All Aboard

Elegance seems to have chosen the wrong time of year to sit around Bondi Beach, watching tanned hunks mince up and down the flotsam line. As I took delight in reminding her, it's Spring here right now and my sap is rising. Today I plant the Night-Scented Stock in the back garden of our compact but adorable city apartment. Oh all right then, the window box.

Talking of Australian hunks, you cannot help but be aware of the film 'Noah' being foisted onto the public here right now, what with all the huge posters of Russell Crowe standing in the pouring rain (like all the other hunks at Bondi at the moment) and looking like every other bloody character he has portrayed since - for some inexplicable reason - he has become top of the pops in Hollywood.

The only difference is that he is carrying an axe rather than the usual short-sword, but the way he handles it suggests that he is about to use it to decapitate a British film critic rather than do a spot of light carpentry. I bet there were a load of confused cinema-goers who left the premier wondering why Noah had an Australian accent too. His mastery of regional accents is second only in proficiency to the great Dick Van Dyke. Ok, I know we don't know what a B.C. Hebrew accent sounded like before modern English was invented, and I know that if he attempted one he would probably sound like Groucho Marx, but even so... I wonder how he feels about being the biggest British gay icon since Dusty Springfield?

I have lost interest in the career of Emma Watson ever since she graduated from Hogwarts and started having children of her own, so I won't be going to the pictures to see her either. I feel the same way about Daniel Radcliffe too, ever since he got his kit off on stage and stood next to a horse. He's got such a strange, physiological shape and texture, so unlike Russell Crowe's finely-honed flab.

Emma Watson did post up a funny tweet halfway through filming 'Noah' though, wondering if anyone else found it ironic that the shooting had to be postponed due to torrential rain. I wonder what the difference between rain that comes out of the end of a fire-hose and the sort which comes from the clouds is?

Actually, I do know the difference. Real rain hardly shows up on camera, so a milky dye has to be mixed with the water to catch the artificial light. In 'Singing In The Rain', they used real milk during a hot, Hollywood Summer, and the actors went home every night stinking of rancid cheese. That's true. It must be, I've already told you that before at least once.

When I read that article about Dr Irving Finkel (who translated the blue-print for the real Ark) spending a day doing almost everything that any normal person would spend his day on, I had not realised that it must have been timed for the release of 'Noah', but - as one of you pointed out - Dr Finkel looks a lot more like the Noah of popular imagination than Russell bloody Crowe. I bet he can act a lot better than him as well. He can probably sing a lot better than him too - and he is probably not a violent, monosyllabic bore that charges more for one appearance than Finkel could ever hope to earn in a lifetime of truly valuable work.

I always seem to be slagging off Australians in these posts, but I really am not prejudiced against any of them, other than the ones already slagged-off. I admire most of them (Ms Toa), it's just that us Brits are not allowed to be prejudiced against Americans these days and we have to moan about someone in an irritatingly superior way - it's what they teach us at Eton.