Writer's Block

At some stage in the future, Major (Scarlet Johansson) has had her brain and consciousness transplanted into a robot body following an accident in which she drowned. She works for Hanka Robotics and sets after a mystery criminal hell bent on murdering everyone involved in the corporation. But all is very much not as it seems. The film is based around a Japanese manga series, which later became a hugely popular anime film. I'm not in a position to judge to what extent it is faithful to the source material and there have been complaints about the "whitewashing" of the central character. My only real comment there is that if you're going to do a Hollywood/westernised version involving a half robot woman, Johansson is the obvious choice and she frequently conveys a sense of detachment and distance that you would expect from her character. Deference is shown to the story's roots and it's clearly still meant to be set in futuristic Japan, although there is a rev...

In Angel Grove, 5 teenagers discover multicoloured coins in a mine. After they survive a collision with a train, they realise they have superpowers. They stumble upon a base underground where they meet Alpha 5 (Bill Hader) who introduces them to Zordon (Bryan Cranston) a voice in a wall who was once the original leader of the Power Rangers and informs them that they must now carry on his legacy as a team. The five must train to stop Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks) who has designs on the Zeo Crystal somewhere in the town. Yeah. The Power Rangers need to stop a witch from stealing a crystal because she can destroy the world with it, or something. Don't focus too much on the plot with this one because it isn't really there. The Guardian's review of this said it benefits from lowered expectations and I think that's fair. Save for a terribly misjudged joke about bull masturbation early doors, there's very little to actively get offended by here. The dialogue is clunky i...

I failed my exam today. And I hadn't failed any exams prior to the triggering of Article 50, which clearly tells you everything you need to know. My views on the matter haven't changed a great deal since the referendum last June. I'm not an economic expert, although famously it wouldn't matter if I was. There's been a lot of ugliness since then and a great deal of resentment from both sides. Leaving the accusations of jingoism and racism aside*, I am yet to see any evidence that departing the European Union will benefit us more than being a part of it. It still feels to me like a big senseless risk, an insular regressive step from what should be a progressive forward seeking nation. The fact we still don't appear to have any sort of coherent strategy is cause for concern. But I'm fully prepared to concede that I don't know what's going to happen. Nor indeed do those who voted for us to leave. I suspect what will happen is both sides will continue t...

I lost an hour on Sunday and still didn't feel like the weekend was ever going to end, with two full length shifts and then a bit more. My industry has an exceedingly high turnover of staff. I don't think it's necessarily because people can't handle the work, but because the nature of shift work requires you to make certain sacrifices that some people struggle with. I think my life would be improved immeasurably if I could find 9-5 work and that's what I've got to strive for. In the meantime, I have an exam tomorrow. I'm trepidatious about it. But then I was trepidatious about the last two. I feel like this is my "Boy Who Cried Wolf" moment though. Having falsely floated the prospect for so long, this is the part where I get my face mauled off. I've never failed an exam. I suppose it stands to reason that there's a first time for everything. But it'll hit me both in the pocket and in the head if I do. Not only have I not been taking...

I'm incredibly jaded when it comes to the England national football side these days, after years and years of disappointment and mediocrity. Yesterday's 2-0 victory over Lithuania will not live long in the memory. But what I will remember is seeing England led out by Jermain Defoe and Bradley Lowery. Bradley is a five year old Sunderland fan who suffers with neuroblastoma. He is an extraordinary boy and Bradley and his family have demonstrated remarkable courage under the most difficult of circumstances. Defoe is no stranger to tragedy himself and has gone above and beyond the call of duty to take young Bradley under his wing. Wembley raised the roof for both of them and rightly so. And then the match kicked off. And then in the 21st minute, Jermain Defoe scored. Because that's what Jermain Defoe does. However cynical I am, it was undoubtedly a special moment and I suspect I won't see a Sunderland player score for England again. He's one of the best footballers I...

In a few hours from the time of writing,Yellowcard will have called time on their two decade long career with a final show at the Anaheim House of Blues. To what extent you can trust any band claiming to be on their final tour, I'm not sure. But they've been on hiatus before, from 2008-10. I'm pretty sure that's how it works, you're allowed one crack at being on hiatus and then you have to quit forever. In the years before and after, there have been few bands who have contributed more to pop-punk. I saw them 13 years ago supporting New Found Glory and thought they had something special, not just because they had a dude who could play the violin. Here were a band who wore their heart on their sleeve and had loads of great energetic songs that stayed in your head. Ocean Avenue remains one of the all time great pop-punk records* and it was a joy to see them revisit it in full at Slam Dunk Festival last year, with a crowd so full of appreciation for it and for them. ...

 I don't usually let new podcasts into my rotation at this point but in recent months I've really been into Talking Simpsons. It's part of the Lasertime podcast network which seems dedicated to an extensive analysis of various facets of pop culture. Described as "a chronological exploration of The Simpsons", a meticulous level of research seems to go into each episode. There's discussion of writers and directors for example (they recently had a long form interview with executive producer and writer Bill Oakley) and the hosts strive to place each episode into a cultural context, commenting on events around the original airdate. They'll also go into detail about various references which are mostly enlightening to a UK viewer. I always end up learning something that I didn't know. Another major plus point is that the show's frequent contributors seem like likeable guys and I'm interested to hear about their engagement with the show when they wer...

I surely don't need a synopsis for Beauty And The Beast but precedent has been established. A vagrant arrives at a debutante ball held at the castle of an unkind and arrogant prince, hoping for a place to shelter. The prince dismisses her, except it turns out she has magical powers. She proceeds to turn the prince into a beast and his servants into household objects. If the prince can open his heart and be loved in return then the curse will be broken. If he fails, then he will be doomed to live the rest of his days as a beast. We all know what happens, tale as old as time and all that sort of thing. But the prince's problem more specifically is that he's an arsehole, not that he's incapable of love. So really the film should be about him being less of an arsehole, rather than trying to woo Emma Watson. This is one of the story's many plot holes that I'm going to have to gloss over. OK, indulge me in one more. The villagers are seemingly anti-intellectual and ...

Yesterday, a terrorist attempted to mow down pedestrians in a car on Westminster Bridge before trying to continue his assault into parliament, stabbing a policeman to death in the process. At the time of writing, four innocent people have lost their lives. My thoughts are with the family and friends of PC Keith Palmer and everyone else affected. I've seen people as usual on social media hijacking a tragedy to fuel their own agendas and I find that totally abhorrent. I also find #PrayForLondon trite, however well meaning. What I will say is this. I've been expecting a day like this to come since the 7/7 bombings in 2005 and I'm surprised that it hasn't before now. The fact that that's the case is a testament to the outstanding work of our security services and the police, whilst once again our emergency services have excelled themselves under the most trying of circumstances. Sadiq Khan called London "the greatest city in the world". I'm not in a po...

I needed to make time to study for a forthcoming accounting exam, so I watched every episode of American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson in four days. That at least suggests that the drama is very watchable, although the performances are a bit of a mixed bag. There are parts of Cuba Gooding Jr's portrayal of OJ that feel believable, but it's difficult to imagine a whinier depiction of the character unless he was played by Tracy Morgan. A lot has been said about Travolta's involvement including various speculation on whether he's had Botox or cosmetic surgery. That's neither here or there but it's difficult to get around the fact that  his facial expression seemingly fixed somewhere between pain and discomfort irrespective of what he's actually attempting to convey. I've not seen David Schwimmer for a while and he's in solid form here as Robert Kardashian, who informs his children "Fame is fleeting, it's hollow. It means nothing wi...

I wanted to keep it out of my review but The Early November gig on Saturday featured some of the most egregious breaches of gig etiquette of recent memory. I've begrudgingly accepted the use of camera phones at shows, although I despise them to the point where I'd happily see them outlawed by legislation. As I mentioned, this show was downgraded to a smaller venue, which made their employment feel even more baffling to me. Everyone interested in seeing this is already in this room, or going to another show on this tour. If people wanted some sort of record for posterity, they may as well have just nominated the person with the highest quality recording equipment and procured the files from them later. Yellowcard put it brilliantly in their recorded pre-show announcement on their December UK tour. "While we're not telling you how to live your lives, if you choose to watch a kick ass rock show through an LED rectangle, you are fucking blowing it". Cue people proce...

Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is preparing for a trip to meet the parents of his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Alison Williams). Evidently fretful, he asks Rose whether her parents know that he's black. His apprehension proves to be well founded as a number of peculiar happenings start to occur upon arrival at the Armitage residence. I have very little interest in horror films (the thought of It Follows still makes me shudder and not in a good way) but found much to enjoy here. The film's use of horror tropes is well judged without an over reliance on elements like jump scares, for example, whilst also developing a sinister sense of unease. The film's comic relief comes in the form of Chris' friend Rod (Caleb Landry Jones), desperately attempting to keep tabs on the situation from afar, frequently gleaning laughs from wild speculation. Those who consider the USA to be a post-racial society certainly won't find one in Get Out. The film turns its sights on liberal...

Ace Enders and his band make a welcome return to these shores to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of their ambitious three disc concept record "The Mother, The Mechanic and The Path". Their show tonight was downgraded from the Dome in Tufnell Park to the Boston Music Rooms. A disappointment I'm sure but if you have a sister venue available downstairs, it's much better to have 150 people in a 250 capacity room then have the atmosphere suffer in a space for 500. Or it would be if a decent proportion of those people weren't unbearable fuck-knuckles. I'll return to that subject in a future blog. Dryjacket are keen to stress that their name is a reference to Back To The Future II and not some sort of sexual innuendo, although a cursory Google provides no clues with regards to the latter. They hail from New Jersey and play alternative rock, much like tonight's headliners. The similarities end there in a set that's inoffensive but uninspired. I have come t...

I've been keeping tabs on Grace Petrie ever since I saw her support Gavin Osborn in 2015 where I thought she was terrific. Fiercely left wing, this EP is Petrie's riposte to articles like this in The Guardian about the supposed death of the protest song . The record is bookended by its two most political songs, "I Wish The Guardian Believed That I Exist" ("the mainstream music press, well they just couldn't care less") and "God Save The Hungry", a near five minute broadside against inequality. They are compelling arguments, eloquently and melodically put. Petrie takes us into more personal territory in the middle section of the EP. "Nobody Knows That I'm A Fraud" is charmingly self-effacing ("We could all be doing better and we could all be doing worse", I suspect there's truth in that) whilst "I've Had Worse" is a quietly moving lamentation on a lost love. The personal and political come together on ...

The big story of the day is that George Osborne will become editor of the Evening Standard, a move that has sparked outrage amongst journalists and left wingers everywhere. The precedent has very much been set for establishment figures taking on roles for which they are fundamentally and perhaps dangerous unqualified, so why not George? I've heard so much about Teresa May being in Rupert Murdoch's pocket that I'd prefer it if everyone involved just made it official. The actual big story of late is Jermain Defoe returning to the England squad at the age of 34. Defoe expressed surprise that he was not in the international picture when he was banging in goals for Sunderland last season but a) Sunderland is too far north for England managers to bother with and b) then manager Roy Hodgson felt that Defoe had surrendered any right to be in the England squad when he moved to Canada to play for Toronto FC. Unfortunately, Roy Hodgson surrended the right to avoid being called a gut...

A friend (who may or may not read this, so I won't go into too much detail) revealed recently that they had lost a stone and a half in the past five weeks. This gave me pause, in part because said person had gone from above my weight to below my weight. I weighed myself last week during a particularly low moment. I think my logic was that at that point I couldn't possibly feel any worse about myself. I thought 27 stone was a genuine possibility, it turned out that I was 24 stone, 5 pounds. I don't have the actual statistics on this but I am reasonably certain that this is the largest weight I have ever been. I've consulted the brief period when I wrote my weight down in blogs a couple of years ago. I am three stone and 2 pounds heavier than I was at roughly the midway point of 2015, a period when I was seemingly concerned enough about my weight to make a token effort to monitor it. I don't know how this possibly makes sense but I am both aware that I'm reachin...

I'm becoming less and less inclined towards writing these blogs. Part of that is I don't want to write anything that I'll end up regretting later, having made that mistake on occasion during my 2015 run. But if I go back and amend the one word blogs later, then are they truly daily blogs? Probably not. But does anyone really care? In particular I can think of one recent blog which would have just been me repeatedly calling myself a useless piece of shit if I'd have written it on the day. As you may have guessed by this point, I've been having a mental wobble of late. I'm still trying to see it off. I found college hard going today, as I often do. My erratic sleeping and working patterns mean I often show up on a Wednesday mentally and physically tired, struggling to cope with what are sometimes difficult concepts to wrap my head around. I'm gradually coming to a conclusion that I should have arrived at a long time ago that I need to take better care of mys...

I closed another shop today. I always feel anxious about closing another shop, especially if I'm working with someone fairly new. In my own shop, I'll either have help or be in a position to talk out whatever I did wrong. If I balls up in someone else's shop, I fear that I'll give them a more difficult time the following morning or I'll end up being resented from a distance and judged. Entirely irrational, I know. But it's how I feel. Fortunately I worked through some problems that arose with some outside assistance and didn't panic. Let's call it personal growth, I suppose. In my very first blog of the year, I mentioned being berated by a customer for what I think I described as "an entirely imagined transgression". He made a reappearance yesterday, fortunately with a much more positive outcome. It will doubtless not come as a surprise to anyone that gamblers are much easier to deal with when they're winning.  I also went and got a key...

Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is a struggling travelling salesman, failing to convince numerous businesses to purchase his milkshake mixers. He receives an order from Maurice and Dick McDonald (John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman) for eight mixers for their San Bernadino restaurant. Kroc elects to pay them a visit and is dumbfounded by the lightning fast production of burgers and fries. The McDonald explain to him the history of the enterprise and how they became "an overnight sensation 30 years in the making". Kroc proposes to franchise the business. The rest of course, is history. How much you get along with The Founder probably depends on how much you enjoy things like seeing men argue over the composition of milkshakes on screen. Fortunately, I like that sort of thing which is just as well as Dick and Ray slamming the phone down on each other becomes a recurring aspect of the film. There's something of Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation in Offerman's depiction, ...

I'm not even a quarter of the way through this year's daily blog effort and I'm already starting to flag. Far too often lately I've written a one word blog on the day and then returned to it later (or not). It's a cheat basically. But because I don't want to do it again and because I've left this one ridiculously late, you've got to deal with this filler. In addition to Kong, I also saw The Founder yesterday, which I enjoyed a good deal more. It would have made more sense to have written about that in this edition. But that would have involved some focus. I went back to work today. The novelty of being somewhere I hadn't been for six days just about got me through, but it'll all come crashing around me during my early opening shift at another shop tomorrow I suspect. But for now, I can still smile and nod as elderly men repeatedly violate the terms of social contracts*. This is probably as far as I'm prepared to go before I fear reprisals f...

In 1973, Samuel L Jackson, Tom Hiddlestone, Brie Larson, John Goodman and a few others go on an expedition to the mysterious "Skull Island". Pretty quickly shit starts going down involving a giant ape. I'm quite inebriated right now but I'm quite happy to rattle through this. This is almost a total mess of a film. None of the characters motivations are adequately explained, in particular Jackson's character who seems to have a largely illogical Captain Ahab style lust for revenge. John C Reilly shows up later on and appears to have been parachuted in from an entirely different movie. But his character does at least provide the occasional moment of comic relief. The allusions to Vietnam are clunky and heavy handed and the majority of the dialogue is god awful dreck like "Nobody really comes back from war, do they?". I went to see this with my friend Dasha who not unreasonably pointed out that if you're going to see a film like this it needs to be ...

I drove home from Southampton in the early hours of the morning after the State Champs gig. It's been a while since I've gone on a decent length drive and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it. In particular I'm fond of driving through the night when I can see the road stretching out for miles. It's also one of the few times I feel like an adult, which is a notion that I'm still struggling with. Let's not dwell on how old I am. The M3 was closed upon my return, forcing me to detour through some obscure Hampshire villages, including a place called Ropley. Surely there's nowhere called Ropley. Ropley sounds like the response you'd get if you put an American on the spot to name a British place. I'm not even going to get started on Bighton. Anyway, I've done very little today other than attempt to sleep off what remains of my week away of work in my ongoing effort to "Work Through Some Stuff" ™. I'll let you know how that goes.

I drove down to Southampton tonight to watch Albany pop-punkers State Champs kick off their UK tour. The Engine Rooms is a curious venue, quayside, adjacent to a freighter, next door to a car rental. A long, wide room with a low ceiling, it's a bit more "warehouse rave" than "punk rock club". But in the front half of the room, the sound and atmosphere are largely decent. When I get to the venue, Trash Boat As It Is have just taken to the stage. The Brighton band play sparky pop-punk that's reminiscent of Yellowcard in places and they have many admirers in the crowd tonight. Many of said admirers produce a high pitched sound when asked to get involved by the band, a reminder that I'm probably getting too old for this shit. Not a bad set by any means but I do feel they lack a certain quality to make them stand out from the crowd. State Champs meanwhile have that quality in spades, producing huge anthemic tunes that burrow into your head. Tonight, they...

Hidden Figures tells the stories of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three African-American women in employment in NASA, working towards John Glenn's "Friendship 7" mission in 1962 and towards equality during the time of segregation in the United States. It's a greatly likeable film, if one that hits a lot of familiar beats. There's no real getting around the fact that watching women write equations on blackboards is not all that exciting, but these scenes are used sparingly. The film subtly exposes the racial discrimination of the time, although those who would prefer a more thorough examination of the issue are probably better served seeking out something like Selma. Prior to this year, I predominantly knew Janelle Monae as the guest vocalist on Fun's terrific "We Are Young. Between this and Moonlight, she's beginning to develop a reputation as a charismatic screen presen...

I'm writing this on 11th May. The former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan once recalled the occasion in 2003 when he brought then manager Trevor Francis into his office to inform him that he had been relieved of his position. According to Jordan, there was a moment of silence in the room before Francis quietly said "But it's my birthday". I believe Francis was 49 at the time, which makes me feel marginally better about what I'm about to recount. We all have birthdays and I'm not really precious about mine. There are years where I don't really acknowledge it at all. I want to use this blog to talk about the things happening in my life but I don't want to implicate other people. The short version of this story is, I was seeing someone for a little bit, thought it might be going somewhere and had reason to believe that it might be. She then informed me on my birthday that she wasn't interested. This immediately sent me into an intense depres...

I wangled a last minute ticket for Stories For The Starlit Sky, Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborn's tome trilogy at Battersea Arts Centre on Monday night. The shows were originally written for three Regents Park Theatre dates in 2009, revived for a 2015 tour and currently being worked on again ahead of an imminent Melbourne Comedy Festival run. It's basically three individual but linked tales all occuring in the night time. Kitson provides the prose, Osborn the musical interludes. The first, a fun "story within a story" about a group of retired assassins told by a father desperate to get his inquisitive son to go to sleep is probably the most fun and includes the delightful phrase "Hot Chocolate O Clockolate" and repeated musings on a character with deformed hands from "YEARS OF PUNCHING PEOPLE TO DEATH". It's a loose theme that allows Osborn to muse on magical happenings in the early hours including the lovely "Albert Went Out To See Rock ...

It's been ten years since the release of The Simpsons Movie and I've revisited it again this evening. I think people's main issue with the film at the time was that it failed to reach the heights of the show at its peak but that was an unrealistic expectation circa season 17 of the series. A decade on, it stands up as a creditable attempt to transfer one of the world's best loved TV shows to the big screen. It may not necessarily be hugely ambitious but it stays true to the spirit of The Simpsons. It feels fitting that Homer's selfish behaviour threatens the very existence of Springfield, whilst the idea of Bart finding an alternate father figure in Ned Flanders provides interesting territory. But the real star is Marge Simpson, a marginalised figure finally taking her place in the spotlight. It's an outstanding performance from Julie Kavner and her speech to Homer on videotape explaining why she's left him is beautiful, poignant and devastating. The...

A quiet day today. I've got one more six hour shift tomorrow and then six much needed days off. I turn 29 on Tuesday and I can't say I'm looking forward to it. Look forward to a terrible naval gazing blog on that subject in the near future. Regrettably most of my thoughts today are sporting related so I can't share them with you. All I will say is a certain team's tenure in the Premier League is almost certainly coming to an end in the near future, Who play in red and white and are based on Wearside. And another certain team are pissing away so many points that they should be gaining comfortably that it threatens any designs they may have on regaining a place amongst the European elite. I'm a huge fan of Mike Birbiglia and his new stand-up special "Thank God For Jokes" is on Netflix now. I enjoyed it very much but I'm going to watch it again before I compose some thoughts on it.

In 2029, Logan (Hugh Jackman) is scraping a living as a driver for hire in Texas, occasionally driving to Mexico to deliver prescriptions for Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who is in the care of Caliban (Stephen Merchant). The development of mutants has laid dorment for years but a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) emerges, who possesses some very familiar characteristics. Xavier feels duty bound to protect her, whilst Logan begrudgingly agrees. As I said, I'm interested in superhero movies that break away from the usual cliches and this seems like a logical continuation for Marvel into R rated/15 features after the success of Deadpool last year. Logan feels more like a Western, a comparison made more explicit by footage from Shane at one point in the film. Wolverine is the tired gunslinger who is clearly getting too old for this shit and it's a strong performance from Jackman as he enters the psyche of an ageing, mortal Wolverine. It's a typically excellent stuff ...

1. Sell Out 2. Beer 3. Alternative Baby 4. Down In Flames 5. She Has A Girlfriend Now 6. Take On Me 7. Good Thing 8. Ban The Tube Top 9. Kiss Me Deadly 10. Trendy 11. Everything Sucks 12. Dateless Losers

Trash Boat. Trash Boat. Trash Boat. I said in my review of the Wonder Years gig that it appeared to be a contractual obligation that all touring US pop-punk bands in the UK had to be supported by Trash Boat. Their appearance tonight is starting to make me wonder if I'm right. Again, there's no real point in talking about a band I dislike but will observe tonight that one of their songs ripped off the riff from Blink 182's "Dammit". I'm aware it's a derivative genre, but you need to do better than lifting from one of the most recognisable songs in pop-punk. I'll leave the final word to Darren Maskell who described their set tonight as "bollocks".  Huzzah then for Sum 41, forgoing a day off on their "Don't Call It A Sum-Back" tour to play a 50 minute club set in Kingston. Spanning their entire back catalogue, the energy seldom lets up through the early sparkiness of "The Hell Song" to the new material off "13 Voic...