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To the Glasgow Film Theatre for a special preview of the feature film of Brideshead Revisited.

The cinema may be packed but producer Douglas Rae is under no illusions.

Introducing the film, he asks how many people in the audience saw the ITV series in 1981.

Almost everyone in the audience puts their hands up.

"And how many of you loved the series?"

He shakes his head in mock despondency as almost every hand in the place goes back up.

Making a film of such an iconic TV series was always going to be a challenge but actually even for those of us who remember the original with a warm wash of nostalgia, it's a pretty good adaptation.

The young actors who play Charles, Sebastian and Julia - Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell - are so young they hadn't seen the original series and Whishaw in particular gives a more subtle, poignant performance as poor, pampered Sebastian.

The older actors of course are overshadowed by the weighty cast who appeared last time around.

But Michael Gambon follows gamely in Laurence Olivier's footsteps as the exiled family patriarch Lord Marchmain and Patrick Malahide gives a hilariously acerbic performance as Charles Ryder's father, which more than matches that of the mighty John Gielgud.

Douglas Rae admits Emma Thompson wasn't his first choice as Lady Marchmain - "I think she plays it a bit like Helen Mirren in the Queen, it's a very regal performance" - but instead wanted the famous froideur of Kristin Scott Thomas.

But the studio Miramax would only agree to three newcomers in the central roles, if they had at least one bankable name on the cast, and Emma Thompson's name is one of the most bankable in Hollywood terms.

For the record, I thought she was fantastic.

A brilliant mixture of pious and poison, with just the tiniest glimpses of humanity beneath her icy facade.

The story is nicely potted into two hours without missing any of the plot, and particularly not the crux of the religious argument which is still the central point of the story.

There are some beautiful symbolic moments which capture some of the more minute details of the novel and it looks lavish and sumptuous.

But it's not just audiences who have to be won over.

The film-makers agreed they wouldn't make any radical changes to the novel or its characters, and any minor changes had to be approved by the Waugh Family.

A neat little turning of tables which would have amused Evelyn Waugh, who famously worked with Graham Greene on a screenplay in the 50s which was rejected by the studios of the time for being far too risque.

But this time round, the film has made it to the big screen - and the family gave it their approval just weeks ago.

"It was the longest silence after a film I've ever endured," recalls Douglas Rae, "really unsettling, and then they decided they like it."

Of course the one constant in both film and TV series is the setting - Castle Howard in Yorkshire.

Like Emma Thompson, not the immediate choice of the producer.

"We looked at about 25 different houses across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland," says Rae.

"Being a Scot, I'd have loved to have used Hopetoun House but the Forth Bridge was in too many of the views.

"I was also keen on Chatsworth and got as far as having tea with the Duchess of Devonshire who announced it would be £25,000 per day."

"But your grace, we'll be on location for three months, I said.

And she replied, "I know. It's £25,000 per day."

"But the great thing was that word got back pretty quickly to Simon Howard who immediately dropped his price, which is how we ended up back at Castle Howard.

"But it had everything we needed, the space for all the equipment, the long driveway, the views and of course the house itself."

Brideshead Revisited (12A) opens in cinemas on 3 October.

Oh dear Grimble, thanks for your comments but it is only a title.

View from the South Bank is a way of finding my humble blog in the midst of thousands of other chattering pages.

It is not any grand comparison with London or anywhere else. So let's talk about something more interesting.

Like the fact that another box office has gone belly up.

No, not the Fringe but those of Glasgow's Kings Theatre and Theatre Royal. And not because of any complicated computer system but to cut costs.

The Ambassador Theatre Group have given all 27 staff at both box offices redundancy notices.

Callers will instead be put through to a centralised box office in London which already deals with their 21 other theatres across the UK. They'll also charge you a booking fee for the pleasure.

On top of that, they've just received £7.2m to refurbish the 104-year-old Kings.

Am I alone in thinking that the council - who gave them the grant and own both buildings - might want to consider whether this is a good move?

I'm as adept as the next person at booking tickets online but in quirky old-fashioned theatres like the Kings, I like to make sure I'm not sitting behind a pillar or getting a nosebleed in the gods.

The best way to avoid that it to speak to someone with local knowledge, not someone 500 miles away who's on the clock and on commission.

The Ambassador Theatre Group say the cuts are necessary and in response to "customer demand" but the staff are now urging customers to make clear their demands to the theatre.

Meanwhile, it's all gone quiet at the Fringe where a friendly face in the box office wasn't enough to prevent the system going bust.

I understand a number of staff have already quit in the wake of Jon Morgan's resignation, with more set to follow.

My self imposed cultural vacuum didn't last long.

You clearly can't wind down without a good book - and Kate Atkinson's new novel When Will There Be Good News and Catherine O'Flynn's amazing debut novel What Was Lost both fitted the bill. Both have clever, funny children at their heart - and I raced through both quite happily during the holidays.

Back to the theatre too - this time the Tron - for V.AMP's production of Fleeto. Originally part of the Play and a Pie and a Pint season at Oran Mor, it's now been expanded into an hour long stage play with a fairly substantial cast - including students who play the shadowy gang members and deliver their own chilling version of Auld Lang Syne.

The play examines a knife crime from many different angles - victim's mother, policeman, pathologist and perpetrator - ambitiously in verse as a sort of classical Greek drama. All the cast are terrific but in particular Neil Leiper as the menacing gang leader Kenzie.

The night I was there the Tron was packed with schoolkids whose teenage rustlings and giggling were very swiftly replaced by rapt attention. Interestingly when Kenzie drew a huge serrated knife from his shellsuit, there were a few gasps of awe as well as the more general ones of horror.

Regardless, we were all gripped to the play's final chilling denoument. No easy answers - but then again, perhaps that was the point.

Destined to keep repeating our mistakes over and over until someone is brave enough to stand up and say enough.

Fleeto is off on tour around Scotland this autumn, including four performances in Polmont Young Offenders Institution. Artistic director Alison Peebles - who also gives a bravura performance as a bereaved mum - tells me the age gap between the cast will also be most apparent in their down time. While the young stars may be off out on the town, she's looking forward to a few sessions of tea and scones with friends up and down the country.

After the full on assault of Fleeto, I should probably have taken myself off to the cinema for something light and comic, but having already seen Mamma Mia and not liking the look of the remake of The Women, I found myself in the GFT on Friday afternoon for the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Based on the John Boyne book of the same name, it's the story of an eight year old boy called Bruno whose father - a Nazi commandant - moves them to the country to be closer to his work, a death camp.

Bruno doesn't know it's a death camp, he thinks it's some kind of farm, and he tries to find out more from another eight year old he befriends on the other side of the wire fence.

Now I'm aware that there's a whole raft of opinion which believes that any fictionalising of the Holocaust is wrong - I once heard Bernice Reubens rant about the evils of Steven Spielberg and Thomas Keneally before him for attempting to sentimentalise the subject in Schindler's List and playing right into the hands of those who believe the Holocaust to be all made up.

But I've always thought there was room for both factual and fictional accounts. And as long as they're still teaching about the Holocaust in schools, I see no reason why children who're unlikely to have any direct contact with anyone who lived through that era (save perhaps a few hardy great grandparents out there) shouldn't get some sense of the horror of the time through books or films.

It's not cloyingly sentimental - or as exploitative as Life is Beautiful - and it doesn't shy away from an ending which is dark and disturbing and all too painful.

What was interesting too, was that the audience on Friday afternoon at the GFT (still £3 for all!) was largely made up of older people - many of whom would have been children themselves during the second world war and unable to do little more than follow their parents and hope they had the moral magnitude to make the right decisions.

So back to work this week - and cultural activity continues apace.

Scottish Ballet dip their toes in vintage territory this week with their new show Pennies from Heaven, the Heritage Lottery will be handing out their latest award - not for another Titian this time - and notching up half a billion pounds of awards across the country since the pot began.

And the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's first Gaelic channel launches at the weekend. I went to the preview this morning when they promise music from Skye, a documentary on the killer Peter Manuel and a drama about a punk who meets Elvis.

Stay tuned. Normal service has resumed.