Like all new Freaky Trigger series, the idea for this one came in the pub. I had been re-reading MR James’ Collected Ghost Stories and started talking about them with Mark and Rick: within moments I thought, “let’s blog it”. H[…]

A comparison between the European folk tale and the recent South Korean film of the same name.
Hansel & Gretel (Brothers Grimm Style): So there are these kids, H&G whose parents are deathly poor, probably due to some medieval credit crunch […]

As keen devotees of ephemeral pop cultural trends, you will undoubtedly be aware of Walkers’ new series of flavour combinations, being marketed as “Do Us a Flavour”. The concept being that the flavour suggestions of six ordinary Bri[…]

In Crouch End yesterday (this will become important) I saw a small child gleefully playing in the snow after being let out of school. The poor nipper was possibly upset that his primary school had not been closed by an inch of snow, but he was making[…]

* I don’t think it will, by the way. Its a good, but pretty bogstandard, biopic which stands or falls – like most biopics – on how interesting you find the facts of Harvey Milk’s life. And in this case its Milk’s life […]

What was most impressive was the feeling that you could reach out and touch Kevin Shields nose as you were being deafened…
My Bloody Valentine 3D impressed me. Not the 3D. I only have two dimensional vision in real life so, so its unlikely cure[…]

In “Comics as Culture”, M. Thomas Inge posited that comics and jazz were the two art forms that “perhaps represent America’s major indigenous contribution to world culture.” A throwaway line; as you can tell by the title[…]

Three more links from the past – two of them never before reprinted! (possibly with good reason) If you want just the content and none of my reminiscing, go here. (more…)[…]

As we are naval gazing here at FT, with our ten years celebrations, I though I would have a little trip through the related links on the sidebar. A magical mystery tour which took me to an article I wrote back in 2006 regarding the oddness of the phy[…]