Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan in Wedding Crashers.
I've been to four weddings over the summer - but, touch wood, no sign of the other ceremony, or the urge to say inexcusably sappy things to Andie MacDowell. They've come spaced at two-week intervals, so plenty of time to muse on love, family and the Somme-like assault on my finances. It's surprising weddings don't get used in films more: they're a potent touchstone for people's inner feelings - and thus potential drama in several wobbly, thickly iced tiers. Maybe film-makers are reluctant because, unless you're closely involved, cheesiness is just one mobile disco away.
1) Wedding Crashers was such an excellently cynical premise - commitment-phobe divorce brokers who have cornered the market in picking up chicks at nuptials - it's hard to see what went wrong. Trying to turn it into Meet the Parents halfway through, perhaps - but it starts so well.
2) "In spite of the fact that somebody's up from the bottom, he can still be quite a heel. And even though somebody else is born to the purple, he can be a very nice guy." Someone else's big day brings it all into focus for Cary Grant, in The Philadelphia Story.
3) With one of the best audience-aimed preambles in movie history, Adam Sandler wins the day with a little "mood music" in The Wedding Singer.
4) You wouldn't want to attend a wedding organised by Quentin Tarantino: interminable build-up (a whole separate film - Kill Bill Vol 1), way out in the desert, cheesy retro styling and everyone gets slaughtered before they even make it to the champagne.
5) The archetypal wedding, at the beginning of the Godfather: lavish, a little bit raucous and presided over by magnanimous parents (in this case Brando, dispensing a generous free assassination to one of the guests).
Much respect for the follicle frenzy on last week's hair-related Clip joint - with plenty of requests that could easily have fitted either into the best or worst barnet category. Here are the choice morsels we managed to tease out of those shining locks:
1) Few people go into Toni & Guy and ask for an "Eraserhead", but it would be good to live in a world where a David Lynch trailer might have as much style influence as a series of Friends.
2) Only one man was ever in it for best mullet (remember that strange post-millennial obsession?): Jean-Claude Van Damme: badass par excellence and, surely, the mullet personified in Hard Target.
3) "This place sure is crawling with celebrities - I'm the only person I never heard of." Is Bob Fosse trying to make some point about ephemeral celeb fashions in Rich Man's Frug from 1969's Sweet Charity? There sure is plenty of daft hair on show.
4) Never a man to shy away from a haircut, even David Bowie must have upped his fee a couple of times before donning his frightwig in Labyrinth.
5) "A career built almost entirely on a hairstyle", as one reader put it of Rita Hayworth: primped and curled to liquid perfection.
