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Up

There are only two things on TV that make me cry – the Lion King (and who doesn’t?) and footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The first… well… like I said… who doesn’t… and the second… I guess something about studying the Cold War from beginning to end gives the end a certain climactic resonance.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  A lot of TV can induce in me other severe reactions; Elizabeth: the Golden Age gave me an asthma attack within the first ten minutes it was so historically and dramatically bad.  Most Saturday night TV between the hours of 6.30 and 8.30 p.m. induces violent verbal abuse at my long-suffering remote control.  I think possibly my least honourable moment was in that moment in Superman Returns, that moment with that waterfall and that precarious take off and that rising island and that long silence in that excruciating moment of tension as that plane vanishes off the bottom of that screen, when the entire cinema was sat in horrified silence, every bum teetering on the edge of the seat, do-they, don’t-they… that was naturally, the moment, in that peak of horror, when I felt the need to shout ‘hah!’ at the top of my lungs in the agonised silence, earning me a punch from my neighbour and piss-taking for many years yet to come.

Anyway…

All this being so, I was more than a bit surprised and a tad embarrassed to find myself sat in the cinema watching Up, crying (very quietly!) within the first ten minutes.  I had no idea what to expect of Up, and still can’t tell you what it was, or how it happened, or what came to pass, only that it was utterly delightful, funny, moving, engaging and well worth the silly money that my local cinema seems to ask for a Sunday night viewing.  Without wanting to really say more… go see… or if it’s too late to go see… borrow the DVD… it is well worth it…