Jamie Fox

Dinner with Glyn and Michelle – savoury mushroom on filo pastry, Moroccan spicy chicken with couscous and pureed vegetables, home made ice cream (pistachio) with pears – and some nice South African pinot.

Watched the film Collateral, with Jamie Fox and Tom Cruise, directed by Michael Mann. This won Jamie his second Oscar nomination this year for best supporting actor (Best Actor for Ray) and I think this may well be deserved – a low key performance, building over the movie to a strong piece with a real sense of his character emerging. The film itself, however, a great disappointment. Cruise is efficient and effective as a “doing my job” as the best professional assassin in the business, but the film was repetitive, long and the dialogue poor. Michael Mann can do better.

Continuing my reading of James Lees-Milne’s biography of Harold Nicolson. An interesting man – diplomat, writer (novels and biography of literary figures such as Tennyson, Swinburne, Pope). Married to the bi-sexual Vita Sackville West – herself a novelist and poet – who had several steamy lesbian affairs, most particularly with Virginia Woolfe. The period I am at right now in the book is that between the two wars when Nicolson was consul in Persia (now Iran). Some wonderful descriptions of diplomatic life.

At work on my book on Innovative Enterprises with Don Simpson. Looking at why Canadian productivity is so low. Interesting.