For the first time ever watched Four Weddings and a Funeral (don't ask), and was struck to hear "Love Is All Around" by the Troggs. This was not the first song that was also in Love Actually but it was the one I could remember and that caught my ear. Then I discover in fact the two movies have something else in common: Richard Curtis, who directed Love Actually and wrote the screenplay for it, Four Weddings, and the dreadful Notting Hill. It seems Curtis owes Grant a debt of gratitude...or the other way around. Hard to say.
Curtis is a longtime collaborator with Rowan Atkinson, having worked with him on the immortal Mr. Bean as well as Blackadder (baaaaa!).
Anyways, this is mostly just a rambling entry, but here's the text of W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues":
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Bonus Four Weddings and a Funeral observation: Matthew (the faggot who was ass-pirating the old bearded guy) was played by John Hannah who you might also remember from The Mummy (the dorky brother of Rachel Weisz). The thing I noticed during Four Weddings is that he sounds amazingly like Lord of the Rings hobbit Billy Boyd (or possibly Dominic Monaghan, I can't remember now which he sounded like, and no way am I turning that movie back on).
