Brazzaville Beach is the William Boyd book I have most wanted to read since drifting into his work. Moreover it is the book most other people have wanted me to read. So they at least will be pleased to hear that I loved it. What concerns me is why th[…]

Bubba Ho-Tep is not really a comic horror movie. Oh it has its gags, and occasionally throws stuff at the screen to make you jump. But at its heart, it is actually a film about the way society relates to the older generation. Okay that older generati[…]

Derrida watch
Reading obituaries; comment pieces; jokey, dismissive jibes; personal tributes; and public commemorations: it’s still clear that pretty much no-one knows what to say about JD. About JD the man there’s a consensus, from those[…]

An Occurrence on Territorial Road
1983, junior year, and I have recently been accepted into the ranks of the pretty-cool-high-school-kid group. Not the top echelon, mind you, but doing okay for myself, thanks to success in sports and a pretty and acc[…]

WATCH WITH MOTHER: LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE
mark s (after watching in silence for a time): do you find this funny? mum s (for it is she, back home and a lot better hurrah!): not really *long pause w.canned laughter* mark s: did you ever? mum s: no *l[…]

PORN STUDIES
Linda Williams, ed.
I never took any courses from Linda Williams while she taught at UCI, but this is no surprise — I was in grad school for English lit while she was over in film studies, and though there can be and is some crosso[…]

What with Team America: World Police coming out in the US this week, much has been said about Super-Marionation of late. After the stupendous errors of the Thunderbirds film it seems that puppets may well often be the way to go in films. Which may ex[…]

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE
dir. Trey Parker
My good friend and possessor of similarly misanthropic sense of humor Dan Perry has asserted that the tempest in a teacup over this movie — in America at least, over the past couple of weeks — s[…]

I am probably what would be known (in barbed terms by many people) as a fair-weather fan. The connection between my football team and me is a couple of teenage years when frankly there was little else on a Saturday afternoon. Since then I have seen f[…]

INDIE CHICKEN EXTRA
In as much as I did not eat it, and it was not even chicken. But spotted, in Wood Green Shopping City, opposite the Wood Green Cineworld multiplax is a shared concession. Favorite Fried Chicken / Ardo’s African Kitchen. It i[…]