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FILM 1643: PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 

TRIVIA: Photographed in the English Technicolor process by Jack Cardiff, this film is considered one of the most beautiful colour films ever made.

The first feature film in color for Ava Gardner.

Esperanza, the name of the fishing village, is the Spanish for 'hope' which was the only thing left after Pandora opened her box in the Greek myth

Van der Zee means "of the sea" in Dutch.

The famous poet Dylan Thomas visited the set and is believed to have appeared as an extra, being briefly visible in the background in one scene.

On the beach, around 0:05:40, Geoffrey says aloud to himself, "'The measure of love is what one is willing to give up for it.' Who said that?" Though the quotation comes up a couple of times more, the question of who said it is never answered. The answer is, none other than Albert Lewin himself, the writer of the story and the screenplay and the director.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

FILM 1541: THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS

TRIVIA: The triffids inspired the E.T. plants of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

In an interview, producer Bernard Glasser said that in order to satisfy a British government requirement that productions shot in British have a certain percentage of British executives, George Pitcher, a retired film executive, was hired as basically a "frontman"; although credited as producer, he had no actual authority over the production.

Kieron Moore and Janette Scott were only added to the cast when it was discovered on completion of filming that there was only 57 minutes of good usable footage available . The whole lighthouse sequence, directed by the veteran Director of Photography Freddie Francis, was only added on to help extend the movie's running time.

FILM 1370: THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA

TRIVIA: The character of Maria Vargas is said to be based on Rita Hayworth, who was actually offered the part. Hayworth was a Latina who later married a prince, Prince Aly Khan. However, some elements were taken from Ava Gardner's life as well. The stormy relationship between Maria and the tycoon movie producer Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) is based on Gardner's own relationship with billionaire film producer Howard Hughes.

Mankiewicz wanted James Mason, whom he had just directed in "Julius Caesar," for the part of the nobleman. MGM executive Nicholas Schenck, who had had a vehement disagreement with the director, would not release Mason for the film. According to Mankiewicz, he ended up with Rossano Brazzi, "who cannot act, cannot be sensual... could hardly speak English..." Ironically, Rosemary Matthews, who was hired to help Brazzi with his English, and Mankiewicz later married.

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BOOK 128: ANY HUMAN HEART: WILLIAM BOYD

Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart is a 2002 novel by William Boyd, a Scottish writer. It is written as a lifelong series of journals kept by Mountstuart, a writer whose life (1906–1991) spanned the defining episodes of the 20th century, crossed several continents and included a convoluted sequence of relationships and literary endeavours. Boyd uses the diary form to explore how public events impinge on individual consciousness, so that Mountstuart’s journal alludes almost casually to the war, the death of a prime minister or the abdication of the king. Boyd plays ironically on the theme of literary celebrity, introducing his protagonist to several real writers who are included as characters – a spat with Virginia Woolf in London, a possible sexual encounter with Evelyn Waugh at Oxford, a clumsy exchange with James Joyce in Paris, and a friendship with Ernest Hemingway that spans several years.

Boyd spent 30 months writing the novel. The journal style, with its gaps, false starts and contradictions, reinforces the theme of the changing self in the novel. Many plot points simply fade away. The novel received mixed reviews from critics on publication, but has sold well. A television adaptation was made with the screenplay written by Boyd, first broadcast in 2010.

Richard Eder praised Any Human Heart in the New York Times: "William Boyd, is multifaceted and inventive, and he plays a deep game under his agile card tricks." Christopher Tayler, in the London Review of Books, called the characterisation of Mountstuart weak and wondered if he was merely a device through which Boyd could write pastiche about 20th-century writers, "Boyd hustles you through to the end despite all this, but it’s hard not to wonder if it was really worth making the journey." In The Atlantic Monthly, Brooke Allen liked the Mountstuart character: "he is far more generous, forgiving, and free than most of us. He is also more amusing, and more amused by life", thus making an "attractive central character" and Boyd's writing showed "a great natural vitality and an increasingly sophisticated humanism." The Atlantic Monthly selected it as one of the "books of the year".

In The Observer, Tim Adams complimented the opening sections as "nicely layered with the pretensions of a particular precocious kind of student" but criticised the "predictability" of Mountstuart's "walk-on part in literary history" and ultimately the suspension of disbelief, particularly the Baader-Meinhoff passages, concluding "For all the incident, for all the change he witnesses, Mountstuart never really feels like a credible witness either to history or emotion." Tom Cox in The Daily Telegraph disagreed: he praised the characterisation, calling Mountstuart "a man whose fragile egotism and loose-fitting story has you frequently forgetting you're reading fiction, and even more frequently forgetting you're reading at all." Giles Foden, in The Guardian, found the New York art-scene sections weakest, saying they "puncture the realism Boyd has so carefully built up in the rest of the novel." Michiko Kakutani agreed that Mountstuart's youth was well evoked, but that the description of his retirement and poverty was "as carefully observed and emotionally resonant". While in the early part of the book "the characters' marionette strings [are] carefully hidden", later Boyd tried to play God, resulting in "an increasingly contrived narrative that begins to strain our credulity."

Boyd spends his summer in the south of France and has a large audience there, and several French journals noted the publication of Any Human Heart. L'express called Boyd a "magician", while Le Nouvel Observateur called it "very good Boyd. Perhaps even his magnum opus."

The novel was in the longlist of the Man Booker Prize in 2002, and on the shortlist of the Dublin Impac Literary Award in 2004. In 2009, Boyd commented, "[it] didn't get particularly good reviews, yet I've never had so many letters about a novel. It's selling fantastically well seven years on, and we're about to turn it into six hours of telly for Channel 4, so something about that novel gets to readers."

MY VERDICT: I was given this book by my friend at work.  He said if I didn’t like this then he’d give up with my literary education forever.  I am pleased to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was explaining the story to my boyfriend and he thought I was describing the adventures of a real person, so easy is it to forget that this book is a fictional account of a fictional life.  It is truly engrossing and despite knowing what is happening in the world at the time of each entry, the effects of events and the minutia of a man’s everyday life can still surprise, shock and intrigue. I didn’t want it to end and I saw sorry to say goodbye to Logan Mountstuart.