Words Dept.: category

It’s the last day of the year, so here are my top several things of 2010. I haven’t bothered to create an artificial five or ten of everything, partly because my consumption of cultural artefacts doesn’t really merit it and partly because I like to keep it fresh and unpredictable, like a game of snooker [...]

I went to Sheffield Doc/Fest last week. It’s a film festival especially for documentaries and I saw a number of rocking films. My special pick was Junior, which is about the most gripping character-based doc I’ve ever seen, thanks to the uniqueness of the central characters Eddie Belasco (75) and his “Ma” (98), who have [...]

As I’ve nothing better to do and 2008 has now definitely finished, I thought I’d provide you with my list of my favourite things from the year just gone. Happy New Year, by the way. Film I thought Wall-E was surprisingly deep for a kids film and was also technically flawless. But There Will Be [...]

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but haven’t got round to it. Last week I stayed in Edinburgh overnight and was able to catch a couple of Fringe shows with a local Haggis-eating Irn Bru enthusiast by the name of Adrian. Really. Firstly we saw Justin Moorhouse’s show, Justin Moorhouse’s Ever [...]

I went to watch The Dark Knight at the IMAX in Manchester this week and it was bloody amazing. There was a bit towards the end, though – involving two boats – where I knew what was going to happen in advance because they gave it away on Newsnight Review last Friday. I watch this [...]

Here’s Sharon Stone spouting forth on the Chinese earthquake. Sharon, you see, is a friend o’ Lama and believes in, like, karma and shit. I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else… I don’t like that. I’ve been concerned about, [...]

Can there be anything more depressing than the new British film Three and Out? I haven’t seen it, of course, because it’s shit. How do I know it’s shit if I haven’t seen it, you ask. Well, just look at the poster (I reply) – in fact, just look at the font used on the [...]

Nicolas Cage is not a dog thief and anyone who accuses him of being a dog thief shall be sued. Unfortunately, Kathleen Turner didn’t realise this. Nor did the Daily Mail, which reproduced extracts from her autobiography in which she falsely labelled Cage as a drunk driver and - uh oh - claimed he stole a dog. Consequently, they have [...]

I went out on Saturday night. I know. It was a revelatory experience. I went to the cinema (rather than on an acid garage-soundtracked Prodigy video-inspired junk binge) to see a creepy Spanish film called El Orfanato, or The Orphanage. I was taken aback by three trailers that preceded the film, all of which were [...]

As you will no doubt have noticed, this site looks a bit different today. I’ve got me a new super-minimalist theme called Stripped by Upstart Blogger. I’m a fan of minimal, functional design and, since the emphasis round these parts is on words, this theme is perfect because all the other distracting stuff is dumped [...]