To know me is to know how much I ADORE Colin Firth! He's done a recent BBC production set to air in the UK dealing with homelessness and it showcases the different ways that people end up in such a fix. The article is here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6148446.stm

BBC drama tackles homelessness

Colin Firth plays Mark who is gripped by guilt at his wealthColin Firth and Robert Carlyle star in the BBC's Born Equal, an emotional tale which looks at how hardship, poverty and wealth affects people's lives.

The film tells the story of social inequality in the UK through the lives of several characters living in temporary housing accommodation.
Firth plays Mark, a rich city worker who enjoys a comfortable lifestyle.
But he feels pangs of guilt when he is confronted with how other people, less fortunate than he, are forced to exist.
Mark embarks on a personal journey to try and make a difference in a world that could not be more different from his own.
"My character is the hardest to sympathise with, because people seem to think it's incorrect to sympathise with the one who has actually got the material things," he said.
The idea is that it could happen to anyone
Dominic Savage, Born Equal director"I think that's an unimaginative view... but nevertheless there is nothing attractive about the poor little rich boy.
"Once having taking it on I was fascinated by the complexity of someone in that situation."
The other characters all have their own stories to tell with one thing in common; they are all seeking refuge.
Heavily-pregnant Michelle, played by Anne-Marie Duff, moves into temporary accommodation with her daughter after fleeing a violent husband.
Her character forms an intriguing friendship with Robert (Robert Carlyle) who is attempting to find his feet after being released from prison.
Sense of deprivation
Yemi (David Oyelowo), and his wife Itshe (Nikki Amuka-Bird) had to leave Nigeria for asylum in the UK. The couple find themselves in a race against time, as they try to raise enough money to bring their family safely over to the UK too.
Firth, 46, said he found playing Mark a challenge as he "identified with him so little".

Everyone likes to think they're safe, but we're not, that's the eye-opener
Anne-Marie Duff
And he hopes the gripping storyline will make people more aware of the issue of homelessness, especially at Christmas time.
"I think maybe if this film gets under your skin, it will feel a little bit different the next time you go down an underpass and walk past a homeless person," he said.
"Films can turn into reference points and it just might pass into people's hard-drives somewhere," he added.
Bafta award-winning writer and director Dominic Savage, who describes the story as "satisfying and emotional", is confident the gritty tale will have an emotional impact.
The sterile rooms in which most of the film is shot gives the audience, a real sense of deprivation.
The silent and uncomfortable pauses used cleverly in several scenes highlight how easily the television and radio is taken for granted in most people's homes.
"I think, hopefully, what this film will do is engage people and realise that everyone has a story. The idea is that it could happen to anyone," he said.

Robert plays a former convict who tries to find his mother
Before Savage started work on the film he embarked in some research which involved meeting with people who live in hostels.
He also encouraged the actors to do the same.
Duff met women who, like her character, had escaped violent relationships.
It was something Duff, who starred in Channel 4's Shameless, found emotional.
"It was very upsetting and you can't help but be moved," she said.
"We're all only a few steps away from some dark corners.
"Everyone likes to think they're safe, but we're not, that's the eye-opener."

Real Live Female 007!

It's too bad she didn't get the recognition till after she passed away. Here's a cool artical about Virginia Hall who worked for British Intelligence in France during WWII.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16157305/

Ambassadors to honor female WWII spy
Envoys to remember American who was ‘heartbeat’ of French Resistance

Dec 11, 2006
BALTIMORE - In 1942, the Gestapo circulated posters offering a reward for the capture of "the woman with a limp. She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies and we must find and destroy her."
The dangerous woman was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore native working in France for British intelligence, and the limp was the result of an artificial leg. Her left leg had been amputated below the knee about a decade earlier after she stumbled and blasted her foot with a shotgun while hunting in Turkey.
The injury derailed Hall's dream of becoming a Foreign Service officer because the State Department wouldn't hire amputees, but it didn't prevent her from becoming one of the most celebrated spies of World War II.
On Tuesday, the French and British ambassadors plan to honor Hall, who died in 1982 at age 78, at a ceremony at the home of French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte in Washington.
British Ambassador Sir David Manning plans to present a certificate signed by King George VI to Hall's niece, Lorna Catling. Hall should have received the document in 1943, when she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.
"I think it was ironic that the State Department turned her down because she was an amputee, and here she went on and did all this other stuff," said Catling, who lives in Baltimore. Catling said she didn't learn many of the details of her aunt's espionage career until after her death.
Hall, who was fluent in French, was living in Paris when the Nazis invaded in 1940, and she decamped for London, where she was recruited by the secret British paramilitary service, the Special Operations Executive, becoming its first female field operative.
Hall was sent to Lyon, becoming "the heartbeat" of the local French Resistance, said Judith L. Pearson, whose biography of Hall, "Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's First Female Spy," was published last year.
"Any agent from London came through her flat. She coordinated them with Resistance members," Pearson said. "Most agents only stayed about three months in the field. She stayed 15 months."
Travels with CuthbertAfter the Gestapo wanted posters made her situation untenable, she fled through the Pyrenees mountains into Spain. During the journey, she sent a radio message to London, reporting that "Cuthbert" — her nickname for her prosthetic leg — was giving her trouble.
Her commanders didn't understand the reference, and their reply suggested the gravity of Hall's circumstances and her value to the Allied cause: "If Cuthbert troublesome eliminate him."
Back in London, she joined the American Office of Strategic Services — the precursor to the CIA — and returned to France in 1944, disguised as an elderly peasant. She located parachute drop zones where money and weapons could be passed to Resistance fighters and later coordinated guerrilla warfare. Her teams destroyed bridges, derailed freight trains and killed scores of German soldiers.
"I would certainly put her name in the pantheon of people who distinguished themselves in intelligence," said Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, which has an exhibit devoted to Hall.
Kept her counsel after the warHall maintained her cloak of secrecy after the war. The certificate that went with her British OBE medal sat in a vault for more than 50 years because the British government was unable to track her down.
In the meantime, OSS chief William Donovan had presented Hall with a Distinguished Service Medal in September 1945 during a private ceremony in his office that was witnessed only by Hall's mother. She was the only civilian woman to win the medal for service in World War II.
In 1950 she married French-born OSS agent Paul Goillot. She took a job with the CIA in 1951 and retired in 1966, living out her days with her husband on a farm in Barnesville.
"She would talk about books and she was very into animals and things like that. But work, no. There was a big wall about anything like that," Catling said. "She always seemed kind of glamorous and mysterious."
On the rare occasions that Hall told war stories, they weren't particularly harrowing.
"One time she said she and Paul found a deserted chateau, and they discovered a whole wine cellar," Catling said. "They had a wonderful evening enjoying that." Heee I bet she did, and well deserved too!

First Time Out of the Shoot

This is my first post on Blogger. I'm not new to the world of blogging. I've had another blog for more than a year now and I do really enjoy having a special place on the web.
In a way it's like having your own newspaper column. The problem is you may not be writing what someone finds interesting enough to read. Unlike being paid to write this "column", you do it because you just want to have a voice and to be heard. You can't be fired by yourself [unless you just delete the whole blog] and if someone makes a stupid comment, you can delete it if you like.
Sometimes blogging is just part of a cyber challenge to see how cool you can make your personal space look. I know I've learned in one year of blogging how to add media players and backgrounds to my post. I feel like I've come along with what I can do on a webpage. I've enjoyed working with graphics and making cool signs.
I may not update this particular blog very often as my loyalties seem to lie with my MSN Live Space that I created and morphed into my special place to put my thoughts or current happenings, but for the sheer fun of it, I'm accepting a new challenge over here at Blogger.