patrick

that's an actual sedated tiger, truly they do not make em like this anymore bsky.app/profile/sean...

A shot from Manhunter of two people standing on a jetty before an outrageously good-looking sunrise bathes the scene in all tones between yellow orange and blue.

Gentle reminder that whatever you think of the BBC you can watch Manhunter on iPlayer right now and it is still one of the best-looking films ever made.

At Béthune, I saw the ghost of a man named Private Challoner, who had been at Lancaster with me, and again in 'F' Company at Wrexham. When he went out with a draft to join the First Battalion, he shook my hand and said: 'I'll meet you again in France, sir.' In June he passed by our 'C' Company billet, where we were just having a special dinner to celebrate our safe return from Cuinchy - new potatoes, fish, green peas, asparagus, mutton chops, strawberries and cream, and three bottles of Pommard. Private Challoner looked in at the window, saluted, and passed on. I could not mistake him, or the cap-badge he wore; yet no Royal Welch battalion was billeted within miles of Béthune at the time. I jumped up, looked out of the window, and saw nothing except a fag-end smoking on the pavement. Challoner had been killed at Festubert in May.

Robert Graves recalls seeing a ghost during the Great War

Mr. Inbetween: It’s Time to Appreciate the Genius of This Very Australian Noir I recently chaired a panel in which several American crime writers discussed their most memorable discoveries in terms of noir television and film during the various COVID lockdowns we have all end…

If there’s any of you who profess to be into noir and have not yet seen MR INBETWEEN, you need to fix that asap. If you need further convincing, my @crimereads.bsky.social piece from a few years ago
#noirvember

crimereads.com/mr-inbetween/

A side effect of Celebrity Traitors UK is I've only just learned that the comedian Alan Carr is *not* also the author of a vastly successful book about how to stop smoking (that was Allen Carr). I'd always filed that one under "weird but plausible".

Only just realised at the age of 39 that squash and Hi Juice are actually very different drinks (although this may be because squash is ruined now, because of woke). Waitrose grapefruit Hi Juice is exceptional.

What if all Marvel stuff is actually like this, and I've been ignorant because I have never watched any of it.

It's heartening somehow to be reminded that you could live your life exactly like a Bethesda open world RPG.

Ministerial responsibility aside, there's a part of me which thinks that the middle managers at HMRC and the Home Office who signed off on this nonsense (provide a letter from your school to prove you're still there!!) should have their names in the paper too. It's a mendacious, miserable business.

Woman turned away from UK-Italy flight due to ill child has benefit stopped Family denied entry at gate after one of their children had epileptic seizure – but HMRC said she took a one-way trip

At a loss for how to describe the stupidity of these stories - www.theguardian.com/society/2025... - of all the things HMRC could be doing, why are they using incomplete flight booking data to stop people's child benefit? & then doubling down when caught out? who could have thought this would work?

oh and my obligatory "as a parent..." reaction: felt absolutely dreadful! exactly what you'd want, really.

I was a little surprised to see how much it very consciously owed to Blade Runner - there's quite a bit of Rutger Hauer in Jacob Elordi's (really excellent) performance - but there's also one other very direct reference, maybe missable to most, which I won't spoil...

Went to see the new GDT Frankenstein. Really liked it, & it's exactly the kind of film you'd think he'd make: emotive & sympathetic, authentic but not slavish; outrageously detailed production design & costumery; Oscar Isaac doing a peculiar Euraccent; almost literal wheelbarrows of gore. Great fun.

Storybook Love

It occurred to me that it was only about ten years between Willy DeVille being in a scruffy little house band at CBGBs to winning an Oscar nomination for a song in The Princess Bride. I just think that's neat. spotify.link/oY7VgOpWNXb

Cat Changing The Clock Changing The Time GIF ALT: Cat Changing The Clock Changing The Time GIF

Always a sad time of year when we lose an hour! Don't forget to put your clocks forward tonight team.

Screenshot from The Invincible: from a first person perspective, the player as an astronaut is looking down at a sort of transparent photostat image of a school of large fish on an alien planet.

Screenshot from The Invincible: a spectacular view of a yellow rocky sandy beach on an alien planet leading down towards an open ocean, under a turquoise sky; in the distance a planet with Saturn-like rings hovers over everything.

Screenshot from The Invincible: a spectacular construction of intricate metalwork

Played a bit of The Invincible, a game which caught my attention for being a direct adaptation of a 1964 novel by Stanislaw Lem. Slow, semi-engrossing, quite technical, often a little bit dull - feels exactly like reading hard sf at times. It's also often very beautiful.

the Bluesky android app is inexplicably not working for me today - endless beachballing even after clearing data, reinstalling - so the only way I can get on here is by Going On My Computer. And for tedious reasons the only Computer I have access to right now is a 2009 iMac. nice but also...annoying

ha I lived in brentford for many years. they have added some nicer stuff since I moved a few miles up the road but La Rosetta should still be dependable for dinner, I reckon. or just potter up the river to strand on the green etc.

Bring Me The Disco King (Loner Mix) [feat. Maynard James Keenan and John Frusciante] [Underworld: Music from the Motion Picture] - 2025 Remaster

today's gloomy Monday morning brought to you by one of my favourite Bowie off-cuts; seems inconceivable now that this was originally only available on the soundtrack to early 2000s cult goth movie Underworld spotify.link/6aSO90jlCXb

key Dad test: how many words into Plaistow Patricia by the Blockheads can you get before frantically mashing the skip button when spotify starts playing it in the car with the kids

I mean, if ever a bluff needed to be called.

a little sad he's clearly not gonna do any more seasons, but the last episode has the finest air of finality about it in a way that's kind of rare these days.

I finished Mr Inbetween. At the risk of Boss Baby tweet vibes, probably the best Australian TV show I've ever seen; also the only show I can think of that was entirely written by the lead, who has acted in hardly anything else before or since? Remarkable.

What a curious device this is: a handheld gaming PC that both is and isn't an Xbox console. I guess if it was this or a new gaming-capable laptop, it seems plausible? (Also I enjoy that ROG stands for Republic Of Gamers, one of the most embarrassing naming decisions of all time.)

Pale Fire (first draft)

btw when Bob is yelling on the phone and the guy makes a smart-ass comment about the unreality of time and Bob says something like "I can tell you don't have kids" - that's the whole film, right there.

One Battle After Another: a bit of totally transporting technical mastery that made 2.5 hours fly by & by the end I emerged blinking and confused to discover that I was no longer in southern california. Maybe also PTA's most straightforward heartstring-puller.

It's hard to straightforwardly recommend because it's so (for want of a better word) problematic. But it is kind of fascinating.

I watched Marnie (the Hitchcock film). It is basically second rate - dated, disquieting, objectionable in various ways - but it has a strange uncomfortable gravity. Also a clutch of the most penetrating imagery in all his stuff.