celticman's blog

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowman-Michael-Fassbender/dp/B076B8B7WV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=F1X4A7U9WGE3&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WJNn2zh9V6W1SdedKlH3zw.4bmtaqlSLVGsIzX7tcNDdo8_MX0AYgumz_qblIA8oZQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+snowman+michael+fassbender&qid=1716581776&s=instant-video&sprefix=the+snowman%2Cinstant-video%2C81&sr=1-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snowman_(2017_film) I was a big fan of Wallander on BBC4. I watched every...

When I was a kid, late sixties and early seventies, most of us watched the same programmes on telly . Jackanory when we were younger. Then Blue Peter . These were the kind of programmes parents would have approved. Educational and entertainment. It was part of the remit of BBC to provide for both. STV, later ITV, had Magpie . It tried to mimic Blue Peter , with the catchy tag: ‘Why Don’t You Go Outside and Do Something Far More Interesting...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carter Angela Carter died at the relatively young age of 51 in 1992. I’ve been digging up her legacy. I started with Night at the Circus . Life is wonderful and horrific. And if you scratch the surface, magic happens. Heroes are heroines. As they are in the Bloody Chamber. I didn’t find out until later it was meant to be a retelling of The Bluebeard Story. Carter’s heroines are innocents abroad, crossing the...

Recently, I said to Teresa that I had to keep correcting myself. It was no longer Jimmy and Teresa—Jimmy had died at the end of June 2023—it was just Teresa. A flicker of a smile, but she was quick to correct me. ‘It’ll always be Jimmy and Teresa,’ she said. ‘Always.’ I guess it is again. She’s buoyed herself up during his long illness. In and out of the chemists. Up and down Singers Road carrying messages. She’d carried him to the end. With...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001ys7b/dopesick?seriesId=m001ys7c I already knew the story of the Sackler family, having read and reviewed Patrick Reeden Keefe (2021) Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family. https://odonnellgrunting.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/patrick-radden-keefe-2021-empire-of-pain-the-secret-history-of-the-sackler-dynasty/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family Greed has consequences. This eight-...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001pvtv/the-power-of-the-dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Dog_(film) Jane Campion is a Hollywood name. She might not have the leverage of say Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but mostly, when she wants to make a movie, producers find the finance and it gets made. The Power of the Dog won many plaudits on its release. I found it watchable. The sets were fabulous and everything looked and...

Angel Carter’s Nights at the Circus explodes on the page in the form of six-foot-two, eyes of blue, fourteen stone Fevvers, a feminist icon, who has wings and really can fly. Or so it seems, she’s an aerialiste that needs no high wire. The high-flying star of Colonel Kearney’s circus—a fool and his money are easily parted; never give a mug a break—courted by Royalty, The Prince of Wales, painted by Toulouse Lautrec. She’s the toast of Paris, of...

My mother’s maiden name was Connolly. As a child, she was sent ‘home’ to Ireland, during the Second World War, with her sister (my Auntie Phyllis) to safeguard them from German bombs and to make their Roman Catholic faith bombproof. She didn’t talk about it, certainly not to me, but there were whispers of predatory paedophilic attempts. And as outcast Irish, they were treated like cow shit. My Auntie Phyllis and my mum had a lifelong-bond based...

I’d picked this book up and put it down several times. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild was nearer Lost than Found. I got it was some kind of travel journal. Cheryl Strayed had walked part of the Pacific Crest Trail that stretches from the Mexican border in California to the Canadian border and goes through a lot of places I’ve little or no knowledge but might be vaguely interested in because of the naturalist John Muir (a fellow Scot and honorary American...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001lspj/storyville-blue-bag-life Blue Bag Life won the audience award at the 2022 London International Film Festival. As any artist or writer knows, “Who are you?” or “What are you?” can mean different things. We are all different people. Lisa Selby’s passion is filmmaking. She turned the camera on herself and documented her fractured life. Not everything made the cut, but there’s a raw honesty that’s...