Moss and Roy are, in the words of Denholm Reynholm (the CEO, played by Chris Morris), just a pair of “standard nerds” who are outcast by the rest of the firm despite their reliance on their technical expertise.

The glamorous and ambitious Jen is appointed their manager after blagging her way into the job, even though it’s clear she knows next to squat about computers.

Despite the episodes being all over YouTube and the like, the two series of The IT Crowd are worth checking out on DVD, due to the many quality Easter Eggs and neat little features tucked away inside each 3-inch shiny plastic disc (OK, these are all over YouTube as well, but they’re not interactive, and are all fuzzy, compressed, and crappy).

For a start, all of the series one (or ‘Version 1.0′) DVD menus are laid out in the style of classic Spectrum titles from yesteryear, and it also comes with ‘1337′ as a subtitle option; things like ‘ringing.wav’ appear on screen whenever a telephone goes off. Btw, 1f yu0 d0n’t kn0w wh4t 1337 15, th3n yu0 sh0uld’NT b3 4ll0w3d t3h 1nt3rn3t5, n00bZ.

As the style set of the first series is based on classic games of the pre 8-bit era, the menu styles of ‘Version 2.0′ (or series two, for regular humans) are based on 16-bit hits. The start up features a brilliant parody of Zero Wing, (pictured) more famously known as the All Your Base Are Belong to Us game, during the menu start up, which contains 16-bit renderings of the characters and deliberately badly spelt Engrish.

The Choose an Episode screen is a parody of the Mortal Kombat character selection screen, and the Extras menu is based on point and click puzzler Lemmings.

There are also outtakes, ‘making of’ specials and the usual DVD fare. And then there’s the series itself, which is also very funny. Whist some of the jokes depend on how much time you’ve spent working in and around the IT department office, it doesn’t require you to have an extensive working knowledge of Ubuntu to enjoy it; in fact the majority of the humour is of the slapstick variety, accidents involving fire extinguishers, shoes that don’t fit and getting stuck under desks.

If you’ve not yet logged on to The IT Crowd, you can order Versions 1.0 and 2.0 as part of a single order, as they now come packaged together in the shops as a nice shiny box set. 0rd3R 1t n00w!!1!

Released over twenty years ago between 1986 and 87, to say that Watchmen was an influential success would be a pretty epic understatement. It cemented Alan Moore’s reputation as a writer in the graphic novel medium and since then, more than a fair few of his graphic novels have (much to his chagrin) been adapted for the big screen, most notably V For Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine, and Jack the Ripper conspiracy theory yarn From Hell. His treatment of the Joker in his celebrated Batman one-shot The Killing Joke, is widely cited as being a major influence on both Tim Burton’s 1989 movie, the subsequent Batman animated series, and recent outing The Dark Knight.

No Watchmen, no Heroes. Simple as.

The comic book is set in an alternative universe where superheroes exist – it is 1985, and the Cold War is on the verge of becoming a very, very hot one.

In this universe, the USA won the Vietnam War, and Watergate never happened – Nixon is still the President. The West is defended by a small elite corps of licensed superheroes, the most powerful of which, Dr. Manhattan, has given the States an edge over the Soviets. However, things take a turn for the worse – the story begins with the discovery that The Comedian, an ultra-patriotic American superhero is found dead, having been hurled several stories from his apartment.

The masked vigilante Rorschach, himself a wanted man, is convinced that there is a conspiracy afoot, and that all masked superheroes are in mortal danger, and so he sets out to warn his former colleagues. What Rorschach and his associates eventually discover out turns out to be more shocking and profoundly worrying than any of them could have ever imagined.

Stylistically, Watchmen raised the bar for graphic novels, including within its narrative extracts from fictional police and psychiatrists reports, diegetic magazine clippings and articles and chapters from an autobiography written by one of the characters. Watchmen even includes an issue of Tales of the Black Freighter, a fictional pirate-based comic book that is read by one of the characters.

All of these elements, combined with the overall scope of the narrative (hint: it’s pretty darn big) had led many, including its creators to deem the book unfilmable. And so, naturally, scores of people have been trying to film it for the past two decades.

Having languished in development hell for several years, a big screen adaptation is finally clawing its way to a cinema near you. The story of its gestation, production and the legal wranglings that surrounded the movie is as labyrinthine as the narrative on which it is based. The film has seen a number of high profile directors assigned to it, including Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Brazil) and Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum) as well as X-Men screenwriter David Hayter.

Hayter, perhaps more recognisable as the voice of the gravel-throated Snake from the Metal Gear Solid games, wrote a screenplay, updating the plot from its original 1985 setting to the modern day, his reasoning being that the story had been previously “considered too dark, too complex, too ’smart’. But the [western] world has changed [since 9/11]. I think that the new global climate has finally caught up with the vision that Alan Moore had in 1986. It is the perfect time to make this movie.”

Despite this pretty major temporal shift, Hayter’s treatment of the source material was considered by no less an authority than Moore himself to be “as close as I could imagine anyone getting to Watchmen.”

Hayter looked all set to direct when he was offered the chair in 2001, something which sent Watchmen and Metal Gear fanbois and grrls into full-on froth mode. Having secured Moore’s blessing, Hayter and producer Lloyd Levin (Mystery Men, The Rocketeer and the first Tomb Raider movie) upped sticks and left Universal after falling out over creative differences. The pair tried to get Revolution Studios, (producers of Hellboy) interested, but negotiations fell through.

Hayter reluctantly relinquished the role of director, after it emerged that Warner Bros. would finance the film, so long as the script got a re-write, meaning that the movie you’ll eventually see next year will be set in the eighties as in the original, although several elements of Hayter’s script have been used in the final version, to the extent that he receives a screen credit. Eventually, Zack Snyder, who previously worked on 300 (another comic adaptation) was given the job of director, with Alex Tse (Sucker Free City) writing the script.

All of this studio manoeuvring and wrangling has seen the movie tied up in litigation. It is currently thought that Warners will distribute the film in North America, with Paramount getting distribution rights for the rest of the world. However, Fox believes that ultimately, the rights to distribute the film rest with them, no matter how much money the other studios have thrown at it. The case is due to begin in January next year, a good two months before the film is due to premiere on the 6th of March 2009.

There’s every chance that we might not get to see this film by then, or by next year or even at all. So what’s the point in blogging about a film that might not see the light of day?

The wealth of trailers and pictures currently floating around on the internet suggest that the film will be released – hopefully the inertia of the Hollywood juggernaught will be enough for the movie to see the light of day. There’s simply too much money at stake.

Regardless of whether it comes out or not, Moore, however won’t be watching the Watchmen. “My book is a comic book,” he said to US magazine Entertainment Weekly. “Not a movie, not a novel. A comic book. It’s been made in a certain way, and designed to be read a certain way: in an armchair, nice and cozy next to a fire, with a steaming cup of coffee.”

Despite his much documented disdain for Hollywood (he is quoted in the LA Times saying that “It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms…”), sitting next to a crackling open fire with a mug of coffee doesn’t sound like too bad a way to enjoy the film when/if it comes out on DVD.

The Tales of the Black Freighter narrative has been filmed; it stars Gerard Butler (King Leonidas from 300) and is thought to be released on DVD independent of the supposedly eventual Watchmen DVD release. Under The Hood, the aforementioned autobiography, has also been filmed as a mockumentary, and is expected to be bundled on the same disc as Tales of the Black Freighter is. There are also rumours of a Lord of the Rings style ‘extended edition’ box set DVD which will include Tales edited back into the main feature as intended…

With the court case looming, all of this however is hearsay. It might never be released in this form, or any form at all. It still might. But is also might not. All we can do is sit and wait, and watch the minute hand of the clock slowly count its way to midnight.

Bauby wakes up in hostpital from a coma to find himself paralysed from head to toe and unable to speak. The only part of his body he can move is his left eyelid, which he uses to communicate. The pretty speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) recites the alphabet in the order of most frequently used letters, and Bauby chooses a letter by blinking. Thus, letter by letter, blink by blink, he ‘dictates’ his extraordinary memoir on which this film is based.

If Bauby’s physical immobility is his diving bell, then his imagination is his butterfly – vivid, liberated and full of hope. Director Julian Schnabel uses his painter’s eye to create a watery canvas from which spring dreams, visions and memories - it is only in the past and through his imagination that Bauby can escape his agonising condition.

Moments from Bauby’s past flash across the screen, only to be cut short by clinical reality. Handsome and sardonic, one moment he seems invincible as he strides into a fashion shoot, unkempt and unshaven as one totally assured of his King of the Hill status; the next he is facing his father who berates him for leaving his wife. His story is a terrifying demonstration of life’s fragility.

In another sequence he remembers a “dirty weekend” he had in Lourdes with his mistress Inès (Agathe de la Fontaine). Wandering past devout nuns and disabled people coming for healing, Madonnas watching in judgement from every crevice, Bauby is unable to sustain the relationship.

The juxtaposition of past and present leads to agonising moments of self-reflection. During a visit from his estranged partner Céline et famille, the children sing him a song about a kangaroo escaping a zoo by jumping over a wall, tactlessly pointing to his own condition. Later Céline takes a phonecall from Inès, and must translate the intimacies that Bauby conveys through his winking.

Bauby’s caustic wit and frank, confessional approach stop the film from becoming overly sentimental. However, Schnabel manages to create an operatic level of intensity with smudging colours, frenetic camera movements and extreme close-ups. In a bold move he imprisons the audience in Bauby’s uncooperative body for the first 20 minutes of the film, even letting us watch as his eye is sewn up. Schnabel moves seamlessly from Bauby’s agonised, bedridden perspective to the third-person camera positions showing us the helpless man locked in paralysis – a far cry from the glamour of his former haute couture lifestyle.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a poignant reflection on what it means to live. Rather than sentimentalising death, the film faces mortality head on, with Bauby’s imagination acting as a antidote to his infirmity.

One dark halloween night, a six-year-old boy named Michael Audrey Myers (Will Sandin) stabs his teenage sister to death with a kitchen knife. Discovered soon afterwards by his parents, the boy is sent to a sanatorium under the care of child psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). After spending eight years in treatment and a further seven locked up, Myers escapes to his quiet hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, looking for prey.

A 19-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis plays the bookish schoolgirl Laurie Strode. Babysitting on hallowe’en night, Laurie is unaware that the adult Myers (Tony Moran), a psychopathic killer wearing an expressionless white mask, is lurking right around the corner, waiting for his moment to pounce and change the course of her life forever. Meanwhile the horrified Dr Loomis waits, as single-mindedly obsessed as the killer he’s chasing.
It’s easy to create violence on screen; less easy to do it well. Avoiding blood and gore, Carpenter creates suspense with smooth, creepy camera movements – panning to one side when something suddenly looms in the foreground – and those frustrating moments which occur when a killer’s at large: lost keys, stuck doorknobs and characters tragically unaware of the looming danger. The camera pays as much attention to the background of shots as to the foreground, and Myers is perplexingly capable of showing up anywhere, at any time. Then there’s that sparse piece of piano work - written by Carpenter himself - which has become as synonymous with horror movies as Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’ and the screaming violins of Psycho.

Halloween ingeniously melds the everyday with the unthinkably horrific. Myers chooses ordinary teenagers as his victims - young women worrying about hair, nails and their latest crush - and the experience of babysitting in another person’s home, looking out onto unfamiliar, dark streets, is something to which we can easily relate.

Donald Pleasance brings authority, dignity, and vulnerability to his role as the psychiatrist who once cared for Michael, even shared a bond with him, but is tired of years spent trying to get into his mind and failing. Jamie Lee Curtis is excellent in her screen debut as Laurie Strode, unaffected and softly spoken until she demonstrates why she earned the title “Scream Queen.”

Violent but never gory, Halloween is a masterpiece of pure, terrifying suspense. It adeptly layers peaceful, anonymous suburbia with unknowable, all-pervading darkness. Many far inferior slashers have since adopted its blueprint, spicing things up with an ever increasing body count, but few have managed to create a film so uncompromisingly scary and haunting as this. If you’re in for a proper fright tonight, Halloween is the one to watch.

Naomi Watts plays Rachel Keller, a Seattle-based newspaper reporter who is asked to investigate the sudden and mysterious death of her niece. Rachel discovers that three other teenagers also died that day, and that all four had watched a mysterious, grainy video exactly a week earlier. But once she manages to track down the offending VHS the budding journo can’t help but take a peek, and begins to fear that her curiosity could get the better of her. Determined not to be fooled by an urban legend, Rachel enlists the help of her reluctant ex-boyfriend Noah (Martin Henderson) and intuitive son Aiden (David Dorfman) to get to the bottom of the mystery. But one death threat later and Rachel is fighting to save her own life and those of her family. The clock is ticking…

Highly stylised and visually creative, the film’s success lies first and foremost in the tape itself, with its layering of creepy and gruesome imagery – including a ghostly woman, a severed finger and the titular ring. Director Gore Verbinski does the shock treatment brilliantly, assuaging your fears until just the right moment, and then going in for the kill. As more and more people get their hands on the unmarked tape and discover they have just a few days to live, the atmosphere becomes increasingly claustrophobic, culminating in feelings of helplessness and despair.

Watts is excellent in her leading role as a sceptic on whom the truth of the video tape’s deathly power slowly dawns, although we see little character development throughout. Henderson makes an admirable devil’s advocate, consistently challenging Rachel’s suppositions.

As the evidence mounts, the film begins to lag. The denouement is given in tedious detail, each explanation accompanied by flashback after flashback which makes the movie feel overlong even though it runs for less than two hours.

The Ring shies away from blood and violence, instead presenting a fascinating mind game which transforms the unknown into something monstrous. You may not be screaming at the telly or hiding behind a cushion but this creepy thriller will stay lodged in your subconscious for hours after the film’s close.

It turns out that Clarice and the FBI are not the only ones with an eye on the Doctor - billionaire and convicted child molester Mason Verger (played by a very heavily made-up Gary Oldman) remembers Lecter too. After using his wealth to escape a jail sentence several years ago, Verger was ordered by the court to attend therapy sessions… with none other than the celebrated Baltimore psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter…

Horrifically mutilated and paralyzed after an encounter with the psychiatrist years earlier, Verger is determined to see Lecter dead, and has set up a website offering a $3 million reward for information leading to his capture.  Florentine police detective, Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini), upon receipt of information from Clarice and the FBI, manages to uncover the true identity of Dr. Fell, decides to contact Verger for the reward. This turns out to be a big mistake, as Lecter susses him out and disembowels him with his characteristic theatricality - Pazzi’s ancestor, the real life Francesco Pazzi suffered the same fate.

Hopkins’ still holds the gravitas he did in Silence, and his sheer brilliance is both Hannibal’s saving grace and its weakness. Lecter looks more relaxed than ever – a genial doctor who hasn’t missed a night’s sleep in years.

Unfortunately, unlike Silence, where Lecter’s presence pervaded the film whether he was on screen or not, Hopkin’s talent serves to throw into releif the insubstantiality of the scenes in with characters that surround him. Sparks still fly with Hopkins on screen, but the interludes that exclude him are flat – fillers, really, before the old master enters for another aria. Julianne Moore’s Clarice has become more hardened after 10 years on the job (a diegetic Guiness Book of Records notes that she’s killed more people than any other female FBI agent) and she’s lost the youthful idealism that made her younger self so compelling. Her efforts to pursue justice are met with derision by her own colleagues, to the point that she becomes almost irrelevant.

The film lacks the focus and brilliance of both Silence and Red Dragon, most noticeably because Dr. Lecter is free to roam where he pleases. His liberty diminishes his power and capacity for horror. His depravity is too often bogged down with police red tape, and the underlying tension of Silence is replaced by an audacious desire to shock.

On the other hand Ridley Scott’s presentation is beautiful. Lush, sumptuous backgrounds are juxtaposed with claustrophobic close-ups and an artful layering of gore - the prostetic make-up used for Mason Verger (pictured) is particularly gruesome.

Violence and maiming are displayed with operatic intensity heightened by the classical soundtrack, more than likely a conscious choice given Lecter’s Florentine backdrop and his ‘Renaissance Man’ disposition. Fun to watch, Hannibal is masterfully shot, but nowhere near as compelling as its predecessor.

In a grim, anonymous city which seems to experience constant rainfall, steady-handed veteran Detective William Somerset is preparing to retire from the force, weary of the horror and apathy that surrounds him. But before he does so, he is matched with Detective David Mills, a young cop with a can-do attitude who has recently moved from a smaller town with his sweet-tempered wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). The pair form the modern detective cliché – the wise old hand and the cocky young upstart who gradually learn to rub along.

The two have been called in to investigate the death of a highly obese man who was fed spaghetti until his stomach burst from a kick. When a second mutilated body is found, Somerset instructs his young protégé to read the likes of Dante, Milton, Chaucer in order to keep up with the killer’s literary pretensions. Mills settles for the study aids. As an orderly string of crimes is established, Somerset theorises that a messianic murderer is perpetrating crimes to preach a sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins - which means there are five more to go. A breakthrough in investigations comes in the form of a library card, but the bodies keep piling up, in a nauseating layering of verbal description and visual hooks. Only Mills’ wife Tracy adds a touch of hope and sentiment to proceedings when she invited Somerset over for a meal to break the ice, and later when, pregnant, she confesses her worries about bringing up a child in the soulless city in which she lives.

One interesting detail in the film’s construction is the killer, who is brought on half an hour before the film’s end. Like Hannibal Lector, he remains a foreboding presence throughut the film without actuallly taking up much screen time, and is an articulate antagonist who has concocted a disturbing but satisfying plan to conclude his twisted lesson in morality.

Morgan Freeman moves savagely along the psycho’s path with the air of one who has seen it all before, and is looking forward to a quieter life. He comes with an authority and presence that we have seen in later paternalistic roles, from ‘Red’ Redding in The Shawshank Redemption to God in Bruce Almighty. Brad Pitt gives an commendable performance but rides too much on his considerable charm as the archetypal young buck. But it’s Kevin Spacey who steals the show as one of the creepiest serial killers the big screen has ever seen.

Also, keep a look out for R. Lee Ermey - everyone’s favourite boot camp instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman - as the police captian.

With a screen play written by Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien (yes, he of The Crystal Maze) the film is based on the British musical stage production The Rocky Horror Show, and it is in the theatre that the whole caboodle really belongs, with the performers and audience joining in a collective send-up. The film remains very much a staged play, and loses much of its giddy appeal when translated to the confines of one’s living room, mainly because the audience - normally participants as well as spectators -  has disappeared. Bearing all that in mind, what better excuse to invite your mates round for a fishnet-clad horror fest, courtesy of the enigmatic Dr. Frank N. Furter?

Fresh-faced Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) and Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) are the newly engaged all-American couple who find themselves with a flat tire on a lonely road one dark and stormy night. Seeking refuge, the two of them topple through a time warp and into a sinister Gothic mansion where the annual Transylvanian Convention is taking place. The mansion is presided over by camper-than-thou Dr. Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry), the self-proclaimed “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania”. Surrounded by a hoard of misfit servants including the hunchback butler Riff-Raff, played by Richard O’Brien himself, and his wide-eyed sister Magenta (Patricia Quinn), the mad doctor leads the crowd upstairs to reveal his latest creation, the handsome and muscled Rocky Horror (Peter Hinwood). As night draws in, our young lovers are shown to separate bedrooms, but far from getting a good night’s sleep, both are seduced by a wild array of bizarre, cross-dressing, gender-bending rock and rollers.

Tim Curry, who also starred in the original stage version of Rocky Horror, steals the show with his outrageous apparel and rambunctious sense of fun. The music, choreography and accoutrements are shamelessly hedonistic – a fiercely independent antidote to more wholesome contemporary musical offerings such as Jesus Christ Superstar. If the film has one serious flaw, it is that it fails to keep its momentum from beginning to end. Whilst the uproarious pace never flags, the gags become tired and flat as they are repeated throughout the film, and the atmosphere of the second half is more frenetic than it is out-and-out funny. Nonetheless, the cast and crew give it their best shot, and the film provides a fantastic excuse for unbridled mayhem.

Doubting Thomases the world over were made to eat their hats upon the arrival of Casino Royale, which confidently reinvigorated the Bond franchise, which was veering dangerously close to self-parody with the pretty god awful Die Another Day. All of the classic elements were there, an Aston Martin (DB5), Vodka Martini, soundtrack by David Arnold, nods to the political climate of the time, there was a thankfully noticeable lack of CGI, with practically all the stunts being performed the ‘old fashioned way’, there were guns, there were girls, and there were gadgets; even the film’s title was a nod to the original Ian Fleming source material.

But despite all the knowing winks, it was a thoroughly modern take on a classic style, perhaps best encapsulated by the infamous Vodka Martini scene which sent naysayers into apoplexy; asked by a waiter if he wants his drink shaken or stirred, he replies ‘Do I look like I give a damn?’ This Bond meant business, but not business as usual.

(*Quick spoiler warning*: if you’ve been living in a soundproofed cave and have not yet seen Casino Royale, the please read no further – the following paragraphs contain small giveaways of its plot. If you’ve not seen it then go and rent it! Go and rent it now!)

Now Bond is back, in Quantum of Solace, the follow up to Casino Royale, which, again, borrows its title from an Ian Fleming novel, and is a first among the series in that its events follow on almost immediately after from those of its prequel – the film literally begins minutes after the end of the last one, with Bond jumping into the driving seat and giving chase, after Bond learns that the shadowy organisation influencing the actions of his enemies in Casino Royale has agents placed high up in the hierarchies of MI5 and the CIA.

The film also sees Bond taking liberties with his 00-status, and find himself in conflict with M (again, ably played by Judi Dench) as he struggles to unravel the mystery behind the powerful Quantum organisation, whilst keeping his desire for retribution over the death of Vesper Lynd (played by Eva Green in Casino) in check; the film sees Bond searching for his titular quantum of solace.

Mathieu Almaric, most famous for his role in last year’s award-winning The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, plays the villain of the piece, one Dominic Greene, a businessman who poses as the legitimate, public face of Quantum. Fittingly, and unlike classic Bond villains such as Blofeld, Baron Samedi, or even Le Chiffre, Greene’s appearance is that of a clean shaven, sharp suited businessman. Bond will be aided in his mission by Camille (played by Olga Kurylenko) another agent who has a score to settle with Greene, and the MI6 agent Strawberry Fields, played by Gemma Arterton (St. Trinians, RocknRolla, and telly’s Lost in Austen).

The film is set to be released here in the UK on the 31^st of October – which is before anywhere else in the world, which is nice. One minor gripe to be had is that theme song ‘Another Way to Die’ composed and performed by Alicia Keys and Jack White doesn’t really feel suitable for a Bond film – it sounds like a Marilyn Manson song, which, seeing as the film comes out over here on Hallowe’en, is kind of appropriate, I suppose…

You can check out the official trailer here, as well as that heretical Vodka Martini scene from Casino:

Zhang Yimou, who also directed Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and The Story of Qiu Ju, was formerly a cinematographer, and he is adept at stirring up emotions with his mastery of colour and mood. He possesses an intense awareness of the natural world, revealing in his camerawork the glory of the changing seasons, the weather and the gorgeous landscape of towering mountains, crisp snow and lush, golden fields. San Bao’s impassioned soundtrack, reminiscent of James Horner’s theme music for Titanic, represents a full-blooded escape from the political heavy-handedness that dogged Zhang’s earlier Mao-era features, lending this elemental love story an emotional grandeur.

The story is narrated by Luo Yusheng (Sun Honglei), a young engineer who, upon the sudden death of his father, returns from the city to the village of Sanhuetun, where he grew up. His elderly mother is consumed with grief and insists on a traditional burial following village customs. She also wants the villagers to carry her husband’s coffin the considerable distance from the hospital to the village. Yusheng’s offers of payment are rejected by the villagers, revealing the differing attitudes of old and new China – Yusheng and his contemporaries expect everything to come at a price, whereas his mother’s generation give of themselves willingly for the good of the community.

As Yusheng contemplates his father’s death he remembers the stories of his parents’ courtship, when his mother Zhao Di, played by the enchanting Zhang Ziyi, fell in love with the visiting school teacher from the city, (Zheng Hao). Di, the prettiest girl in the village who has been resisting a customary arranged marriage, is love-struck, her wide-eyed innocence only thinly disguising a stubborn, fixated passion. Too shy to approach him, yet too infatuated to withdraw, Di watches the schoolteacher from every vantage point – the forest, the well, behind the school fence. When the couple eventually marry - after two years apart due to a political “mistake” - this pattern continues, with Di visiting the school daily, listening, enthralled, to her husband’s dulcet tones.

The Road Home, and the village life it portrays, deliberately eschews the ideological wars waging in distant capitals, though their reverberations can be felt. Rather it is the simple love story that carries the film, unfolding so beautifully in a series of separate, restrained moments: A cheap hairclip, for example, which becomes the love token that will see the couple through two years of separation, and the tableau of mother and son, quietly sobbing. These subdued instances perfectly counterbalance the irrepressible passion burning in the hearts of the two main characters, and radiating through the seasons of their love in full technicolour.