It’s beginning to look a lot like Eurovision… Why? Well they have already announced the opening and interval acts for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest fiesta for one thing. Traditionally these two slots give the host country a chance to strut their cultural stuff and the music is either resolutely Continue Reading
Jericho returns: maybe, possibly (if CBS and Netflix make nice)
Ever since Netflix moved into the business of producing original content, they have become more and more like a pop culture Santa. On their latest trip down the TV show-giving chimney, it’s been announced that they’ve been talking to CBS about resurrecting the critically-mourned, but ratings-starved cult favourite Jericho, which Continue Reading
My brief tumultuous love afford with The Voice
I still have no idea how it happened. One minute I am watching hours and hours of scripted drama, glorying in the skill of the writers and actors that produce quality entertainment like Mad Men, Community, and Once Upon a Time… and the next? Why all of a sudden, as Continue Reading
A writer by any other name: the pseudonyms of famous writers
When most writers of fiction are published, they are so inordinately proud of getting their beloved work into bookstores that they think nothing of splashing their name across the book’s cover. Why would you do anything else? After all, you want the world to know you wrote this book, right? Continue Reading
Sonic Bliss #7: My favourite songs of the week
I may be squeezing every last musical drop out of Santigold’s fantastic new album, Master of My Make-Believe at the moment as it spins on high rotation like a runaway spinning top through my iPod but that doesn’t mean I don’t have time to listen and explore and find new Continue Reading
“Fringe” returns for a fifth and final season
After much nail-biting, which may have occurred in multiple dimensions depending on the day, and which version of me was doing the worrying, it’s been confirmed by a number of sites that Fringe will be back for a final 13 episodes. There was uncertainty about whether this would happen, so Continue Reading
Review: “The Visitors” (Deluxe edition) – ABBA
The front cover of the deluxe version which was released today [via] I am of a certain vintage now I will admit it, and being a person of that unspecified vintage (although the Sherlockian among you should be able to hazard a reasonable accurate guess about my age simply by Continue Reading
Road to Eurovision 2012: Week 4
It occurred on the way to writing this week’s instalment on the glittery yellow brick road to Eurovision that I hadn’t regaled you with even one solitary piece of Eurovision trivia, a glaring oversight when there are so many pages devoted to that very thing. So to rectify such an Continue Reading
The romantic aroma of old books
Admit it – you walk into a second hand bookstore and all you can smell is the delightful, or possibly, offensive smell of old books. As Richard Davies of worldwide online bookseller, abebooks.com, and an expert on rare books, explains in this information-filled video, old books have a distinctive smell Continue Reading
Review: “Battleship”
I have long suffered from blockbuster phobia. Too many times I have believed the hype, bravely ventured into the popcorn strewn, choc top infested local multiplex only to find my hopes dashed on rocks so inane they feel like hollow tubes of polystyrene as they crush beneath me. So burned Continue Reading