This sporting life

With the Rugby League World Cup having got underway in Australia at the weekend, the site of this fast-paced game, with sweaty athletic bodies running around a pitch, reminded us at Bookshelf Boyfriend Towers to watch a film that none of us had seen for years. 

This Sporting Life, directed by Lindsey Anderson in 1963, centres around Frank Machin (played by Richard Harris), a Rugby League player from Wakefield in Yorkshire.

If you’ve never understood the allure of Rugby League, or its importance to industrial working towns in northern England, then this film will enlighten you and demonstrate how utterly compelling it can be.  Not only that, This Sporting Life is one of the greatest British films ever made.  A “kitchen sink drama” figure-heading the new wave of social realist filmmaking in the 1960s Britain, it is beautifully shot and beguilingly acted – winning Richard Harris the best actor award in Cannes. 

Not necessarily the happiest film you’ll ever see,  but if you only need one reason to watch it, we are all agreed here that Richard Harris looks Hot!

 

This Sporting Life is available to buy at Amazon:

This Sporting Life (DVD) [1963]

If you want to find out more about the Rugby League World Cup, the official site is:

http://www.rlwc08.com/

If you want to know what on earth Rugby League is, why its so great, and get to grip with the rules, then read our Girls guide to Rugby League at Bookshelf Boyfriend.com.

 

Hurrah for Helen, and Meryl, and Greta…

We were shocked to read over the weekend, that Greta Scacchi, now 48, once went to visit a plastic surgeon to see if he could rectify the small problem she saw as being the “hollow” below her eyes – we’re still struggling to work out what this is.  

Its not that she went to see the plastic surgeon in an attempt to resolve what sounds like a complex since childhood – most of us have those moments of thinking “if only I could rectify my this that or the other my life would be sorted” moments.  Our shock is that despite the fact that she is still one of the most beautiful women to grace our screens, all those years ago she left the surgeon, devastated, with a whole list of problems; from her nose being too small to her underbite being to big and her chin too long.

Luckily for us, she saw the sense once the bill arrived and didn’t go ahead with any of the procedures.

There seems to be a greater appreciation these days for natural beauties in older women, helped by the likes of Dame Helen Mirren (62) looking fantastic last week in a red bikini – and looking better than most of us here at BB Towers, despite us being 30 years her junior.

And then there’s the forever beautiful Meryl Streep, who, at 59, has once again seen box office and now chart success this week for her dynamic role in the film version of Mama Mia this. She is once reported to have attributed her perfect skin to “actively not touching it with her hands” – if only we’d all listened to that tip ten years ago!

The truly marvellous thing about these actresses is that they provide a fantastic example for us 20 and 30 somethings, and an avenue of aspiration away from the nip-tuck culture we’ve been subjected to over the last few years. These women are all the more beautiful and distinguished for the fact they haven’t had surgical intervention, and we should all take heed and not resign ourselves to a trip to the surgeon once we hit 40. Helen, Meryl and Greta – we love you!

For a little non-evasive help and advice on maintaining your natural good looks and beauty for the years ahead, check out our article on strength training for women in the Bookshelf Boyfriend sport and fitness section, and our tips to great skin.

 

[ASM]