E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Eyewear 's favourite film has been Vertigo for some time ( see my post from four years ago ).  How could it not be?  The fetishism, scopophilia, love-death soundtrack, high romance, and melancholia of desire all make it grist for my mill.  So though I love Welles and his Kane , the news that Sight & Sound 's once-a-decade critics poll has finally moved Hitch 's greatest film to top place - a vertiginous place - is news to celebrate.

I was in Leytonstone, in London's far East End, out past where the Olympics will be held next year, in 2012 ( Eyewear readers may recall that one of my first ever posts, in 2005, was about the announcement that London had won the bid).  I was reading out there today with John Stiles , and with a band, Public Speech (worth checking out for their online hit, ' The Queen's Speech ').  Anyway, the Leytonstone tube station features 17 mosaics honoring Alfred Hitchcock , the greatest British film director of all time, who was born there in 1899.  There are some lovely buildings in Leytonstone, but trying to locate the house where Hitch was born was sad, because 517 High Road is now a petrol station (it must have been an area bombed in the war).  Anyway, the mosaics are brilliant, and really should be on every visitor's radar.  Above is the one for 'North by North-West' with the famous crop-duster scene.