Death to Smoochy

Big Chip Dale has been on something of a roll, over the weekend, which made it impossible to update. I'm putting the finishing touches to a novel I've been writing and is now almost complete.

Not much else to tell you except my Saturday evening was taken up by rewatching one of my favourite films, Death to Smoochy. I doubt if many (if any) of you will have heard of it. It was one of those films that most people don’t quite 'get'. It’s profane, cynical, bleak, sweet, corny, cheesy, sick, twisted, and absolutely fantastic. Robin Williams plays Rainbow Randolph, a star of children’s TV who falls from grace and is replaced by Edward Norton who plays a large pink rhino called Smoochy. The thing sounds cute beyond all plausibility but it's one of the darkest comedies you could find. Danny De Vito just has a knack of making great movies... He's very under-rated. It's also written by one of the guys behind The Larry Sanders Show, so you really can't get a better pedigree for your laughs.

I also spent some of the weekend reading T.H. White’s Once And Future King, which Disney remade as The Sword in the Stone. It’s a gentle but utterly beguiling retelling of the Arthurian legend. I can't recommend it more highly. There's a wonderful scene, early in the novel, in which Merlin introduces Wart (the young Arthur) to the ways of knightly combat. He takes the boy to see two old knights engage in a joust and then a fight. The whole thing is a comedic masterpiece as the two heavily armoured knights prove utterly incompetent as they proceed to hack at each other. It’s Monty Python without the visceral delight in gore. It really is that good.

There. It's Monday and I've already recommended a book and a film. What more could you ask for, without my having to post pictures from Friday night's performance?

Now, I have to get back to the novel. These things don't write themselves.