Category: on the sofa | 影評 | 영화를보고 | 映画レビュー

  • February 2024 newsletter – No.7

    February 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my February 2024 newsletter which marks my 7th issue. I hope that your year of the dragon is off to a great start. The number 7 is a bit of a mixed bag, depending on how you look at it. In the old testament, the 7th heaven is where God’s…

  • December 2023 newsletter

    December 2023 newsletter introduction I put the December 2023 newsletter together early because I know how December goes. It used to be that Christmas parties and a gradual disappearance of clients and colleagues meant that the month effectively ended on December 15. In recent years all that went out the window. Clients called pitches for…

  • November 2023 newsletter – fourth time unlucky?

    November 2023 newsletter introduction You’re still reading? Great! Welcome to my November 2023 newsletter which marks my 4th issue. I am not excessively superstitious – but living in Hong Kong rubbed off a bit on me. I developed a love of milk tea, found the ‘hit women’ cathartic and am still leery of the number…

  • October 2023 newsletter – 3rd time’s the charm

    October 2023 newsletter introduction As I write the October 2023 newsletter. it’s getting noticeably darker outside earlier, but the sunrises reward us with a wider variation of colours. And we all have Halloween to look forward to. This is the third issue and I am still finding my way writing these things. I hope that…

  • Tampopo

    I first got to see Tampopo at the 051 Cinema in Liverpool. It was a comedy, it had new wave vibes and I knew I could watch it several more times without getting bored. When I went to college a lecturer screened clips of it to emphasise the importance of observation as a market research…

  • General Magic

    General Magic has a reputation of being the technology equivalent of the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls, but it ended up going nowhere. I never got to see the device in person, it was only available in Japan and the US. It’s as famous much for its alumni, as it is for its commercial failure. This is…

  • The Killer

    The media environment that drove the popularity of The Killer Before talking about The Killer, it makes sense to talk about the media landscape. The late 1980s and early 1990s was when consumers first started to buy video films rather than only rent them. Retail video sales had been pioneered in the UK by the…

  • Kurena by Kurena Ishikawa

    I first heard Kurena Ishikawa on a video that a friend of mine showed me of her performing at the Blue Note Jazz Club in Tokyo. Ishikawa played double bass and played a stripped down version of Michael Jackson’s off the wall. It completely changed the atmosphere of the original song. In Ms Ishikawa’s hands…

  • Bruce Mau + more things

    Bruce Mau I spent part of the bank holiday weekend reading and finally managed to tuck into designer Bruce Mau’s signature book MC24. For those that haven’t heard of him Bruce Mau is a Canadian designer and academic. He founded a brand design agency: Bruce Mau Design which is now part of marketing combine Stagwell.…