Sunday afternoon film club

The past few weekends have been spent at home. As PJ grinds his way through another berry-collecting adventure, offing various samurai lords on his way to restoring peace to his village, I watch movies. Black and white movies. And not my usual Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn romantic comedies. Oh no. These are art-house classics, albeit art-house lite. British kitchen sink and Ozu, rather than Fellini and Fassbinder. "Darling", a grim look at what it was like to be beautiful in 60s London. "The L-Shaped Room", a grim look at what it was like to be beautiful and pregnant in 60s London. And today, "Late Spring", a grim look at what it was like to be the beautiful, devoted, unmarried daughter of a widowed father in post-war Japan. The latter was beautifully shot, hugely restrained in terms of dialogue and plot -- it played for 5 minutes before I could ascertain whether I'd turned the subtitles on properly -- and very touching. (It also inspired me to cook Japanese food this evening.) Mind you, I did have to pretend to PJ (when he appeared shortly before the end of the movie) that he'd just missed the battle with the giant, time-traveling robots that are essential to his enjoyment of any movie, and particularly Japanese ones.

The film club will be suspended for the next two Sundays, due to trips to Norwich and Cardiff. Showings will resume with "Early Summer", a grim look at one woman's resistance to familial pressure to get married in post-war Japan. I can't wait!

One question though: Why are these films so bloody expensive? I can get the latest blockbuster, complete with several hours of special features and commentaries, for less than a tenner, but a 90-minute, 60-year-old art-house classic with nothing in the way of interviews or documentaries costs 20 quid. It makes no sense!