Catering for a New Audience

Of all the places you’d expect to find quality food being served, a museum would probably be bottom of the list. But as recent visitors to Bradford’s National Media Museum have discovered, the staff at the museum’s Intermission Cafe is working hard to provide even the most discerning of food critics with a meal worth talking about.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: The Influence of Twin Peaks

It’s a cold, rainy morning in Twin Peaks, Washington. Fog is lifting off the lake; the morning coffee is still warming up at the Double R Diner; and Pete Martell (Jack Nance) is preparing to go fishing. Leaving his quaint log cabin, Pete spots something out of place on the riverbank – it’s a body. “She’s dead - wrapped in plastic,” he tells Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) in a shaky voice over the telephone. It’s 1990 and the world is about to ponder the question, ‘who killed Laura Palmer?’ It’s also a landmark moment in television. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks would go on to become a cult classic, adored by critics and loved by fans across the world. Some of those fans made their own television shows. Indeed, without Twin Peaks, the television landscape we know today would look remarkably different. 

Leonard Cohen – "Old Ideas" Album Review

Published in ReelRecord Magazine

Old Ideas is Leonard Cohen’s first studio album in almost ten years. It finds the 77-year old crooner taking things back to basics and the result is an album that will thoroughly satisfy his loyal fanbase. It might even win him some new supporters, after all, who could dislike an album that begins, “I’d love to speak with Leonard, he’s a sportsman and a shepherd; he’s a lazy bastard living in a suit”?

Christmas TV Review

If you were glued to the TV like I was over Christmas, you’ll have noticed that the festive period offered up some rather brilliant televised drama. Amongst the best was Boardwalk Empire’s shocking Christmas Eve finale, the return of the critically acclaimed, BAFTA-winning BBC drama Sherlock on New Year’s Day and Sky One’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s much-loved Treasure Island. Oh, and Pat Butcher met her maker on Eastenders.

The Room Brings Down the House - Hyde Park Picture House - 22/10/2011

An air of excitement hangs over a crowd of students gathered around the entrance of Hyde Park Picture House. Expectant faces burst into wide grins as talk turns to the film they are about to see. Favourite scenes, quotes and characters are discussed lovingly, laughter bouncing noisily off the houses lining the adjacent Queens Road. The atmosphere could be compared to that of a smash-hit blockbuster, an Oscar contender or an old Hollywood classic, but the late-night feature this sell-out crowd have gathered to see at Leeds’ premier art-house cinema is none of those. As Andy Moore, the 24 year old film administrator at Hyde Park Picture House, says, Tommy Wiseau's The Room is: "probably one of the worst films ever made and yet every time we show it tickets fly out of the door.”

Little Fish – “Wonderful” (Single) Review

Wonderful is the new single from Oxford three-piece Little Fish. It is a bold and powerful song sung with gusto by frontwoman Julia Sophie Heslop, known to her fans as Juju, whose hoarse, low vocal in the verses renders us unprepared for the hurricane of a chorus on the horizon. Indeed, it is her flexible vocal range that makes Wonderful so mighty.

Beirut – “Santa Fe” (Single) Review

Uplifting, inspiring, additive: Beirut’s latest single Santa Fe is all of those things and more. It is one of those late summer songs that force us to recollect the last few months, sigh sadly and wish we had just a few more playful days in the sun before winter creeps in. Not that Santa Fe is a sad song, in fact it is the very opposite, but whether it means to or not it does manage to press the right buttons when it comes to reminiscing about the sun-soaked days of yesteryear.

Andy Burrows – “If I Had A Heart” (Single) Review

Sometimes it’s brilliant to be surprised, and this single from Andy Burrows is a truly welcome one. The former Razorlight drummer and I Am Arrows frontman seems to be on a mission to prove his worth as a songwriter and this little gem does nothing but add weight to that objective. If I Had A Heart is a great pop song, albeit a sad, reflective one - but aren’t they sometimes the best, and the most accessible?

The Loving Palms – "Runaway" (Single) Review

The casual listener could be forgiven for assuming that Runaway, the latest single released by The Loving Palms, was written and recorded on some sunny coast of Hawaii, but look a little closer at the liner notes and you’ll find that this eclectic, lazily-cool tune was forged in a decidedly chillier collaboration between Yorkshire, Scotland and, thanks to sublime slide guitar playing courtesy of Christine Bougie, Canada.   

Miles Kane – “Colour of the Trap” Album Review

Miles Kane is a productive lad. In only a short few years he’s gone from playing guitar in The Little Flames to piloting The Rascals, collaborating with Arctic Monkeys, and co-fronting The Last Shadow Puppets with best mate Alex Turner. It’s safe to say that Miles Kane has his fingers in a number of musical pies.