(no subject)

Last night I was watching a Stanley Kubrick film from 1957 called Paths of Glory. It's set in 1916 during the First World War, and it's about a regiment in the French army who are ordered to make an impossible attack against the enemy. When they are forced to retreat, the generals accuse the entire regiment of cowardice and, in order to make an example of them, order three men to be selected at random to be tried for cowardice, which is punishable by death. The regiment's cmmander, Colonel Dax (played by Kirk Douglas) has to defend them. It is a brilliant film, and one of the best war movies ever made. It was banned in France for about 18 years because of it's negative portrayal of the French military. Although it turned out to be very good for Kubrick himself, because the actress Susanne Christian, who plays the captured German woman who sings for the French soldiers, later became his wife. They remained married until Stanley Kubrick's death in 1999.

Today was the first full day of the "Realising Our Future" training course from work. It wasn't bad actually, it was held at a hotel, and we had free coffee and biscuits and a free buffet lunch (I had little baked potato pieces in pasta sauce, pasta with olives, some slices of chicken and salami and rice, with a chocolate desert with strawberry, raspeberry and cream for dessert). The subject of this first day was 'Emotional Intelligence', which was really about communicating and relating to people. I thought it was quite interesting actually.

I was out before four in the afternoon and on the way home, I picked up a copy of The Times, today's free poster is for Casablanca, which is a film that I love.

In about half an hour or so, I'll be leaving for the first class in the "From Text to Performance" evening class, and of course tomorrow it's Michele.