David Thewlis is the ugliest actor in the world

It would not be an exaggeration to say that John Boyne's book 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' is one of my favourites - and that is a hard list to get on to. It would be an understatement to say that the film version is just plain shit. I am often criticised by my many readers for writing overlong film reviews, so let's make this one short. This film is shit.

But in finishing like that how do I take a pot-shot at David Thewlis? I can't resist even the smallest opportunity to put the question out to the Hollywood decision makers... Why do you keep putting this ugly man in major motion pictures? Does anybody want to watch ugly people when an attractive one is surely waiting in the wings to play the role? My theatrically trained flatmate Richard could have done that part, and he's very easy on the eye - according to the citizens of Malaysia (very pretty). I could spend this entire review discussing the reasons why David Thewlis should be used to lower the sexual drive of peodophiles but I had better talk about the film.

It was shit. But was this because the book is so great and near impossible to bring to the screen. Director Mark Herman takes a book filled with subtlety and the nuances of a young boy and turns it into a broad coloured-in World War II drama that just happens to feature a young boy living in the middle of a nazi concentration camp. The book is more of a pencil sketch with every moment told from the perspective of Bruno, the 8 year old protaganist. In the book he calls Hitler 'the fury' and Auswich is 'Out With'. In the film we don't discover things like an 8 year old, and this makes it just another film set in World War II about a nazi concentration camp with a kid thrown into the mix.

Vera Farmiga as the Mother is excellent, it must have been so hard for her to look David Thewlis lovingly in the eye when I'm sure she just wanted to say: "You are even more grotesque than you looked in Basic Instinct 2" (I digress). Asa Butterfiled is just not good enough to capture Bruno and I could never engage with him because he looks just like that kid from the Omen (remake -not original). Plus in another casting calamity the kid who played Bruno's Jewish buddy looked a little bit retarded - I was cheering when they dropped the pellets.

I tried tried tried to love this film as much as the book. I am generally not a book / film comparer - I would rather treat them as seperate mediums, and would always see a film over reading the book - but this is my exception.

Read the book. Let's work together to rid the world of David Thewlis once and for all.

Unbelieveable things from Joan's mouth 1...

Flatmate Joan (yes, the one with the vibrators) does say some very interesting things on occasion. Last weekend during a routine conversation she shocked Richard and I with her viewpoint on race relations when she uttered: "It's the bad type of white people I don't like". As if this jaw dropping statement was not enough for Richard and I (both white) she then finished with: "I'd forgive it from an ethnic person". An. Ethnic. Person? Richard has gone away for a few days (coincidence - I think not).