WATCHING, READING AND LISTENING TO

THE WRITER:

WATCHING: Two rubbish 80s films in the shape of Robert Altman's Popeye and Police Academy 2. Yeah, not even the original, the second one! Of course, it's rubbish, but it still has the fella who can make the sound effects with his mouth and I could watch him in anything. Meanwhile, Popeye is surprisingly entertaining in an insane kinda way. Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall give impressively physical performances and Altman directs the whole thing with a madcap swagger that makes the film an entirely watchable flop.

LISTENING TO: Generation Terrorists, Manic Street Preachers. Having not listened to the Manics’ 1992 debut since I was about 17, I was surprised to hear that it still stands up - though only just. Little Baby Nothing is still cringe-inducing cheesy (if only they’d been given clearance for Kylie like they wanted!), while the Damn Dog cover and remix of Repeat add nothing. Still, with Motorcycle Emptiness, You Love Us and Condemned To Rock and Roll it can’t really fail.

READING: Warlord of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I do love a good bit of pulpy science-fiction and you can't get any better than Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series. Written in 1918, this third entry displays massive imagination and attention to detail. Sadly, that doesn’t stretch to character development, with our hero John Carter displaying all the personality of a plank of wood. Still, who needs characterisation when you've got hot naked Martian chicks and love-struck space heroes running around in zero gravity with guns. This is what the English language was made for!

THE EDITOR:

WATCHING: Supergirl. Yes, it's as bad as you remember. Also watched new TV Dexter, about a serial killer who helps the police track down serial killers and, in his spare time, tortures and murders serial killers. It's like CSI directed by Rob Zombie and stars Michael C Hall (from Six Feet Under) and while it's not exactly great on the basis of the first episode, it's certainly unusual and much better than Brothers And Sisters, which also features one of the stars of SFU. Actually, if you combined the domestic stories of that with the gruesome dead people and black humour of Dexter, you'd probably have Six Feet Under...

LISTENING TO: The Incredible Moses Leroy/The Softlightes, a great band who make lovely quirky pop music. Also Japanese band Acid Mother's Temple And The Cosmic Inferno's album Starless And Bible Black Sabbath, which has the great title track, over half an hour of crunching mindlessly repetitive riffs. And it's even better than that sounds. On the flipside, there's a modern album by the Temptations which I enjoyed recently even though it's just mainstream soul music with none of the classic edge of the REAL Temptations of the 60s and 70s...

READING: I was reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang, which I'm enjoying very much, but then at the weekend I discovered Transformers: Ghosts Of Yesterday by Alan Dean Foster for £2.99 in a bookshop in Chester. It's the prequel novel to the new film, so as someone whose entire life revolved around Transformers for most of my childhood, I figured it might help me enjoy the film a bit more. So far it's pretty good, lots of familiar names (I still love Starscream) and best of all, I can imagine them looking like the original characters instead of the grey shapeless lumps that Michael Bay's team have produced. But, to be fair, the characterisations are pretty faithful and if the film is as good as the prequel novel, it should be ok.