".........but you have to keep the line tight"

“……………..but you have to keep the line tight”

We all watch films and come away with iconic snippets of dialogue.

Each and every classic has a famous line which is easily remembered when quoted but a challenge to think of when offered a film title to quote from. Either that or a film is misquoted. It is a myth that Bergman said “Play it again Sam.” (Play it Sam, play it for me). But not all films are classics, yet they offer up meaningful lines that stay with their followers, like lines that jump out from a book. They mean something important to the reader or the viewer but have to be explained to others who have not picked up on it.

At the end of Walk the Line (James Mangold 2005), there is a repatriation scene between Johnny Cash and his family. The children are playing with their grandfather, using a pair of tins at the end of a long piece of string. This is a string telephone and the children call to Johnny Cash, played by Joaquin Phoenix, to show him what they are doing. He spots the slack string and he shouts back at them “…………but you have to keep the line tight.” This was the last piece of dialogue in the film and it sums up the whole point of the film. Cash had been living his life in such a way that he was in danger of losing everything at one point. His redemption was in understanding the need for focus and keeping what was important to him tight. This quote has become a staple in my repertoire of sayings especially when there is a call for an element of discipline or focus in a task or a problem that needs solving.

For many years I have been maintaining a blog on the subject of my allotment and the experience of growing and harvesting. It was a mixture of humour and parody, lists and facts, but always on the subject of fruit, vegetables and flowers that I grew with and sometimes without, success. As the years went by I began to realise that it was a blog of random news that often went in cycles. I knew a few of the 100 or so folk who read it each week. But what value it had was only in the initial fun that I had in compiling it. The problem was that I was not growing with it and there was a limit to the inventiveness of reporting on the allotment. I had this problem with listening to the Archers for the first time in my life last year. After six months I soon realised that nothing ever happened. Unless one of the writers through a spanner in the works, such as someone falling off a roof.

Cinema and film are a passion of mine. I might not go more than once per week. I watch film at home and record many from Film Four. I am blessed with an independent cinema in the city centre, Glasgow Film Theatre, and also have the benefit of a multiplex when I need to see a blockbuster or movie that does not get round the independent circuit.

So now you will understand not only the title of this new blog, but also a little of the reasoning behind compiling it. Each posting will be a review of a new film that I have seen as close to the date of posting as possible. It will be an opinionated review, not a critique, and never longer than an A4 sheet – thus keeping the line tight.