I: what a much maligned word. The very essence of our existence and perpetual problems. (Phrases that any real writer would be sacked for using;) And without making the poor girl at the end of Life in a Day (who I've mentioned before) into a receptacle 'starlet' for the unbearable unbelievability of life, today for me (or rather yesterday by the time i post this from my dinosaur cave) was one of those days in flipside! (Hey: don't knock primordial til you've tried it - or indeed the use of parentheses). IIIII - get home (after spotting the only 8 people [velvet ilk] who converged on an alleyway after reading the 'let's have a London revolution' ad in Time Out (don't laugh - a couple of Hampstead New Labourites actually DID put an open house party ad in TO late 90s pre-Blair - and NO ONE spotted the decade to come??...) I avoided getting whacked over the head by the 'velvets' placating them with tales of Werner Herzog's revolutionary penguin who was really FOR REAL [in Encounters at the End of the World] after seeing we assume his/her boyfriend, yeah - what's not to like in cross-flipping gay penguins - the Emperor penguin wash up on a New Zealand beach the other week [in a menage a trois with Michael Barrymore I guess:)

Arrive home. The digital TV installers of tomorrow morning have left a card sayin' my digital connection won't take place til a week from hence. Who the hell do they think they are! We just take days off willy nilly to amuse ourselves like some bored housewife hoping (la vein helas) that the tradesperson will turn out to be Mr/Mrs/Ms G spot!!!! oh please - as many a critic in the 90's used to sigh, begging me to ghost write their reviews back in the 90's.

So: life in a day: 'cause u see I never wanted to get out of bed this morning but waking up early to the British summer of grey sky and drizzle- yeah: Tom Hanks loves the British weather too - so much so in fact he's signed up for my script about a Brit weather man who got fired for taking his TV gig too seriously and accurately (not to mention his tie and cardigan), then inherits a lighthouse, gets tortured by jealous left-wing yuppies who were gesumped from buying the lighthouse up the coast, and said weatherman takes revenge on Westminster - and 'cause he's the only guy with any revolutionary balls, the Brit public say 'what the heck' we'll get behind 'him' as our leader. Kate 'Duchess of whatever' whips her lot into line claiming (quite rightly) that she's the only one who knows how to catch the bus to Westminster and give even the semblance of cake, bread and circuses. (Harry's wearing a red nose at this point completely nonplussed). And NO Tom- there's not a part for Julia in this one (much as we still love her - mean Village Voice motherfffers...). What's not to like about Julia Roberts' smile?

Oh, life in a day: so: I did get to the 10.30am screening of Universal's Beginners and found The Standard's Derek Malcolm unusually full of joie de vivre rather than gloom after being on the jury of the Golden Apricot film festival in Armenia. You see - you just couldn't make up real life nomenclature! Nigel Andrews (film critic of the Financial Times) popped his head into the conversation just as we were taking about old age 'dropping dead' avoidance. And there across a crowded room was Metro's (the free morning commuter paper owned by The Standard) Larushka Ivan-Zadeh besporting her wonderful pregnancy - though the critics see so many horror movies it's hard not to hallucinate some inter-stellar thingamajit morphing out of her witty weekly wordswomb. Metrodome's The Violent Kind (written and directed by The Butcher Brothers...(I told you you'd never believe the really real) screened that afternoon with much of said 'transfiguration': hey if it works for a penguin.... Cheesy film- but yo: a mate was DP (that's camera guy for the lay folk) who always does a great job - e.g. the gorgeous sepia Medicine for the Melancholy that didn't even get laid in the UK after it's tiny London Film Fest appearance years ago. I know that feeling.

But then Dexter (director of Wild Bill screening next door) just couldn't resist my poker ability and rather than lose the thrippence he'd made in his career, promised me a part in his next film -that's after Robert Sheehan who as any actor worth his salt would, filled in the missing line from the Murdoch parliamentary grilling when Mr. M snr. looked totally perplexed at being asked why and who'd asked him through the back door of Downing Street....do I really need to spell out rear***). It got even more legal when Mr M snr. remembered that PM Brown also had offered him rear entry. ME - I haven't watched TV in years - so captivated by the new high tech of Plato's screening Cave I forsook Warner's Horrible Bosses and became mesmerised by the Murdoch father/son questioning by parliamentary reps. Now THAT whole argument is one to be saved for a later consideration. Suffice to say that THEY (in the broadest public sense) wanted a scapegoat and who better than the man himself THE mogul Mr M. But it sorta backed fired because though my front row (oft assuming) colleague came to the rather blunt conclusion that he was "arrogant", Mr Murdoch Snr. was rather endearing -in a way that one longed ex PM Tony Blair to be given his 'Medusa' delivery but just never could given the loud 'hissing'. Whether Mr M knew or not about the phone hacking we may or may never know as the police enquiry finds its rolling stone.

And there was something quite moving (rather than evasive) about the way a father wanted his son (James) to do proud the family name (oh shut up Elisabeth - here's a copy of Louis Althuseer to read;))- just as in Beginners where the son (Ewan McGregor) of Christopher Plummer's gay character tried to reconcile and piece together the complete inhibitions of his father's gay sexuality while he (the son) endearingly fumbles somewhat 'mumblecorishly' through his newfound relationship with the adorable kooky girl (Mélanie Laurent). (No implication here of Murdoch sexual similitude I stress;)) Though, Mr M Snr - people would pay good money to see you attempt an All That Jazz routine in a garishly coloured cravat alongside James Jnr being the 'straight' man;) They would! Piss off Simon Cowell that's MY idea, love....

And then, and then! LIFE IN A DAY gezooks! (I might have just got sloshed on vodka in bed if I hadn't arisen this morning): just as the Murdoch questioning was closing from the very impressive and attractive Conservative MP Lousie Mensch (again - I'm not making up these names,) Pow, Wham. Splat from left of TV screen, live feed cut! What just happened? Someone in the public gallery behind tried to whack Mr M!!! You're kidding! His wife Wendi instinctively with Jackie Chan DNA skills looked as if she whacked back the assailant. This is staged right? We're in The Truman Show - come on, we have to be! The Yahoo tweeter behind me says the assailant's name is Jonnie Marbles - now he's pulling my whatsie too! And he tried to whack with a plate of shaving cream?! No. no I really am hallucinating. I never really got up this morning, right - I've really been in an alcoholic stupor. No wait, I did get up. AHHHHH TRUTH where art thou?

Funny thing is, if this were Sky sports we'd have slo-mo action replay almost immediately with all the human points of contact graphically laid out so that even a kid of 5 would think he's the next best astro-pysicist understanding trajectory of shaving foam from the paucity of a human limb. But this was BBC News 24 so we had to wait 10 minutes for even a simple standard replay. Credit where credit is due Sky TV. Incredibile! My first live TV in years and I get this. There is a God after all...Mr Malick (well, Fox Searchlight did stump up the money on that experimental studio film The Tree of Life- again, credit where it's due). One MP closed the Murdoch proceedings by jovially noting that "your wife has a very good left hook," - but typical of politicians eternally confused as to which side of the chamber they inhabit, Mrs Wendi Deng actually used a 'right hook'.

Missed most of Rebekkah Brooks answers as I unexpectedly stayed on at the screening room to watch David Weissman and Bill Weber's doco We Were Here about the history of AIDS in San Francisco (not released in the UK until Nov 25). You'd think it'd been done before but, I don't remember so....And do caring people even remember that initially the gay and lesbian camps were very far from being synonymous, in fact quite the opposite. It's incredibly emotive and personally recollective but that in fact gives the film a pinpoint focus rather than something rather more diffuse. One of the most moving moments (that wouldn't be out of place in The Sun or even The News of The World) is when one man describes how some who'd lost loved ones couldn't even afford to buy flowers. And amidst all the day's bluster, political maneuvering, coaching and guile, a real world was emerging. I had really woken up this morning. All of us lie to some extent sometimes. To save someone, rather than to harm them. But when does an illegal act become welcomed in the public interest rather than becoming a hinderance? If everyone is now in the public eye, or in Mr. M Snr's words demanding the need for "transparency", what does the law mean? Aren't we all complicit in this 3-ring circus of life? As Mr. M Snr noted in his answers, the city with least political corruption in the world is Singapore because they pay their democratically elected politicians an unbribable wage.

The trouble with Britain is that some of the most important (arguably unskilled) jobs such as security guards and CCTV monitors have such derisory salaries no human in their right mind would turn down a tempting offer from the dark side. (Seeing a new print of Brit B/W classic The Lavender Hill Mob was such a treat this week. It really does look different on that big screen...) People don't think that their son or loved one might be killed walking along that collapsing ill-constructed bridge that they could really not be bothered properly attending to. Whereas in America they can't get away from that democratic thought. And ironically Mr M Snr who controls Fox News in the States today admitted that Britain was far more transparent in regards to freedom of the press than America.

A day full of fascinating insights and contradictions into our life on earth. The whole crux of capitalism and the free world is creating desire. Desire for something just out of our grasp and yet only just enough so that we think we can trick it into our orbit. Like the old comedian's slight of foot sketch of seemingly almost grabbing the ball or whatnot and yet kicking it at the same time. It's both a reality and yet an illusion. Over the years, Mr Murdoch has given the world what it thinks it desires in many markets but most particularly in Britain. So much so that this country's democratically elected political elite thinks that is exactly what it too desires in their collusion with the Murdoch press. But it's a movable yet stationary feast just like the greedy buccaneers in countless movie adventures who melt into stone after believing in the illusory table of bountiful sustenance. While Britain foolishly sold off ALL its viable assets to foreign lands over the decades, a plucky young Ozzie Mr Rupert Murdoch spotted an ailing paper that over the century had caused even a true socialist such as George Orwell to sink into his armchair with gleeful slaver and savor. The News of the World fed The Sun and vice versa. Murdoch moved onto greater conquests. Britain, alas did not.

And would the world be a better place if democratic newspapers and democracies treated their readers and constituents as if they were their own son and daughter? No direct Murdoch family reference intended (I really do stress), but Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear just wouldn't bullshit her father like his other siblings. For that act she was banished. And ultimately the wise (or foolish depending on one's viewpoint) old Lear who thought he'd done his best in life? He ended his life carrying his daughter's carcass in his arms. No, no, no, no! The fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves. Murdoch is being made out in many quarters to be in search of his childhood 'Rosebud' (Citizen Kane). The man can be no saint but is there any proof that he is actually really a sinner? And may I posit the very unfashionable view that just maybe, and very perversely, the man is actually giving readers their Rosebud rather than searching for his own.

When Murdoch referred to making proud his own newspaper man father in his closing remarks today, I was genuinely moved. No! Please don't lynch me for saying that. Moved in a way that made me hate former PM Tony Blair's spin even more - (unfair perhaps I know but...) though there's certainly skill involved in that. Most people one meets (both sides of the Atlantic) try to find an excuse for not doing something. That someone, something or other let them down in life. And I thought of my own father (also an Australian) who passed away earlier this year. He was no saint either. And often I hated his guts to be honest and in many ways still do. But am I dead? No. Did I become a drug addict? No. Did I become a failure? No. In a very perverse way do I still love him? Yes, undeniably. Very much so. And why? Because although he was as straight-laced as anyone else of his generation, my father entertained the possibility of life's impossible. And as unfashionable a view as it might be I believe Murdoch has offered people that same choice. The fact that they have ignored or been to ignorant to question that choice is not a blame to be dumped on his doorstep.

Who is guilty and of what in the phone hacking scandal is for the government/police investigation to possibly uncover. And it is far from insignificant. But why are most people incapable of interrogating an equally significant and far bigger question about their lives? If everyone's a celebrity then no one is! Murdoch's tabloids ruthlessly (and arguably cruelly as well as illegally) made money out of holding a mirror up to nature: we live in a democracy so any celebrification has to be both normal (down the pub like us) and abnormal (how do we ever get to afford that fashion look). The result is a bit akin to the film Back to the Future where matter cannot possibly occupy simultaneous temporal spaces else it logically destroys itself. Thus is the story of many in Murdoch's tabloids. Thus is the dilemma of our society.

The Big Picture (not a bad transliteration of the film's French title L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie) shows a man who thinks he knows what he wants to the extent of killing another and taking that identity whilst erasing his own by a faked death. The irony is that he is ultimately reborn by surrendering, or rather unwittingly creating yet another 'identity' for a total stranger. Many people never resurface from those waves. But he did. Maybe he had a 'Rosebud' or maybe not. But he stopped clinging to a past in which there was no hope in finding him a future. German director Alexander Kluge's films are all to do with that. Brit indie Treacle Jnr about the sadness of London streets also explores that catharsis. As doco director Molly Dineen has often pointed out in interviews the British don't have amnesia about the past it's that they so often just don't want to remember. But remembering isn't clinging. And it most certainly isn't about worshipping anything let alone in a refection. At least not unless one wants any chance of survival. Of waking up to another life in a day rather than forever trying to avoid it.