Notes on a Scandal

I'd heard nothing about Notes on a Scandal but whilst scrolling through the Waitakere Library website I happened upon it and was drawn by mention of Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. Together. Hmmm sounds promising, might be worth a look. Dench, plays an older, cynical teacher, and Blanchett, the young and very green newcomer to the teaching staff, taken under her increasingly malign wing. For totally different reasons, each woman feels a sense of quiet isolation and is driven towards radical and ultimately, self-destructive behaviour. The more deeply their lives intersect, the more overt the older teacher's motives and desperation become. Dench and Blanchett are totally convincing in their roles. I haven't seen Judi Dench in a role such as this and she is, quite simply, magnificent. I found this film hugely engaging and would not hesitate to recommend it.

Eels and all that

All around her tiny green, red and orange lights
where things are in sleep mode and standby mode.
The house is a city full of traffic
needing to be told when to stop and go.

Excerpt from Kate Camp's(NZ) poem The Insomniac Learns A Lot
Photograph of Derek March by Liz March