Tag: reviews

Making you the man of nerve or nerves you are: from hard resilience to soft and fearful retreat. A case study based on Nicholas Boggs (2026) ‘Baldwin: A  Love Story’ and the import he detects in Baldwin’s role as director of ‘Düşenin Dostu’ (‘Friend of the Fallen’ in English), the Turkish version of John Herbert’s ‘Fortune and Men’s Eyes’ in Istanbul.

April 21, 2026

Making you the man of nerve you are: from hard resilience to soft retreat. A case study based on Nicholas Boggs (2026) Baldwin: A  Love Story and the import he detects in Baldwin’s role as director of Düşenin Dostu (Friend of the Fallen in English), the Turkish version with its tellingly moralistic new Turkish title, of … More Making you the man of nerve or nerves you are: from hard resilience to soft and fearful retreat. A case study based on Nicholas Boggs (2026) ‘Baldwin: A  Love Story’ and the import he detects in Baldwin’s role as director of ‘Düşenin Dostu’ (‘Friend of the Fallen’ in English), the Turkish version of John Herbert’s ‘Fortune and Men’s Eyes’ in Istanbul.

I use ‘social media’ to imagine a void in which a mirror placed therein might be a window or vice-versa and wonder why I talk to what I cannot see in it.

April 17, 2026

I have addressed the cogent reasons for me to use social media in a blog on ‘Why I Blog!’, at this link. But following on from all that is difficult, like driving on through dark empty space and pretending that it can be named as ‘social media’ or some other name that hardly fits the … More I use ‘social media’ to imagine a void in which a mirror placed therein might be a window or vice-versa and wonder why I talk to what I cannot see in it.

How do we travel the distance between us? Seeing the film ‘Midwinter Break’.

March 31, 2026

How do we travel the distance between us? Seeing the film Midwinter Break at the new Reel cinema, Bishop Auckland at 1 p.m. on Monday 30th March 2026. Let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge that the key flashback in Midwinter Break is to a moment in which the Northern Irish troubles hit the lives … More How do we travel the distance between us? Seeing the film ‘Midwinter Break’.

Why we look at a ‘two-dimensional’ picture but watch a picture that contains movement.  The possible role of attentional features of vision.

March 13, 2026

Why we look at a ‘two-dimensional’ picture but watch a picture that contains movement.  The possible role of attentional features of vision. It seems entirely innocent to us to talk about ‘watching’ a film, TV or a ‘movie’ but we don’t often distinguish ‘watxhibg’ from a rather passive act of looking at or gazing at … More Why we look at a ‘two-dimensional’ picture but watch a picture that contains movement.  The possible role of attentional features of vision.

The last thing you learned OUGHT always to be to distrust the learning that refuses to be open to change. Some thoughts about Kirill Serebrennikov’s film ‘The Student’.

March 1, 2026

The last thing you learned OUGHT always to be to distrust the learning that refuses to be open to change. Some thoughts about Kirill Serebrennikov’s film The Student. What if you discovered that every truth you will; ever need, sufficient to contest any other truth, except its own contradictions from the same source, was in … More The last thing you learned OUGHT always to be to distrust the learning that refuses to be open to change. Some thoughts about Kirill Serebrennikov’s film ‘The Student’.

A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects.

February 10, 2026

A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects. For a long time, literary critics have insisted that to see elements of the biographical in the … More A week of Hamlets: [1] To start, there is a tendency to see Shakespeare’s character Hamlet as a part nightmare dream version of one’s autobiography. Riz Ahmed has won the prize for the finest version of such projects.

‘The History of Sound’: the silenced noise of the non-performative queer story.

January 25, 2026

I saw the new Oliver Hermanus film today, The History of Sound, with Geoff and dear friend Catherine. Before going I had made the terrible mistake of seeing some of the reviews of the film, all it seems by people hardly equipped to speak of film as art, for this is precisely what this film … More ‘The History of Sound’: the silenced noise of the non-performative queer story.

‘without transformation / Men become wolves on any slight occasion’. This blog takes as its starting point, Jacob Kerr (2025) ‘The Wolf of Whindale’, London, Serpent’s Tail.

January 15, 2026

‘without transformation / Men become wolves on any slight occasion’. This blog takes as its starting point, Jacob Kerr (2025) The Wolf of Whindale, London. Is it conceivable that, asked to choose an animal you like, you would choose one you consider yourself to be like. There is no certain link or even line of … More ‘without transformation / Men become wolves on any slight occasion’. This blog takes as its starting point, Jacob Kerr (2025) ‘The Wolf of Whindale’, London, Serpent’s Tail.

Uninventing the myth of Shakespeare: seeing the film of Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’.

January 9, 2026

Uninventing the myth of Shakespeare: seeing the film of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. There is a real issue of ontology involved in this question – for it raises the question not only of what to choose but what, being ‘uninvented’ that something might be, if indeed it could be anything at all, for to uninvent ‘it’ … More Uninventing the myth of Shakespeare: seeing the film of Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’.

That place is in the eyes and is the creation of the cognitive-affective machinery we all possess. It can even be simulated as if we were there in a fine performance, consciously enacted.

December 2, 2025

That place is in the eyes and is the creation of the cognitive-affective machinery we all possess. It can even be simulated as if we were there in a fine performance, consciously enacted. We saw a fine multi-award winning film last night: Since The Last Time We Met, by Matìas de Leis Correa, a brilliant … More That place is in the eyes and is the creation of the cognitive-affective machinery we all possess. It can even be simulated as if we were there in a fine performance, consciously enacted.

Seeing the Gary Clarke Company embody the way that history in which my husband and me were involved flashes before our eyes – intense pleasure, pain and the value of contemplating past darkness in times moving apace to times of potentially greater darkness.

September 17, 2025

Seeing the Gary Clarke Company embody the way that history in which my husband and me were involved flashes before our eyes – intense pleasure, pain and the value of contemplating past darkness in times moving apace to times of potentially greater darkness. The publicity told us that ‘Detention is a powerful new dance theatre … More Seeing the Gary Clarke Company embody the way that history in which my husband and me were involved flashes before our eyes – intense pleasure, pain and the value of contemplating past darkness in times moving apace to times of potentially greater darkness.

This is a blog in which I prepare to see Lila Raicek’s ‘My Master Builder’ on Tuesday 8th July at Wyndham’s Theatre, London.

July 2, 2025

How should we view the fall of a great man in a post-patriarchal age? A blog on preparing to see Lila Raicek’s ‘My Master Builder‘ on Tuesday 8th July at Wyndham’s Theatre, London. I consider some ways in which her play re-sees what Raicek calls Henrik Ibsen’s ‘autobiographical play’, ‘The Master Builder’ [‘Bigmester Solness’]. My … More This is a blog in which I prepare to see Lila Raicek’s ‘My Master Builder’ on Tuesday 8th July at Wyndham’s Theatre, London.