The fashionable thing to say about The Ladykillers is that the Ealing version isn’t that funny either.  (The either is optional depending on whether you found the Coen’s version funny. I’m leaving the either in.) I think that k[…]

I like detective fiction, but I’ve got to say I am not quite so keen on straight down the line mystery novels. It strikes me that what I like about my detective fiction is finding out about the detective, his/her methods and the lure of a stron[…]

FT Top 100 Films
62: GHOSTBUSTERS
Can you review a film by the quality of its spin-offs? Let’s see. I’m not talking about The Real Ghostbusters the significantly less real cartoon incarnation of the who-ya-gonna-call guys. No, I am going […]

Its a Brown Wedge piece about a television show. So it gets a link here too![…]

Battle Of The Books
I’d not seen this BBC4 show before I stumbled across it last night, and missing the first few minutes I was interested to see what happened to the book that lost. The format, not a million miles from the old Freakytrigger fe[…]

It seems clear to me that the animal and fantasy characters in the Shrek films are much more emotive than the human ones. It seems odd that this was not clear to the film-makers, especially as the crux of Shrek 2 turn Shrek himself into a human for a[…]

What fre(nc)sh madness is this. I was in my local the other night The Haringey Arms, and I heard someone asking for a pint of BombARDeeAY. The bar monkey was as confused as I was. He question the order. The fella repeated his order BombARDeeAY, and p[…]

WARNING: PISS-POOR SATIRE ALERT
Back to our old friends BBC news who are pretty pleased with their headline “Museum has flush of inspiration” even though it does not really make sense. (You have flashes of inspiration, hence the lightbulb[…]

FT Top 100 Films
63: THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS
What do I like about the Royal Tenenbaums? There is only one thing I really, really like about it (there are lots of little things I like a bit about it but I must admit the whole thing did not overwhelm me).[…]

Those Mean Girls posts not quite in full. I have written and discarded three posts about Mean Girls, which suggests that I think this might be the most important film of the year. It is not. It is instead a rather good, smart teen comedy which happen[…]