In a Tony Place

I've been eagerly awaiting the opening of the Baker Street branch of Canteen for several months now, having enjoyed the "all-day casual eating" delights of the other two branches, although any cool restaurant that is about a 90-second walk from my flat is bound to get many thumbs up. It was quite quiet in there this morning but Baker Street is generally quiet on Sunday mornings and, besides, the place only opened on Tuesday. 

The service was excellent, though, as were the cappuccinos (sourced from my favourite Monmouth Coffee Company), although my carrot and ginger juice had a little too much va va voom for my liking so early on a Sunday morning. Mum loved her bubble and squeak and Dad enjoyed his bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs. I had the best bacon sandwich I've had in a long time (since the first one I had after ten years of vegetarianism, anyway). I asked for the bacon to be very crispy and it was but also very tasty and the (sourdough?) bread was pretty good too. 

All in all, I was very impressed and will definitely be returning often, especially as they do sausage and mash, a daily roast, afternoon cakes, great, creative cocktails and "bar snacks" that include a fish finger sarnie — OK, yes, said sandwich costs £5.75 and I could make my own for a fraction of the price  but that's not the point.

We walked off breakfast around Regent's Park (bumping into quartier resident neighbour, Thomas More Jeremy Northam, on the way) before heading to Selfridge's where there wasn't the slightest sign of any form of credit crunch.

Having dumped the shopping at the flat, I went to meet Dr Max at the BFI. We had a drink in the very funky film cafe/bar before crowding into the very small screen three with a load of film buffs to see In a Lonely Place. It wasn't really Dr Max's kind of film but he didn't have any better plans so agreed to accompany me. We picked up a copy of the programme notes in the hope that we might be able to keep up with the film geeks during the movie but the top warned that there were spoilers therein so we decided we'd better not. 

I was expecting something a little more noir and was pleasantly surprised that there were so many great and funny lines (in response to the question, "Why didn't you call for a cab? Isn't that what a gentleman usually does under the circumstances?", Dix Steele, Humphrey Bogart's protagonist (antagonist?) coolly drawls, "I didn't say I was a gentleman. I said I was tired."). 

Besides, I always like films that are about the movies (oh, Cinema Paradiso — how pleasantly you made periods seven and eight on a Thursday afternoon go in the upper sixth) and Bogart is effusive, jaded, funny and scary in equal measures, although there is never really any attempt to get to grips with or to explain the lonely place that his character occupies (it isn't, I suppose, really the point).

The BFI is great. However, it is an exercise in choice and comprehending that you will never watch all of the movies you want to see — each month, the programme seems to contain far more films than I can afford to see (in terms of money and time) and yet so many that I would want to see. Besides, members' tickets are only £7.60, which is only just over half the price of the horrible West End cinemas — no classy bars or mediatheques in Leicester Square, that's for sure. The whole too much choice thing probably applies to all of London — it's so nice to always have plenty of possible things to do, of a weekend, after so many years of exile in Nowheresville. Not that I'm complaining, of course.

Easy Virtue Is Sufficient Temptation

I only went to see Easy Virtue because none of the films on my to-watch list are out in the cinema yet and because the heavens opened with great vehemence this afternoon when I was in the vicinity of Leicester Square. I baulked at paying £12 for a cinema ticket (£12? After paying a fiver (members' price at the Arts cinema in Nowheresville), forking over £12 made even my loose purse strings tremble) given the mixed reviews I had read but actually, I rather liked it.

Based on the Noel Coward play of the same name, Easy Virtue tells the tale of a glitzy, American "floozy," Larita, who meets the son and heir of a posh, English family on the Rivieira in the '20s, marries him and then finds out she got more than she bargained for when she and new husband John return to the family digs in wintry Angleterre. Except, his family also get more than they bargained for in Larita, who isn't exactly the woman they imagined John marrying (not least because she drives fast cars and is allergic to flowers).

Jessica Biel, whom I always confuse with Jessica "Sin City" Alba, is actually very good as Larita (much better than Scarlett Johansson in Match Point, who also plays the glamorous American marrying into an aristocratic English family; that's probably not much of a compliment, though), although the butler, played by the guy from My Family (Kris Marshall), stole more scenes. 

Kristin Scott Thomas, meanwhile, plays Veronica, the glacial mother-in-law who engages in an ever-escalating battle of the wits with the new daughter-in-law, who is doing her best to interfere with Veronica's efforts to keep the family afloat. John himself and his two dippy sisters are all a bit drippy, although John's BFF (who lives on the estate next door and whom John was supposed to marry) is slightly spunkier.

Given that John is played by Prince Caspian and his dad by Colin Firth, I wasn't really expecting this film to score very highly on the talent-o-meter — unlike pretty much all of my school chums and other female friends, I never really got off on Mr Darcy and certainly not on Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones (or his characters in Fever Pitch, Shakespeare in Love, Hope Springs or Love Actually), and yet somehow, Firth was very attractive in Easy Virtue. While John and his sisters are being drippy and failing to defend Larita against their mother, Mr Whitaker Senior is the only member of the family to stick up for her. 

He sees the free spirit in her and empathises greatly — he too spent several years after fighting in the Great War, hanging out in France, until the angry wife stormed over and dragged him back from the brothel to the family estate in England but it was very much à contre-cœur and since then, he seemed to stop caring about the social engagements, the running of the estate and his wife's petty ambitions. He plays along and fixes up a seriously buggered motorbike in his spare time  — a motorbike, which Larita mounts when honouring her promise to her mother-in-law that she will "ride in the hunt." 

The tango danced by Larita and her father-in-law was definitely too smoking for a PG-rated film and only makes it obvious what a mistake her marriage to the sweet and well-meaning — if immature and utterly naive — John was.

This new-found interest in Mr Firth does not mean that I will be queueing up to see Dorian Gray, of course (in which Prince Caspian also stars)--I try to steer well clear of film adaptations of Oscar Wilde plays after An Ideal Husband (I was too young at the time for Jeremy Northam to make up for it). However, I could be persuaded to check out The Meat Trade if it is ever released.

As for Easy Virtue, it certainly generated easy laughter among the (overwhelmingly female) audience and as expected, the wit was suitably piquant. Some of the reviews I read argued that despite Biel's tour de force, the drama never really got going properly until the dying minutes, which meant it felt like it wasn't paced correctly; I would be inclined to agree had I not been too distracted by the tango. Not bad. Not bad at all...

Google's Sarcastic Weather Report

"Chance of storm," sez Google of the San Francisco forecast this afternoon. Yeah, there's a chance that I got thoroughly soaked today, although to be fair, it probably was the worst day of the whole trip to try to obtain the latest in my series of photos of myself leaping in front of famous monuments. Today, however, was the day when I had the offer of photographic assistance and so after lunch downtown, we drove out to the Golden Gate Bridge.