Donald Clarke

• Avatar Oscars
• January 31, 2010, 22:22

Hello. Billy the Fish here with his final attempt to guess Tuesday’s Oscar nominations. As we seek to anticipate the Academy’s shortlist for best picture, a strange revelation sets in. When, last summer, it was announced that the powers that …

• Rock 'n' pop.
• January 29, 2010, 23:27

As it’s the weekend allow me to recommend  a tune to accompany your progress through brunch and advertising supplements. Comic rock is rarely comic and it almost never rocks. The one notable exception is the oeuvre of the imperishable Birkenhead …

• Avatar Box Office Figures
• January 26, 2010, 23:25

At the time of the 1987 British general election, I was living in London — in Mrs Thatcher‘s constituency, in fact — and, like many of my Guardian-reading friends, greatly appreciated a cartoon that appeared in that paper the day …

• Box Office Figures Oscars
• January 24, 2010, 23:42

Events at the Screen Actors Guild this weekend confirmed one of the odder cinematic developments of 2009. Sandra Bullock picked up the SAG best actress award for her performance in The Blind Side — some blubby American foorball thing — …

• Uncategorized
• January 22, 2010, 22:26

When I began this “blog” I never expected to find myself writing about bread commercials, but, after a trip to the Dart station, I find just such an urge coming upon me. Consider the ubiquitous billboard — sadly I can’t …

• Hell
• January 20, 2010, 22:44

…to make sense of the phenomenon that was Love Story? Erich Segal, who died a few days ago, was a distinguished classics scholar, literary critic and sports commentator. Unfortunately, Eric, a nice, smart bloke by all accounts, will forever be …

• Golden Globes Oscars
• January 19, 2010, 23:14

There were, for those of us who stayed up to watch the stupid Golden Globes, a few pleasures to make up for the depressing intelligence that Avatar has now been installed as the third most popular religion in the United …

• Uncategorized
• January 17, 2010, 23:13

Did anybody visit the Guardian’s film page over the weekend? On the left-hand column (and somewhere in the real paper, I guess) there was a piece by Kidman-fancier-in-chief David Thomson entitled Ozu vs Avatar — this really is what cinema …

• Television
• January 13, 2010, 22:13

A little over a decade ago, RTÉ began repeating The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the middle of the day. Visiting favourite TV series from one’s youth is always a tricky business. Dad’s Army still looks like a 24-carat classic; …

• Avatar Oscars
• January 12, 2010, 22:46

Viz comic used to great mileage from the fact that, as the editors saw it, nobody cared much for Fulchester goalkeeper Billy the Fish. His exploits were often accompanied by copy such as “the strip everybody hates” or “everyone’s least …

• Hell London Film Festival Trailerspotting Uncategorized
• January 10, 2010, 22:07

Okay. Now, this is the trailer we’ve all been waiting for. There are few films more delightful to the Hibernian palate than the Hollywood Mick-flick. Did you see Laws of Attraction? How about P S I Love You? Yeah? How …

• Hell Politics
• January 8, 2010, 01:35

By now, you should have heard the news — revealed in a fantastically creepy BBC Spotlight investigation — that Iris Robinson, gay-bashing DUP outrider and professional Margaret Hamilton impersonator, had a torrid affair with a brave 19-year-old chap. Might I …

• Uncategorized
• January 6, 2010, 23:19

Unkind commentators have, from time to time, suggested that certain sections of the Irish-American community tend towards sentimentality in their attitude to the old country and paranoid chippiness in their approach to the United Kingdom. What else do these rogues …

• Deaths Michael Dwyer
• January 4, 2010, 16:20

It hardly needs to be said that I am very touched by all the comments beneath the notice of Michael Dwyer’s death. He would have been delighted to know that he was remembered so kindly and would have been particularly …

• Deaths Michael Dwyer
• January 2, 2010, 02:13

My friend Michael Dwyer, this newspaper’s film correspondent, died on New Years Day. He was just 58.