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p. We’ve been meaning to go and see the film ‘[“Goodbye Lenin!(IO Film review)”:http://www.iofilm.co.uk/fm/g/goodbyelenin2003.shtml]’ for weeks, but we only got around to actually going yesterday evening. We both love watching films, but the cinema is a slightly inconvenient distance away so apathy often overwhelms any film-watching urges. Certain films really make hauling your body out of the door worth it though, and ‘Goodbye Lenin!’ is certainly in that category.

p. The film, directed by Wolfgang Becker, tells the story of a family living in the Communist GDR, from the point of view of the son—Alexander. When the father leaves the family and escapes to the West, the mother has a nervous breakdown, and spends months in a hospital, not speaking to anyone. When she recovers, she becomes a fanatical poster-girl for the Communist regime, writing supportive but critical letters to the Party leaders about such burning issues as the skimpy sizing of the regulation knickers. So when she sees Alexander being beaten up by the police while participating in a pro-democracy demonstration, the cognitive dissonance it produces is enough to give her a heart attack. She spends the next eight months in a coma, while Alexander does everything he can to bring her back.

p. By the time she comes out of the coma, everything she knows has changed; the Berlin wall has fallen, the Communist regime has gone, and Burger King™ and Coke™ have moved in. The doctor warns Alexander that she must not be excited or upset, or she might have another heart attack—this time, a fatal one. So Alexander weaves a complicated illusion that nothing has changed. Or rather, he creates a fictional GDR, where everything is as he wishes it might have been—not how it actually was.

p. The film is funny, touching and gently satirical, and the characters are very engaging. It’s certainly worth dragging yourself out for if it’s showing in your area, or you could just wait until the DVD comes out.

p. Two days ago, “Bare Bones Software”:http://www.barebones.com/support/mailsmith/updates.shtml updated my new [“favourite email application”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000355.html]—Mailsmith—to version 2.0.1. As ever, there were what seemed like thousands of improvements and fixes listed, so I just scanned over the first few. When I fired up the update, I immediately noticed one improvement which had been very subtly bothering me in 2.0. When you highlight an item in the mail list which has a coloured label applied, the labelling is now shown in all its glory, as you can see in the screen capture above. It’s beautifully done, giving you the best of both worlds; you can see that the item is highlighted, and you can clearly see the label in the most important fields (the subject of the mail and the label).

p. I find myself using the labels more and more in Mailsmith. As you can see, you can give a custom name to labels, filter using labels as a criterion, or execute an action with an Applescript. So, using a script produced by [“Jan Erik Moström”:http://www.mostrom.pp.se/info/ms/scripts/scr0015.html], I have a script that moves emails labelled ‘Priority1’, ‘Priority2’ or ‘Priority3’ to my ‘ToDo’ mailbox, and those labelled ‘Follow up’ to my (yes, you’ve guessed it) ‘Follow up’ mailbox. It’s a very quick and easy way of sorting the wheat from the chaff in a packed inbox, and the coloured labels help you quickly see what needs to be dealt with first.