Often, if I have a spare minute to fill and I’m near an Apple TV, I’ll pop up YouTube and have a riffle through what the US chat shows have been up to. I’ve often posted here about Jimmy Fallon and James Cordon and the silly antics they get up to, but I’ve got a new go-to that I tend to check first - Kelly Clarkson. If you’d have asked me three years ago who could take up a new chat show and make it not only work but be amazing, I don’t know that Kelly would have been my first pick but she’s brilliant.

The zero-waste challenge is still ongoing in my household, or maybe I should call it the reduce-waste-as-much-as-possible-because-zero-is-unrealistic challenge. When I use things and throw things away, I try to take a minute to think about if there’s a better alternative, and quite often find that there is, even if it’s not a perfect swap. That’s good news and it’s always a nice feeling when you embed something more virtuous into your life.

It’s important to set the scene for this: we bought this (probably in a sale) a while back and have talked about watching it for quite a long time. Both of us can remember having seen it when we were younger and having really liked it… as kids. But would it hold up on a rewatch? We were urged into watching it now because it’s the perfect Sunday night movie and ahead of the upcoming TV show on Disney+. I was worried though. It’s magical, it’s people going on a journey, would it have the same disappointing effect that the hobbits had?

I’ve seen this before but not for a while, and having had a run of very bad films, was keen for a certified winner. This is that film. It’s emotional and moving and sad, enraging and enlightening in equal measure. Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington are two powerhouses by themselves, so put them together and it’s an incredible on-screen partnership.

The Rasmus popped up twice in my radar in the same week which was a clear sign that I had to listen to one of their albums. Firstly, in the discussion of the retirement of ye olde iPods, I was reminsicing about some of the early songs I had listened to religiously on that amazing device. Then, of course, they popped up on Eurovision this year, with a really good rock song that didn’t perform that well overall. Nevertheless, I had to dig this album out and suddenly remembered how much I loved it! In the Shadows and Guilty are SO good, and the rest really stands up as some fab early 00s rock. More, please.

I can’t believe this album. At first, I was enjoying it well enough - it’s that same old Jason Aldean vibe of getting over a heartbreak with as much alcohol as possible. Whiskey Me Away is quite a clever title, you know? But then, we get to track six… God Made Airplanes. OH REALLY? Apparently, God made airplanes, runways, and half price tickets. WTF? What’s so frustrating about this song is that it’s a great premise, got to get on a plane because it’s the only form of transport that won’t turn back, but if he just changed it to ‘that’s why I’m on an airplane’ rather than the actual lyrics, it would still scan and he wouldn’t have written off over 100 years of engineering. I couldn’t concentrate on the rest of the album for the rage.

This is such a fascinating topic, it’s a shame it’s done so poorly in this movie. The pacing is really off - the first thirty minutes are bafflingly full of information and then the next ninety are so drawn out it’s eye-rollingly boring. The weird moments that poke fun at Ian Fleming seem really out of place, whoever wrote this seemed to have a real vendetta against the many writers that emerged from the military in the war. It’s a good cast but the love triangle at the middle of it had very little going for it - there wasn’t a lot of chemistry. It was just dull and best avoided.

Nope, nope, nope. Just couldn’t continue with this one. It was poorly made, with all those cheesy one-liners and rubbish intense stares, and all based around the concept that the moon isn’t natural at all but some kind of hollow AI thing. It’s a movie that just feeds love to the conspiracy theorists and this is such a stupid one to go with. Bleurgh. Roland, mate, what’s going on?

I’ve not set any hard and fast rules about how much to update my blog during a particular 30 day challenge because they’re all so different, and have different outputs. I only wrote an intro and an outtro to the Core challenge because what else is there to say? I didn’t gain a six pack so let’s move on. Meanwhile, I wrote three times about the Marvel Comic book challenge because there were things I needed to get off my not-very-defined chest.

What the hell is this movie? It’s a 1 out of 5, it’s terrible. And yet it’s also somehow unmissable? It’s made up of startling moments and the very occasional genius moment, but they are buried in a really bad movie with terrible lighting and colours and a pretty poor message of older vs younger women. The faces that kept popping up were an endless surprise - Olivia Colman just loitering in the background, Graham Norton as a studio dresser, Mackenzie Crook facing Michelle Pfeiffer’s unexpected wrath, and so many more. At heart, I liked the chemistry between Pfeiffer and Rudd, that bounced off the screen, and there just aren’t enough words to describe how talented Saoirse is even at this young age. Isn’t It Moronic is an anthem and should have been the words. Genuinely awful film. But also… you have to watch it.