This post has been bought to you by the letter T.

names
Perhaps someone could explain something to me. Where the fuck do black Americans get their names from. As a Brit I find this needful diversification very strange. It's like American maternity wards have black box word generators which randomly throw out names like Taraji, Alfre or Condoleezza, which the…

T2
Anyone mentioned Edward Furlong yet? Though 'Went on to successful, respectable career' might be pushing it.

Jesus H Christmas…
..I read this feature, thinking I'll add my embarasssing first record buying story. But first I need to go away for a couple of days (work). I come back and there's 956 comments! Anyway, first record stolen from Woolworths was Madness: Absolutely. First record actually bought with money earned or…

If there's one thing the Coen Brothers' films remind me of it's the novels of Martin Amis. We all have our pet theories so indulge me here. There are three broad categories; the comedies, the tragedies and the histories. Each Coen film or Amis book has a lot of one and some of the others. But what they share to a…

That half-arsed Manchurian Candidate. No remote controlled machine gun, although there was a remote controlled Liev Schreiber.

The problem with the son angle is that it negates the need for a rookie partner, who is also a filial surrogate, thereby losing the opportunity for the exposition excuse and leaving the film makers looking around for someone else to die that the audience cares about. Also with the daughter there are all sorts of…

Secret Service Agent
The Secret Service Agent film checklist:

Why does she have to be nice? Writing a novel, of any kind is a long distance run. Writing a series is a succession of back to back marathons. That sort of wall-eyed determination comes at a price, and that price is approachability. I've read nothing of Rowling's, although I have read some stories of her interactions…

A solution
I see a way out of this. We continually mock them for being too old, even when they clearly aren't. Not worldly enough to ask "too old for what?" they mercilessly cull the older ones until they think they have it right. "OK" they say, "this year there's not one presenter or act older than twenty". Still we…

People, some people, enjoy watching violence, real or enacted. We have always been this way; Roman gladiatorial contests, public executions. Whatever primal urge this satisfies, and I'd argue that hyper-violent movies belong in the same category, there is an important qualifier; emotional distance. As long as we don't…

I hope she cleaned it up afterwards.

The Little Bus That Couldn't.

What's an ACL, and why would you tear it?

Are you still writing in English?

I don't hate Blair Witch. In fact I saw it the cinema when it came out, and despite the fact that the cat was well out of the bag concerning the 'found footage' premise I still found myself carried along by the hype. What I'm saying is that the hype was integral to the movie. It's possible it just doesn't work on a…

I'm pretty sure no-one has ever used 'Samuel Beckett' and 'chuckles' in the same sentence before.

I saw it on DVD after eventually persuading my wife to watch it with me. It came out before we met and she, never a follower of media sensation, hadn't seen it. I explained the premise as well as I could without completely putting her off. We sat down and watched it and the sense of deflation was almost palpable. It…

Ugly, hateful, trite, sentimentalised, misogynistic film. I see we are condemned to disagree on this.

I have to say, troll or no. When he said 'in a word' and then used two words made me laugh out loud.