watched Jun Ichikawa's Kaisha monogatari: Memories of You (1988) this afternoon, a lovely film about lost time and the sad anonymity of a decades-long corporate career coming to an end — and how, sometimes, the joy of starting a jazz band with the boys is enough to make up for everything else.

I spent a few days at the Viennale a couple of weeks ago and I've (finally) written about some of the films I saw — a good festival! thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/11/vien...

the two-year anniversary issue of Strange Days has just been sent to subscribers — on Annie Ernaux, Claire Simon, and Yasunari Kawabata. Read it here if the algorithm makes it visible, subscribe if you haven't already etc thistheaterishaunted.substack.com/p/strange-da...

The Vanishing is such an evil movie

Vienna is a fun city to watch movies in, I gotta say. Good festival! 16 films in 5 days, five great cinemas, lots of good food / coffee, only a mild sense of fear and danger when attempting to cross roads. Hard to fault it!

wrote about the four films I managed to see at this year's London Film Festival (all of which are fascinating in very different ways) thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/10/lond...

it's amazing how much the theatricality of The Fence works in its favour, just two horrendous men standing in spotlights and monologuing deafly to an audience, only for it all to fall apart when the lights come up.

i've written some capsules on the three Sho Miyake films I've been able to track down and watch over the past week or so — an excellent filmmaker! thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/09/sho-...

The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960)

watched Rosa la rose, fille publique (1986) tonight, which is such a great, beautiful, devastatingly sad movie, and the best thing I've seen all year — need to see more Vecchiali ASAP

i have never pre-ordered anything faster in my life

v late to this, but caroline 2 is such a great, strange album that i haven't been able to stop listening to all day caroline.bandcamp.com/album/caroli...

stormy skies on a gloomy saturday morning is maybe the ideal backdrop to say that the new Alex G album is really very good

wrote about Death Stranding 2 and Paul Auster and Test Match Special for this month's letter, pls enjoy thistheaterishaunted.substack.com/p/strange-da...

i think the music opinion i am most disappointed in myself for holding (but will continue to hold it anyway) is that i really like The 1975 in spite of the many reasons not to (i am watching Glastonbury on iPlayer on my sofa with a hangover and a berocca and this headline set is going down a treat)

having fun with lists again

missing Haruomi Hosono in London because I'm going to see The Maple State in London, or the old me defeating the new me once again

beat Persona 3 Reload tonight, hard to be rational about something that demands 100+ hours of time but i thought it was a pretty spectacular game about the value of time + using it wisely (will be playing something much shorter next)

instagram keeps pushing me slow asmr adjacent videos of people walking around cities very quietly and you better believe i am watching every single one of them from start to finish

hadn't listened to Blonde for a while, but threw it on today and it's still so so good — wild that it's been nearly a decade since it came out

I spent the best part of a decade resisting the work of Seijun Suzuki because Tokyo Drifter screengrabs popped up a little too often on Tumblr back in the day, but I just watched Youth of the Beast and had a great time — which begs an obvious question: what are his best movies?

Radiance are doing it again (Rosa La Rose! The Beast To Die!). Coincidentally, I wrote about two of their previous releases in this month's letter (the hit rate is v v strong) thistheaterishaunted.substack.com/p/strange-da...

maybe says a lot about how i'm feeling about nintendo these days but i'm more excited about the prospect of gamecube games on the switch 2 than basically anything else

having just reacquainted myself with it, i'm happy to report that last year's Balance and Composure album is v v good

feel like i dropped off Soderbergh when his movies started going straight to Sky Movies so I now have a lot of gaps, but after having a good time with Presence I had an even better time with Black Bag — maybe I gotta go back letterboxd.com/mattmansfiel...

Materialists looks good, James L. Brooks is back. 2025 already looking to be a big year for the good old romantic comedy.

not seen a lot this year so far, but Jan / Feb new to me favs (chronological): Pale Flower (1964) The Conformist (1970) Tausend Augen (1984) Suzhou River (2000) Takeshis' (2005) In The Wake (2021) Afternoons of Solitude (2024) Hard Truths (2024) The Shrouds (2024)

i've been trying to write more this year + share it where it makes sense to do so, so here's a quick piece on Takeshi Kitano's three semi-autobiographical films from the late 2000s, each one fascinating in a different way thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/02/kita...

I didn't realise I wanted this and now it's all I think about, but I would very much like to see the Radu Jude Rossellini movie

last week i went to Rotterdam for a few days of IFFR + I've written about two of the best films I saw there: Albert Serra's Afternoons of Solitude + Wei Shujun's I Dreamed A Dream thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/02/inte...

whoever programmed a triple-bill of new films by Hashiguchi, Yamashita, and Zeze in London today, thank you 🙏

for my newsletter, I wrote about my chaotic + tumultuous history with the films of David Lynch, and how his cinema quite literally changed my life (photo of a rainbow taken from my living room window, unrelated) thistheaterishaunted.substack.com/p/strange-da...

leaving Rotterdam having seen a lot more boring movies than good ones, but Wei Shujun's I Dreamed A Dream was pretty good, and Jia / Cronenberg / Serra have never let me down

Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos is so chaotic and so funny and so bleak and so so good.

going to Rotterdam tomorrow to watch some cool new movies and (more importantly) track down the finest stroopwafels the world has ever known, pls stay tuned

will always pick up secondhand novels with covers like 80s movie posters

been throwing myself headfirst into the music of Scott Walker this past week or so, what a strange and brilliant artist

minus three degrees and sunny is Stars of the Lid / Stina Nordenstam / The Durutti Column weather in this house

spent the evening starting Persona 3 Reload, and apart from being told to go to bed early all the time it's v fun! Love the lack of narrative so far (compared to P5, which, for context, I love) — make some friends and kill some monsters, no rush on either have a good day at school!

as is tradition, I've written about my 2024 in cinema (and beyond) this Xmas Eve, including fav new films, best discoveries, and some other bits + pieces about novels + music + other miscellany — have a wonderful festive season! 🍃🍂 thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2024/12/2024...

also picked up a copy of Frog by Mo Yan. I’m currently reading Big Breasts and Wide Hips (incredible title), which is so so good. Keen to read more by him!

in Oxford for the weekend and so far i've had a nice chat with a bookshop owner about László Krasznahorkai and seen some schoolkids singing Nelly Furtado's I'm Like A Bird with / to a bemused street karaoke man, loving the vibe here

It's Not Me is so so sad, and so so beautiful. A film haunted by the ghosts of one man's history, never out of sight but forever out of reach.

Misericordia is the perfect Guiraudie movie: a bemused outsider accidentally ignites a decade of repressed emotion to such an extent that literally anything is justifiable, and as the dust settles on a new lay of the land and people assume their new roles in it, everything starts to grow again. Fun!

feel like 2025 might be the year of Paul Vecchiali, Aleksei Balabanov, and Shinji Aoyama

first views november: Stolen Kisses (1969) The Woman on the Beach (1947) The Village of Mist (1983) Rancho Notorious (1952) Bu Su (1987) Kamikaze Taxi (1994) The Woman Next Door 1981) The Blue Sky Maiden (1957) Prime Cut (1972)

v good movie

early morning journey from hell for a big movie day in london, welcome back to 2014

I'm deep into a melodramatic November + having a wonderful time, peaking this morning with Yasuzō Masumura's The Blue Sky Maiden, a breezy + vibrant + v beautiful movie about manifesting a better life for yourself by staying positive in a dark + loveless place (incredible ping-pong scene, too)