15 April

What did we do yesterday? I suppose we blathered. About what? Oh, this and that. Nothing in particular. Ah yes, now I remember. Yesterday we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on for half a century.

(First radical producer to do a Cornovirus Lock Down version of Waiting for Godot gets slapped with a wet fish.)

We watched Godfather III, as threatened. It was not as good as Godfather I and Godfather II, but does not deserve its reputation as the Phantom Menace of extremely long films about Italian Americans garrotting each other. The final sequence of everyone being murdered at the opera goes on for about three times as long as it needs to; and I don't think I buy the idea of the hitmen dressing as priests to murder the untouchable gang boss during the festival. The film is so long and there are so many characters that I tend to get lost as to who is killing who in the final bloodbath. I like the way that the purely romantic Mafioso of the Godfather have caught up with actual history in the Godfather Part III: I remember the real life news stories about God's Banker hanging himself (or not) off Blackfriars bridge. I think that the premise of the film is probably flawed: having spent seven hours and two movies establishing that Michael is a callous monster, it doesn't quite work for the final part of the trilogy to try to humanise him. Similarly, after Kay has walked out on him so decisively in part two, it is an anticlimax for them to try and get back together, up to a point, in part three. However, the central character arc, of Vincent growing from being an out of control psychopath to the next cold blooded Don is very well done. I really ought to put the novels on my list of very long books that I am going to get around to someday.

Apparently, there is going to be an infinitely long Netflix series based on Dune.