The frolicking took me out 😂😂😂

Still from Danger: Diabolik with a masked man embraced with a woman wearing salmon pink dress stood in front of a white car.

Tilda Swinton in The Party - Nature Morte

Black and white Still from Goodbye, Dragon Inn of a man looking at 35mm film

Still from Ghost World of Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch looking out pensively

Early Bird passes are now on sale for the 10th birthday edition of Cinema Rediscovered 🥳

Taking place in and around Bristol UNESCO City of Film from Wed 22 to Sun 26 July 2026, you can get up to 30% off a full festival pass.

Read more about the highlights announced at @wshed.bsky.social website 👇

Over the moon to be presenting the blessed @milestonefilms.bsky.social reconstruction of the cursed QUEEN KELLY at @cineredis.bsky.social this July. Early bird passes are a bargain and on sale now. More highlights www.watershed.co.uk/news/first-h...

a medieval illustration of the virgin mary punching a horned, claw-footed, bestial devil

virgin mary punching the devil, england, 13th century

Reynolds They sent a dummy over the waterfall and it looked like shit, like a dummy. So I went over the waterfall and hit a rock about a quarter of the way down and cracked my hip bone and my coccyx. They told me if I got caught in the hydro flow, swim to the bottom and it'll shoot you out. They didn't tell me that it would shoot me like a submarine torpedo! They couldn't find me for five minutes. A mile down the river, they saw this nude man stumbling, crawling towards them. I'd had on these high boots and they were gone, the pants were gone, the underwear was gone, the jacket was gone. I said to Boorman, "How's it look, John?" He said, "Like a dummy going over the waterfall."

Reading about the making of John Boorman's Deliverance and you know that scene where Lewis (Burt Reynolds) somersaults into the waterfall...?

Mifune sitting down in the desert, foregrounded by tiny little yellow wildflowers. he's wearing a yellow short-sleeved turtleneck & cream corduroy pants, drinking a beer in a glass, and grinning.

Mifune in a cream turtleneck, gazing thoughtfully into his beer

Mifune smiling at us in a white short-sleeved turtleneck, holding a glass of beer with a tiny bit of foam on his tooth, some foliage hanging above him

Toshiro Mifune for Sapporo beer

Brabazon development in Bristol listed among 'new towns' plan The huge Bristol development should not be labelled as new by the government, say local Tories.

"Brabazon" just sounds like what Scooby-Doo would say when asked what his favourite major online retailer is

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan Songbook, put together with their help and blessing ♥️

Couldn’t be prouder of it. And they love it so much it’s going in Tom’s own web store.

Pre-order link: acerecords.co.uk/where-the-wi...

Hello. I finally have a website! Includes potted writing “biog” and a mini-archive of my TV reviews & features. I’m always looking for fun/interesting TV reviewing and comedy work, so do get in touch!

Union street fire: support Haus of Hair Last month, my wonderful hairdresser and friend Gemma left her job to fulfil her dream of starting her own salon with fellow stylist Aimee. 'Haus of Hair' opened last week. I visited on Friday and wa...

My hairdresser and friend opened her business last week. Tonight it burned to the ground. This is devastating.

I’ve set up a fundraiser. If you haven’t done anything for international women’s day yet, here’s a chance to support a women-run business in need: www.paypal.com/pools/c/9nhn...

Albini Sessions (Benefit for Letters Charity), by Fugazi 12 track album

Stop literally everything.

Steve Albini's Fugazi sessions, widely bootlegged and full of lore, now available officially for the first time.

fugazi.bandcamp.com/album/albini...

So Philip Glass just joined TikTok. He only has like 4 posts and they’re simply him in what I assume is his living room playing the piano. First comment on one I saw was “your piano is too close to the fireplace, you’ll dry it out” and if that’s not the internet in a nutshell I don’t know what is.

“One of the greatest films never finished. One of Hollywood’s most dangerous alliances. One enduring legend.”

My new book THE CURSE OF QUEEN KELLY will be published this month by @stickingplacebk.bsky.social – on 27 March, Gloria Swanson’s birthday, no less.

stickingplacebooks.com/books/the-cu...

tweet by the late Dawn Foster from Sep 4th 2020 "Matt Goodwin once emailed me to accuse him of being racist when I called him a “racist whisperer” and I had to explain to him that horse whisperers aren’t horses."

RIP to a real one

The long 2010s are finally over

Eusébio buying soul LPs in Harlow's Startime record shop in 1968

This is what I've been doing with my time recently. Can't remember when I last enjoyed helping to compile a festival retrospective programme so much. These films are subversive, outrageous, WTF & bonkers, a full complement of extraordinary horror & sci-fi classics that deserve to be rediscovered.

Frederick Wiseman: TITICUT FOLLIES YouTube video by Austin Film Society

Requiescat, Frederick Wiseman. My man had Foucault-levels of things to say about the role of institutions in our lives, but was also a hugely talented filmmaker on top of it.

If you have not seen Titicut Follies (1967), prioritise it: right out the gate, our guy was NOT here to fuck around

A still from SMILEY'S PEOPLE (1982) showing London's Palace Theatre in Cambridge Circus, which is decked out in colorful signs advertising Royce Ryton and Ray Cooney's play "Her Royal Highness"

Finally getting round to watching SMILEY'S PEOPLE (1982), and strangely finding it easier to recall a time of Cold War intrigue and pre-internet analogue telecommunications than I am one in which the Palace Theatre had something on other than Harry Bloody Potter:

Something compelled me to make this

Once again, we have given new life to an old book. @backlisted.bsky.social @regretteruane.bsky.social

Been keeping an eye out for a copy and just stumbled across the listing for the new edition. Can't wait to finally read it!

Been itching to read Joan Barfoot's Gaining Ground / Abra since @regretteruane.bsky.social's appearance on @backlisted.bsky.social a while back, so delighted to spot that Faber is reissuing it later this year:

www.foyles.co.uk/book/gaining...

The only thing I’ve seen in the last ten years that has given me hope for the future.

Rare Elio Petri film alert! Stars Marcello Mastroianni and Gian Maria Volonté; music by Ennio Morricone. (Probably helps if you're au fait with 1970s Italian politics; I am not, but loved it anyway - the blocking! the design! It's like an arty, almost abstract, intellectual slasher movie!)

People from outside Ireland occasionally ask me, "Why is Bono, an international music titan from Ireland, not all that loved in Ireland?". The answer in its entirety is a complex one, but "He sent Dolly Parton a birthday cake and put his own name on it" goes a long way to summing it up.