When we interviewed '80s guitar legend Marty McFly two years ago, a technical error meant that the recording of one of the most interesting parts of the interview was lost. Fortunately, we have now been able to recover it.

The subeditor responsible has been fired.

PV: You played support on Wyld Stallyns' epoch-making Most Excellent tour. Why do ( Read more... )

So, Avatar: as you've probably heard by now, it's very, very pretty, has little to recommend it by way of script, plotting or characterisation (to quote chromatic scthewriter: the solution to flat characters is not 3D, it's better writing), and it has a really stupid ending ( Read more... )

Beware of the Train recently caught up with 80s guitar legend Marty McFly, and talked to him about life, love, his upcoming new album, and his mysterious fascination with the Old West.

( Read more... )

I went to see this last Friday with wormwood_pearl and our flatmate Alan. WP had never seen any Indiana Jones films before, Alan had seen Temple of Doom and Last Crusade but (shamefully) not Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as for me... well, I wouldn't describe myself as an expert, but I've seen them all multiple times and knew enough to predict the match cut after ( Read more... )

I've finally finished reading The Turquoise Mountain, Brian Blessed's account of his first attempt on Everest, and of the filming of the documentary Galahad of Everest. It's taken me ages because in the early stages I skipped about a lot, and it's hard to get excited about reading a bit of the book that you've read before - the time I've taken to ( Read more... )

My flatmates and I went to see the new Quentin Tarantino film, Death Proof, last night. In this off-beat thriller, Tarantino turns his trademark blend of hip dialogue and beautifully-shot ultraviolence to the world of pure mathematics. Kurt Russell stars as an embittered former number theorist who plots revenge on the profession that wronged him by ( Read more... )

One of the things my new flatmate (whodo_voodoo, for those of you keeping track) brought with him is a television. I'm a bit dubious, as my ability to work is low enough as it is, but it did mean that I was finally able to catch an episode of Hustle, the "complicated confidence trick" series starring Robert Vaughn. I love crime capers even more than I love ( Read more... )

Hot Fuzz is the best thing the Spaced team have done yet. Far better, IMHBCO, than the frankly disappointing Shaun of the Dead. Go see. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once ( Read more... )

I've just been watching the film of Pride and Prejudice (the one with Kiera thrice-Knightley as Lizzie), and had rather a shock when I realised that Mr Bingley was being played by someone I went to school with! I think he may even have been in my English class when I read the book for GCSE ( Read more... )

Following a conversation with steerpikelet last night, I think it's time I blogged about Annapurna. It's a massif in the Himalayas, the highest peak of which was the first 8000m mountain to be climbed, by a group of French mountaineers led by Maurice Herzog in 1950. It's also the title of Herzog's memoir of the expedition, which I'm currently re-reading. I ( Read more... )