There’s music that you love, and then there’s music that you can’t disentangle from the rich and complex makeup of your being, I’m going to run through 20 songs, some great and some not so great, that have accrued meaning for me as I’ve grown up and reached some version of adulthood.

May need to be updated relatively soon.

My First Favourite Song

I was introduced to Arcade Fire through my dad through the radio and instantly knew this was one of the most special sounds I’d ever heard. Although it’s not necessarily even my favourite Arcade Fire song…

Sunday night is Hollywood’s biggest night! And this year, literally, because it’s the first time many nominees will have been in a crowded space of any kind for at least a year. But, all potential Covid safety issues aside, it’s a good year for the Academy Awards, with a genuinely above-average selection of nominated films. And here are my customary predictions in the major categories!

Best Picture

Should win: Nomadland

Biggest snub: The Assistant

What Tim Burton began in 1989 ended this week with Zack Snyder’s Justice League. No, I’m not referring to the decision to replace Danny Elfman’s (itself a replacement) score for the 2017 theatrical cut of this film, which featured hints towards his original Batman theme from ’89. Rather the three decades and change of auteurs and quasi-auteurs being handed valuable comic-book IP by studio execs and allowed to apply their style to it is likely no more. Zack Snyder broke that system. And Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the investigation into how he did it.

The tale of how Snyder’s…

Movie music comes in various forms: indulgent orchestral scores, showtunes, and ingenious needle drops of great existing songs, just when you need them, perfectly timed and conveying more feeling than any actors, dialogue or scenery ever could. I’ve listed my 25 favourites from the past 20 years. Let me know what you think….

Call it cult of personality. Call it a sob story. But Zack Snyder has gotten a few million nerds salivating as much over a director’s cut of a 2017 semi-flop, going straight to a premium streaming service, as they have over most theatrical comic-book movies of recent times. Yes, Zack Snyder’s Justice League as it will be officially known is but a week away from release after an almost four-year campaign for this longer, darker, Snyderer cut of the superhero crossover movie to see the light of day. There will be no red carpet premiere. No standard global press tour…

There are few things as wholly combative to the notion that ‘tough guys can’t show their feelings’ than the below video of Vin Diesel, seemingly on the verge of tears, singing Tove Lo’s “Stay High” while footage of his late friend and co-star Paul Walker plays behind him.

It’s as blistering an exhibition of pain as any you’d catch Diesel expressing in a film role, if not significantly more than he ever has. Or most actors would ever be willing to. It helps, in terms of impact upon watching the clip, that Diesel is maybe the last guy in the…

What sort of posters does the typical 11-year old boy have in his bedroom? John Cena? Fortnite? The Avengers cast? While that last one would emerge slightly later in my early adolescence as a socially acceptable passion for a young man au fait with modern popular culture, it was the sparkling visage of Robert Pattinson’s Twilight character that stared deeply into my tired eyes as I fell asleep, on the brink of my tweenage years, from 2008 to 2010.

Edward Cullen was a sex symbol for kids my age like none we had seen previously; the big-screen heroes of the…

Even as a non-American, Inauguration Days are just one of those things you remember. You remember where you were, who you discussed it with, whether you were excited or appalled. And what about the days in between? There are three out of four January 20ths that don’t have any significance. What were you doing on those days? As the Trump era comes to a close and the Biden era begins, I decided to chart my life over the last four January 20ths to see where I’ve been on this date each year since Trump became President…