Obsession (2026) Cinematography by Taylor Clemons Directed by Curry Barker

What the hell are we doing?

Now sack the guy who designed the new kit

Obsession is a flawed film but I jumped in the air and screamed "Jesus Fucking Christ" at one point so that's a thumbs up from me.

Screening tonight @ picturehouse @factliverpool.bsky.social, Soviet era folk horror, Viy, based on the Nikolai Gogol novella of the same name. A tale of the grotesque, it weaves together witchcraft, fear and forbidden desire to great effect.

A new post on Liverpool Almanac by me And a new series having short sharp chats with people in the middle of things going on. Because sometimes little things happen, and you don't know if it's going to become something bigger open.substack.com/pub/liverpoo...

I Saw The TV Glow but it's Andy Burnham watching Newsnight

This graphic isn't telling you that growth will drop by 0.8%.

Mackenzie Crook’s magical suburban folk tale, #SmallProphets published by #PenguinBooks and #PuffinBooks down the years. A 🧵 1/

What's the etiquette when somebody is quite clearly recording you on their phone on a train? I'm siding with just play on my Switch while giving the stink eye.

I'll workshop this so I get two or three reposts.

I do a lot of "stuff" - work and life and creative stuff. You know the type of thing. But, and hear me out here, maybe I should just watch a load of baseball. I mean, if I'm just going to run around and get nowhere the Red Sox are available to do that for me. I'll even get a quiet October.

Our evening film is a slow burning British horror thriller with #EdwardWoodward #JaneMerrow 📽️ THE APPOINTMENT (1981) 9:10pm with #SamanthaWeysom #JohnJudd horror #TPTVsubtitles

mr xi my people cry out for chibi urban golf carts

Found this compelling. harpers.org/archive/2026...

The liberals yearn for a bubble. Show me where the bubble is?

Flawless

To be fair to the Titanic it did change course quite quickly

Modern grieving is getting an email from the local paper of their daily news mailer with a picture of your recently deceased father as one of the stories. The piece being a death obituary listicle. Super fun.

And from this day in 2014.

I absolutely adore this book about magic use in England over the centuries. I highly recommend it for this time of year. Very witty and deeply thoughtful www.penguin.co.uk/books/451800...

Some of these redactions are almost like modern art

The entirety of last night's Netflix boxing was poor. It sums up their entire content strategy that they are paying through the nose for a flashy, but hollow, product. Why the Caroline Dubois fight was relegated to YouTube amazes me. Huge mismatches across the card and the men's fights were terrible

For those who are interested in panto, I spent a very happy few days reading some old books including 'The Annals of Liverpool Theatre' from 1908 and 'Recollections of Old Liverpool' from the late 19th century about Victorian panto in Liverpool open.substack.com/pub/liverpoo...

Trainline, there’s too much snow on the app

People putting in meetings for the afternoon of my last working day of the year

BLOG POST: Another batch of spooky stories, mostly made for TV, that I think capture something of the vibe of the Lawrence Gordon Clark era of BBC ghost stories for Christmas. precastreinforced.co.uk/2025/12/11/a...

“I am so bored by AI. One of the things I love about the theatre is AI can’t do it.” Ethan Hawke is a dude 👌🏻

Any takers for the Greens? We're one short of a full set

Good morning to Brazilian reporter Manuela Borges, who’s been waiting eleven years for this petty moment. ❤️ 🇧🇷

An update on this. Roughly half the people who got through to a screening interview clearly didn't have the skills to do the job.

Plan for Foo Fighters next year. In early for Otoboke Beaver then straight to the bar until the Foos come on.

Suggestion: Make yourself a homonculus for #Halloween - @johnreppion.bsky.social with the lowdown on how its been done, from medieval times to modern. www.dailygrail.com/2017/11/how-...

Absolutely gutted reading this. Both her books are beautiful and incredibly honest www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

I AM BEGGING YOU. Don't use LLMs for your job application. They all read exactly the same.

Sky Sports News not broadcasting on a Saturday morning is my three minute warning

I am 100% convinced that Twitter is the problem with politics. I'm also 100% convinced that it will be AI chatbots by the next election. The solution is that people start talking to people again, not their phones. But yeah, lol, good luck with that.

Alien Earth sums up all my feelings on modern television in the sense it is a story I would like to watch, told in an unfathomably dull and sluggish way. It also simultaneously feels incredibly impressive and deeply cheap. My toes curled at the Tool needle drop. I don't care about anybody.

Is there a word for thinking your friend is responding via AI but you don't want to mention it in case you are wrong?

I know no one has money anymore but publications should probably consider getting proper editors and fact checkers in again, as opposed to "overworked people who'll give your copy a quick look over before publishing", which is what most of them have now

I am significantly more worried about the harm people spending all day creating parasocial relationships with social media ai bots can do than I am about any version of a supposed job-taking digital overlord.

it's another information crisis. we've had them before eg after the invention of writing & printing. they overwhelm us with info which makes us upset, angry & afraid. there’s often great working-together, thinking-together on the other side. let’s see if we can avoid bloody wars of Reformation!

Struggling to get excited about Wolves V City when Jamie Redknapp pops up looking like he's trying to tell you how great a deal a Timeshare in Magaluf is.

Some gold in this one www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

First V-HYes at Videodessy was yesterday. All went fab. Thanks for everybody who came. Sign up now for info of September's film subscribepage.io/DDR3ge

Morning

A gentle read for an August lunchtime, well, it depends what we mean by gentle. What if Wirral being weird is it’s super strength instead of something to make a joke about? By me for Liverpools Almanac open.substack.com/pub/liverpoo...