🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
🎥 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004 - ★★★★

It’s a long way from Ace Ventura! Great movies.
🎥 The French Dispatch, 2021 - ★★★★

Wes Anderson Hasn’t Changed With ‘The French Dispatch.’ And That’s Perfectly Fine.It was on my ‘to watch’ list even before I read this;
> “But the most endearing thing about Wes Anderson is that he’s a hopelessly romantic filmmaker, and these worlds he creates clearly mean a lot to him. His latest film, The French Dispatch, is a love letter certainly—to journalism, to writers, to art in general and filmmaking specifically—and rather than change or adapt in the way some want to see, he gloriously doubles down on his style, making for his most maximalist, hyper-imaginative film yet.”
🎥 The Hitman's Bodyguard, 2017 - ★★★★

If you are thinking about watching the sequel - watch this one instead.
🎥 Mrs Lowry & Son, 2019 - ★★★½

Slow and gentle and worth curling up with if you in the right frame of mind.
🎥 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, 2022 - ★★★★

Lovely - just lovely - with occasional cringeworthy self help one liners.
🎥 The Da Vinci Code, 2006 - ★★★★

Yes it is a yarn and the book is badly written (though I still turned the pages VERY quickly), this is the movie - and was a good one.
Calling JP Morgan out - like I said I would 6 months ago ...
I posted this doozy on June 2nd - noting that I would come back to it at the year end because it smelt of horse shit. (If you don’t want to click through - in a nutshell JPMorgan predicting that 2022 was going to be just fine).
Here I am back ….
2022 was the worst year for the S&P 500 since the 2008 financial crisis. While the markets usually finish up, down years can happen. Last year was one of those rare times.
From Visual Capitalist:
Now THAT is a sea of red - and take out Healthcare and Energy and you got nothing.
A few specifics …

Drafts AND Pinboard
IF you use Drafts and Pinboard and you want to get your links out of Pinboard - well - the mighty @Agiletortoise has thought of that and just published a new action …. here.
Works beautifully.
Now I have 13,259 drafts in my archive folder (don’t judge). Next step is to work out how to bulk export those drafts to a folder on the hard drive, so that I can create a new Obsidian vault..
Any and all ideas welcome.
I have done a bit of searching on Greg’s site - but not found anything yet.
(Then again I am perfectly capable of opening a fridge and not see the milk on the shelf right in front of my eyes.)
🎥 Amsterdam, 2022 - ★★★★

Been on my list since it came out and was not what I expected. Took 15 to 20 minutes to recalibrate. But I did. Really good. If I closed my eyes, the audio and dialogue reminded me of a Wes Anderson project (close your eyes .. the visuals are nothing like Wes. Bale was great .. at time channeling Peter Falk’s ‘Columbo’ … or is that just me?
🎥 The Power of the Dog, 2021 - ★★★★

It just popped up as a ‘why not watch’ kind of alert … I had. Very good.
🎥 Don't Look Up, 2021 - ★★★

I resisted watching this for a while … asked on the trailers … It was all right … but the cheesy trailers are a clue.
🎥 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, 2022 - ★★★

It was better than the first in the series! Maybe I’m just not the target audience.
🎥 The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014 - ★★★★

Wes Anderson has such a distinctive style it’s amazing how they are so different. Love them all.
🎶🎵 Music Was My First Love
Music was my first love
and it will be my last.
Music of the future
and music of the past.
To live without my music
would be impossible to do.
In this world of troubles,
my music pulls me through.
💬 John Miles
🎶🎵Interesting to see the albums that appear roughly daily in Matt Birchtree’s feed where he celebrates a different album each day. So far, I am personally not inspired - but that is the beauty of music. It is all different. We are all different.
It might also be that there just isn’t enough context around a post to make me think why I should be bothered - particularly when on the whole - the artists he posts that I do know, just ‘don’t do it ‘ for me. All good. I know it’s me — BUT
I do think this quote needs refinement.
“I love music, and even at the stage in life where most people seem to listen to the same artists they did when they were decades younger, I’m still prowling the new releases every week to see what’s new. I’m obsessed with music.”
💬 Matt Birchtree
‘What’s New’ can’t come from an established artist?
Surely it depends on the artist and what they are producing?
I would agree that there are people who hit a formula and then repeat over and over and are really un interesting - and then there are others who keep evolving … keep changing … refusing to fall into that trap, to pick on a few ….
-
Pink Floyd in their early days refused to play their hits like Emily Play and Arnold Layne in their concerts (though ‘Saucerful of Secrets’ doesn’t seem to have imposed that limitation on themselves!)
-
The Arctic Monkeys open up concerts with brand new music that the audience will never have heard.
-
Neil Young and Brian Eno are both famous for their position of refusing to talk about their music from the past.
Most importantly - if you never listen to music from artists that have been around - you’d never have heard Bowie’s Blackstar.
I would also argue that a true music aficionado would explore the roots of music. When you listen to real musicians talk, to understand their influences, their history - WOW. To trace the roots of how artists get to where they are is fascinating.
For my part, I am building a few lists in Album Whale that I hope might provide insight into the music I like - and how I came across it … it’s a different spin on ‘best of’ … and more to do with the interconnectedness and relationships in music - and me. When they are ready I will be back.





