Bzangy Groink

Year: 2015

  • Albums Of The Year 2015

    This year, I bought 91 albums. I heard way more than that but those 91 were the ones I chose to invest in, to own. So, it’s with great sadness that I had to take 51 outside and quietly push them off the cliff of NO REMEMBRANCE. If an album appears below, it’s a winner.…

  • Star Wars: The Force Awakens

    I just got home from seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens (gonna call it TFA from here on) and I’m absolutely buzzing so it’s review time! SPOILERS AFTER THE BREAK! DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT! 

  • Doctor Who – Hell Bent

    SPOILERS, DARLING! I feel emotionally drained after that finale. Heaven Sent was all Greg Egan-ish, just a mad, brooding, fantastic SF meditation on time and existence, reminded me hugely of the start ofPermutation City. Hell Bent started off far more High Plains Drifter. The Doctor tramps across Gallifrey to his old home and almost has time…

  • Storage 24

    Just started watching Storage 24 :  And I was like… hold on, who is that handsome Irish fellow… OH YEAHHHH!!! O’Donoghue was born and raised in Drogheda, County Louth, in a Roman Catholic family. He initially attended Dundalk Grammar School, and then The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. At age 16, O’Donoghue went to…

  • Looking At Pictures Of Attractive Women On Tumblr

    I don’t follow any actual porn blogs as that’s what porn sites are for. But my dash is often peppered with pictures of attractive women because of the gynephiles I follow. (There are also lots of pictures of attractive men because of the androphiles I follow but since I don’t fancy men, my eyes kind of…

  • Elementary S4E1

    Originally posted by heckyeahreactiongifs I’m only twenty minutes into S4E1 of Elementary and I’m already loving it way more than any recent Sherlock.  I know that’s heresy round these here parts and I’ll now get run out of town by Cumberbatch fans but eh. Jonny Lee Miller brings a depth of pain to Holmes that’s missing…

  • Rotterdam

    Rotterdam I got back from Rotterdam today and I’m already missing it. What a wonderful city, fabulous architecture whether it’s old like Laurenskerk or new like Erasmusburg. And all the natives we met (Rotters? lol) were just the most laid-back, friendly and funny motherfuckers ever. Such total loves. If you can afford to visit it,…

  • Tigercub @ Rock City Basement, 7/11/15

    Tigercub by Jyoti Mishra Via Flickr: So, usually, I walk into the Basement and there’s a band on and I leave about three minutes later after some dreadful neo-Hair Metal or other atrocity. But last night, I went in and a band were on. I gave them a song. And then another song and by…

  • Jekyll And Hyde (ITV)

    Just watched S1E1 of ITV’s new Jekyll And Hyde and I’m very pleasantly surprised! First, they’ve obviously spunked some money out on this as the cinematography and production values are very high. Next, I was impressed by the writing. The show’s creator, Fast Show blokey Charlie Higson said he wanted it to be ‘Downton with monsters:’ “It certainly…

  • Le Mystere De Voix Bulgares

    I haven’t posted any Voix Bulgares for a while. And I do love them so! Their harmonies, their crazy interval leaping. The way the major sections break out like sunshine through clouds. My parents always say they sound Indian but the truth is they sound Indo-European, which is hardly surprising considering they way language and…

  • Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War

    Today, after a calm time visiting my folks, I spiralled into a sarlacc pit of worrying about money, worrying about work, worrying about my label, worrying that I’m not doing enough, worrying that I’m doing too much, worrying about my weight, worrying about the fasting I’ve been doing, worrying about worrying, worrying that I’m not…

  • Western Propaganda – A Chomskyan Analysis Of Today’s News

    In case you’re not familiar with the Propaganda Model, have a quick read here. I will be looking at headlines on today’s BBC News website, that is Saturday 3/10/2015. Here is a screengrab of the first of a paired example: The headline is clear and unambiguous: Russia is the bad guy and good guy Cameron…

  • US Murders Doctors In Air Strike On Hospital

    Medecins Sans Frontieres said at least nine of its staff were killed in the attack. Many are unaccounted for. It said the strikes continued for more than 30 minutes after US and Afghan authorities were told of its location. US forces were carrying out air strikes at the time. The Nato alliance has admitted the…

  • Defiance S3E13 – Upon The March We Fittest Die

      WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW!!   Woah! I really didn’t expect that ending at all. It was beautiful, as Nolan jetted through all the different systems in the Omec ship, you could tell the VFX people had really gone wild. What about the bit with the meteor shower hitting that moon?? *sigh* I will miss Kindzi.…

  • Star Trek: Renegades

    Finally watched Star Trek: Renegades and I loved it! Pluses: the sheer love of Trek seeps out of the whole film. I loved playing ‘spot-the-actor’ particularly when it was actors who’d been in Trek but not as the same character as they portray in ST:R. Also, the CGI for the space scenes is absolutely glorious. Kind…

  • We Love The Monkees

    And I thought I’d be okay, that it’d be a standard-issue ‘origin/clip/weren’t they great’ cheesy doc. In some ways it is. But the last part of the show, where they show the post-Monkees careers and then talk about Davy passing away… man, that killed me. I think it’s because I don’t remember a time not knowing…

  • Head – Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?

    Yet another clip from Head and also some groundbreaking visuals for 1968. I particularly love the solarised and coloured sequences where they freeze-frame it on beat with the guitar break. I have tried so many times to rip-off the style of this sequence and never managed it yet: the editing is exquisite. It’s also a wonderful…

  • Krays Kraze

    Just watched two ads on telly. The first was for the new Kray twins film starring Tom Hardy. The second was for Jackpotjoy. The ad stars Barbara Windsor who, in the sixties, was a big fan of the Krays: Her first marriage was to small time crook Ronnie Knight, and through him, she became associated…

  • Absurdly Detailed Pop Punk Dream

    (My dreams aren’t like normal dreams with hats becoming penguins and all kinds of impossibilities, my dreams tend to be like little films, in Technicolor, full 5.1 and with coherent plots, characters and locations.) I’m talking to this guy, he’s about 21 or so, we’re walking along and he says that I need to come…

  • Boy Meets Girl

    Mild spoilers after the break:

  • Superman (1978)

    I’m watching the original Superman film with the beautiful Christopher Reeve as Supes. There’s some truly gorgeous cinematography in the opening chapter. Ma Kent is just saying goodbye to teen Supes in a lovely wide shot: And Glenn Ford… he is just magical as Pa Kent: I think Kevin Costner comes close but Ford just…

  • Nichole Galicia

    I’m loving Nichole Galicia as Kindzi in Defiance. Her acting is totally committed, totally in the moment. Whenever she appears on screen, I’m nervous! She actually doesn’t need the CGI snakejaw thing at all, she is quite, quite terrifying without it. I really hope to see her in more SF because I love the way…

  • On Clubbing

    Just got back from town and seeing my friend Tash, the majority of which we spent ogling girls. She’s better at spotting girls than me but I’m stealthier ~ she just blatantly points! We were chatting about clubbing and I was trying to persuade her to come out to Mosh tonight. But she’s got an…

  • Stalinists Unite With Fascists Again

    class-struggle-anarchism: 161crewpoland: Stalinists in bulgaria demonstrating together with fascists from ATAKA party agaist… fascism in Ukraine and NATO. You couldn’t make that shit up… Seems like Putin’s money is a very uniting factor. stay classy Stalinism Hmmm… this seems familiar…. Germany, in 1930, had reached a turning point – for the masses, frustration had turned…

  • Ian McDiarmid

    I’ve just watched my fave ep of Inspector Morse. It’s my fave due largely to it featuring my favourite villain, Hugo De Vries, played by the wonderful Ian McDiarmid: I love this ep because it’s full on madness: set-ups, disguises, mis-direction, all under the control of De Vries. It’s like a classic Hitchcock where the…

  • Trot Stuff

    northern-irish-lefty: The Communist side of Tumblr seems to be quite split. There are people defending the USSR and denouncing Trotskyists (I will admit, the USSR improved some aspects of life) and then there’s the other side of Trotskyists and some AnComs who are denouncing the USSR and such. It would be interesting if this site…

  • Defiance S3E8 – My Name Is Datak Tarr And I Have Come To Kill You

    WOAAH! I did not see that end coming. Tarr goes to the enemy camp, I thought, this is it. They’ve been having the kid flashbacks to his Dad, we’ve seen the history of the blade, he can finally atone for everything and go out with honour. AND THEN HE SAWS HIS OWN FUCKING ARM OFF??…

  • Cop Rock (1990)

    Cop Rock is an American musical police drama series that aired on ABC in 1990. The show, a police drama presented as a musical, was co-created by Steven Bochco, who also served as executive producer. TV Guide ranked it #8 on TV Guide’s List of the 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time list in…

  • Fantastic Four

    So, I saw FF last night and I’m still really confused by it. It feels like it was pulling in two different directions. The first was towards the emotional realism of Trank’s awesome Chronicle and the second yer standard Marvel action film. I re-watched Chronicle again this week before FF and I still love it and the…

  • Halt And Catch Fire

    I knew zero about this series. Zip. Nihil. I saw it when I was skimming through Amazon Prime’s exclusive vid list and thought, hmmm, I’ll check that out when I have time. I assumed, because I haven’t seen even one post about it on Tumblr, that it wasn’t any good. I was very wrong. (MINOR…

  • Antoine Et Colette

    I guess I fell in love with Marie-France Pisier the first time I saw François Truffaut’s Antoine Et Colette. Originally posted by romantic-nostalgia Originally posted by francoisrolandtruffaut See? How could you not? Plus, she had the exoticism of being an older lady… I must have been around 16 when I saw it and she’s 18…

  • Where Is Everybody?

    sunslammerdown: rockpapertheodore: roachpatrol: just-shower-thoughts: What if aliens visited Earth during the Jurassic Period, found it to be occupied with a bunch of mean, giant lizards and thought “Well, fuck this planet” and never came back? what if when humans went out into the galaxy all the aliens panicked because if the dinosaurs’ tiny fur snacks…

  • Fascism – What It Is And How To Fight It By Leon Trotsky

    “What is fascism? The name originated in Italy. Were all the forms of counter-revolutionary dictatorship fascist or not (That is to say, prior to the advent of fascism in Italy)? The former dictatorship in Spain of Primo de Rivera, 1923-30, is called a fascist dictatorship by the Comintern. Is this correct or not? We believe…

  • Wonder Woman

    Originally posted by whatsyourderbyname When I saw the series as a kid, I loved it! There wasn’t that much powers stuff on telly so to get a major US series like this was sooo awesome. I cannot tell you how innocently excited I got every time she did her twirl, it was exactly the same…

  • Terminator Genisys

    JUST GOT BACK FROM SEEING TERMINATOR GENISYS!! and WHEEEEEEEEEE! Such an awesome SF blockbuster! Some of the initial fight scenes made me literally jump out of my seat. I had to close my eyes like a tiny child COS I WAS SCARED! CGI was cool, properly impressive without being intrusive. All the performances were on…

  • Cargo (2009)

    I started watching this totally on the off-chance: it was on Amazon Prime, said it was SF so I thought I’d give it a go! Turns out, it’s a pretty good SF thriller! I thought at first it was gonna be a creepy Event Horizon-type thingy but I’m glad it was actually more of a…

  • Apple Music Connect – A Muddled, Outrageous Cock-Up

    So, since my NEW SINGLE is released today in iTunes, I thought I would try to connect (hurr) using the new Apple Music Connect service that Apple evangelised at WWDC. How about I upload a little text blurb and the video onto Connect? Should be easy! Right, let’s find my Artist bit in Safari on…

  • Dark Matter

    So, I’m three eps into Dark Matter and it’s pretty good! It was a little clunky to start off with but I feel it’s finding its feet now. I’m glad the memory thingy has been addressed so quickly and not dragged out for the whole series, that would have been painful. The cast are all…

  • Trisha Noble

    So, it’s a Saturday so I’m obviously watching Columbo on Channel 5 and the ep is Playback. The baddie is a awesome Oskar Werner and this was probably the first time I saw him if I saw this when I was a kid, his Truffaut turns were unknown to me then. In the gallery scene,…

  • Nightmare

    Last night I had a horrible nightmare where I was trying to fight this monster made out of sliding slabs of stone. It kept blocking my path out of rooms, the noise of it sliding over itself was horrific, like nails on blackboard. I got so scared I woke up and hugged my wife to…

  • Humans

    I’ve been intrigued by the trailers for Humans and the first ep tonight didn’t disappoint me. Where I thought I knew where it would be going, it took a big swerve with the introduction of Colin Morgan’s character and his compatriots. This series is an adaptation of the original Swedish series Real Humans but truthfully…

  • On Thatcher

    Hey how are you? I hope you’re doing great. Hey i just saw a post in your blog about Margaret Thatcher and it was quite some time since i wanted to ask you something about her. Look i’m very intrigued about those Thatcher years, and i know somethings obviosly from pop culture but also i…

  • Sense8

    I’m on ep 3 of Sense8, created, written and executive-produced by Andy and Lana Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski and I’m loving it. In tone, it most reminds me of the first series of Heroes. Yes, the multiple storylines are reminiscent of Cloud Atlas, perhaps directing that is what made the Wachowskis hanker for more. But, overall, the storylines…

  • Murdoch Mysteries Histories

    SO… Murdoch Mysteries proud feminist streak carried on this week with an election special. It was another deftly-plotted and sometimes unsettling episode. The scene where the two Drs. walk to the front of the polling line and then… nothing. They have to stand aside and let the men pass as they do not have the…

  • Gina Carano

      I first saw Gina Carano in the utterly brilliant Steven Soderbergh film, Haywire(2011). I knew nothing about her MMA background then, all I knew is that this woman was utterly convincing as a super-badass agent. Unlike so much fighting in spy / action / superhero films, here was a protagonist who moved like a…

  • Jones The Axe

    Watching this week’s Grimm and the baddy Leporem Venator is WELSH. YES, WELSH! From the sound of it, south Wales, mebbe from around Merthyr. As I lived in Pontypridd when I was a little lad, this made me happy. MORE WELSH BADDIES ON US TELLY, PLEASE!

  • We’ve All Been There

    https://twitter.com/JyotiMishra/status/594534205859717121

  • The EMAX II Saga

    The sampler that I wrote Your Woman on, the sampler at the heart of a lot of my music twenty years ago was the EMAX II. It was my first real sampler and I went mental on it. My previous experience was with a Boss RSD-10 which was wonderful but if you didn’t get the…

  • Gotham And Mr. J

    Cameron Monaghan has already been in a load of series that I love; The Mentalist, Fringe, Numb3rs, Monk, Malcolm In The Middle. But seeing him here portraying a young… you-know-who… well, he’s certainly got great things ahead of him. Meanwhile, Gotham unbelievably gets better every episode, the writing is absolutely spot-on. The ensemble cast is…

  • Capitalism Is Not Your Friend, Part Whatever

    A drugs firm has been accused of trying to block access to what some doctors believe is a cheap, safe and effective drug to treat a common eye condition. The British Medical Journal claims it has revealed a campaign to derail research into the cancer drug Avastin. (Source: BBC) The profit motive is incompatible with human happiness,…