WATCH WITH MOTHER: LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE
mark s (after watching in silence for a time): do you find this funny? mum s (for it is she, back home and a lot better hurrah!): not really *long pause w.canned laughter* mark s: did you ever? mum s: no *l[…]

PORN STUDIES
Linda Williams, ed.
I never took any courses from Linda Williams while she taught at UCI, but this is no surprise — I was in grad school for English lit while she was over in film studies, and though there can be and is some crosso[…]

What with Team America: World Police coming out in the US this week, much has been said about Super-Marionation of late. After the stupendous errors of the Thunderbirds film it seems that puppets may well often be the way to go in films. Which may ex[…]

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE
dir. Trey Parker
My good friend and possessor of similarly misanthropic sense of humor Dan Perry has asserted that the tempest in a teacup over this movie — in America at least, over the past couple of weeks — s[…]

I am probably what would be known (in barbed terms by many people) as a fair-weather fan. The connection between my football team and me is a couple of teenage years when frankly there was little else on a Saturday afternoon. Since then I have seen f[…]

INDIE CHICKEN EXTRA
In as much as I did not eat it, and it was not even chicken. But spotted, in Wood Green Shopping City, opposite the Wood Green Cineworld multiplax is a shared concession. Favorite Fried Chicken / Ardo’s African Kitchen. It i[…]

FREAKY TRIGGER TOP 25 SCARIEST THINGS
15: A Red Hot Poker In The Eye
SIZZZZLE!!!!
Let us break this down. Is this fear a mere conflation of a number of individual horrible things, happening all at once. The invasion of the eye, the fear of blindness,[…]

Pub graffiti you have known
“Oats are a great herbal solution to depression. Eat porridge or muisli every day for breakfast for a week. I promise you you’ll be able to tell the difference”
This is the most annoying graffiti I’[…]

Sex Traffic. I wondered about the name. Was it just going to be like Traffic (the film) based on Traffik the TV series but about sex? Answer. Pretty much. A nicely rounded look at the sex traffic industry from the viewpoint of the girls, those runnin[…]

Coins on the Railway Line
It was the summer of 1980, the last week of the school holidays. Ashes to Ashes was top of the charts and West Ham had recently won the FA Cup. My dad was on my back to get out of the house. So I phoned some friends and we h[…]