My Movie Meme

I’ve just been reading a couple of posts about favourite (or otherwise) movies at The Fearless Blog and Thoughtful Reflections and since I spend a lot of my time copy-editing journals about films and cinema from across the world, I’ve drawn up up my own list, based on the format used in the blogs I’ve just mentioned, so here goes!

1. One movie that made you laugh: Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks. There are dozens of others. I just love movies that make me laugh.
2. One movie that made you cry: I can’t think of one at the moment.
3. One movie that you loved when you were a child: Snow White; in fact, anything by Walt Disney!
4. One movie you’ve seen more than once: Mary Poppins. However, my brother once insisted on seeing this movie several times in a single week when it was first shown at our local cinema back in 1964.
5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it: Any of the Carry on… series that were popular in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. However, I’ve watched a few recently, and they seem very dated when compared with movies nowadays.
6. One movie that you hated: The Night Porter, with Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling.
7. One movie that scared you: I don’t go to scary movies!
8. One movie that bored you: The Night Porter. See above.
9. One movie that made you happy: Shakespeare in Love (another movie I’ve seen more than once).
   
10. One movie that made you miserable: Braveheart. How could the English treat the Scots so badly!
11. One movie you thought would be great, but it wasn’t: Young Frankenstein, by Mel Brooks.
12. One movie you weren’t brave enough to watch: The Exorcist.
13. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with: Deanna Troi, of Star Trek. Okay, I’m cheating a bit here, because I fell in love with her when she appeared in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she appeared in the subsequent follow-up movies.

Omid Djalili Gets His Own BBC Show

It’s great to see that Omid Djalili has eventually been given his own TV show at prime time on BBC 1. What is even better is that the producers of The X Factor have moved the time of their results show so that I can watch both on Saturday night without missing any part of either show.

I’m particularly pleased to see Omid do so well because, like me, he is a Bahá’í and was born and brought up in Britain. Of course, Omid has been plying his trade as an actor and comedian ever since he graduated from the University of Ulster in 1988 – he was rejected by 16 different drama schools – when he began to win parts in London’s “fringe” theatre circuit because of his ability to portray a wide range of ethnic characters.

I first saw him perform his one-man shows The Short, Fat Kebab Shop Owner’s Son and A Strange Bit of History at the Riverside Studios in West London during the mid-1990s and I thought he was hilarious. In 2001, I finally got to meet and talk to him in person at the Bahá’í Academy for the Arts, where I was taking a graphic design course and he was performing for us, free of charge, several times during the programme. And I must say, he really is a nice person to get to know.

I had already met his wife, Annabel Knight, who writes a lot of his material, at the Bahá’í Summer School held at Ackworth in 1991, when she was living in Gillingham and I was living just up the road (and railway line) in Bexley. I remember inviting her to the Bexley community’s Nineteen Day Feast, but I think she had other plans in mind.

Annabel and Omid got married in 1992 and moved to the Czech Republic where they started working together in a number of experimental productions; became involved with the Brno-based Centre for Experimental Theatre, where some of Vaclac Havel’s first plays were produced; and toured the country, giving performances and holding drama workshops.

The next time I saw Annabel was in 1996 when she introduced Omid to British television viewers on ITV’s The Big, Big Talent Show, hosted by Jonathan Ross. Omid reached the final of this TV show and won its “Best Comic” award.

Of course, since then, Omid has been seen numerous times on television in Britain and the United States, and in several Hollywood movies – and not just in comedy roles! What I find amazing is that it is now more than ten years since he first appeared on our TV screens, but I am so glad that he has finally reached the top of his profession – after all, the BBC doesn’t invite just anybody to host Have I Got News For You! I understand from Omid’s website that he has even been invited to take part in Celebrity Big Brother in 2008 and, you never know, he might even perform at the Comedy Hall here in Tiverton!

For further information about Omid Djalili, visit his entry on Wikipedia or read the article about him and his wife on the Bahá’í World web site.