Brokeback Mountain

Typically, at this time of the year, we watch films on DVD. It's cold and dark outside, so I light a big fire and we settled down to watch some blockbuster that's still in the drawer in its original cellophane wrapping. I know that I noticed a problem when we watched Walk the Line last November. Why is it so difficult to understand film dialogue? Last night we watched Brokeback Mountain and I swear that neither of us understood more than 50% of what was said. It has been given a 15 Certificate with the rider that it "contains strong language, moderate sex and violence." There was absolutely no need to worry about the language because it was impossible to hear what they were saying. If you consider watching two men rogering each other as moderate sex then I admit to being seriously out of touch and I have also seen more violence in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The audio was so bad that I considered checking the television for a fault, that is, until the film finished and regular tv came back on. I can only imagine that all the people involved in the process of giving 4 Bafta Awards and 3 Academy Awards are also excellent lip readers!

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This afternoon at 17.00, the village was invited for the annual get together in the village hall with William for a reprise of the year and to drink local wines and eat some gallette du rois. I understand more of William's speech every year and this year was no exception. What's fun is that we now know lots more people and we had the opportunity to meet new ones. For example, we met a nice couple who we vaguely know and who might be fun to excercise the dogs with and a lady who is just starting new kennels. It would obviously be handy to have kennels in the village so we will check them out tomorrow.