Synecdoche, New York

Yesterday evening I was listening to the final episode of the radio series of The Twilight Zone. This week's story was called "Five Characters in Search of an Exit", and was about five unconnected people who find themselves trapped together in a metal room with no way out and no memory of how they got there. It was a pretty good story, with a surprising twist at the end, although it was slightly marred by one of the worst attempts at a Scottish accent I have ever heard.

Later on I was watching a show called Bring Back... Star Trek, in which Justin Lee-Collins, a British comedian and TV presenter, was trying to reunite the cast of the original Star Trek TV series to talk to them about their time on the show and try and get them to return for a one-off reunion. He had a good response from most of them, with the only one who he couldn't at least get to talk to being William Shatner. I used to love Star Trek and I thought it was a really funny and enetertaining show.

This morning I went along with my Mum to the Cameo Cinema to see a preview of the film Synecdoche, New York, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. The film is about an aging theatre director (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose wife (Catherine Keener) leaves him to go to Berlin to work on her painitng, taking their young daughter with her. Deeply troubled by his failing health and complex relationships with the women in his life, the director decides to create an epic experimental theatre piece, which he plans to be a "brutally and painfully honest" recreation of his own life on a giant life-size New York set built in a massive hanger. However before long life and art become increasingly confused. The film is well-made and well-acted, with some memorably quirky elements, but in many respects it is just too weird.

After the movie we went along to my parent's house for lunch. Which today was beef stew with mashed potato and peas. The afternoon was pretty quiet and I spent most of the time reading the various supplements from the Sunday papers.