Bullitt

Last night I watched a one-off horror drama on TV called Whistle and I'll Come to You which starred John Hurt as an elderly man who has just put his wife in a nursing home and gone on holiday alone to a quiet seaside hotel. After discovering a wedding ring on the beach he finds himself haunted by increasingly disturbing supernatural occurances. The story was loosely based on a short story by M.R. James (called "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad"). In the original story the main character is an unmarried middle-aged academic who finds an old whistle on the beach and blows it, and then finds himself tormented by ghostly occurances. Also the original story was actually quite scary, but the new TV version cut out the scary bits. It was okay in places, and it had some good sequences, but just not enough. Mostly it was kind of a disappointment.

I also watched the last in the current series of Peep Show, which was kind of a New Year special.

Today I was watching the 1968 movie Bullitt, directed by Peter Yates. Set in San Francisco, it stars Steve McQueen as police lieutenant Frank Bullitt who is assigned to safeguard a witness from the Mob, on the request of a sleazy politician (played by Robert Vaughn). The movie hasn't really aged well and the pace kind of sags in places, but it does feature Steve McQueen in probably his most iconic role, and a cool jazzy score from Lalo Schifrin (which has probably been played at every wine bar and cocktail party for the past 40 years) and also one of the most famous and influential car chases ever seen on film. All that, and the presence of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn, pretty much makes it a compendium of sixties cool. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Tomorrow I am pretty much going to have to be up at half past five in order to get into work early so I can leave as early as possible. It's New Year's Eve so it's likely to be a really busy couple of days. To be honest I am not looking forward to going to work tomorrow at all. I love New Year, but to be honest I feel like I'll be doing well to make it to midnight without passing out.Anyway, Happy New Year!