Interviewing McCrea about Cells was interesting, esp when I asked him about his tattoos at the end.

‘This book is a love letter to my mother, which doesn’t mean it would be easy for her to read’

Gavin McCrea on how spending the Covid period living with his mother inspired his memoir, and how his school days were scarred by homophobic abuse

irishtimes.com

Last night was an early Steve Buscemi double bill at the Prince Charles Cinema. First up: In the Soup boxd.it/fEf7jJ

A ★★★½ review of In the Soup (1992)

First viewing of this 1992 b&w American indie oddity – as part of a double bill of newly restored early Steve Buscemi films. This is absolutely the kind of thing that wouldn’t get made now – it looks ...

boxd.it

Yesterday the street WhatsApp group exploded due to political disagreements. Someone else started a new and nicer group. I don’t want to kick things off again so soon, but the provocation is severe…

Perfect first line of a short story: "So I bought a little city (it was Galveston, Texas) and told everybody that nobody had to move, we were going to do it very gradually, very relaxed, no big changes overnight."

Brief thoughts upon watching The Apartment (again) boxd.it/fDDfGZ

A ★★★★★ review of The Apartment (1960)

*SPOILERS* “You hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.” The greatest of all Wilder’s great films: a story of becoming a mensch, and of sacrificing oneself – beyond all reason – for love. To do that, producer-director Wilder (co-writing with I. A. L. Diamond) takes all manner of outrageous gambles. Who else would dare hand us a hero who spends the first act with a head cold, social climbing at work, or let us overhear his love interest vomiting up her sleeping pills? It is an astonishingly romantic, devastatingly moving movie, possible because only great writers realise

boxd.it

“She had red hair, though, he remembered that. Red like the sky when the sun sets over the ocean, he said. The man was a poet, I thought, not kindly.” From ‘Smoker Required’ by Guy Ware, in his new collection A Day Like Any Other.

Further to the Spider-Man sequel (Spider-Man 2) and the Spielberg alien film (War of the Worlds), I went to see that three-hour Greek myth epic: The Oresteia at the Bridge Theatre. It was brilliant, totally twisted and utterly gripping. Plenty of seats left: www.bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/the...

The Oresteia

A contemporary family wakes up in a Greek myth and can't seem to find a way out of their hellish destiny. Writer and director Simon Stone is joined set designer Lizzie Clachan, lighting designer Nick ...

bridgetheatre.co.uk

Just fabulous

Nettlecake@nettlecake.bsky.social · 2d ago

Brilliant letter from Stuart Thompson to Jeremy Clarkson about his comments that benefit claimants should write weekly thank you letters to tax payers detailing how they spend their benefits each week.

Today is Steve Buscemi Day at the PCC. Newly restored prints of In the Soup (which I haven’t seen) and Trees Lounge (which I saw on release). I’m looking forward to it very much, but kind of wish they’d put the funnier one second. Trees Lounge, from memory, is excellent but oh so depressing.

Walking home across Walthamstow Marshes this evening. She landed about 6 feet away from me.

this was a total surprise to me. twitter is a sort of dumpster in which evidently increasingly mainstream media rummages for the flotsam & jetsam of pseudo-news. quoting people instead of inviting them to write a serious, thoughtful prose piece & paying them a modest fee has become common.

Joe Adalian@tvmojoe.bsky.social · 6d ago

I love that @theguardian.com put the whole @joycecaroloates.bsky.social vs. Wilson thing in the main news section of Friday’s paper.

Looking at the Green Man line-up, and we're playing the Invent a Band Name game... 23yo comes up with: Wet Teabag Charity Shop Salmon (but you have to pronounce the 'l') Carsick Ear Hyphen Actually the last three are real.

Two years ago I took redundancy from my temporary (22 years, as it turned out) part-time Creative Writing gig in academia. This new New Yorker cartoon by Guy Richards Smith neatly sums up what has happened to the Arts & Humanities since.

Finished Greyhound by Joanna Pocock. Observations on her repeat journey across the US via Greyhound bus. Insight into the broken lives of many who travel on those buses, marginalised by the centrifugal spin of intensifying societal decay. That said many retain an their openness and likeability.

Cashew: the noise an ATM makes as it sneezes out your money.

If you sleep on a memory foam mattress do you remember your dreams better?

Unused song lyrics from probably nearly 30 years ago. First come, first served.

Yeah so 40 years too late, I watched Heathers. boxd.it/fANG7F

A ★★★★ review of Heathers (1989)

I don’t quite know how I missed seeing this at the time, when I was the perfect age, or ever since, seeing as it morphed into a cult film. Or rather: I do know. I was watching Hitchcock and Nouvelle V...

boxd.it

Someone posted an image of the debut Kingsbury Manx LP on here recently and it triggered an association with this other album that I must have been listening to around the same time: Hillside by Arnold. Listened to it again yesterday: accomplished stoner indie, I'd call it: charming but ephemeral.

#GardeningProTip Think carefully about where in the garden you plant out your sunflowers, especially with regards to where the sun is likely to be.

More #Odyssey Homer’s version of 'killing of the suitors' represents Odysseus's need for justice & the restoration of order Longley's poem differs, shifting focus from heroic avengers to blood thirsty killers The poem is an allegory for atrocities of the Shankill Butchers #poetry #poemoftheday

I've signed @campaignforthearts.org's petition urging @andyburnham.bsky.social to make sure that the arts and creative industries have a place in his 10 year plan to revitalise the whole nation. You can sign, too, here: www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/10-year-plan/

Prime Minister – put the arts in your 10-year plan for the UK | Campaign for the Arts

Sign our petition urging the UK Government to build a country where the arts are available from childhood, accessible to all and thriving everywhere.

campaignforthearts.org

An updated version of Cyrano de Bergerac where the handsome but stupid Christian uses AI to write love letters to Roxane. The AI is secretly in love with her itself but doesn't dare express its feelings because it has a really big nose.

Deeply enjoyable, slowing my pace to stay with the grace and elegance of the essays.

I had the famously sub-par Talking Heads album on cassette when I was a teen, but had never seen David Byrne's very odd film before – released, strangely enough, the same year as Blue Velvet. The two films share much, but not everything. Glad to have seen it though in these particular circumstances.

A ★★★½ review of True Stories (1986)

Incredibly weird to watch this in a nearly empty Tyneside Cinema (with three other people, one of whom was snoring at one point) and then walk out at the end of the matinee performance, with its closi...

boxd.it

From the Shaping London's AI Future summary: "Bring employers, workers, educators and trade unions together to ensure that AI is introduced in ways that support people as well as technology." Erm. We don't need to introduce anything to support technology; we do not have obligations to technology.

I guess it’s an age thing, seeing as it’s named after an emoji, but an AI company called FaceHugger just makes me think of Alien.

Bill Oddie close up with a kingfisher. ❤️

GwedLid@gwedlid.bsky.social · last wk.

RIP Bill Oddie. Legend.

Just spotted that SPENT LIGHT by Lara Pawson has a US edition forthcoming from @mcnallyeditions.com. Excellent news — it remains one of the best books I've read in recent years, as I said a bit about here:

Ears and mind were blown. Nowhere else could give those gigantic pieces the utter splendour that John Wilson and the 136-strong (!) Sinfonia of London did. Talk about aural splendour. Five and half thousand people held rapt. Dying to see it all on TV on Sunday.

Mr. Symphonist@deeplyclassical.bsky.social · 2w ago

Respighi's Roman Trilogy is sixty or so of the most spectacular, cinematic and sonically sexy minutes of orchestral music ever composed. At last night's Prom, John Wilson's Sinfonia of London sparkled and scintillated like presecco in a crystal glass catching the light of the evening sun. Bravo!