Flavours of the Month: January/February 2026...

A grizzled Finn on the rampage, banging synth rock, and a cloud-scraping Knight are some of what's been setting the tone of my January/February 2026...

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Flavours of the Month: January & February 2025...

Hopping about Parisian rooftops, bloody dramas, and some alternative retro beat-em-ups is just some of what was setting the tone of my January & February 2025...

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Flavours of the Month: January & February 2024...

Bone-crunching action, mysterious woodland happenings, and the rediscovery of creativity is just some of what's been setting the tone of my January & February 2024...

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Flavours of the Month: December 2022 & January 2023...

Dark, brooding dramas, local familiarity, and the foibles of Yara are just some of what's been setting the tone of my December 2022 and January 2023...

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Flavours of the Month: December 2021 - January 2022...

A killer come back, uneven ground, and a grand finale are just some of what's been setting the tone of my December 2021 & January 2022...

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Flavours of the Month: December 2020/January 2021

Demon slaying, hammering the keyboard, and a litany of streaming darkness is just some of what's been setting the tone of my December 2020/January 2021...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2020...

Rebooted snootchie bootchies, a murder mystery on the brink of the 20th Century, and gunplay in a shifting brutalist concrete world are just some of what's been setting the tone of my January 2020...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2019...

Rogue coppers, killer puppets, and off-colour tales are some of what has been setting the tone of my January 2019...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2018...

Tech-savvy portmanteau tales, numerous shades of horror, and Hollywood tell-alls are just some of what's been setting the tone of my January 2018...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2017...

Killer thrills in the late 80s, chaos in Kyrat, and coming of age on 42nd Street - just some of what's been setting the tone of my January 2017...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2016...

Hobbits, exploitation flicks, and a brand new screenplay - just a couple of this month's flavours...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2015...

Sword-swinging fantasy, gut toting goons, the pleasures of world domination, and more...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2014...

LOOKS:

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee Season 3 - Jerry Seinfeld's web show that does what it says on the tin in a pleasant, humorous, and laid back manner. A couple of the new episodes have been a bit 'meh', but if you don't know of/take to the comedian one week then that's inevitable, but most others have been great.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition Blu-Ray) - 5 discs, 3 hours of movie, 9 hours of extra features, blimey! It took a couple of weeks to crack through it all, but it's a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes information (which also helps better define the thirteen dwarves). The Lord of the Rings was better, but you can't help but allow yourself to be consumed by the world of Middle Earth.

Shameless Screen Entertainment Sexploitation 'Triple Sinema Bill' Boxset - a triple dose of Euro-sauce in the forms of Love Goddess of the Cannibals, Satan's Baby Doll, and The Beast In Space; click the titles for full DVD reviews of each.

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Flavours of the Month: January 2013...

How time flies! Before I knew it, it was 2013, and now we're already cranked out January - it's onwards to February already! Anyway, here's what was influencing the tone of my January...

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Flavours of the Month: January 2012...

LOOKS:

The Angelos Neil Epithemou Show - seemingly just a pilot at this stage (along with Milton Jones' "House of Rooms"), but being a huge fan of his character as-seen on the now cancelled Shooting Stars, I loved it. Hopefully Channel 4 pick it up for a full series.

Apocalypse Now (Blu-Ray) - Franis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war epic just got even more vast - on 3-disc collector's edition Blu-Ray. It's crammed with extras too.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Blu-Ray) - Jason Siegel wrote a killer script and gave a brilliant comedic performance. I loved it when I saw it in the cinema, and I figured it was about time to give it another spin.

The Golden Globes 2012 - last year Sky Movies broadcast them in the UK. This year it was E! Entertainment - and boy did they make a pig's ear of it. The feed was all over the place in the first 30 minutes, missing half of Gervais' intro speech, an entire category, half of a winner's speech, and it kept cutting away to the same glitchy package of adverts that just seemed to keep coming back like a friggin' zombie. Add in the incessant, wimpy bleeping out of every punchline (and even entire sentences!), and it was just a weak sauce showing all round.

Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set DVD - as you'll have seen already, this month I've been reviewing this excellent 3-disc box set of 1970s Italian genre flicks. Killer Nun, Torso, and Night Train Murders.

Kevin Smith - Too Fat For 40 (his latest stand-up Q&A DVD) finally makes an appearance more than a year after it happened, but in an unexpurgated form. Hilarity ensues as he once again manages to capture my imagination with well told yarns from his personal life (the main feature is 3 hours and 20 minutes long!) Plus at long last, a full year-to-the-day after it's Sundance Premiere, Smith's deeply twisted realist horror movie Red State comes to a wide UK release on DVD and Blu-Ray - it has some flaws, but I really dug it. Finally, another viewing of Clerks: The Animated Series.

YouTube hopping - my love for The Big Bang Theory has excelled thanks to it being on constant repeat on E4 nowadays (since they let Friends go to the Paramount Comedy Channel), and I've found myself skimming around YouTube watching numerous gag reels, interviews and Comic-Con panels to do with the show. What's more I've also got into watching various small clips from season five of Robot Chicken - a season that, at this time anyway, has no release date on DVD (even though it's been out in America for ages - before it's even finished airing on Adult Swim).


SOUNDS:

Chase Status ft. Liam Bailey "Blind Faith" - as heard in Dirt 3.

The Walker Brothers "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" & Wye Oak "Civilian" - the time is nearing for the second half of season two of The Walking Dead (the best show currently on TV in my view), so I've been psyching myself up with these tracks which appeared on the full trailers for seasons 1 and 2.

Red Dead Redemption OST

Ringo Deathstarr "Colour Trip"

Alessandro Alessandroni "Suor Omicidi" - otherwise known as "Killer Nun". Like so many stand-out pieces from the soundtracks of Italian genre flicks, this one gets pleasingly lodged in your head.

Stelvio Cipriani "La Polizia Sta A Guardare" - as heard in the flick "What Have They Done To Your Daughters" (and briefly heard in "Death Proof").

M83 "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming"

Drive OST - Kavinsky ft. Lovefoxxx "Nightcall", Desire "Under Your Spell", College ft. Electric Youth "A Real Hero", Riz Ortolani "Oh My Love", and The Chromatics "Tick of the Clock"

Kavinsky "Pacific Coast Highway"


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - a nice rounding off of a trilogy arc. The third act isn't quite as thrilling or epic as the first two acts, but as a fan of the franchise I really enjoyed myself. The additional "Special Ops" content has also been tweaked for the better (although I do find it strange that "Recruit" mode isn't included for the Spec-Op missions).

Dirt 3 - the 'mini pyramids' felt a bit like a chore after a lengthy career mode, but then on the other hand you aren't left wanting for content. It's still been a spiffing racer to play, mind you.

The Walking Dead: Volume 9 & 10 - slowly but surely I'm catching up on Kirkman's excellent comic series. Still another five to go, however.

Damned by Chuck Palahniuk - the author's latest book, and it's his most inventive outing since Rant. The central character is a 13 year old daughter of a celebrity couple, who is damned to hell after suffering an apparent 'marijuana overdose' and bands together with a veritable 'Breakfast Club' cast of teenage stereotypes to plead her case to the authorities of Hell itself. I enjoyed it immensely - if you're a fan of Palahniuk's work, you definitely need to check this title out.

The Top 50 List - it was an exhaustive process re-jigging the list (less-so than creating the list from scratch back in 2009, mind you) but I had been meaning to do it for ages. Well - I've compiled my own Top 50 list of personal most favourite-favourites ... but even still a beloved title or two is going to slip your mind (such as the utterly arresting The Shawshank Redemption, or the endearingly laid back and meandering The Big Lebowski).

Pentuple Bill Mini Musings: January/Febuary 2011...

Point Break:
The only other Katherine Bigelow film I had seen up to this point was The Hurt Locker, however I was quite familiar with some of the iconography of this flick - namely 'the ex-Presidents' robbing banks, and the sky diving stuff - turns out it's a really fun action flick, and the sort that the film school graduate in me could have a field day with for an essay on sexual subtext. It's very much of the time of the early 1990s, but that's no bad thing. Plus the foot chase later on in the movie is great.


Harry Brown:
Like Gran Torino, only British - which, unsurprisingly, means 'set on a council estate and really goddamned bleak'. Perhaps that comes off as a bit snippy, but it is true that British film seems to be either obsessed with costume drama, or the criminal underclasses of the nation's inner city council estates and tower blocks - there's far more to Britain than that, and likewise the films produced here should expand beyond that more decisively.

That little rant aside though, it's a decent film - albeit, yeah, properly bleak. Gang crime, drugs, violence, intimidation, a police force that's completely divorced from giving a stuff about the problem ... it's a tough watch at times, but on the other hand you do get to see Caine's elderly avenger deliver vengence (in a British way). If only the darkness of the council estate featured wasn't representative of too many situations across the nation.


Where The Wild Things Are:
I had no knowledge of the book before reading about the film adaptation in Total Film, and while I didn't quite get what all the fuss was about, once we get to where the titular wild things actually are my interest did pique. Thematically it's a subtle film, which is a welcome change of pace - it could have so easily crammed the issues and character lessons down your throat, but it takes a different route ... although perhaps it could have been a little clearer in how it dealt with the themes, while still avoiding the usual bludgeoning approach we're so used to.

Still, when the kid eventually leaves the wild things, it was a really well handled and touching moment - and who doesn't want to watch a movie where James Gandolfini voices (movingly so) a big hairy monster that likes to smash shit up?


Ninja Assassin:
It has a standard enough revenge plot, so it's nothing to particularly write home about in that regard - however the action, violence and OTT Japanese-style gore is endlessly entertaining. So if you want to see some insane Ninja-related fighting, sword play, and shadowy action then it's well worth a look - oh and it's produced by the likes of Joel Silver and the Wachowskis ... so you should have an idea of the movie's style.


Youth In Revolt:
I'd intended on seeing this at the cinema last year but never got around to it. Turns out it's a decent little flick with Michael Cera getting to explore a different type of character than he's often considered to portray (namely, a laid back Breathless-inspired troublemaker). Enjoyable cameo performances and moments of animated whimsy round this out to be an entertainingly quirky tale of trouble-courting young love.

Flavours of the Month: January 2011...

LOOKS:

Kick Ass (Blu-Ray) - still a great flick. I'd forgotten how thrilling the action set pieces were, too.

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World (Blu-Ray) - three of the four commentaries and another viewing on top, plus all the special features. I must have heard the menu music a hundred times by now.

Inception (Blu-Ray) - Nolan's mind-bender blockbuster is still as spiffing as it was in the cinema, if not more so.

The Expendables (Blu-Ray) - Ultimate Recon Mode is quite impressively done, and one of the best Picture-in-Picture tracks I've seen so far. While I generally prefer Rambo to this, it's still a bloody good time and I look forward to a sequel.

Black Books - years late to the party, but we barged through the rest of the complete box set.

Boardwalk Empire - it took a couple of episodes to get into it, but you find yourself becoming really quite invested in the characters and the complexities of their relationships. Plus the re-creation of the 1920s is superb.

Clarkson: The Italian Job - I think his DVD from 2009 was better, but it was still good for a bit of a Top Gear-like fix. The best sequence was the race at the end.

Lost: Season Three & Four DVD Extra Features - now I just need to get my mits on the last two seasons.

Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide - 3 discs of video nasty goodness, and surprisingly informative. Definitive, most definitely.


SOUNDS:

The Black Angels "Directions To See A Ghost" - I love their first album (Passover), and I've come to really dig this second outing too.

Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy Soundtrack - the flick was the visual and aural treat of 2010, so Daft Punk's superb soundtrack has been in my CD autochanger ever since.

Sex Bob-Omb, Metric "Black Sheep", and Nigel Godrich "Hillcrest Park" - there's been a distinctly Scott Pilgrim flavour to January, so that naturally extended to the aural world too.

Kick Ass OST - not only was it a great action superhero movie, but it had a cool score to boot.

Black Spiders "Just Like A Woman" - as recommended by a fellow fan of Airbourne.

Bo Diddley "Hey, Bo Diddley" - as heard during one of the Mafia 2 cutscenes.


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Cold - I haven't had one since January 2009, so that was a rubbish few days. I do maintain however that some people who say they have "the flu" actually have a cold, and they're just trying to sound tough. Cold or Flu, they both suck. As if the time of year when you're packing away all the festive decorations wasn't depressing enough, eh?

Script Writing - working on the new version of the short version of zombie mini-epic "The End" (working title), as well as working on an idea to enter for a Public Information Film.

The Big Book of Top Gear 2011 - it's just a bunch of silly old nonsense mostly, but I do love Top Gear.

Cyanide & Happiness Vol. 2: Ice Cream & Sadness - my favourite online webcomic in book form for a second year running.

The Walking Dead Vol. 5: The Best Defense - I continue to make my way through the trade paperbacks for the first time, and while the dialogue is still needlessly filled with unrealistic exposition, the scenarios are intense and gripping. By the end of this volume I was gagging to read the next.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (Vol. 1) - the Scott Pilgrim feel to January extended to the first two (of six) volumes of the graphic novels.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Vol. 2) - it's interesting to see that volumes 1 and 2 basically make up an hour of the movie (which runs for an hour and 50 minutes), but it's also cool to see further exploration of the characters and entire sequences that never made it to the film version (such as Ramona and Knives' library battle).

Call of Duty: Black Ops - the second time around, like with the previous CoD, it's not about the hype and all about playing the game on its own level. It also helps that you know what to do, so you don't have moments where the action gets too confusing, which has been the case with first-runs for the last couple of CoD games.

Mafia 2 - I fancied some 1950s gangster action, so I gave this another spin. It's no GTA IV or Red Dead Redemption (essentially being a linear game in a sandbox world), but I still found myself really enjoying it as the story continues to make you invest in the characters. I even got to nab some more achievements and collectibles I'd missed the first time around.

Jeremy Klaxon - Driving Us Insane (A Parody) - just a bit of fun, and one of those pleasant surprise gifts you get at Christmas.

"Snow 2010" short video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBUWKOt780

In January we had quite a lot of snow (for Britain at least) so I went out with my new Kodak Zi8 to try it out and get some coverage of the surrounding landscape all covered in snow. I stored the footage away and forgot about it until yesterday when I decided to cut together a little video of it all, and you can see it by following the above link.

Just a little something I put together, enjoy.

Flavours of the Month: January 2010...

I'm going to try and make this month's flavour run down a little more punchy, so here it goes...

Music for this month has mostly consisted of the "End Titles: Stories For Film" and "War Stories" (both versions) albums by UNKLE, along with "Invaders Must Die" by The Prodigy, as well as a return to CKY's "Carver City", not to mention the soundtracks to Sin City, Planet Terror, and Death Proof.

Speaking of which, I had a return to Sin City via the excellent 2-disc R1 special edition DVD. Grindhouse was also on the cards again, I seem to come back around to Planet Terror and Death Proof every few months and just gorge myself silly on the two double disc DVDs (still awaiting the double disc theatrical cut DVD that was promised months ago - hopefully it'll appear with the launch of Machete, which I'm also eagerly awaiting).

It's also been a right old month for weather. While nothing like what parts of America (and many other parts of the world) gets, we haven't had a winter this harsh for a good few decades (although it was worse in the 40s and 60s). The snow's now gone, and what we've got left is a bunch of roads covered in pot holes that are either still there or hastily patched over - needless to say the left front tyre of my car succumbed to one monster pothole that sprang out of nowhere - resulting in a bent alloy that needed replacing, as well as a new tyre. It's like driving on the sodding moon, out there!

It's also been a month where I've indulged my Top Gear fandom in the form of the Big Book of Top Gear 2010. Funny stuff indeed (and I've just started the latest Richard Hammond book "Or Is That Just Me").

Naturally January has been a busy month on the DeadShed shorts front - the third I Am Zombie Man film "The Inevitable Decomposition of Zombie Man" has been going through the editing process - and I'm glad to say the muse was with me the entire way and I simply barged it out quicker than I'd expected. It's now in the hands of Gary and Brian, who are doing the music, and as such we're aiming to have "TIDOZM" up on YouTube in the second half of February. So far the music is sounding great - and indeed the first fully completed track (for a montage sequence) kicks total ass.

It's also been a month of nostalgia after nabbing the Criters 1-4 box set for a fiver. I hadn't seen these movies in years, but it all came flooding back. Despite often being considered a Gremlins rip-off (in fact the script was written before Gremlins came along), the franchise still kicks ass ... well, maybe not Critters 4, which seems to really suffer the consequences of making the last two movies, with not enough money, back-to-back (Critters 3 meanwhile was great fun, but 1 & 2 are the best of all).

Finally, I've been barging my way through Nazi occupied France, in the form of The Saboteur. While it may be somewhat undercooked and in need of further polishing, considering I got it less than a month after release on a special offer for £20, it was a bloody steal in my favour. I've really been enjoying yomping around Paris and its environs, sticking it to the Nazis with some sabotage explosives, sniper rifle and Tommy machine gun.

Speaking of games - I've recently become aware of (and obsessed by) Red Dead Redemption (Wild West sandboxing), and continue to grow excited about Mafia 2 (1940s/50s mobster sandboxing) and of course, this year Alan Wake finally gets released. These three are, of course, just the tip of the ice berg as there's a whole bunch of games on my list - some I'll never get around to playing, and others will just have to wait (which also benefits my coffers).

Well ... so much for being punchy ... maybe next month, eh?