Tales from the Bitface

There seem to be more cops at this relatively tiny Free-Iran demo than at any of the Brexit ones.

March in London romorrow in support of the protests in Iran. I’ll be there. Not much reporting of it in the mainstream news, from what I can see.

Watched: Towards Zero Season 1 🎥

Or season ‘only’, as it is. An adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, and quite a fun one. Where ‘fun’ includes murder, as it tends to with the Queen of Crime, of course.

I note in passing on this early-morning start day, that The Monkees (or songwriter John Stewart) had to get up earlier than The Clash, pre-fame. ‘Ring, ring, it’s seven am’ vs ‘The six o’clock alarm would never ring.’

🎥 Forgot to mention we watched Holiday Inn over the Christmas period. A singer gives up show-business because it’s hard work, to become a farmer! After a year he realises the obvious, and turns his house into a supper club that’s only open on the fifteen holidays in the US year. Great songs.

Trying out mb-cli, a command-line Micro.blog client from @timapple.

I fail to understand anyone who considers themself to be even vaguely ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘on the right side of history’ can not stand with the people of Iran. Sure, the US taking action might not be the best result, but as long as the Islamic Republic falls, the world will be better.

Five under par in today’s Minute Cryptic!

Minute Cryptic - 12 January, 2026 “7-Eleven uniform among ugliest uniforms” (5,4) 🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🏆 0 hints – 5 under the community par (47,960 solvers so far). www.minutecryptic.com

The Book of Mormon was good: fun, if a bit daft in places. As I said, I had no idea about the story when we set out. Turns out it’s abut two young Mormon men being sent out on their missionary work, to Uganda.

As you’d expect from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it takes the piss out of the Mormon faith — especially its origin story — and belief systems in general. But it’s surprisingly positive about Mormonism overall. In fact what it’s really about is how schisms in religions form.

And it goes to some unexpectedly dark places, talking about female genital mutilation, and warlords controlling territory by violence.

But the songs are good!

Going to see The Book of Mormon tonight. I’ve no real idea what it’s about, which may be the best way to approach it, I don’t know.

The American President is another Sorkin/Reiner collab, and another one we watched over the Christmas break.

it’s also Sorkin’s dry run for The West Wing, being the story of — well, you can guess the post of the main character.

it’s pretty good. Feels weird, having Martin Sheen in the Leo role, but you get used to it.

Very weird. I’m trying to sign in to YouTube on my Mac. The signin page gets intercepted by Microsoft’s SSO page, which wants me to log on with my City Lit account. I did a course there last term. They used Google Classroom, so that was the last way I signed in to anything Google. But I want to sign in with my Google account.

Can’t remember if we watched this on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but it turns out to be a Christmas movie itself. At least in part, and as much as Die Hard is. Or maybe not quite. The point is it does have a scene — quite an important one — at Christmas.

Anyway. I thought I had seen this before. I mean I had, I watched it. But I couldn’t remember anything of the story after the famous horse’s head scene. Maybe that’s because I watched it on my own, so didn’t talk about it afterwards? I don’t know.

It is, of course, very good. There are some strange missed or dropped elements. Michael marries a woman while he’s in hiding in Sicily. She is assassinated by a car bomb, and never mentioned again. Not even as part of his motivation for revenge on the other Mafia families.

I don’t doubt, though, that if (when) I watch it again, I’ll find many parts I missed or have forgotten. That may be the mark of a great film, you can keep going back to it. Or, I don’t know, maybe the mark of a bad one, that you don’t remember it! (I don’t really think that.)

Watched: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl 🎥

Another one we watched over Christmas. Rewatched, actually, as we saw it when it came out last year.

Tons of fun, of course. Four stars.

Watched: A Few Good Men 🎥

I’m trying the Micro.blog films feature, for more control than the Letterboxd RSS feed.

We introduced our daughter to The West Wing over the last few months, and needed more Sorkin. Also RIP Rob Reiner. It’s a great film. I’d give it four stars if this had them.

Watched: Bowie: The Final Act 🎥

Very good documentary about Bowie, starting approximately with Young Americans and moving forward — though moving back and forward in time. A lot of focus on the years in which he (hushed tones) wasn’t cool!

Interviews with Reeves Gabrels of Tin Machine, Earl Slick, Tony Visconti and others. Well worth a watch.

It’s interesting to discover that this is a great read even though I’ve seen the TV series. An interesting parallel with early last year, or rather last thing in 2024, when I read Conclave, not long after seeing the film.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mick Herron’s ‘Slough House’ stories, the series is up to four seasons now — or is it five? — on Apple TV. And it’s really good. This is the book that started it all, and it’s excellent. A group of misfit MI5 spies, each of which has been shunted aside from the main track because of some mishap or fuckup.

This is, of course, a classic of Old English literature, translated into a modern verse form by the poet Laureate, Simon Armitage.

It’s a deeply weird tale. Why, when an uncanny knight turns up at King Arthur’s court — not just dressed in green, but green-skinned and -haired — and issues a challenge that involves both striking the knight with an axe and agreeing to receive a similar blow from the knight in a year’s time; why would anyone agree to that?

Chivalry, I guess? Or arrogance, we might call it today. Either way, Gawain accepts, and beheads the knight. The knight picks up his head and rides off, saying, ‘See you in a year, you’ve got to find me or you’re a big fat coward,’ basically.

Gawain proceeds to do nothing about it until the year is almost out. This, at least, I can identify with.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. I might take issue with the modernness, the casualness of some of Armitage’s word choice. But who am I to do so?

My personal tradition requires me to post a brief summary of last year’s posts, early in the new year. I also note how many books I read.

In 2025 I read — I’m going to call it 30 books, even though there are only 28 posts so tagged at the time of writing. I’ve finished two in the last week or so that I consider 2025 books, and I’ll be posting about them soon.

And 134 posts so dated, which is up on 2024. Here’s the monthly breakdown:

And on we go into the new year.

The world turns, and just like that, it’s a new year. Happy New Year, everybody!

I didn’t know creating a list on Letterboxd would add an entry to my feed, and thereby create a post on my blog. It was only meant to be a place to record the films we watched recently, prior to me writing about them. Oh well.