- Wayfaring Stranger by Emma John (2019)
- Bluegrass is not a musical style I know much about and, having listened to a little now while reading this book, I'm afraid I'm not that bothered about learning more. But Emma John's enthusiasm for it comes across brilliantly and that carried me along completely. Her "musical journey in the American South" (the book's subtitle) doesn't come across as one that was undertaken in order to write a book, but rather driven by a genuine curiosity and desire to learn. It no doubt helped that she really can play the fiddle (there's a couple of YouTube videos if you're interested), and the result is the kind of travelogue that only an outsider (she's from London) can really write. Very enjoyable.
- Redwood Bend by Robyn Carr (2012)
- I'm nearing the end of the Virgin River series, and although they are all pretty similar, they're good-hearted, dramatic without being melodramatic (mostly) and feature characters you care about. However, in this instalment, the couple end up not choosing to live in Virgin River <gasp>. This is an unheard of departure and I'm not sure I like it. Seriously though, as well told and easy to read as always for this series.
- The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (2022)
- In this third book in the record breaking (it says here) Thursday Murder Club series, the plot is increasingly implausible - perhaps that's the point (it's a cozy armchair mystery), but it does make it a little hard if you're trying to guess the plot based on logic, and of course none of the suspense can be taken seriously because we know none of the main characters will actually be killed. But I never try anyway, so that's fine for me. An enjoyable piece of nonsense that, for some reason, I've taken over two years to get round to reading (sorry C).
- How To by Randall Munroe (2019)
- A nice easy and very funny re-read. I love the slight recurring theme that some of the more ridiculous ideas have actually been researched by the US Government.
- We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (2024)
- A new series from everyone's favourite quiz show host and general media polymath! Most of the things we expect from Osman are present and correct: anchoring cultural touchstones (as he acknowledges in the, er, acknowledgements, he mentions "Twix", "Greggs" and "Lee Child" in the first fifteen pages), pointless but amusing details (the directions to and from the New Forest are funny) and a signature pathos about death of loved ones. And the plot is slightly ridiculous, and the "ordinary" people turn out to be anything but. All jolly good fun though and immensely readable.
- Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod (1978)
- An odd mix of styles that I found hard to like, but I finished it because I wanted to know how the murder mystery played out. I hadn't realised until afterwards that it was first published in 1978, so that probably explains some of the oddities, but in fairness nothing actually jarred or stood out as hopelessly dated. It's the first in a series but I don't think I'll bother with the rest.
- Mixonline Classic Tracks by various authors (2009-2025)
- In a very similar vein to the Sound On Sound classic tracks series (and featuring many of the same tracks), but with less of a focus on the engineers only and with more contributions from the artists themselves. Interesting reading and introduced me to a lot of tracks that I hadn't heard before, like Eddie Money's "Two Tickets to Paradise". Full playlist here!
- Never: The Autobiography by Rick Astley (2024)
- I didn't know much about Rick Astley other than that - like Andrew Ridgeley - he seemed like a nice guy who did a few years in the limelight before choosing to return to a sane, normal life. It turns out it wasn't quite that simple for Rick, as we learn through this honest and engaging book. Obviously he had help writing it (the Guardian's head of music journalism Alexis Petridis is thanked right at the beginning) but it comes across as Astley's own voice, and is an easy read that's well worth the time. And it's good to know he's happy now!
- Rebel Rebel by Chris O'Leary (2015)
- Ian MacDonald's classic Revolution in the Head inspired many people, no doubt, to attempt the same feat on their own favoured artist. The Beatles had a nicely defined, complete output that covered only eight years and it's tempting to argue that you could select a similarly short period from David Bowie's life and gather all the most essential recordings. This nearly does that; if you started a little later than '64 and then included Low and "Heroes" you'd probably be fine. But the subtitle says "All the Songs of David Bowie from '64 to '76" and it's really not kidding, and since Bowie made so many false starts that means including a lot of fairly dull juvenalia. As a result, there's quite a bit of the book that's quite hard going, even allowing for the very fragmented nature of splitting into a commentary on individual songs. But once we reach the real hits, the narrative lights up and by the time we get to Station to Station (where this book ends), O'Leary is doing a superb job highlighting just how outré Bowie's records were for a mainstream rock star. Bowie was the first "serious" artist I got into as a teenager, and I'm so familiar with tracks like "Sweet Thing/Candidate" or "Station to Station" that's it good to be reminded how far away from blues-based rock they actually are - the closing essay on the latter is fantastic. It took me a while to get through (partly because I insisted on listening to each track while reading about it) but worth it. I'm a bit scared of the next book though - it's twice the size!
- Sunset Point by Robyn Carr (2012)
- Another fun instalment of the Virgin River series, and if this time I could have done without the "other woman" being quite such a caricature, and the ending not quite so abrupt, well, it didn't stop me enjoying the book overall.
- Begin Again by Helly Acton (2023)
- Well, the title is a bit misleading as our main character gets to see what would have happened if she had taken the other route at key moments in her life - but, crucially, she doesn't actually get to begin again. However, in what is a bit like a cross between Sliding Doors and A Christmas Carol, she does visit alternate timelines and learn about herself and her effect on others. A fun premise, well executed and easy to read, and providing a nice bit of feel-good incentive if you need it, perhaps.
- Recursion by Blake Crouch (2019)
- An example of the "what is reality?" strand of science fiction, in the grand tradition of Philip K. Dick and, more recently, Christopher Nolan. The only thing that marred it slightly for me was the bit where it kind of elided how implanting false memories in one person made every single person in the world go back in time - that not only didn't make sense (yeah I get that this is SF) but didn't seem to me to be consistent within the universe of the novel. So although everything that followed from that assumption was great, along with the thriller elements, it didn't quite hold true for me. Good fun though, and I ripped through it in about a day!
- Modern Recording Techniques by David Miles Huber & Emiliano Caballero (10th edition, 2024)
- This was recommended by a working engineer/producer (on a forum) as one of the essential, standard works on recording, so I thought it would be interesting, both as an insight into how recording audio all fits together and as a way of understanding the subject better so I could have a go myself. It's laid out (and priced) like a text book, and no doubt is used as one in many places. I can't fault its scope - it covers a lot of ground - and while the editing and fact checking could have been better in a couple of places, it really has got loads of useful information that I am sure I'll refer back to at some point. However, I didn't find it easy to read and the layout is nowhere near as good as The Producer's Manual by Paul White - although in fairness, the latter is more explicitly aimed at a hobbyist like me!
- Deep End by Ali Hazelwood (2025)
- Maybe I don't get out much, but I haven't seen sub-dom (maledom in this case) relationships depicted much in the kind of mainstream romance I read - or, more accurately, I haven't seen it labelled explicitly as that. There are too many books where the strong woman becomes a simpering, submissive idiot when she meets "the one", and that makes me uncomfortable, as the men nearly always come across as sexist, controlling arseholes. In this story, Hazelwood makes it very clear that the central couple make a conscious, agreed and joint choice about their relationship, and logically that is much better - but it still doesn't sit right with the part of me that is very aware of the instrinsic power balance of most male-female relationships. However, the author manages to portray consensual submissiveness without implying that actually what all women need is a man to tell them what to do - and, honestly, I can kind of see the appeal of an arrangement like this, and I really enjoyed the story and a little soujourn into this world. Sure, the MMC (I've literally only just discovered the acronyms for all this book reviewing shit) is an unrealistically perfect robot but perhaps that just how he appears to the FMC (the book's in first person from her point of view). And shorn of the (pretty mild, imho) kinkiness, the plot is a pretty standard romance arc. But that didn't stop me charging through the book in a couple of days.
- My Kind of Christmas by Robyn Carr (2012)
- Yeah I know it's not Christmas - but even though you don't really have to read the books in this series in order, I want to anyway, and this is where I am. A little under-developed compared to other books in the series: the characters fall in love pretty much immediately and there's a half-hearted "oh noes what if they can't be together" plot line that we all know is going to be resolved. But satisfying anyway when it is.
- Talking at Night by Claire Daverley (2023)
- DNF, and in the first few pages too. I find this fad - and yes, obviously that's what it is - for not using quotation marks to be ridiculous and pretentious, and it constantly takes me out of the world. Apparently Sally Rooney is one of the most notable recent authors guilty of this, and although I'd wondered about reading Normal People, that completely excludes it for me now. I've read a few articles where other authors attempt to justify redefining grammatical rules that work fine for everyone else, and they all miss the point: if you want to communicate your ideas, then a common set of rules helps your reader. Otherwise you might as well invent your own words - and let's face it, there aren't that many Shakespeares writing today. Laura Miller puts the case against this pointless affectation much better than I do.
- Daydream by Hannah Grace (2024)
- K says I have the fiction taste of a teenage girl, and it's hard to argue if I describe the process by which I selected this from the library: it has a cute-looking couple on the pastel-coloured cover and a classic romance plot described on the back. I didn't have particularly high expectations, so I was pleasantly surprised to find sweet characters I cared about, likeable secondary characters and a story that got me really invested!
- Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZZT by Trevor Horn (2022)
- A perfectly readable but slightly sketchy (in the sense of lacking detail) account of snapshots in Trevor Horn's life. Each chapter is about a specific track, although it sometimes branches out to others he worked on, but you still get the sense that there's a lot missing. In fairness, he sounds like a busy man so if he included more, the book would be twice the size!
- Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood (2022)
- Excellent fun, with a You've Got Mail inspired sub-theme (even if it was obvious from about the first page who her correspondent was). I enjoyed seeing how the FMC went from thinking the guy hated her to realising the opposite, and if the cartoon villain was a bit Scooby Doo and one-dimensional, it didn't spoil things. And the extended rants about sexism in academia and STEM subjects in particular were great.
- Funny Story by Emily Henry (2024)
- Well, this meet-cute - girl moves in with ex-fiancé's new fiancé's ex - would a bit icky in real life, I think, but in the world of the story, it's kind of sweet and has lots of fun characters. There's some depth and insight into characters, but maybe not a lot of growth. But it's still a nice read and I enjoyed it.
Occasional Jottings
Writings on things I want to write about
30/06/2025
Reading - June 2025
Watching - June 2025
- Hot Pursuit (2015)
- Slightly ho-hum buddy movie, showing its age with some clichés (particularly about women) that I hope wouldn't get the time of day now. But funny in places, and passed the time.
- The Time Traveller's Wife (2009)
- I read the book about two and a half years ago and enjoyed it very much, so I was keen to see what the adaptations are like. There's a more recent TV series but I'm unlikely to get Apple TV for a while, so when this came up on Prime I was interested. It's a two hour film so of course it misses on much of the content and subtlety of the book - it can't show the internal thoughts of the characters and there's a limit to what it can show. So instead of a moving meditation on the effects of long term illness on a relationship (in my opinion, anyway) you get a sort of thriller/romance. The film brings to life some scenes well - Henry's despair at suddenly being transported to random places was much clearer in pictures than on the page - but struggles in others, particularly the ones with Henry as an adult and Clare as a child, where it's harder to ignore the slightly problematic nature of the relationship. Still, a sweet film and a nice way to pass the time.
- Maestro (2023)
- While I'm usually not very good at working out the underling themes of films, I think I've got this one. This is ostensibly a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, but really it's about what an amazing talent Bradley Cooper is. It's fatally infatuated with its own cleverness of direction and emotional truths, when actually it's just a posh TV melodrama, stuffed with clichés (ooh look, Bernstein is smoking in every scene! What a original, subtle and clever directorial choice!), over-theatrics - cue the Oscar nomination scene! - and poor dialogue; in one case, Cooper (did we mention that he wrote the script as well as directing and starring - blimey, what an amazing talent, eh?) has Bernstein say he "misread the room" ... in the 70s? Come on. And don't get me started on the startlingly poor choice to put Cooper in Jewface. I get that biopics are difficult - you're trying to fit decades of a real and messy life into a convenient two hour story arc - but this failed badly, in my opinion, and I was already counting the minutes to the end after about twenty minutes in. Somehow I finished it, but I couldn't get involved.
- Somewhere In Time (1980)
- I was reading around the subject of The Time Traveller's Wife and this was mentioned - a little-known, slightly hokey and very sentimental romance starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour film that features time travel. Mostly forgotten now (apart from by a small but very enthusiastic fan club), there's nothing particularly special about it and if it wasn't for the big names (Christopher Plummer also features) it would be a typical TV movie - and indeed it effectively was, as apparently it got a new lease of life on early cable. So, nothing special - but I still enjoyed it more than Maestro.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine (season 3, 2015-2016)
- My kids are finally shaming me into watching more of this, since I haven't made much progress since last year! Is it worth it? Well, I enjoyed it, but a whole series is something like the same duration as four films, and that's a lot of time to spend with the same characters. I'll give myself a bit of a break before the next season.
- F1 The Movie (2025)
- A summer blockbuster about Formula One, on the biggest screen in Southampton, and with sound that shakes your seat - what's not to like? I really enjoyed the whole experience (even the fly that caught in the projector didn't annoy me); the action scenes are spectacular, there's laughs and emotional bits and some sort of redemption. The plot? Well, it's tempting to describe it as essentially a re-run of Top Gun: Maverick: old hand is called out of retirement for one last hurrah, and shows those upstart young 'uns what a real driver can do, by disregarding the rules blah blah blah. Brad Pitt's good (not as good as Tom Cruise, though), but I was pleased to hear so many British voices - this is true to F1 life, of course, but it wouldn't have surprised me if Hollywood decided that all these weird foreign accents would be too difficult for Americans to understand. But overall, although the (mostly ex-) F1 fan in me had a great time, it's hard not consider the film as a whole as pretty insubstantial, and I suspect that anyone not interested in the sport would find it a bit of a yawn (a view articulately and, I'd say, accurately, argued in Nicholas Barber's review on the BBC)
- Clueless (1995)
- So, anyway - it's, like, the 30th anniversary of this iconic teen romcom. And it's being re-released (briefly) into cinemas this weekend, so what better time to watch it again? At home, though - I considered going out, but it's only being shown on the smallest screens, so it would have been a bit pointless. It's still peerless, even if you could point at some moments and call them dated.
31/05/2025
Reading - May 2025
- Wild Man Creek by Robyn Carr (2011)
- There's obviously a formula to the Virgin River books, but Robyn Carr does a good job of varying the principal characters and keeps it from feeling too repetitive. I wish the heroine's ex had been given more of a comeuppance but that wasn't the main point of the story.
- Manwatching by Desmond Morris (1977)
- I remember this book being in the school library, but other than occasionally looking at the pictures of naked women (hey, I was 13 and we didn't have the internet), I didn't read it. However, I found it a couple of years ago in a charity shop and was curious. There's lots of interest, but what I find most fascinating is completely how it betrays the time in which it was written. Morris goes for a scientific, detached tone but more often only achieves patronising, and overall it couldn't be clearer that this is a book anchored in the male- and white-centric attitudes of the seventies. The whole section on sport only discusses and pictures men, while the section on aesthetic behaviour has photos of women in swimsuits. I'm no anthropologist but it seems obvious that many of the conclusions here mistake superficial and specific western social customs for underlying human "truths". Still, at the very least it's interesting to see how things have changed in the last forty years. (note: the edition I read is the original; the latest is called Peoplewatching and given the change in title, I really hope it's been updated to remove the more egregiously sexist content.)
- Harvest Moon by Robyn Carr (2011)
- A bit more depth than some of these books, with a troubled teenage daughter complicating the core relationship - but of course, she comes round in the end! At one point I was really caught up in it.
- Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett (2001)
- More than most Discworld books, this leaves me feeling like there's something I'm missing here that I'm just not well-read enough to understand. But reading the initial quote from Terry Pratchett at the start of the Annotated Pratchett file (link above) makes me think perhaps not. Anyway, the usual Discworld frenetic-ness abounds, although perhaps this one is a bit more meta-physical than usual. Eminently readable and as always, you can't fault the level of imagination that's gone into it.
- Listen by Michal Faber (2023)
- A hugely enjoyable discussion about why we listen to and enjoy music, from a sociological perspective rather than a physiological one. If that sounds a bit dry, well, it isn't. Although it's clearly conceived as a complete work, it is effectively structured as a collection of connected essays on related topics. That can make it a little bitty, but I didn't mind as the writing was interesting. If, like me, you love music but (crucially) also tie your identity to some extent to that love of music, then there's lots to think about here. Some of it resonated with opinions I already had, some was a useful new perspective, but all was entertaining. Highly recommended.
- Hidden Summit by Robyn Carr (2011)
- Book number 15 in the Virgin River series! Getting towards the end now, I think. A pretty straightforward plot, but with some good drama going on too. Ends a bit suddenly though.
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)
- This was recommended to me by B - possibly almost a year ago - and I put it off for ages because I'm not really a fan of fantasy. But it's nicely compact (Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is off-puttingly thick) and now I have more time, I felt I owed it to him to give it a go. And I'm pleased I did - it was very readable and I polished it off in an afternoon, so keen was I to learn what it was all about. But even though I really enjoyed it, I'm a bit disappointed. For most of the book, I assumed that the other world described would turn out to be really this world, but seen from a completely different point of view. However, it seems that the other world is, in fact, just another world (like Narnia, to which there are several references). OK, so far, so fantasy. But I do prefer my stories to be rooted in some kind of reality, so this, in some respects, for me, is a less imaginative option. But that's not to take away from the quality of the writing and I liked the slight element of mystery that was gradually unravelled.
- Skallagrigg by William Horwood (1987)
- I've owned this book since the early 90s (on the recommendation of a friend who wasn't known for reading much) and probably not read it since then. But it's survived various purges of books over thirty years because I remembered it being worth it, and I wasn't wrong. There's a lot going on and much that is very moving, even if it is a borderline mawkish at times (albeit one could say, with justification). A unique story.
- Kilt Trip by Alexandra Kiley (2024)
- Chosen fairly at random in the library on the basis of an amusing title and a promising premise (although I wouldn't have described this as an "enemies to lovers" romance like the cover says). Some of the relationship obstacles feel a bit forced and our hero is waaayyy to good to be true, but this doesn't stop me willing them to sort everything out.
- Nothing Is Real by David Hepworth (2018)
- Second time of reading (I saw it in the library and just fancied it - completely failing to remember that I actually own a copy) and I enjoyed it a bit more this time, I think. Hepworth's slightly staccato style is still a little jarring on paper but he knows what he's talking about, and if a few of the collected pieces here are a bit shorter than I'd like, well, never mind. Still waiting for a volume two though.
- Showstopper by Peter Lovesey (2023)
- An enjoyable murder mystery in the classic Christie mode. It's taken me a year since the first Peter Diamond book I read to get to this one, but I'll find more soon.
Watching - May 2025
- Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
- I've been meaning to watch this for a while, having heard acceptable things about it, and I do love Eurovision. And it's that time of year, so it seemed appropriate. Well, I made it about 40 minutes in before giving up. It's woefully unfunny, appallingly patronising, and grindingly tedious. Will Ferrell lacks any subtlety as either a writer or performer and, as well as demonstrating an almost complete failure to understand anything about Eurovision as a cultural phenomenon, has managed to badly miscast himself in his own film, which is some sort of achievement. The whole thing is like a bad translation of a classic book into another language. It's only redeeming feature - in the bit I managed to sit through - is that someone has very effectively nailed the music styles.
- Red Notice (2021)
- Apparently this is one of the most successful films on Netflix, which I can totally understand, as it's an easy watch, Ryan Reynolds is great being, y'know, Ryan Reynolds, and it happily fills time. I've seen it before and still didn't remember the twist at the end, which may say something about the memorableness of the plot, but more likely about me.
- The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)
- Amazon offered me yet another free trial of Prime so this is the first thing I watched. Again. I still love it. I wish I could own a copy.
- Overboard (2018)
- A gender-reversed version of the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, er, "classic", you say? Well, only if it has under 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. It does? Count me in! Actually a perfectly watchable remake that adds nothing to the original but is funny and ends happily (and incidentally has a much better user rating that RT gives it). Kept me amused, anyway, so clearly I have lower standards than the critics (but this isn't news).
- The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
- An unabashed tribute to fast-talking, screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, with Jennifer Jason Leigh doing her best Katharine Hepburn as a hard-boiled reporter, and an exaggerated style of its own. I remember watching it years - decades - ago and enjoying it. Coming back to it now that I know more of the movies it's emulating, I can see how closely the Coen brothers (and all their crew, of course) matched them, not just in style but in substance - which is to say, there isn't much emotional depth here, just like something such as Bringing Up Baby. Very clever and entertaining, but possibly a little shallow.
- Wandavision (2021)
- I'm not much of an MCU fan, and so although I've watched quite a few of the films (with the boys in particular), I wasn't overly bothered about this when it came out. But Z persuaded me otherwise (basically in exchange for him watching some of my recommendations) and so we binged it over a few nights. I loved the initial concept of each episode being based on a different sitcom, although some of them are so US-specific it failed to resonate culturally as much as the makers probably intended. For example, something like Family Ties (the sitcom that made Michael J. Fox famous, parodied in episode 5) was huge in the US but less so around the rest of the world, so you're left with a bit of a "huh?" moment. I'm not sure where else you could have taken that but it felt like the slow change into a fairly typical series of Marvel fight scenes was a bit of a disappointment. Full marks for the sitcom scenes though.
- Eurovision Song Contest 2025 - Grand Final (2025)
- All the usual fun!
- Last One Laughing UK (season 1, 2025)
- I heard about this via Richard Osman on the brilliant podcast The Rest Is Entertainment and it was interesting to hear his perspective as a producer: mainly that, as a format, it's genius, because you get ten comedians in a room for a day, and out of that, you've got an entire season! The show originated in Japan several years ago and has now been franchised to nearly thirty countries (the UK is surprisingly late to this party), so clearly it's been a success from a production point of view. However, on the evidence of the UK version, it's a mixed bag for the viewer. There are laughs, but not as many as a good scripted sitcom (which, in fairness, would be a much more expensive proposition). It starts a bit slowly, gets funnier but peters out slightly at the end, and there are too many shots of the participants making faces to try not to laugh, which are ultimately not that amusing. It's a bit hit and miss, really, and, annoyingly, the climax of the show is not actually the funniest moment. But that's the risk and balance you take, as a producer, I guess: maybe there's some sort of price per laugh formula - just good enough to get people watching, cheap enough to make within a certain budget.
- Fargo (1996)
- It probably says a lot about me that I enjoyed the ostensibly awful remake of Overboard earlier this month more than I did this. Sure, I know Fargo is a classic. William Goldman waxes lyrical about the script in his book Which Lie Did I Tell? and Roger Ebert's original review is glowing. These are both people whose views I trust a lot. There's probably all sorts of craft, themes and subtext that I don't even realise are going on (although probably not to the extent of this ridiculous over-analysis). I'm pleased I've seen it, but the story itself is really not my cup of tea, I don't get what the point of the film is, and I can't enjoy a film for the technique.
- Last One Laughing Australia (2020)
- Despite feeling that LOL UK was a very qualified success (see above), I was curious enough about the format to investigate a couple of the other dozen or so versions available on Prime. The setup is identical - enough that I wonder if it's the same set, just dressed differently - but of course the show changes vastly with a change of personnel. The Australian version was a lot more scatological and puerile in places, mainly due to one of the participants but possibly because of cultural differences I guess. I'm not sure in hindsight why I carried on watching, but overall it's a light-hearted, easy watch. And I don't know if it's coincidence, but in the Australian, UK and Canadian versions, it's what you might term the "elder statesman" of the group who wins. And I think I'm done with it for now.
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
- I happened to be listening to George Thorogood's brilliant "Bad to the Bone" and that reminded me of the scene when Arnie first rides off on the Harley, so I watched that and then obviously the rest of the film followed. Great stuff if you can ignore the time paradox stuff!
- Back to the Future Part III (1990)
- More time paradoxes (paradoxi?) that don't really bear thinking about - just enjoy a great film full of fun moments. Trilogy watched with Z.
- Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
- This is part of my cultural landscape and so, as such, I find it hugely enjoyable.
- Hello Quo (2012)
- I can't remember what prompted me to watch this again, other than it was free on Prime - although I'm sure when I watched it before, it was about half the length. A good reminder of how good they were in the early-to-mid 70s in particular, a bit less convincing about their continued relevance at the time of filming.
- Moana (2016)
- Great songs, great animation - a classic already. Hard to see why Disney are bothering to remake it as live action (I mean, other than money ... but what other reason do they need, I suppose). Some revision for watching the sequel ...
- Moana 2 (2024)
- ... which we watched that evening for our Saturday family film night. Very obviously a sequel, unfortunately: pretty much a shopping list of the same elements as the original, just not done as well - certainly it didn't keep the teens attention well enough. Can't fault the animation though.
30/04/2025
Watching - April 2025
- Back to the Future (1985)
- Forty years old and as fresh as a daisy (although I'm not sure what's specifically so pristine about daisies). Saturday film night with Z.
- Back to the Future II (1989)
- The second BTTF film is usually considered the worst of the three,[citation needed] but although it's the most complicated, it's also the most satisfyingly complete from a time-travel point-of-view.
- The Lego Movie (2014)
- Blimey, over ten years old! Surely this has to be the best of the product tie-in films - imaginative, very funny. tongue-in-cheek and superbly animated. A firm favourite in our house for a reason - the kids were speaking along with it during our pizza 'n' movie night.
- Wicked Little Letters (2024)
- I'm not quite sure why Netflix describes this as a "riotous comedy" - there are some funny moments for sure, but there's more drama than laughs and the overall message about the subjugation and judgement of women in the 1920s is, ultimately, not amusing at all, just the cause of indignation (as intended, of course). But it's a good watch and the three central women - Olivia Coleman, Jessie Buckley and Anjana Vasan - are superb.
- Our Welsh Chapel Dream (season 2, 2025)
- Unfortunately this time there's even more of a feeling of the material being stretched than there was in the first series. The narrator is doing double time, so even if you discount the (apparently necessary) multiple re-caps at the top of each episode and after each ad break, the main voice you hear is his. Poor old Keith and Marj feel like they're just supporting artists in their own documentary, as they only really pop up for a sentence or two at a time, and the whole is very disjointed. Still a watchable series though, even if it's just to marvel at the outré decorative choices being made!
- Hidden Figures (2016)
- I struggled with the original book of this (or maybe it was one of those that just didn't download to my e-reader properly, I can't remember), but really enjoyed the film - as a piece of storytelling with a clear point. There's no question that many liberties have been taken with historical accuracy in order to tell it (just see the fairly damning list on Wikipedia), and while this is to some extent understandable - as the book's author says, you can't have a film with 300 heroes - it spoils it a bit for me to find that, once again, a really interesting piece of real life has been chopped around to fit a standard Hollywood template. That said, it's still making important points as well as being moving.
- Waking Ned (1998)
- A simple idea, wonderfully told - even if is leaning a little heavily on a vision of bucolic Irish country simplicity - very funny and very sweet in places. The (small) twist at the end is unbelievable and unnecessary in my view, though.
- The Wild Robot (2024)
- Animated films take a huge amount of effort over years of time, and so it's a shame that here the resultant stunning visuals are in service of a clichéd and mawkish story. And I like sentimental - but this was too much. There's charm, for sure, and everyone loves a cute talking animal, but the anthropomorphism treads well-worn paths and the plot feels like several of the original books smooshed together. We watched it with Z (whose choice it was) and I'm pleased we did something together, but it's a kid's film, with simplistic ideas and predictable results. A miss (although for some reason, the critics loved it, according to Wikipedia, which baffles me).
- Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (2019)
- Things I thought I knew about Linda Ronstadt before I watched this: she was spectacularly pretty and she sang country rock in the 70s. Well, I wasn't wrong about either of those things, but that represents a very small fraction of the overall picture. I hadn't realised what a huge star she was in the US, what a variety of music she recorded, or quite how good a singer she is - the few songs I knew don't really show her range - or, most importantly, how she carved her own way through a rampantly sexist music business for decades. I've listened to some of her albums since and while none of it particularly grabs me, there's no denying how good she is. Consider me educated!
- The Adam Project (2022)
- Fairly standard time travel film, enlivened by Ryan Reynolds. Good fun.
- Doctor Strange (2016)
- I fancied re-watching this for some reason - probably not seen it since around when it came out. Watched it with Z (who needed little persuading) as preparation for the sequel. It's fairly typical Marvel fare of course - too much action and not enough plot - but enjoyable nonsense. I don't understand why they made Benedict Cumberbatch do a very average American accent when it would have made no difference to the plot to have him use his own, though.
Reading - April 2025
- Backtrack by Tessa Niles (2015)
- Tessa Niles might not be a household name, but if you come from the generation of music fans that reads credits on albums or CD booklets (I assume this basically excludes anyone under about forty) then there's a good chance you'll have seen the name - and given her incredible list of credits, you will definitely have heard her. The physical book feels like it's a print-on-demand copy (I bought it on Amazon so it's possible) and I can't quite decide whether Panoma Press are a vanity publisher or not; the writing style is a bit Mills & Boon and could definitely have done with better editing in places. But that said it does come across as her genuine voice rather than a bland ghost written account - and I found it very readable and enjoyable.
- Beserker! by Adrian Edmondson (2023)
- This had been recommended in various places, and despite the fact that the only bits of Edmondson's output from the last 40+ years that I'm familiar with is The Young Ones (which I haven't seen since it was originally broadcast) and vaguely remembered bits of The Dangerous Brothers ("dangerous!") from Saturday Live, it was worth reading. He's an honest and relatable companion and it's refreshing to hear the trials and effort involved in what could appear, to an outsider, like a comfortable life in entertainment.
- The Perfectly Dressed Gentleman by Robert O'Byrne (2011)
- I found this on the book exchange shelves at work, and it looks like a Christmas stocking filler; slim, but a hardback, with a slightly novelty integrated bookmark. But it's surprisingly full of information.
- Paradise Valley by Robyn Carr (2009)
- Forbidden Falls by Robyn Carr (2010)
- Angel's Peak by Robyn Carr (2010)
- These next three books in the Virgin River series seem to have randomly assigned titles representing places that are literally never mentioned anywhere, but they are decent, readable and enjoyable stories that get you involved and wanting to know how things work out - not just whether they will work out (obviously they will). There are more and more secondary characters turning up and they have their own arcs too. Perfect bedtime reading.
- White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook (2006)
- A hugely impressive and authoritative history of mid-to-late sixties Britain. It takes a history with this kind of perspective, the kind only afforded by time, shorn of bias and with the egos long eroded, to be able to show the real causes and the real effects. Sadly, it also shows that politics hasn't changed, with decisions made in the interests of self or at least, party, heavily overriding any wider concerns. Harold Wilson comes across as an incredible political operator who nevertheless was more focussed on keeping his job than in running the country for everyone's benefit. Opposition parties still grabbed every opportunity to carp and pick holes instead of behaving like adults. It also shows the impact one determined person can have, usually for the worse - whether that's Mary Whitehouse, Enoch Powell or Ian Paisley (all of whom claimed to be speaking on behalf of a silent majority that didn't exist). Sandbrook's summary (if you can summarise anything as complex as this) - that Britain wasn't swinging or in fact vastly transformed in any ways other than by the normal march of time - is sane and rational and a deliberate counterpoint to those who might try to twist the evidence to suit their own prejudices. Politicians were still politicians and people were still people. Still, it's great to have this kind of history to read and I've come away vastly better informed. I'm looking forward to the next books, which cover the times during which I was actually alive. I might give myself a bit of a break first though!
- Screenwriting for Dummies by Laura Schellhardt (2008)
- I picked this up ages ago in a charity shop because I thought it would give a good insight into screenwriting (and as a more practical counterpoint to William Goldman's peerless Adventures in the Screen Trade). Well, it was interesting but I didn't find it compelling: it's taken me over two years to finish it! There's lot of good advice here but neither does it shy away from making it clear that there's a huge effort involved. That's true of everything worth doing, of course, but it's probably killed any faint fantasy that I might try my hand at it!
- Paper Cuts by Ted Kessler (2022)
- Despite being the last editor of Q magazine before it folded, Ted Kessler describes himself as essentially being an NME writer - and even if he hadn't, his off-hand dismissal of Q as "smug, self-congratulatory, purposely fogey" would give him away. But I loved magazines like it and Word, and would say it was ironic, with a keen sense of the innate ridiculousness of much of the music industry. By contrast, the weekly inkies always had the breathless, over-excited feel of a bunch of teenagers seduced by the myths of rock 'n' roll and unable or unwilling to see past them, and Kessler sounds like he fit in exactly. The monthlies were clearly dying long before he arrived to oversee their last days and I'd ducked out years before. All of which is a long way of saying that I've never read or even come across Ted Kessler before, and in any case, I probably wouldn't have had much time for him. Which is my loss, because he's a really good writer, not just when he's being self-deprecatory about his younger self's misadventures, but about the music that's inspired him. This took me a solid day to read and was never less than entertaining and often insightful.
- Promise Canyon by Robyn Carr (2011)
- Some sort of horse whisperer thing going on here, and a mild tribute to Native American traditions, but otherwise pretty much exactly the same as the others in this series - which is to say, a satisfying but maybe slightly forgettable romance.
- Pick of Punch (1991) edited by David Thomas (1991)
- I found a couple of these in a charity book shop (in a National Trust property) and couldn't resist adding to my little collection - I now have five. Yet now I've read it, I'm not sure why I bother. It's the penultimate annual from the "proper" run of Punch (the 1996 re-launch under Mohamed Al-Fayed doesn't count) and by this point it feels like it's trying to emulate Private Eye in a bid to recapture readers - and it's not working. Too much is just not funny. Add in a couple of execrable Richard Littlejohn pieces that would be rejected these days by the Daily Wail for being overly reactionary, and what you have a is a museum piece with a few gently amusing cartoons. Still, it didn't cost much (and the money went to good cause) and didn't take long to read.
31/03/2025
Watching - March 2025
- Titanic (1997)
- I've always found this film fascinating, but I'm not sure I can explain why. It's spectacular still, even on a small screen, and the story at its centre is affecting despite being hokey teen angst. I don't really subscribe to the idea of "guilty pleasures" (at least not with respect to mainstream films or music, if you get off on puppy snuff flicks then you definitely have a guilty pleasure) but this comes close as I feel vaguely embarrassed about liking it.
- The Good Place (seasons 1-4, 2016-2020)
- I fancied watching this again and once I'd started, I binged right through it (my kids are very proud of me). It's ideal for this, for me - nice short episodes, funny but not too silly, and has a definite ending that isn't delayed too long (four seasons is entirely reasonable). The original concept is brilliant, of course, and if it gets a little lost around the middle of season two and beginning of season three, then it's still funny and once the end is in sight, it has a clear message that I like and found touching all over again.
- The Incredibles (2004)
- Something reminded me that I hadn't watched this for absolutely ages, so I got to enjoy it all over again. Great stuff. I also love the way the short that goes with it (Jack Jack Attack) links in with the events of the main film.
- Incredibles 2 (2018)
- Well, I had to watch the second one. Not quite as memorable as the first but entertainingly over-the-top. And the short (Auntie Edna) is great too.
- Virgin River (season 1, 2019)
- Just so we're clear, objectively, this is melodramatic rubbish - and I knew it would be before I started watching it. But I thought I'd try it, since I've been enjoying the books so much. Of course there are differences, but that's OK - mostly. The novels have many recurring characters and story arcs that cross from one book to another, but the main relationship in each book has a definite beginning, a middle and, crucially, a happy ending. I can't stress how important this is. The TV series doesn't do this, and so, for me, breaks a fundamental contract with the viewer. I'm sure eventually the main characters do get together but I'm not prepared to be teased and tantalised forever with a "will they, won't they" story line, so I'm out.
- Le Mans '66 (2019)
- A great story, well told. Can't say fairer than that!
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