Har Forssell fortfarande inte avsatts?

I don’t know how a society comes back from where the US is now. I wish I had a sense of optimism or constructive ideas, but I honestly just feel profound sadness tempered with impotent rage - and an awareness that the US is often the accelerated face of a trend that threatens Europe too.

I have stuck with Audible, against my better judgement, when I've divested myself of everything else Amazon since I have so many books already purchased there. If they don't stop trying to push the Potter garbage on me, though, they will join the rest of their corporate compatriots in the bin.

Has anyone ever looked more clearly designed by Aardman than Michael van Gerwen?

I am once again bemused that what he did or didn't say at school (and it's fairly obvious what he did say) has become some sort of character test. He shows us who he is, now, every day, and he is disgusting.

After KINDS OF KINDNESS, which I hated, I was really worried that Yorgos Lanthimos was abusing his lifetime pass (I regret awarding one to Tim Burton in the late 90s) but BUGONIA more than justified it. Unsettling and unpredictable and continually engrossing. Plemons and Stone never better.

This is a good read, but far from her best; it’s obvious with the benefit of hindsight that this is a first novel. It’s a little too full, with lots of themes and plot points that she would return to more effectively, and more leisurely, in her brilliant later work. But I still cried at the end.

One of my favourite pop songs is Tracy by The Cuff Links. It’s 2 minutes and 14 seconds of pure joy, as pop should be. The Cuff Links were 1969’s Milli Vanilli: a fake group with all the vocals by one man, Ron Dante. He was also all of The Archies of Sugar, Sugar fame. youtu.be/4wNAfPfJ01U?...

THE HISTORY OF SOUND dovetails nicely with both Josh O’Connor’s hot streak and Paul Mescal’s cold one. It’s…fine. It’s all a little bit too pretty and tasteful to be really affecting. I could have done with more passion and messiness. Nice to see Chris Cooper, though; it feels like it’s been ages.

Is this not simply all faith healers? I suppose the Hampstead bit is a novelty. (And nice to see that the classic Grauniad misprint tradition is still thriving in the digital era.)

Revisiting Middlemarch for the first time in a few years, and sobering to be reminded that Casaubon - all but a walking dessicated corpse - is ‘towards fifty.’ And I know her growth is (part of) the point, but the initial version of Dorothea is absolutely and totally insufferable.

One of the subtler pieces of characterisation in WITHNAIL AND I is that Withnail went to Harrow School - great for an inflated sense of superiority - but it’s never made explicit. There are two clues, which only some would recognise, including this print visible in the background of the flat.

Persuasion is as perfect as ever and remains my favourite Austen. She is great at writing monsters - and the Elliots certainly qualify - but I love her happy families too, and the Crofts, the Harvilles and even the Musgroves are all enchanting.

In MAMMA MIA (2008), Stellan Skarsgård as Bill refers to meeting Donna in ‘the time of the flower power.’ Assuming that this refers to 1972 at the latest, Sophie must have been born by 1973 and consequently aged at least 34/5 during the film’s action. In this essay, I will…

My only resolution in 2026 is not to buy any books. I have made a list, based on my existing TBR shelves, of my reading plan for the year and it runs to 96 books which should see me all the way through the year. (Starting with Persuasion, the only re-read on the list, because I need it just now.)

I’ve not always got on with Park Chan-Wook - I felt like the only person who didn’t care for DECISION TO LEAVE - but NO OTHER CHOICE is a winner. KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS for late-stage capitalism, with wild tonal swings and full of ideas and invention (but, as often for him, maybe a bit too long).

I slightly expected to hate NOUVELLE VAGUE as a self-indulgent affectation, but I absolutely loved it. It took me back to being 15 and discovering cinema as vivid and exciting and immediate, and made me want to rewatch a raft of movies.

I can understand the sniffy reviews for SONG SUNG BLUE - it’s basically a Hallmark movie with a budget - but it’s just so ingenuous, with some lovely performances, that I couldn’t help but warm to it. Drama’s all well and good but I like stories where everyone is nice and kind to each other. Sue me.

Courtesy of the Beeb, I’ve recently renewed my acquaintance with both ET and JAWS. I know this is no revelation but, my goodness, what a film-maker. No-one else moves the camera so purposefully, so meaningfully and so unobtrusively. The best to ever do it. He makes it feel as natural as breathing.

I had been saving this for Christmas, because I love Barbara Comyns and I thought from the title it might be mildly festive. It isn’t, but I still love Barbara Comyns and this is simply a wonderful read. Slightly more conventional than her usual style but still strange and brittle.

It’s fascinating how wedded my parents - in their 80s - are to the idea of linear television. My dad is constantly scrolling the EPG of their smart TV complaining that there’s nothing on, no matter how many times I explain to him that everything is on whenever he wants it. (He also votes Reform.)

Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre in London is as good as family theatre could ever want to be. Smartly modernised, brilliantly adapted and directed and played with glorious fluidity and buoyancy. Sentimental but never saccharine and an absolute delight from start to finish.

My most Boomerish opinion* is my ongoing astonishment and rage at the number of people who consider it acceptable to make calls, watch video or play music out loud on their phone in public. This is not discourse, I’m just venting. *I am squarely Gen X but I appreciate we’re the Boomers now

And since Somebody Somewhere is a Duplass Brothers joint, I should also put in a good word for THE BALTIMORONS, Jay Duplass’ solo directorial debut and the most touching, heartfelt Christmas film in a long time. See it now while it’s still topical or you’ll have to wait a year.

Anybody touched by Bridget Everett’s turn as Louise in WAKE UP DEAD MAN should look out for Somebody Somewhere, her HBO show which recently concluded after three series. It’s one of the best shows of the last ten years and a lovely counterpoint to the current horrorscape of the United States.

Oh and now she's on Radio 4 complaining again about being cancelled so I've had to turn it off. The BBC is such a disgrace.

Subtlety of messaging is not his forte.

He’s very good in both KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE IRISHMAN (creaky old man long shots notwithstanding) but De Niro’s two best performances of the last decade are in THE WIZARD OF LIES and THE INTERN. They both deserve more love!

I appreciate every culture has its own festive traditions which seem impenetrable to outsiders (I don't think non-Brits get the joy of Slade and Wizzard), but America's commitment to the notion that NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION is a good, or even watchable, film is a proper head-scratcher.

How are we doing Francis Fukuyama discourse again? He is probably the most ostentatiously, epoch-definingly incorrect academic in history. He should have spent the last 24 years hiding in the shed in embarrassment, not sharing his needy thoughts about ChatGPT.

Really feels like UK is about to find out why first past the post really is a terrible system

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

I appreciate they are (presumably) more soundalikes than lookalikes, but yeesh. Even Mike Love’s Zombie Beach Boys look more like the real thing, and I don’t say that lightly.

Off to see Sarah Millican play Stockholm’s worst building, Waterfront, with its design aesthetic of someone having described Frank Gehry to a friend on a limited budget. I can see this monstrosity from my office and it makes me sad every time.

It only took ten years for a dedicated bunch of well-connected weirdoes to get the entire UK elite to unite against a tiny minority of the population that they previously barely noticed. The few to resist, like Robin Ince, deserve our lasting gratitude and respect.

I’m all for taking a fresh look at things, but I’ve seen a couple of people arguing on social media that LAST CHRISTMAS (the film, not the song) is not terrible. This is taking revisionism too far.

The Safdie Bros solo sports movie showdown turns out to be an unequivocal knockout victory for Josh. MARTY SUPREME crackles with the same hectic abrasiveness of GOOD TIME and UNCUT GEMS. (Benny is the better actor, so there’s that.)

What a (thankfully temporary, though we'll see if it ends up actually hitting its deadlines) loss to London. I hope this renovation will not undermine its legendary incomprehensibility...getting lost in the Barbican is a Londoner's rite of passage! artreview.com/barbican-to-...

A brilliant and undervalued show, although they accidentally used the perfect series ending for the penultimate season and then - presumably to their surprise - got recommissioned and had to undo it all slightly messily.

The Goldfinch’s rubbishness notwithstanding, I think it’s about time we got a nice new Donna Tartt book. I am also ready for new work from Sarah Vowell (last published in 2015) and Becky Chambers (last full novel in 2021…her novellas are glorious morsels but I am craving something more substantial).

I am always bemused by the high regard in which The Goldfinch is held. The Secret History is perfect, The Little Friend is really good, The Goldfinch is long and boring and sometimes incredibly stupid, with some beautiful writing occasionally sprinkled in like tasty fruit in a sawdust panettone.

Can't say I ever expected to see a "That Font was No Angel" headline. But here we are.

I adore the character, and find something to enjoy in most adaptations, but Christopher Reeve is Superman and the others are playing Superman.

Thinking about Colossal per my last reskeet made me dig out my list of my favourite films of the 2010s that I made for a friend a couple of years ago. I still stand by all of these!

We should talk more about this terrific movie

I feel like my fellow fifty year olds and I have an unfair advantage with this one.

ZOOTROPOLIS 2 doesn’t quite have the snap and crackle of its predecessor, but it shares its delightful world-building and pacy plotting. Its core message is depressingly timely (though the state of the world is making me wonder if progressive morals in kids’ films are actually making a difference).

*Love is an Open Door cadence* Abolish the House of Loooo oooo ooords Abolish the House of.... LOOOO OOO OO OOORDS!

When even Disney adults boycotted Disneyland in protest of the fucking Jimmy Kimmel thing, you're left with no other conclusion than 'Harry Potter' fans being a special kind of cozy fascist, okay with any degree of harm to undesirables so long as it's out of their sight, for the sake of nostalgia.

Happy 65th birthday to Kenneth Branagh, seen here at his hottest as Roman Strauss in DEAD AGAIN.