https://www.channel4.com/programmes/resistance-2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_(2020_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Marceau Jonathan Jakubowicz’s hagiography of Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) begins in pre-war Nazi German of 1938. Elsbeth (Bella Ramsey) watches her dad and mum being arrested, beaten and shot. Their crime was being Jewish. It ends post-war in Nuremberg. General Patton (Ed Harris) asks ‘what is courage...

Don Paterson is around the same age as me. But he’s won a stack of poetry and literary awards and is Professor of Poetry at St Andrew’s University. That’s the university that usually comes out near the top for all the English nobs that can’t get into Oxbridge and even a few that can. Don Paterson, like me, grew up in a council estate in Dundee. Dundee is on par with drug deaths with Glasgow, which every year wins the award for dying. That’s how...

My historical novel, The Castle , from which extracts were posted on AbcTales last year, is now available on Amazon in digital, paperback and hardback editions. Overview of book: Cornwall, 1646; England is in a state of civil war. In the town of Falmouth, the population awaits the arrival of General Fairfax’s Parliamentary army which is sweeping through the south west. Only Pendennis Castle remains under Royalist control, its garrison refusing...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/rhino/on-demand/74813-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhino_(film) Right-wing followers of the moron’s moron and former President Trump are trying to indict President Joe Biden ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/biden-impeachment-inquiry-what-to-know ) because of his son, Hunter’s, links with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Corruption was and remains at a high levels in Ukraine. Standard...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/minari/on-demand/73507-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minari_(film) Minari is a type of planet used in cooking South Korean dishes that grows like a weed. Monica’s mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) travels from South Korea to help look after her grandchildren. She plants minari seeds in the creek bed where it grows abundantly. There’s a metaphor there. As Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun/ Yeun Sang-yeop) explains his...

Hope everybody has had a good week! Story of the Week is another funny, charming and insightful tale from Hudson Moon. We all get The Bothers, and Hudson offers a solution which is guaranteed to work. Until it doesn't. A delightful read for your weekend: The Bothers | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Dynamaso's 'Scratched'. It's beautifully written, slightly unnerving, and will stay with you long after reading: Scratched | ABCtales This week's...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/night-of-the-kings?.none.none.popular|| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Kings Most prison movies tend to be about escape, or redemption, or both and act as morality plays. Stephen King’s short story turned into a longer film, The Shawshank Redemption , is familiar to most of us. Night of the Kings has a fairy tale feel to it which lifts it out of the ordinary. The plot is simple. Roman (Koné Bakary...

Great news about Josiah and Archibald! The very first story in their adventures - 'A Dubious Undertaking ' - which appeared first here on ABCTales, has been selected for broadcast on Yorick Radio's podcast on Friday, 17th November, 2023. I'm very excited about this and very much looking forward to hearing how these two make the transition to audio. My thanks to everyone here who have been kind enough to read the continuing Undertakers stories...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-mustang?.none.none.popular|| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mustang I was brought up watching Champion the Wonder Horse . It could do pretty much anything apart from shoot a gun and dance backwards like Ginger Rodgers. The Mustang is from the same breed. The spiel before the film tells the viewer there are thousands of horses running wild. But they’re overbreeding. Ironically, they are also dying off...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/them-that-follow/on-demand/73188-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them_That_Follow Olivia Coleman is in this film. She doesn’t usually make duff movies. So I decided to watch the start and see if I liked it. I thought it would be a naff horror about some kind of poltergeist. A curse of some kind. In a way it was. Set in rural Appalachia on ‘the mountain,’ the curse was religion. The kind of Pentecostal...