Earlier today Hugh Laurie broadcast a live performance of several tracks from his first musical project. He's hardly the first actor to make the leap to music, and it was obvious from the diverse range of musical parodies he performed in A Bit Of Fry & Laurie that he's pretty damn talented. And while Too Long Johnny may be a parody, strip away the ( Read more... )

Amazon's product review feature has occasionally become a venue for creative writing, wherein people make no attempt to seriously review a product and write purely for the entertainment value. A certain product catches someone's imagination and suddenly it becomes a gathering point. It happened with the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt, the humble Bic ( Read more... )

On thursday and friday I caught a train into London to spend two very pleasant evenings with saintmaryuk and doctorstewie. Mary invited me on the thursday, but I had a lads' night out planned so she suggested friday. Then my thursday plan fell through at the last minute so I went to London both nights instead ( Read more... )

( In which I meet shimgray, and also Dar Williams )

Despite Alan Moore's assertion that it was unfilmable, Zack Snyder has proven that it is indeed possible to make a film of Watchmen. Unfortunately I left the cinema with the feeling that I'd seen about half of it ( Read more... )

Last night I saw It Bites.
( If you're not a fan, this will probably mean very little to you. )

The first time I saw the Canadian trio they'd been around for 14 years, hugely successful despite being relentlessly unfashionable and having grazed the singles charts only twice in all that time which, back then, seemed like a prodigious feat of endurance. That was almost 20 years ago ( Read more... )

( Some talk about various stories of the great detective, none of them written by Conan Doyle )

Here, cut for length, are a few things I've seen or read in the last couple of weeks.

( Spamalot )

I've been to the Reading Uni Film Theatre a few times to date. But this year I've actually bought a membership. If I see six films during this year it will have paid for itself, and there're at least three in the spring season alone. Next week I will finally get to see the much talked-about Pan's Labyrinth. But in the meantime here's what I've seen ( Read more... )