Kensuke's Kingdom is pitch-perfect film-making

Initially premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2023, before being seen at last October’s BFI London Film Festival, this film based on Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book – originally published in 1999 – has now made its way to a more general release.

It tells the story of Michael, an 11-year-old boy, who sets off with his parents and older sister on a sailing trip around the world, after Mum and Dad both lose their jobs.

But Michael is less than happy – not least as his beloved sheepdog, Stella, has had to stay at home, or so we are initially led to believe.

One night, as a storm rages, Michael and Stella are washed overboard, only to wake on an apparently uninhabited desert island.

However, they find help – albeit reluctantly – from Kensuke, an elderly Japanese man who was washed up on the island decades before. Gradually their relationship evolves, as Michael learns to respect and value the environment he finds himself in, together with its wildlife, which Kensuke helps to protect. And as we discover, there are varied reasons it needs protection.

It's an excellent screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who has changed aspects of the original novel, but which certainly make sense here. For instance, in the book, the two central protagonists learn to speak each other’s language. Here, they learn only each other’s name, with communication being based more on emotion and expression.

There is also a love of art that they share and helped them learn about each other.

And their art allows the animators to be incredibly creative, from Michael’s log-book drawings coming to life on an origami boat that moves around a map of the world, to an extraordinary sequence of Japanese-inspired ink works that give the audience an insight into Kensuke’s own past.

The animation is superb – hand-drawn and combining 2D and 3D styles, which hark back to early Disney: think the 1937 Snow White and Bambi, both with lush painted backgrounds and 2D characters. As touched on above, here, there is a melding of different approaches throughout and including some simply beautiful vistas.

Directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry and with a super score by Stuart Hancock, it comes in at a very pleasingly trim 85 minutes.

In terms of the voice cast, Sally Hawkins is Mum, Cillian Murphy is Dad, and Raffey Cassidy is Becky, Michael’s sister.

But the film rests firmly with Michael and Kensuke, and Aaron MacGregor and Ken Watanabe get it absolutely nailed on.

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a beautiful film – both to look at and in terms of its humanity, compassion, exploration of what family/community means, and its advocacy for the natural world.

Very, very much worth seeing.

American Fiction: A funny satire on literary ghettos and dysfunctional families

Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison is a black Los Angeles-based professor and writer of acclaimed literary novels that sell poorly. Uptight and abrasive, his college decides he needs to take some enforced leave and spend time at a literary festival and with his family in Boston.

After presenting a poorly-attended seminar at the festival, Monk is horrified to find a packed event for a talk with fellow black author, Sintara Golden, whose bestselling novel, We's Lives in Da Ghetto, is full of tropes about the lives of black people – what he later describes to her as “black trauma porn”.

Sitting down to pen a satire on this kind of novel, My Pafology, Monk sends it to a publisher in contempt – and is stunned to be offered a huge advance. But with his elderly mother failing with Alzheimer’s, he has to take responsibility for finding a care home for her and, although the family is apparently well-off, that cash will be very welcome.

But when the book becomes a best seller – published under an alias, by a supposed fugitive on the run – and Monk gets a film deal, he has some heavy ethical decisions to make.

It’s a funny film, which has a benefit of not being hectoring in tone and also not being simplified in terms of themes. 

When Monk challenges Sintara over her own book, she has no time for his moralising, effectively shrugging and saying it’s “what the market wants”.

There are also attitudes within Monk’s own family life that send a message that they’re not without intolerances or problems or a lack of understanding. Having been raised in a middle-class, well-off home that produced three professional siblings, he seems to have little or no comprehension of the reality of some black lives for those much lower down the economic and social ladder.

His mother is homophobic and his late father would have probably disowned Monk’s brother, who has come out as gay after being in a straight marriage for some years. Indeed, all three siblings are recently divorced (a slightly odd note to presumably excuse why their professional incomes won’t cover mum’s care costs).

And then there is the central question of how Monk deals with his success coming as his ‘joke’ backfires and makes him into what he despises.

Director Cord Jefferson also adapted the screenplay from Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure, the latter earning him this year’s adapted screenplay Academy Award.

Making it as a comedy about a literary ghetto – and combining it with a story of a dysfunctional family – avoids it seeming too ‘preachy’.

Laura Karpman’s jazz-filled score deservedly won her a first Oscar nomination.

But it’s the performances that really make this film. Jeffrey Wright as Monk is superb in a roles that needs him to be many things – brusque to the point of rudeness, highly intelligent (except in emotional terms), yet also vulnerable in many ways.

Sterling K Brown as Cliff, Monk’s brother, Leslie Uggams as his mother, Erika Alexander as his girlfriend and Adam Brody as the film director and provide excellent support.

Worth watching and currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Lockdown's creative surge continues

The lockdown brings with it plenty of difficulties, but there can also be opportunities – not least to think about things. 

I’ve already explained briefly here that for me, it has produced an entirely unexpected creative burst, as I have found myself writing poetry for the first time in decades.

In the last couple of days, remembering old family photographs uncovered when clearing my parents’ home two years ago this summer, I found that a couple of the pictures made me want to talk about them.

Or to put another way, I felt that I wanted to write about some of them, to build a picture in a different way. The photographs themselves will be included, because this is – hopefully – one thing complimenting another.

Before

Snow-dumped fells blur

Into snow-filled skies;

Drifts arc up from the road

Like a pitted bobsleigh track.

She stands in the middle distance,

To the bottom left.

Perspective,

deceptive,

has a black hedge tower over her,

Drawing the eye

and accidentally lending the shot

                        good composition.

The slide was colour but

Winter and time have leached that.

Blow it up and there is no trace

of a smile

in the smudge of a face.

Booted, with feet turned out

(Later, she’d say not to stand that way).

Stockings beneath a dress or skirt,

She relies for warmth on a big coat,

collar up

And hands hidden in gloves or overlong sleeves.  

Her hair is tucked away, queen-like, beneath a scarf.

Further off, two men in caps

            clear the road.

It was December ’62 and

The snow that had snowed

            would be followed by plenty more;

And, just a few days later,

            By me.

23 May 2020

The wonderful ... WONDERFUL Wizard of Oz

We didn’t go to the cinema a lot when I was child, but memory suggests that the most regular period for family film-going was from around about 1968-1971 when we lived in west London and would pop over the river to a cinema in Putney. It was during that period I saw Disney’s Snow White on re-release – and was terrified.

This was still the era of two-film programmes: Snow White was my first cinema trip and it was paired, if I remember correctly, with MGM’s Tom Thumb (Russ Tamblyn, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers et al).

It seems fairly safe to think that I saw The Wizard of Oz at around this time – 1969 would have marked the 30^th anniversary of the film’s release and explain why it was back in cinemas.

Wizard of oz t captured my imagination then and has never stopped being an important part of my cultural life since – which includes being in two stage productions (as the Mayor of Munchkinland in a girls’ school production and later, as the Wicked Witch of the West, before you ask).

Last weekend, The Other Half and I went to our usual cinema to watch a single screening for the 80^th anniversary.

I know the film so well that I can mouth along with the songs and a load of the lines, but seeing it on the big screen for the first time in ... gulps ... 50 years was a fascinating experience.

Being in a cinema makes you pay closer attention than if you’re watching at home, with all the distractions. Never before, then, had I really appreciated Harold Rosson’s cinematography – particularly in the opening sepia section of the film.

As times change and history moves on, you can view cultural works through a changing prism.

Today, Frank Morgan’s blustering conman wizard seems like a harbinger of politicians and political leaders for whom bluster and empty rhetoric is all they have.

Terry the cairn terrier – cast first and paid best of all her co-players – really is more than a set-dressing. She’s in is much of the film. Apparently, when she broke a paw during filming, she convalesced at Judy Garland’s home – and Garland desperately tried to adopt her.

Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West remains scary – there is nothing to make her more ‘child friendly’ at any stage. There’s nothing to blunt the fact that, for instance, she is a torturer – not least in her psychological torture of Dorothy as the film builds to a climax.

And so to Dorothy and Garland’s iconic performance. Somewhere Over the Rainbow retains its magic – not least in her rendition.

She produced an extraordinary performance: there is nothing brattish about Dorothy: she’s a serious young girl – an orphan with (apparently) no friends of her own age; vulnerable at the same time as being self-reliant and with a simple yet strong sense of what’s right and what’s not.

There is an extent to which The Wizard of Oz is like Casablanca: there are many ways in which it shouldn’t work – or at least, not have travelled well down the decades.

The message of there being “no place like home” is twee and limiting. The film as a whole is arguably over long and, with the introductions of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, repetitious.

And yet, and yet ...

At the cinema we went to, a new generation was seeing it on a big screen for the first time

Eight decades on, The Wizard of Oz defies so much and, in retaining its own magic, reveals for us again why cinema as a whole can be such a magical experience.

Time to care

Over on Facebook, someone started a very serious and sensible discussion about integration of health and social care services. Because of family events in the last six months, I now have personal experience of some of the issues, so replied at length.

But it struck me that what I have observed might help to inform a wider audience of some of the issues – a post here didn’t sound like a waste of time.

What follows is essentially my comments on the issue of integration of these services – based on my personal experience of the last six months. I think it’s clear why I have become drawn into the day-to-day reality of the situation.

This is most certainly not about condemning staff working in really difficult situations. Nor is about condemning any specific council or region, so I am not specifying those.

Indeed, I recommend reading the Ethical Care Charter – a document from trade union UNISON, which addresses a lot of what I have observed in the last half a year. Disclaimer – these days, I work for UNISON, but was not involved,ved in putting this document together, although I have reported since on councils signing up to it.

In the last six months, I’ve become a carer (one of several, in effect) for my father. I have power of attorney for his financial affairs (but not health) and increasingly – albeit erratically – adult social services in his area talk to me, since while my father is not ga-ga, he is increasingly divorced from a sort of gritty reality and certainly very forgetful.

The Start team from social services looked after him to begin with. He’d had a fall and a heart attack at the beginning of April, was released from hospital almost a month later and became a widower five days after that.

However, at the time, he said he had no ‘personal care’ needs – he could get himself up in the morning, dress etc and do the reverse in the evening. This impacted on what he was considered to need, within the parameters of some pretty strict rules that are based on funding.

I was asked (told) by adult social services to get a toaster so he could make his own breakfast. He’ll make himself toast occasionally, but it’s not guaranteed. I have attempted a form of bribery to get him to use it – the sort where you tell him that he can toast his own crumpets and slather as much butter on them as he wants, without my mother being censorious about him having “butter with bread”.

In the summer, social services decided he didn’t need them: he could have meals on wheels for lunch (with a sarnie in a bag delivered for his tea) and have visits from district nurses bookending the days to ensure he took his medication.

In the meantime, he has been going deaf, due to wax build up. The carers cannot apply unprescribed ear drops. The doctor hasn’t prescribed any. He had a GP visit him at home a couple of weeks ago – but not to do his ears, even though the GP themselves couldn’t get entry to the house because my dad can’t hear the doorbell at present. The GP had to ring someone to get the safe key code. Yet my father has now been ‘referred’ to some other ‘community practice’(?) to do his ears.

The district nurses couldn’t do that, and indeed, complained to an Age UK carer that he pays for, that his is not the sort of case to justify their £150-a-visit cost.

I had his head case worker on the phone a week or so ago saying that the district nurses had noticed that he is dehydrated. He doesn’t drink enough. Since then, she’s put two carers a day back on – and the district nurses have now disappeared into the mists of memory.

This is a classic case of people being bounced between budgets – between the NHS (district nurses) and local government (carers).

She told me the other day that she is confused by my father. She doesn’t want him to be so dependent, yet apparently cannot comprehend why he won’t get himself a drink.

Frankly, he’s not even eating much more than his breakfast (sometimes) and his meals on wheels lunch at present. I arrived at 10am on Tuesday: he hadn’t even had a drink, let alone anything else, since lunch on Monday. His first carer (who is wonderful) arrived just as I was making him tea and toast.

But I have realised that, for him, drinking is inherently social. Tea is a drink to share over a chat with someone. In the past (he’s a retired clergyman), he’d visit the local Catholic priest where they’d gossip over whisky; he was no stranger to the local pub (that was a down-to-earth social life away from the church); he spent his days in pastoral visiting (much of that to elderly women who would make him a cuppa or pour a cream sherry into a delicate little glass).

When I ask him if he wants a cuppa, his first response is to ask back if I’ll have one too.

The clues are there.

Time.

What carers need to really do their jobs, is time: time to chat, time for a cuppa. One of the biggest problems that the elderly face is loneliness. This is no secret: this isn’t rocket science.

They also need a properly-funded NHS that doesn’t palm off something like ear syringing so that a vulnerable, frail person cannot even hear the fire alarm for weeks.

They also do not need the piss-poor excuse that passes for tea from my Dad’s meals on wheels service. Every time I go, I find uneaten sandwiches (which we pay for, incidentally – it’s not free) in the fridge. And I cannot blame him – they look awful. Utterly unappetising.

Just as we feed hospital patients dross, because we have forgotten the connection between health, recovery etc and proper food (or have conveniently decided to forget it for the sake of cost) the elderly don’t lose their taste buds – but they do need to have them tickled.

On Tuesday, I heard a groan as he looked inside the paper bag that contained his ‘tea’. It was a meat paste sandwich – so unappetising that it would make supermarkets’ own-brand sarnies look like haute cuisine. I nipped back to the shops and bought a few things – ready-to-eat Cornish pasties and sausage rolls, cream cakes (I can guarantee those will never be left to moulder) and Cornish clotted cream and Golden Syrup.

Back in the house, I made ‘thunder and lightening’. It’s an old Cornish treat that I remember my (non-Cornish) mother making when anyone sent us a tub of clotted cream from the south west.

Take a couple of slices of plain white bread. Butter both. Add a sheen of syrup to one side and then spread clotted cream on top of that. Put the other slice of bread atop. Cut as needed. Eat.

My (Cornish) father didn’t remember having it before, but at the first taste, his face lit up. I have passed on the recipe to his Age UK carer, at his request.

Now, you can tell me ’til the cows come home that this is not ‘healthy’ – but between ‘Dad won’t eat’ and ‘Dad will eat’, which do you think is healthier?

So, in short: proper funding for all. Time is a serious time: time for carers to care, with proper recognition that actually, company is a genuine health issue for the elderly.

I can most certainly see advantages in services being linked – but it is far from the major problem that social care faces.

Why have we, as a society, apparently stopped seeing the bleedin’ obvious?

Who do you think you're kidding, all you cynics?

It might be a matter of perception, but the new Dad’s Army film seems to be dividing viewers and reviewers along far deeper lines than most film releases.

For many of us over a certain age, Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s series was a highlight of the 1970s TV schedules and deservedly retains the status of national treasure.

Reruns have ensured that it has never dropped out of the public consciousness and continues to gain a new audience, and it has consistently been voted as one of the best examples of British TV and, specifically, sitcoms.

For me, there’s the added little point that my paternal grandfather was seriously myopic (thanks, Grandpop) and thus did his WWII service in the Cornish Home Guard. Decades later, he’d chuckle at the series and note that it was very true to life.

When the film was first announced, I suffered a fit of apoplexy. How could they? The original is sacrosanct and should not be tampered with.

Then I saw the casting. Goodness, the casting of this film is genius. And I started wanting it to be okay.

There were other worries, though. I originally heard that the script was to be written by those responsible for the St Trinian’s reboot, but it turned out to be by Hamish McColl, who previously penned 2014’s utterly delightful Paddington.

After seeing the trailers, I decided to make it another cinema visit and, by coincidence as much as anything, The Other Half and I saw it on the opening day, last week.

There will be no spoilers here, but suffice it to say that the film sags in the second half.

Parade time in Walmington-on-Sea (Bridlington)

However, the idea that it’s rubbish is difficult to grasp. The script is more than mere pastiche. There are innuendos and physical comedy, certainly – both of which existed in the original series and are staples of British comedy – but also layers of far subtler stuff.

It has the thread of class running through it, as did the original series – a subject that is every bit as relevant today.

The catchphrases are used with care. Charlie Mole’s score is clever, with all sorts of subtle references within it both to the original theme and assorted songs from WWII (and even, I thought, James Bond).

The cast is wonderful and don’t make the mistake of trying to impersonate the actors who made their characters famous. Particular mentions will go here to Toby Jones, who is wonderful as Mainwaring, Bill Nighy as Wilson and Michael ‘The Great’ Gambon as Godfrey.

It was also delightful to see the two remaining original cast members appear, including Frank Williams reprising his role as the vicar.

The women in the film are not, as one or two have alleged, shoehorned in in the interests of some sort of political correctness, but are worthy characters in their own right – and for goodness sake, it was hardly as if WWII excluded women.

In a role that could, given the original series, have been awkward, Felicity Montagu makes an admirable Mrs Mainwaring.

I had a worry, about half way through the film, that many of the core characters were making fools of themselves, and that what I couldn’t cope with was it being left in that way.

The denouement, though, is surprisingly tense and solves this question in fine fashion.

This is not, of course, the first Dad’s Army film, but 1971’s effort was not good, suffering from the inability to transfer a small-screen series to the big screen (and the same can be said of other British sit coms).

This is far better.

Mrs Mainwaring leads the women

Nor was I alone in my enjoyment: before the film started, The Other Half whispered that, at just gone 56, he didn’t expect to be one of the youngest members of any audience.

There was a ripple of applause during the film at one catchphrase and another at the end.

I shall assume that these were not, in some way, sarcastic.

Of course, it offers the chance to consider the issue of ‘ownage’ of characters and, indeed, dramatic works.

What this film of Dad’s Army illustrated for me was the quality of the original writing and creation of character. In recent years, I’ve been appalled on occasion when certain remakes have been announced.

But great stories and great characters can have a life of their own: would anyone suggest that there should never have been any film adaptations of Sherlock Holmes after, say, those with Basil Rathbone? Were that the case, we’d never have enjoyed Jeremy Brett. And if it had stopped there, we’d not have Benedict Cumberbatch.

What, in this case, does such a reboot give us?

Well, I think it’s a nice reminder of people who, however daft they could be in certain circumstances, they also did the right thing when the chips were down.

It’s a please, in such cynical times, to see something that is essentially uncynical.

I left the cinema with a broad smile on my face. And while it most certainly not the best film ever made, I cared about the characters once more and certainly wouldn’t object to watching it again. 

Cultural outings after a bit of a shock

It was a relief to see the back of June, a month that had not started with any sense that it would produce a major ‘event’, but took only a few days to announce that it was going to be memorable.

The event in question was The Other Half having a heart attack. Don’t panic – it sounds more dramatic than it actually was.

There was no clutching at chest and/or keeling over.

And the first responder, the London Ambulance Service paramedics, the medical, ward and support teams at Bart’s were all absolutely magnificent and have my (our) eternal gratitude and appreciation.

I've not personally seen the NHS in action like that, but it makes you very aware of just how valuable it is.

After four nights, he was discharged and is now doing rehab stuff, practising being a cat and feeling faintly embarrassed at having been signed off for two months, because he feels okay in himself.

If we both needed an urgent motive to quit smoking, that was it.

So, it’s all been a tad distracting – hence no posts on this blog for over a month.

Panorama from Queen's Promenade, Ramsey

And in the middle of it all, I had to fly out and back in a day to the Isle of Man for a family funeral – an experience that was more enjoyable than expected, but quite surreal at times.

It’s 40-plus years since I was on the island and, since I was so young then, I have limited memories of it. I had forgotten – or perhaps I had never fully realised – just how rural it is.

The taxi ride from the airport at the south of the island to Ramsey in the north took me over the mountains.

Fog was clinging to the bleak hills, which made one appreciate the dangers of the TT racers who had only recently been speeding along the narrow roads. There have been 243 deaths at TT and Manx Grand Prix races since they were first staged in 1911 – one this year.

'You has chips. We wants chips'

By late afternoon and my return journey, the cloud had lifted, leaving a view from the mountains down to the sea, which also serves to give one a sense of just how small an island it is.

Having arrived in the rain – stepping down onto the tarmac from the plane at Ronaldsway to the smell of manure – I found myself in Ramsey just as the drizzle tapered off. Wandering around in the damp, I recognised elements of the harbour, where my grandfather had taken me to buy fish fresh off the boats when we holidayed on the island.

I had chips for lunch – from a chippy where the menu board advertised “posh coffee” for £2 – and found myself feeding seagulls who had swooped in at the mere smell of chips. It was entirely apt, since my love of gulls stems from those childhood holidays in Ramsey, when I would wake to the sound of their shrieking.

Anyway, all of this means that you won’t be getting lengthy reviews for a number of things that we have seen since ‘The Event’ (as I feel like to euphemise it). As the medical staff made quite clear, rehabilitation does not mean enforced 24/7 bed rest.

Pirates of Penzance – left, Alex Weatherhill 

But I’ll start by mentioning the all-male Pirates of Penzance that we saw at Hackney Empire a couple of weeks ago.

We had booked not knowing that it was be an all-male production, simply that it was G&S, but it was an absolute hoot.

Particular mentions should go to Alex Weatherhill as Ruth and Alan Richardson as Mabel.

Watch out for future productions by Sasha Regan’s company – they’ve done similar productions before and hopefully will do so again.

It’s also worth noting that the Tate Britain’s Barbara Hepworth exhibition has opened.

Not helped by my inexperience in looking at abstract sculpture, I didn’t find it earth-shattering.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it. The guarea pieces, carved from “great logs” have a beauty that seems to radiate something very tranquil.

Corinthos by Barbara Hepworth

Hepworth talked of ‘tunnelling’ through the wood and you can let yourself get lost in the curvaceous channels into and through it.

But in general, the exhibition really only surges into life at the end, with a room that aims to recreate a pavilion where some of her bronzes were displayed in the Netherlands half a century ago, and which the artist herself considered as a perfect way to show them.

Indeed, more generally, Hepworth commented on the link between a work and where it is displayed when she noted that “one of the functions of sculpture is to fulfil the demands and conditions of a given site”. The two should not be divorced if the culture is to fully work.

Suddenly, in this final room, you have the sense of what influenced Hepworth so much – nature: and how much better her pieces work in a setting that reflects that rather than a more sterile room.

Ham from the 'ultimate black pig'

And as if that wasn’t enough cultural hijinks, after a 16-year gap, we were finally lured back into the cinema last Friday.

I say “we”, but I’ve been the particularly reluctant cinema goer over the years; dischuffed with the actual experience of going to the cinema and also with the amount of Hollywood tat aimed at an adolescent male audience.

Don’t get me wrong, that audience deserves being catered for by the industry as much as any other, but not to the exclusion of others.

And with the UK having largely binned our own film industry and decided simply to import whatever Hollywood churns out, I felt disengaged from the entire enterprise.

Admittedly, I then ‘discovered’ foreign-language films – and a present of a DVD player allowed me to watch quite a few.

Where there is tapas, there are pardon peppers

While more recent years seems to have brought some improvements in what’s being made, I’ve waited for the DVDs rather than going to see them on cinema release.

Well, finally there was a film I didn’t want to wait any more months to see.

It has French origins and is the epitome of charm, sophistication and erudition.

I speak, of course, of Minions.

Having booked for the Vue at Islington, we needed to eat first, so tried La Farola a short walk away, where we enjoyed very pleasant tapas.

The Lomo iberico de bellota is apparently the “utimate black pig” and, seasoned with smoked paprika and sea salt, delicate slices are an absolute taste delight, with a good deal of complexity.

Green Gordal olives were huge and tasty; the padron peppers were fine (if not including any surprise hotties), while mushrooms were good too: the boquerones might have been Calabrian, but were a reminder of sunny Collioure, and the pan con tomate came on a scrummy, wafer-light, chargrilled bread.

Hurrah for silliness

Anyway, Minions was also our first 3D film – and that itself was rather enjoyable.

The film itself was great fun – utter silliness, but there’s a place for that. Some critics have been rather snooty about it, complaining that the plot is a bit thin.

It probably is, but it was not the sort of film where that bothered me. I didn’t want to see it for the ‘plot’, but for what it does very effectively, which in essence is a series of gags and sketches.

The opening – marvellously dryly narrated by the wonderful Geoffrey Rush – sees the eponymous yellow characters going through a number of bosses as they seek an evil being to serve.

Not only is that an establishing sequence in terms of giving us the minions’ history, it also establishes the sketch-like nature of the film.

No complaining from me – it provided plenty of laughs.

The initial smell of popcorn was almost overpowering when we entered the foyer, but the seating was as comfortable as anything I could remember.

So perhaps it won’t be another 16 years before I enter a cinema again. In fact, I think Ted 2 has just opened.