Still watching
Still watching
Slice-of-life in the early days of a vaccination centre in Croatia during Covid, that is oddly nostalgic in its own way, an amount of certainty and positivity in that part of the pandemic. It’s enjoyable to see the mundane reality of it all, with strangers making conversation as they wait the mandated period of time to monitor for adverse reactions, but even at 1h8 does start to drag a bit.
Oh for the times that a tech billionaire gets to form a cabinet department and it’s only the MCU. Who, by the way, I think has to shoulder some amount of the blame for Elon Musk and the mess we’re all in today. Unironically. Still a decent romp, love the high school bits, I misremembered this being the one where it’s mostly just Tom Holland and Zendaya, but I don’t know whether I care enough to rewatch that one at this point.
A shame this didn’t get nominated for Best Original Score (although the song with Nick Cave did for Original Song, so y’know), but Dessner’s score for Train Dreams is a perfect fit for the film - quietly unwinding to reveal a greater depth in the still of its calm.
Still reading
Yesterday, I was (very easily) talked into buying the Waterstones book of the month by the bookseller at the till, and eager to reassure me that I was making the right choice, informed me that with the receipt I could get a free hot drink until the end of the month. Not one to leave money on the table, I went back the next day to take advantage of this offer, with a perfectly serviceable hot chocolate and an excuse to sit still and read for a bit. What more could you want?
A classic for a reason, and my god would I love to see a 2026 version of this. Billy Wilder firing on all cylinders, Jack Lemmon incredibly funny, Marilyn Monroe just perfectly her. The farce builds impeccably to a final stretch that culminates in the perfect final line to it all. Great fun.
I’ve identified the only other human being I know in Birmingham, and I am thrilled to get out the house and have a coffee with Reuben. He suggests Blank Slate Coffee, which - with no superior local knowledge - I am happy to agree to. I have a small chai latte which is smaller than I’d have anticipated, but is perfectly nice. I’ve not yet had enough chai lattes to fully discern. I also bring home a brownie, which is no Zara’s or my own, but is fudgy enough to get by.
One or my favourite political films, in its own weird way. Very early Alexander Payne, with so much promise of things to come. I forgot how funny that first freeze-frame on Witherspoon is, proper laugh from me on that this time. The narration really does work, to be fair, in a way it often doesn’t. Provides a proper counterpoint to what’s on screen. Is there a thinkpiece to be written about this presaging the 2000 election? Probably! It is going to be written by me? Wouldn’t think so!
Ah, my teenage emo phase - short-lived but with a long tail. The ones that stuck really did stick. As with any remaster, it’s always a toss-up as to whether any perceived improvements are either real or the placebo effect of just paying more attention. In any case, sounds pretty good! A bit compressed, but with more presence in the low-end. The demos are always interesting - the electronic-y tracks are more electronic (Time To Dance!); the rock tracks are more rocky. A testament to how well produced the final product was. And a proper audio release of Live In Denver is always appreciated, if only in recognition of my gateway into Radiohead.
The Letterboxd reviews are, as ever, an exercise in people failing to possess a basic level of media literacy, but here we are. For all Wilder regretted how much the Hayes Code restrained him in not actually being able to have Richard actually go through with cheating on his wife, it actually makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. The playing with fantasy is a lot of fun, and Monroe is a treat.
Not as massive a step down as a sequel as you might expect! It’s not bringing much to the table, admittedly, but it’s fun enough and it’s enjoyable to watch it really twist the knife of just how much of a hellhole New York can be.
I have cleared my afternoon of meetings and have found a café that’s a 15 minute walk from Aladair’s mum’s house, so it’s time to take a break into the world that isn’t just going to the gym. I have a very nice chai latte and a red velvet cupcake, which I can tell you was good because the frosting dipped into the centre rather than just adorning the top. I listen to Slowdive’s self-titled comeback album and crack on with some work proposals. Nice to have a change of scene.
A vivid, feverish novel, of the escalation of teenage anxiety and panic attacks into mania. It’s not quite my experience with anxiety (thank god), but it feels lived in. A fantastic discursion into the virtue of understanding the root cause or just making up your own. There are scenes where I personally found it tough going, when the protagonist Nick gets ganged up on by the cool kids when getting high for the first time, expertly written by Clune in the intertwining external and internal sources. There’s a beautiful vignette towards the beginning of the book where Nick describes this idea of childhood prophesying, of telling his babysitter when the wind will rise. Remarkably touching in its view of the world.
Still watching
Young Dev Patel! Adorable. The conceit is actually a really fun means of exposition with built-in tension/stakes. The only jarring thing is Boyle’s insistence on his typical frame-skipping cinematography in a misjudged attempt at introducing kineticism to a story that has enough of it intrinsically. Have faith in your material, Danny!
A fun confection of a film, if ultimately featherweight. Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra all do what they do. Louis Armstrong gets to turn up in an extended cameo and be extremely meta. We get the song Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. People fall in and out of love and it all wraps up maybe 15 minutes after it should have, but it’s an amiable watch.
Oh man. A quick, scorching read, full of lyrical prose (“I am sunwarm and eveningwonderful” - I’d love to know more about how Hazel Evans approached the translation from the original Danish). A devastating examination of the weight of being a teenage girl in a world of men waiting to devour you. The duties and expectations of being pure and virginal but ready and eager, incubated but not long enough, and what agency do you have within those constraints to own them? The epilogue maybe doesn’t quite stick the landing - or, I think, less that, more that it decides in the last few pages to veer off into a different direction that isn’t really in keeping with the rest of the book. But beyond that, a difficult triumph.
I could have sworn I had watched this since (checks Letterboxd) before uni?! - but apparently not. I think I liked it more this time, just clicked a bit more. It’s not as much of a vehicle for the cast to just play their personas, but Bill Murray is obviously larger than life and Rick Moranis is quietly great. Banging soundtrack too.
A country-flecked midwestern emo EP from hot new things Westside Cowboy, whom I’m very excited to be seeing later this year at the Exchange. Hints of early Modest Mouse abound, amongst many other influences I’m not really aware of. Strange Taxidermy sets a more lilting tone than the rest of the EP follows, but the closer In The Morning with its almost folky harmonies is a strong bookend.
I’ve popped into Birmingham itself to get out of the house for a bit of a mooch, and have taken the opportunity to have a bite to eat. I’ve been to a Fat Hippo a couple of times before, and honestly, I think I remembered it being better? The burger - I go for their classic “American” - is pretty anonymous, with a flavourless bun dominating proceedings. The chips are on the cooler side of hot, but yet still the food came out long before the drinks (“yes, that’s because I haven’t made them yet” is the somewhat pass-agg response when I point this out). The chocolate and salted caramel milkshake almost makes up for it, being generous in size and strong in flavour. But it doesn’t live up to the not obcenely excellent memories I had.
An odd little one, this. It’s perfectly fine, some decent enough jokes, the plot moves along nicely. But that’s… it? It feels like a waste of Mark Heap and Dawn French to make something so grounded. It’s missing a spark to properly ignite it into something good. It sometimes feels like Simon Mayhew-Archer - who does, to his credit, an awful lot to raise awareness around Parkinsons - set out to make a comedy that included a good representation of Parkinsons, and then once that was achieved (which it was, Heap’s character gets a lot of good moments around that), didn’t really push much beyond that. A shame for the loss of potential, but maybe a second series could double down.
Not watched in some time (2017 according to Letterboxd), and obviously top of mind with Reiner’s recent tragic passing. It’s so very good. An obvious descendant of Annie Hall both in writing and directing, but leaning more on the earnestness. The line “I’ll have what she’s having” is so over-referenced now that it’s actually quite startling to remember just how effective a punchline it actually is.
Having dropped Alasdair off at the hospital for the operation, and having found out that despite being on the morning list and getting there for 7.30am that he’s actually going into theatre at 2.30pm, Vicky and I make tracks via Gluttons For Nourishment, if only for the name. I treat myself to a brunch slice of chocolate cake - quite moist, well iced - and a chai latte for my troubles. A pleasingly different vibe from a hospital, which is really the selling point I suppose.
It’s not a bad album, but do we really need this album in a world where Black Country, New Road are doing this female-voice-fronted alt-art-folk vibe in a much more interesting way? Woman is a Tree stuck out on first listen, so maybe that’s my way back in.
God, this was a refreshing read, if only to feel like I’m not the only one seeing this and to inspire some optimism about the future. This is a heart-on-sleeve fact-based polemic on the state of late-stage technocapitalism, with a convincing and thorough laying out of how we got into this mess of every service getting worse as it gets more essential, how it plays out in the here and now, but most importantly it provides practical - if ambitious - solutions. It’s also really made me think about my part in this (as a consumer, not a producer, although inevitably the HPE/Juniper acquisition gets mentioned, but we escape it until 92% of the way through the book) - what services do I subscribe to, what efforts do I make to not reward enshittification in these services, and what alternatives could be out there? It’s also just nice to be reacquainted with Doctorow’s writing!
I cannot keep making new favourite restaurants in Bristol. There are already too many. But on my second visit to Lapin (the first captured by The Guardian, with me and Ruth in the background of the photo taken to run with Grace Dent’s review), I fear it’s too late - an absolutely gorgeous meal from start to finish. As Raph broadly follows a kosher diet and as two thirds of the prix fixe menu contains pork, this time I feast from the a la carte menu. Snacks to start, though, with heavily marinated provencal olives, some still warm baguette with an intensely rich salted butter, and a blue cheese gougere as pungent as all get out, snowed with grated Old Winchester. For the main, maybe the best chicken kyiv I have ever had, and given this didn’t even have garlic butter, I don’t say that lightly. Instead, a saffron and apricot butter treads the line perfectly between suffusing the chicken and pouring out when the kyiv is cut open. It’s served on a bed of spiced carrot puree and confit fennel, all to die for. We share some sides - the duck fat frites cannot be avoided, and nor should they be, not least when we’ve blagged some incredible aioli to accompany them, and the leek & spinach gratin is done in a way you could only ever hope of the French to do. Such faith do I have in the Lapin team that when I find out the eclair du jour is a rhubarb and custard one, I still go for it! Topped with an italian meringue, the custard positively pools around the pastry after the first cut, more creme anglais than anything else. Almost faultless food (the Old Winchester could have been out of the fridge a little longer first), impeccable service and hospitality. I’m sure I’ll be back very soon.
Genuinely very affecting, especially towards the end. Mescal and Buckley both obviously very good (apart from, maybe, a couple of moments from Buckley in the more… overt grief moments), but Hamnet himself does a really great job. Can’t believe Jessie Buckley is going to win an Oscar for playing someone who talks all the way through a play.
We’ve somehow got some Q1 budget left for team activities, and so Sharon has miraculously sorted out a section lunch at Aerospace Bristol, which means getting to eat lunch sat under Concord! Ah it’s a good gimmick. The food is not as plentiful as I might have hoped, a cold buffet with limited range, but it is all actually nice enough. A good potato salad, a leek and cheese quiche that goes well with some chutney, a good hunk of foccacia. It’s free and it’s not work, so who’s complaining.
I never really listened to The Cribs the first time around, so maybe it’s unfair to dismiss this as just feeling like landfill indie. Surprised to find out Johnny Marr briefly joined them, but then to be fair he’s been in most bands at this point. Self Respect might be either catchy or annoying, we’ll find out which in the long run.
Ah, the dichotomy of man. He’s an asshole! There might be mitigating factors from his childhood for his assholeness! But he’s still an asshole! It’s telling who they could and could not get to talk about him on camera. There’s a lot of time spent with Chase himself and his family, which means there’s a slight veer into hagiography towards the end, especially around the perceived SNL50 snub which is presented broadly uncritically on the part of the filmmakers.
Ruth and I are due a catch up, and having a bite to eat at the Tobacco Factory before her life drawing class seems the most convenient way of achieving that. We’re brought in by the promise of pie and mash, and today’s option is cauliflower cheese pie - yes bloody please. The pie itself is surprisingly not dense or claggy, with a strong pastry standing up for itself and a filling that is biased towards the cauliflower rather than the cheese, probably for the best. The mash is good but very minimal, which is disappointing. The root veg served with it are very nice, if slightly over-salty in the seasoning department, but go down nicely with a decent boat of gravy.
We are fully in the age of the millenial novel, and I mean that as a compliment. Flat Earth revolves around Avery, an art student in New York who is to varying degrees jealous of her varyingly successful friend Frances. The specifics are largely irrelevant. Instead, it talks more to the way the world as we have made it exacerbates and influences that jealousy, the means it provides as an outlet. The precise and cold prose models the remove at which Avery has to take the world, the job at the dating app for the patriarchy, the casual relationships where even she seems unsure whether it’s anything more than just something to do. And why do we want so much what still doesn’t make other people happy?
Needing some sort of sustenance before the train back to Bristol by myself, Alasdair and I pop into Black Sheep Coffee more in a “this will do” sense than any particular excitement. Service is remarkably slow and ill-thought through (don’t have the hot drink on the side ready to go and then take 10 minutes to make the food). I have a peppermint tea which is hard to get wrong, and a somewhat underwhelming “Norwegian” waffle with strawberries and cream.
Alasdair’s mum’s surprise retirement party! (the party being the surprise, not the retirement). Stuart has pulled a blinder and amassed a good 30 of her friends in the function room at Cosy Club, which does necessitate the party menu. An array of starters for the table, with highlights personally being the crispy cauliflower and the Bath chorizo. I don’t really consider that one of them is also the Asian buttermilk fried chicken when I order my main, the (by implication non-Asian) buttermilk fried chicken. It’s a decent slab that is more breadcrumbed than anything else, served with a frisée and green bean salad, dressed in effectively just caramelised butter, which I’m not really complaining about but does feel like cheating somewhat. The fries are acceptable if not massively bountiful. I intuit that ordering dessert would just hold up the dancing, so I make my peace with that and my not too shabby mocktails.
I never really listened to The Cribs the first time around, so maybe it’s unfair to dismiss this as just feeling like landfill indie. Surprised to find out Johnny Marr briefly joined them, but then to be fair he’s been in most bands at this point. Self Respect might be either catchy or annoying, we’ll find out which in the long run.
Our home away from home, and an odd choice to go to our local whiskey and cocktail bar during Dry January, but the non-alcoholic cocktails are still to die for - I opt for a 0% floradora, made with grenadine instead of raspberry, and it is just divine. Thank god it’s here.
For our last night together in Bristol before a few restricted weeks, Alasdair treat ourselves to Ragu, the sister restaurant to our beloved Cor. Whisper it, though, I think Ragu might have outshone its older sibling. With minimal overlap on the vegan menu for Alasdair, we basically order our own small plates. We do, though, share the olives, as well as the focaccia with whipped bottarga butter for me and olive oil and a balsamic vinegar for him which is so good that our waitress goes and takes a photo of the bottle for us to take a photo of itself. I opt for two big small plates (which average out to two normal plates). The first, pappardelle served with slow cooked pig cheek in a rich, parmesan fuelled sauce that clings silkily to the pasta and coats the beautifully tender cheeks. For the main event, I have a dish that I had last year with Raph but in its full, unaltered form: venison - sourced from the immensely local Ashton Court - with gorgonzola dolce, dresssed in bone marrow butter, and some raddichio leaves for the illusion of balance. I am at least honest enough with myself in the moment to acknowledge that this was not a plate designed for one person, no matter how little else you order, so leave at least a bit of the gorgonzola, but I feel the joy of early onset gout coursing through my veins. We share the crispy potatoes, smashed into rosemary and garlic, and wander off into the night.
Hard for me, personally, to get on with this level of sprechgesang (compared to your early BC,NR, for example), at least in a “latching onto it” sense. It’s still good! It’s not necessarily my kind of post-punk, but I reckon with more listens I’ll get into it more. Highlights are Let Me Grow and You’ll See The Fruit and I Need You.
At one point for my late teens/early 20s, I’d have probably told you that Douglas Coupland was my favourite author - oh for the days of certainty! This didn’t change out of any particular personal growth (mine) or creative decline (his), more just he stopped publishing as much. But picking up this post-covid collection of microfiction, I’m instantly reminded of what I loved about his work. It’s a generational voice that works when stretched above and below that generation, consistent across these 60 bite-sized stories that quantum leap from character to character, but still different enough that each character feels suitably real. Laugh out loud funny in one moment, ruminative on the state of the world the next, and very hard to put down.
As a man who has the correct opinion that Pasture is the best steak place in Bristol, it was an inevitability that I’d have to try their new burger place, Prime By Pasture. And Zac has evenings free with Martha off on holiday, so what an excuse. Let’s cut to the chase, it’s going straight in near the top on the Bristol burger rankings. I opt for the #4: American cheese, crispy bacon, bacon jam, miso mayo, and pickles. All burgers come with a choice of either smash patties or proper juicy thick ones. Given that this is a place that knows its beef, I want that rich flavour so it has to be the pink and juicy for me. It was very good indeed. Crucially for me, not being a massive fan of bacon in burgers, the bacon here is the perfect texture, cooked enough to not bring the whole rasher with you on the first bite, but not so much to be all texture no flavour. The patty itself practically melts in the mouth, combining well with the cheese and sauces. The bun is a nice, lightly toasted sesame bun. The chips are the ideal paradox of crisp but fluffy, and I don’t even resent how much I paid for the beef fat garlic mayo to have with them. The only slight disappointment was the double chocolate brownie milkshake, which was nowhere near as rich as that name would imply. But all in, it’s already overtaken quite a few burger joints here. I look forward to returning to try their breakfast menu soon.
Found it hard to get locked into this - too distracted by actually writing some code at work for the first time in lord knows how long. That’s not to say it’s bad! Sludgy guitar with a shoegaze sheen, a little Cloud Nothings but veering off the path a bit.
Diving into Tom Skinner’s solo work at long last, having very much enjoyed the slightly faltering set at Strange Brew last year. Did some of that improvisation end up on here/come from here? Who knows, I have no memory of that. But beautifully wrong-footing jazz here, with the title track a highlight, tight-locked grooves that begin to unwind just when you think you’ve got a handle on them.
A bit PC Music in the toeing the line carefully of being either hypercatchy or just extremely annoying, but I think with time I’ll enjoy that element of it. Not quite the dentist’s drill to the pleasure centre of you brain in the way A.G. Cook does it, but a lot to like here in Grow Up!!! and Lil Maria.
Big fan of this, having been slightly disappointed by fellow Norwegian pop girlie girl in red’s sophomore effort last year or so. Good solid pop bangers all around. Jotted down Jellyfish, Do It Again, and Fort Knox as highlights for the playlist and then had to stop before I was going to just add it all. Eternal Sunshine might peep its way on there too.
After a really solid year of Taskmaster with series 19 and 20, maybe the best back to back pair for some time, it’s a disappointing New Year’s Treat to start off 2026. The contestants themselves are fine, but everything else around it is the worst parts of Taskmaster dialled up to 11, with Alex Horne at his most weird/fetish/fan-service-y.
A blend of droning ambient and field recordings (but then what isn’t these days). Hard to pull out much on first listen, oddly captivated by the end of somehow, snatches of some overheard conversation. Feels lived in.
Fun to see Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice pop up on Haze. A good mix of instrumental ambient and bocal loudness. Neon Pulse a fave on the former front, and Art School Girlfriend-featuring I Feel You on the latter front, an excellent closer to the album.
Incredible accent work from Ben Whishaw here, amongst everything else. Always a pleasure to have a new Ira Sachs film, and this is an odd little egg. A quietly meditative film, almost a step removed from being slice of life, a recounting of a slice of life maybe. Oh how our lives expand when you stop to think about them.
Still playing
Still playing
Mavis Staples is responsible for my favourite episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, so much so that it forms part of my own little Christmas traditions, and yet I’ve never actually ever really listened to her. Thrilled to put on this collection of covers to find that the opening track is Tom Waits’ Chicago, bringing out the blues of it from a different angle, her beautiful bass voice in place of Waits’ rasp. Leonard Cohen’s Anthem is another highlight, another crack where the light gets in.
The fun subtextual throughline of Cover Up is whether Seymour Hersh’s paranoia at being asked questions in this interview that he agreed to and continue to agree to is justified or not. A prickly participant in his own documentary, Hersh’s presence enlivens an otherwise solid documentary on the quite impressive array of major journalistic breaks he’s been responsible for, from war crimes in Vietnam to the abuse in Abu Ghraib.
Still watching
I’ve read a few books on the general theme of Bitcoin/cryptocurrency (Michael Lewis’ hagiography of SBF, Zeke Faux’s excellent investigative journalism on Tether), but Howson’s Let Them Eat Crypto takes a different tack somewhat. Rather than another book about the technicalities and the obvious scamminess of it all, this instead looks at the broader social impact: the poor communities in South America and Africa suffering from modern day colonialism; charities and NGOs being scammed into solutions that supposedly work towards their aims but instead absolutely make them worse; the supporting of far-right/longtermist/incel groups. Let Them Eat Crypto is unapologetic in its view that there is not a single good use of the blockchain, and offers a full-throated defence of that that is refreshing to read. What struck me most, though, was how easily translateable this is to the current AI hype - custom-built hardware that will burn out in a year and will end up on landfill, the same names making the same landgrabs for everyone’s mindshare and personal data, the same hype rush overtaking the people asking what this is all actually good for. The books will write themselves in a couple of years time (or, at least, metaphorically).
Fun to see that Josh Safdie is the brother injecting the severe anxiety into the blood of the Safdie Brothers films. If not as much of a living panic attack as Uncut Gems, Marty Supreme is still cut from the same cloth, a frenetic film bouncing from catastrophe to catastrophe without let-up, all grounded by a compelling performance from Timothee Chalamet. What price glory indeed.
Very little to grab onto here. Like The War On Drugs, I just cannot get into this kind of American indie rock. But, we move.
As is tradition, Mum has given me the Doctor Who annual for Christmas, and as such it is the first book of the year. Not much, as ever, to talk about here. The usual guff, and a short story from Pete McTighe (how many times can Ruby say something “tinged with sarcasm”?).
Still watching
Starting the effort of listening to an album a day in earnest this year. We saw Prima Queen supporting Everything Everything back in 2024 in Bath, and as they made a point of telling us their album was coming out in 2025, it seemed only fair to make a note. It’s their debut, and it achieves - just about - what it needs to: proof of potential, even if their voice hasn’t yet solidified. Enjoyed enough to give another listen, and early highlights are Meryl Streep and Mexico.
Certainly one of the films that I will have watched in 2026. I dunno, it’s a fun way to start the year. It’s all absolute hokum, of course, and it is massively skating on personality and cool visual location title cards, but the convoluted nature of the thing is fun, and Justice Smith is great in it and deserves all the roles he can get, so I’m perfectly happy with my choices here.
It’s New Year’s Day, I am surprisingly only mildly hungover compared to how much I drank last night, and a good walk is in order. Fuel is needed. Repeating ourselves from last year, what was once Tin Can but is now Peggy’s is open and ready for us. The Brunch Burger is the one. It’s not quite fully balanced, a bit claggy with the combination of brie and a thick caramelised onion jam sticking the sausage patty in place. Not bad, and does the job, but would be more interested if it gets mixed up a bit in the future.