Stephen King’s new novel, Fairy Tale, feels like a homage to a lot of stories and, indeed, storytellers – perhaps not surprising from the title. Many of the references throughout the story of Charlie Reade and his travel to the world of Empis are overt – Disney, Grimm Fairy tales, Ray Bradbury and HP Lovecraft,... Continue Reading →
Letter to You – Bruce Springsteen. Album Review
I don't do many music reviews on this site, but I've written before about the influence Bruce Springsteen has had on me. From first hearing him and then listening non-stop throughout paper round routes around my village as a 14 year old, through to getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning as a 51... Continue Reading →
C.R.A.P Movie Reviews: Ninja Terminator
Well, it's the end of the road for the remaining video available of the legendary in our own minds series of C.R.A.P reviews. The only ones left are too embarrassing/ misjudged to present (and given how bad these ones that I was prepared to put up have been that should give you some idea of... Continue Reading →
C.R.A.P Movie Reviews: CIA Codename Alexa
Another oldie but moldie...a charity recommended art piece from yesteryear. A movie that's proud of lines like "I don't care if you have to drug her, beat her or sleep with her - just do it." and features OJ Simpson. IMDB identified it has 251 plot keywords, which just seems...impossible. Anyway, we watched it so... Continue Reading →
C.R.A.P Movie Reviews: Breakin’
Another blast from the past...this time in Charity Recommended Art Pieces we watched Breakin'. It nearly broke us...and the review "AKA 'White Middle Aged Men Can't Do Anti-Racism Well' has aged even less well than the movie. Come for the review, stay for the overlong trailer and impossibly blurred out celebrity spot. We never did... Continue Reading →
CRAP Movie Review: Hercules in New York
Another one from the Charity Recommended Art Pieces archives... This was actually the first one we ever did. How we made it through to do another one, I don't know. Maybe we thought things were going to get better. (They didn't). And this wasn't just any old version of Hercules in New York - this... Continue Reading →
C.R.A.P Movie Review: Doomed
From the dim and distant past... back in a time when parents showed their young children unsuitable movies and then the two did video reviews of them... This was Charity Recommended Art Pieces (aka CRAP) where Joe (then aged about fourteen) and I would visit charity shops and choose the worst looking films we could... Continue Reading →
Inside No 9: The Best of the Best
Tonight sees the return of Inside No. 9, and an hour and a half before it starts, I’m thinking about what’s gone before in anticipation of the new series and watching a few old episodes. I don’t I’ve been quiet about how much I like this series: Black Mirror may have had more publicity and,... Continue Reading →
A Decade in Movies…Top Ten 2010-2019
Spurred on by listening to Unspooled and, more recently, For Your Reconsideration, and given I failed to do a top films of 2019 for the first time in years, I thought I’d put together ten movies that have stuck with me from the past ten years. These aren’t necessarily the films I think are ‘best’,... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Going Rogue
Published by Burning Chair, who were good enough to feature my short story The Five Votive Candles of Joe Wray in their first publication Burning, the Tom Novak books by ex-Met police officer Neil Lancaster, are continuing a strong list from the new publishers - you could do a lot worse than check out their... Continue Reading →