From THR, some info on the intl box office of LA: The romantic comedy "Love Actually" conquered Italy with $2.2 million from 357, edging "[The Matrix] Revolutions" to second place. Combined with a weekend opening in Portugal, "Love's" weekend haul came to $2.6 million as it entered the international market. So it was in first place in Italy and second place in Portugal.

[Ed note: How I wish that every program put up transcripts. ;-) ] That's PBS for you! You really get your money's worth.;-)

(Deb)Makes you wonder what those pretty sparkly thangs on her fingers were -- I would suppose ANY natural gemstone would be OUT. I imagine they must be some affordable synthetic "All-rounders", you know . .something you could where any where on any occasion . . ." (Deb)Do you think the Firths shop at QVC for Cubic Zirconias and various "___-olites"? Can you imagine being the QVC operator picking up that order . . "So sir, that will be the one of Item Number J94553 the Epiphany Platinum Clad Diamonique Princess Cut w/Accents Ring . . . " "Ab-so-lut-ley . . ."

Is this new or terribly old? http://film.guardian.co.uk/gall/0,8544,1085537,00.html Enjoying all the goodies...

Lots of thanks to everyone for all these treats! I've lost track of what's what so here's another clip that you may or may not have seen: This one is almost 7 minutes long. I like the accent Colin used for this one. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/entertainment/films/articles/7709685? Can't wait to see Mr Emma's photos!! Should we be calling him Mr Bean? (sorry, I couldn't resist that).

US TV news flash (well, I didn't know about it, so it's a "flash" to me ;-): P&P is apparently being shown at 2pm EST on A&E beginning this afternoon.

some affordable synthetic "All-rounders" SNORT!! "And, sir, if you order now, you can also get the matching earrings for only $19.99." "WOT? ... Sorry, musta dropped the phone whilst doing my little happy dance!"

How did Sophie's animatronics get to this site? http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-11/471047/CFdancing.gif

I borrowed this one only. Sorry if this is not allowed. I only intended to re-use it here. I will smack my own hand. :(

From MSNBC Holiday Movie Guide http://www.msnbc.com/news/988783.asp?0ql=c7p Scroll way down on the site for this bit. GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING� Scarlett Johansson stars in 'The Girl with a Pearl Earring.' Starring: Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Essie Davis, Alakina Mann, Cillian Murphy Director: Peter Webber The story: Based on the novel by Tracey Chevalier, this story of seduction stars Johansson as a girl hired to be a maid in the house of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (Firth). She finds herself drawn to his work and winds up being the model for one of his most famous works, stirring up jealousy in his wife (Davis), who realizes the girl has borrowed her pearl earrings to wear for the portrait. Firth (�Bridget Jones Diary�) may have finally been given a role that allows him to show some of the sexual heat he had in �Valmont.� He often gets typed as the prim, proper type � but give him the right role and he smolders. What�s the buzz: Johansson has become the �It� girl of the moment since her winning turn in �Lost in Translation.� She�s more likely to get a nomination for that film than for this one. This film will give her a chance to show her range. Web site: http://www.girlwithapearlearringmovie.com/

For Drooleurs in LA, Chicago (YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!), NY and SF, I got an email announcing free advance screenings of GWAPE (all except NY's followed by a cocktail reception) in early December. You go to this site: http://www.campuscircle.net/girlwithapearlearring/ click on your city and open up an Adobe invite, which you must then print to use as your admission ticket. Info on times, places, receptions, etc., is in that Adobe file.

US TV news flash (well, I didn't know about it, so it's a "flash" to me ;-): P&P is apparently being shown at 2pm EST on A&E beginning this afternoon. It was posted here 2 weeks ago, and recently Rika posted it again on Darcy drool topic. AGAIN:Mark your calendars This Sunday Morning on A&E COLIN FIRTH INTERVIEW from Toronto FF. On BWTA check your time. (Karen)free advance screenings of GWAPE ( Pox on Lion's Gate for ignoring the rest of the country.

A hearty thanks to Petra, Aishling, Emma and Gina for all the London reporting! Excellent! (Emma) I could sit back and listen to him orate about diamonds threatening tribes in the Kalahari! (Mari) Er, um, bad diamonds, bad bad. Never use 'em! ;-) Wow...so Marilyn Monroe was wrong! (MSNBC) Firth (�Bridget Jones Diary�) may have finally been given a role that allows him to show some of the sexual heat he had in �Valmont.� Heat? Valmont? Never noticed! ;-)

For Drooleurs in LA, Chicago (YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!), NY and SF, I got an email announcing free advance screenings of GWAPE (all except NY's followed by a cocktail reception) in early December. YESSSSSSS!!!!! . .I am so there in NY on Dec 10th . .this is down the street from me (I'm temping at Showtime Cable Networks at 1633 B'dway) . . . .Will anyone be there? . .I'll be happy to meet ya!!!

Who's Colin with in this picture? Sorry if it's been asked, haven't had time to read all the post yet. Is Colin still scheduled to be on A&E's Breakfast With The Arts this Sunday? Thanks.

I give up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From the office of Redundancy: (Evelyn)This Sunday Morning on A&E COLIN FIRTH INTERVIEW from Toronto FF. On BWTA check your time. (Karen)free advance screenings of GWAPE ( (Ev.)Pox on Lion's Gate for ignoring the rest of the country. I'll match your Pox and raise you a pestilence. Who will relieve us of our suffering?:-((

Okay, now I'm confused. A&E doesn't list CF for this Sunday. I can't find a listing for Dec. 7th on the BWTA site, but was under the impression (from here: http://www.firth.com/tv_promo.html) that he is going to be on Sunday, Dec. 7th. Here's what they have listed for this Sunday (Nov 23rd): Enrico Caruso: Voice of the Century Life of the opera star considered by many to be the greatest singer of all time. Enjoy the recollections of fellow singers Luciano Pavarotti, Beverly Sills, and Placido Domingo. Also, Michael Kimmelman talks to curator Ruth Fine and jazz musician Branford Marsalis about The Art of Romare Bearden at the National Gallery in Washington, and a conversation with James Rosenquist, one of the founding fathers of pop art. Am I missing something? Is he in fact still supposed to be on on the 7th?

(Karen) For Drooleurs in LA, Chicago (YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!), NY and SF, I got an email announcing free advance screenings of GWAPE Hmmm, I already was RSVP'd for a Lions Gate GWAPE screening that night at a screening room. Must check to see if this is additional or they changed to a bigger theater due to demand.

(Beedee) I'll match your Pox and raise you a pestilence. Who will relieve us of our suffering?:-(( It's showing in Portland on December 11th. A benefit for the NorthWest Film Center. (Sorry Bee and Evelyn! At least we won't get cocktails!) ;-)

(Evelyn)My favorite :"Made of glass, lady". Note to self: Learn how to say that in Italian;-)). Siete fatti di vetro, signora? (Tress and Dorine)but there were tons of 'random sorts' whose sole purpose appeared to be to run back and forth You mean like Joan Collins? ;-) More like random tart;-) Great to hear from you, Gina. Glad you got to see ODB, with or without the helmet hair. Those jeans faded in the right places sound lovely, better yet...scrummy. Love that, Emma. Firth (�Bridget Jones Diary�) may have finally been given a role that allows him to show some of the sexual heat he had in �Valmont.� Oh, Valmont...just watched that two days ago, have P&P on in the background, now. Just finished with Mr. Darcy leaving the bath, and thinking about the sexual heat of Vermeer. Whew, time for a break and I only just got here;-)

(Meg) Am I missing something? Is he in fact still supposed to be on on the 7th? Last month I got an email, after an inquiry ,saying he would be on 11/23. We'll get emails tomorrow or Fri on the program guests . Watch this space;-)

(Karen) At least no one yelled, "hey, lady, you make a better wall than a window." ;-) *blushes* I didn't realize I was yelling... I thought I was just muttering out loud. ;-)))

Though Karen said it above . .I liked the conparisons to other previous openings in this as well . . Daily Variety - 11/17/03 "Love Actually" wooed $2.3 million from 332 playdates in Italy, which would be No. 1, unseating "(Matrix)Revolutions," if Universal/UIP's estimate pans out; the opening was 11% bigger than "Bridget Jones' Diary" and 4% up on "Meet the Parents." In Portugal, the romantic comedy penned and written by Richard Curtis fetched $330,000, 43% better than "Notting Hill" and 4% ahead of "Bridget Jones." Pic opens next weekend in 15 countries including Germany, Spain and the UK.

Sorry, I've been offline for awhile (@#$% SBCYahoo DSL)... A couple of things... Admin message For the the sake of some people's sanity (and that includes mine, especially today - insert winkie-), please read the boards before you post a question. If you are using some convoluted, inefficient method of reading Drool (i.e., you're in public mode, not logged in, not letting the software do its thing), contact me at my office and I'll give you some pointers for the best way of reading and navigating here. One of the great things about Drool is that you can always go back and read previous messages too. However, unlike chatrooms, each of our topics has a finite number of messages, which is why private conversations, personal OT questions, etc., are frowned upon. Okay, putting away my virtual wet blanket now. As to BWTA, I received an email on Nov 3, telling me that the interview had been changed to 12/7/03 and I updated my "TV_promos" page around that time. The email included the attached correspondence from A&E.

FYI, I got contacted by the woman who held up a Colin Firth sign in The View's audience. She might come over here; otherwise, I'll post her comments about what went on.

It seems I am ill equipped for having a job that actually requires me to work ALL the dang hours of the work day (plus plus lately!) with no time for my true vocation as "Googlier" (pronounced like Sommelier, my DH's vocation and thanks to Dorine for granting me that title in NY!! :-))and as Droolier too I suppose.. Of course I am also ill equipped to live in this climate and yet every morning despite donning my red sneakers of happiness and clicking them 3 times and doing the chant "There is no place like home" I open my eyes and still find myself here in insupportable 80 degree weather in November...But enough kvetching and back to ODB!!! I just popped into Google and this popped out and I hadn't seen this pic or bio, and the pic truly should appeal to those that love the bedhead or JFL (you know who you are! ;-)) http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/colin_firth_biog/page1

OMG...this bio is 10 pages long (and every page has that wonderful JFL pic)!! AND....there is a conveniant button on the bottom that says "BUY NOW"!! Wait! Will he come before Christmas? Can I have him gift wrapped?? Can I give him to myself?? ;-D Try it as an experiment; walk into any pub or restaurant and shout out "Cab for Mr D'Arcy!" The result will always be the same. No man will express the slightest interest, but every woman's eyes will brighten, a coy smile of delight will appear on her lips and her head will revolve as close to 360 degrees as is possible. Just in case it's him - THE Mr D'Arcy. LOL...my heard revolved 360 degress just reading that! Thank you Googlier! ;-)

More silliness... MARTINE McCUTCHEON'S MEN Actress MARTINE McCUTCHEON cherished her time on the LOVE ACTUALLY set, because she and the rest of the female crew adored her co-stars HUGH GRANT, COLIN FIRTH and LIAM NEESON. The former soap star found herself acting opposite some of Britain's hunkiest actors when she filmed the romantic comedy, and she was surprised by how lovely they were. Martine says, "Hugh Grant is really serious. He's much more serious than I thought he would be. He is clever, very shrewd, and a good businessman. There was no sexual chemistry off-screen. In real life we were just mates, cracking up and telling jokes all the time. "Everyone loves Colin Firth and Liam Neeson. I can honestly say that everybody on the set just loved Colin Firth. He is gorgeous - everybody in make-up just loved him. "It was the same with Liam Neeson - all the women were going, 'Look at his hands - you know what they say about men with big hands!' Liam's such a soft, lovely man." Mental note - Give makeup artists more credit...And ODB's hands aren't chopped liver either!! ;-))

UK papers are starting to post their LA reviews. Financial Times: Indulgence likely to rot liver, teeth or brain By Martin Hoyle Amorous misadventures starting in the month before Christmas, cannily released in the month before Christmas, fortuitously touching on an American president's visit to Britain - but there real-life parallels end; for our boyishly idealistic PM makes a speech mentioning Churchill and Shakespeare and refuses to be bullied. We know we are in the realm of fantasy, fable and fairytale. In the realm of Richard Curtis, actually. The writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill has taken effortlessly to directing; and that small but discerning gro up who found those two mega-hits toe-curlingly embarrassing or nerve-grindingly irritating may be won over by Love Actually. As anyone who has recently glanced at a paper will know, a galaxy of stellar thesps enact a collection of love stories. Some are casually connected, but expect no tightly knit strands or overall cohesion. At least one of the nine or 10 plotlets could be expunged without trace. The PM's infatuation with his tea-lady (Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon), a middle-class marriage ruefully under strain (Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman), a jilted English writer floundering to communicate with his Portuguese maid (Colin Firth, Aurelia Moniz) a widowed father attempting to bond with his small son (Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster). There are various sorts of love depicted here: romantic, sexual, familial; fulfilled, frustrated, fantasised. And funny, notably with Bill Nighy's superbly raffish old rocker making a comeback with a tawdry Christmas number. But the comedy is perhaps less memorable than unexpectedly touching vignettes of love unattainable: the revelation of a young bride realising the wedding video shot by her husband's stand- offish best mate is brimming with secret tenderness towards her - beautifully understated by Keira Knightley and Andrew Lincoln; while Laura Linney, whose pining for an office colleague is doomed by her devotion to a mentally handicapped brother, is so moving that she almost unbalances the film. Distinguished in parts - Grant's endearing little Travolta routine through Number 10, Thompson, when not affecting modish Estuary - the film is sleekly machine-tooled for American consumption. The English characters have the breezy, transatlantic flipness that mark Curtis's creations, whatever their background. London is portrayed as how Brits want tourists to see it. The film is too long; it concertinas development and actions into a time-scale improbable even by fairytale standards; it over-eggs the Christmas pudding (primary school nativity play, beaming teachers in a rock routine); and the finale, to a Beach Boys soundtrack, sums up its ruthless mid-Atlanticism. But Curtis's direction of actors is a treat. Love Actually is a Christmas over- indulgence: well-stuffed, sometimes too sweet, not for daily consumption as likely to rot liver, teeth or brain; but only a Scrooge could fail to find something to enjoy, however ashamed he might feel the day after.

(Tress) "BUY NOW"!! Wait! Will he come before Christmas? Can I have him gift wrapped?? Can I give him to myself?? ;-D LOL! Is there only one in stock? ;-) her head will revolve as close to 360 degrees Was wondering if it's possible to go further. Mine might snap off from the speed. ;-) (MM re HG) He's much more serious than I thought he would be. He is clever, very shrewd, and a good businessman. She forgot the good kisser part she's mentioned before. ;-) Thanks, Mistress Googlier!

Great Bio of ODB. Every time I saw the picture it reminded me of the old nursery rhyme we redid in high school. "There was a little boy with a curl right in the middle of his forehead and when he was good he was very very good and when he was bad he was better;-)

Bravo Googlier! Lovely bio and even better photo! ;-) Far more worthwhile was Girl With A Pearl Earring, where Firth played a brooding Johannes Vermeer, finding a muse in new servant Scarlett Johansson. But while Firth is dealing on an aesthetic level, his sponsor Tom Wilkinson is after some hot muse-nookie. It was a beautiful piece, its look heavily influenced by Vermeer's work, the kind of movie Colin had always been seeking. I love that part, but does anyone else find the parts about future events written in past tense (i.e., He ended 2003 with a bang,... 2004 would be equally busy.) just a little creepy, or is Dominic Wills also clairvoyant? It all seems a bit precipitous. ;-)

Sorry for my earlier posting. I hadn't checked out the messages in a couple of days and was skimming through everything. I was mostly concentrating on the recent pics. Will be more careful from now on.

JFL, Googlier/Droolier, muse-nookie...whoa...seems my dictionary is seriously out-of-date! ::::plugging in for download:::: (Shoshana) is Dominic Wills also clairvoyant? Maybe we should ask about The Dead Wait?

MariaT - Thanks so much for that bio!!!! . .Mmmm I just want to run my fingers through that hair . . .yummy! (Tress) "BUY NOW"!! Wait! Will he come before Christmas? Can I have him gift wrapped?? Can I give him to myself?? ;-D (Dorine) LOL! Is there only one in stock? ;-) Woohooo . .let's guess where the bow will be tied around;) (Ooh ,bad Kimberly, naughty, naughty)!!!! (Shoshanna)I love that part, but does anyone else find the parts about future events written in past tense (i.e., He ended 2003 with a bang,... 2004 would be equally busy.) just a little creepy, or is Dominic Wills also clairvoyant? Maybe he's just a lazy writer . .figures he'll cover everything . .and this bio could last for at least past 2004! My favorite part from the bio: No, there's only one, with his naturally curly brown locks and searching look, his seemingly cruel aloofness disguising a heart brimming with sensitivity, his body buff as you like as he rises from the sparkling waters of that famous lake. Sigh . .now if that doesn't say it all . . . .there's definitely only ONE!!!!

Hang in there Maria you have not lost your touch yet! Hate when work gets in the way of my obsession and will wait patiently till you get back in gear. In the mean time perhaps Ms. early time zone Annette can pick up some of the slack.;-)

Love is not all around, actually The Scotsman ALASTAIR McKAY Love Actually (15) ** There is, note, no comma in the title. It comes from the quite dreadful voiceover that opens the picture, in which Hugh Grant, as a twittish post-Blair Prime Minister, warbles depressingly about the arrivals gate at Heathrow being a symbol of love and how it "actually is all around". He also mentions the destruction of the Twin Towers, and how, on 11 September, no-one paused to send messages of hate. Actually, those final words were all of love. So, before the film begins, it is clear that the masterchef of the mid-Atlantic souffle, Richard Curtis, has lost none of his ability to charm or offend. He is also clever enough to insulate himself against criticism. Yes, it is obscene that someone should attempt to make Hallmark poetry from the massmurders at the World Trade Center, but that someone is not Curtis, it is Prime Minister Hugh Grant, who will also prove to be so lacking in judgment that he falls for the Downing Street teagirl: a version of Eliza f***in� Doolittle, played with the sauce of an overripe tomato by Martine McCutcheon, who delivers secret Treasury documents along with the Hobnobs, and jeopardises UK-American relations by snuggling up to the twinkling post-Clinton (un-Bush) President, Billy Bob Thornton. Lest the Rt Hon Hugh be mistaken for anything but a parody of a parody, he is shown going into Downing Street for the first time, mentally noting that his wave needs work. Asked how he is feeling, he replies: "Cool. Powerful." You want plot? There isn�t one. Instead, there is a group of disparate characters marooned in the run-up to Christmas, looking for romance. There is a wedding, in which the whole congregation plays All You Need is Love. There is a funeral, in which the coffin is dispatched to the sound of the Bay City Rollers� Bye Bye Baby. There is flamboyant swearing. Not nasty swearing, just the posh ejaculation of f***, bugger and arse, in a manner designed to sound ridiculously English to American ears. You might, if you were feeling generous or deluded, praise the absence of form, were it not for the fact that the film slides with a sense of grim inevitability towards a celebratory ending in which almost all of the characters find festive cheer and love, actually; this being an emotion characterised by nothing more than longing and the micro-romantic gestures more usually found in advertisements for chocolates or wilting bouquets. That warm tears are jerked in the ending of this syllabub of sentimentality is a tribute to the music of Craig Armstrong, which plucks emotion from a montage of absurd and manipulative images. What are we to make of Curtis�s version of love? There are slithers of truthfulness in it. Poor Emma Thompson gets to play a drudge who is married to a pillock (Alan Rickman) who finds himself tempted by the Bambi-eyed charms of his secretary. Thompson, whose agent presumably forgot to inform her that she was acting in a marshmallow, manages to squeeze real pathos from the scenes in which she uncovers her husband�s emotional infidelity. Liam Neeson gives a performance of easy charm as a single dad raising a lovelorn infant in a house full of Waitrose groceries and a Dualit toaster. Bill Nighy does well as the anti-Cliff Richard, a sozzled snotty rocker who aims to curse his way to the top of the Christmas charts with a cynical retread of the Troggs� Love is All Around (as sung by Wet Wet Wet in Four Weddings and a Funeral). Nighy displays more comedic charisma than the more celebrated stars of the picture, and is always worth indulging for his peculiar snorting laugh. Tim from The Office is here, playing a stunt double for a porn star. Egg from This Life gets to swoon over Keira Knightley, who gets to be lovely. Laura Linney pretends to be plain and to have a mentally ill brother who needs love at Christmas. Colin Firth gets his britches wet as he fails to notice that he is in love with his Portuguese housekeeper. Michael Parkinson appears, unconvincingly, as himself. A boy with an oddly shaped head goes to Wisconsin to look for American babes - and finds them. And yes, it is possible, if not probable, that Curtis is having a private joke when he has Nighy, his loveable cynic, ask of his doting engineer: "This is shit, isn�t it?" The engineer, played by Rab C Nesbitt, replies proudly: "Yep, solid gold shit, maestro." Feelgood? I almost ate my arm.

The Times Love Actually by james christopher Our critic falls in love with love THIS is a piece of romantic fluff in which ten pairs of star-crossed lovers deliver ten exquisite excuses to weep (or be physically sick) into your party hat. I found it shockingly likeable, and I�ve seen and wept through it twice. Richard Curtis, the director, is helped by a team of Romeos and Juliets as famous and formidable as Manchester United. Actually, it�s the paucity of their passes and their habit of scoring own goals that make them such a winning, and utterly English, combo. Chief striker is Hugh Grant, our new Prime Minister, hopelessly nutmegged by a Downing Street tea lady (Martine McCutcheon). The dashing fop bowls into No 10 after election night feeling �cool, powerful� and decidedly single. After sighting Martine�s chubby thighs and crimson face, he bangs his head against the desk blotter, takes a look at Thatcher�s portrait, and says: �Did you ever have this kind of problem? Of course you did, you saucy minx.� Is there a deep point to this mash? Of course not. Love can strike anyone anywhere, and we�re blissfully free to dream. This is the democratic heart of Curtis�s film. Colin Firth�s highbrow English writer falls for his Portuguese charlady. Alan Rickman�s advertising exec is torn between his sizzling secretary (Heike Makatsch) and his prickly wife (Emma Thompson). Martin Freeman and Joanna Page prevaricate about the weather while he awkwardly massages her naked breast. Kris Marshall�s goofy sandwich vendor packs a rucksack full of condoms and fantasises about sex kittens in Milwaukee. True, there is little cinematic alchemy to speak of. Every relationship is carefully impaled on the needle of love. Every frame looks machine-tooled. And the punch-lines have that stamp of British inferiority which Hollywood can only dream about. Sit back, and gawp at Ideal Britain. Revel in the tipsy plot. And enjoy a film full of adult whimsy and adolescent whingeing. Love Actually hits so many sweet spots that you could choke on the sentiment. But I�m not complaining because I love the humour. There are moments of high pain � Thompson discovering that her husband might be having an affair � but they are anaesthetised by comedy. Perhaps that�s the fate of writers who wear double-glazed, rose-tinted spectacles. They are doomed never to be taken entirely seriously.

Colin Firth�s highbrow English writer ... ...and his prickly wife (Emma Thompson) Don't think I saw the same film! I didn't think Colin was highbrow or Emma prickly....actually.... ;-) Thanks Mari for all the reviews!

For some reason I was able to get to the LA Times reviews tonight without paying;-) 'Love' is all around, and often funny Los Angeles Times By Kenneth Turan, Times Staff Writer Given its status as an elaborate holiday confection, it's simplest to think of "Love Actually" as a box of fine chocolates filled with a variety of centers. All are tasty, no small thing, but some are tastier than others. And while some quickly become cherished favorites, others make you wonder: "What were they thinking with that one?" As written and directed by Richard Curtis, "Love Actually" is an ensemble romantic comedy with more than 20 characters and so many plot lines even the detailed press material can't manage to list them all. It's got a fine cast, including such known quantities as Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Laura Linney and Liam Neeson, but, best of all, it's got Curtis. One of the most reliable delights of recent British film and TV, Curtis wrote the scripts for "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill," co-wrote "Bridget Jones's Diary" and helped create such British television landmarks as "Blackadder" and "Bean." What Curtis brought to those projects as well as to "Love Actually" is a sharp sense of character comedy combined with a very human touch. His feeling for people is as genuine as his wit, and he manages it all with a light-on-its-feet casualness, a sense that none of this has to be any kind of big deal to be successful. It's typical of Curtis' engaging sensibility that he says he came up with the idea of making a film that encompasses so many distinct groups of characters because at the rate films are made, if he didn't do them all at once "I would spend the rest of my life" getting them on screen. However in this, his first time behind the camera, Curtis couldn't resist branching out from the habitual lightness of his earlier fare, and a few sections of "Love Actually" have more serious themes and less-than-jolly resolutions. It turns out that as a writer and director, Curtis' gift does not extend quite as far into that area as he would like, and stretching himself to all those unconnected scenarios inevitably means that even with the lighter ones some are more successful than others. But the bits that do work are so funny and satisfying that audiences may be willing to simply bide their time and hum "Rule, Britannia" until the good parts return to the screen. "Love Actually," which begins five weeks before Christmas and goes week by week until the holiday, starts with the private voice-over thoughts of Britain's prime minister (Hugh Grant). He tells us that though "general opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed," it just takes a few warm moments at an airport's arrivals gate (security checkpoints likely being another matter) to prove to him that "love actually is all around." Love may be all around, but if "Love Actually" is any indication, it can also cause all kinds of problems. Love refuses to arrive without obstacles, rivalries, cross purposes, hesitations and awful embarrassments. It can make little boys feel small and grown men feel smaller. Even if he's the country's newly elected prime minister. As played by the ever-appealing Grant, the prime minister is � surprise � a witty and sophisticated sort, agreeing to meet the 10 Downing Street household staff because he'll do "anything to put off running the country." Just one look at the fetching tea lady (Martine McCutcheon of British TV's "EastEnders"), however, has him as tongue-tied as any rural swain. Definitely not tongue-tied is veteran rocker Billy Mack, trying for his umpteenth comeback by recording the standard "Love Is All Around" as "Christmas Is All Around." "Wouldn't it be great," he enthuses to a stunned DJ, "if No. 1 this Christmas wasn't some smug teenager but an old, ex-heroin addict searching for a comeback at any price?" As a riff on all the hard-living rockers of yore, egocentric Billy is the film's funniest character, and it's a treat beyond treats to see veteran British actor Bill Nighy (memorable in "Lawless Heart") realize the potential in the role and deliver a comic performance that will completely put you away. Equally satisfying in a more unashamedly romantic way is the story of Jamie (Colin Firth), a jilted author with no foreign-language facility who retreats to the south of France and takes on a severe-looking housekeeper named Aurelia (Lucia Moniz) who speaks only Portuguese. Though the result of this episode is hardly in doubt, it is characteristic of Curtis' gift at its best that he can bring all measure of sharp humor, unforced emotion and delightful surprises to a story whose outline doesn't seem to merit a second glance. Given how well Curtis works when he's at his best, it's frustrating when other sequences do not measure up. Some segments � a young man goes to Wisconsin to become a god of sex, a young bride played by Keira Knightley gets caught between her husband and his best friend, two stand-ins meet during a movie sex scene � are just OK. Others are mixed: Thomas Sangster is excellent as a small boy in love, while Neeson is leaden as his newly bereaved stepfather. And others still � Linney as a woman with a crush on a co-worker; Thompson and Rickman as marrieds potentially in trouble � push too hard for a seriousness that isn't there. Though it seems unduly schematic to break the story down so nakedly into its components, the film's "love is a good thing" theme is so generic it makes that segmentation inevitable. Still, even the unsuccessful sequences have their moments � a delicious cameo by Rowan Atkinson as a department store clerk is one � and though it would be dishonest to call this an unqualified success, it would be churlish not to tip the hat to "Love Actually's" genuine charm. Maybe humming "Rule, Britannia" isn't such a bad idea after all.

UK droolers- 4 column interview in this mornings (20/11/03)p.60 Daily Mail.Journo- Sue Gold. Pretty standard questions and replies.Things that make me happy that he's "so rooted in London and happy here." "Most valuable thing that you've learned in life so far?"....."Children and marriage nothing comes close to that." How this man makes my day- says and does all the right things. According to my sister in law's friend who happened to see him in Chiswick Park he stopped to return a baby's bottle that had been tossed out of the pram by an errant child.Sorry don't have any other details but I'll work on it. My sister in law is expecting her own baby next spring. Must get down to Chiswick Park just in case.!!

Thanks for the Daily Mail alert Gina!! 'I'm a nerd and Hugh hates me' Life is good for COLIN FIRTH. His new film, Love Actually, has been hailed the best British film ever, he has been filming the sequel to the hugely successful Bridget Jones's Diary, and his wife has recently given birth to his third son. Here, he talks exclusively to our writer SUE GOLD. You have three sons - Luca, two, and baby Mateo with your Italian wife, Livia, and Will, 13, by actress Meg Tilly. How do you feel about being a dad again at 43? Great, wonderful, I couldn't be happier. I don't know where we're going to stop, but there are definitely times when one two-year-old can be quite enough! You've described fatherhood as being completely frightening. Do you still think that? I think I said that before becoming a father. I didn't find it frightening after I became one. I think I just found it distasteful. It didn't appeal to me, that's all. There's a great line by the writer Robert Towne about fatherhood which hit the nail on the head for me. He said he'd always associated fatherhood with age and the atrophy that goes with comfort - pipes and slippers and eventually death. But having a baby was rejuvenating and wild and wonderful. Being a father is more like passionate love than I'd imagined. You have the same sense of being on the brink of being out of control, and of utter euphoria. It's what makes life most worth living - no question. Are acting and fatherhood equally challenging? Fatherhood is a more important challenge, and it runs far deeper into what I care about most. If I had to do without acting, I'd survive. But I simply couldn't do without my kids. Are you a very hands-on dad? Oh, very. I change the nappies and help out wherever I can, but I think most dads do that. Even Tony Blair does, doesn't he? Were you there at the birth? Yes, and it was amazing. It was brave of me, actually, I have to say. I'd begun to think that things had evolved to the point where it's now de rigueur for the father to be present at the birth, but I don't think that it's necessarily a good thing for everyone at all. I think a lot of women don't want to be worrying that their husbands are going to faint. I found the whole birth absolutely wonderful, but I think if you're the sort of person who can't bear it and you get queasy and terribly nervous, you're not going to be any comfort to your wife. So best to stay away. How do you juggle changing nappies with Hollywood roles? Like I say, they're two completely different things, and dealing-with dirty nappies definitely keeps your feet firmly planted on the ground. I like doing both. How would your wife describe you? You'd have to ask her. But I don't think she thinks I'm the strong, silent type in real life. I'm more of a nerd. I'm a fairly dorky sort of person. If I went around trying to smoulder at people in real life, they'd just laugh at me. Is she a fiery Italian to balance your repressed English side? They say opposites attract, but the truth is it's never that simple. Not all Italians are fiery and not all Englishmen are repressed. But it was love at first sight for me. I immediately felt she was amazing, and it was very quick. It was instinctive, inexplicable, and I've never looked back. Have you ever hit a Bridget Jones type of low point in your life? Not in my career, but personally, absolutely. I've had my heart broken. I met Livia when I was 35, so it was late, but I never worried about being alone. Did you and the rest of the cast slip back easily into the roles from Bridget Jones? No, it was quite difficult. I think people expected us all just to pick up where we'd left off, but I've done quite a bit of stuff since, including Love Actually. It's one thing revisiting a role, but it's another thing revisiting a role that everyone knows. I was playing a guy who was out there in the public consciousness, and my first day back on the set was out in public in London. So to walk onto a London street dressed as a familiar character in front of 200 people, including paparazzi, was a bit like doing some variety version of what I'd already done. It was very odd. Here we are, Mark Darcy - The Live Show! We're taking Bridget on the road! Is Renee Zellweger as quirky in real life as she seems? Quirky? I don't know. I'm used to her and very fond of her and she's a real individual. I've only ever met her with an English accent. I've never met the girl from Texas. She does talk about home sometimes, but it's always in an English accent, so it's bizarre to hear her talk about lassooing mustangs and going to the rodeo when she sounds like she's from Croydon. Did she want you to join her doughnut diet? I'd join that diet any day. Hugh and I just gaze enviously at her as she sits and stuffs herself. One of the most bizarre sights is watching Renee - this young, very attractive Hollywood star - downing pint after pint of Guinness. It's not something you see very often. Hugh and I dropped the idea of dieting for the sequel. On the first movie we were desperately trying to reclaim our boyish figures at the age of 40. This time we both felt we're getting too long in the tooth for that. We don't want to deal with that any more. Thank God. How do you get on with Hugh Grant? Are you good friends? I get on really well with him, I like the guy, despite his outrageous rudeness about me. It's a running joke, and we do it to each other. I'm always hearing how he's announced that I'm too old to be in the cinema any more. So what do you think of Hugh wanting to give up films and become a family man? I Believe him - he's sincere. He did stop working for nearly two years at one point, so I do believe that he finds acting pure torture. I think he would like to give it all up, but what else do you do? Acting seems like a silly job for a grown-up, really. I'm doing this because it looked good when I was 18. I'm now 43, and you change. It's well paid, I get lots of time off and there are enormous perks, but it's hard to take the concept of it seriously. Your career's going so well - would you ever move to Hollywood full-time? No, I'd never move there - but not because I don't like it. I do, and I go there fairly often to visit my eldest son, Will. It's more that I thrive on London. I love the city and it gives me so much stimulation, so a great deal would have to change in my life. I like LA, and I have a lot of friends there, but I'm so rooted here in London and I'm happy here. What's the most valuable thing you've learned so far in life? It's probably to do with committing yourself to something you can't undo - like having a child. I'm learning so much about myself through that, and I'm finding out that I'm not who I thought I was. Having a relationship with someone cannot be an egotistical process if it's to survive. Children and marriage: nothing comes close to that.

baby Mateo I thought it was 2 T's. If it's one, I can see why Katie Couric pronounced it wrong. That would have been a valid pronunciation. (CF) Have you ever hit a Bridget Jones type of low point in your life? Not in my career, but personally, absolutely. Ahem, PM? ;-) Cute comments about Renee and HG.

Thanks for finding the 10 page interview, Maria. It's really a hoot, as there's an incredible amount of subjectivity in it for a biography. The picture seems v. Locarno to me. He did look v. yummy that day. (Hoyle-FT) the film is sleekly machine-tooled for American consumption. Ah, yes, the cornerstone of British film critcism, which ignores the fact that the British movie-going public are willing consumers of such fare, as evidenced by the box office stats. (Mackay-Scotsman) Michael Parkinson appears, unconvincingly, as himself. ROTFLOL! Feelgood? I almost ate my arm. So, they're chaining them to the screening room seats now? ;-) (Firth) I think I said that before becoming a father. I didn't find it frightening after I became one. I think I just found it distasteful. It didn't appeal to me, that's all. Does this make any sense to anyone: "After" he became a father, he found it distasteful? Then he goes on to talk about how important it all is. Thanks, Gina, for the heads up on the Daily Mail interview. I'm told there's something in today's Evening Standard too.

(Firth)I think I just found it distasteful. It didn't appeal to me, that's all. I'm sure I've read previously that this was his opinion before having children of his own. - Sometimes he just doesn't explain himself too well!! (KarenR)Now don't you think this makes him look...squishier? ;-) -Just the way I like him!! BTW, can I just say again how wonderful the posts, links, articles have been these past few weeks. Thanks to everyone for their input.

Jennie has sent me the picture from the Daily Mail; it accompanies the article: http://www.firth.com/articles/03dailymail_1120.html Pic is from the London FF gala for GWAPE

(Janet) Sometimes he just doesn't explain himself too well!! Or the writer doesn't know how to write. ;-)

Being a father is more like passionate love than I'd imagined. You have the same sense of being on the brink of being out of control, and of utter euphoria He does have a way with words. Empire has a mention of the Daily Mail article: http://www.empireonline.co.uk/news/news.asp?story=5180 That's Mr. Sex God, thank you very much! I think this one will be widely quoted.

Hi, there. Long time no post. ;-) Just back home from a special preview of LA. I must say that I quite like the movie. Great stories, wonderful actors. Sweet Christmas pudding? Maybe. Insufferable? Certainly not. ODB's story is so sweet that I guess he must hate it a lot! :-P So, in case there are lurkers from Hong Kong here, I heard that LA will be opened in early December. Don't miss it!

It's a small world department. My daughter's best friend's mother-in-law sent this e-mail to her the other day with a picture: "Yes that is me. Yes that is Colin Firth. Universal had a screening for the new movie that included a Q&A. I found it online on a conference that Mrs. Murphy contributes a lot to [ed note: not enough, however]. I signed up and they held the tickets for me. It was a small venue and the group that attended was only interested in Scarlet. He was quite generous with his time and told the woman gesturing on the left that he would sign everything for his fans. During the Q&A I asked him a question that set off a heated debate and he spoke to me for about 5 minutes, gesturing and mugging and telling an anecdote. Needless to say it was exciting. Hi! to "P" if she is visiting - Murph

Pauline has sent me the full set and I'll eventually get them up. Sorry to be so inefficient, ladies. :-(

Really good article from The Weekend Australian magazine, with tons of new quotes and info. My favs have to be: "I find it quite extraordinary how much more famous he is than most other people, when it comes to our profession," he remarks. "I went to Los Angeles to do publicity for Bridget I, and I don't know if I have ever felt quite so invisible. Coming out of the airport with Hugh, going through all the red tape and immigration and so on - everybody knew him. Any by the time we arrived at the hotel, the VIP treatment he got at the expense of absolutely everybody else around - I mean, I could have lain bleeding on the carpet, and they would have stepped over me to help him with his bag." Indeed, quite a lot of people would leap at the opportunity to punch Grant, push him into a cake and throw him through a window, as Firth did in Bridget Jones. Decking Grant was something, he admits wickedly, "I have been wanting to do for years" Now, this is good stuff! Leno or Letterman-calibre anecdotal material. He believes there is "something wrong" with spending months being someone else. "I think actors are essentially juvenile. There is a retarding element to the job, and I also think that it is very difficult to do it brilliantly unless your ego is somewhat fractured. I think you have got to be a little unstable, probably. If you are very grounded, and have got a very firm sense of who you are, how do you tip up the balance in order to be someone else, and then go back to this firm, grounded person? I don't really think it is possible. There have got to be some screws loose somewhere." Lots of philosophizing here and some far better conclusions than I've heard from him. This is the same writer from the April Women's Weekly and she has a particularly good way with him IMO. Article is up now: http://www.firth.com/articles/03weekendaus_1115.html

Thank you Gina for the Daily Mail heads up and Maria for the article! (ODB on fatherhood) Great, wonderful, I couldn't be happier. I don't know where we're going to stop, but there are definitely times when one two-year-old can be quite enough! Ohhhh...more baby Firths?? There can't be too many of those genes floating around. Want them to have a girl. Karen...!!! Thanks! Great article...loads of interesting tidbits (those you listed above are fantastic). Liked this bit too (LOL!): There is a certain uptight dignity about him that is just begging to be moistened I beg for him to be moist all the time! Glad to see I'm not alone! LOL! And looks like he wears the glasses for affect more and more ;-) : With short hair and wearing severe black glasses Like the vision of him grappling with a huge sandwich while giving this interview... Thanks again! Too many good bits to quote. That one's a keeper! ;-)

(Tress)Ohhhh...more baby Firths?? There can't be too many of those genes floating around. Want them to have a girl. LOL! I just knew you would love this. (Tress)Thanks again! Too many good bits to quote. That one's a keeper! ;-) Ditto! Great article but what was the interiewer wearing? Mini skirt? Boots? This one is definitely a member of the cult.;-)

(Bee) Great article but what was the interiewer wearing? Mini skirt? Boots? ROTFL...now that you mention it...I feel a bit lost. What was she wearing? And I want to know what she was eating! And was she cold and grumpy? She seemed smitten, but that's not important...was she wearing heels that killed her feet or comfy shoes? Did ODB stand her up three times before this interview (now that is a flight! Australia to UK....that Edinburgh puddle jumper is nothin' to that!)? ;-)

Tress's NY pics are up; thought I'd immortalize someone else. ;-) http://www.firth.com/love_gal_nyprem2.html

Thanks for the article and photos and all! I saw a Scarlett interview in the Oct. issue of Dazed and Confused today. I think I would've remembered reading this before, but if not, excusez-moi! SJ: "What's a movie set without some pranks? Colin Firth and I had a drawing war. By the end of the shoot, the make-up trailer was filled with insult drawings. His favorite drawing is of me as a hard-boiled egg....I drew Colin as an oompa loompa. It was a very rude drawing." Use your imagination ;-)

I'm a little Dazed and Confused by how juvenile she is. She has a long way to go before she could direct a film herself...unless maybe someone explained it to her. ;-)

Gina, Maria T & Karen - Thanks for the articles & Updates . . . Gina - Let us know if you see ODB around the park . .perhaps go incognito as nanny pushing a pram? If he's a sucker for kids . .there's one way to meet him;) My fav from the Weekend Australia article: There is a certain uptight diginity about him that is just begging to be moistened, fully dressed if possible, for maximum effect. Something about those lines just hits spot on .makes me laugh ( sigh) had a rough day of auditoning . .needed a good pick me up . .and doesn't Colin always do it!

(Karen)Vinnie watching one particular fan like a hawk... ROTF Karen! Vinnie da Gate...

Yeah, I should probably adjust the color of the pictures because she shows up as wearing pink, when I've been told it really was salmon. LOL!!

(Karen) I'm a little Dazed and Confused by how juvenile she is. LOL..but she's only 18! ODB is drawing with her and he's 43 (wonder if they used crayons or colored pencils...LOL)! I quite like the idea of exchanging pervy drawings with Colin...and I'd pay 'ready money' for one of the drawings he had done of Scarlet as an egg (some make-up woman...somewhere...has quite a treasure!). ;-) Good to see "Vinnie" getting some recognition! LOL! He had a few stressful moments on the carpet!

(Karen)Vinnie watching one particular fan like a hawk... I found Vinnie to be particularly inattentive to our end, even when trying to get his attention. Guess he was otherwise engaged. ;-) (article) Better in person than on the screen Even she agrees. :-) And who among us can forget his graceful swan dive into the pond in Pride and Prejudice in tight white breeches? A pond, he says now, that was full of indignant frogs and nasty pond stuff:� It was very, very filthy and unhygienic.� Of course, she edited out the part mentioning the poor stuntman who did have to jump in that slop. ;-) Firth was relaxed, amusing, giggly..... I�d pay ready money to see him giggly. Bet it�s too adorable. When Firth met his wife.....she.....greeted the news that he is a sex symbol in Britain with incredulous laughter. �Well she found it incredibly unlikely.....� Yeah, I�d rush right out and marry her, too. ;-) This statement always gets me Although he is best known for romantic comedy, he likes a departure into drama..... So do we! Any other ships we can help to turn around? ;-) Tress thanks for your pics, too!

The fun never stops! (Wahoooo!) LOVE ACTUALLY Q&A WITH COLIN FIRTH Movie Feature by Martyn Palmer In the weeks leading up to the start of filming on LOVE ACTUALLY, Colin Firth was having panic attacks and sleepless nights. Not, you understand that the undeniably talented and extremely experienced Colin was over concerned about his role, in this case playing a heartbroken writer, Jamie, who seeks refuge in the south of France. No, that bit was fine. Nor indeed, was he troubled about the quality of the script, which was, he says, �just fantastic.� No, he was actually worried on behalf of Richard Curtis, the man who had written LOVE ACTUALLY, and for the first time, would be directing it, too. �I was first on the schedule and just before we started I had panic attacks and actually woke up in the middle of the night thinking: How is he going to do this? How will he cope? He�s got ten or fifteen stories, some very famous actors and he�s going to jump in for the first time in his life and orchestrate all of that. It seemed to be an absolutely overwhelming task.� In fact, �Curtis did very well indeed,� says Firth. �He was extremely upbeat, very cheerful and he expressed a lot of enjoyment in the process. And he�s far too intelligent to pretend he knows things he doesn�t which is something you do find with first time directors, quite understandably, when they feel the need to prove they have done their homework and yet it is very hard to have covered everything before you start.� �Richard, on the other hand, clearly had done a massive amount of homework and quite honestly, a lot of what is required for the job he already had done. He�s a formidable storyteller. He has sat on film sets and watched his work unfold. It would be incredibly hard for anyone who has never made a film before to have any more experience than that.� Colin joined an all star British and American cast for LOVE ACTUALLY - Hugh Grant as a bachelor Prime Minister who falls for his Downing Street tea lady (Martine McCutcheon), Billy Bob Thornton as a hard-line American president with an eye for the ladies, Liam Neeson as a grief stricken father worried about how his young son is coping, Alan Rickman as a happily married man who is tempted by a young, beautiful colleague, Laura Linney, who is secretly in love with a handsome young man and at the same time, devoting much of her spare time to caring for her mentally disabled brother. And many more besides. The film tackles love in all it�s glory and all it�s heartbreakingly sad and funny guises. Colin, 43, is one of Britain's best known actors. He starred alongside Renee Zellweger in the hit comedy BRIDGET JONES�S DIARY, playing Mark Darcy the man who rivals Hugh Grant for Bridget�s affections, and is currently filming the sequel. His first big break came playing another D�Arcy - in the highly acclaimed BBC adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE which won him a BAFTA nomination. Colin's numerous other films include THE ENGLISH PATIENT, FEVER PITCH, CIRCLE OF FRIENDS, MY LIFE SO FAR and PLAYMAKER. He was recently seen in the comedy, WHAT A GIRL WANTS and will be on screen in the eagerly awaited GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING soon. Colin lives in London with his family. He is a talented writer and contributed to a collection of stories collated by the author Nick Hornby. Have you seen any of LOVE ACTUALLY? Yes. I think it works fantastically well. As far as I�m aware Richard as something like a 100 per cent strike rate with everything he has done and you just can�t believe he has pulled it off again with such an ambitious project. Although with LOVE ACTUALLY he had to step up a gear, directing for the first time? Yes, he did. I was first in on the schedule - it started with three weeks of my stuff. And just before we left for France I had a panic attack on his behalf and woke up in the middle of the night. I actually thought, �how is he going to do this? How will he cope?� He�s got ten or fifteen stories, some very famous actors and he is going to jump in for the first time in his life and orchestrate all of that. It seemed to be an absolutely overwhelming task and the read through seemed like a premiere or a night at the Groucho Club or something - limos, I was expecting bodyguards with earpieces (laughs). He could have taken any one of these stories and developed them into a feature film on their own. In fact, I�m led to believe that they were all stories that he had been toying with as full-length stories. And it�s as if he has put them all into one and left himself with a clean slate. When did you first hear about it? There were rumours about it before it became definite. I remember by January (2002) hearing about this thing because there was a reading of the script which I had been invited to participate in but I wasn�t able to be there. There was quite a buzz about the existence of this thing for a long time and you know a lot of talk about it, who may or may not be in it, and who may or may not play which part. I think there were quite a lot of musical chairs in casting as there often is. I knew they were umming and aahing about me and whether I was right for this or right for that. And I think it was �well if Hugh is going to be the prime minister then perhaps I�m not right for the Prime Minister�s brother-in-law or something. And it wasn�t until the summer sometime that they offered it to me. Did you talk it through with Richard at that point? No, not very much I think it spoke for itself. I think quite often if you see something that needs a bit of work then you go into a period of debate. I just felt that it�s very hard to question Richard really, when he has got it right so often. You can�t really bet against him. Why does he get it right so often? I think he has done something which is very hard to do in film and would have been deemed impossible had he not proved otherwise, which is to write about middle class people. As the title suggests it�s a story about love, and the English are often a little wary of that emotion too� Yes. The story reflects different kinds of love. The dark side of it is addressed, it�s not really a film about the real guts of dysfunctional love and torture, it�s not that sort of story. It�s an optimistic film aimed around Christmas time and it has that sort of leaning but it doesn�t ignore the fact that love is painful. There is a scene between Liam Neeson and his little boy where the child has been locking himself in his room and behaving strangely and Liam�s character is afraid that the boy is sick or on drugs or something. And it turns out that the boy says �no; I�m in love...� And the father says �I thought it was something much worse than that.� And the boy says �worse? What could be worse than the total misery and agony of being in love?� And you can�t really argue with that actually. Talk me through your character. He starts in a bad place... He is a man who is rejected. That happens at the beginning of the film. He is rejected by his lover and he has retreated to the south of France. He�s gone away and my story feels a bit to one side as a result of that and in fact I had strong suspicions that if they needed to cut anything mine would be the first to go (laughs). So I�m in a cottage in France writing my novel and licking my wounds and the cleaning lady who is Portuguese and speaks no English is my love interest. A friendship develops and the comedy and pathos of the relationship exists in the misunderstanding. Basically you the audience get to understand what I say obviously, but she doesn�t. You get the subtitles of what she says but obviously I don�t understand what she says. You understand everything but we don�t understand each other. And actually it�s a simple love story within that convention. Your segment in France was the first to be filmed. What was Richard like at that stage? On a personal level he was extremely up beat, very cheerful and he expressed enjoyment at the process and he is far too intelligent to pretend he knows things he doesn�t which is something you do find with directors, quite understandably when they are beginning. They need to prove they have done their homework and yet it is very hard to have covered everything before you start. And it�s hard to admit that you haven�t� Well quite. And you can probably do a multitude of films and there is still a whole bunch of stuff you haven�t grasped. I mean, you can say that from an acting point of view, it�s the same thing - and I�ve done twenty or so. Richard, on the other hand, was very, very on top of it. I mean he had clearly done a massive, massive amount of homework. And quite honestly a lot of what is required for the job he had down already. He was already a formidable storyteller. He has sat on film sets and watched his work unfold and be adapted into another medium and I had worked with Richard briefly. I had done a day on a BLACKADDER film and he was sat next to the camera and incredibly hands on in terms of changing bits of dialogue cutting bits, adding bits, and it would be very hard for anyone who has never made a film before to have any more experience than that. I watched him on set and he is very relaxed and handles people extremely well� Yes, he does I think that there was an awful lot he had going for him. He is a very, very diplomatic man, he has a lot of qualities which help him just deal with people. He�s had a lot of leadership experience. For some people the stresses of the job are terrible and however much you are all mates, the director just can�t smile anymore after a couple of weeks because there is too much pressure. And I never saw him get to that point. He was always buoyant, quick witted, approachable. Just like he always is. It�s billed as a romantic comedy. But in a way there is more to LOVE ACTUALLY than that. Would you agree? Yes I would. I think it�s a strange mixture this one. Because I think a feel good movie implies escape, fairy tale implies escape. This one I think takes a look at the kind of lives a lot of us lead. I mean these are people who look like us, dress like us, have jobs like ours. And you know that�s probably not every walk of society, he is looking at urban middle class people. I mean he hasn�t crossed a lot of class barriers or regional barriers here, but they are recognisable people and, I don�t know, it�s as if he has sprinkled magic dust over it all or something. Just to give it all a lift and give an optimistic take on some of the more stressful and distressing aspects of our lives. He is not solving the problems of the entire world but the kind of general love difficulties, which a lot of people have, the kind of the things in real life we lose our sense of humour about. This film rekindles the humour and it can kind of help to lighten one�s view of those problems. And there�s nothing wrong with that. http://www.phase9.tv/moviefeatures/loveactuallyq&a-colinfirth1.htm

(article) There is a certain uptight dignity about him that is just begging to be moistened (Tress) I beg for him to be moist all the time! Glad to see I'm not alone! LOL! I'm right there with ya! I really like this writer! :-) And looks like he wears the glasses for affect more and more ;-) I think this interview was done the day of the Dorchester Hotel press conference that had those pics with him in those glasses that seemed to stimulate the Great Glasses Debate of 2003. ;-D (Tress) I'd pay 'ready money'.... (Me) I�d pay ready money... Great minds.... ;-)

Maira - Thanks for posting the Q&A article . .very nice. Colin Firth was having panic attacks and sleepless nights. Not, you understand that the undeniably talented and extremely experienced Colin was over concerned about his role, in this case playing a heartbroken writer, Jamie, who seeks refuge in the south of France. No, that bit was fine. Nor indeed, was he troubled about the quality of the script, which was, he says, �just fantastic.� No, he was actually worried on behalf of Richard Curtis, the man who had written LOVE ACTUALLY, and for the first time, would be directing it, too. In a way . .that was nice that he was so concerned for RC's first directorial debut . .a shame he had panic attacks about it though . .but you wonder how many actors out there now really truly care that much about a project they work on . . .again, another side of ODB I do admire him for (that and his strong family/fatherly values! as well as his acting!)

And looks like he wears the glasses for affect more and more ;-) (Dorine) I think this interview was done the day of the Dorchester Hotel press conference that had those pics with him in those glasses that seemed to stimulate the Great Glasses Debate of 2003. ;-D I gotta say I do like him with the glasses . .something about them makes him appear academic and adorable all at the same time . .and for me, an intelligent man is EXTREMELY sexy . . .

"and that if he needs advice about work he talks to his wife. "She is the smartest person on Earth." Fergit R-rated role. *insert red fingernail*

(Colin Firth in today's London Evening Standard will ensure that women everywhere are loosening their stays and calling for smelling salts Trust me, if I'm loosening my stays, I won't be calling for smelling salts;-) (CF)I went to Los Angeles to do publicity for Bridget I, and I don't know if I have ever felt quite so invisible Ah, the VH1 Cast Party... There are so many of you to thank, tonight. The articles are great and so full of new quotes and things. Mari thanks for the reviews, Karen for articles and pictures. Vinn-ie, Vinn-ie, He's our man, well not really, but he was a doll.

When Firth met his wife.....she.....greeted the news that he is a sex symbol in Britain with incredulous laughter. �Well she found it incredibly unlikely.....� Ok, I don't want to be an apologist here but let me be an apologist here...;-) Let's get the time frame right... He met her doing Nostromo. Who among us went or would have gone bonkers over Charles Gould without a Darcy or Valmont whetting? Remember those little horses he was riding around on? His feet almost scraped the ground fer cryin out loud. His character was almost as repressed as Adrian LeDuc in that one, though I did like the shag in the mine. If I was not already smitten I would not have found him that attractive. He did mention that the first film the I'dies (as I'talians are called in Indiana;-)) saw him in was CoFs. A veritable sleeze in that one. I unknowingly hated his character in that one myself. Great acting but a skeeve. So I think that her leap of heart might just be admired. For a prize she got the lovely Matthew Field and perhaps that interlude in France resulted in lovely enough memories to name a son Mateo. Ok, I'm sure I lost Evelyn here but I just had to express my thoughts.

Telegraph review: Romantic comedy? No, on both counts The stars are out in force in Richard Curtis's Love Actually, but they can't save a film that fights shy of real emotion, says Sukhdev Sandhu Love? Actually, no. More like disappointment, and, at times, hatred. I wanted so much to love Richard Curtis's directorial debut, expected to love it too. Yet, even though its makers would have us believe we're curmudgeons if we don't grin and lap up the film, it really is a stale and contrived letdown. A sense of fairness compelled me to see it again last weekend at a cinema packed out by what seems to be its target audience: Anglophile Americans. It was more bearable, but not by much. Don't get me wrong. Romantic comedies are my very favourite type of film. Nothing beats going � deux to see Annie Hall. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary, while not in that league, were � and are � hugely enjoyable. Curtis created career-defining roles for the likes of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. The glossy, germ-free fantasy of England he fashioned was as lovable as that in early Britpop records. His movies, for all their fondness for stammering self-deprecation, seemed confident and wonderfully fresh. Not this time. Love Actually is smaller than the sum of its parts, many of which have been lifted straight out of Curtis's earlier films: the mad, show-stopping dash across London; the disabled relative; the strategic and showy use of profanities; the belief that all human emotion � happiness, anger, sadness � has to take place on the banks of the Thames or with a whopping grand view of St Paul's in the background. Stylistic tics have begun to curdle into clich�s. The stars are out in force here. All of them falling in, and sometimes a little out, of love. At Christmas time too. Hugh Grant plays a prime minister smitten by his tea lady (Martine McCutcheon); Colin Firth is a cuckolded novelist who retreats to France where he is charmed by his Portuguese maid; Emma Thompson discovers that her husband (Alan Rickman) has a thing for his sultry secretary. And so on. So much talent. So little chance to use it. The film resembles a VIP club, swarming with celebrities who have turned up as much to be seen as actually to have a good time there. By cramming so many characters into his story, Curtis reduces all but a handful to caricatures. He also lops off the possibility of them evolving through the course of the film. The end result is like a "Stars on 45" medley: it promises to be a bonanza-blitz of the best choruses of your favourite songs, but it rips away those intros that gave depth and weight to their unmanacled joy. It's the newer faces, many imported from television, that offer the greatest pleasures. Gregor Fisher as the doting manager of Bill Nighy, a foul-mouthed has-been rocker who is trying to revive his career. Martin Freeman, from The Office, as a mild-mannered porn actor who falls for his equally sweet co-star; Andrew Lincoln, from This Life and Teachers, gives a performance that at times recalls John Cusack. Yet it's the storyline he's involved in, or more precisely the lack of one, that exemplifies this film's failures. He's the best man at the wedding of Chiwetel Ejiofor to Keira Knightley, a couple who show no chemistry whatsoever, and who seem to have been cast on the basis of their box-office successes and Curtis's desire to appease those critics who slated Notting Hill for being too monocultural. It turns out that Lincoln has always secretly loved her. Why that might be is unclear as, her mouth permanently ajar like a snooker pocket, she displays zero personality. Finally he proclaims his love, using Dylan-style placards. Then � nothing: we hop back to another segment of the film. All we're left with is a very showy and exaggerated declaration that love is very important, but no real sense of how it works, how it hurts, how it may change people. The glibness of the dramatic treatment undermines the film's central theme and renders it hollow. Glibness is all around. At the start of Love Actually a voiceover from Hugh Grant (speaking in his prime ministerial capacity?) invokes the attacks on the World Trade Centre. It's an incredible moment of chutzpah, a grotesque piece of emotional blackmail that seeks to enlist the thousands of men and women who died on September 11 as part of the back-story for this lightweight froth. This eruption of reality also means that Curtis can't excuse its more flimsy and ludicrous elements by claiming it's just a fantasy. "Very romantic. Very comedy" read some of the posters for the film that have been plastered over every bus shelter in the country. How strange to advertise a movie on the basis of the strictness to which it adheres to a formula. Scrappily edited and flatly directed, it actually disobeys some of the cardinal rules of romantic comedies. Its multiple storylines mean that the characters aren't afforded enough time to veer away from each other or to undergo sufficient bumps and glitches in their relationships. The humour in too many scenes � Grant shaking his ass to dance music at 10 Downing Street, Bill Nighy defacing a Blue poster on a kids' TV show � doesn't emanate naturally from the story itself. Crucially, Curtis's script is not as sharp as in his previous ones, bereft of flirty badinage and cut-and-thrust romantic parrying. Perhaps the fault lies in irony. Whenever real emotional pain looms into view, Curtis turns to other works of art � Auden in Four Weddings and a Funeral, the Bay City Rollers' Bye Bye Baby here. These were popular because of their fundamental sincerity, a quality Curtis hankers after, but is too reticent or craven to emulate fully. This film, in its arch, English way, is as enclosed in its own culturally hermetic world as anything by Quentin Tarantino. There is one very good reason to watch Love Actually: Laura Linney, as subtle and sympathetic an actress as is alive today. The rest of it is as easily digestible but value-free a compendium of "feel-good" clich�s as I Love 1973. How odd that a film that champions emotion should seem so schematic, compiled rather than felt, as full of genuine Christmas joy as a high street shop-window display. And how odd that a film that attacks boy bands for creating oily, slickly marketed mass-market fare should be guilty of those same sins. "Solid gold shit" is how Bill Nighy describes his terrible, fakely cheerful attempt to beat those boy bands and reach number one at Christmas. I'm afraid I couldn't have put it better myself.

The Mirror's review: ALL YOU NEED IS LOVELOVE Nov 21 2003 INTELLECTUAL, thought-provoking, ground breaking, incisive, courageously different, fascinating... Actually, Richard Curtis's much talked about movie of the moment is none of these things. Throughout most of the ridiculously unrealistic action I felt as though my heart strings were being played like a fiddle in tune with a succession of demeaning insults to what I like to call "my intelligence". But while this blatant brain candy doesn't tax the grey matter, Curtis - directing his own screenplay for the first time - has delivered the perfect feelgood film for Christmas. There's no denying that Mr Curtis's characteristic symphony of saccharine and sentimentality is a brilliantly conceived commercial product. And, even if you're the worst kind of bah humbug Scrooge (me!), get ready to wallow in a warm bath drawn from the milk of human kindness. Trust me, it's very difficult to resist a film brimming with remarkable charm. I tried - and failed. Chronicling nine separate love stories as they reach festive fruition during the season of goodwill, this skilfully woven romantic tapestry adds up to an It's A Wonderful Life for the 21st century. Those seeking gritty realism should, at all costs, avoid what amounts to a shameless two-hour-and-15-minute flight of fantasy. But what the hell. We're in CURTISWORLD - a forget-all-your-worries theme park in which misery doesn't exist, there are stripped pine floorboards and brightly coloured front doors for all, and everybody has a groovy job in fashionably decorated offices where they play pop music. So, leave your cynicism behind and just pretend that not only is the Prime Minister a profoundly handsome bachelor - but also that he's fallen head over heels for the down-to-earth charms of his Downing Street cleaning lady. Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon turn this absurd little sub-plot into a hugely entertaining upstairs-downstairs romp. Although, it must also be pointed out, that extreme Cockney McCutcheon is a limited actress who looks too much like a dumpy garden gnome to stand even an outside chance of succeeding in her ambition to make the grade in Hollywood. If you like unlikely, you'll adore the scene in which Premier Grant tells Billy Bob Thornton's visiting US President that he's a domineering dictator and that Britain is no longer prepared to play the poodle. As if! Cleaning ladies loom large in this convivial conceit as Colin Firth, playing a pulp fiction crime writer, also flips for his comely maid - this one, in an extraordinary twist, Portuguese. Widower Liam Neeson's tear-jerking relationship with his weird looking step-son is magnificently implausible. What grown man would take a 10-year-old kid to the airport and encourage him to break through security so that he can declare his undying love for a similarly pre-pubescent little girl? September 11? Never heard of it. And, instead of kissing up to her husband's best friend after he declares his secret passion, Keira Knightley should have recognised him as a dangerously deranged stalker and gone to the courts for a restraining order. In the only cautionary tale, Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman play parents whose happy family hits crisis point when he flirts with his mini-skirted office PA and buys her a stunning gold necklace. The domestic dispute is not resolved. Even though, naturally, Curtis couldn't quite bring Rickman's character to actually commit adultery. In CURTISWORLD impure thoughts are quite enough, thank you. I roared with laughter at the sheer hypocrisy of Emma's interviews in which she railed against how awfully commercial Christmas has become in these modern and venal times. Well honey, if you believe the spirit of capitalism is ruining the spirit of the season here's an idea - DON'T STAR IN FILMS LIKE LOVE ACTUALLY! In any case, the real star of the entire heart-warming production is the fabulous Bill Nighy who is hilarious as a drug addled old rock star on the comeback trail hoping to top the Yuletide charts. Way to go Bill for the funniest film performance of the year. There's a sense here that the audience is being emotionally manipulated. I felt at times that I was drowning under a tidal wave of nonsensical fairytale silliness. But it would be a mistake to take Curtis's lightweight fluff too seriously. Just pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and enjoy a super slice of all-out escapism that will be as popular with families as it will with dating couples. Actually, I'm certain you'll love it.

Peter Bradshaw Friday November 21, 2003 The Guardian 2 out of 5 stars Love Actually: this isn't the conlusion Peter Bradshaw came to So here it is at last, after the traditional ruthlessly orchestrated PR crescendo of interviews and photo-ops: Richard Curtis's seasonal feelgood comedy, all done up in red ribbon like a Christmas present. Leaving the cinema, the question that occurred to me, along with Are there no workhouses? and You'll want the whole day tomorrow, I suppose, Cratchit? was this. Does Mr Curtis have special screenwriting software to produce this sort of thing? Using a Q-tip and bodily fluid, he must have impregnated a disk of the Final Draft programme with his DNA, so that all he has to do is type, say, control-shift-NUPTIALS, to get a complete quirky-yet-touching wedding scene. Or maybe control-shift-PRESSCONF, and we get one of his press conferences with a coded public declaration of love. Perhaps apple-control-SIBLING generates a scene with a trademark disabled sibling or loved one, or maybe he just types alt-ROMCOM and the entire movie comes chuntering out of the printer, while Curtis slopes off to watch the rugby on t levision. Well, you could do worse, and Love Actually is put together with professionalism and care. It's a multi-strand comedy with eight or nine interwoven little storylines - Curtis's first film in the director's chair. Hugh Grant plays a stammering fortysomething who is the first bachelor to become prime minister since Edward Heath. He falls in love with his tea-girl, winningly played by Martine McCutcheon, who is, however, the only one bothered about making this whole situation believable; Grant himself looks at both Martine and files marked "Treasury" with the suppressed quizzical smirk of an actor who is clearly going to burst out laughing the moment he hears "Cut!" At any rate, both his gallantry and his patriotism are tested when a visiting American president, played by the always charismatic Billy Bob Thornton, makes Clintonian advances to our Martine. As for the rest, there's just too much to describe: an array of chocolate-covered, bite-sized, softcentred mini-plots, a Cadbury's Cameo Selection of stars. And overseeing them all, like a raddled old good-ish fairy, is Bill Nighy, playing a superannuated rocker hoping to get a Christmas number one with his cynically repackaged version of Love Is All Around. The good news about Love Actually is that Nighy is barnstormingly brilliant: hilarious in every scene with a cracker of a laugh in every line. His performance, full of twitches, flinches and naughty-boy grins, is pitch-perfect. And his final mumbling declaration of non-sexual love for his manager, played by Gregor Fisher, interspersed with embarrassed air guitar arm-movements, is the funniest and sweetest thing I've seen on screen all year. The bad news is that everything else is rubbish. Well, not all of it, and not total rubbish, but none of the little plots is all that funny or humanly convincing and none has room to breathe or develop. Nothing has the dramatic punch of the aborted Duck-Face marriage in Four Weddings or the real poignancy of Julia Roberts being turned down by a heartsick Grant in Notting Hill. Here, each pseudo-story seems to cut straight from the premise to its unearned euphoric resolution, with no narrative dimension whatever. No sooner have we been introduced to the characters than it's time for the big declaration of love in a public place, or the big rush to the airport. "We'll go to the airport!" says someone to a London taxi driver. "I know a shortcut!" Sure you do. This whole movie is shortcuts, but not like Robert Altman. It's more like watching a 135-minute trailer for a film called "Love Actually". Talking of that "shortcut" to Heathrow, there's the much-discussed question of what planet Richard Curtis characters are from. Like Ford Prefect in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they may be aliens posing as Brit Humanoids, but giving themselves away though little slips. They have a special weird way of swearing. "Fuck-wank-bugger-stinking-arse-head'n'hole!" shouts Bill Nighy - funnily, but very, very eccentrically. Martine McCutcheon actually says: "Oh - piss it!" which nobody has ever said in real life. The strangest Curtis replicant is that adorable little boy who plays the stepson of Liam Neeson, recently widowed. What a dark-eyed, frizzy-haired cutester he is. I am prepared to accept that he is chirpily and heartwarmingly courageous about the death of his mum. Fine. But don't tell me he's a carbon-based Earth life form. I don't think I have been so blood-freezingly afraid of any alleged child since those kids in The Village of the Damned. There are a few more things to write home about in Love Actually, actually. Emma Thompson has a nice moment as Alan Rickman's wronged wife, slipping away from the family celebrations to control her secret tears by the marital bed. Hugh Grant is always good value, and Martin Freeman and Joanna Page do very well as a couple who fall in love while working as stand-ins for what is apparently an expensively produced hardcore porn film. But Grant provides a curious voiceover for the beginning and end scenes set at the Heathrow arrivals gate, showing ordinary non-stars on video, joyfully reunited like a BA advert. People still love each other, he says, and even claims that love is the take-home message from the World Trade Centre attack: "As far as I know, none of the phone messages from the planes were messages of hate." Was there no one who could have dissuaded Richard Curtis from including that icky, disingenuous line? The career of this uniquely clever and talented man is practically all that we have left from the 1990s wave of hope for a native film-industry to rival Hollywood. Curtis has hinted that he wants to branch out into something more serious. I look forward to that. Because this kind of comedy has just hit the wall.

The Independent's review: Love Actually (15) Reviewed by Anthony Quinn There is a moment early on in Richard Curtis's Love Actually which encapsulates both why his brand of feel-good romantic comedy will have them queuing from here to Christmas, but also why it sticks in the craw of non-believers. We are at a wedding (there will also be a funeral - welcome to Curtisworld) as the happy couple, their vows complete, take their first steps down the aisle as man and wife. Suddenly, a singer appears in the choirloft to begin a rousing version of "All You Need Is Love"; then a row of horn players pop up from behind a pew, matched by a row of violinists on the other side of the church. Then a guitarist launches into a solo. Even though it is more like a scene that would end a film rather than begin it, Curtis seems to be getting away with the euphoria when his camera turns back to the altar to catch the priest high-fiving the best man. That is the moment I thought: "Oh no." The problem is one of knowing when to say enough. Richard Curtis, unfortunately, cannot look at a pudding without overegging it. The warbling soloist is acceptable; the hidden orchestra is pushing it; but that high-five tips the whole confection into a realm of touchy-feely inclusiveness that one simply never trusts. According to Curtis, his partner Emma Freud happens to be his sternest editor and will mark even the favourite passages in his script with NBG (No Bloody Good) and CDB (Could Do Better). One can only wonder at how the script of Love Actually read before she got a look at it. The absurd overcrowding of its ensemble structure is the most obvious sign of his inability to see that less is more. Of the nine stories that constitute its length, three, maybe three and a half, are fine; the rest range between sketchy, schmaltzy and plain inadequate. The film opens with its main character, the youngish bachelor prime minister (Hugh Grant), reflecting that the world is not a place of hatred but of love, actually, and invites us to look at a montage of people happily embracing one another at an airport arrival gate. Even the last phone-calls from the doomed of September 11, as he reminds us, were messages of love (a risky reference in the circumstances). But is it actually love that is being celebrated in these vignettes? What the best man (Andrew Lincoln) feels for newlywed Juliet (Keira Knightley) is surely a romantic infatuation, so too Colin Firth's cuckolded writer for the Portuguese housemaid to whom he scarcely talks. The bug-eyed bozo (Kris Marshall) who flies to Milwaukee in search of American girls is purely inspired by a need to get laid: lust, actually. Another sliver of a story turns lust inside out, so to speak, as Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) and an improbably sweet-faced girl (Joanna Page) literally go through the motions as stand-ins on a porn flick. There is something winningly preposterous about these strangers cavorting naked beneath the arc lights ("Could you fondle her breasts now?" asks the director) while making polite chitchat about the traffic hell they encountered on the way to work that morning. Again, though, it is a sketch, a chucklesome squib about intimacy and embarrassment, not a dramatic insight into the mysteries of love. As for Liam Neeson's young stepson (Thomas Sangster) whining about his unrequited love for a top girl at school - "the end of my life as I know it" - please, he is 10 years old! A clip round the ear would surely be the wise parent's response. None of these small ardours is convincing, and in the case of Colin Firth being followed by a comedy French chorus line on his way to spring a marriage proposal, it is downright silly. The Curtis veterans fare better. PM Grant, falling head over heels for a perky secretary (Martine McCutcheon), still contrives to make his stuttering self-deprecation endearing. Audiences will enjoy his staircase jive to The Pointer Sisters "Jump", though I prefer the tiny moment of embarrassment when he greets McCutcheon with a chummy handwave and then walks on, quietly cringeing at his gaucherie ("Pathetic!"). Playing his sister, Emma Thompson also does sterling work as a wife pained by her drifting husband (Alan Rickman) but determined to show the world a brave face. Her stricken look when she realises his betrayal, and the private moments she takes to collect herself - dabbing her eyes, smoothing the coverlet on the bed - are a masterclass in restraint. That is something Laura Linney knows about, and it was presumably her fantastic performance in You Can Count On Me that persuaded Curtis to cast her as a Bridget-type singleton whose romance with the office Adonis is cruelly stalled by the importunate attentions of her schizophrenic brother. Here is a serious, albeit brief, consideration of what love actually can mean: looking after a sick relative when you would rather be having a life of your own. The film's wild card, and the best reason to see it, is Bill Nighy's clapped-out rock star, a magnificent reprise of the adenoidal old fart he played in Still Crazy five years ago (truly worth renting the video for.) Nobody shambles quite like Nighy, or intimates the disappointment of a lifetime simply in the hang of his jaw. The dreadful Christmas single he flails through is less funny than his galumphing efforts to promote it - even Ant and Dec are reduced to horrified silence by his on-camera "message" to the kids: "Don't buy drugs... [pause] Become a pop star and they give you them for free." He also brings to this madly calculating film a refreshing blast of spontaneity; like Hugh Grant, Nighy can convey just in a shrug or a pause the impression that he has absolutely no clue what he is going to say next. His crumpled majesty is wonderfully out of step with the film's overeager conga-line of lovers and losers, and feels like an antidote to its more virulent excesses - Andrew Lincoln's smarminess, a cringeworthy set-piece dash to Heathrow at the end, the puerile splattering of four-letter words. If Richard Curtis could curb his urge to go over every top he sees, who knows what he might be capable of? Unfortunately, he is vastly more interested in the emotional responses of his audience than in the plausibility of his characters, which is why his "love is all around" cheerleading so often seems a put-on. Love Actually isn't dull, just manipulative and ingratiating, and it reveals its maker to be no more than the Fotherington-Tomas of modern cinema.

(BeeDee) Ok, I'm sure I lost Evelyn here but I just had to express my thoughts. BeeDee, I'm sure you didn't, and thank you for expressing your thoughts that I happen to fully agree with. :-) Ladies, thank you for the great articles, they are some of the best I've read in a long time. They were a joy to read, and I was quite surprised how comfortable Colin seemed to talk about things he rarely talks about. Also thank you for the pics, we can never have enough of those. :-)Great job, all of you!

(Mari/Independent Review) Another sliver of a story turns lust inside out, so to speak, as Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) and an improbably sweet-faced girl (Joanna Page) literally go through the motions as stand-ins on a porn flick. Did I fall into sleep during the screening or what? I didn't recall this story in the film at all! :-(

For Drooleurs in LA, Chicago (YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!), NY and SF, I got an email announcing free advance screenings of GWAPE *skreeee* i'm there i'm there! not much time to chat, but wanted to let everyone know that i am now indulging in fantasies of photo sessions with Sir Colin... *swoons, muttering 'the legs, the legs' over and over*

LOVE ACTUALLY Q&A WITH COLIN FIRTH Movie Feature by Martyn Palmer This is interesting. The Q&A is copyright to UIP, so it's something they handed out, like in a presskit or something. The beginning is definitely written in PR style. Thanks Maria for all your finds. (CF) I just felt that it�s very hard to question Richard really, when he has got it right so often. You can�t really bet against him. *kiss kiss* (CF) in fact I had strong suspicions that if they needed to cut anything mine would be the first to go (laughs). Didn't I say this? His character interacts the least with other characters and would be one of the easiers ones to go. (CF)I went to Los Angeles to do publicity for Bridget I, and I don't know if I have ever felt quite so invisible (Linda) Ah, the VH1 Cast Party... Was he there? ;-) And now the reviews... (Telegraph) "Solid gold shit" is how Bill Nighy describes his terrible, fakely cheerful attempt to beat those boy bands and reach number one at Christmas. I'm afraid I couldn't have put it better myself. Excellent choice for an ad blurb, even better than "I wanted to vomit once or twice." (Mirror) INTELLECTUAL, thought-provoking, ground breaking, incisive, courageously different, fascinating...Actually, Richard Curtis's much talked about movie of the moment is none of these things Cockney McCutcheon is a limited actress who looks too much like a dumpy garden gnome LOL!! (BTW, garden gnomes are often the best parts of movies IMO) (Guardian) or maybe he just types alt-ROMCOM and the entire movie comes chuntering out of the printer what planet Richard Curtis characters are from...The strangest Curtis replicant is that adorable little boy...I don't think I have been so blood-freezingly afraid of any alleged child since those kids in The Village of the Damned. Too funny! So the answer is, with the exception of James Christopher from The Times, they've joined the feeding frenzy, but are resigned to the fact that people will flock to feel-good movies regardless. Thanks Mari for posting all the reviews. Such good late-night reading. :-)

(Risa)skreeee* i'm there i'm there! Not fair!!!! ..........furiously checking bus schedules...that should scare her (Karen)(BTW, garden gnomes are often the best parts of movies IMO) I agree! Loved the gnome in The Full Monty;-)

(Telegraph re:Keira Knightley)..."her mouth permanently ajar like a snooker pocket, she displays zero personality." Couldn't have put it better, ROTF. I know some of their comments are obscene, but these guys write entertaining reviews.*still LOL "Solid gold shit*. RC will rue the day he wrote that line. Thanks Mari.

Aishling says that the Daily Mail gave LA 5 out of 5 stars.

Arghh! A press conference but ODB wasn't there!! Hugh makes some very funny comments though and of course takes his digs at Colin... http://www.uip.se/loveactually/

Thank you all for the interviews, clips, reviews and what have you. About Maria's latest find, if you didn't know before, you probably all know now that "skratt" is Swedish for "laughing". LA got reviewed in Danish tv this week as well. Not much news (not that I thought there would be). In an interview with RC and HG, RC calls it a "chickflick" and a "d**kflick"; lots of pretty girls. Another reviewer presented Colins clip like this: And now, The Wonderboy of British Film :-) (but he kept on babbling, how this was HG's movie. Made a top 3 of HG's movies with BJD on top.)

(Evelyn)I know some of their comments are obscene, but these guys write entertaining reviews.*still LOL "Solid gold shit*. My fave was the guy who wrote that RC must be useing rom com write-a-script-software. LOL! (Karen)Aishling says that the Daily Mail gave LA 5 out of 5 stars. Christopher Tookey likes this one?? Will wonders never cease. Can't wait to read it. What's Ev call him, Tookey bin Laden?;-) Maria! Two things: 1. How do you find all this stuff, and 2. Keep up the great work! Off to read some more.

The Sun's review: All Hugh need is love I DON�T know how Richard Curtis discovered his magic formula for cinema success � he is to the box office what Kylie is to the charts. While everyone else in the British film industry knocks out one turkey after another Curtis, aka The Man With The Golden Pen, can�t switch on his computer without having a hit. Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones�s Diary � they have made hundreds of millions. But they could all become small beer compared to Love Actually � his latest cash cow (sorry, film), which he also directs. With Love Actually, Curtis goes into overdrive. The king of the Brit-rom-com is not content with just one love story � he has to write at least six. Here we have love in every conceivable form: First sight, unrequited, lost, impossible, first, married, falling in and even shallow love. The movie begins with a Hugh Grant voiceover as people hug and kiss at Heathrow arrivals lounge. The message is obvious � love is everywhere. This sets the tone of the movie as we are introduced to the various characters. There�s Hugh Grant as a foppish PM more interested in sexing up his tea lady (Martine McCutcheon) than sensitive documents. Liam Neeson is a recently bereaved husband who has to look after his stepson suffering from the effects of his first crush at school. Keira Knightley plays a newlywed whose husband�s best pal is in love with her. Colin Firth is a writer who, while on retreat in France, falls in love with his Portuguese cleaning lady. Emma Thompson is trying to save her listless marriage to Alan Rickman. Laura Linney seizes her opportunity to consolidate an office love affair. And Bill Nighy plays a seen it, done it ageing rock star making a gloriously shameless attack on the Christmas No1 spot. Their stories all come together and Christmas Eve provides the backdrop for the various conclusions. From anyone else, Love Actually would have you reaching for the sickbag but, as he well knows, Curtis can pull it off like no one else. A mixture of slick storytelling, good (if, in some cases, totally unbelievable) characterisation, gentle comedy and, above all, a series of sugary endings had me grinning from ear-to-ear like a loved-up teenager. It�s not all happiness and light though � Curtis is canny enough to know that love doesn�t work all the time and drops a couple of hard luck stories in too. Love Actually pushes all the right buttons. Curtis makes films the whole family can sit down to watch, without having to worry that Granny might be offended. (My note: His granny must like simulated sex scenes and say f*ck a lot.;-) Love Actually � A Richard Curtis film. It does what it says on the tin. The Christmas movie of the year.

(Mirror) Curtis, aka The Man With The Golden Pen, can�t switch on his computer without having a hit. Plagiarizing Bradshaw, huh? ;-) Curtis makes films the whole family can sit down to watch, without having to worry that Granny might be offended. (My note: His granny must like simulated sex scenes and say f*ck a lot.;-) Not sure what the rating is in the UK, but I'd be willing to bet his Granny is over 15. ;-)

Thank you Mari, Karen, Maria, Annette, Gina, and Tress (great photos of Vinnie and nice ones of Colin, too!)!!! (Mari)His granny must like simulated sex scenes and say f*ck a lot.;-) Pffft! LOL! (Beedee)Ok, I don't want to be an apologist here but let me be an apologist here...;-) Just don't apologize for being an apologist! Nicely written, Bee!

Sorry to double post, but is this the review people were looking for? Love Actually Chris Tookey's Rating 10 / 10 Average Critics Rating 6.63 / 10 Film Details 2003, GB, C, 128, 15 Synopsis An incredibly large number of interconnecting love stories. Review Love Actually may not be perfection, but it is two and a quarter hours of cinematic delight. In terms of ambition, range and entertainment value, Richard Curtis's first film as writer-director can stand alongside the great romantic comedies - and it's the most heart-warming Christmas movie since It's A Wonderful Life. At least something good has come out of 9/11. Curtis establishes his Twin Towers-inspired theme in the opening moments, when he makes his alter ego, Hugh Grant, point out that, although fear and hatred sometimes appear to dominate our planet, the world is also full of love. When people knew they were about to die on September 11th, they didn't give vent to their hatred: they sent fond messages to their love ones. Love, as the song says, is all around. As if this isn't enough to enrage melancholics the world over, Curtis enlarges on his theme by depicting the extraordinary variety, versatility and virulence of love. He does that by intertwining 9 short stories and 22 leading characters, with a skill I haven't seen bettered in any movie. The technique and self-discipline are staggering. And the effect is magical. It's not often you can go to the cinema, look around at almost any point in the film, and see virtually the entire audience crying with joy. This New Zealander turned quintessential Englishman first made his name in international cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral, and his achievements since have included Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary. So it is no surprise to find Hugh Grant in the leading role. Once again at the peak of his powers, Grant plays a new, highly charismatic Prime Minister. He enters Downing Street unencumbered by Blairite blandness, smarminess or marriage. "No nappies! No teenagers!" he promises the domestic staff. "No scary wife!" He immediately, and inconveniently, falls for the Number 10 tea lady (Martine McCutcheon, showing us the Eliza Doolittle that most of us missed), but gets dispirited when he catches her being snogged by a visiting US President (Billy Bob Thornton, amusingly arrogant - and just a bit chilling - as a Clintonesque womaniser who takes British subservience too much for granted). Love finally gets the better of the PM, however, and he decides to track her down on Christmas Eve - and he doesn't want a cup of tea. December 24th is traditionally the moment when the year's Christmas Number One pop single is revealed, and one contender for this dubious accolade is clapped-out rock grandad Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), with an atrocious version of Love Is All Around, retitled Christmas Is All Around. This narrative strand charts the love-hate relationship between Billy and his long-suffering manager (Gregor Fisher). Nighy builds upon the hilarious character he played in Still Crazy: someone who's been there, done that, but can't remember much of it. This must be one of the funniest performances ever, and - were everyone else not so tremendous - he would steal the movie. There was scarcely a moment when Nighy was on screen that I was not weeping with laughter (and I've seen this movie twice). In a darker strand of the film, Laura Linney has wonderful warmth as a woman entering middle age but still too nervous to date the best-looking man in her office (Rodrigo Santoro). Besides, she has a family responsibility of her own, arising from a very different kind of love, and it keeps getting in the way of her "love life". The other tragic-comic story brings out arguably the finest performance in the film. Emma Thompson makes a triumphant return to the big screen as a middle-aged Wandsworth mum increasingly aware that her husband (Alan Rickman) is succumbing to the less than subtle advances of his gorgeous, predatory secretary (Heike Makatsch). Thompson is terrific, whether faking joy at her daughter getting the role of First Lobster in her school's Nativity play but unable to disguise her incredulity ("There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?") or dispensing sage advice to a male neighbour who's grieving for his wife ("Nobody's ever going to shag you if you cry all the time"). With comparatively little time on screen, she's as moving as she was in Howards End and Sense and Sensibility. If you don't have a tear in your eye when she gets her Christmas present, there's something wrong with you. I could also rhapsodise about the father-son strand, with Liam Neeson showing an unexpectedly light, charming touch as a widower resigned to a single life, unless of course Claudia Schiffer should suddenly become available, and coping with the sudden stroppiness of his 11 year-old stepson (played by a talented young newcomer, Thomas Sangster, who is Hugh Grant's real-life cousin). Unrequited love is also on show, through the best man at a wedding (Andrew Lincoln) who apparently resents the beautiful young wife (Keira Knightley) of his best friend (Chiwetel Ejofor). Another of the film's highlights is when he is made to show Knightley his highly embarrassing video of her wedding. Lust is represented by the splendid Kris Marshall (the elder son in TV's My Family), playing sad sack Colin, disastrous at chatting up London totty but convinced that if only he can move to America and charm the girls with his English accent he will be transformed into a Love God. "Stateside," he assures his sceptical best friend, "I am Prince William without the weird family!" We're also shown love flourishing under inauspicious circumstances - Joanna Page and Martin Freeman, trying to make personal contact while "standing in" for actors in a porno movie. Finally, there's love across the language barrier, with Colin Firth back on form as a diffident thriller-writer who's crushed by his partner's infidelity but bounces back thanks to his Portuguese maid (Lucia Moniz). Curtis weaves together these varied but complementary strands with sublime artistry. He knows just when to put in the big comic set-pieces, when to give us the romantic escapism we're hoping for, and when to bring us down to earth with a dash of realism. Curtis is usually portrayed by his detractors as relentlessly optimistic, which he is if you haven't bothered to watch his movies with any care. There are spectacles here - especially those involving Linney and Thompson - which are far from rose-tinted. Though a first-time director, Curtis hardly put a foot wrong. Even the dodgiest sequences - and I wasn't wholly convinced about the likelihood of the bar room scene involving Marshall, Firth's procession through the streets of Marseilles, or Neeson's cheerful disregard for airport security- all have a goofy charm. Though Curtis will rightly scoop most of the plaudits, production designer Jim Clay and costume supervisor Joanna Johnston show the same fine eye for modern detail that they did in About a Boy. Nick Moore's editing has the energy that helped make The Full Monty a hit. Michael Coulter's cinematography is gorgeous, once again - as he did in Notting Hill - making London seem the world capital of romance. And the film is immaculately cast by one of the UK's most distinguished casting directors, Mary Selway. This year has already thrown up one five-star British movie in Calendar Girls. Love Actually, by virtue of its scale and ambition, deserves to be rated even higher. Because of its unfashionable charm, humanity and generosity of spirit , a small but vociferous minority will condemn it out of hand. Most people, however, are going to love it, and - like me- will want to watch it over and over again. If I had a sixth star to award, this movie would get it. And I wouldn't mind a side bet on this film becoming the highest-grossing British picture of all time.

Sorry, sorry, sorry... didn't grab it all, but then I thought this review of reviews was interesting too. ;-) PRO �Enough of Curtis' lovably crazed characters do succeed in finding love in all the unlikely places that you leave the theater with your heart humming happily. He has his dark - well, darkish - side under control. Which is to say that he is an Englishman, well practiced in masking pain and absurdity and descents into sheer goofiness with mannerly behavior, sly irony and stiff upper lips.� (Richard Schickel, TIME) �Movie reviewers who gush always sound like they're waging a shameless campaign to get themselves quoted in the ads, but I loved Love Actually and will happily recommend it to anyone who asks. It's a chick flick, to be sure, but men at a recent preview seemed to be having a pretty good time, too... As if a pointillist, Curtis keeps applying tiny dots of color to his canvas until he completes the whole. By the movie's end, you realize who's related or friends, and it simply adds another layer of richness to the proceedings... Christmas romantic comedies can be like holiday cookies with too many sweets folded into the batter. Love Actually, admittedly stuffed with perhaps two or four too many characters, is not the deepest, most prestigious or thoughtful movie out there, but it sure is enjoyable and uplifting. And some days, that's like a mysterious package under the tree, just waiting for you to remove the oversize bow and rip off the wrapping.� (Barbara Vancheri, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE) �Movies like Love Actually are often made by jaded cynics preying on our shallowest feelings. One senses that Curtis is not a cynic but a congenital optimist who believes that, notwithstanding the evening news, love really is all around � or at least lurking by the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport. Love Actually is often banal, but it is not false, and even its willfully sunny creator will allow that love doesn�t conquer all. The truest, most affecting scenes come late in the movie, and they have nothing to do with resolution, and everything to do with renunciation.� (Ella Taylor, LA WEEKLY) �The characters are too numerous to name and explain and there are many comic gems to discover. Unlike the troubled Le Divorce, Love Actually uses all the actors to their full potential. It is, actually, funny. You�ll laugh, you�ll cry, you�ll swear it was better than CATS. Love Actually is a succinct, well-executed success. It was kind of amazing to watch so many stories be told so fluidly and so well � with none left dangling. Equal time is given to each plot thread in soap-opera fashion. Though here, each vignette is either touching or hilarious, often both. I could not spot any boring or unnecessary scenes.� (Rachel, Moviepie.com - indie film review) �Yes, Love Actually is another romantic comedy, but distinguishes itself from the usual rom-com pack by being the first one this year worth seeing... Emotionally manipulative, but pleasantly so. It�s impossible NOT to get caught up in these stories when Curtis and his movie are so obviously in love with well� love. There�s happiness to be found in a movie unafraid to delve into both the bleak and beautiful aspects of romance and come out with a theme that brings all of that together.� (Filmhobbit.com) �This is a movie about taking big chances (both hopeful and hopeless), about making big gestures to show our love, and about big, big feelings that may make us crazy and miserable but remind us that we are alive and why we are alive... Any movie that manages to include a child dressed as a Nativity lobster, a Bay City Rollers song played at a funeral, love-emergency lessons in both drums and Portugese, and Hugh Grant dancing through the halls of 10 Downing Street to the Pointer Sisters is worth seeing at least twice.� (Nell Minow, MOVIE MOM) �Epic in scope but intimate and funny at the same time, writer/director Richard Curtis' Love Actually is so filled to bursting with warmth, love and comedy that only one of the most talented of casts can do justice to a film that dares to tackle the subject of love, to define the undefinable.. There are two subplots that stand head and shoulders above the rest. In one, Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) is a curmudegonly ex-rocker whose latest Christmas album could be the comeback he needs or just another forgettable piece of shit. Nighy is, for all intents and purposes, the real star of the film as he possesses pitch perfect comic timing and imbues his character with a sense of what can only be described as belligerent brilliance. In another subplot, David (Liam Neeson) and Sam (Thomas Sangster) are father and stepson grieving over the loss of the one woman that mattered most to both of them - the boy's mother Joanna. Soon after, David reveals to his stepfather that he has a crush on the most popular girl at school a d what ensues is priceless... I dread using words like delightful, charming and funny no matter how apt a descriptor of a film they may be but writer/director Richard Curtis' latest feature proves itself to be all of those things and more. This film could well be the closest thing we ever get to making the intangible tangible. If we had to take every feeling we ever had about love and put it to a word or an image we'd end up with something an awful lot like Love Actually.� (Brandon Curtis, CULTUREDOSE.NET) �Love Actually is an unabashedly romantic feel-good comedy that will stop at nothing to be loved itself... A big warm-fuzzy that is funny and entertaining enough to see.� (Bill Payne, MOVIES.COM) �Sprint to the cinema.� (Mariella Frostrup, HARPERS & QUEEN) �The best Brit flick ever.� (Victoria Newton, SUN) �100% unmissable.� (Shebah Ronay, NEWS OF THE WORLD) MIXED �The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs, until at times Curtis seems to be working from a checklist of obligatory movie love situations and doesn't want to leave anything out. At 129 minutes, it feels a little like a gourmet meal that turns into a hot-dog eating contest... Nighy steals the movie, especially in the surprising late scene where he confesses genuine affection for (we suspect) the first time in his life... The movie has to hop around to keep all these stories alive, and there are a couple I could do without. I'm not sure we need the wordless romance between Colin Firth, as a British writer, and Lucia Moniz, as the Portuguese maid who works in his cottage in France. Let's face it: The scene where his manuscript blows into the lake and she jumps in after it isn't up to the standard of the rest of the movie.� (Roger Ebert) �Love Actually doesn't have a cynical frame in its celluloid. It's for all those romantics who think there aren't enough happy endings. Richard Curtis' movie dips so deep into the well of feel-good sentiment that it will threaten to send some audience members into sugar shock. There are times when all of this goodwill feels a tad forced and artificial (such as at the ending), but, on balance, Love Actually is appealing and genial with plenty of solid laughs, and worthy of a recommendation for those who appreciate this kind of thing. Just don't expect material that's edgy, dark, or challenging. Consider Love Actually the antidote to Mystic River.� (James Berardinelli, REELVIEWS) �Love is a many-splendored thing, but this film could have done with more of the splendor and not so much of the many... Stealing the show is the lean, leathery and twinkle-eyed Bill Nighy as a has-been rock star trying to make a comeback with a sappy Christmas song who shakes things up when he refuses to play the PR game and instead gives deliciously devilish off-the-cuff interviews that rocket him to infamy... While it's all appealing on the surface, none of the love connections are particularly inspiring... It's cutesy glibness more than love that's all around.� (Christine James, BOXOFFICE) �Love Actually is so derivative that it ultimately turns into a severe case of deja vu. You sit there (for over two hours) wondering what movie was she in? and where have I seen this story before? Eventually the answer to both of those questions ends up being some other movie with Hugh Grant in it. Not that I don't like Hugh. He's a great comic actor and probably the best part of Love Actually - though Rickman, McCutcheon, and the effervescent Bill Nighy as a faded rock star trying to make a comeback with a cheesy Christmas song all give him a run for his money. The problem is that Curtis has overstuffed this movie with so many storylines that no single star gets a moment to shine... There's a fair amount of dead weight here, and Curtis could have easily crafted a stronger package by excising the weaker plotlines.� (Christopher Null, FILMCRITIC.COM) �A roundly entertaining romantic comedy, Love Actually is still nearly as cloying as it is funny� Its cheeky wit, impossibly attractive cast and sure-handed professionalism are beguiling.� (Todd McCarthy, VARIETY) �You can see how much Notting Hill and the rest were truly written by Curtis in the way Love Actually cannibalizes themes and whole scenes from those successes with mixed results... The plot that involves an adorable schoolboy being coached by his recently widowed stepfather (Liam Neeson) in attracting the attention of the most unattainable girl in school is pure treacle. Even harder to swallow is a nastily anti-American sequence involving Grant's prime minister and Billy Bob Thornton as the U.S. president... The film exists in a glossy universe of hip wealthy metropolitan folk, most of whom own fabulous apartments in fashionable neighborhoods and all of whom wear beautiful, expensive-looking sweaters. (At times you wonder if the film wasn't sponsored by the Wool Council.) By far the best single performance in the film - and it is really, really terrific, utterly believable and moving - is by Emma Thompson. To the extent that there is genuine feeling in the movie that doesn't feel slickly manipulative, it's in the scenes involving her character. It's that plotline and another one involving a refreshingly cynical washed-up pop singer (the hilarious Bill Nighy) that save Love Actually from being too artificial and cloying to bear. But they also make you realize that Curtis is a filmmaker capable of genuinely affecting and powerful work - who chooses instead the easy grin, the pandering feel-good moment and the overcooked joke.� (Jonathan Foreman, NEW YORK POST) �Feels less like a brand-new movie than a greatest-hits compendium. It offers nothing new and instead makes do with presenting the warmed-over like something pulled fresh from the oven; it's comfort food for the holidays, easily digested and passed before the new year sets in and you resolve to swear off such rich and unhealthy edibles as this... Curtis leaves no variety of love untouched: There's newlywed love, puppy love, sibling love, unrequited love, adulterous love, paternal love, even the heretofore unexamined love between an aging rock star (gleefully played by Bill Nighy) and his overweight manager. All it lacks is Courtney Love... Curtis, a stickler for happy endings and middles and beginnings in which people who don't even like each other love each other, does nothing to damage his reputation as a maker of feel-grand films. Not even revelations of adultery spark arguments. In one scene, Firth's Jamie comes home early from a wedding to discover his brother (Dan Fredenburgh) is sleeping with his gir friend; next time we see Jamie, he's alone in a countryside cottage, being introduced to the cleaning woman, Aurelia (Lucia Moniz), with whom he will, veddy naturally, fall in love next. No shouting, no slapping - nothing, just more calm and cool in a film as serene as a lake on a windless day... Did I mention this will make a fortune? My mother alone will see it three times.� (Robert Wilonsky, DALLAS OBSERVER) �Rather sprawling in its portrayal of several love stories, the film strikes some appeal at times, and misses the mark at others - all the while somehow managing to present itself in a charming manner. With not much time to actually get to know the characters, excellent actors come to the call, and in fact, most do a find job there... The kid in the octopus costume earns the biggest laugh, Billy Nighy as the self-deprecating, washed-up rock artist is a close second. Otherwise, the film swings sometimes abruptly from light-hearted to broken-hearted serious - averaging itself out with lows and highs in both drama and humor.� (Ross Anthony, HOLLYWOOD REPORT CARD) �Reminds you of an elaborate Christmas card that tumbles apart with pop-up figures, silly/charming greetings and perhaps even a jingle. It probably cost more than the gift it heralds, and you can't help but laugh at the audacity of such an aggressively cheerful card.� (Kirk Honeycutt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER) �Alternately beguiling and bloated, witty and warmed over, smart and pandering. The majority is likely to swoon; the minority will squirm their way through it.� (David Ansen, NEWSWEEK) �An ensemble comedy on the theme of love in all its variations, this London-set film deals with numerous different interlinked relationships... All of them are overshadowed however by a hilarious turn by Bill Nighy as a faded rocker desperate to have a Christmas Number One. In many ways, his relationship with his manager (sensitively played by Gregor Fisher) is the glue the bonds the film together, and is both laugh-out-loud funny and eventually quite touching. The set-up, which consumes the first hour of the film, is neat, sharply-paced and more often than not very very funny. But then Curtis arrives at a problem: no sooner has he outlined each character's situation than he has to think about resolving it. Thus, the second part of the film (notably much less funnier) feels forced, and at times unconvincing... Nevertheless, there is plenty of festive cheer in what is essentially good-natured nonsense, and the film has a positive message much needed in these gloomy times. The box office will ring, the soundt ack will sell and the audience will get more than their value for money and leave with grins on their faces.� (TISCALI UK) �Depressingly upbeat... On one hand, I'd like to congratulate Curtis for making a movie featuring 10 significant story threads that isn't as jumpy and uneven as you might expect from a first-time director. One the other hand, I deplore him for taking this very smart cast and occasionally degrading them into humor and situations usually found in dreck like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Since I don't have any hands left, I guess I'll have to use a foot to apply a crushing blow to Curtis's swimsuit region for literally forcing the audience to applaud several times at the end of Actually. � (Jon Popick, PLANET SICK-BOY) �Undoubtedly there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours than in seeing this film and allowing its very funny dialogue, gentle, self-deprecating wit and exuberant joy to infiltrate your life. One or two of the stories are a little too sketchy or flippant and tying all the relationships together at the end of the movie is a little clumsy but forgivable as each relationship comes to some kind of crisis point and resolutions emerge. The relationships are not perfect, because the people are real, flawed.� (Avril Carruthers, MOVIEVAULT.COM) �Inevitably, some strands are almost forgotten and actors underused. A soft focus Short Cuts, the movie lacks the layered fluency of Robert Altman's work - or the hard edge. But while there's enough treacle to turn a bee diabetic, it is not without raw emotional moments - with Thompson outstanding in a tear-duct tingling scene. You can almost see Curtis pressing the emotional buttons, but he does it so well you won't care. Warm, bittersweet and hilarious, this is lovely, actually. Prepare to be smitten.� (Nev Pierce, BBCi) ANTI �One movie, ten love stories - only half of them funny, actually... As a director (it's his debut), Curtis can't seem to rein in his writer. Did we need Liam Neeson as a widower teaching his ten-year-old stepson about shagging? It's tough to see talented Laura Linney and Keira Knightley wasted in nothing roles. It's even tougher to endure the language-barrier humor between Colin Firth as a writer in love with his Portuguese housekeeper. And why the ungallant fat insults? As for the girl-boy porn actors too shy to ask for a date, that's one joke pounded into hash. And the subplot about the geeky British kid (Kris Marshall) who has to go to Wisconsin to find babes is not only subpar, it wouldn't work in any movie. It helps that the great Bill Nighy nails every comic line as an aging rocker who claims Britney Spears was a lousy lay. Nighy's rocker refers to the old song he's recycled into a Christmas chart-topper as 'solid-gold shit.' If only Curtis' ear had stayed that acute. He ladles sugar over the eager-to please Love Actually to make it go down easy, forgetting that sometimes it just makes you gag.� (Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE) �It's so lovey-dovey, anything but permissive coos may seem cruel. The word itself is pounded with Pentecostal insistence: love, love, love, lovelovelovelovelove. An old-school romantic with a soft skull and a heart as big as a cement mixer, Curtis here extends the niche he eked out with Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones's Diary: love British style, handicapped slightly by corny circumstance and populated by colorful neurotics, one of whom is always Hugh Grant... Bill Nighy salts up the Christmas-eve-countdown scenarios as a spent, self-loathing rock star making a comeback with a seasonal revamp of his old hit, and his blisteringly honest media blitz stands as the film's only, badly needed chord of cynicism. Cretinous love songs from yesteryear clot the soundtrack like factory-dumped phosphates. When he isn't overreaching for absurdity, Curtis can write bouncy patter, but each character gets about 60 seconds before the movie jumps deck to the next love-seeker and the next moony pr tfall.� (Michael Atkinson, VILLAGE VOICE) �The result is like watching a dozen or so ultra-cute mini-movies simultaneously. Unfortunately, almost all of them are bad: the word �actually� in the title is especially perverse, since there�s not a moment in the entire thing that�s remotely genuine. In the short (but not short enough) span allotted to each little tale, there�s clearly no opportunity for characterization or subtlety. So Curtis draws the various couples in the broadest strokes and is content to go for the easiest laughs and smarmiest sentiment at every turn. Those who found the sweeter-than-pie anecdotes that marked Love American Style the most darling things in the world will embrace this movie. Others will feel their hearts sinking twenty minutes in as the shallowness of the piece grows all too apparent. It�s a chore merely to calculate the number of story threads being juggled here... Only the Nighy episodes have any real spark.. The worst of the lot, excepting the moronic John-and-Judy stuff, which is quite beneath contempt, is probab y the longest - the prime minister thread - not only because it�s the most inane (here�s a world leader who seems to have nothing better to do than pine away over a secretary) but because it features the most unpleasant twist - a visit from a U.S. president (a snotty Billy Bob Thornton) who appears intended to represent both the lip-smacking lechery of a Bill Clinton and the shark-like arrogance of a George Bush. It�s by facing down the president on some matter too trivial to be revealed to the audience and staking out his independence from American control that the PM becomes a national hero. Sure. Most of the other episodes, by contrast, are just cloying and empty.� (Frank Swietek, ONE GUY�S OPINION) �An indigestible Christmas pudding from the British whimsy factory responsible for such reasonably palatable confections as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary. A romantic comedy swollen to the length of an Oscar-trawling epic � nearly two and a quarter hours of cheekiness, diffidence and high-tone smirking � it is more like a record label's greatest-hits compilation or a �very special� sitcom clip-reel show than an actual movie... In his opening voice-over, Mr. Grant establishes a new standard for bad taste masquerading as its opposite when he introduces this fluffy farrago, written and directed by Richard Curtis, with a reference to the World Trade Center attacks... The problem is that the movie, more than any of the characters in it, is a mess of crossed signals, swerving between cynicism and sincerity without quite knowing the difference between them. It is most grotesque when it tries for earnest drama, parading the grief of a widower (Liam Neeson) and the humiliation of a middle-aged wife (Emma Thompson) before us when it thinks our throats need lumping. It is disturbing to see Ms. Thompson's range and subtlety so shamelessly trashed, and to see Laura Linney's intelligence similarly abused as a lonely, frustrated do-gooder. The fate of their characters suggests that women who are not young, pert secretaries or household workers have no real hope of sexual fulfillment and can find only a compromised, damaged form of love. Perhaps Mr. Curtis wishes to offer this as an insight into contemporary social arrangements; if so, his indifference to the cruelty of those arrangements is truly breathtaking. But it is unlikely that any particular insight was intended. Instead, Love Actually is a patchwork of contrived naughtiness and forced pathos, ending as it began, with hugging and kissing at the airport (where returning passengers are perhaps expressing their relief at being delivered from an in-flight movie like this one). The loose ends are neatly tied up, as they are when you sea a bag of garbage � or if you prefer, rubbish.� (A.O.Scott, NEW YORK TIMES) �Feel-good schmaltz creeps into every nook and cranny... The film, despite its impressive all-star cast, is beset by rampant sentimentality and contrived plotting, and doomed by a cloying, pretentious didacticism... Love Actually may want to show us the wondrous, unexpected ways love can blossom, but given Curtis�s ham-fisted orchestration, all we get is an obnoxiously predictable and disingenuous romance gift-wrapped for the holidays.� (Nicholas Schager, SLANT MAGAZINE) �This is little more than a not-so-cheap rip-off of Love, American Style (1969-74), an American sitcom consisting of short vignettes involving love. The difference is that Love, American Style was funny, interesting, often well-written and intelligent, and generally involved established relationships. Love, Actually (written, produced, and directed by Richard Curtis) is long, boring, poorly written and involves people who have just met (or haven�t met yet). Worse, it�s guilty of false advertising. If you saw the trailer, which I did many times, it looks like a Hugh Grant picture, starring Hugh Grant. Alas, Grant could have shot his scenes in a day or two. He�s in it, all right, but not much. The picture loses credibility right off the bat because it starts out with Grant entering No. 10 Downing Street after just being elected Prime Minister. Never will you see a less convincing Prime Minister than Hugh Grant. Actually, and you should pardon the use of the word, this film should more accurately have been ent tled, Infatuation, Actually, because love is never to be seen. These people have such an ephemeral relationship to the people whom they are represented as �loving� that the word loses its meaning. These are people in heat, not love. In Love, American Style, at least the people were in established relationships. �Love� implies a certain morality and fidelity. In one segment shortly after a woman marries a man she is approached by her new husband�s best friend, and she responds favorably. What kind of morality is that?... Liam Nielson is probably the dumbest father in the world, encouraging his son (one of the weirdest looking kids I�ve ever seen) to pursue a girl with whom he�s never spoken and to break airport security, something for which he could be shot as he�s running away from the security guards. But the people who made this film thought this would be funny. I thought it was irresponsible. Worse, the girl with whom he�s infatuated is a 10 year-old singer who is shown dressed in a slinky, sexy dress si ging a Christmas song in a sexy style. I don�t think a 10 year old should be displayed as a sex symbol. There�s more. In another segment two people who are stand-ins for porn stars in a porn movie are constantly simulating sex, totally naked, and strike up a romance. Funny? Maybe. Not to me. I saw this in a packed theater and some people actually clapped, so there are people who will find this entertaining. Maybe you�re one of them. I wasn�t. For me the two hour eight minute running time seemed almost interminable. This is a superficial film of low intellect with an equally low moral tone. � (Tony Medley, www.hanthonymedley.com) �If straight male porn offers guys the graphic fantasy spectacle of women engaging wantonly in emotionally unattached sex, a movie like this one - in which men cry, say they're sorry, cook, listen closely, remember to phone, propose in public spaces, turn down sexually available younger women and love hanging out with children - offers a kind of opposite-sex mirror image: men so sensitive they're like the porn stars of romance... In hardcore, women drop their moral guard and put out. In Love Actually, men drop their reserve and cry. If the movie wasn't such a baldly commercial, slickly calculated exercise in romantic wish-fulfillment - there are no eye-moistening stops left unpulled here, from last-minute airport reunions to men showing up on doorsteps on Christmas Eve to profess their love - there could be something interesting in it: A kind of Stepford Husbands scenario, in which all men represent idealized female fantasy. But this is a movie that aims purely to please, not to parody, so every element of ts engineering is devoted to the stimulation of maximum warm and fuzzies. Understandably, most men will try to avoid Love Actually with the white-eyed clawing panic of a dog being dragged into a bathtub. While this is perfectly reasonable under the circumstances, it may be unwise. At the very least, the movie offers a vivid rendering of someone's idea of what women want. Watch closely and learn. My advice is to start with the English accent: It may be easier than the sensitivity.� (Geoff Pevere, TORONTO STAR) �How instructive that Curtis takes a break from his love-is-everywhere theme to remind us of the anti-Americanism of every right-thinking Briton... Curtis is a clever writer. When the magic works (as it did in The Tall Guy and Four Weddings), his cleverness shows itself in real warmth and romantic insight. When it doesn�t (Notting Hill), he comes off as a shallow puppeteer manipulating characters to push an audience�s buttons. In Love Actually, he spends more time manipulating than he does showing insight - well, maybe not more time exactly, but it�s more annoying when he does, and the insight isn�t enough to make up for it. Characters and scenes are contrived and convenient. The love-struck preteen is articulate and self-possessed as only movie kids ever are. The smitten best man shows up to confess his love to the surprised bride in an elaborate charade that will work only if the groom doesn�t answer the door - and Curtis sees to it that he doesn�t.� (Jim Lane, MOVIEREVIEW.COM) �This movie has the most annoyingly cloying soundtrack since Love Story... As a first-time director, he lacks discipline, both in organizing his material and knowing when to throw things out. The movie is a half-hour too long, and there are entire relationships that don't work. The worst of them is the bizarrely cheerful and often inappropriate relationship between Neeson's widower and his pubescent stepson, to whom he reveals that if Claudia Schiffer were to enter their lives, he'd have sex with her in every room of the house, including the kid's. Sure enough, Schiffer shows up for a cameo and Neeson and the boy share a knowing glance. It's creepy, and I don't know what it has to do with love, actually.� (Jack Mathews, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS) �Even the kids got into the love act in this film. A devoted and loving father, Daniel (Liam Neeson) lost his wife and left him with a young son, Sam (Thomas Sangster) about 10 years old who was in love with a beautiful and talented 10 year old singer in his school. Of course, these two 10 year old kids acted as though they were worldly and capable of being 30-year olds, well beyond their years, portraying persona unfair to the typical 10 year old who desperately wants to be older. What else is to be expected when dad teaches the 10 year old son all about love ... all about sex using street-level vulgar expletives and innuendo to do it What else is to be expected of a 10 year old when he is taught that immoral intercourse is the ultimate goal of a premarital love relationship? There are other love stories but to tell you of them all would completely spoil the movie if you decide the filth and vulgarity are acceptable. And what a waste! A waste I tell you! Every single use of the three/four letter word vocab lary (all 15 of them), every use of the most foul of the foul words (all ten of them) [Col. 3:8; Prov. 22:11], every pornographic image of intercourse and oral sex with full and explicit detailed nudity AND positioning AND motions was absolutely unnecessary! Not one single sexual innuendo, comment, story or invitation or gesture was needed. Not one! [Gal. 5:19; 1Ths. 4:2-5; Rev. 21:8] This would have been a fully delightful, warm and witty romantic comedy without them. But n-o-o-o! It had to be ruined with tons of sexual immorality and filthy language. Even one secular reviewer said Love Actually should be acceptable for teenagers. [Luke 17:2} Wow! That is pushing immoral programming on to those least capable of managing the fires created by it. Now do you understand why I still analyze R-rated movies?� (Childcare Action Project: Christian Analysis of American Culture) �Unnecessary extended sexual scenes detract from the film's overall drollness... A shy young couple meets. They are naked stand-ins for the stars of an erotic movie. The not-too-subtle gag is that though the duo pretends to perform a variety of sexual acts for the camera both are sweet, almost naive characters who end their first real date with an innocent grade-school peck, and are thrilled by it. Nevertheless, the viewer is taken aback as the filmmaker includes borderline lewd visuals within an otherwise engaging story... With the exception of Laura Linney, the Americans portrayed in the film come off rather shabbily. The American president (played with veiled dignity by Billy Bob Thornton) is a sleazy womanizer and American females are uniformly ditzy and promiscuous... The film is seriously marred by the inclusion of the unwarranted, brazen sexual visuals. � (US CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS) �Nighy is barnstormingly brilliant... Everything else is rubbish. Well, not all of it, and not total rubbish, but none of the little plots is all that funny or humanly convincing and none has room to breathe or develop... This kind of comedy has just hit the wall.� (Peter Bradshaw, GUARDIAN) �An embarrassment, an overdrawn rom-com gone very, very wrong. Alternately sentimental and silly.� (Tom Charity, TIME OUT)

Wauw, Shoshana. Talk about reviews :-) Thank you! It turnes out, that a Danish site has some of the LA interviews online and the small clip showed to review the movie. I'm sure you'll find your way around the site without any knowledge of the Danish language :-) http://www.dr.dk/kultur/indexfilm.asp?articleID=24697&articleTypeID=4&SubjectID=125&site=film&action=artikel

(Karen) LOL!! (BTW, garden gnomes are often the best parts of movies IMO) (Bee) I agree! Loved the gnome in The Full Monty;-) And then there is the traveling gnome of Amelie! There should be more gnomes in films! ;-) (Telegraph re: Keira Knightley)..."her mouth permanently ajar like a snooker pocket, she displays zero personality." (Evelyn) Couldn't have put it better, ROTF. I didn't even notice in Bend it Like Beckham, but now that everyone talks about it, it is all I notice! It's as if she has too many teeth and cannot close her mouth properly! Still think she is very pretty, but even with her mouth closed, it looks as if she's 'bursting at the seems'. Needs to have a few molars removed maybe! (The Sun) From anyone else, Love Actually would have you reaching for the sickbag but, as he well knows, Curtis can pull it off like no one else. Wow! Didn't ODB say nearly the same thing? If he ever tires of acting, maybe he can get a gig at The Sun! (The Sun) Love Actually � A Richard Curtis film. It does what it says on the tin. LOL...I agree! It can't all be Shakespeare. It's a rom-com...can't get too 'highfalutin' about it (but I still think they could have tossed the Condom Boy and Stand-Ins)! ;-) Thanks Mari, Shoshana, Maria!!

LOL...I agree! It can't all be Shakespeare. It's a rom-com...can't get too 'highfalutin' about it (but I still think they could have tossed the Condom Boy and Stand-Ins)! ;-) Agree, agree! Even with the lack of continuity, continuous boobiage, fat jokery and feminine servitudelegde aside, I was amused and can't wait to scene select the hell out of Jamie! Thanks Mari, Shoshana, Maria, Tress (for smile)!!

Thanks Shoshana for all the review excerpts; it'll help if I ever attack my review page. ;-) (Tress) And then there is the traveling gnome of Amelie! There should be more gnomes in films! ;-) Amelie's was certainly a star! Then there was one in BJD, but it didn't have nearly as integral a role. ;-) I've put up pics from the Survival screening courtesy of Kelli and Emma. It starts here: http://www.firth.com/p_eye012.html Enjoy!

A rapturous review of GWAPE, with an especially Firth-fanatic take on Colin. Not a "major" critic, but this woman has awfully good taste: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-10002174/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=1&rid=1221063 Uppercrusty man torte Colin Firth lurks and smolders as the torn artist. Here's a girl he can be real with; chat about paints and lights. But, to frolic about the house with her can have dire results. Men. Firth never lets you see Vermeer's true motives and the film's mysterious side shines for it. I'd like to play painter with this tall elegant slice of manly yum... paint by the numbers....slow and artistic-like...purr.

Great Karen!!The original Wild One!

That one was snapped outside the theater. ;-)

(Karen) Amelie's was certainly a star! Then there was one in BJD, but it didn't have nearly as integral a role. ;-) Oh! How could I forget about the gnome in the "tart and vicar sneaking a fag" scene! Excellent work! Think it is the same gnome? Does he have a SAG card? ;-) Okay...I do know I spelled "seems" incorrectly...did spell "highfalutin" properly! Crikey! ;-) Thanks for the pics Kelli and Emma! He looks amazing...should be some sort of law against those long legs in denim (or at least a 'crier' to shout out that 'he' is coming...give us some warning)! And Karen....LOL! ODB secretly auditioning for Batman?? That posh accent saying "I'm Batman" makes me giggle! But the idea of latex six-pack abs is appealing...and his utility belt (a boy with accessories!) ;-)

(CT)Because of its unfashionable charm, humanity and generosity of spirit , a small but vociferous minority will condemn it out of hand. Most people, however, are going to love it, and - like me- will want to watch it over and over again. If I had a sixth star to award, this movie would get it. And I wouldn't mind a side bet on this film becoming the highest-grossing British picture of all time. This guy is really gushing! Six Stars, LOL, not bad. Thank you for all the reviews and picures, ladies. Maria, Karen, Annette, Shoshanna and all. "Solid gold shit" Love it!