Freelance writer specializing in comedy and the geekier end of the pop culture spectrum.
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Dancing in the Dark
I should be watching Bruce Springsteen at Hyde Park tonight. As I may have mentioned previously, I tried to buy a pair of tickets on the morning they went on sale but - quelle sur-bloody-prise - it was too late. It had sold out within a fraction of a picosecond. Since then, an inordinate amount of time has been spent entering every damn chance-in-a-million competition for Springsteen tickets I could find, but to no avail. I even thought of buying tickets from an online tout but - after seeing the hideously inflated prices on offer - that option was swiftly [...]
Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight
We have heard the chimes at midnight... - Shakespeare, Henry IV For as long as I remember, Orson Welles' 1965 film Chimes at Midnight (AKA Falstaff) - in which The Great Round One shamelessly yet seamlessly spliced together five different Shakespeare plays to create one cinematic masterpiece - has been fiendishly difficult to get hold of. Thanks to some decades-old, migraine-inducing ownership issues, you can't buy, rent or borrow one of history's most influential films in the English-speaking world and screenings continue to be as rare as rocking-horse shit. I'm sure the legal shenanigans will eventually get sorted and the [...]
John Dillinger Died For You
Seventy-five years ago today, the notorious American outlaw John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents as he was leaving the Biograph Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. The film Dillinger was watching was called Manhattan Melodrama, which went on to win Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Original Story and Best Tasteless Marketing Campaign (1935). Nobody knows whether Dillinger liked the film, but this was probably due to the fact that FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover had ordered his G-Men to adopt a strict policy of "Shoot first, ask critical opinions later". Tonight, a silent vigil will take place outside [...]
BSG R.I.P.
Well, that's it then... I've just watched the final episode of the mighty Battlestar Galactica. I'm probably one of the last of the show's legion of fervent fans to have seen its finale, but so it goes. I'm talking about the 21st Century Ron Moore-produced reimagining of BSG, of course, not the original 70s show with Lorne Greene and Faceman. My lag time's bad, but it's not that bad. First impressions: I liked it lots. It was a sometimes perplexing but overall satisfying conclusion to one of the most consistently brilliant shows in TV history. I even welled-up on a [...]
