This lacklustre ad for a festival (via Popjustice Twitter) for some reason reminds me of nothing less than how Trad Jazz bands used to advertise their niche wares in the late seventies. Much like much of the worst excesses of CAMRA, the affair seems […]

I like a writer who defies real comparison with anyone else in their genre. The closest to Jim Thompson would be Dostoyevsky, I think, except Thompson is far bleaker, far more negative about human nature. He’s also a stranger and more experimen[…]

Wendy And Lucy is a tinycore mood piece about poor, struggling Wendy (Michelle Williams) trying to drive up to Alaska with her dog Lucy. Wendy is looking for work and has a plan, but to get to Alaska she has to stick to a strict budget with very litt[…]

Two important bits of business:
For Popular fans – friend of the blog (and real actual pop star) Bob Stanley is curating the Britain Learns To Rock! season at the Barbican, which starts tomorrow with Fan Fever and Calling All Cats, two of the f[…]

You may or may not be aware that I’ve been spending a fair bit of time on Twitter lately. This began as a work exercise – “what’s the point of this then?” – but has become something more as my enthusiasm has grown.[…]

Iceland (the country) makes an appearance in this recession special hosted by Elisha Sessions.

It’s hard to know where to start with Delany. He’s not really been much within SF for a long time, and my favourite novel by him (and probably by anyone), while published as SF, mostly isn’t. Still, he started in the field, writing […]

I thought Underworld stank. A tedious effort in style over content where
a) the style was second hand rubbish
b) the content should have been great.
It is, after all, a story about a centuries old secret war between vampires and werewolves. But caugh[…]

This video for The Fall’s “Wings” (embedding sadly disabled or I’d post it direct) is not only a rare promo of one of their finest songs, it’s also a forensic examination of a pub in 1983. Perhaps even the kind of pub Ma[…]

Superhero Perfume Ad
Saw this in a comic last week. Had to be scanned it is so preposterous.
I cannot for the life of me imagine who this is aimed at. Except children. And children
a) don’t buy comics anymore
b) don’t buy eau de toilette
[…]