2005’s Four Brothers is exactly the kind of movie I enjoy watching when I don’t really want to have to think too much about what it is that I am watching. It’s full of mindless violence and clichés but it never pretends to be anything it isn’t and if you can suspend your disbelief and…
Category: review
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 5
It’s a somewhat quirky fact that the person who brought the world ‘Mad Max’ is also, at least partially, responsible for 1995’s saccharine-sweet family-friendly flic, ‘Babe’. But George Millar is definitely credited for having written both. On paper, ‘Babe’ is not the kind of movie I should like. I was slightly too old to be…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 4
2020’s ‘The 2nd’ is the kind of low budget action movie that, once upon a time, might have been described as ‘straight-to-video’ and is the sort of thing I might have mistakenly picked up at Blockbusters in my early twenties to watch with my flat-mates and some cheap lager when we were unable to sufficiently…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 3
Spoiler Alert – If you haven’t seen this 2004 movie and you still intend to watch it some 17 years after it was released then I should warn you that there are some plot details below which might ruin it for you. But it’s all fairly predictable stuff so you’d probably have been able to…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 2
2015’s Daddy’s Home is a run of the mill comedy vehicle for Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. It’s fairly predictable, eminently forgettable and even at a slender 96 minutes, probably slightly longer than it needs to be. It’s the kind of movie that, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve probably already seen all of the…
The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 1
Unless I’m much mistaken it is now December and therefore it must be time for The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films. We kick off this year’s festive countdown with a movie from the Rocky franchise. This is the third time a Rocky movie has featured in my annual advent calendar with…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 26: Who Killed…… The Zutons
And so another A-Z comes to an end. From tomorrow I will no longer be writing about music from the noughties. I may not be writing about anything at all. Or I may be writing about something. Only time will tell. In another 11 months I may well decide to complete my trilogy of A-Zs…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 25: Yours Truly Angry Mob
As ever, when we get to the penultimate day of an A-Z challenge, we must ask ourselves ‘Y’. It can be hard to come up with an answer, but today I have managed to do just that. Y is for Yours Truly Angry Mob In their early days, Kaiser Chiefs always struck me as a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 24: X&Y
On last year’s A-Z I had to cheat a little bit for X by including XTRMNTR by Primal Scream. The main reason this was cheating was because last year’s retrospective was meant to be 90s music and that particular album was released in the year 2000. It was very much at the beginning of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 23: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
And so to ‘W’ in this A-Z musical retrospective of the noughties. There were a few decent albums from the 2000s that began with ‘W’ but one from 2006 still managed to stand out from the crowd. W is for Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not In January 2006, I was entering…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 22: Vampire Weekend
Day 22 of this self-indulgent wander down a memory-lane of music from a decade that is inherently less nostalgic for me than the decade that preceded it, but which, nonetheless, does retain elements of nostalgia – nostalgia which is often evoked by listening to the albums of the day. V is for Version 2.0 Vampire…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 21: Up The Bracket
It’s always a shame that I have to write twenty other posts before I can finally make time for ‘U’. But that is the way of an A-Z challenge. As much as I would like to put ‘U’ first, it just wouldn’t be proper. U is for Up The Bracket By the time I got…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 20: Twelve Stops and Home
It’s finally time for ‘T’. But not necessarily time for tea as I’m more of a coffee drinker by trade. But do feel free to have a warm beverage of your choice. T is for Twelve Stops and Home I don’t know if I could describe myself as a fan of Horsham alumni The Feeling.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 19: The Seldom Seen Kid
When I get to ‘S’ in an A-Z challenge, I always feel like I’m on the home straight. Although there are still seven letters to go, psychologically I feel like I’ve done most of the hard work. Of course ‘psychologically’ does not begin with ‘S’, even though it sounds like it should. So I’m probably…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 18: Red
Day 18 of the 2021 A-Z challenge and time to reflect on where we are. And where we are is ‘R’. R is for Red For one reason or another I felt I was getting a little out of touch with popular music circa 2008. I suspect the fact that I was in the midst…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 17: The Good, the Bad and the Queen
‘Q’ is always one of the most challenging letters in an A-Z challenge. Most years I’ve had to expand the parameters a little in order to crowbar something in and this year I’ve had to outright cheat. But it was all in a good cause, because the album in question is definitely worth revisiting. Q…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 16: Permission to Land
Long time and particularly dedicated readers who definitely do exist outside of my unrealistic aspirations will be familiar with me persistently referencing 1980s quiz show Blockbusters whenever I get to the letter ‘P’ in an A-Z challenge. Because it is impossible to do the letter ‘P’ without channelling the immortal joke associated with that show.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 15: Origins of Symmetry
And so we get around to ‘O’. Which is OK. Well part of OK. Did I make that joke for ‘K’? Yes. Yes I did. Do I apologise for making it a second time. No. No I don’t. O is for Origins of Symmetry I went to the Glastonbury festival in the year 2000. I…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 14: Neon Bible
Welcome to the beginning of the second half of the 2021 A-Z Blogging Challenge, in which I attempt to catalogue an alphabetised list of albums I liked in the noughties for no particular reason. N is for Neon Bible Arcade Fire’s debut album Funeral is a regular participant in futile lists attempting to identify the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 13: Make Believe
It’s always a grim realisation when I get to ‘M’ in any A-Z challenge that I’m actually only half way there. But after today we are closer to the end than the beginning, which may be of some consolation as I complete this arbitrary and entirely unnecessary retrospective of albums that I listened to in…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 12: Love Kraft
Day 12 of my A-Z of noughties music and today we’re all going to ‘L’. L is for Love Kraft Super Furry Animals were one of my favourite bands of the 90s, but I lost track of them for the early part of the noughties. Which is a shame, because they continued to produce some…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 11: Kasabian
Today is the turn of the letter ‘K’ in my A-Z retrospective of albums from the noughties. And that’s OK. Well part of OK anyway. And, like so many debut albums of the noughties, it’s another eponymous one. K is for Kasabian When Kasabian released their debut album in 2004, they were often touted as…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 10: Jarvis
It’s time for ‘J’ in my A-Z of albums I liked from the noughties. I struggled with this letter for last year’s 90s retrospective but there were no such problems this year. Indeed I had a couple of potential choices but one album from 2006 had selected itself before I even started compiling my list.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 9: Is This It
It is time for ‘I’ in the 2021 A-Z Challenge. The letter ‘I’ often tends to lead to an intro full of pronoun fun when I do an A-Z Challenge. But I will not do that today. And neither will ‘I’. I is for Is This It The debut release from The Strokes was the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 8: Hot Fuss
Day 8 of the 2021 A-Z Challenge and it already feels like this has been going on for far too long. I’m very much enjoying the ‘listening to music’ bit of the challenge, but the writing about it has become a tad repetitive and frankly I get better blogging stats for my stupid haikus. But…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 7: The Great Western
I have often wondered where we would be without the seventh letter of the alphabet. It wouldn’t be a good state of affairs. It might well be an ood state of affairs though. Who can say? But now it’s time to find out which album from the noughties made the cut for ‘G’. G is…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 6: Franz Ferdinand
It’s time for ‘F’ in the James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger. And there is no time to ‘F’ around, so let’s get on with it. F is for Franz Ferdinand The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria triggered a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 5: Elephant
It’s day 5 of ‘James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger’ and it’s time to address the elephant in the room. Which is that in last year’s A-Z I had a distinctly British bias and managed to overlook most of the great US bands of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 4: Dig Out Your Soul
Due to the traditional omission of Sundays from the April A-Z Blogging challenge, we’re now out of synch between the date and the numerical position of the letter du jour. Today is, of course, the 5th day of April but we are only on the fourth letter of the alphabet. I’m sure we’ll all cope.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 3: Costello Music
It’s day 3 of the 2021 A-Z challenge and I can see the ‘C’. Because that is the third letter of the alphabet. So let’s ‘C’ what album of the 00’s is on offer today. C is for Costello Music 2006 was a bit of strange year in many respects. It was the year that…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 2: The Back Room
It’s the second day of April and not a fool is in sight. But the A-Z Blogging Challenge continues and so we must move on to ‘B’. And the band behind today’s album of choice, if they live up to their name, might also be able to help me improve the content of my blog.…
James Proclaims! 