Belleville Rendez-vous starts with a crackly black and white TV showing an animated dance number by the charatcers the Belleville Triplets: an homage to all those Merry Melodies and Silly Symphonies which cluttered up the cartoon times of my youth. I[…]

Last week I went to The Oval to watch the first day of the last test between England and South Africa. Now a lot of people, and I mean a lot of people (if you consider the populations of any non-commonwealth country and lots of them too) do not under[…]

Continuity, Fandom and Pop
Anyone with more than a passing interest in the geekier elements of mass culture – superhero comic books or genre TV, for instance – will be aware of the idea of continuity. (more…)[…]

I have been involved with an organisation called Exeter City Supporters’ Trust. It’s a group of fans of our little club set up a few years ago with the aim of representing us to the board of the club, amongst other things, and aspiring to[…]

HORNBLOWER! Marvellous stuff. No series has ever been more
a) NOBLE
b) HEROIC
c) ridiculous
as the adventures of Captain Horatio Hornblower and crew of able Seamen. Even now as I type, the plucky ENGLISH hurrah are getting boats to sail offshore int[…]

Yoko Ono-Cut Piece
Yoko Ono doing the cut piece (she sat on stage, people cut her robes off) in 1961 was scary shit, this was before the second wave really begun, and the fears of violence against women were not discussed very loudly.
That’s […]

60’s kitsch can rarely be done better than Modesty Blaise, which I recently saw on American Movie Classics. If you haven’t seen this film, you should: Modesty (portrayed by Italian actress Monica Vitti) uses her Mod-style to bring down th[…]

This question is pre-emptive, since my friend and I haven’t been yet: but in the course of a project which may take us years – we meet up maybe once every three months, if that – we decided our next meal out together had to be at an[…]

I’ve no idea whether Calendar Girls is a good film or not, though I’m always content to watch Julie Walters in anything. I’m reacting here without seeing the film. For those who don’t know, it’s about a true story, a cle[…]

The area around Green Park tube has always struck me as a bad one for pubs, and last night showed that little has changed in the years since I was a regular drinker there. When I worked in Belgravia, there were three distinct types of local boozers &[…]