We love NetFlix!! And the Internet Movie Database!

Barbara has a neat way of picking good movies, most of which we had never heard of before. She zings in on an actor we particularly like or think is especially interesting, for whatever reason. Then she looks him or her up on IMDb to see what other movies they've been in. Then, she looks the movies up on NetFlix. That's how we ran into Quigley Down Under and a particular filming of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, looking for movies with British actor Alan Rickman (most recently, probably best known as Prof. Snape in the Harry Potter movies).

Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent was another. We'd seen him as Hap Shaughnessy, the tall-tale telling blowhard on "The Red Green Show" and heard that, as ridiculous as the character was, in real life, Pinsent was an excellent serious actor. Which, indeed, he is. We saw him in The Shipping News, Saint Ralph, and Away from Her, all excellent movies, and Pinsent is, indeed, a fine actor.

Lately we've been sampling the work of another British actor, the late Roger Livesey. We had first noticed him as the elderly Duke of St. Bungay in the TV series, The Pallisers (secretly, I'm madly in love with Susan Hampshire), and there was something about that sort of "hoarse-ish" voice of his. We checked out the 1945 movie, I Know Where I'm Going, with he and Wendy Hiller. Then the Errol Flynn swashbuckler, The Master of Ballantrae (okay, but very Errol Flynn-ish), and quite recently, Futtock's End, with Ronnie Barker. Grunts and mumbles, no actual dialogue. Bloody hilarious! At the age of eighty, Livesey insisted on doing his own stunts!

We've just watched Livesey in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). I had heard of Colonel Blimp as a satirical British cartoon character, and this movie picks up on it, although the character played by Livesey is much more fully rounded and sympathetic than the cartoon character. This carries the character, British army officer Clive "Sugar" Candy up through the ranks as he partakes of three wars (the Boer War, WWI, and WWII—over time, they age him with make-up, mainly a walrus mustache, a "bald cap," and a prosthetic belly). Deborah Kerr co-stars, playing three different (?) women in his life.

I can recommend all of the above-mentioned movies (unless you're not a fan of Errol Flynn as he swashes from the neck up and buckles from the knees down), particularly The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

A most unusual and enjoyable movie.

Don Firth