Getting off a broken train in a heavy April shower, adults grumbling and sighing. I see a girl, 4 or 5, in a metallic rainbow coat and rose pink hat, stepping her tiny Timberlands in & out of the rain puddles with delighted fascination …

I struggled on with E2 of Imperfect Women so you don’t have to undertake this corpse of a show. Yes,it gets more pointless after misapplying Byron’s She Walks in Beauty to a blonde. Elisabeth Moss should know better, but has form (shining girls). Is the script AI? Who knows or cares

The drama about The Drama has been a matter of unwise, grabby marketing. The Drama itself isn’t a romcom or a black comedy about shootings. It’s a conversation about the unspeakable, the unforgivable and the incomprehensible. It’s is a film trying to have a conversation

The Drama: can’t remember the last time I felt a cinema audience waiting until the credits to exhale like I did last night @phoenixphoxford

In 1849 Herman Melville left England from here with a copy of Frankenstein in his pocket; the result was a queer book about a monster of his own making

Storm Dave rattling the writing hut; online writing partner waiting to log into market town library to join our group writing sesh; sheep and their lambs in field next door taking warmth by huddling on a 30ft pile of manure. #rural #writing

Church bell tolling for a death through rural village air filled with birdsong and sunshine

Shout out to the protestor in a red Mercedes trying to stop a yew being cut down in the main road of the valley. Facing down the cops. Wes Anderson eco boss right there

open.substack.com/pub/somaghos... On mothering, the Bengali language, food, family, inheritance, love and loss - on my Substack, for Mother’s Day

Manifesting Rose Byrne winning in a dress made of doughnuts manifesting Rose Byrne winning in a dress made of doughnuts manifesting Rose Byrne winning in a dress made of donuts. #Oscars

We're excited to announce comedian Stewart Lee will be hosting our Q&A screening of The Memory Blocks with artist Andrew Kötting on Sat 28 March 18:00! https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/13759/the-memory-blocks

Heritage British Nature/nostalgic telly animals is the new white flag saying AI deserves to eat us. Still, at least they can’t misquote Austen (or can they?).

Another day at the rural cashpoint extracting a scanty tenner, another moment to deplore the misapplied Austen quote, 'I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!' When-oh-when will the Royal Mint understand that Miss Bingley's pretended interest is ironised by Austen, not celebrated?

There are few greater things, as someone who teaches in an art school, than saying to a student, 'Have you seen John Smith's film "The Girl Chewing Gum"?', and then sharing it with them if they haven't. Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of its first screening at the London Filmmakers’ Co-op.

Wuthering Heights casting director: "It's just a book" Everyone who has read Wuthering Heights: "have you read it?" Margot Robbie, on pitching to be Cathy: "..and so I threw my hat into the ring!" Everyone who has read Wuthering Heights: "have you read it?"

Friday #film fact. Dorothy Parker was also a script writer, her most lucrative job, co-writing with her beloved Alan Campbell (fellow addict & an actor). Paramount paid her $1000 & he $250 a week. Screenplays included Smash-Up & A Star is Born.

Santosh by Sandhya Suri with its superbly quiet storm of a central performance by Shahana Goswami is currently being highlighted by BFI Player. It’s poss THE film of 2024/5 to leave the biggest stain on my thoughts when I consider India and its cinema. Next to All We Imagine as Light ofc. Peak.

Rereading.Brilliant at twinning the obsessive writing process to the mystery of soul-consuming love. “So much of a novelist’s writing takes place in the unconscious … the last word is written before the first word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.”

Hate to be an identity zealot but does shade being thrown by establishment lit press at Ocean Vuong’s new book have to be quite so gleeful? These stumbles are to be expected when developing his kind of style. It’s at the v least unseemly, at worst smells of something other than pure critique

Magical Solstice stormy evening on the Welsh borders: seeded grass and blackberry blossom psychedelic raving in the hedgerows and a helix of crows cursing the sky’s turbulence of gold, mauve and pink,

They found the missing Matter. Parents all over the world, various languages: “Where was it, X’s bedroom floor?”

if anyone wants to start a Youtube channel about the tortured psychological travails of a cat-lover who feels compelled to intervene in the slaughter of “her” robins .v. the friendly/merciless neighbourhood cats, while ranting against the anthropocene, u know where to find me

“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.It is a moral illumination.” Elizabeth Hardwick, The Paris Review, 1985.

Light the Vaim flame. New Fosse (extracted in the New Yorker last week, see earlier post), out in October from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

Very much looking forward to the Wes Anderson adaptation

Shout out to the arts critics whose kids had to write an arts review for today’s English exam and have made it into their pyjamas before 6pm, ready to project on the sitting room wall the best Star Wars film ever (clue: so good it granted New Hope with Andor).

Literal literary bliss doesn’t get more fruity, camp or psychologically subtle. I’m so here for you, Marcel

This. That. Far too much ‘whiching’ in the essay world now and forever. Be bold. Just be That.

"If you write tremendously fast, you sometimes realise you’ve written down something you didn’t know you knew. And that’s a moment to be treasured. That’s the only reason for doing it!" Wonderful interview with Pat Barker by @john-self.bsky.social thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

For this eve’s relaxed-brain treat of The Studio: please more leaning into in-jokes like The Oner & The Note & less slapstick. Seth Rogan getting broken is a running gag but comedies like this are so much funnier when satirising those pockets of anal nerd-dom & perfectionism that beset every art

“The fact remained: it was almost impossible to dislike anybody, if one LOOKED at them” - To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Think how much better Your Friends and Neighbours would have been if it had been a tightly scripted film. Relatability killed the writing room… Again

Epping Forest in the perfect spring rain this morning. Chuffed to say I'm talking about my favourite place on this planet on BBC Radio 4's Open Country, I think now airing tomorrow, info here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

How have trees shaped who we are? @kwoovo.bsky.social and I launch what might be the multicultural history podcast about trees, culture, and LGBTQ+ identity, joined by a host of divine tree huggers. Travel with us through welsh oakwoods and across the Ganges, here: shows.acast.com/branched-out

So, in between winning a Welsh creative commission and developing brain fever JUST to be more 19th C, @kwoovo.bsky.social & I made possibly the world’s first multicultural, LGBTQ+ histories of trees podcast ever, on Apple, Spotify, Deezer etc tmw! Drama, discussions, travel & music by Arun Ghosh

I’m introducing Lost Highway at MAC Birmingham tonight - tickets still available!

Regret to inform you that in the war between the Jack sparrows, and the Margot Robbie Robbins, the Pirates are winning. This morning I watched one hop up to a spider a bigger than its head and carry it off with cold cold indifferent eyes

The horror & pathos of Frankenstein's monster, in this 1910 film by J. Searle Dawley made in 3 days, and restored on wonderful @archive.org are remarkable. Esp its link to Frankenstein's own darker psyche in this scene where the monster appears to emerge from a womb above Frankenstein on his couch.

Beside myself for new film by Julia ‘Titane’ Ducournu. However, apropos of no one asking my opinion, would love to see her do creepy in a way that’s tender, unbearably soft.. #Cannes

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, DOTD. “She could be herself…Free for the strangest adventures.”

“With respect to my livelihood, I will not write for it. I will not run with that most common of crowds, the literary.” Keats, March 1819.

Jennifer Jones (born #onthisday) with Joseph Cotton in my beloved Portrait of Jennie (1948).

Today's hot-bird action for Nature-porners: white geese cackling high in the cloudless aquamarine sky; crazy owls wide awake to woo (twit-a-woo) in the sun-dappled woods and Margot Robbie II the the robin chattering on the garden table by my laptop while I work.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🌙Ramadan Mubarak / Dydd Gwŷl Dewi Sant 🌙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Last year I began the Cerdd Tafod Arall / Music of Another Tongue project - an exploration into understanding more about the tradition of cynghanedd. For more information, check out: www.literaturewales.org/our-projects...

earwigging Londoners hotdesking, picking up the dialogue of our times: “it’s a cool head warm heart company culture”; “why am I on this group chat?”; “he’s a bitch but just ranting.. how old is this lady who’s gonna escalate it…? well Ima screenshot this chat cos it’s funny.”

Sunset over flooded fields, Welsh Marches

"I’m getting older, I feel a bit weaker, and my stamina is not as strong, so I have to fight against my ageing body and mind" - YASS that's where the wild seedy things come from and we're here for it. Great nuggets from Bong Joon Ho with @ellenejones.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/film/2025/fe...

Fantastic video/transcript of the conversation between the indispensable @anandwrites.bsky.social and @anatosaurus.bsky.social 'So what do we say? We say: “This is a government of the bullies for the billionaires.” He is coming for your freedom. He is coming for your privacy.'

And they escaped Big Corp and set up a YMCA in Alaska and lived happily ever after is the detour we all want tonight. #Severance