This piece from The Observer is slightly provocative but seems to be coming along the same lines as what I posted below; the overall thrust is that the goose which laid the golden egg is slowly being killed; death by a thousand short-term decisions t[…]

Rule one in writing a film about conmen. Name it after a name for conmen. Hence Confidence, The Grifters and the somewhat implausibly titled Matchstick Men. Unfortunately no Matchstick Cats’n’Dogs in attendance here – though there i[…]

The world of very low alcohol drinks is a strange hinterland, an unloved section of the world of booze which pleases neither the boozer nor the abstainer. All manner of crimes are committed in the name of reducing the alcoholic content of That Which […]

Saturday morning’s “Ever Wondered About…” regularly features the same chilled soundtrack of Lemon Jelly and Zero 7 (even now), but when they kick in to their “here’s the culture” montage, it turns over to tun[…]

What are the limits of dramatic license when editing together yr footage in a documentary abt animals? In Natural World (Sunday 30 November, 6.25pm BBC2), “Monkey Prince” told the glum tale of Bobo, an existentially tormented fellow with […]

I keep watching Charmed, as I’m easy meat for anything like that, as I was for I Dream Of Jeannie and Bewitched and Buffy and almost anything else with magic on TV (do they have to star women? I’m not sure). But tonight’s episode on[…]

Stop, And Listen
You might hear something you’re missing
Well its quite possible that you missed this, the fantastic highpoint of the fraggle band Mega City Four’s career. It managing to tickle the charts at number 34 in 1992. Which is a […]

Well it wouldn’t be an alphabet of crap if the Beatles did not make the cut. PS I Love You comes from the stage of their career when they were not being feted as the single most important cultural event of the twentieth century. The beginning o[…]

I was trying to work out what it was about Elf that reminded me of Ghostbusters. I loved Ghostbusters as a kid, and really rather like Elf. Perhaps it is the slightly fantasy setting of both films. The fact that both are firmly rooted in a vision of […]

Take a journey back in time
Leave the western world behind
Cross the mountains to Peking
Where the paper laterns gently swing
Leaving aside the fact that the Chinese prefer Beijing these days since Level 42 wish us to travel back in time, has there e[…]