[ Bank of English - selected references]
He's just bought Club Monaco cosmetics - which Monica Lewinsky wore in her interviews with Barbara Walters and Jon Snow. The lipstick colour was Glaze. Sales went up tenfold. Like the man said, a natural progression. Indeed, the ever-fortunate hand of Lauren has touched the other poster girl of the year, with his candy-pink confection for Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars. As the Best Actress's tears soaked the satin, the picture was beamed round the world, bringing lots of lovely free publicity. As we know, Paltrow had a reputation as a severe Prada or Calvin Klein type. Thus Lauren did not bother to solicit her, although I knew she'd worn a white cashmere gown of mine, and had been buying in my stores". But when the call came, he knew instantly what she should look like. `I knew who she should be. She should be a princess." Did he come over all pink? `It's spring. I knew before I even spoke to her that she should wear pink or blue. She'd look gorgeous. I think that Gwyneth is the Grace Kelly of the Nineties, so she should look like a princess, not a fashion victim.
SOUND the trumpets, put out the flags, at last we have a decent British movie that doesn't bang on terminally about life on a Scunthorpe council estate or star Emma Thompson looking lachrymose in a tight fitting corset.
I was beginning to despair. Four Weddings And A Funeral arrives laden down with triumphant laurels and the kind of Stateside box office more suited to a Spielberg time travel epic. It is easy to see why.
This is a wonderful, over-the-top confection, perfectly structured, warm and inviting, spiced with just enough bon mots and mischievous insights to keep the treacle fairy from the church door and neatly confirming every well honed prejudice the Yanks possess about the English middle classes.
Barbarella (1968) was a meretricious confection of futurist mumbo-jumbo, which was very largely a vehicle for the frequent disrobing of the comely Jane Fonda. Easy Rider, though it sharply observed much of what constituted contemporary America, allowed its hippy protagonists to escape in a haze of sentiment which was quite uncharacteristic of Southern at his satirical peak.
SNEAKERS
KENNETH Branagh brings a lot of folk out in hives and I was scratching myself furiously at the thought of Ken, Em, Stephen, Tony, Hugh and Imelda - plus Em's distinguished mum Phyllida Law as the faithful retainer - all holed up, chummy as you please, in a country house over the Yuletide hols, quaffing bubbly and beating their breasts. It has to be said there is a lot that is queasily smug about this English answer to the US `reunion" movie The Big Chill, substituting the products of Oxbridge Eighties ambition and greed for Sixties radicalism gone sour. But in fact the whole fluffy, vapid confection is so resolutely unmemorable that it gives as much offence as a toothless poodle.