What does the latest round of Guiness (Extra Cold) adverts (a follow-up pastiche compilation of previous classic Guiness ads) suggest? That they’ve run out of ideas and are squeezing the last drops of the black stuff (not Bovril) from the damp […]

Brilliant People of Television1: Ptolemy Dean
I was quite pleased when Restoration came back to our screens last night. Now, yes it’s a good thing that old buildings are being saved and returned to their former glory or put to some new use. Tho[…]

FT Top 100 Films
63: THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS
What do I like about the Royal Tenenbaums? There is only one thing I really, really like about it (there are lots of little things I like a bit about it but I must admit the whole thing did not overwhelm me).[…]

Elsewhere:
Horror.
Not entirely sure about this.
Really not sure about this – and a little surprised given the author’s campaign against ‘indie drabness’
Back!
Nostalgia post hints (in comments) at intriguing question – […]

Oh dear, a tale of woe from the copa America
Let’s hope they keep flying as some of the football has been great. It must be such a burden on a country though, to put such a tournament together, makes you wonder that love of footie apart, why d[…]

Question for ILB (when it returns): how much of a book do you need to read before you can say you have read it?
(inspired by flippant qn in Orange list comments)[…]

Those Mean Girls posts not quite in full. I have written and discarded three posts about Mean Girls, which suggests that I think this might be the most important film of the year. It is not. It is instead a rather good, smart teen comedy which happen[…]

The Orange Prize for fiction compiled a vote of the living library of top 50 essential contemporary reads.
To be in, you needed to be well thought of by bookish sorts (the survey was undertaken during the Hay festival) and not dead.[…]

Most of the work in Tom Friedman’s current show at the South London Gallery is entertaining enough without being breathtaking, or even especially exciting. Much of it consists of plays on perspective: several boxes of Cheerios spliced to form t[…]

In a priceless interview with Pete ‘Just Researching’ Townshend about what a bully he thinks Michael Moore is, the following priceless line is thrown out.
“…he’ll have to work very, very hard to convince me that a man w[…]