Matt Sullivan

I remember, as a kid, getting a pair of 3D glasses in the tv guide -- a cardboard affair with cheap plastic lenses, one red, one green (or was it blue?). And I remember, as a kid, watching the tiny screen in the living room as some truly awful film played in truly awful 3D, and being enraptured ...

Then, in the mid-nineties, I went to Universal Studios in Orlando and watched the Muppet 3D show; Miss Piggy in three dimensions is a sight to behold ... and I was as happy as a pig in muck, pun intended.

I've been on the road due to work commitments for a number of days now: flew out from London on Sunday to San Francisco, from there to LA on Monday (where I flew right over the forest fires that are raging in the hills north of the city), and from there to Seattle on Wednesday. I fly out again tomorrow to hit Boston, and will be back in the big smoke of London next week. Quite the travelling lifestyle; I could do with a few more hours sleep, a lot less hotel and airport food and a tad more exercise.

I recently set myself the lofty goal of sitting down and actually watching all those classic and seminal films that are so often quoted and talked about by those in the know.

The reason for this sudden interest in classic movies? I have a habit, late at night, when I'm tried enough so that my brain switches off, yet not tired enough to drag my carcass to bed, to sit and watch some random film on the TV, in my eclectic DVD collection, or downloaded (legally, I might point out, though a service such as Vizumi).

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by Neil Gaiman -- well, more of an interview really, lead by a journalist from the Guardian -- where Mr. Gaiman entertained and delighted the audience for an hour of so. I had read that he was an accomplished speaker and reader of his own works, and the truth was borne out as he read an excerpt from Stardust, which, as a movie, goes on release in the UK this week. He was open, witty and armed with many humorous anecdotes.

Last Monday week I had to fly to Nice, France on work business. I lived in Nice back in 2001/2002 for around six months, and I had not been back there since. It was strange, landing in an airport that I knew intimately (I flew in and out of it at least monthly while I lived there), and yet had not walked through it in years. It was a real shame that I did not make it into the city proper; time would simply not permit.