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The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

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A short time-lapse of crowds outside the National Gallery in London earlier this afternoon.

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Delighted with my still-fresh Elm Street ink by the wonderful @HannahxCalavera

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Some video here of last night’s superb Faith No More gig in London. Everything about the night just worked- great venue, a warm, friendly crowd and a brilliant band at the top of their game. Faith No More were the first major band I ever saw some twenty years ago, and seeing them again with adult eyes gave the night a pleasing kind of symmetry. Life is all about change and uncertainty, so constants like music and movies anchor me and give me perspective.

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At the Rik Mayall bench in London.

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Some pics from a trip to Blenheim Palace in Oxford.

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Finally got myself a frame for my Robert Englund autograph.

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Some pics here from a recent visit to the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. Five minutes down the road there was a man barking psalms into a megaphone and thrusting Christian tracts into the hands of passers-by. Fact and fiction, so near and yet so far apart.

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"Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them- it gets up and kills. The people it kills GET UP AND KILL"

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With one colossal, heartbreaking chorus Weezer have atoned for years of mediocrity. Self-referential as ever, this song is as life-affirming and poignant as a drink poured on the ground for an absent comrade.

I suppose the upside of Weezer’s inconsistency is that it’s a genuine thrill when they knock it out of the park. This song (in fact, the whole of their new album) is exactly that- a genuine thrill.

"This is a toast to what you did And all that you were fighting for”

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This game is fucking terrifying!

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Something small and silly and simple but we just went outside and put a Doctor Who sticker on my car. I've been letting him stay up to see it on Saturdays, and he watches it with me on the sofa, still warm from his bath.

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Some pics here of a recent trip to Caldey Island, just off the coast of Tenby in South Wales. We caught the last of the September sunshine- the ferry ride was beautiful and the island serene. A lovely day.

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Super

Coming as it did in the same year as Kick-Ass, Super got a rough ride at the time from a mainstream press unable to handle its jarring, thoroughly unpleasant vibe. For all its anarchic four-letter pretentions, Kick-Ass feels utterly pedestrian when viewed next to the wild tonal shifts, nihilism and gore of James Gunn's film. It gives me no end of pleasure that Gunn is about to become a mainstream darling with Guardians of the Galaxy- let's hope he still feels compelled to sicken and confuse after the Marvel millions have cleared in his account.

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People always point to the first minutes of Up as an example of how brilliantly Pixar can blindside an audience, but it’s the opening of Finding Nemo which shows us how dark they’re really prepared to go.

Marlin and Coral are a beautifully written couple, her the long-suffering pragmatist balancing his goofy, loveable energy. They explore their new home and look to the future with their unhatched brace of children. They discuss names, they ponder which of them the children will warm to. They bicker, they flirt. They are clearly in love.

The believability of their relationship makes the entrance of the barracuda all the more chilling. Marlin’s sentence tails off and there’s an ice-cold beat of silence as Coral sees the barracuda watching them- that silence is all we need to understand what the barracuda’s presence means to the dreams the couple were discussing just seconds ago. There’s a wonderful, horrific second where we see Coral struggle with whether or not to attempt to protect her eggs at the expense of her own life- Marlin implores her not to, enough so that we understand how desperately he needs her to be safe. He’s knocked unconscious, long enough for his wife and all but one of his children to be slaughtered in the home that moments ago was filled with love and hope.

This tragedy informs the rest of the movie- Nemo’s “lucky fin” and his father’s new-found neuroses are both gifts from the barracuda. Much like Carl’s misanthropy in Up, Pixar’s tragedies have far-reaching implications for their characters, leaving them changed in ways which end up defining them.

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"Angry Molesting Tree" for the all-time win.