Culture • Memory • Film • Music • Things We Refuse to Throw Away
Rewinding the best of film and music before the world ends.
Long-form writing on films, television, music, physical media, old technology, model kits and the cultural debris that somehow followed us home.
Cover Story
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Fall 2: Deadpoint — I Watched Most of This Film Through My Fingers
I liked the first Fall, so I wondered why it needed a sequel. Then the filmmakers put two more climbers on a cliffside plank walkway and reminded me that I apparently enjoy being terrified of heights.
Latest
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When the Mountains Woke: How Troll Turned Norwegian Folklore Into a Global Monster Franchise
Spoilers for Troll (2022) and Troll 2 (2025). There is a peculiar pleasure in returning to a film…
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IT: Welcome to Derry — Pennywise Was Never the Only Monster
IT: Welcome to Derry finds its most unsettling horrors not only in Pennywise, but in the people who…
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Hope (2026): A Spectacular Alien Invasion That Forgot to Give Us an Ending
Na Hong-jin’s Hope (2026) brings extraordinary cinematography, uneasy CGI aliens and a fascinating change of perspective — then…
Signals in the Static
Film & Television
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Fall 2: Deadpoint — I Watched Most of This Film Through My Fingers
I liked the first Fall, so I wondered why it needed a sequel. Then the filmmakers put two more climbers…
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When the Mountains Woke: How Troll Turned Norwegian Folklore Into a Global Monster Franchise
Spoilers for Troll (2022) and Troll 2 (2025). There is a peculiar pleasure in returning to a film you remember…
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IT: Welcome to Derry — Pennywise Was Never the Only Monster
IT: Welcome to Derry finds its most unsettling horrors not only in Pennywise, but in the people who make the…
Songs for the End Times
Music
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When the Silence Was the Crime: Revisiting Alanis Morissette’s “Hands Clean”
A 2002 pop-rock single that passed as bright, polished radio fare carried a much darker story about power, secrecy and…
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Two Cassettes, Too Many Shoes, and a Red Pajero
TLC’s CrazySexyCool, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and the slightly battered red Pajero that turned two…
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The Party at the End of the World: The B-52s and the Radical Joy of Staying Weird
The B-52s built a pop language from surf guitar, thrift-store futurism, deadpan humour and dance-floor joy. A retrospective on Ricky…
The Geek Attic / Toys After the Fall
Gear & Collecting
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Star Rangers: Before Power Rangers, We Already Had Five Heroes in Colour
Before Power Rangers, Philippine TV had Star Rangers: five numbered heroes, improbable monsters and an English dub that has nearly…
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The Props I Wanted More Than the Movies: Blasters, Proton Packs and Other Objects That Escaped the Screen
From Deckard’s blaster and Ghostbusters proton packs to Starfleet comm badges, lightsabres and the Lament Configuration, some screen objects escape…
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How I Nearly Ruined My Tallgeese III — and Learned to Paint Gunpla
My first fully spray-painted kit involved incompatible paints, Singapore humidity, parts soaking in alcohol and several lessons I didn’t need…
From the Archive
Floating Through Memory Lane: The Sundays and the Art of Beautiful Melancholy
An older transmission pulled back off the shelf: a return to one of those bands whose music seems to carry its own weather.
The Weekend Transmission
One thing watched. One thing heard. One thing found in the attic.
New essays, rediscovered music, films worth arguing with and occasional recommendations, delivered by email rather than entrusted to an algorithm.