Just my luck that falling ill again I miss all the art circuses this week. The worlds of New Yorkers can oftentimes be quite small so if the art world isn't your milieu, perhaps the week needs 'spelling out', namely: The Armory Show, INDEPENDENT, and Moving Image - a new art fair of contemporary video.

My initial inverted self-anger at missing all the fun then morphed into solipsism as I asked myself, does it all really matter? In a city where's there's an art opening practically every night of the week can one get just too obsessed? Too insular? Apart from all the 'business' perhaps a young artist might just have been lucky enough to have hooked themselves a deal this week. I'm reminded that a friend of mine years ago attended the Cannes Film Festival on a whim wing and a prayer and landed herself a tipsy Hollywood honcho's signature on paper for her script. Not that it was ever eventually produced. Still, stranger things can happen.

And I mused upon such things having wangled myself into a preview of The Adjustment Bureau - a film based on sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick's 1954 story Adjustment Team. And reminded of my quips last year about my ex-boyfriend marrying me off to a 'Duke of Devonshire' on my London trip. Well if you're tired of Manhattan's least attractive trait of having to be seen to do/marry 'the right thing', then The Adjustment Bureau is the movie for you/us.

It came hot on the heels of me crying my heart out at re-watching on DVD A Place in the Sun and the Brit film Never Let Me Go. Was the romance of poor boss' nephew Monty Clift and socialite heiress Elizabeth Taylor doomed from the start? Can we ever find our 'place in the sun'? Never Let Me Go (based on Kazuo Ishiguro's quasi sci-fi novel) is about a love that is only truly consummated in death. Not a perfect film by any means but an incredibly haunting and beautiful one.

There are some fascinating extras on A Place in the Sun including memories of director George Stevens. Director Rouben Mamoulian: "When you see [his film] Giant those figures are bigger than life, there's nobility there's strength there's power in them. And you walk out [of the cinema] and say, goodness, I am proud to be a human being rather than saying isn't it a shame I'm a human being what can I do about it."

It's quite an impressive leap from the short story original to the sweeping big screen The Adjustment Bureau adaptation by writer/director George Nolfi. And it's probably more interesting to read the story after seeing the movie rather than before as it will only enhance rather than detract the experience. To say that it's a bit like The Truman Show - Peter Weir's film about the guy who doesn't realise that from birth his life's been one big reality TV show - is to say only that. The couple in The Adjustment Bureau - rising politician David Norris (Matt Damon) who bumps into and unexpectedly kisses dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) - have their lives dogged 'in the wings' by men in grey suits i.e. all lives in this world have been pre-programmed without happenstance. And it really is quite a 'Manhattan' film as much as many won't like to admit it. Without giving too much away, David tries defying the suits, fails, but then by riding the same bus he last left Elise on every day for 3 years he unexpectedly spots her. The suits are furious - particularly as David is hot political property and Elise is destined to marry a leading choreographer. Are there holes in this as a modern day sci-fi story? Well, not really if you consider it to be an allegory as director George Nolfi does successfully. Do we ever have free will? Must compromises in life be inevitable?

If you want something that's perhaps a little more realistically gritty but no less 'romantic' then I also caught up with the Sundance indie hit from some years ago Gigantic: it's hard to fault any of the elements of this film. Post Valentine's Day, and as much as we keep reminding ourselves that day is all just an advertising gimmick, there is hope for us hopeless romantics and that we don't just have to stick to being a cog in someone else's wheel.
I did venture the invite into some other darkened celluloid corners this week, much of which should remain nameless....The wondrous films of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul are all also about love, though. His latest Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (this year's Cannes Film Fest winner) plays Film Forum. Or try Syndromes and a Century.

Interesting news clipping from London:
Garrick Club in 'sexism' war of the century