There’s a strange moment near the beginning of the 1982 Puffin Books edition of Robert Westall’s Fathom Five (1979): Dad never talked about Life and its Meanings; only fried bread and thrushes.‘What’s got you up so early?’Jack told him about the thing in the…
Happy New Year! I’ve written about the way that new decades seem to bring their own distinct identities with them before (probably too often; here was I think the most recent time) and as we ascend/descend/just go into 2021 an auspicious anniversary approaches; 30…
On the rare occasions that anyone asks me anything about my writing, it’s usually about music reviews. The consensus seems to be that a good review (I don’t mean a positive one) should either be ‘listen to the music and say if it’s good or…
I suppose I should warn people: this is pretty much all spoilers. Television has always had one big advantage over cinema – time – which should really make it the better medium for drama. After all, the novel is almost always superior to the short…
To start with, this was mostly about books, and I think it will end that way too. But it begins with a not terribly controversial statement; hero worship is not good. And the greatest figures in the fight for human rights or human progress of…
A new decade, and the year is flying past already. I intended to write something full of enthusiasm and positivity at the beginning of January, but at that point I was still clumping about in a walking boot and using crutches so it had…
As I write these words it’s the first day of summer and I’m sitting in my study (sounds pompous, but ‘room full of books and records where I work’ is less economical), with Atom Heart Mother playing, looking out at a beautiful sky of quilted dove-grey clouds…
So, I’m taking far too long faffing with the more (relatively) substantial things I’ve been working on, so in the meantime I will try to reinstate the weekly updates. Just to stop the whole thing becoming too repetitive, this one is in a very slightly…
However successful George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max movie was, for a variety of reasons it is unlikely to have the impact of the second (and by extension, the far superior first) one did; the release of 1981’s Mad Max 2 (known internationally as The Road Warrior) coincided with the boom…
Valet Girls (1987) Dir. Rafal Zielinski Starring. April Stewart, Meri D. Marshall, Mary Kohnert Valet Girls is a poorly made, badly paced, atrociously acted, flatly filmed, desperately unfunny, trashy near-exploitation movie; it has almost no redeeming features; so why is it so great? Mostly, this…