I have a bath every Sunday morning. That’s the most interesting thing you’ll read today, I’m sure. But I have a bath because I need to ease the aches, pains and stresses that I inflicted yesterday on the tennis court, so that I can do the same today. I don’t do aromatherapy fucking oils, honest. I don’t light a dozen feng shui candles, dim the lights and hummmmmmm… I just soak. And read the Culture section of the paper so I don’t get bored. Because I’m one cultured muthafucka. And I look at the films and music and plays, flick past the ballet, obviously, and opera, read the books bit and then, once the tv reviews start I throw it away.

Unless…

Unless the picture upon that page is one showing a young Robert DeNiro. As happened today. Bobby with Meryl. Unmistakably The Deer Hunter. Hmmm…

I love Robert DeNiro. Sorry, I loved Robert DeNiro until he turned into the worst kind of slapstick ‘funny man’ in a host of awful movies I refused to watch. In honour of what he had been. Ok, he redeemed himself a bit in Silver Linings Playbook, but really? Bobby playing a hapless schmuck agonising over wedding plans??? The Bobby of old would have wiped out all the caterers, planners and bridesmaids with a fucking kalashnikov. The good Bobby. The one I love.

People were polarised, back in the 70s/80s. Who is the ‘best actor in the world’; Bobby or Al Pacino? For me it was no contest. No matter how much little Al shouted and screamed in Scarface, no matter how brilliant he was in Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon (and he was incredibly so), he simply couldn’t match the smouldering menace of Robert DeNiro in absolutely everything. Taxi Driver (in my personal top 3 movies of all time; along with 83 others), Mean Streets, Goodfellas, everything totally brilliant. DeNiro and Scorsese; what a match.

And then Deer Hunter. Martin Cimino’s finest moment. Came out in a wave of Vietnam movies. Or anti-Vietnam movies as there was never anything good to come from that awful war. And the top movies were Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. Both outstandingly brilliant, both amazingly powerful, yet totally different. Whilst Francis Ford Coppola showed the horrors of the actual war and how it totally fucked up everyone involved in it, Deer Hunter was more about the way the war affected normal lives, and fucked up everyone involved in it, especially the amazing Christopher Walken.

The movie is so brilliant they’re showing it at 11pm on some third world, second rate channel. Which is why God invented things that record tv programmes.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx