I didn’t realise how much I liked Kirsty MacColl’s music until she died.
I sometimes feel sad listening to her voice, it carries weariness even in the happy songs. An anthology released earlier this year captures it well, all the heartbr[…]

It is rather lovely to have an real ale bouzer almost on one’s doorstep, especially one as nice as the Oakdale. It’s a good size pub, with two big rooms, so I’ve never really felt crowded in there, although at the beer festival a c[…]

It’s Eurovision time again! There are a host of blogs celebrating this, and I’m sure some of them are putting MP3s up. For the next three days, we’ll jump the bandwagon, today offering Britain’s best-ever entry:
Bardo – […]

This is a real blog entry right here, folks: ace critic Raymond Durgnat takes on Sight and Sound, the BFI, Hoggart, Leavis, the Free Cinema etc etc, forty years ago. (Later he made up with Anderson, a bit.)
Until it was posted, this piece was rare as[…]

This is utterly fucking awful. I really loved a pair of Bester’s old SF novels, kind of pulp with modernist ideas (we’re talking Joycean SF in the ’50s), and real intensity – at least, that’s how I remember them, but I w[…]

There is a problem that many high-concept properties have. The concept is more interesting than any individual story you can tell about it. This is a problem common with many hero-led action films and other media adaptations*. The idea behind The Apo[…]

Yes, yes, Ong-Bak has repeated sequences of people getting the tops of their head caved in with an elbow, but what is unusual about that? Elbow have been giving people brain damage for years. No, what is interesting about Ong-Bak is the edit job whic[…]

Another Stylus singles jukebox with lashings of me, and not too many of my really lazy reviews. In my unseen comments I was horrible to the Kaiser Chiefs, nice to Hot Hot Heat, and Sleater-Kinney and I came to an understanding about thirty seconds in[…]

In my many years of drinking and brewing tea I have occasionally been accused of fussiness. I admit that there is probably some truth in this accusation. I am rather fond of the warming of pots. I do dislike the misordering of mug filling. Hell, I&#8[…]

Is this a science post at all? BBC Weather is ditching its own familiar symbols for super-graphics which make britain look less green. The second controversial BBC weather story in two months, what is the world coming to.
This is clearly a science i[…]