Within You Without You

There is a lot of excitement this week over the final release of the Get Back film, but I’ve been watching The Beatles In India instead. The Beatles have always had an odd position for me, as their music had been canonised and accepted as a Great British Thing before I was born. Their films, […]

The Music Centre

This week I heard the new album by Pye Corner Audio. Like all Ghostbox releases it follows a standard format of sleeve design, with specific fonts and arrangement of text on the front and back in the same position and alignment for all releases. This is a harking back to the formalised layout of old […]

While Endwhile

I watched Boss Level (2020). This is a sci-fi film that is not attempting to be a serious, subtle independent sci-fi film that isn’t like a Hollywood product, and so consequently it has lots of positive qualities missing in some of the other sci-fi films I watched recently. The introductory screen is like an 80-s […]

Boys In The Band

I watched the 2 films David Essex made in the early 70s, in which he played a British pop star from the 50s through to a contemporary climax. That’ll Be The Day (1973) starts with young Jim MacLaine delighted to finally see his dad back, demobbed at the end of World War Two. Daddy soon […]

Dead Souls

I watched Undergods (2021). We start with a dishevelled figure in the mist, and then we see the titles in a font and colour appropriate to a Pan paperback or heavy metal album sleeve of 1978. The soundtrack affects the synthpop style of a few years later. We are in a desolate landscape of brutalist […]

Chumblies

I watched the new edition of the 1965 Doctor Who story Galaxy 4. Only one full episode and 5 minutes from the middle of the 1st episode are still available, so this is an animated reconstruction with the original soundtrack added. The surviving original footage is included as extras. The reconstruction comes in both coloured […]

Faust Banana

I went to see Faust IV Live at the Union Chapel. When I bought my ticket for this event on 1st February 2020 it was scheduled for Friday 8th May 2020. On Tuesday 17th March 2020 I had an email saying the gig would be postponed. On Friday1st May 2020 I was told the new […]

Cell Count

Today I had my annual trip to Hammersmith Hospital to check my health as a former in-patient at the Catherine Lewis Centre. The appointment was made after the last one last year, and should have happened on November 1st but I had a message putting me back 2 weeks, presumably due to the shortages in equipment that […]

Hotwire My Heart

I watched some old films about cops and robbers in America. We start in a black & white world presented in 1961. Underworld USA takes us back to a dark alley on New Year’s Eve 20 years earlier. “Auld Lang Syne” is the background music, and it recurs several times during the saga of Tolly […]

The Multiverse Economy

I watched Parallel (2018). The story opens with a middle-aged couple in bed upstairs in a suburban home. Marissa hears the dog making a noise downstairs and so goes down to check he has food. She is then grabbed by a hooded masked stranger with a muffled voice. After the stranger calms her down and […]