I’m out of town for a few days staying in a strange hotel room. It’s a perfectly nice hotel but it’s not my home city and I’m in a room that’s not my own. There are unknown noises and strange bumps and all sorts of weird things going on. It’s what happens when you are in a place you don’t know very well. So the obvious film to watch was Hammer’s ghost story The Woman in Black…
Archives for February 2013
Broken City
27 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
There are some things that come around every year – the panic to fill out the tax-return, the complaints that Easter Eggs are in the shops too early, jokes about there being a hosepipe ban every time there’s a slight rainfall during the summer. We can now add to this the annual Mark Wahlberg tough but good guy film…
In Defence of Seth MacFarlane – Kind Of…
26 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
There are many thankless tasks in this world but as Seth MacFarlane is probably now realising, being the host of the Academy Awards is possibly the most public way to make yourself a worldwide figure of hatred literally overnight. His reviews are not great and some of the Twitter vitriol has been appalling…
Think of the Children
25 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
When I first got my Kindle I went through a period of downloading many, many free and cheap books. More than I could possibly read in a decade and with no quality control whatsoever. There was a flurry of mindless downloading of books onto my new and special machine. I was, I admit, greedy. In some cases I discovered gems that I would previously never have found…
Oscars 2013 Live Blog
24 February 2013 by 4 Comments
Live blog of the 2013 Oscars – join in with discussion of the winners and losers in the biggest night of the film year.
Oscars 2013 Predictions
24 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
It’s Oscars Day and I’m excited. I love the Oscars, I love the good and the bad outfits. I love the gushing speeches and the losers proving why they lost by not being able to act happy for the winners. On the other hand I can’t stand the moaning minnies who complain that it’s all back-slapping and aren’t there more important things in the world to be concerned about…
This Means War
20 February 2013 by 5 Comments
Sometimes I read reviews of romantic comedies that are very scathing and make me think I’m about to watch the worst movie ever made. I’m usually pleasantly surprised by a film that is a bit mindless but normally quite fun and enjoyable…
Soulseeker
19 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
Just over a year ago I reviewed Sinclair Macleod’s The Reluctant Detective, the first in his series of crime novels set in Glasgow with an insurance investigator who gets caught up in murders. I mentioned in that review that while The Reluctant Detective wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a cosy mystery nor was it quite dark enough to be categorised as a “tartan noir”…
A Good Day To Die Hard
17 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
I imagine that in any number of Top Tens I could do Die Hard would feature prominently. Top Ten Action Films – check. Christmas Films – yup. Films set in tower blocks, Bruce Willis films, films with leading men wearing vests. I will make up spurious Top Tens just to find new ways to extoll the virtues of Die Hard. I really do love the original film…
Aberystwyth Mon Amour
15 February 2013 by Leave a Comment
In my own personal backlash against the influx of Scandinavian crime fiction I was determined to read more British thrillers this year and did relatively well. I may have been last to the party in discovering the brilliance of Mark Billingham but at least I discovered it. I took a tour of some M.C. Beaton cosy mysteries..