I’ll start by saying I’m not especially an Elvis Presley fan. And that I think Baz Luhrmann has a slightly patchy filmography. But I did enjoy his Elvis movie in 2022. This, however, is not a movie, it’s a full blown documentary, akin, in some ways, to Peter Jackson’s sublime “They Shall Not Grow Old” (his WWI recolourised documentary) and The Beatles “Get Back” TV series. It opens with a…

Blue Lights started out in 2023 as a low budget cop drama with a twist or two. Firstly was set in a post-troubles Belfast where the tensions linger and this created scenarios that felt different and thrilling. Secondly there was a great deal of relationship-building going on in the station and on the beat between male and female officers. It offered light relief and was used in sufficient…

Day 12: The Edinburgh Fringe.

The truly beautiful Larkhall. Miss it at your peril. Two more really great shows and couldn’t have been more different. Let’s start with Larkhall – Piano and Creative Coding at, yup, you guessed it, Summerhall. It’s a beautiful show by astounding pianist and, eh, creative coder, Larkhall in which he, a variety of collaborators and a computer called Otto wire up a piano via some effects pedal…

Cave’s book of atonement. Atonement for the death of his 15 year old son, Arthur, in a climbing accident in his home town of Brighton after taking LSD, in 2015. Since then Cave has made a film with great friend Andrew Dominik, called One More Time With Feeling which bleakly shows Cave and his wife Susie’s reactions to Arthur’s death as they deeply grieve his untimely end. But here, in 2022,…

Triple BAFTA TV nominee (one win) and RTS winning documentary, Billy And Molly: An Otter Love Story, hit the Channel 4 screens in the UK last week and is an absolute pearler of a film by National Geographic. Not only is it stunningly photographed, but it tells a story as engaging as a fairy tale. And in truth it’s a real life fairy tale as it explores the unlikely but true story of retired,…

I am listening to a profound book, an extended interview between Sean O’Hagan and Nick Cave, called Faith, Hope and Carnage. It was recorded in the wake of the recording of Ghosteen which, in turn, was recorded in the wake of Nick Cave’s son, Arthur’s death. It’s a book about religious belief, faith and grief. And it’s mesmerising. The story that brought me close to tears whilst out walking…

Horror is reaching new levels of creativity this year. Jordan Peele has started the momentum but first Backrooms and now this are proving that the genre will never run out of new ways to scare you. Where Backrooms was surreal and utterly discombobulating this is more rooted in tradition but the storytelling does not need to resort to dozens of jump scares and tedious slasher finales that long…

As we anticipate the release of O’Farrell’s Booker contender, Land, I got round to reading an early novel in her career (this is my sixth). Possibly her breakthrough into greatness. I wasn’t a fan of her debut, After You’d Gone, but her later work just gets better and better, culminating in the wonder that is Hamnet and then The Marriage Portrait. Hopefully Land will will be as good as the…