My friend and I decided to go and see The Oxford Murders tonight, simply because Oxford is in the title, and it's fun to recognise places on screen... this sophisticated motivation proved worthwhile, since it was about all we got from it!We did see a lot of Oxford. We chuckled when John Hurt and Elijah Wood emerged from pubs only to appear some 500 metres away, or walked behind a van and be transported to the other side of the city. Similar laughs were provoked by the Life Lessons we learnt along the way (something about being true to ourselves, no doubt) but, amidst all this hokum, there was a fairly fun murder mystery to be solved. Sadly, the first murder did away with the finest actor in the film (neither of those named thus far, fear not).
I'm not a mathematician, but I'd be intrigued to see what The Carbon Copy or Our Vicar thought, should they see it - the central characters were brilliant mathematicians of some variety or other (though fairly inept at solving things I found easy with my A Level) and much of the plot centred around Wittgenstein's ponderings on logic.
All rather silly, but didn't Oxford do well?
I've been looking forward to this, obviously for similar reasons. We used to have just that same kind of fun with Inspector Morse. I shall definitely go after reading this -- thanks.
ReplyDeleteI took part in this film as a singer in the choir which performs at an evening concert at some stately home (rooftop chase, stuntman collapses dead onto grand piano)and it did seem weird even to me that the rehearsal for this concert took place (i.e was filmed) in the Sheldonian. Apparently little of our footage made it to the screen, but quite a bit of our singing is on the soundtrack. I was interested to see how an actor can "play" an instrument quite plausibly on film: in this case it was a 'cellist, and she sat with her 'cello, facing a "real" cellist (out of shot), who played the piece she was supposed to be playing, so she copied his bowings and finger positions as she saw him adopt them.
ReplyDeleteBase camp was the basement of the Bodleian, where we changed, ate, talked etc etc when not on set. All great fun, and good to meet Frodo and John Hurt.
Simon, just so that I could have another glimpse of our dear Curzon I trekked across Leeds to see this film!! At first I doubted whether it was to be in English since all the credits looked Italian to me. The film was (imho) pretty poor - the best actor found dead after about half an hour. Who am I to criticise but Curzon was def the highlight for me! I have only had two very brief visits to Oxford ... now, Cambridge, that would be another matter! Barbara
ReplyDeleteMy first thought on seeing this film was 'great, now the world is going to think Oxford is full of psychopathic mathematicians' and then realised that it is, only they tend to hide themselves better, because of all the Japonese tourists. Ah, how I love my city!
ReplyDeleteAnyway - hello! I'm Becca, I discovered your blog through Justine Picardie's and if you want to read mine, you're more than welcome!