VANISHING LONDON
2: The bit of road on the north side of Trafalgar Square
This did not get nicked overnight. Instead the Mayor put in place a long and some say tedious process to turn London’s squarest roundabout into – his words – […]

I am thinking about my favourite action movies because Midnight Run is on TV, clashing with No Man’s Land a Bosnian favourite from a few years back. But I will watch Midnight Run, because it is more fun than the BBC2 satire, and it has a very […]

FT Top 100 Films
49: CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON
Martin Skidmore says:
I love this film. It’s full of great moments and scenes, beautifully shot, mostly flawlessly acted, with glorious cinematography. I love the scene with the petite girl (Zh[…]

As mentioned almost a year ago, probably my favourite artist is Ed Ruscha. But, until last weeked, I had never seen any in the flesh. I had survived pretty much on They Called Her Styrene by Phaidon and a few web covers. One of the appeals to me of t[…]

VANISHING LONDON…
1: Mole Jazz
(Part one in an occasional series, done partially under protest because one of the best things in London is the constant renewal – good and bad.)
Mole Jazz used to be right at teh bottom of the Gray’s […]

HOORAY FOR ACID RAIN. Okay so the pH3 drizzle might not be so good for your car paintwork over time (though not a bad as the throwaway culture we live in eh readers), but it might be saving us from global warming. I love this kind of science. It is a[…]

More Woody: The title gag goes as follows “Do you ever wonder about the futility of life, the horrific impending spectre of death and the fact it seems impossible to relate to anyone in this world?”
Cab Driver -“Well you know, it&#8[…]

FT Top 100 Films
50: ANNIE HALL
I love Annie Hall. There you go, not much more for me to say on that subject really. It completely invented a type of romantic comedy, and laid the template for the standard Woody Allen film that he would flop back to […]

If Ping Pong was too tame for you, and the lack of death in Shaolin Soccer got you down – there is always Battlefield Baseball. Probably not coming to a cinema near us soo.[…]

Ping Pong (the Japanese film based on the manga) did not seem that unusual a premise for a Japanese film at first. Of course the Japanese are obsessed with table tennis, the inattentive racist in my bonce said. The film picked me up – the scary[…]