North by Northwest... to Akebonoyama Park

I had a bit of a Cary Grant moment the other day. It was quite sunny and we decided to head off on a picnic to far distant Akebonoyama Park (at least 20 minutes and two buses away). We'd never been there before so were a bit perturbed when the bus driver got to the end of his route and ordered everyone off at a makeshift bus stop on a long straight road by a field and, er, more fields. It was the closest I've come in this urban country to a prairie, and I found myself looking over my shoulder for evil crop-duster pilots. But we found the park and the kids managed to clamber over everything, in cliff hanger after cliff hanger. There was no Mount Rushmore in sight, alas.

The Third Man

I can't remember the last film I saw at the cinema. It may well have been Lost in Translation or The Last Samurai or possibly Madagascar (that's a kids' movie, not a poor man's Casablanca), so you can see I'm a little out of touch (and out of date) with my movies, but I finally got round to watching a DVD I picked up for a song from Arai-san's defunct bookshop. It was The Third Man, which you probably already know, is a cracking movie. Set in post-war Vienna, it's really of its time - 1949 - but in all the right ways:

• It's got the most evocative soundtrack I can think of
• There isn't a single throwaway camera angle in the whole film
• There are touches of brilliant understated British wit
• It's dark and menacing - just like the femme fatale
• The violence is all off-camera

I enjoyed watching the hero bumble his way through a strange land where he doesn't speak the language but somehow gets to the bottom of it all - with the help of an inscrutable raven-haired beauty. There's hope for me yet.