Finally getting some theological clarity on the ethics of reclining in one’s plane seat

I had to check to see if this had been published today, as opposed to half a century ago during the last Harold Wilson administration, which was the last time that Britain had anything even vaguely paying the most token lip service to the concept of full-blooded socialism. But no, it was today.

RIP Udo Kier. In late 1983 and early 1984 I saw his Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr Jekyll on assorted big screens, in all cases absurdly too young, in films that had a worryingly disproportionate impact on my entire cultural worldview. He truly fucked life in the gall bladder and no mistake. RIP.

Not sure how "sophisticated" this supposedly sophisticated publishing scam is when their fake photos haven't even been cropped to hide the watermarks showing that they're fake. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

My latest commentary commission. I was honoured to be asked, and I hope I did these incredible films something vaguely approaching justice—although I can definitely say that I’m as proud of my work here as I’ve been of pretty much anything else I’ve ever done.

Proofreading an OCRed document about Turkish popular cinema, I find that the name of the director Çetin İnanç has been misread as “Cretin Inane”. Everyone’s a critic.

Does this mean that Donald Trump has seen the error of his former ways and will no longer be grotesquely misrepresenting people several times a day via a combination of selective quotation and flat-out lying? I mean, one would hope so, but...

I’m absolutely thrilled for my New York friends who - expectedly but still gratifyingly - cut through the same bullshit that Londoners were fed in 2016. And, ten years later, London still hasn’t become the hotbed of Islamist Communist terrorism that we were assured was inevitable under Sadiq Khan.

1) She has proof Salt & Vinegar and Cheese & Onion colour swapped 2) Mrs Doubtfire & Rose from Titanic are the worst 3) She has a 3rd, correct, way of putting Jam and Cream on a Scone 4) Arsenal scoring from set pieces is perfectly acceptable and whining about it makes you a loser 5) Han shot first

Well, there’s lovely.

A thing what I wroted. I'd gladly have made this two or three times longer - it's a phenomenally rich subject - but the BFI has a standard template and word count for these pieces.

@ohsinnerman.bsky.social has probably seen this already, but just in case...

FERAT VAMPIRE is fantastic. Not only is it a fun "Car Horror Film" but it's a nifty little snapshot of Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Iron Curtain. @severinfilms.bsky.social put the transmission into top gear for this one. Also, @marbleicehook.bsky.social gives a fascinating commentary.

If someone gave me $30bn, I wouldn't become "energised and focused", I'd say "thank you very much", put my feet up and enjoy the rest of my now extremely pampered existence in a state of blissed-out relaxation. (Actually, I'd most likely give 99.999% of it away and live comfortably off the rest.)

After watching Michael Brooke's hour-long history of Polish animation on this set last night I now have a better idea of how to pronounce the names of directors that I've been mispronouncing for years. Also a much better idea of the history of Polish animation.

There are 3 types of newspapers columns I am an utter sociopath I am extraordinarily thick Thank Christ for nepotism They can, obviously, overlap

I’m no expert but I would’ve got a person to do it.

Cleaning up the automated transcript of @horrornonna.com and @joshnelsonfilm.bsky.social's latest commentary (which I'm having to create for Sony's legal department; oh, the glamour), I note that one of these esteemed speakers has been rendered as the distinctly Greek-sounding "Alex Helenikos".

This month’s nearly 1,200-page extravagance. I’d been umming and aahing about it for ages, my now 30-year-old copy of Bendazzi’s single-volume ‘Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation’ was getting a bit long in the tooth, and I’ve had than one animation-related commission this year, so...

Today's post, courtesy of the estimable @johnnymains.co.uk (as its creator, not its donor; I was happy to pay for it!). I'm very glad I went for the almost 550-page hardback, as it feels seriously meaty in a way that I imagine the paperback doesn't quite match.

Deeply sobering, but hard to deny right now.

The last couple of minutes of @horrornonna.com and ‪@joshnelsonfilm.bsky.social's commentary for Indicator's upcoming The Taming of the Shrew is now right up there with my favourite commentary endings. (It's not all like this, by the way - the rest is admirably scholarly and informative.) ‬

Nancy Banks-Smith meets Dennis Potter.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders/Valerie a týden divů (Jaromil Jireš, Czechoslovakia, 1970) This celebrated Gothic-Surrealist fantasy about a young girl on the cusp of womanhood explored, to quote its director, "the juncture of reality and dream and the playful struggle between horror and humour".

Children of Glory/Szabadság, szerelem (Krisztina Goda, Hungary, 2006) By some distance the biggest and splashiest of the handful of films made in Hungary to mark the abortive 1956 uprising's 50th anniversary, this is an unwieldy but often fascinating fusion of local and Hollywood approaches.

Vassilisa the Beautiful/Василиса Прекрасная (Aleksandr Rou, USSR, 1939) Long-term fairytale specialist Rou's second feature was based on a Russian folk tale about a beautiful young maiden cursed by an evil serpent after she spurns its advances, and who is finally freed by the love of an honest man.

I'm contributing an extensive video essay about the history of Polish animation, and as a result I've had a sneak preview of the high-definition masters fuelling this release; the level of fine detail knocks spots off the now ancient PWA Polish animation DVD compilations, as fine as those once were.

The Conductor/Dyrygent (Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1980) Made just before (and therefore subsequently completely eclipsed by) the monumental Man of Iron, this low-key oddity is quite unlike anything else in Wajda's output, thanks not least to the eye-catching casting of John Gielgud in the title role.

Can’t help but think that my watch and glasses want to put me away for a very long stretch.

The Barnabáš Kos Case/Pripad Barnabáš Kos (Peter Solan, Czechoslovakia, 1964) Barnabáš Kos (Josef Kemr) is a professional triangle player whose undemanding practice routine buys him time to represent his orchestral colleagues on official panels, where he's scrupulous about never rocking the boat.

Flow/Straume (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, 2024) Already by far the most successful Latvian film ever made, Gints Zilbalodis’ second feature hit international headlines in February when it became the first film not produced by an established major studio to win Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.

I wrote a fair chunk of this when I was actually in Slovakia a couple of weeks ago. (And normal daily service will resume soon; a week of flu has been followed by a week of manic work catch-ups, which is the curse of being an independent freelancer.)

Apologies for this week's radio silence, especially after I unexpectedly managed to stick to my twice-a-day schedule throughout the entire time that I was in Slovakia.

This is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen online, and I’ve been online for a full three decades last month.

On this week's podcast, we spoke with Polish film expert Michael Brooke (@marbleicehook.bsky.social) about the centenary year of Polish master Wojciech Has and his unique legacy, visionary adaptations, and dreamlike cinema. Link in bio 🗣️✨

Transport from Paradise/Transport z ráje (Zbyněk Brynych, Czechoslovakia, 1962)   There have been many distinguished films about life in Nazi-controlled ghettos during WWII, but none quite like this extraordinary evocation of Terezín (Theresienstadt) made less than two decades after its liberation.

Freedom/Libertate (Tudor Giurgiu. Romania/Hungary, 2023) Sibiu, central Romania, December 1989. In the confusion following Ceaușescu’s fall, shots are fired, people are killed, and nobody knows for certain who was responsible. So people are rounded up largely randomly and labelled “terrorists”.

The Cold Summer of 1953/Холодное лето пятьдесят третьего (Alexander Proshkin, USSR, 1988) One of the glasnost era’s bigger local hits, this is set in the months immediately following Stalin’s death and implicitly criticises the Soviet system to a degree that was scarcely imaginable pre-Gorbachev.

They think the box is going to hold him, don’t they? (Fools!)

The Albanian/Shqiptari (Johannes Naber, Albania, 2010)   This German-Albanian production tells a pretty familiar story – a young man needs money in a hurry, and inevitably ends up getting sucked into crime – but is of unusual interest for its specific focus on illegal Albanian immigrants in Germany.

Today’s trip is to the primary location of the first half of the 1922 Nosferatu. We’ve successfully negotiated a train changeover and are now on a slow stopping train wending its way through some impressively vertiginous Tatra mountain scenery.

Apologies for the delay to today’s regular post, but I’m currently up one of the Tatras visiting an original 1922 Nosferatu location (Starý Hrad, literally “Old Castle”, near Žilina), and we reached it bang on 9am UK time. Amazingly, there’s a three-bar 5G signal up here.

Camouflage/Barwy ochronne (Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland, 1977) Along with Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble, Camouflage was regarded as one of the first examples of Poland’s famous “cinema of moral anxiety”, although Zanussi pointed out that its core situation could be transplanted pretty much anywhere.

Deadly Spring/Halálos tavasz (László Kalmár, Hungary, 1939)   Had this film's events played out in strict chronological order, it would essentially be a romantic melodrama, set amongst Budapest's moneyed classes, this setting alone providing considerable sociological interest a decade pre-Communism.

I can confirm that this is true and that I am en route to Žilina (via Luton Airport and Bratislava) as I type this. Which is exciting - I’ve been *through* Slovakia before but never directly *to* it.

Tractor, Love and Rock’n’Roll/Traktor, ljubezen in Rock’n’Roll (Branko Đurić, Slovenia, 2008) This extremely broad comedy is set entirely in a Slovenian peasant community, ostensibly in the 1960s, although the only clue to the era comes via the musical tastes of protagonist Breza (Đurić himself).

When I've finished writing about Otar Iosseliani, I'm moving onto Wojciech Jerzy Has (timed to coincide with the upcoming London retrospective in April), but in the meantime here's a beginners' guide to this extraordinary, hugely underrated Polish master that the BFI kindly commissioned from me.

Strike/Стачка (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925) Not until Orson Welles would a filmmaker so comprehensively exploit the medium's entire expressive vocabulary from the very start of his career, and Eisenstein's debut remains as electrifying today as it must have been at its premiere 90 years ago.

Mystery-Bouffe/Містерія-буф (David Cherkasskiy, USSR, 1969) For decades, Ukraine's first (mostly) animated feature was practically a lost film; released exclusively there, it was banned in the rest of the Soviet Union and not exported. And then Cherkasskiy himself uploaded it to YouTube in 2015.

@carlottafilms.bsky.social has started following me, just as I started ploughing through their superb complete Otar Iosseliani Blu-ray edition, which is an excellent excuse to recommend it pretty much unreservedly. The films are English-friendly; only some extras and the book are in French only.