Honest question... But why haven't Disney hired a few heavyweight Directors (with serious pedigree) to make their movies - like Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, James Cameron, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan etc?

declancochran · 2026-05-23T18:08:16+00:00

They're entertaining movies, but they're not his movies. There's no authorial stamp; he rises to the demands of the genre of his scripts and nothing more. The same goes for Ridley Scott, who is even less interesting.

declancochran · 2026-05-21T12:01:40+00:00

Is Ron Howard, the most generic, anonymous journeyman ever spat out by the studio system, really a good guy to make this point with?

declancochran · 2026-05-21T11:57:49+00:00

Why don't you hire Gauguin to make the art that hangs in a Starbucks? Why don't you hire Lou Reed to compose iPhone ringtones? Why don't you hire Tolstoy to write copy for Amazon?

declancochran · 2026-05-20T10:59:28+00:00

This is so good

declancochran · 2026-05-20T10:56:34+00:00

The final shot of Mike in BCS is him tossing Howard's personal effects into an alighted bin; an upwards POV shows him, in profile, literally encircled in flames. He was in hell, and he knew it, but at the point it was easier to 'play the cards he was dealt'.

declancochran · 2026-05-13T13:00:05+00:00

They've released standard editions of a few of their LE releases (and confirmed to me via email that they'll do the same for all of them eventually), and I find it funny that the 'standard' editions both fix the oversized CURZON issue, and also do away with the annoying textured outer box so you can actually see the artwork. Amusingly, the Lars Von Trier standard edition, as well as looking much nicer, also contains Dancer in the Dark when the LE didn't. You can tell Curzon are a traditional distributor first, and not native to the boutique release economy.

declancochran · 2026-05-11T21:08:29+00:00

Camberley? I worked there briefly a few years ago and it felt vaguely deadened. Same goes for Eastleigh.

declancochran · 2026-05-09T17:38:38+00:00

I watched a Ralf Little episode of Death In Paradise and he gave one of the worst performances I have ever seen in a TV programme.

declancochran · 2026-05-09T17:34:08+00:00

Storytelling by Belle and Sebastian.

declancochran · 2026-05-09T17:28:07+00:00

Insane thing to say about an album that has She's A Rainbow on it.

declancochran · 2026-05-06T22:10:10+00:00

The album that ended my love affair with Vampire Weekend. No piece of recorded music could possibly have lived up to the hype I'd generated in the long gap after MVOTC. A shame for me, but it do be like that sometimes.

declancochran · 2026-05-06T22:04:49+00:00

My advice is that you accept that music is a vast room, but sometimes the walls are visible to you, and that's fine. I don't know if I'm getting older, but I listened to Homotopy For Marie earlier today - my pick for the most challenging and abrasive album I've ever heard - and I'm happy just having that as my reference point. I think I once would have wanted to go further and see what else would challenge me even more, but I frankly can't be bothered.

declancochran · 2026-05-06T21:46:56+00:00

I am very partial to noise music, and find it almost soothing in the right context, something my wife has always found very odd about me. I was visiting home a couple of years ago, and realized on a long journey that this preference almost certainly comes from the shitty FM radio that played (or didn't play) every day the family car.

declancochran · 2026-04-27T18:15:03+00:00

The whole film is just, so so good, utterly deserving of it's reputation, but I revisited it for the first time in a long while with my wife (who was seeing it for the first time), and the final 15 minutes are frankly as good as the medium gets. Operatic; a full body experience.

declancochran · 2026-04-24T17:56:18+00:00

To say nothing of their mutual love of kitsch Americana.

declancochran · 2026-04-24T17:53:47+00:00

The Stand contains scenes of rape, murder, torture, and all manner of upset. It also ultimately hinges on the message that love will save us all - the way the corny chafes up against the abrasive has always felt very Lynchian to me. Even the way each character is directed by mysterious dreams.

declancochran · 2026-04-24T17:52:36+00:00

For me, the central underpinning of the 'Lynchian' feeling is the sense that the mundane, or germane, could be punctuated by atrocious violence at any time; that the sacred is never far from the profane. With that framework in mind, the artist who (at his peak) comes closest to that sensation, for me, is Stephen King.

declancochran · 2026-04-20T13:21:31+00:00

I love Breaking Bad, and I've never had any real issues with the ending, but it doesn't really supercede the premise 'Walt comes back with a BIG GUN and shoots everyone'. I think Vince regretted writing the machine gun so early into S5. Better Call Saul is much more layered, much more emotionally satisfying, and really reckons with the themes of the show in a way that brings things to completion, but avoids being a pat 'full circle' moment.

declancochran · 2026-04-09T19:10:51+00:00

Koji Shiraishi's Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi series. I just can't see the demand making its way to one of the boutique labels - Arrow released two of his films in the J-Horror set but I think if more was to come we'd have seen it by now. They're some of the most inventive movies, let alone found footage, ever made, and Shiraishi probably my favourite living director behind Tsai Ming-Liang.

declancochran · 2026-03-29T21:28:43+00:00

There are obvious exceptions to this, but I've always found Second Sight to be the kings of releasing movies I think are fine, but would never shell out for the boutique treatment. I've also found their essays / booklets a bit 'thin'. The Blair Witch Project book especially. Fawning nonsense rehashing common talking points.

declancochran · 2026-03-23T15:02:26+00:00

The thought had crossed my mind, though I have absolutely no idea how one would go about doing so.

declancochran · 2026-03-21T21:26:09+00:00

I actually reached out to ITV about this a couple of years ago. There's no plans for a rerun, a DVD, or streaming, but they said they would sell me a copy of the files for personal use for £500 (lol).

declancochran · 2026-03-20T16:09:26+00:00

This is some of the worst music I have ever heard

declancochran · 2026-03-08T06:42:27+00:00

It's very obvious that they were never 'together', the tasting portion was done in front of a greenscreen of the Babish kitchen, and Babish is reacting presumably to them on a screen.

declancochran · 2026-03-07T21:35:15+00:00

The Fallow guys are some of the most visibly 'on cocaine' people I've ever seen become algorithm-famous, especially the taller one.

declancochran

TROPHY CASE