celticman's blog

I’ve read a few Alan Parks's novels. Don’t ask me which ones. I thought To Die in June had won the McIlvanney Prize, but it was his last Detective Harry McCoy novel. I’m a book or two behind. I continually use the same line when talking about McIlvanney’s Detective Laidlaw series; his aim wasn’t to solve the crime but to solve the world. Detective Harry McCoy is from the same mould. ‘Wisdom comes through suffering.’ Aeschylus. I’m all for wisdom...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/la-civil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_civil How much is your daughter worth? El Puma (Juan Daniel García Treviño) gives Ciero (Arcelia Ramírez) a price she must pay to see her daughter again. To keep her alive. He also demands her ex-husband’s truck. The smiling assassin and his companion assure her it’s just business. And she’d not to contact the police, because obviously in Northern Mexico they’re on the...

The title is longer that some of the books I’ve written and pretty much covers it. Alex Tresniowski has to shape a made-for-TV-kinda testimonial, true-story genre, into a three-part traditional beginning, middle and end with a bang. He gets nationwide coverage and a documentary programme to help with his search. The SET-UP establishes a normality that suggests this is who I am. In December, Paul Joseph Fronczak is just your typical ten-year-old...

I didn’t get this… Shakespeare’s Typewriter. I’d once stopped writing in an exam about a minor Shakespearian villain/hero because I was bored to fuck. There was and is some dispute of who was the playwright called Shakespeare. Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne. She painted her face with lead pain. But I was pretty sure typewriters weren’t invented until the nineteenth century, perhaps earlier, but not 200 years earlier. Shakespeare, whoever he...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/happy-as-lazzaro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_as_Lazzaro Happy as Lazzaro won the Best Screenplay at the Cannes Festival 2018. It’s quite simple yet quite complex. Setting the scene. A proposal. A peasant farmworkerwith his workmates come to ask for the hand in marriage of young girl. Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) looks on smiling. Food and drink is prepared in the traditional way. An electric lightbulb is...

Notes on why Celtic Supporters Fly the Palestinian Flag. Epitaph on a Tyrant W. H. Auden - 1907-1973 Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. President Joe Biden offered some...

The book cover has a blurb from the Guardian : ‘Like an American Alan Bennet’. You might be asking what’s the Guardian and who is Alan Bennet? Why do we need more of him, especially if you’re American and already got David Sedaris. Like most writers David Sedaris writes about himself. Like most writers he tells the same story over and over while trying to capture new readers who’ll appreciate him for his literary talent, or at least pay him for...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/another-round https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Round_(film) Another Round won an Oscar for The Best International Film 2021. Like most great stories the plot can be summed up in one line. Four teachers at the same school agree to get pissed every day. They call it an experiment. An aid to creativity and the better life they feel they’re missing out on. Psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s theory — humans are...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/a-fantastic-woman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fantastic_Woman Marina (Daniela Vega) is A Fantastic Woman or if you’re being picky, a fantastic transgender woman. Sebastián Lelio’s Oscar-winning drama is in many ways a revenge movie. Marina is a singer and part-time waiter who lives with her boyfriend, Orlando (Gonzalo Maza) in a smart apartment in Santiago. They have a dog, and he’s the type of older man...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/on-demand/75517-001 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65588273 Symeon Brown investigates how Pastor Paul Mackenzie, a former taxi driver and preacher of the coming apocalypse (who is in police custody) led to the mass murder or suicide of over 600 men, women and children and babies as young as two-months old. Pathologist Dr Goya reports that many of the victims of the exhumed bodies in...