I’m on day two of a savage comedown that feels like a slow-motion crash-landing. Watched Fellowship of the Ring last night. Started crying the second it cut to the Shire and pretty much didn’t stop. Am I emotionally stable enough to make it through Two Towers? Let’s find out!

Snapping my fingers, hooting, hollering, jumping for joy when I get the notification that a movie I’ve wanted to see for years is now available on streaming… only to remember that I own said movie and could watch it whenever I want.

TX's blend of The Odyssey and pop-corn Satanism HIGHWAY TO HELL is here! Our LE includes an O-card and new booklet writing by @mactingz.bsky.social + director's notes. Plus, new interview w/ director Ate De Jong, new commentary by @annodracula.bsky.social + Sean Hogan, archival interviews + more!

Does Rose of Nevada rock? Let’s just say I was sat behind Peter Strickland during last night’s screening and he spent the whole movie doing this.

Incidentally, I watched (the colourised version of) 20 Million Miles to Earth the other night and the elephant fight is truly one of the greatest feats of stop-motion I’ve ever seen?

The @filmsradiance.bsky.social Transmission release of Highway to Hell is out now. Come for the gorgeous matte-stock slipcase; stay for the booklet essay by me! I would love to do more essay writing for film releases. In fact, I’m about to file copy for another. Give me more please!

I must confess (to my beleaguered partner if no one else): when I booked tickets to see The Movie Orgy at @princecharlescinema.com tonight, I did *not* know the runtime.

I love watching gross movies in beautiful settings, so it was a perverse pleasure to see Pink Flamingos in NFT1 at the BFI last night. Those iconic curtains parting to reveal dogshit and a gaping arsehole – *chef’s kiss*

Friends and family fear he caught wind of another @indicator.bsky.social sale.

Finished the Human Condition trilogy at the @princecharlescinema.com last night. What does it all mean? Well, I’ve been ruminating over it these past three weeks and I believe the thesis of Masaki Kobayashi’s films can be summed up thus:

Encounters of the Spooky Kind; Dead Lover; The Valley of Gwangi; The Human Condition Part 1: No Greater Love.

This sounds like an Always Sunny B-plot with Dennis and Dee.

Seriously considering getting a full American traditional-style backpiece based on the Valley of Gwangi poster.

Growing stupidly obsessed with Powerplant’s Bridge of Sacrifice, which twists together black metal and dungeon synth with egg punk, new wave, blues-rock ballads and more. It’s camp. It’s chaotic. It’s innovative in ways so much metal fails to be. And it’s the most fun thing I’ve heard all year.

Good morning to everyone but especially to the aul fella leaving Tesco with two Pot Noodles and a bottle of brown sauce. Guy’s eating good tonight.

Humbling half-star reviews of my Letterboxd top four. Pleased to report there are no half-star reviews of Destry Rides Again – but only because no cunt’s seen it.

Watched the 2002 HBO film Hysterical Blindness, in which Uma Thurman basically plays Dee from Always Sunny: always in a shitty bar, shitty attitude, Big Bird energy, delusional, skin-crawlingly awkward around men. She does everything but the dry heaves. 10/10. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiHS...

A father and son get in a terrible car accident. The father dies. The son is badly hurt and taken to a local hospital. There, the surgeon says, “I cannot operate on this boy – he is my son”. How is this possible? That’s right, you are watching The Bride! by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

I always thought Outlandos d’Amour was the greatest Police album. But I just discovered Eberhard Schoener’s Flashback, which came out the same year. Sting vocals, Summers riffs and Copeland fills commingling with German experimental electronics? Yes, yes, yes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EBI...

Ah, yes, the influenza’s gambit, the dregs of the cunning cold, when the illness retreats to the safety of the U-bend between the nose and throat, where it knows no amount of coughing or hawking can touch it. I loathe you – but I respect your guile.

Almost cried getting my knee ditch tattooed just now – but only because Black Sabbath’s Solitude came on in the shop.

Nobody’s heard from him in weeks. Friends and family fear he’s playing Slay the Spire.

Restarted Elden Ring recently. Godrick may be the most fascinating character in the game – and we get so little of him! I’d be happy if Alex Garland’s film focused on grafting and how Godrick became a deluded demigod trash-lord weasel fuckboy hated by everyone from his subjects to his superiors.

A few strong mail days courtesy of Eureka and @filmsradiance.bsky.social recently. (I can stop whenever I want!)

Shoutout to Bad Bunny for, among other things, featuring a double dolly shot in his Super Bowl halftime show… which reminds me, I was high as hell on the Amsterdam Centraal Station ferry recently and, as it was docking, I blurted to my friends, “duhhh, look! it’s like we’re in a Spike Lee joint!”

“I’m mad I can’t understand Bad Bunny’s lyrics because they’re not in English” my brother millions of metalheads around the world have been happily listening to incomprehensible Finnish shrieks and Japanese death grunts since we were teens, you’re just boring and racist

Obsessed with these unhinged box sets I just found at Record Mania in Amsterdam. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence alongside Hulk Hogan dreck and Tommy Cooper’s greatest moments! I love this shit.

Fascinating essay on navigation, the “invisible agent” that is AI and the effects of stripping the online search system down and obfuscating its pathways. Capital! Cognitive decay! Pharmakon! www.doc.cc/articles/ai-...

There will surely be few more fascinating acts in music this year than Mustaine choosing to close Megadeth’s final, self-titled album – and his 40-year career – with a Metallica cover. Never change, Dave.

Happy 80th birthday, big man. You would’ve loved Laura’s blue velvet suit.

Can we call a moratorium on the term “opened up”? Sick of news sites framing every interaction as if it’s some earth-shaking scoop, as if the speaker has divulged something of enormous importance, when it’s usually, like, “READ NOW: Fancy Freddie has opened up about his favourite flavours of crisp”.

Saw Dying Fetus last night. Can we acknowledge what a feat of graphic design this is? So many metal logos are performatively illegible but when you have such a horrid, provocative name, why not simply batter people with it? Sometimes a designer’s job is to know when they’re not needed.

To my surprise, the most repulsive part of Angel, a 1984 action-thriller(?) about a 15-year-old student sex worker who has been on the streets since she was 12(!), is actually the bit when this guy sucks a raw egg from its shell. The scene lasts 60 disgusting seconds.

i did a single night shoot as a supporting artiste on Greenland 2: Migration ask me anything

Béla Tarr visiting a store in Peru selling pirated DVDs and posing with the owner and bootlegs of his own work, one of the realest ones, RIP

Oh, what a week! What a lovely week!

Yes, this made me cry.

There is no greater theatre of drama than the ring, and no more emotionally rich event than the retirement match of a wrestler – a commingling of character work, shenanigans and veil-dropping, honest-to-goodness, real-time reckoning with ageing and mortality. Farewell, then, Hiroshi Tanahashi.

First flick of 2026. Hadn’t seen this in about a decade. With 10 years and a bunch more Larry Cohen joints under my belt, man, this thing really sings. Big Bob Z’dar is brilliant and director William Lustig shows just the right amount of him. Gimme that sweet, sweet New York scuzz.

My final film of 2025 – Gaz and Babs in a clear-cut five-bagger. Billy Wilder never misses and this is, for my money, funnier, sweeter and spicier than Howard Hawks’ better-known screwball about a fiery feminine shaking up the life of a fusty academic fella. Can’t wait to watch this again.

Got my old man a nice pullover and a ticket to the new Avatar movie for Christmas. Fleece Na’vi, dad.

Watching Gremlins over the holidays? Watch this first. It’s a trailer-for-trailer recreation of the 1984 ABC Cinemas experience, featuring film previews, an ad for a discontinued tropical liqueur, a cracking Young Ones NatWest spot and more. Kitsch. Cosy. Christmassy. youtu.be/Hnnai7jQGZc?...

The meaning of Christmas? Movies, actually.

He’s on an impressive run. Can he keep it up? Only time will tell.

There’s one fewer freak out there and that’s a loss for us all.

NEW COMIC Cultured Mind, Perpetual Feast is now available to read over on my website! www.willtempest.com/shorts/cultu...

Just stumbled across Dr Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans, an archive of 8x10 stills and high-res PDFs of film books and magazines, many from the early 20th century. Amazing resource. Love websites like this. Proper old-internet shit. www.doctormacro.com/index.html

I can think of no greater schism in my being, no heavier burden, no more loathsome charge than to have to choose between team bat and team rat. Science Magazine, you cleave me in two.