What's On? 16/02/17 I am desperate for a big, loud, mindless film this weekend. I look at the great five-star movies on release, Moonlight and Manchester By the Sea , and I nod my head approvingly. I may even enter the cinema and at the last second take the moral high ground and buy a ticket. Or I might buy a ticket for John Wick 2 instead. I misse...
11/02/17, Single on Valentine's Day Christmas is the best holiday. I have cycles of memories of family and goodwill and all the tinsel and baubles and carols; cards showing snow-covered landscapes that I could dream myself into. TV before digitalization, when four channels vied for the most Chrismassy presentation of 'what's on this Christmas!' I g...
05/02/17, My Personal Trial Note: this post was originally intended as a review of an opera I went to watch at the King's Theatre the previous night, 'Kafka's The Trial' adapted by Philip Glass. But given how the evening ultimately made me feel, I think it works better as a diary posting. The trial. It certainly was, in terms of trying to find disa...
What's On? 02/02/17 There are brilliant films that pass you by, and then when it's time, when your calendar opens like clouds unveiling sunshine, the cinema has nothing for you. Or is this just being fussy? Manchester By The Sea remains there, it still looks moving and well-acted (about a loser adopting his dead brother's son), and L...
31/01/17, Trainspotting 2 (T2) at the Cameo cinema On entering a full Cameo cinema with a tight, rather ugly hat on (£5 from Scottish Co-Op), I asked the doorman if I could go through to the screens and use the bathroom. 'Certainly,' he said, 'the gents' are just over there.' I was wearing a skirt, I wasn't tomboyish or androgynous in my look (or n...
29/01/17: Another three months of life without testosterone This weekend's diary post isn't easy; it's still January, I'm continuing to cough from my bubonic-plague-cough of a few weeks ago, and my sciatica is back, making me get up from library chairs like I have toiletary issues. I'm now wondering if I should delete that last crude sentence, it's...
27/01/17, Ghost in the Shell (1995) It came and went in a single night on special release; I was lucky to catch even that. Having turned up casually at the Cameo asking for a ticket for Ghost in the Shell , I was told it had sold out days before. I stayed in the lobby until the trailers were finished and with a few seats untaken, the staff let me j...
What's On? 26/01/17 I'm in Edinburgh and it's only the day after Burns Night, so I have to mention T2 (Trainspotting 2) , which is showing this weekend at the Cameo and probably everywhere in Edinburgh. Actually, I'd like to mention the smoke-machine-laden, shiny and spot-light lit premiere for T2 at Fountainpark last week, because I really didn't ...
22/01/17 My Grail Story: Is Life Really Over After 25? My beloved magazine lay there yesterday on the sofa, open at a certain page and left forgotten. I was alone and needed something to read; I picked it up. Empire magazine's expose on the coming of Trainspotting 2 ('T2' for short). Being based in Edinburgh, I'm aware of the film's extra importanc...
20/01/17, Silence Having decided not to watch Split due to its depiction of a cross-dressing male psychopath, and the resulting feelings of discomfort this would give me in a cinema, I went instead for Martin Scorsese's Silence . This had the kind of existential quest narrative in a far-away land that I could watch in detachment. Not being religiou...
What's On? 19/01/17 Nothing fills me with foreboding like the release of a film with a cross-dressing male. My experience is they're usually psychopaths (literally: Psycho , 1960) or some similarly unhinged murderer, like in Dressed to Kill (1980) or Silence of the Lambs (1991). No less uncomfortable are the films that play it for laughs (Some Like...
16/01/17, Underworld: Blood Wars I'm not sure what was more comforting last night in Cineworld , the film or the audience, who all seemed to be in their thirties and forties. The Underworld series has created a particular following, and for good or ill, I am part of it. I'll start with the film's design. It has better settings than the previous ent...
What's On? 14/01/17 I fell in love with Underworld when it came out in 2003. What a great time in my life, that was, back in Szczecin in Poland. I had a really nice girlfriend, believe it or not, an American of shiny reddish hair and angelic skin who was passionate about directing cinema. We produced a school play, and watched great films together ...
14/01/17: Back From the Void Have you ever had an illness that left you damaged? I'm returning from one now, my eating and sleeping habits a distortion of the old, normal me. I went through a week of insomnia, overdoses of paracetamol and accompanying hallucinations. Of walks back home from University that felt so bad, so sickly that you counted ev...
07/01/17: New Year Message I had things to share about my Christmas, but it can wait. I'm ill today and don't know when it started, this dry cough. Last night I couldn't sleep, I was cold, it was so cold in my Edinburgh apartment. Under the covers I shook and was unable to stop shaking with cold, despite adding socks halfway through my restless nig...
05/01/17, Passengers I enjoy films that present moral dilemmas; no matter how good or bad the film is, you leave the cinema with a 'what-would-I-have-done' contemplation. Batman Dark Knight involves one such point of reflection, a test set up by The Joker to play two ships of passengers against one another with exploding devices and a whole lot of ...
23/12/16: Christmas message I'm going away to a place without the Internet for a while. I won't write over Christmas, will be back in early January. This is my chance just to give everyone a season's greetings. And to say a few things, just some reflections. I guess it's been quite a tumultuous year, globally, I don't think I need to explain why. O...
21/12/16, Star Wars: Rogue One (the film The Return of the Jedi should have been) It didn't start promisingly, a lot of jumping around from planet to planet, scene to scene, trying to establish different characters in different situations. The cast is good, not all are well-known (a strength), but plenty of charisma and people you can empathise wit...
With my debut novel going out in a few hours on Amazon Kindle, I've included a blurb to describe it on the Amazon site. So that anyone visiting this site wonders what the story's about, here is the blurb: 'You're a hit man who doesn't hit much, and isn't much of a man, by your own estimation. Then one day you and your companions pursue a girl...
My debut novel: Utopia in Danzig (20.12.16) It was eight years in the making, the novel where I learned how to write, by writing, and re-writing, and it's about to be available on Amazon Kindle in the next few hours. You may have lots of questions; I'm going to try and anticipate some of them here, and hope my answers satisfy. Why are you writ...
