Toy Story

The Nostalgia Toy Museum in the town of Godshill on the Isle of Wight was quite a trip down memory lane for me. I already knew about their impressive selection of Star Wars memorabilia. Look, the Cantina Playset (lightsaber-severed limbs not included)! Look, both versions of Snaggletooth! (I used to have the red one, myself). [...]

Good old-fashioned entertainment

I recently introduced my children to Star Wars. All three enjoyed it, although my eldest daughter took to it most enthusiastically, bombarding me with questions and spending every spare moment with her nose buried in the Star Wars Visual Dictionary. So far the only criticism they’ve voiced is that there’s only one female character. Strangely [...]

Tables and walls and ceilings

Another Saturday morning browsing in Pele-Mêle bookshop. No purchases this time, but I paid a little more attention to the décor than the inventory. Although this display of French adventure novels caught my eye. I got to see some of the illustrated tabletops in more detail. This one is frankly unsuitable for minors and should [...]

Britflicks

The Iron Lady While almost everyone agrees that Meryl Streep gives a phenomenal performance in this film, it’s taken a beating from reviewers for not being an hysterical anti-Thatcher tirade, for not portraying her as a hideous, baby-eating monster. Which is not to say that it glorifies her either. In some ways it’s quite balanced. [...]

Jedi Burger

Many of you will have seen news stories recently about French fast food chain Quick’s three themed burgers featuring on their menus in February to tie in with the 3D re-release of the Star Wars prequels. I make very occasional visits to Quick when I’m in the mood for a burger but not too fussy [...]

The look

Disclaimer: I tried and tried to find all the clips I needed for this post on Youtube. I tried to rip them from my own DVDs but they were copy protected. Even grabbing stills from the DVDs seemed unnecessarily complicated. Hopefully you get the idea in most of the cases. If not, go and see [...]

Free films

When I arrived at university one of the first things I did was attend that semester’s first editorial meeting of the student newspaper, Concrete, to see how I could get involved. I walked away from the meeting having scored a free preview screening of a new film at one of Norwich’s main cinemas. All I [...]

Star-studded

On the last day of a recent trip to California I had 24 hours in LA. I spent an hour or so on Hollywood Boulevard, where I saw some of the stars on the Walk of Fame. Not real stars, obviously, just imprints and imitators. Handprints in the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater, street performers [...]

Cinemalphabetical

An alphabetical list of films I like, because I was told to. All ones I’d recommend for one reason or another. Akira Brazil The Company of Strangers Delicatessen Eraserhead The Five Tousand Fingers of Dr. T Gummo Hana-bi The Iron Giant JFK Kind Hearts and Coronets The Last Seduction My Neighbour Totoro Nothing Lasts Forever The [...]

Susannah York

As you may or may not be aware, Susannah York died over the weekend. Did I ever tell you about the time she held my face in her hands and gazed into my eyes? No? Late summer 1996. I left university with a respectable humanities degree and no job prosepcts, so I ran away to [...]