Messing with History

At the end of the day Alasdair phoned me from Dunlop especially to tell me that his Moot went very well today. I believe that a Moot is some sort of mock trial, and I know he has been working hard on his speech. I thought that it was very sweet that he phoned to let me know how he got on. He and Cat are going to a party in Mallaig this weekend. Meanwhile David and I stopped at Sainsburys on the way home to buy some yeast and sugar that he wanted. I don't know what he wants it for because he was very evasive when I asked him, but now he has filled a row of plastic bottles in his bedroom with some sort of mixture and it smells really vile. In fact it is making the whole of the upstairs of the house smell bad so I think I will ask him to put it in the shed overnight.
James and I have been watching bits and bobs of Comic Relief on television and we also watched the film Argo, about the rescue of American hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, which recently won the Oscar for best picture. Well it was ok but I didn't find it to be outstanding and I really had to suspend my disbelief because I know from reading about it that although it is based on real events, the drama of the rescue has been very much spiced up for the film. It annoys me when filmmakers mess around with the truth too much; I don't mind if they put in conversations and even events that didn't actually happen as long as they don't contradict historical facts. In this way Shadowlands was a great film because although fictionalised it stuck to the truth of C. S. Lewis' life. His stepson even said that he was amazed at how much it captured the atmosphere of what life in their household had been like. In contrast I hated Inglourious Basterds because it was just ridiculous - it was a wishful alternative to history rather than any sort of interpretation of it. I don't mind films that are completely fictional but if you are going to make a film that is about real events you should keep to the truth - it makes for a better film. And that is my opinion!