My four year old daughter has developed a fascination with vampires of late. This is how I ended up sitting in front of “Hotel Transylvania”, a feature length cartoon about an overprotective father who happens to be Dracula and his attempts to keep his own daughter from falling in love with a human being. The […]
I’m tired of talking about Europe already, so instead I’ll talk about……Europe
I’ve just spent three days in Barcelona. It was the first time I’ve been away from London on something other than business in how long I genuinely cannot recall. I hadn’t been to the city in almost twelve years, and my previous visit was a very different one. Back then, I spent a month in […]
Is it just me or was “Firefly” really not very good?
I realise two things. One, reviewing a TV show that came out in 2002 definitely puts me a decade and a half out of the loop. Two, give reverence for this show is on a monumental level for many sci-fi fans, I’m about to make some enemies here. I finally watched the first episode of “Firefly” […]
My review of “Star Wars”: the Force Awakens”
I have tried to fill this with as few spoilers as humanly possible I finally saw it the new Star Wars movie, after a couple of weeks of deliberation. As some of you will know, I was no great fan of the prequels (this is putting it extremely mildly). But the trailer to The Force […]
Is there really no room at the cinema for baby Jesus?
The Daily Telegraph ran a feature this week that is perhaps the worst piece I have ever seen in the newspaper, one entitled “No room at the cinema for baby Jesus“. It’s basically a re-hash of the old “the secularists are trying to ban Christmas” spiel, but this article came across as a sort of […]
The five worst Christmas movies ever made
‘Tis the season and all that, so I thought I would try and catalogue the five worst attempts by the motion picture industry to capture the magic. If this comes across as a little Scrooge-esque – why not the five best Christmas films then? – I will answer back that there is no fun in […]
The Labour Party reminds a bit of “The Long Good Friday” at the moment
“The Long Good Friday” is perhaps the quintessential British gangster film (it’s only real competition being “Get Carter”). Bob Hoskins plays the lead role, that of a London gangster who is trying to move into mainstream business. Along the way, one of his lackeys gets into trouble with the IRA, stealing some money off of them […]
John Lennon’s bitterness v Paul McCartney’s: a tale of two songs from the 70s
John Lennon’s 1971 album, Imagine, is for most people the ultimate in hippy laidback aural wallpaper. High on vibes and life. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. That’s why the 1988 documentary film, Imagine: John Lennon, is such an interesting document. The recording sessions for the album in question seem to mostly have […]
The 10 best expressions of suburban life in art of all time
As someone who grew up in suburbia and didn’t really enjoy it all that much, I have a particular soft spot for anything that describes artfully the depressing facts of life which comprise the coming of age in such an environment. What I’ve tried to do here is assemble the ten best such works, which […]
One of the great unrecognised film genres: the Yakuza film
Yakuza are Japanese gangsters, but that doesn’t quite tell the whole story. In real life, the Yakuza are the inheritors of the Tekiya and Bakuto groups that existed in Edo-era Japan; at least, the rituals of those groups found their way down to the modern day Yakuza (such as the large scale tatoos that adorn their abdomens). […]