PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The show has not yet officially opened to critics. Dave Harris' Tender is the latest play to deal with a modern crisis of masculinity, although maybe one without quite the same level of toxicity as some of its predecessors. Darren Bennett plays a former adult performer who now leads a trio of male strippers called the Dancing Bears: Exploiting a loophole in New Jersey law, they are to all intents and purposes prostitutes, the mostly-female clientèle being allowed to do a lot…
Results of asking Sci-Bot AI about 'hamiltonian cycles'
The Great Escape (1963)
A leisurely day today. I wasn’t due in town until later in the afternoon, so spent the morning watching the snooker and putting in the final software updates for the escape room. At the library after school, I held the regular Dursley Code Club. A good attendance today with 6, and a few trying out python for the first time. In the evening I went down to the annual Dursley Town Assembly held at the Chantry Centre. This is always a good opportunity to catch up with a few people I know around the…
photo cred: my dadIt’s time for the annual Experimental History Blog Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree! Send me your best unpublished blog post, and if I pick yours, I’ll send you real cash money and tell everybody how great you are.You can see last year’s winners and honorable mentions here. They included: a self-experiment on lactose intolerance, a story about working as a 10-year-old bartender, a takedown of randomized-controlled trials, and an economic explainer of college sports. The…
Hooray, cute LEGO® robot! H.E.R.B.I.E. was introduced to The Fantastic Four comics in 1978, but has enjoyed refreshed popularity in the 2025 Marvel movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps. So much so that in August 2026, LEGO® Super Heroes will release set 76339 H.E.R.B.I.E. Let's take a look at the model and some of the new pieces we've spotted in the images.Continue reading »
Watched: Project Hail Mary 🍿I’ve seen it twice at the cinema and loved it both times.
The cover of Joseph Packer and Ethan Stoneman’s Cypher Culture: Conspiracy, Fandom, and the Messages That Were Not There (LSU Press, 2026) is structured as a classic string board. ▲ Joseph Packer and Ethan Stoneman, Cypher Culture Cypher Culture: Conspiracy, Fandom, and the Messages That Were Not There (LSU Press, 2026), cover
Nuremberg (2025) is not a film I would have chosen to watch had I been
Cars (2006)
I don’t often go to the movie theater these days, but when there’s a new Steven Soderbergh joint, you can bet I’m gonna do my best. I really dug The Christophers, in no small part due to the director’s renewed collaboration with the excellent composer David Holmes, who also scored Soderbergh’s Black Bag, from last year, but prior to that the two hadn’t worked since 2017’s Lucky Logan. Holmes’ second professional film score was Out of Sight, in 1998, and a few years later he famously set the…
Iceman (1984) An arctic surveying team finds the discovery of the century, a perfectly preserved Neanderthal (John Lone) in an ice cave. Back at the base, a group of doctors somehow manage to revive the frozen caveman. Now the big question becomes what to do with him. Dr. Stanley Shephard (Timothy Hutton) seems to be the only member of the research team with an unwavering moral compass, befriending the caveman, whom he calls Charlie. Separated by his family and comrades by tens of thousands of…
Having a difficult movie month here. Seijun Suzuki and The Cannibals were the best movies I’ve watched lately, but this one was the smartest decision. How do you follow up those, plus some major docs, a Jerry Lewis, the Arbuckles, the end of the Szulkin apocalypse series, and my big Cinema Scope roundup? With some brilliant late Cohen nonsense, of course. Gang: Janine Turner (Northern Exposure, Cliffhanger) collapses while large-faced Eric Roberts is harassing her. But Eric is no casual…
The first recording today starts with the end of Film File. Then it’s a repeat of Space 1999 – Dorzak. Media Centre Description: Dorzak: The alien craft requesting emergency assistance turns out to be a prison transport ship carrying Dorzak to a life sentence on an asteroid. Recorded from ITV4 on Tuesday 29th December 2009 09:28 The recording ends with the start of The Champions. The next recording is another repeat of Space 1999 – Devil’s Planet. Media Centre Description: Devil’s Planet:…
In 1987 a middle-aged guy loves to spend time on the computer. He and his dog watch A Nightmare On Elm Street on broadcast television then “wake up” inside a customized fantasy videogame, rescuing a guy with a TV head and traveling by map. Once the movie gets into game mode, I flashed back to Hundreds of Beavers – which was more ambitious but had totally different manic vibes to this movie’s good-natured dreamscape.
Two centuries after her death, a powerful human/alien hybrid clone of Ellen Ripley aids a crew of space pirates in stopping the aliens from reaching Earth. A good “reboot” of the Alien franchise, moving the story 200 years forwards, with clone-Ripley being more badass and indestructible. With a great ensemble, with Ron Perlman, Winona Ryder, Gary Dourdan, Dominique Pinon, Raymond Cruz, among others, under the direction of the Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The City of Lost Children, Amelie, Big Bug), this…
The only thing I know about the 1960 Tony-nominated musical Once Upon a Mattress is that it was Carol Burnett's Broadway debut. I've never seen a production of it... until last weekend at Lakeshore Players Theatre. It's a weird and wacky show for sure, but I found it to be a lot of fun. And maybe also ahead of its time in its depiction of a princess who isn't the typically demure and obedient type, but rather one who is brash and strong and decidedly unladylike. This production leans into the…
Pin a fresh sprig of celery to your lapel, it’s time to check in with the Fifth Doctor’s audio adventures again! The Key 2 Time concept might have been a bit weak in its own right, but it did pioneer the “mini-season” approach Big Finish would take with their monthly range in one form or another until it came to an end. No weird one-off companions that Big Finish would love to turn into a spin-off series here – we’re going to be focused on televised companion line-ups, though not always in the…
When I saw the trailer last year, I thought that might be one of those shows that I could either love or hate. Turns out, I absolutely loved season one of Pluribus! The show starts with astronomers discovering a strong radio signal originating hundreds of light-years away. After lots of guessing and experimenting, it turns out to be an RNA sequence. That got injected into mice, a mouse bites a researcher, and so a mysterious infection starts to spread. A bit later, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn),…
The Machine continues to provide intelligence to both the United States government to deal with large-scale threats to national security, and to its creator, Harold Finch, to deal with crimes that are "irrelevant" on the large scale but hugely important on the individual. But, to Finch's distress, the Machine has also chosen a new operative, the hacker of dubious morality known as Root. As Root operates as the Machine's free-roaming agent of chaos, Finch's police allies are consumed by the…
“Untitled” (Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein’s Grave, Paris), 1992, ed. 1/4+1AP plus some other prints now considered non-work, but which are conceptually very fecund, this one sold at Christie’s in 2005 One of the great surprises in the exhibition catalogue for Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Always To Return)—which I brought up to curators Charlotte Ickes and Josh T. Franco in our conversation yesterday—is the essay by Joshua Chambers-Letson about Felix’s 1992 photo of flowers, “Untitled” (Alice B.…
Continuing an occasional series about artworks in feature films. This is a minor entry but a worthwhile one if only to draw some attention to an unusual fantasy film by Albert Lewin, an equally unusual director. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman was made in 1951, a British film with an American star (Ava Gardner) and a Spanish setting. Gardner plays Pandora Reynolds, an American nightclub singer living in the coastal town of Esperanza where she’s the centre of attention for the small colony of…
Classic string maps appear in Demon Witch Child (dir. Amando de Ossorio, 1974). ▲ Demon Witch Child (dir. Amando de Ossorio, 1974) ▲ Demon Witch Child (dir. Amando de Ossorio, 1974) ▲ Demon Witch Child (dir. Amando de Ossorio, 1974)
Went to the cinema for our anniversary. The movie was good, but the pace was a bit slower for my taste.
The necessity of a liberal arts background for STEM is made apparent nowhere moreso than AI research. Because clearly they have not understood Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. You know, the one subtitled “The Modern Prometheus”? It’s not “horror” in the modern sense. It’s horror in the sense of psychological dread, the unexamined consequences of one’s actions, and a creator’s responsibility toward the created. Being conscious and aware is a mixed blessing at best. The joke in Rick and Morty’s…
I watched Project Hail Mary at the cinema for a second time today, this time I was being a Dad to my boys. It was just as much fun a second time around.
PBS Masterpiece brings a reimagined version of John Galsworthy’s ‘Forsyte’ novels novels from the U.K.
🍿 Reflections on Jurassic Park: Ian Malcolm is gross and he has all the best lines. That shot of the T-rex with the banner falling is so iconic. (Forgive me the spoiler.) If you’ve been to Universal’s Jurassic Park area, this whole thing feels much more real because they did such a great job.
