hello fellow south Londoner.

as a non American I will never understand the format of this. The answer to 'What is Little Rock, Arkansas?' is, at best, 'A town.' If the question was 'Name something that happened in Little Rock' maybe it would make more sense. But as it is… it just seems weird.

I do find the love for Brooklyn kind of baffling. It's perfectly pleasant and Saoirse Ronan is a great actor, but… I feel like I'm missing something when I see it praised to the skies.

Well it depends where you are in England. Where I'm from, about 55% of people identify as white and 30% as black. So yeah, it does look less diverse to me. But Hogwarts draws its pupils from all over the UK I guess? But the point probably is that they could probably make a point of being more representative than they…

I suppose Haynes being gay is the relevant thing?

Well, that's a higher percentage than the percentage of the population that's LGBT (if the kinds of summaries of statistics you see from time to time can be relied upon at all). I don't know if that's relevant - I don't know if trying to achieve proportional representation is a thing that's got merit or not. But 12%…

But neither Cate Blanchett nor Rooney Mara is gay. I thought this was about subject matter, not representation in casting.

Tom Hardy, perfect man. Sigh, swoon, etc. The insight into Fitzgerald has improved the film for me, and I already loved it.

Bits of it were filmed just down the road from me. Sadly I did not find this out while it was happening, only when I recognised the location in the film.

Too right. I love it when Tom Hardy really commits to an accent.

I came here to say basically this. If Carol was a better film I'd care more. Are the Oscars transphobic for 'snubbing' (by the metric that says nominations for acting and costume are snubs) The Danish Girl, even though the Danish Girl isn't that great a film?

*quotes Abe Simpson*

yeah I was being silly

Someone cut one of his arms off and it grew back, like a lizard. Either that or he got a bionic one, I can't remember.

I'm really into opening credit sequences. They can be immensely creative and mood-setting: iZombie, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, True Detective, Penny Dreadful, Hannibal, The Americans, Masters of Sex (gloriously cheesy, that one). Or more functional, but still very atmospheric - Walking Dead, Z Nation, Brooklyn 99,…

Fangirl is great, I think I liked it the most out of all of them.

I can't wait, like, literally can't wait, and this is the best and most exciting thing that's happened to me in about eight years. I've got to be grateful to the producers for that (and also take a really long look at what a sad statement that is, I know). But just to have this kid-at-Christmas feeling is marvellous…

Well, learning the languages is a very different undertaking from reading texts - did you want to do that or just read the texts in English?
If you're just reading in English, I wouldn't use Loebs. They cover pretty much every Greek and Latin text we have, which is a LOT, and a lot of it'll be fragments and weird bits…

Maybe it was just really bad, I don't know. I certainly found it much more depressing and unpleasant in a bad way than previous seasons. Maybe it's just evolution - I shouldn't expect to like something just cos I've liked it in the past.

I went to Hateful Eight yesterday and just got back from The Revenant tonight. I have to say I was much more engaged and absorbed by The Revenant - I found Lubezki's photography to be incredibly visually inspiring. I loved how it was at once all about presenting these forests and mountains as lonely, inhospitable…