scaryblog

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #11 :     Nickel Boys The 2019 book The Nickel Boys, from The Underground Railroad author Colson Whitehead, was already an acclaimed, accomplished, searing piece of storytelling: a fictionalised account of the real-life Dozier School in Florida which was exposed as an abusive and in some cases deadly institution for young African-American men. Filmmaker RaMell Ross — responsible for the hugely underrated 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening — somehow found a way to elevate the text even further, expanding on the interiority of the book by placing the camera inside the head of his two leads as they navigate the hellish Nickel Academy. The film is a technical and artistic feat, a genuinely innovative use of cinematography for character-based storytelling, but it is the tender, delicate way it approaches the harrowing story — and the humane performances, (sometimes off-screen) from the likes of Ethan He...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 20/10/63 : When In Spain -  Cliff Richard & The Shadows Before we get to the main album, we have another one to discuss that we've skipped over - from that well-known musical duo of Steptoe & Son. Huh? The internet is surprisingly lacking in information as to what was actually on this album (because there were several S&S albums) but it was almost certainly just bits from the soundtrack of some episodes. I listened to the only one available on Amazon Music (which was released in '70, but might have been a re-release of this one) and it was surprisingly dry - so I felt quite happy to skip over it... ...even if it meant having to endure a seventh visit with Cliff. I suspect we're into full-on cheesy Cliff mode by now - surely he must have accepted by now that he's never going to be Elvis? Well - this was unexpected. In some ways, he is quite Elvis-ish - but slow, ballad-y Elvis as opposed to rock'n...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 27/10/63 : Chuck Berry On Stage -  Chuck Berry Somewhat surprisingly, this is only our second visit with Mr Berry, with the previous one being a best-of on Rolling Stone's list which I would otherwise have rejected - and this one is a live album which wouldn't normally be included either. But he deserves the visit more than one I have unusually rejected from this year - we certainly don't need another Sinatra compilation, do we? Hmmm - this is both good and not so good. The songs are, for the most part, pretty decent (particularly when you consider a load of them are from the mid 50s) and there's some very fine guitar playing on them - easily the best we've heard this year. But the sound quality isn't great - we've already met plenty of live albums from earlier years which have a much better tone to them. But overall, I'm pleased I got to visit the lad. We're at #8 in the chart this week on his ...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/05/26 : ICEMAN - Drake  Well this is a peculiar week and no mistake - and it all starts off with our seventh visit with Drake. None of the previous visits have shown me what people see in the lad and I suspect it's really rather late for me to be converted. Yeah, there's nothing here to make me see the light - I will agree that there's some skill involved in the lyrics, but it's all a bit defensive, feeling sorry for himself or annoyed that people don't recognise his genius for my liking. If you like it, then I'm perfectly happy you're along for the ride but I won't be joining you. And so, quite obviously, we're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week - sigh (and things are about to get a WHOLE lot worse). The rest of the top five are a Michael Jackson best-of,  Olivia Dean , Michael Jackson 's  Thriller  and  Noah Kahan   - well, that doesn't seem too bad now, does it? Mayb...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 03/11/63 : Greatest Hits -  The Shadows It's impossible to say which visit this is with The Shadows because of all the albums we've met which have some combination of Cliff, The Shadows or both on them, but my verdict so far has been a mildly damning "mostly competent". But this is their greatest hits, so it's got to be great, right? It's another album I couldn't find but didn't have any difficulty recreating from the ten or so other greatest hits albums of theirs lying around on Amazon Music - and I was pleased to see it started with "Apache", a track I actually quite like, and "F.B.I."  and "Wonderful Land"  are OK as well. I actually didn't mind the album as a whole with there being more variety than I was expecting (within the somewhat narrow confines of guitar-based instrumentals, although "Stars Fell On Stockton" does include some whistling!). Howev...

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 10/11/63 : Born Free -  Frank Ifield He's been mentioned a few times in the top five this year, but apart from that I can tell you absolutely nothing about him - the best we can do is hope he doesn't come from Liverpool. Ah yes, there's no danger of that Merseybeat sound - we're back in 50s territory here in the style of Andy Williams or Perry Como, complete with, quite obviously, added yodelling in places. Well, I guess I was asking for something different and that's definitely what we've got here - there's no danger of me every listening to it again, but it was nice to have some more variety. We're at #4 in the charts this week on a surprisingly length 32 week run (obviously not everyone was listening to that hip new sound) with it having peaked at #3 in its 5th-7th weeks. The rest of the top five were  The Beatles ,  Gerry & The Pacemakers ,  The Searchers  and Kenny Ball with the highest new...