Boy Wonder

I have read some extremely joyless reviews of Be Kind Rewind, most particularly by Philip French of The Observer, who, from the small amount of his work I've absorbed, doesn't really seem to do joy. I note from the infallible Wikipedia that Philip French is, in fact, 75. Naturally this has no bearing on his ability as a critic, but I wonder if reaching old age as a dead ringer for Uncle Junior from The Sopranos has left him feeling slightly jaded with his lot.

'The f**kin Feds are so far up my ass, I can taste Brylcreem'

'Be Kind Rewind is a sentimental, whimsical embarrassment'

Anyway, sorry, uncle Ju, but the magical mincing machine that is director Michel Gondry's brain always bewitches me. And while I'm aware I'm dazzled to the extent that I suffer a minor dislocation of my critical faculties (Dave Eggers also does this to me, albeit with a slightly different method, and Jonathan Safran Foer), I wouldn't have it any other way. No, I don't think Jack Black completely nailed it. And no, I didn't sit through the 'let's make our own movie' part without the slightest ding-ding on my wince-ometer,  But I could happily see out all my cinema-going days in The Gondry Enchanted Forest, where the everyday is transformed, with the casual deftness of a balloon modeller, into the extraordinary.

Also, Mos Def = hot.

One of the joys of a trip to the Odeon Beckenham, aside from the chance to see my lovely friends of course, is renewing my love affair with the gleaming aisles and chic packaging of Waitrose, which, like any good mistress, arranges itself seductively round the side of the train station. As I flirted with the ready meals, I heard a handsome young orderly whistling one of the Moldy Peaches' songs from the Juno soundtrack, to the indifference of his colleagues. I wanted to catch his eye, and say, with the power of my mind, and the muscles in my face, 'Me too! I know what you're singing, even if none of these pork-pie-hatted, white-overalled automatons don't. I know'. Maybe he couldn't see me from behind his painstakingly dishevelled fringe, maybe my powers of telepathy aren't all they might be (although surely that's not true), but alas, I was unable to distract him from his work. But us impotent disciples of Le Gondry live for these dreamy non-encounters. And those thai red curries won't unpack themselves.