Film Review: Love is All You Need
Love is All You Need is a gem of a movie. On the one hand it would seem to be a deceptively simple rom com but there’s a lot more going on. For starters, the film also deals with the repercussions of someone having to deal with cancer. Now, in theory that should be a […]
Continue readingFilm Review: Ides of March
Ides of March is an apt title for a political movie dealing as it does with the shenanigans required to become a presidential candidate in 21st century America. Symbolic, as the date is, for the day when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. The film shows that over 2,000 years later nothing in politics […]
Continue readingEdinburgh
Edinburgh is to comics what the Holy Grail must have been to Arthurian knights. Many set off to seek their fame and fortune only to return severely disappointed. Edinburgh though is a great opportunity to stumble upon comics you’ve never seen live and marvel at how great they are, as I did in 2007 when […]
Continue readingFilm Review: Argo
Argo takes us back to the 4th November 1979 and the Iran hostage crisis. And just like the political thriller Day of the Jackal before it, Argo manages to pull off the nigh impossible – that tricky paradox of being able to create suspense in a story whose ending we already know. It’s a difficult […]
Continue readingThe Blame Game When It Comes To Violence Against Women
When it comes to violent attacks where the victim is a woman and the man is the perpetrator, in most cases the blame game immediately starts up and blame is shifted to the victim one way or another. Men, who are usually lauded for their sense, reasoning and logic, apparently lose all these qualities when […]
Continue readingA Big No No for New Comics!
Giving feedback to a comic can be a delicate operation at the best of times and definitely not to be attempted even if you have been on a “2 week intensive comedy course”! Tonight I had a new comic come up to me after I’d just done a set. He was very new indeed. He’d […]
Continue readingYounger-San and The Japanese
I’ve lived in several countries in my time, Russia, Ukraine, (well to be honest when I lived there it was so long ago, it was still the Soviet Union), Austria, Germany, Spain and France. In Germany I worked for the Japanese. On hearing about my new job, my father, as usual in his very gruff, […]
Continue readingForeign Film Review: A Royal Affair
A Royal Affair not only tells an engrossing tale of love, passion, politics and royal intrigue but also manages to elicit your interest in the painful birth pains of modernity in Europe (a subject which is not generally known as a crowd-pleaser) while at the same time giving you an insight into a country that […]
Continue readingNovel Review: Brave New World
Brave New World depicts what the world will be like in the future. It’s 2540 or 632 A.F. i.e. After Ford and the novel depicts what happens to society when Americanisation/Globalisation has reached its zenith. Written in 1932, it’s chilling how prescient the author, Aldous Huxley, seems to be. Brave New World is a world […]
Continue readingFilm Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of only 3 films to have ever won the 5 main Academy Awards (the other two being It Happened One Night and Silence of the Lambs); with Jack Nicholson’s performance in the film recently being named the greatest movie performance of all time by Total Film Magazine. […]
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