how to do pathos

i quite fancy a rambling blog entry here, so if you're after the answer to the above, skip the next few paragraphs and head straight for the pellucid summary at the end. ( you'll miss out on the back-story of postal dvd-renting, how the TV licensing people make you feel really trustworthy, and a teeny film review.

a few years back, i signed myself and mrs hope up for postal dvd renting - with screenselect i believe.  we had cash to splash in those days, and enjoyed the novelty of wondering what film would be chosen, from our shortlist, for our viewing pleasure.  screenselect briefly masqueraded as sainsbury's, or tesco (can't remember now), and after riding on their coat-tails for a few months, got swallowed up by LOVEFiLM and hiked their prices up.  whereupon we checked out - as we weren't watching that many films anyway.  also, in my attempts for selecting the coolest shortlist of films possible, i had a staggering 60 or 70 films on it which meant we were getting some rather obscure art-house titles instead of mrs hope's preferred blockbusters.

having ditched our subscription, we realised that our TV licence was up for renewal at the end of the month. after a brief evaluation of how much TV we were watching ("I'm a Celebrity..." had just sucked us into its candy-floss-world-of-tat once again) we decided to ditch the TV, relegating all related equipment to the cellar in case the lovely TV licensing people came to call.  a month later, while we were still recovering from the shock of no TV (we'd gone cold turkey - not even watching the final of Celebrity after our licence expired), a sturdy brown envelope dropped through our letterbox... a check-up from the TVL folk.  although they trusted our disclosure that we had got rid of our TV, they clearly were into giving people second chances...

"Our experience has shown that a small but significant minority of people who tell us that they do not need a TV Licence, are found to require one when visited...  we hope to identify all such evaders and we can also ensure that those who, like yourself, legitimately need no contact from Television Licensing are not troubled unnecessarily in the future."

judging by the excuses they receive from some members of the public, who can blame them for their graceful approach!

dvds on the laptop were the solution we came up with, and having been pestered by marketing emails from LOVEFiLM, we relented and renewed our subscription. last month we watched the 2004 remake of the manchurian candidate, which i new was about mind control stuff, but have always thought it was based in china (from the title?). i was really sucked into the story by some wonderful actors and sensitive direction.  liev schreiber, denzel washington and meryl streep were spot on in how they worked out their characters.  the only flaw in the film was the scratch on the dvd that caused a glitch during the polling scene - not sure there could be a worse place to have an interruption - but even that didn't prevent the film building to an appropriately dramatic finish.  how to do pathos?  liev schreiber.