I normally have to get my family to watch any films about writing with stealth, bribery and begging, but we all enjoyed Stranger than Fiction last night. With a stellar cast including Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah and starring Will Ferrell, it was about a desperate writer, played by Emma Thompson, whose authorial voice started to sound in the head of her fictional - but alive - character as she decides how to kill him off. The scene when her character came to visit her in her office to plead for his life was as tense as any of the horror scenes written by Bret Easton Ellis in Lunar Park, and the general introduction of emotion in both the fictional and real lives was deftly done. Admittedly we did spend a long time discussing the quality of Dustin Hoffman's legs for a what, sixty, year old? and, worryingly, no one agreed with me that the overwraught writer was just a little bit overplayed, but otherwise we all thought it was a winner. I'm encouraged to try more writing/book films now, all suggestions welcome.
And imagine my excitement, half way through the film, when I realised that one of the lovely Christmas presents I'd been given and had kept boxed up for later, was making a getaway from its box:
and seemed to be growing successfully without water, air, light, or anything really ...
