I thought of a great way to con people. Its brilliaint. A modern day sting. Or Sting. Here’s what you do:

you make a film about a con, a sting, a hustle. You get truly brilliant actors (I shall include the females under this generality for the sake of… of… of something) and you get them performing brilliantly and you create a massive hype surrounded by Oscar nominations and glitzy 70s period costumes. And then you use a story which is limp, weak, lacks credibility and is lumpily unbelievable. And con the British public into spending their hard earned, tax-paid income on this truly American Hustle.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t hate it, purely because Christian Bale is magnificent, Amy Adams amazing and Jennifer Lawrence… well, to be honest, her presence alone precludes my ability to hate anything. If she played for Arsenal I’d have serious problems. If she performed a quenelle at the Oscars I’d consider forgiving Anelka.

But much like that other Oscar nominated movie; Blue Jasmine, this too is a bunch of magnificent performances that simply didn’t work for me as a movie. Though unlike the Woody Allen film, this one is too long. All films tend to be too long and suffer for it. Because you get bored and start thinking about how uncomfortable cinema seats can be. As a rule, a movie should last as long it takes to get all the bits of popcorn husk out of your teeth. Any longer is just vanity by the director. Or the dentist. (?)

In American Hustle the Bradley Cooper character is the main flaw. I like Mr Cooper; he was wonderful in Silver Linings Playbook, fabulous in The Hangover, but was just wrong in this. A problem with the plot rather than the acting.

So that was last night. Luckily we had such fun in the afternoon at the London Art Exhibition at the Design Centre in Islington. What was planned as ‘a leisurely afternoon/early evening stroll enjoying the best of artisitic endevours’ turned out to be an hour of pushing through crowds trying to get just a peek at some total shit (in the name of ‘art’), some piece of cardboard painted white, (£5750 + vat), a collage like my kids did in kindergarten, but more childish (£7225 + vat), three red squares on a blue canvas (£9583) and a photo of an old man (£22,745).

Nothing wowed, nothing even made us look twice, but on the plus side, I didn’t get my pockets picked nor got ribs broken in the constant crush.

We were out within an hour. Job done. Art over. Let’s check out the football scores.

Fortunately, for art’s sake, I played tennis brilliantly. I played like Toulouse-Lautrec.

Happy sunday

A xxxx