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Monday, 28 February 2022

Poirot: Murder in the Mews

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 "Well, I should think it's a jolly good night for a murder." Ok, that was better. No snobbishly depicted working class charac...
Sunday, 27 February 2022

Breaking Bad: Half Measures

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 "I won't be wearing bells..." This, yet another exercise in how to make sublime television from Breaking Bad , is an extraord...

Willow (1988)

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 "Ignore the bird. Follow the river," This is, let's be honest, a fantasy B movie script made to look like Hollywood fare by R...
Friday, 25 February 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 5: The Return of the Mandalorian

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 "Dated a Jawa for a while. They're quite furry. Very furry." This episode is, needless to say, not like the others. It would ...
Thursday, 24 February 2022

Mad Men: Indian Summer

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 "Just think about it deeply, then forget it. Then an idea will jump up in your face." This is an episode about ambition. The cent...
Wednesday, 23 February 2022

Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

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 "Ah, the stewed peaches! Quite!" I've done the Granada Sherlock Holmes; why not make a leisurely start to Thames' Poirot ...
Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Mark Lanegan

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It seems Mark Lanegan has died. He was a songwriter of extraordinary talent, and until today I would have unhesitatingly described him as th...

Mad Men: Long Weekend

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 "This is all there is..." This is yet another multi-layered and multi-faceted episde of a drama with a lot going on, ending with ...
Monday, 21 February 2022

Breaking Bad: Abiquiu

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 "You, I thought I was gonna see some, like, vaginas." As we often do in Breaking Bad , we begin with an obliquely symbolic sceene...

Black Widow (2021)

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 “Such a poser…” It’s a little weird seeing Black Widow get her own flashback movie at a point after she’s been seen to die on screen, but ...
Saturday, 19 February 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 4: The Gathering Storm

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 "You can only get so far without a tribe." This time the focus is on the flashback as Boba, folloewing the detrruction of the San...

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 3: The Streets of Mos Espa

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 "Take it from an ex-bounty hunter: don't work for scugholes." This episode gives us a fascinating change of pace as it focuse...

Daredevil: A Cold Day in Hell’s Kitchen

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 “What if this isn’t the end? What if this is just the beginning?” This, in the end, is a fairly predictable finale, but it’s so well-crafte...

The Uncanny (1977)

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 "I thought I saw a pussy cat? I did! I did!" This is a film, a portmanteau horror produced by Milton Subotsky of the sort that ha...
Thursday, 17 February 2022

Metallica- Master of Puppets (1986)

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 I suppose this, while not as widely popular as the bestselling Black Album, would be the Metallica album of choice for the cognoscenti. Thi...

Encanto (2021)

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 “You can’t hurry the future!” This film, the latest Disney behemoth, has become ubiquitous over the last few months. Little Miss Llamastran...
Wednesday, 16 February 2022

Daredevil: The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

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 "Matty, I'm proud of you." Wow. That's how to do a penultimate episode. I especially love how there are two parallel narr...

Daredevil: .380

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 "Stay away from me..." The season is in the final stretch and things are speeding up. There's still time for character scenes...
Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Another Update

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 I’ve been pondering my approach to the Marvel Defenders series leaving Netflix and will be slightly changing my approach. Breaking Bad wil...

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

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I’ve somehow reached the age of forty-four without, until very recently indeed,  reading a word of the Gormenghast trilogy. I was vaguely aw...
Monday, 14 February 2022

Breaking Bad: Fly

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 "It's all contaminated..." This is, it soon becomes apparent, not a typical episode. Not so much a bottle episode but somethi...
Sunday, 13 February 2022

Breaking Bad: Kafkaesque

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 "One taste and you'll know!" This is one of those episodes which, while easy to follow, have a lot of three dimensional chess...

Update

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 So I’ve been more-or-less alternating, aside from films, Breaking Bad and various odds and sods, between the second season of Daredevil a...
Saturday, 12 February 2022

The Ghoul (1933)

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 "I shall be among the trees, waiting..." There are quite a few '30s horror films, in the wake of Frankenstein , starring Bori...
Thursday, 10 February 2022

Out of the Trees

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 “Van… is a word rarely used to start sentences.” It's a shame this was buried on original transmission and lost for so many years; it’s...
Tuesday, 8 February 2022

Daredevil: The Man in the Box

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 “This is your jungle. This is your blood, like it is mine.” We're moving close to the end of the season and things are speeding up. An ...
Monday, 7 February 2022

Breaking Bad: I See You

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 "It's all, like, shiny up in here." Once again we have a devilishly clever episode which gets even cleverer at the very end. ...
Sunday, 6 February 2022

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

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 "Well, if you save the world, you knoiw what that means...!" I rather enjoyed the previous Kingsman movie, a fitrst class rollic...
Saturday, 5 February 2022

The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)

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 "This is dreadful. The next thing we know we'll be nationalised..." This is not, perhaps, one of those Ealing comedies that a...
Wednesday, 2 February 2022

Mad Men: Shoot

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 "I like this show. Very gay songs." Once again, Mad Men gives us a devilishly clever forty-seven minutes of television. Ostensib...
Tuesday, 1 February 2022

Daredevil: Seven Minutes in Heaven

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 "In prison, there's only room for one Kingpin..." At this point the series is quite addictive and I'm eagerly waitng for ...
Monday, 31 January 2022

An Alien Heat by Michael Moorcock

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My first novel of 2022 is, predictably enough, by Michael Moorcock. Apologies for the fixation of late; I tend to go through phases with fic...
Sunday, 30 January 2022

Breaking Bad: One Minute

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 "Stop a bullet like a soft wang against a Quaker girl..." Ok, that was bloody clever, bloody good, and I suspect once the shape o...

Seven (1995)

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 "This guy's methodical, exacting and, worst of all, patient." I'm not going to call it Se7en . That would be silly. Anywa...
Friday, 28 January 2022

Inspector Morse: Last Bus to Woodstock

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 "Is sex more trouble than it's worth?" This is another solid episode, with a fairly impressive cast, with a couple of twists ...
Thursday, 27 January 2022

Mad Men: The Hobo Code

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 "There is no system. The universe is indifferent." This episode is, at once, a deep character study of Don Draper and a fascinati...
Wednesday, 26 January 2022

Daredevil: Guilty as Sin

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 "This is who I am." I think it's probably fair to say that this is an eventful episode. Matt and Karen breaking up and Matt a...
Tuesday, 25 January 2022

Mad Men: Red in the Face

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 "He doesn't even wear a hat!" This extraordinary drama of bygone manners here turns its attention, in an oblique manner, to p...

Breaking Bad: Sunset

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 "This is my own private domicile and I will not be harrassed. Bitch!" Wow. Breaking Bad is consistently bloody good, but this is...
Sunday, 23 January 2022

Ladyhawke (1985)

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"Oh God, is it Lent again already?" I expected this film to be one of those Sword and Sorcery or Tolkien-esque fantasies that abou...
Thursday, 20 January 2022

Alice in Chains- Facelift (1990)

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I didn't buy, this, Alice in Chains' first full album, until surprisingly late, around 2006 or so. I used to play it a lot while pla...
Wednesday, 19 January 2022

Daredevil: Semper Fidelis

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 "Elektra is not the problem, Matt. You are." Ouch. This is a hard-hitting episode which hits at the core problems with Matt/DD as...
Tuesday, 18 January 2022

Breaking Bad: Mas

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 "The chemistry must be respected!" Another fadcinating and superbly crafted episode this time, but it's clear that something ...
Monday, 17 January 2022

Breaking Bad: Green Light

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 "I caught my second wife screwing my stepdad, ok?" This is another superb episode (aren't they all?) with particularly excell...
Sunday, 16 January 2022

Mad Men: Babylon

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 "Mourning is just extendsed self-pity." The title is clever. It relates to the ad campaign for Israel and Don's half-flirty, ...

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

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 "Um, did your traffic jam have something to do with the Russian mob?" Ouch. This is a rubbish film, isn't it? I mean, Andrew ...
Friday, 14 January 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tattoine

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 "I am not a bounty hunter!" Here we have another fascinating episode, yet again light on dialogue and heavy on well-directed and ...
Thursday, 13 January 2022

Daredevil: Regrets Only

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 "Well, you can't mask that ass. I'd know it anywhere." This is probably the episode where the season starts to click into...
Wednesday, 12 January 2022

The Cure- Pornography (1982)

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This is an early Cure album, from the days when their sound was more of a general soundscape per album than would later be the case. This is...
Tuesday, 11 January 2022

Mad Men: 5G

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 "I like being your medicine..." It's an arresting title for a programme made in 2007, but even more arresting is the programm...
Monday, 10 January 2022

Daredevil: Kinbaku

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 "German beer. Tastes like piss..." This is a fascinating change of pace. The Punisher is gone, for now, but not forgotten: Karen ...
Sunday, 9 January 2022

Breaking Bad: I.F.T.

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 "This spice feels like it's been through a couple of guys already..." This episode, for the first time, feels a little transi...

The Battle of the River Plate (1956)

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 "The captain must have a hat!" I suppose I've slightly neglected war films. I've seen and blogged a few, like Wesrerns, b...
Friday, 7 January 2022

The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter 1: Stranger in a Strange Land

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 "Jabba ruled by fear. I intend to rule with respect." This is, in the end, a programme in a very similar format to The Mandaloria...
Thursday, 6 January 2022

Mad Men: New Amsterdam

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 "No job for a white man...! I wouldn't have expected it, but Mad Men , that glacially and elegantly unfolding little visual serial...
Wednesday, 5 January 2022

Daredevil: Penny and Dime

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 No killing." "Altar boy!" Yep, this is a superlative bit of telly, just like the last episode. Beautifully acted- Jon Bernth...
Tuesday, 4 January 2022

Mad Men: Marriage of Figaro

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 "He could be Batman for all we know..." This is, of course, an episode about marriage, the monogamy that it represents. Hence Pet...
Monday, 3 January 2022

Daredevil: New York's Finest.

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 "You're just one bad day away from being me." What a piece of television here. Obviously the focus is the foregrounded debate...