I found this at goingunderground and thought it was pretty eerie. It's almost like a gallery of the lost souls of the underground - doomed to look at a sign saying 'Edgeware 1 minute' for all eternity.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles was on the tv last night so of course I watched it again for about the 25 millionth time and it made me laugh as much as ever. The scene where they drive the wrong way down the freeway is one of my Mothers all time funniest ever sequences. Unbelievably its 16 years old - seems like another world - Steve Martin was still funny and John Candy was still alive. It's also a kind of watershed - between 1984 and 1987 (3 years!!) John Hughes made or wrote the following movies :- Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Since then nothing but shit.

In that list alone there are three totally standout movies for me :-

The Breakfast Club. I got this out of the video shop with my sister and it was the first time we had agreed on anything. You could almost say it marked a sea change in our relaionsip [ from actively murderous to sneeringly tolerant ;-) ].

Ferris Bueller. I saw this when it came out with Mr C and we both thought it was fantastic. I was in Chicago last New Year and naturally had to go the Art Institute just because Ferris, Cameron & Sloan did. I too have zoned out at A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte à la Cameron. Plus of course I had a major thing for Mia Sara.

16 Candles. I never saw this at the time but years later I was working for a certain dot com who shall remain nameless and was trapped in New York over the weekend. I knew nobody in town, my colleagues were GRIM - fully paid up 'I only wear black from Ralph Lauren' idiots, and I desperately wanted to be back in London with my chums. To cap it all off I had a truly horrific cold which together with the 100° heat kept me on the verge of conking out altogether. Anyway I managed to get out of the office by about 8 and got a cab all the way back uptown to the UN Plaza which I have to admit is not too shabby:-

So I crashed back in my room, turned the aircon up to 11, opened the curtains to get the view along 1st Avenue :

and watched 16 Candles while eating my way through $80 worth of expense account shrimp. And by the end of it I felt brilliant.

I guess the question is what happens to people? I don't suppose JH woke up one morning and thought "Hey I've made some of the best teen movies of all time so from now on I'm going to make nothing but stinkers."? And where did it all go wrong for Steve Martin : L.A. Story.