The year colour returned to cinema — I’m sure there will be a thousand of this type of retrospective article published everywhere this month, but if you’re interested in cinema 2023 does feel important. Because, like it or not, this year was a watershed. …

Should we listen to luvvies? — A friend of mine is a lecturer in English Literature at a British University. Like all English teachers, the one major touchstone in the curriculum that you can’t just breeze past is Shakespeare. It’s almost a cliché at this point, but if you want to understand how the English language…

Society isn’t classless, it’s just coded — Since the pandemic there has been a wave of public protest and industrial action in the UK in response to the drop in wages, public services and living standards. Whether under the banner of the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign, or the democratically voted strikes by Unions, this thread of public…

Desciphering the Internet’s Unconscious — Given the current hysteria around AI (largely fomented by its owners and those who stand to gain from it) is it worth treating it with the seriousness it purports itself to need? Probably not, as most Ai is a dumb-as-rocks ‘if/when’ procedural script that draws from an unregulated pool of…

And how we are squandering sound — Podcasts are one of the most innovative and compelling mediums of the digital revolution. They are older than streaming video, they have lead or changed conversation and thought on vital topics, and the majority of them are free. They are even based on radio, a technology older than television or…

Why Ai could never — Christopher Spencer is an artist who would find fame by making collage pictures with a phone app on the bus to work. He would combine images of the cold war with contemporary photos, almost always with Steve McFadden (in his Eastenders role as Phil Mitchell) looking on in disgust. He…

The Lasting impact of Ridley Scott’s classic — It’s hard to imagine both the horror and the science fiction cinematic landscape prior to Alien’s release. It’s one of those films that so profoundly readjusted audience expectations of the genres and the way a sci-fi future was depicted that there was no going back. It was even deemed by…

How Nolan’s most overlooked work is his best example — Spoilers for the film. In the early 2000’s, magic died as a form of mass entertainment. I was a magician at the time. I joined the Young Magic Circle as a teen and I entered the ‘Young Magician of the Year Awards’ twice. I grew up watching magic shows on…

Don’t Feed the Machine — I work for a university and much is being made about the sudden influx of AI written essays at the moment. The worry from-on-high (and certain sections of the media) is that AI written essays are the death of education and that ‘cheating’ by getting a computer to write your…