I cannot overstate how much I love Smile, and Dern is fantastic in it (even though my favourite performance is Michael Kidd as the world-weary, cynical, in-it-for-a-buck choreographer who ends up having a decent side).

Aw! (scuffs foot on floor) It was nothing. And this didn't seem like the right thread; next week's sounds like it would be more appropriate. But thanks for the mention!

I say a 'small' gem because it isn't one of Lean's more famous films. I think it's a great film, but it does tend to get overlooked.

Yes, it's pretty nerve-wracking, especially in the final 15 minutes before the performance starts: you're ready to go, but have to wait. But the immediate reaction - applause and ovations - are wonderfully exhilarating; when you're up on stage and get that kind of response, it's a real high, and you feed off it. I can…

Yes, and Lean produced Hobson's Choice and is credited as a co-writer as well. It really is a small gem (and John Mills is great).

I use 'Hobson's choice' a fair bit, because I love the phrase. Also, the 1954 movie of that title is well worth checking out; it's an excellent film, with Charles Laughton in full flow, the underappreciated Brenda de Banzie in the lead role, and Prunella Scales in a small but sharp supporting role some 20 years before…

After spending years thinking I couldn't carry a tune in a paper bag, I played the role of Mrs. Pearce, the housekeeper, in our local (very small town) theatre production of My Fair Lady eighteen months ago, where I had to sing two lines at the end of 'I Could Have Danced All Night'. The musical director told me I had…

Yes, and in the RT listing for the show it was noted that it had been written by Stephen Volk. I was living in the UK at the time, and the furor over it was unbelievable after it aired.

Here in British Columbia, the terrain means that many major highways have falling rock signs in areas where this is a real danger. There are also stretches of highway (such as the Fraser Canyon south of me) where there signs warning 'Avalanche area: no stopping.' Which is all well and good, until you're stopped right…

In the more upscale burbs - or in Canada, Great Britain, Australia. . . .

Boy, I'm doing small-town editing wrong. This week's paper only has two front page stories: one about funding for restoration of the local historic fire hall, and one about the reopening of a nearby fossil site that is world-renowned but has been closed for five years (the government took it out of private hands,…

'The Famous Five Go Pillaging' from Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls:

I'm from out west, but lived in Ontario for three years in the mid-1970s, and found milk bags really weird. We were a family of four at the time, so had no trouble going through the milk, but it just seemed like such a strange system.

Hurry! Hurry hard!!

Also, the British dark comedy series Psychoville did a bottle episode in its first season based on Rope, where a mother and son duo kill someone and hide the body in a trunk, then have to hide what they've done from a policeman who drops by unexpectedly. The half-hour episode looks as if it was filmed in one long…

I moved from B.C. to Ontario for grades 6 to 8, then back to B.C. through grade 12. As a result, I missed out on some things (mostly Canadian history) that were taught in Ontario in the grades before or after I was there, and covered in B.C. while I was gone.

Don't give them any ideas. Although I suspect that ship has well and truly sailed.

'I’m not saying [Rick] should trust Daryl right out of the gate—he definitely shouldn’t—but demanding him kneel at gunpoint is… well. I don’t know what it is. But it’s not great.'

This week in journalism, small town Canada edition: the extremes of the editor/journalist's life in a one person newsroom. Last Sunday I went (within an hour) from interviewing the freshly-minted New Democratic Party candidate in our provincial riding, a four-time member of the legislature and former cabinet minister…

Me too. Spy was the second magazine I ever subscribed to, back in the 1980s, and 'short-fingered vulgarian' was my introduction to the man.