POLL: BRITONS FEAR SPIDERS MORE THAN TERRORISTS[…]

LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY
dir. Miyazaki Hayao
Then again the film should be more accurately called Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta in at least one transliteration, but anyway: Miyazaki is turning into one of those pleasureable ‘catch-up’ experien[…]

FREAKY TRIGGER TOP 25 SCARY THINGS
No.20: Being On A Fairground Ride And Noticing Bits Falling Off
Or sundry experiences to that effect. The point of many fairground rides is to scare us. To scare us safely one might add, but if they were not dangero[…]

Context is all, part 547653 — so over the weekend I reviewed the new Staubgold compilation Tempo Technik Teamwork and Pig Destroyer’s new album Terrifyer for the AMG, and my further thoughts on them both will run there in a couple of week[…]

FT TOP 100 FILMS
19: SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT
Anthony Easton says:
Everyone liked this, they liked the crudity and mistook it for sharpness; they liked the absurdity and mistook it for political acumen, they liked the casual inclusion of […]

SENSES OF SHAME
Touch Me- Samantha Fox
In many ways Samantha Fox wanting us to touch her should not surprise us. As the most famous Page 3 girl the Sun ever had, she was certainly used to being seen. What difference would a bit of touching make? Well[…]

Derrida obituary in The Guardian: here. Does a terrific job of a summarising work and life concisely and clearly. The leader here is certainly more appropriate than the Times one mentioned below, and not just because I agree with it to a far greater […]

I drank a beer last Friday that tasted like cold, weak, black tea. This delighted me as I rather like tea like that. Others were not quite so taken by its flavour. Perhaps the word beer primed their tastebuds too much. (I cannot unfortunately remembe[…]

Delovely has a problem at its core, which scuppers the whole biographical process. Cole Porter’s songs were not autobiographical. Generally they were written for musicals, where the songs helped tell the story, a story which was quite unlike hi[…]

X marks the spot.
When Fame Academy was on, I argued that a transposition of critical and popular judgement might be under way in tele-land. (Not necessarily a good or a bad thing.) At the very least, what Pop Idol itself did was place the audience, […]