To commemorate a decade of this blog, here’s a Top Ten rundown of the most clicked-upon posts Of..All...Time! I‘m loathe to call them “the most read”, because it may be more accurate to say these are things people clicked on, stared at for ten seconds and clicked away again in abject boredom. Who knows? Nevertheless, I’m doing it anyway. Here we go...
10. Black as Midnight on a Moonless Night
In which I rhapsodise about the Tao of Special Agent Dale Cooper and his eternally wise words on the finest beverage of all - a damn fine cup of black coffee.
9. Quid Pro Quo, Douchebags
I hate The Hangover with a vengeance. Even more than The Hangover hates you (and believe me, it does). So I decided to articulate my enmity here at some length. It warms the cockles of my blackened heart when people tell me how much they agree with me. Since I wrote this post, I found out that Mel Brooks is a big fan of The Hangover. This makes me ineffably sad.
8. Justice Is What I Seek - Avenging The Lone Ranger
My vigorous defence of Gore Verbinski’s unfairly-maligned future-classic The Lone Ranger, my favourite film of 2013.
7. Spring Break Forever, Bitches
My look at Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers refracted through the lenses of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and Dorothy Gale’s Technicolor trip to the merry ol’ land of Oz.
6. Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die
Some thoughts on one of my literary heroes, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, after sitting through the somewhat dissatisfying Alex Gibney documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. When the going gets weird, the weird turn to blogging.
5. Kentucky Fried Friedkin
Following a screening of his blistering southern fried noir Killer Joe at London's BFI Southbank in 2012, William Friedkin took to the stage for a Q&A with Mark Kermode. I captured the best bits here.
4. Unhappy Campers - Kirkman, Moore & Adlard's The Walking Dead
Once upon a time, The Walking Dead was only a hugely popular ongoing black-and-white comic series and I loved it. I still love it and this is where I wrote about why.
3. Peeking under the hood of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive
I am eternally conflicted about both Nicolas Winding Refn and his film Drive. For all the things I like about both, I am convinced he’s just a trickster plagiarist who pilfers bits from his favourite movies and then bolts them together into sleek, shiny Frankenstein monsters. After watching Drive, I tried to unpick Refn’s myriad influences and wrote about them here.
2. It Came From The Archives! - Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale
This one is super lucky! I first wrote about Battle Royale back in 2003 for a book. Then the book went out of print. So I took those words and put them here for the world to enjoy anew.
1. Living In A Box - Paul King's Bunny & The Bull
I can’t account for the popularity of this post on the little-seen and largely-forgotten 2009 film Bunny and the Bull. Either hardly anyone has ever written about it or (more likely), people are actually Googling for the 1953 Warner Brothers Looney Tunes short Bully for Bugs and are landing here instead...
