Sweet Nothings

Ay up, our kid... are we the baddies? "Industries like airlines and Uber do it already"  Yes, and it sucks when they do it. Plus, they don't advertise one price and then increase it during the queuing process. "It's not Ticketmaster who set the prices, it's the bands" You're telling me the bands would have had this idea themselves if those guys hadn't invented it? Or that, when presented with the option of making more money, you would find it easy to decline? "Noel and Liam have forgotten their working class roots" They've not been working class for a long time, guys. Trying to paint either Gallagher as a saint this late in the game seems rather silly. "It's just capitalism, stupid" I'm no expert, but I would suggest that for capitalism to function it can't just be about the pure, untrammelled pursuit of profit. It's mostly about that, sure. But the last financial crash wasn't an inevitable consequence

I was really snooty about Deadpool. The MCU superhero formula of just-snarky-enough humour was going great guns, so why should I worry about what lesser studios were doing? All that potty-mouthed fourth wall breaking seemed kinda adolescent and, well,  desperate. At some point this year, post Disney-Fox merger and with the MCU in crisis mode , I conceded that maybe I'd been a key driver in my daughter's obsession with poos and farts, and I should probably give Ryan a chance. I watched the first one: Reynolds and his collaborators do nothing by halves, positively wallowing in their ironic depravity. But it also had a proper story arc with surprisingly high emotional stakes. It is, shock horror, a very good film. Kevin Feige presumably intended  Deadpool and Wolverine  to be a disposable palate-cleanser, but with popular opinion turning against the MCU it's become more like a last-chance saloon for Kev, Disney and even superhero flicks in general. Can it stop the rot? (Spoile

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, go on a Disney cruise. Never mind that we booked the trip long before the citrus items in question arrived (straight after we came back from our last one, why do you ask?) - what better way to combat the greyest, boringest time of the year in the UK (NFL playoffs excepted) than getting the hell out?  Some might frown upon pulling your kid out of school for a couple of days, but my mum and dad took me out of school for weeks at a time and it never did me any hurm. Pre-ship We decided to top and tail the boat-based fun with a brief stay in a couple of different WDW resorts. The consensus take from the blogs and guidebooks on Caribbean Beach (CBR to those in the know) is that it’s huge and confusing to navigate, something we’d suspected on our previous visits when we’d Skylinered over from our regular haunt of Pop Century. Turns out said prevailing view is bollocks – it’s a few minutes walk from any room to the reception area and there’s an

So the latest Marvel blockbuster looks set to bomb at the box office, while the rumblings of discontent about Marvel Studios’ output grow ever more ominous. Seems like a good time to take stock of the MCU. The Marvels: not bad 😐 Re The Marvels itself: C haracter overload? The MCU has so many characters now that this is no surprise. Brie Larson may well have been miffed to be sharing top billing, but when you choose to make a character so powerful, how else are you going to create jeopardy other than giving them weaker companions to look after? It’s more or less the whole premise of Doctor Who. Production troubles? Director Nia DaCosta has played down rumours of friction, maintaining that the movie was designed to last 105 minutes (super-brisk for a modern blockbuster). But a definite lack of coherence and skimpy character motivations suggest that several scenes have been cut. It was hardly worth Samuel L Jackson turning up. But: despite all this, it’s still enjoyable enough. If Marv

Yes, we went to Disney World again. Get over it. As usual, for reasons of space and sanity let’s concentrate on what was new and different. The heat Florida in August is a furnace. No matter how many times you tell yourself this, the reality still blasts you in the face like an angry, sweaty fire god. On the first afternoon I was briefly reconsidering the entire trip. Being a shopping and entertainment district, Disney Springs was not designed with shade in mind; unfortunately, Gideon’s Bakehouse has carved itself such a unique artisanal niche that cookie-craving customers must line up in the sun-baked asphalt for aeons. Thank God for their Nitro Cold Brew’s immense restorative powers. Also, late stage capitalism offers innumerable heat-defeating products, from cooling towels to the ubiquitous neck fans, through rehydration tablets all the way down to chafing sticks. After the first couple of days, once we’d got into the rhythm of downing a bottle of water and reapplying our sun