Ghost of a flea

Sounds like Sky Flea and the World of Tomorrow.

Crime-fighting zeppelins are cool. As long as they are helium-filled.

I finally got round to seeing that film last week. While most of it struck me as pretty/insubstantial I confess to a lump in my throat at the sight of the Union Jack on the side of Angelina Jolie's SHIELD-style helifortress.

I just got around to seeing it last month. I really wanted to love that film but couldn't quite manage it. Cinematically it was gorgeous and really pays homage to all those futurist serials of the 30s and 40s. But as one reviewer wittily scribed, the only thing keeping it from greatness was the lack of a good story.

I don't know if it is superficial on my part but I find it impossible to take seriously anything with Jude Law or Gwyneth Paltrow let alone the two of them. I used to think Paltrow was wonderful until I saw her interviewed on The Actor's Studio; you could practically see the marbles rolling around inside her head. And Jude Law seems entirely too pleased with himself.

I was beginning to wonder why I had meant to watch the film and then Angelina Jolie popped up in leather and it all came back to me. I also liked the robots.

I have never really made an effort to see Gwyneth in anything. They certainly had her all dolled up appropriately for Sky Captain but the acting depth, at least for that gig -- was not there.

I like Jude Law, in general. I first saw him in an ancient (circa 1991) episode of Brit-TV's revived Sherlock Holmes series. I thought he did an excellent job in a character role there. I thought the same when I saw him in Gattaca in '97. He's got range, when he puts effort into it. I am not so sure that effort was on hand for Sky Captain but he ought to have been perfect for the role. He already looks like one of those steady blokes you'd see climbing out of the wreckage of his downed Spitfire and calmly lighting up a Lucky.

I was really impressed by Angelina Jolie's little walk-on bits. She ought to do more character roles, she's pretty good at it and you get the sense that, absent a boring, derivative billion-dollar custom-built star vehicle, she really can act.

I thought "Gattaca" was generally excellent and that includes Jude Law. He was also the only point of relief in "AI", on my top ten list of worst films I have ever been forced to sit through by a date. Though as a plastic sex-puppet Law was not stretching his acting abilities much.

I enjoyed Paltrow enormously in "Shakespear in Love". If that was Paltrow. I remember enjoying her but do not remember her herself as it were. Judi Dench was good in that one too. I also enjoyed Paltrow in "Sliding Doors" though it is my impression I am the only person who has ever seen the film. Basically, I like hearing her quasi-mangle an English accent (though I admit everyone in Islington thinks her accent is wonderful... possibly down to the quasi-strangulated affection of the borough's middle-classes being no more or less honestly come by than Paltrow's).

Paltrow was great in both Shakespeare in Love and Sliding Doors. (Yes, I saw it. I was at the premiere, in fact.) I've tried to avoid seeing any interviews with her because her screen persona was so likeable, and everything I've heard secondhand suggests that the offscreen Gwyneth is an abrasive dolt. Just leave me my illusions.

Very wise. I was crushed by the interview. Before seeing it I found her enthralling; delicate and somehow luminous.