Stan's collection, Adaptation, Gran Torino

My son collects films - DVDs and Blu-ray. He knows that he doesn't need to do this; he knows that soon nobody will need a hard copy because they can just stream them, but he wants to own the artifacts that he likes the most, and these things are films.

Adaptation is a study in absurdity in that it stops being an examination of how hard it is to create art and becomes a study in how easy it is to undermine a high purpose by adopting a formula, and it is very funny. Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep play their roles brilliantly, and as for Chris Cooper, you don't know he's acting. I think it should have won a screenwriting Oscar for being original and clever, but having said that, having the writer (Charlie Kaufman) up there talking to himself is not new. Alan Bennett has also done it. He wrote about writing about a tricky subject in "The Lady in the Van", and dramatised his arguments with himself, presumably he had the joy of casting someone who could imitate himself. In this film you have a writer who's writing about another writer's account of her interactions and feelings with a rough diamond orchid stealer. It sounds crazy and in the end it is. But when the writer has got stuck in a hole, his twin brother Donald (who doesn't exist) is there with his worldly advice and by using all the non -respectable schlocky writing tricks in the book, he pulls it all together.

I can't tell you how not interested I am in cars. I had no idea that a Gran Torino is a car. But I gave ten minutes to a film of that name and then I had to watch the whole thing. It's great - a beautifully constructed film with a strong story. The car has practically nothing to do with it - it's a film about poverty of opportunity in the immigrant community, gang culture, and an angry old boy who doesn't give a shit, and then learns to give a shit. It says on the box it's a must-see, and I do agree, for a change. Clint Eastwood; what a guy.

Postscript: The Donald Kaufman character says something wonderful about love. He loved a girl and she laughed at him behind his back. He said he knew she laughed but he loved her and she couldn't take that away from him. Charlie says "but she thought you were pathetic." Donald says "That was her business. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago."

That's for all of us who loved in vain, someone who laughed at us.