Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

 Warfare I got a last minute ticket for a preview of the new A24 film Warfare with a short Q&A with the director Alex Garland and a couple of the cast (Kit Connor and Cosmo Jarvis)  It was in the BFI IMAX which is probably the best way to see this immersive experience.  Garland's previous film, Civil War took a neutral view  of a fictional civil war in America.  It was graphic and grim, a sort of updated Apocalypse Now about war being pointless and hellish, but he got some criticism about not taking a moral stance.  This film takes it further in many ways, although it is about a real mission that went wrong in Iraq in 2006.  The film tries to remove any editorialising or imposition of narrative structure or morality, instead just letting it play out in real time over 90 minutes.  Based on the accounts of the US Navy Seals who were there, there is no hero, back story or character development; in fact it is often difficult to tell the men apa...

Another year another season as this small and perfectly formed but big-hearted love story continued on the journey based on Alice Oseman's webcomics.  One of the great strengths of the webcomic and the TV series is that there is so much here apart from the central love story, all woven in and never feeling gratuiously squeezed in for the sake of plot.  Having said that, Oseman, who writes the series too, does talk about the need for a different beat and higher stakes being required in the show, leading to the introduction of new characters and storylines.   The core stays the same though, the story of Nick and Charlie falling in love and navigating their final years in school, and true to the source material to the extent that many of the scenes in the webcomic are lifted straight onto the screen as if by magic.   I have written here and here about the earlier series and for season three there are again multiple story lines, the primary ones being Charlie's...

 I had been talking about another trip to New York, and so when this new production of Romeo and Juliet was announced, it was the perfect excuse.   With Broadway virgins Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler in the leads, Sam Gold, the love him or hate him director at the helm,  and Jack Antonoff, the show off/genius music producer in charge of original score, it could all go spectacularly wrong or be brilliant.  I booked the tickets before anything else, and then realised that meant I was going to have to go back to NYC for the second time in a year.  I usually prefer not to read reviews before seeing any play, but it previewed for a month, and given the amount of Tik-tok excitement it's not surprising that many of the more unusual features were heavily spoilered beforehand. The play is a fresh, young, take on the well known story.  Walking in the theatre foyer, there is loud disco music and flashing lights to set the scene and that continues inside the intima...

I am in love, that giddy sort where you want to tell everyone about your new love, and your heart leaps every time someone mentions them. One of the features of a crush is the need to mention them as often as possible to anyone who will listen. So, I am going to gush - look away if it is too painful.  My new love is Alice Oseman's Heartstopper series. I had read some of the graphic novels and webcomic and thought it was beautifully done, but missed the Netflix series when it first appeared. I've made up for it since.  The TV series is a real gem, a shining jewel which has unfrozen my cynical old heart. There have been a lot of reviews celebrating the inclusivity and importance of authentic casting and the representation of the LGBTQ+ teen experience in this series, and they absolutely are some of the reasons it is so successful but not the only ones.  Using fresh takes on romcom tropes, idealised and pure of heart it may be, but these feel like real 3D teens navigating...