The Daily Cartoon

Melville became the archetypal director of French ‘policiers’, but this was his first. Jet black shadows, cigarettes and trench coats - he took the props of forties US film noir and added a complexity that was pure Gallic.

With the great Belmondo (Breathless) in the lead this film is full of ambiguity that is never entirely explained. Indeed the only part of the film that doesn’t work well is the long exposition that Belmondo has to give at the end to make some sort of sense of the foregoing action. Long flashbacks seem to change the meaning of what we have experienced - although we do not know who we can trust and Belmondo’s explanation could be a self-serving fabrication.

Melville has created a film that replicates elements of the great noirs that had come before, but Le Doulos is not a classic on a par with those Bogart was making years before. Still it is a film that repays careful watching.

Shopping has become a minefield since the local store rearranged their stock. Now breakfast cereals are next to cat food. It’s madness. The packaging is too similar, you can’t tell where cereals end and cat food begins. I live in a panic that I will pour milk over my breakfast one day and discover I’m eating Whiskas.

Hope they move it all back again soon. Otherwise I’ll have to start having cooked breakfasts.

Have you shot any footage on your mobile phone? If so we want to see it! The video cameras on mobile phones have brought movie making to everyone. We are holding an online mobile phone film festival to bring together the best of this new genre of film making.

So please, upload your film to a video hosting site (eg - Youtube) and send us the link.

To find out more, read here: Mobile phone film festival

Come on! Anyone who has a mobile phone has the means to make a film!

You know when you are talking with a friend and suddenly the momentum of the conversation is such that you find yourself agreeing to something that really you know is madness? I’ve just experienced that and have agreed to run a 10 kilometres race.

One of the problem is that in the UK we really still work in miles, and I had no real idea how far 10K was. I know now though, thanks to the power of the internet. 10 kilometres is 6.2 miles! And we are going to attempt to run it.

Lunacy has never been so easy to spot. if you never hear from me again, assume the worst.

Round here we haven’t seen our elected representative for years, then suddenly they’re shaking hands and giving out prizes as though the world will end tomorrow and you only get to heaven if you’ve kissed enough babies. Ahh, there must be an election. We can’t stand the deception of the UK ‘democracy’, a vote once every five years for a man you never see to enjoy a gravy train you never taste. In most parts of the country the ‘election’ is a foregone conclusion owing to the size of the incumbent’s majority.

So here’s an election T shirt design that sums it up!

The T Shirt club launches today with a design by Jonathan entitled ‘Spork - neither a spoon nor a fork’. This will be posted to all members of the T shirt club, so if you want one, subscribe today.

What is the T shirt club?

The T shirt club is a new way to make sure you have the latest T shirts.  You subscribe here, and then every month you receive the latest T shirt club design T shirt through the mail. It’s that simple! You can unsubscribe at any time.

The price is £25 per T shirt, which includes postage.