Dickens Bi-Centenary

I decided to celebrate the Dickens bi-centenary in style: by watching the Doctor Who story in which Dickens appears.  Simon Callow plays the great man and there is the added bonus of Eve Myles playing the psychic maid.  The script is by Mark Gatiss, and in a typical stroke of genius Russell T Davies managed to link Gwen from Torchwood to Gwyneth when he brought the characters from Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures into The Stolen Earth.

For anyone missing Doctor Who, here's the trailer:

Love's Kitchen

Tomorrow evening we're hosting a special event: a screening of Love's Kitchen with an introduction from the director James Hackin followed by a Q&A session afterwards.

I'd heard that the film did not do well at the box office - understatement - but I hadn't realised how bad the reviews were.  I've checked  out the usual suspects, ie Wikipedia, The Guardian and The Observer, but have struggled to find very much.

After much thought I decided on simple and straightforward statements of fact...

Here are my notes, much shorter than usual:

Love’s Kitchen
UK 2011                      xxx minutes

Director:                      James Hacking

Starring:                        Dougray Scott, Claire Forlani and Simon Callow

 Rob Haley (Dougray Scott) plays a headstrong, award-winning chef who goes into decline after his wife dies.  He decides to buy an ailing country pub in a rural paradise and, inspired by a meeting with Gordon Ramsay, manages to turn it into a successful gastro-emporium.  Then he begins to date Kate Templeton (Claire Forlani) daughter of a local squire who happens to be a successful restaurant critic.

 In addition to Scott and Forlani (who are married in real life) the film also includes well-known actors of the calibre of Simon Callow (playing a food critic clearly modelled on Keith Floyd), Peter Bowles (unsurprisingly playing the village squire) and Michelle Ryan as a kitchen assistant.

The film was shot in Letchmore Heath in Hertfordshire which, as Peter Bradshaw noted in his review in The Guardian, was also the location of the 1960 sci-fi classic Village of the Damned.

Here's a link to the trailer: