I needed something warm and comforting this week so dived into the back catalogue of my favourite boy band. This is their second album, and you can tell that they were slightly maturing from their first, but still nowhere near old enough, experienced enough, or in control enough of their albums to let their real sound show.

Lady Gaga tries her hand at so many different genres that you never quite know what you’re going to get, and that often means her music is hit and miss. However, I really enjoyed this album. It’s Lady back to her best as a dance music queen, good solid pop from start to finish.

I hadn’t even heard of this film going into it, but we’re always up for a music movie and this looked like it could be good. I’ve not been a big fan of Dakota Johnson in the past (can’t remember why now…) but she was great in this - torn between her loyalty to Grace and her desire to be something more.

Ah, lovely Kelly Clarkson. You can tell that this, being her first album, isn’t exactly her style - mostly because she’s trying out a few styles along the way. There are elements of Christina, and Alicia, and others, but of course you can’t get away from that great Kelly voice.

On the one hand, I think this is a great effort - at this point in their careers, The 1975 can’t just put out a middle of the road album, they need to be pushing the envelope. I love that it starts with a manifesto from Greta and there are some highlights along the way. On the other hand, I can’t say that this is anything but a sprawling mess.

I’ve seen the film and must have picked up this book at a similar time but it’s taken my a while to get round to reading it. It’s super short, though, so I whipped through it very quickly. Alan Bennett has hand-picked some of the diary entries he wrote about the lady that came to live on his driveway in a van - how that happened, how they managed to co-exist together, and her sad death at the end, plus the subsequent things he learned.

I mean, if you’re going to go Enid Blyton, you’ve got to go all the way back to the start of the five, right? Four kids and a dog go gallivanting around, causing and finding mischief. Some of it is unbelievable in this day and age, I mean for a start that kids would want to spend so much time outdoors but then also that parents/guardians would be happy about their charges heading off to a notoriously rocky island when there’s a storm brewing.

Interesting story this one, in which our protagonist is at rock bottom after moving to Australia and things not working out. A series of coincidences see her end up staying in the spare room of her ex-boyfriend’s apartment, the one he now shares with his fiancée. And that’s the thing, the coincidences here were just a bit much for me. That they found each other to start with. That the ex-boss and potential new boss happened to be sisters. That there was a job at an art gallery going for an artist. That Alice found her on the beach. I don’t know.

This is an odd film. It has that classic older movie problem of being far too slow to get going. Seriously, I don’t mind a bit of build up but it’s 45 minutes before they even decide to do the god-damn heist. And it’s not even that the length of time is a problem in itself, it’s that you don’t learn anything about any of the characters in that time. There’s such a lot of them, that there’s barely time to get to know any, and in the end the only ones you could care about were Big Joe and Oddball.

The ongoing lockdown continues to evolve and I have found it fascinating to see how the creative types have been trying to keep themselves entertained. Plenty are trying to keep doing what they usually do just in a different way. Some are providing distraction for others, and there’s another subset who are using their time to try and impart wisdom to others. I missed this at the time, but Radio 1 have been getting artists to give music lessons, sharing an insight into how to play one of their songs. A few people have participated so far - Niall Horan gives a good go on the guitar, Sigrid gets to grips with Strangers on the piano, but my personal favourite is Danielle Haim showing us a deceptively simple riff for The Steps.

I’ve read this before in a variety of formats but realised I hadn’t reviewed it, so I quickly dug out the audiobook and whipped through it again. I love these Roald Dahl short stories – they’re all so clever, although they don’t all do it for me.

So much better than that Full Throttle sequel! I really loved this. Trust in Elizabeth Banks for a girl power movie that isn’t too in-your-face, it’s just people being awesome. It’s a movie in which Patrick Stewart is the bad guy but was still brilliant!

Here’s a weird thing. In my head, I feel like I’ve long since fallen out of love with Beyoncé whilst still acknowledging that she is an incredible woman. The music of recent times hasn’t been to my taste and her other choices are her own to make, obviously.

Dance music isn’t one of my favourite genres but Moby is a big deal in that area and it seemed worth giving this a listen, given that new albums are quite thin on the ground at the moment. I quite liked it, it felt like the kind of album that you should sit back and properly listen to rather than as background music.

It’s so good. Brutal, and terrifying, hitting harder than the film does and delving deeper into the chaos theory that Malcolm expands on to the point where you are sort of left wondering if you have any control over anything.

Not sure about this one. It had to skip theatres and so Netflix snatched it up, we were keen to see it as part of the whole ’early release’ thing. On the surface, it’s a good enough movie, but I really think it only stands up because of the fantastic chemistry between the two leads, and their great banter.

I’ve had an Apple Watch Pride band before, but ended up not wearing it that much because it was one of the fabric ones and I’m much more comfortable in the Sport bands. So, the new 2020 Pride bands solved that problem with two fresh and fabulous sport bands in the rainbow colours. And the one I’ve opted for, it’s really gorgeous. Show your true stripes with pride!

For some reason, I thought I’d already this but it became clear quite quickly that I hadn’t. I was aware that the film (a classic and much loved by me) took quite a different path to the book, but I didn’t realise quite how out there the book was! It starts off pretty similar, football at school, the Vietnam war, etc. But then it drifts off to quite a different destination.

When I was checking my book review list for Roald Dahl works, I realised I’m a bit short on the complete package. I’ve read a lot of them, obviously, but not documented it. So I checked what was in my digital library and stumbled across this one. James was never one of my favourite stories, I think perhaps the giant insects weren’t a great incentive to read it over and over again.

This was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick and I thought it was going to be either deep drama or fluffy rom com but it somehow was a bit of both. Trying to span both genres meant it didn’t quite hit the spot for me, and the pacing felt a little off.

I’ve seen a couple more Mastermind editions that have caught my attention but this one came via a slightly different route. I wasn’t expecting to see a James Bond quiz on the BBC Sport site but there it was. Darren Bent, footballer, chose the super spy as his specialist subject but didn’t do as well as he might have hoped. The poor guy only managed to get one of his questions right, but having seen them, I’m not sure I would have done much better. The BBC have put an interactive quiz version of the questions up and have made it multiple choice - that meant I could actually answer quite a few - but faced with just the questions, like below, I would have done very poorly.

As I recently listened to my first Beatles album of this adventure, it seemed only fair to give their bitter rivals a go as well. I had somehow thought The Rolling Stones were a bit more rocky than this, but they’re only just straddling the rock/pop border.

I was looking forward to this, as I love the creativity of Hayley and previously Paramore. It was clearly a well thought out project with the three sections of five songs each coming together to make a full body of work. And you can feel the heart and soul that’s gone into it as well.

The first third of this movie was kinda dull, you knew the beats they were hitting, it was obvious what was going to happen, and you were just waiting for the inevitable. Once Will Smith turned into a bird, the comedy picked up a little bit, although it still felt quite slow going.

Listened to Michael narrating his journey around the world in audiobook form and it was lovely. Such a warm guide, gently travelling across the globe by boat and train, avoiding planes and desperately trying to keep ahead of the schedule. You can easily see Michael loves the people that he meets – spending so much time in close confines with people on boats, you’ve got to be open-minded and gracious and the hero that Palin is.

I’ve talked before about loving the Fleabag TV show, I came to it late and binge-watched both series in as small amount as time as possible. I hadn’t seen the original stage play, obviously, and missed out on the brief return to the stage that the lovely Phoebe Waller-Bridge completed earlier in the year. (Was it this year? I’ve lost all sense of time.) Anyway, that meant I was first in line to rent the play when it became available on Amazon Prime. National Theatre have been doing incredible work in keeping us all entertained during lockdown, and keeping theatre in the heart and minds of everyone. Their weekly theatre releases are something I’m definitely planning on talking about separately, but their video of Fleabag took a slightly different route.

This was an Oprah’s Book Club pick that I know I wouldn’t have found if she hadn’t recommended it. And it’s probably the first since I started playing along that I didn’t really appreciate. Charting the lives of the large Galvin family – mom, dad, and twelve children, six of whom developed schizophrenia – alongside how they helped in the fight to understand this challenging mental disorder.

It’s felt like a really long time since there was a new Star Wars thing coming out that people were really excited about and then when it came out, they actually liked it. Usually all you seem to get is moans from the hardcore fanbase about how it doesn’t work or doesn’t fit the canon. I feel like that’s not the case with The Mandolorian, and all I have heard about it is good. I can totally see why. I was gutted we had to wait such a long time to be able to watch this in the UK, particularly as it was impossible to avoid the Baby Yoda memes and I could only see from a distance the cuteness that was in store for us.

Second book in the Dirk Pitt series, I wasn’t too happy with Pitt’s antics on the beach but otherwise it was a great action thriller – kicking off with our protagonists taking on an old war plane and ending up with some submarine adventures too. The twists and turns along the way were great, double crossing and trying to figure out exactly what everyone’s dastardly plans are.

This movie could have been brilliant but in the end it was just okay. The premise is great, an interesting concept, but it’s a shame that you only really get to delve into two of the potential possibilities when there are at least eight good stories there to tell.

I’m officially obsessed with Mischief Theatre and their unique brand of comedy that is essentially messing things up on purpose. I’ve talked about them a couple of times before, but the joy of their Goes Wrong shows is how meticulously crafted it is to make it look so bad. The TV series that aired earlier in the year was a real highlight over Christmas and January, every episode had me in stitches. So I was happy to see the Goes Wrong Along rewatch that’s been happening over the past few weeks with everyone involved sharing their insights. It wasn’t just people tweeting about the show while they’re watching, but the cast actually filmed themselves sharing behind the scenes snippets and insider information.

This is an album that has associations for me so it’s taken quite a while to pluck up the courage to get through it. But it’s such a good one, it was worth it. I really love it, the more wistful, melancholy and inventive side of Coldplay, back when they were just starting out.

I thought this album might be a bit more old-school country but it wasn’t, it was pretty standard modern country stuff. That’s the problem with it, though, it was just pretty standard. I really enjoyed it whilst I was listening to it, bopped along to the tracks, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it now, despite having listened twice.

Loved this film! Was expecting it to be either pretty lame or a bit of an oddball one like Playing With Fire, but it wasn’t. It was a sensible story, very funny, and not predictable - I mean, obviously you knew where it was going with the big showdown, but they threw in a couple of twists and things didn’t go how you always thought they would.

I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus carries this film incredibly well, she’s got exactly the right mix of frustration, sadness, desperation, but loyalty and her facial expressions are on point. Will Ferrell seems completely out of place in this movie, totally mis-cast. The dark comedy doesn’t really come out of him well in this, and he plays a very wooden character so that it’s hard to see the motivation and thus hard for JLD to have anything to bounce off of.

The general consensus for this film is that it’s fine, a perfectly good movie, but not anywhere near Pixar at their best. And I agree with that to a degree. I thought both Chris Pratt and Tom Holland did a great job with lending their voices to this and had good chemistry as brothers trying to work out their relationship.

What a terrible film this is. I was in two minds going into it, really, but only because I thought it would be a bit too horror and not enough sci-fi. How wrong can one be? It wasn’t horror at all, it was just pointless.

This film is slow, and thoughtful, and introspective and really, on the face of it, nothing much happens. So I can totally see that this’ll be a film people love or hate. I thought it was brilliant. Firstly, I was in exactly the right mood for this. Tired after an exhausting week, just watching someone go about their day was soothing.

What’s not to like about this? First it has the absolute powerhouse that is Total Eclipse of the Heart on there, but second, the other songs stand up just as well. It’s that pop/rock/opera style that Meatloaf does so well too, and I really loved it.

Loved this. I was one of many who knew Lennon from her sister-duo on Nashville, and was intrigued to see her branch out into pop music on her own. But she’s not just gone straight up pop, this is individual, smooth and sophisticated music that showcases her talents in songwriting and vocals alike.

I wasn’t expecting to like this. In my head, I feel like I’ve had mixed responses to Guy Ritchie’s gangster-style work and I wasn’t sure this was going to be any good. I was so wrong. I loved it! Hugh Grant is incredible in this, slimy and sneaky, but bouncing so well off Charlie Hunnam’s implacable, quiet and stern character.

The biggest problem with this movie is with the name, it leads you into thinking you’re probably going to be watching a nice, gentle music movie but that’s not what this is. Once you get your head around it though, things get a lot better.

I used to like Olly Murs more than I do now - I think he’s gone a bit middle of the road. But this album features one of his best songs, with Demi Lovato. Up is just such a tune, it stands out as the real hit of this album.

I always think I like the idea of a Miranda album more than the actual experience of listening, as they often veer a bit too far to old-style country for my tastes, and can sometimes be a bit, dare I say it, whiny. However, this one broke the mould! I really liked it.

I took quite a long time to come round to this movie, and definitely considered stopping it at the twenty minute rule. But I’m glad I didn’t because after the first half hour or so, I started warming to it, and by the end I was completely on board.

The concept of this was more satisfying than the book itself – what would the world be like if it stopped turning and the sun was stationary over the same land for eternity? Great premise. And the descriptions of the scenery, the situations, the politics, all good.

I didn’t know about this Miss World demonstration or the events surrounding it so it was interesting to see the drama that unfolded before and after the protest. The film does a good job of displaying the hopes and dreams of everyone involved and the acting cast do a stellar job with a delicate story.

This was a good one, I’ve never heard of it before but I enjoyed it. It probably hasn’t aged all that well but not as badly as other movies we’ve attempted from this era. The swinging around from a cigarette at the end wasn’t all that believable but it worked.

So, yea, I’ve been doing this album thing for five years now and I’ve only just got around to listening to a Beatles record. If I’m honest, I’ve been avoiding them because the Beatles aren’t my favourite. They’ve got a lot of good, classic songs, obviously, and we know they’re super important to the music world, but mostly, they’re just not my thing.

I thought I was going to love this album, because I’ve heard people talking about how strong the 80s influence is, and Blinding Lights is one of my favourite songs of late. I don’t think it lived quite up to my expectations but it is a solid album.