Nice to write a tribute to an aged Hollywood legend which isn't an obituary. Happy 100th birthday Dick Van Dyke, and yes I realise I got the Chitty toy reference wrong thanks for your concern www.theguardian.com/film/2025/de...

My piece on Cover-Up, Seymour Hersh & the state of modern-day journalism www.theguardian.com/film/2025/de...

Column for @the-independent.com, on the evergreen Sunset Boulevard & the rot on the Hollywood fringes www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Martin Parr, gone far too soon. I interviewed him a few years back, just after lockdown when he was undergoing chemo & he was sharp & combative & relishing his new role as a disabled photographer, a mobility-scooting drive-by shooter amid the British crowds. RIP. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Train Dreams is a stone cold masterpiece - one of the century’s great books www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/m...

At some point soon a journalist is going to lose patience & react as one would normally react when a bullying moron tries to shout you down - & they'll deserve every Pulitzer prize they can carry

I hesitate to bill this as an interview given that it basically involved sitting on a couch, listening to Hawke & Linklater chat & occasionally pitching in. But I wrote it up afterwards, so that officially counts as work www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...

Sublime character actor who landed in a film like a pinch of peyote & made everything weirder, hazardous, better. RIP www.vulture.com/article/cult...

Spoke with Joel Edgerton & Clint Bentley about their fabulous Train Dreams, & the pleasures & pain of a life on the road www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...

Delighted by this; it's a book that sticks around. Right alongside Denis Johnson, too, for the added real estate value

Whole fucking thing makes me sick to my stomach. An abject fucking liar, a man who lies as easily as he fucking breathes, threatening an organisation which strives for truthfulness. And plastic patriots like the Mail and Farage urging him on. Jackels.

By this logic, can the BBC now countersue Karoline Leavitt for labelling its output as “100% fake news”? Have her stand that up in court, with evidence, or the White House pays a billion in damages www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/w...

Waking up to wall-to-wall news of the BBC mugging & the Democrat collapse (8 turncoats, but that's all it takes) & it feels somehow seismic, a battle lost on two crucial fronts. 2025, what a year, constant cowardice & capitulation.

For @the-independent.com, on the self-admiring Jay Kelly & the constellation of stars who like to orbit themselves www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

I love to hear about the genesis of novels. The solitary seed that was planted years before it flowered. The seemingly random schmutter of ideas that slowly come together & spark www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Jennifer Lawrence Oscar campaign up & running

One year ago

This week's @the-independent.com column: on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, that magnificent, swaggering, unreconstructed giant of 70s American cinema www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Good, stringent piece, Hannah Jane Parkinson taking no prisoners here (as opposed to Saudi, which takes literally thousands) www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/o...

40 years old this week. One of those rare life-changing albums when I first heard it at 16; the whole wild world kicking in the front door. ‘We sail tonight for Singapore …’

The one trait shared by all the worst people I’ve ever worked with was their habit of brazenly framing their disasters as triumphs.

Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket. An antic noir adventure that plays like a postmodern Tintin story. A portrait of 1930s fascism that reminds us a little of now www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

This is an excellent, clarifying article that points out pretty starkly where we are all standing right now www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Claudia Cardinale: the only actor to star in three of Sight & Sound's 100 best films of all time, but who also played the princess in The Pink Panther, destoyer & rebuilder of adolescents the world over. The cause of & cure for all our problems. No better legacy. RIP

Birds, Strangers & Psychos, an anthology of Hitchock-inspired short stories, is the Times's "thriller of the month". We're launching it at the BFI Southbank, 6.30pm next Monday. Drop by if you're free, or need a place to lie low. Still some vacancies. All mod cons whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...

Hell is other people, specifically these people www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/w...

Loved PTA’s One Battle After Another for its sheer antic, rolling lawlessness. It’s the red-state blue-state 21stC Pudd’nhead Wilson father-daughter coming-of-age comedy-horror mashup the world (& specifically America) needs right now

The Great Robert Redford: “arguably the film industry’s most consequential American over the last fifty years” www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

Robert Redford, 1936-2025. “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him”

Damn it, he’s gone. I met him once years ago & he was everything you’d hope he’d be. Courteous & thoughtful & entirely comfortable with who he was & what he represented; neither downplaying his status nor exulting in it. Robert Redford, what a man

Latest Indy column: on the posh streets & dodgy estates of Stephen Kingstown, a sprawling film franchise that has the MCU beat www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Indy column: on the Yorgos Lanthimos career arc, from Dogtooth to Bugonia, & how we’re all Greek Weird Wave now

My review of Kent Jones’s Late Fame, a slight, flawed film that has nonetheless stayed with me #Venice2025

First in line at this year’s Venice film festival.

Darren Aronofsky, on the grubby old joys of 1990s New York & the (potential) new pleasures of the brave new world of AI

This week’s Indy column is on Spike Lee, the brilliantly awkward square peg of American cinema (even when he’s trying not to be)

Loved doing this ...

Terence Stamp 1938-2025 www.theguardian.com/film/2025/au...

Obligated to point out that The Catchers is still just £0.99 on Kindle which is what, like the price of a single opal fruit www.amazon.co.uk/Catchers-Sal...

Al Jazeera now has the number of murdered Palestinian journalists at nearly 270, my God www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...

David Stratton: fab critic, lovely man; a pleasure to read & a delight to spend time with. What a great worthwhile life www.theguardian.com/film/2025/au...

Loved talking to @www.johnbleasdale.com for the excellent Writers on Film podcast - covering cinema, literature, journalism, the works podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/f...

Making like Crazy Eddie this morning to announce that for a limited time only you can buy THE CATCHERS for just £0.99 on Kindle, a price so low you’ll think we’ve got brain damage etc www.amazon.co.uk/Catchers-Sal...

My review of Gary Shteyngart's coming-of-age tale VERA, OR FAITH, which is a vital mongrel of a book if you're feeling generous, & a discombobulating curate's egg if you're not www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

I like this a lot (the Bad Seeds song/the Andrew Dominick video). Popular culture crawls from the dirty water, sprouts AI wings & takes flight. Good, disquieting stuff. 'Saturday gives what Sunday steals' www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnDm...

Really loving this chapter Andre Agassi's journey. From annoying, tie-dyed, soft-metal showman to poetic, soft-spoken commentary-box svengali. Full of wit, insight & wisdom; a total delight to listen to #Wimbledon

Superb #KindleOffer on Xan Brooks’s The Catchers: #BookSky #BlueskyBooks #AmReading #ReadersOfBluesky