There’s not too much to really say about this movie, except I just really enjoyed it. Like the previous one, where I could have watched an entire movie of Denzel just being a taxi driver, here I could have enjoyed a full couple of hours watching our hero pottering around Italy and drinking tea. Why is he so watchable?? But there’s a bigger story at work obviously, some hardcore action sequences and gross moments. I like that it’s relatively short, not drawn out, and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. Top stuff.

I haven’t made a podcast in a good few years now but one part of the process I had a love/hate relationship with has been made so much easier by a new Apple Podcasts feature - auto-generated transcripts. I loved creating the transcripts in collaboration with our incredible community because it was an accessibility feature, it meant we could refer back to the text rather than audio to settle future arguments, and it’s always good to see just how much we prattled on in a physical word count.

Madonna really coming into her own here, as she finds her voice and starts to use it. There’s still an element of early pop but the standout songs are great, kicking off with a good few iconic numbers. It doesn’t outstay it’s welcome either, turn on, listen to some great bopping pop and then get out again.

This is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a Green Day album. The sound is there, that intense rock sound with Billie Joe Armstrong’s iconic vocals, and it’s applied to songs that are railing against the system, hating and loving on the world in equal measure, with an occasional downbeat moment to soothe the soul. Good but not moving the dial for them, I’m sure.

This is such an interesting premise of a book, but I’m not sure it totally landed as intended. I love that we dive straight into the action, things have gone wrong and there are dire consequences giving us a countdown clock of pressure. There are dips back and forward in time and those bits feel drawn out when we want to know what’s happening to the pair now… and then the ending just felt unsatisfactory to me. A good read overall but an odd one.

This took a little while to get going, all the action is in the second half so the pacing felt a bit off. It’s very on-the-nose, not at all subtle in raising questions, showing off the perils of patriotism, and admitting there are no good answers to the horrors of war.

A year ago, I reluctantly watched the first series of Traitors in the UK and was instantly hooked, binge-watching the whole thing in a very short space of time. I, like many others, eagerly awaited the second series which came to a dramatic conclusion yesterday, one finalist walking away with just shy of £100,000.

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as previous ones, although the opening scenes about Hornblower having mixed feelings about a luxurious bath was fun. Obviously more and more as Horatio grows and climbs the career ladder, he’s less hands on, and that’s so clear in this book as he has to send others off to the action and just wait for the results. An interesting personal problem, but not necessarily a fascinating read! But we end on another cliffhanger as Hornblower is clearly very unwell!

The design, horrifying yellow aside, is good. It has that hand drawn feeling and is very intuitive to play. There’s a story to work through and plenty of levels to enjoy as you go on the journey, working your way through an illustrated map starting on the beach. If I’m being brutally honest, though, I found the gameplay quite frustrating. There’s always an element of luck when you kick off a minesweeper game, but then I couldn’t quite get my head around the next steps and it really descended into just jabbing at the screen and hoping for the best.

I’ve never actually watched a Stacey Dooley documentary but often see them popping up on iPlayer, and they seem to be pretty popular. I think if you had seen them all, the book might not be that interesting as it just recaps different topics and talks about the experience of making them. But as I haven’t, it was interesting and harrowing to read about these women going through such awful things and still being resilient and brave to continue fighting on.

It’s been quite chilly in the UK recently, so it was a good time to finish off my latest scarf. This Kallik pattern was such a good knit, super simple but requiring an element of concentration to make sure the pattern didn’t go awry. It’s just four stitches knit, four stitches purl but shifting each row to make the diagonal pattern. At first, I had to diligently read the pattern and count the rows to make sure I was doing it right, but then discovered I was able to read the knitting as it grew to know what I needed to do next. That was a good feeling.

I’ve had a vague draft for a blog post about the warm hug of familiar media for a while now, but as ever Kottke has written about it better than I ever could. In this post, the question is posed: What’s Your Go-To Comfort Media?

Tennis has rolled into a new year and already we are into the first Grand Slam, with the Australian Open under way and as fascinating as ever. As a UK viewer, the last couple of weeks have been pretty disappointing, as Amazon dropped their coverage of the sport via their Prime streaming service and Sky have picked it up instead.

I do think there’s something unique and interesting about White Stripes, they’re ability to make good rock songs with just two instruments is to be commended. But in the end, this album just didn’t do it for me, and I’m not sure that slightly odd White Stripes sound doesn’t sustain for a full record.

On the first listen through this album, the first couple of songs really stood out and I felt like the rest was forgettable. The opening track is just a really good tune, and then the second track with the countup/down of global population is completely haunting and has stuck with me. I thought the rest could be take or leave, but actually on the second listen through it was a bit better, perhaps something of a grower.

The penultimate book in the Camel Club series and I had mixed feelings about this one. It’s well written in that iconic Baldacci pageturner style, but only half of it felt like an actual thriller. The other half was people rehashing what happened in the last book and trying to follow a trail, or follow someone who was following a trail. Ultimately as the threads started to come together it did get interesting, and after the seemingly happy ending, I’m wondering what on earth can go wrong in the next and final book!

This film isn’t particularly smart or clever and it’s derivative of many other movies but it is a fun, easy-going experience with Marky Mark being his effortless charming self. The whole thing feels like a million other movies, and then there are specific moments (fighting with a baby is so Jason Statham, you know?) but if you just switch off your brain and go with it, it’s an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

This was much better than I was expecting. It being the first part of a two part story is always tricky, cliffhanger films are no good. Actually it managed that pretty well, there’s more story to tell but the film itself resolved nicely. Which is a good thing because, as it turns out, there may not be a part two anyway!

I’m still working my way through these audiobooks, read by various great names who have been in or are associated with the TV show. This one was read by Adjoa Andoh who did a really great job with the voices and I think inhabited the character of Martha really well. But I didn’t rate the story so much, it felt a bit sprawling, a bit confusing and I found it a bit hard to follow. May just have been me but there are others that are better.

I rate Ben Elton’s irreverant take on modern culture, having been completely obsessed with the musical We Will Rock You as written by him. This book feels like a continuation of some of the themes contained within the Queen musical, and definitely a strong take on things like reality TV and a culture where people think they are always in the right no matter what. I wasn’t sure I was going to get through the whole book but it somehow captured me and I ended up really enjoying it.

I don’t have a good track record with Godzilla movies, I always go into them thinking they’re going to be great and then they disappoint. My shortened review of one of them tells you everything you need to know: So I wasn’t that bothered about the new TV series streaming on Apple TV+ that was a kind of sequel-prequel situation between movies, I’d been burned before. The only interesting thing about it was the clever casting of both Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell as different ages of the same character. How to get a character look the same across the years? Keep it in the family!

A new year and new films. My count of films watched last year was a little low, partly due to less time but also because the time I did have I used to watch so much amazing TV. How can films compete with such great short-form content? Well, we’ll have to see how this year goes and the next batch might help!

You have to love S&G, they’re so iconic. The thing about folk music is that if it’s not done well, it can be so drawn out, noodly and boring. But this album is basically perfect - every song is a good one, even the instrumental one in the middle. The album is bookended by the stand out singles, and leaving me on I Am a Rock meant it was definitely stuck in my head for a while.

I listened to the first Pink Friday album last week in preparation for this one, and actually I think the first one was better. I’m not really musically smart enough to know why this is a sequel but it was good - lots of great guests, and good beats. If there’s one thing Nicki Minaj does well it’s a sample, some really great tunes and used well here. So a good listen but ultimately preferred the original.

Finally up to date with these Inspector Frost prequels, I don’t know if there will be any more books, I guess we’re butting up against the existing stories now. This was a good read, not quite as enjoyable as the last one but a good contender. The stories wound in and out of each other and it was fun to try and follow - I did find the characters a bit confusing and sometimes indistinguishable which didn’t help - but as always the personal elements of the story drove it all along to a satisfying conclusion.

I’ve enjoyed Celia Imrie’s books before, the series following some ex-pats in the south of France is great. This one follows a different set of characters but still in that fish-out-of-water setting. This time two independent woman end up with their lives intwined… one an actress struggling to find work and ending up on a cruise ship, the other a woman between houses that ends up on the same ship to pass the time. Beneath it all is some awful criminal activity and everything eventually becomes clear. I enjoyed it, it got a bit confusing and chaotic towards the end, the pacing was a bit slow to start and hurried to finish, but overall a good read.

This year my list of new year goals was very short and revolved quite a lot around the Playstation, but actually I have been thinking about areas I can reset and get organised, gaining a little bit of control. The first one is subscriptions. I don’t know about you, but I find that subscriptions to various apps, streaming services, and even physical things, can get lost in the wilderness and build up until you’re more out of pocket than you might have thought.

I want to listen to the new Nicki Minaj album which is reportedly a sequel to the original Pink Friday, so I had to get that one under my belt first. I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to, what an incredible group of featured and guest artists for a debut album! Not all of it worked for me, the Eminem track was a bit meh, but the good bits were really great so overall a hit.

Rick Astley is the man of the moment having hosted the BBC’s new year celebrations, and his album from earlier in the year seems to have gone down well. Who would have thought it? With the first week of a new year usually quite slow on new releases, I figured it was a good time to check out that album and I’m glad I did. It’s just some really good, harmless, grown up pop, with good rhythms and fun lyrics. If I had one complaint, it’s that some of the songs sound like others… not in a rip-off way, but just in a ‘oop, bit of George Ezra there’ kind of way.

We might be joining in the tradition of watching stand up comedy in bleak January here, with another live special, this time from Kevin Bridges. I’ve not seen a lot of his comedy before, other than the iconic accent recognition piece but always willing to give it a go. Overall, I enjoyed it, but the comedy fell into three buckets for me - one where I didn’t know what he was talking about, referencing people or events I don’t know. The second was just not really funny to me, Covid jokes are still a bit soon, not too sure on the Hitler bit. But the third was where he absolutely nailed it and the bit about your brain waking up as you go to bed spoke to me on so many levels. Mixed results but an enjoyable watch nevertheless.

If I didn’t know that there were still a couple more books in this series, I would think this was the end of a superb political thriller series. This time, all the strands of things that have happened and been revealed over the past couple of books are all coming together for a big showdown. I thought the elements of Harry Finn’s job infilitrating high security places to show weaknesses was fascinating, would like more on that! But ultimately it was the emotion of the piece, rights and wrongs, loyalty and shame, and a lot of grief. Really well done.

I’ve done it, I’ve decided, phew. It’s taken my a week or two longer than it usually does to decide my top five albums of the year just gone but finally I’m ready to put pen to paper, or pixel to screen, and talk about my finalists. There were only eight albums in the shortlist anyway, which somehow made it harder. I narrowed it down to six but then deciding who to drop and what the order should be… oof! But here goes nothing!

I always think, when I start a new Paddington book, that there can’t be that many more ridiculous situations the bear can get himself into. But I’m always wrong. This time there was a spot of plumbing, a shift at a factory, spring cleaning and, my particular favourite, the mystery tour around the waxworks factory. I also liked the cricket story as it turns out Paddington is actually really good at something - hooray! Cute bear.

My traditional new year post comes with a wrap up of the year just gone and a look ahead to my aims and goals for the next twelve months. The year just gone can be summed up quite simply as chaos - there was so much going on in both work and life that I was supremely grateful to have time off over Christmas just to rest and recuperate. And mostly play Spider-Man 2.

It’s been another year full of reading and it’s been wonderful, the only downside being I don’t seem to be making as much progress on my bookshelf backlog as I would have liked. But nevertheless, each year I like to pick out ten of my favourite reads from the year. These are the ones I have hand picked, listed in the order that I read them, as I refuse to have to do anymore than narrow it down to ten!

The graphics are clear and the visuals pretty cute, but the gameplay is surprisingly slow. On the one hand that’s better than some simulation and strategy games where there is so much complexity straight away that you just give up, but on the other hand, it really felt like a slog to get through the tutorial. And maybe I was being an idiot but the tutorial showed you dig and find oil straight away, once gameplay started, you didn’t and it took me ages to figure out you just have to keep digging.

I continue to be obsessed with Dawn French and after reading the accompanying book to this live one-woman stage show from the comedian, I was super glad to see it appear for free on BBC iPlayer. After finishing up with festive content for the year, it’s always good to laugh it all away into the next year and this show is the best way to do it. Pulling no punches and perfectly happy to air embarrassing moments from the past and probably nearer the present than she’d like, I really love a good story told well with a hilarious ending, and that covers pretty much all this show. Top notch.

You get mixed results with these Inspector Frost prequels, but I really enjoyed this one. I feel like the character is leaning more towards the one in the TV show, portrayed by David Jason, so it’s a bit of a drift from the character in the original books, but it’s a slightly more likeable version so happy to go with it. A good mystery, moving story, and plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing and gasping.

I listened to the audiobook of this, so checked in for an hour or so each day over Christmas. It was a nice story, actually, a slight twist on the usual tale of someone taking a fake partner home for Christmas to please the family - this time the fake girlfriend falls for the sister and twists and turns ensue. I liked that everyone was so respectful of everyone else’s feelings and giving them space to work through it all, it was just a nice and calm tale, told well.

I hadn’t initially planned for this to be a Film Watch viewing, as I thought it was TV rather than movie. But my new metric is whether it appears on Letterboxd, and it does, so what the hey, it counts. It was a bit short and kept going to ad break cards (although thankfully no actual ads) but definitely a film. Hmm. The actual story though was good - love the accents, love the setting, nice family in difficult circumstances, would have liked it to be a bit more heisty than just walking through a forest, but entertaining and a good cast.

I was quite enjoying the banter of this, just a grumpy guy and a Santa character chatting away, but there was a whole sub-plot that came out of nowhere and didn’t make sense. Did I black out at some point? Because there was a lot of talk about an iPad and then suddenly Santa had the iPad and he was being chased but it wasn’t at all clear why or what had happened. Presumably it was going to be explained later at some point but I just couldn’t be bothered with it.

This was an okay movie, derivative of all the other body switch movies but at least leaning into that and referencing them all - including the one Jennifer Garner herself has been in! It was more confusing to try and keep track of who was doing what and what their goals were because there were three switches, rather than just one. Although, still not sure how the baby and the dog switched because there’s no way either of them were wishing for that to happen at the exact right moment.

Turns out, Melissa Joan Hart has made something of a career of cheesy Christmas movies recently, so after Holiday in Handcuffs, it was only fair to check out another one. I wanted to like this because, you know, MJH and baking, what more do you need? Actually, it was no good, and a bit of a slog so that I had to give up. The Nutcracker coming to life is one thing, but then he had no real personality or charisma so I just wanted him to go back to being a toy.

What a terrible film this is. Mr C was sure this was a Christmas film, and I guess it is as it’s based around the holidays but that’s about as far as it goes. I’m never sure about a movie that leans into the was-fat-but-now-thin-so-everything-will-be-better trope and on top of that, all the characters in this are completely awful before and after. And I’m not even sure what the point of it was?

I was aware that this film has very poor reviews but I’ve read the book and it has a great cast, so why not give it a go? Turns out, I loved it! I can see why people don’t necessarily like it as it’s a bit grinch trying to skip Christmas, but I thought it was funny, and in the end quite moving. The neighbours were a nightmare and I would definitely have moved long before it got to this point, but hey, all’s well that ends well.

Despite a couple of stinkers so far this year, I’m still on a mission to watch more of these cheesy romance movies - not everything has to be a massive blockbuster, right? I jumped at this one because of Teri Hatcher and it was actually surprisingly good. The situation contrived and the love story a bit forced, but it had some good themes of learning about yourself and starting over, and not being judgemental about other people. I liked it!

I didn’t think this was going to be a particularly good movie, the title being a pretty bad start to things. But I was curious and gave it a go. It was terrible. Really bad and obvious sets, some dodgy accent work, terrible dialogue and implausible storylines. I suspect there was going to be some falling in love at some point, but there was no chemistry between any of the characters, either the sisters, the ones who were getting married, or the ones who were presumably going to end up together. Best avoided.

This was an okay movie, Melissa McCarthy pretty much holding the whole thing but the relationship between her and Paapa’s character was good. They tried so hard to cover all the potential plot holes with the wishes and stuff but then I think they missed a pretty important one.

It seems like I’ve been saying this a lot recently - this thing from the past is coming back or being rebooted in some way, and it sounds like a really bad idea. And, just as with most of the other things, it’s actually turned out so much better than I was expecting.

This was a really good, traditional festive rom-com style book, with our hero coming home in something of a disgrace and revitalising the area and solving lots of people’s problems. It doesn’t all go smoothly though, and I liked the will-they-won’t-they of the relationship between two people that clearly love each other, and the ever-growing mystery around her father and suspect council goings on. A really good read, and I hadn’t realised that Wynbridge was a series so there are more books to get stuck into.