Finally finished Dominic Sandbrook’s history of the late 50s and early 60s, Never Had It So Good. For a massive book – 700 pages covering only 7 years – it still feels a bit insubstantial in places, but it was an entertaining read. […]

Can’t you see
Harper Lee
Is better than thee?[…]

Talking to other people about seeing the original Japanese Godzilla* I mentioned how dark the film was. The looked back incredulously saying that it is a film about a giant monster destroying Tokyo, of course it is dark. Perhaps my friends don’[…]

Way back in the past, when Week Of Quiz was a mere twinkle in our eyes, the biggest excitement of the week could be the quiz at The Shepherd’s on the Archway Road. It was a nice pub, it was a good quiz, but it was of course enlivened by the pre[…]

Thanks to the miracle of Interweb stealery I was able to watch The Changes last week, the ten-part kids’ TV adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novels from the 1970s. This was always a touchstone of Mr R Carmody’s thinking, so I was eag[…]

Taking sides:
Lars Von Trier’s new film Manderlay is
a) A piece of sub-Brechtian theatricality masquerading as a sophisticated political film whose sophistication seems undercut by the fact that somewhere along the line Lars has got Gone With T[…]

Dungeons and Dragons is the game most identified with roleplaying, but it certainly wasn’t the only option. In fact, once you’d got into the hobby you quickly realised that most vocal gamers had a certain disdain for D&D, seeing it i[…]

On the face of it, this is a simple philistinic story about an American kid who stuck his used chewing gum on an expensive painting. Singlehandedly the unnamed child became either
a) a disgrace
b) the bright new artist in the style of Jake & Din[…]

The Japanese love curry. As such they are very much like the English, who have taken to a non-native food to the extent that it is almost ubiquitous. Nearly all basic restaurants in Japan do a curry: usually a breaded chicken breast with rice and a s[…]

It is great to see a new Tsui Hark film at the cinema. Seven Swords is nowhere near Hark at his best, but since I have only ever seen him on a TV, I relished seeing this in a cinema. Bigger budgets, digital effects and relentless editing though remov[…]