SPOILERISH
 
I do hope Brienne doesn’t get any romantic subplots. I like the way the books refuse to make her the sort of ‘strong heroine’ that she could never have been in a mediaeval milieu. Most of the characters (even, to a certain extent, Catelyn) barely consider her human, let alone a plausible love interest – and…

The title change raises the deeply depressing thought that some studio marketing person thought - hopefully just a little wrongly - that no American child would go and see a film with the word 'scientist' in the title unless it was preceded by the word 'mad'. I'm also imagining that Charles Darwin doesn't feature…

It's not that I have an aversion. It's just that there's loads of good books to read at any given time, so given the option I'll pick an adult one for myself. That said, I'm currently reading the Earthsea Quartet to the young one, which is a pleasure.

Slightly coolstorybro territory, but Patrick Ness taught me on a creative wriing course some years before he made it biggish, and he was brilliant. Changed the way I looked at prose writing in many, many positive ways. I haven't read the books, because I'm not 12, but I'll have no hesitation recommending them to my…

Their meaning and importance to me is that my daily commute is about to get an extra hour (at least) slapped on to it thanks to an IOC requirement to have entire traffic lanes sequestered for the personal use of Olympics staff for the duration. Which, as it goes, is just one of the myriad ways in which they've been…

I thought this was totally amazing. Highly reminiscent of Simon Ings’ underrated novel ‘The Weight of Numbers’.
 
The ‘narrative despair’ the reviewer seems like the point of the novel to me – in the sense that despair is the only sensible response to the ‘narrative’, such as it is, of history. There’s a massive hint…

Like I say, it didn't really apart from in its extreme form of child abuse hysteria. That's what made the whole thing so embarrassing - there was no mainstream purchase here for the idea that any form of pop-culture was drawing kids into 'satanic ways' - it was considered a rather silly fringe worry.

Poldark would have been better on mopeds…

Although to be fair, these were the more commonly spotted and casual 60s and 70s kind of tits that you could expose while staying classy in a countercultural kind of way. I believe she was always pretty well-respected in theatrical circles. Basically, she's Judi Dench. But with more, and better tits,

He is in Smiley's people. Again, briefly and silently, although in a rather more important setting…

On that point I remember there's a throwaway line about Caligula as a child to the effect that he speaks really good Latin. Which got a big laugh from us and has stuck with me to this day as my first experience of…lampshading, I believe the TVTropesters call it?

When I was 13 my Latin teacher, who liked to think of himself as a down and groovy kind of guy, decided he'd show us 'I Claudius' in Friday afternoon lessons. Until one of my classmates' mothers - a meddlesome Christian who later became famous for appearing on local TV berating Dungeons and Dragons as violent and…

Forbrydelsen taught me that a) the Danish for 'Computer' is 'Computer', b) the surname 'Skovgaard' is, like many Danish words, pronounced 'ooorrrghhhh'. Seriously, do they export all their plosive consonants, or something?

I'd go for Miami Vice, but it seems like that wouldn't count as it's not so much a remake as an innovative branding strategy for a pre-existing Michael Mann project.

I think the Avengers gets a very, very slightly raw deal critically speaking. It always seems to me like it was made by people trying to capture the whimsy of the late 60s phase of the show, and then edited by someone who felt they needed to shape it into standard blockbuster product, couldn't work out how and made a…

And the winners of our daily collaborative Internet haiku competition are…

"Not all of it…"

I swear I caught the end of a radio version of , essentially, the Navidson Record on BBC Radio 4 a little while ago (it was their big Halloween production, IIRC). It was very, very dull – just people reading the descriptions out with a few of the scenes dramatised.  The book, meanwhile, is the only thing to have given…

I quite liked the crappiness of the S4 mutiny – I thought it might have been the point, a ‘second time as farce’ angle on the eternal return of history trope . I loved the bit when they put Adama on ‘trial’ and he just laughs in their faces and reveals the whole thing as the poorly-thought-through bullshit it always…

The stranded Kara Episode did my head right in, alas. It looked great, everyone acted well, the flashback structure was terrifically done, but for a show that up until that point had been assiduously ‘realist’ in its approach to SF it just threw in too many ‘don’t ask about it’ moments.
 
So we establish the atmosphere…