It's 10 years today since Prince died.
So a reminder of this, that happened on the other place, because sometimes sadness can still bring laughter.

Graphic on a cinema screen of two people walking horse in silhouette with a rider. Slide reads "Welcome to a special Q&A screening of Wolfram. In cinemas April 30."

Getting my Aussie cinema on. Review soonish.

Village Roadshow’s Hollywood dream ends at the hands of Matrix reboot Once a film financing powerhouse behind Zoolander and Happy Feet, the American spin-off of the Australian entertainment giant fell into bankruptcy last year.

AFR piece on it here.
www.afr.com/companies/me...

Matrix 4 all over again.

share a GIF from a western you love

How's the little guy's paw going?

I adored this game on the Commodore 64.

TV REVIEW: Doctor Who (2005), 7.6 “The Bells of St John” First broadcast 30 March 2013. When it comes to 21st century Doctor Who, the first episode of the year is usually an outstanding place for new viewers to jump on. In the case of 2013’s &#8220…

NEW REVIEW! We're back watching Doctor Who's seventh season, with a look at Clara Oswald's first proper episode "The Bells of St John".
fictionmachine.com/2026/04/20/t...

I didn't realise until I posted it, but this film review was the 2,000th post on FictionMachine.

This is the most weirdly uninteresting news story. They made a machine that can travel faster than people. So can bicycles and cars.

REVIEW: Ilya Muromets (1956) It is never foreign languages that are the biggest barrier to understanding international film, it is foreign cultures. Ilya Muromets, a 1956 Soviet fantasy directed by Aleksandr Ptushko, brings to…

Aleksandr Ptushko's Ilya Muromets is a strange epic fantasy from the Soviet Union, combining great elements with terrible ones and winding up just seeming strange.

fictionmachine.com/2026/04/20/r...

Imagine watching a 75-year-old woman try to do the slapstick she did in the 1950s while slowly dying from a lifetime of chain smoking and sounding like that "there is no Dana, only Zuul" voice in Ghostbusters.

On the weekend I found a second-hand DVD of Life with Lucy, a 1986 Lucille Ball sitcom that I did not previously know existed. It lasted eight episodes before ABC pulled it. It is, based on episode one, egregiously awful. It was the last thing she ever made, and I imagine she regretted every second.

Add some titles and you can make the worst Doctor Who opening credits of all time.

RIP Nathalie Baye.

It is one of many creative choices that I think result in The Lord of the Rings being a film trilogy that gets worse film by film. Fellowship? 5 stars. Towers? 2 stars. Return? Maybe 3?

Actor Rik Mayall with orange hair in a green suit. A still from the film Drop Dead Fred.

Drop Dead Fred is 35.

Pete Hegseth Quotes ‘Pulp Fiction’ Fake Bible Verse at Pentagon Prayer Service Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth meant to invoke holy scripture in discussing the rescue mission of an American fighter pilot stranded in Iran -- but he actually quoted Quentin Tarantino.

You couldn't make this up.

variety.com/2026/film/ne...

REVIEW: Electric Dragon 80000V (2001) Ishii Gakuryu’s Electric Dragon 80000V (2001) is a short, sharp, high-speed injection of Japanese punk. It is low on sense, high on energy, and thrown at the viewer with the momentum of a fre…

NEW REVIEW! Ishii "Sogo" Gakuryu's Electric Dragon 80000V is a short, sharp, furious excursion in pure punk cinema.

fictionmachine.com/2026/04/16/r...

I love Ringo Sheena's soundtrack.

Just read my post back, yeesh. MS brain.

The film of The Prestige takes the most filmlike part of Priest's novel and makes a stunning movie from it. A direct adaptation would, I suspect, have been terrible.

Fight Club is definitely better than the book.

The Prestige, as adapted, is a better film than the book would have been had it been adapted more accurately - if that makes sense.

REVIEW: The Invisible Witness (2018) Italian technology entrepreneur Adriano Doria (Riccardo Scamarcio) waits in his luxury apartment while under suspicion of murdering his lover Laura (Miriam Leone). Doria maintains he has been frame…

The Invisible Witness is an Italian remake of a Spanish thriller; one of six remakes to date. Can you have too many twists in one film? I feel The Invisible Witness is here to work that out.
fictionmachine.com/2026/04/15/r...

Sharks consider 47 METERS DOWN UNCAGED a home invasion horror film.

The cast of television series Robin of Sherwood: Ray Winstone, Clive Mantle, Judy Trott, Peter Llewelyn Williams, Michael Praed, Jeremy Bulloch, Phil Rose.

The greatest. Also a peasant.

Clannad singer and harpist Moya Brennan dies aged 73 The Grammy and Emmy-winning ‘first lady of Celtic music’ was credited with popularising Irish music and lyrics

Clannad singer and harpist Moya Brennan dies aged 73 www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a...

‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’ Sets Cast: Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood Officially Return, Plus Jamie Dornan as Aragorn and More 'The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum' cast has been revealed: Jamie Dornan as Aragorn, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Kate Winslet and more.

For the record I think this is a terrible idea.
variety.com/2026/film/ne...

GODZILLA MINUS ZERO | First Look Teaser YouTube video by GODZILLA OFFICIAL by TOHO

Aw yeah.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-ND...

Disney’s 1,000-Person Layoffs Claim Entire PR Teams, Specialty Divisions | Exclusive Disney's 1,000-person layoffs impacted Marvel and several entire divisions of publicity, and some lieutenants of Asad Ayaz.

Disney just laid off their entire US home entertainment division, so hold onto those DVDs and blurays...
www.thewrap.com/creative-con...

Or is stew a soup that went too far?