So I accidentally left it too long to give you my immediate reaction review of the third Hobbit film, Battle of the Five Armies. Maybe I'll do a proper review once I've seen it again (definitely after Christmas). But here are a few brief medium-length thoughts for now.

( Spoilers (for the book too) )

Went to see Guardians of the Galaxy yesterday - anniversary trip for me and James, who is always trying to get me to watch superhero movies ;) Unexpectedly, this one turned out to be brilliant!

( Not very spoilery comments below )

I've seen The Hobbit (by which I mean part 1, An Unexpected Journey) twice now, so time for a review.

( Cut for spoilers - also watch out for spoilers for the rest of the book, especially in comments )

( Cut for spoilers )

I haven't quite managed any Dr Who reviewing before now. I should though, so...

( Cut for spoilers )

100 Historical Things, Number 20

"The past is a foreign country."

That's a famous first line, incidentally - the opening sentence of Hartley's The Go-Between. But I think it's also a nice quote, and at some point in the future I think I might make a post about history as a foreign country. But anyway, for now I thought it made a nice opening for ( Read more... )

100 Historical Things, Number 13

denorios very kindly allowed me to link to her review of the book 1493 by Charles C. Mann. You can read it hereI don't get through many books that aren't related to my research these days (and I'm not so keen to link to my published book reviews in unlocked posts), so I thought it would be nice to link to reviews of ( Read more... )

100 Historical Things, Number 11In an unprecedented posting of two of these posts in one day, I just wanted to record a few thoughts about something I have been watching, since I finished watching it yesterday and don't want to forget them ( Read more... )

Watched the first episode of Titanic last night. Wanted to like it. Failed. Titanic films/series can only work by making the characters interesting and mostly sympathetic, maybe with the odd baddie figure - because it's not like we don't know what happens, is it? (I read an article recently that started with "Titanic. The ship that keeps sinking ( Read more... )

( Spoilers )