If you had to say to me, which of the Guardian’s of the Galaxy would make the perfect subject of their own spin-off TV show, I don’t think Groot would be my first choice. Baby Groot is, of course, adorable, but the limited dialogue offered by everyone’s favourite tree-based character would seem to reduce what any follow up shows could be about.

Oddly, It Feels So Good was featured on a 1993 episode of Top of the Pops that the BBC are re-airing, and it just put me in mind of this dance version which I knew better. So it had to be time to dip into Sonique’s back catalogue and this is some proper late 90s/early 00s dance pop that is wonderful to hear. I loved pretty much the whole album, except it feels like an odd choice to stick a remix of the lead song at the end that is so much worse than the original at the top. Bit of a weird note to end on but otherwise, I loved it.

This is a good album from Paolo Nutini. I’ve liked his work in the past but not really kept up with what he’s been doing lately. It was pretty much what I expected, a mix of slow and fast, singer-songwriter good pop, with perhaps a stronger Scottish accent than we’ve heard before. Really the only complaint is it’s just a bit long, and that’s not necessarily a problem but it feels like it tails off towards the end, too many slow songs in a row. But overall, a great piece of work.

I didn’t know a six-part documentary charting the beginnings and growth of Industrial Light & Magic was in the works so when the show arrived on Disney+ last month, it was a pleasant surprise. I love a glimpse behind the scenes at how the magic is made in the film industry, and watching creative and brilliant people do what they do just fills me with inspiration and joy. So, as it turns out, this show was absolutely made for me.

Being in the Apple device cycle means putting up with the unfortunate changes they make to their devices until either you get used to it or they roll it back. I tend not to complain too much about them because I’m still so hugely in awe of how brilliant my phone and iPad are, so the benefits far outweigh the cons.

I had seen a couple of people talking about air fryers on TikTok, but not really paid it too much attention. It sounded like just another cooking fad that would pass me by, like slow cookers (I did actually try a slow cooker with disastrous results) and pressure cooking. But then a couple of friends were discussing their own joys of frying in only air and my ears perked up.

I watched Downton Abbey relatively recently and whilst it was alright entertainment, I don’t know that it grabbed me the same way it did a lot of the nation. However, I figured it was worth giving Julian Fellowes works a go in a different format - this time a book. At first, it did feel a little bit slow-going, setting the scenes and introducing a lot of characters. Not too many, but how they all fitted together was mind-boggling. At one point, I genuinely had to draw out a little family tree to get my head round it. But once I got past that, and as the action gradually drifted towards a conclusion - secrets being revealed and all the ramifications that followed - I was hooked! A fun read.

The level of curated content available on Apple Music is so good that it’s overwhelming - partly because there’s so much of it and partly because, despite repeated upgrades and efforts, navigating around the Music app is still really difficult. However, it’s super easy just to pop on one of the three radio channels and listen to whatever’s being played and my one favourite find at the moment is Rock Classics with Jenn, on the Apple Hits station. The premise is simple, Jenn guides us through brilliant rock classics from throughout music history based around a theme… and it’s the themes where the fun starts.

This was such a good film. We’ve not done all the Predator series and certainly haven’t dipped into the Alien versus Predator situation, but as this was a prequel, it seemed okay to give it a whirl out of sequence. I’m glad we did, it was great. The film was absolutely stripped back to the bare essentials and stacked full of tension from start to finish.

This website, mrschristine.com, has been hosted on a static site generator for just over three years and it’s been a fantastic step forward for me. At the time of the big switchover, I wrote about the pros and cons of moving away from Wordpress and it’s fair to say since then the pros keep getting better and better but the cons haven’t necessarily gone away.

Two years ago, to the very month, I wrote about my frustration on trying to follow news and blogs via RSS feed. It wasn’t hard to find great content that I wanted to keep on top of but finding the best way to actually subscribe and follow was really difficult. I think that problem has continued, particularly with the more fragmented world of newsletter subscriptions and paid for content.

I know Lighthouse Family are considered slow-going easy-listening lift music but actually, I didn’t mind it. It made for really good background music, and even though I only knew a couple of the songs, it all seemed to work together. It’s not one I would seek out over and over but I can see why those couple of songs are as well-known as they are.

You know, I love early Beyoncé but there’s a moment where her music goes off the boil for me (haven’t quite pinpointed it yet but it’s there) and ever since I just haven’t been interested. The reviews and the hype over this album were so great though, it was impossible to ignore.

Mr C set me up for this movie by saying there was terrible effects in it and plane technology that couldn’t exist. None of that was true, okay some of the effects while they were in the plane haven’t aged that well but are perfectly fine within the context of the movie. And the plane doesn’t quite look like the stealth bombers we know but it’s plausible enough. And the rest of the movie was entertaining enough so it beat my, admittedly very low, expectations.

A TV show about the challenges of parenting wouldn’t usually be up my street given how very happily childfree I am. However, buoyed by the success of watching Trying (a show about a couple looking to adopt) and by the excellent casting of Daisy Haggard and Martin Freeman, I thought I’d give Breeders a go. There have been three seasons, and the first one is slightly different to the others. I thought the first episode was an absolute triumph in plotting, following a sleepless night that really sets the scene for the rest of the show. It starts with a pact to sleep two hours on, two hours off, and it ends up with Freeman waking up in his car being accused of killing his kids… and yet it makes total sense.

A new trailer for the upcoming Star Wars series Andor was released this week and it looks so good. So very good. Rogue One was such a good film that it’s been a long time coming for a spin off of the spin off. The Disney+ blurb says the series ‘focuses on Cassian Andor’s journey to discover the difference he can make… the tale of the burgeoning rebellion against the Empire and how people and planets became involved."

I was pretty ignorant about the state of the UK’s wildlife until the big lockdown meant concentrating on these four walls plus the back garden. You’ll know I concentrated my efforts on turning into a vegetable gardener, but alongside that is a growing understanding of the other creatures and insects that use our little pieces of greenery to survive. Hedgehog populations have been falling for a long time, and there’s always talk about what you can do to help. I went with the bowl of hedgehog food and a saucer of water each night to keep our prickly friends going, and noticed there were already little hedgehog-sized holes in the fence to let them come and go as they pleased. In fact, one evening, I followed a hedgehog at a safe distance around the garden and it magically disappeared in what seemed to me to be a dead end, so I’m confident they’ve got the fence network sorted.

Did you know there’s stand up comedy on Apple Music? I just found some recently, stumbled across it by complete accident, and I was surprised. Although, when I really thought about it, it does make sense. Old school stand up comedy used to be released on records, didn’t it, with people happily playing their favourite stand up on repeat.

We’ve reached August and it’s time to start the eighth 30 day challenge of my year. Off the back of timing the Waterllama hydration challenge so perfectly for the hottest days in the UK ever, the summer vibe continues and this month I’m focused on lunchtimes. We’re going for 30 Days of Salads. I’ve been eating more salads recently anyway, but it feels like it’s time to give the meal some proper attention. Firstly, I want to investigate varieties and recipes for salad so that it’s not just lettuce and cucumber every day that could get boring. Secondly, understanding what I can use from my garden and what I can look to grow next year to make salads for lunch an easy and super tasty thing.

When I kicked off July’s 30 Day Challenge, to get a full month’s streak on the health tracker Waterllama, I thought it was just a fun thing to do with a cute app that would help me keep hydrated. How could I have predicted that it would be around at exactly the right time - when temperatures in the UK hit their highest ever for a couple of days and keeping fluid levels up became crucially important?

Apparently Black Sabbath are credited with having a hand in creating the heavy metal genre, so this is one of the first outings of that kind of music. I didn’t mind it, the bits that were musical were great, but there was a lot of that thing where songs just go off into something completely different, noodle around a bit, and then come back. I swear there was a minute long drum solo in there somewhere. So I liked it more than I thought I would but it’s probably not really to my taste.

Mabel’s second album is very good, featuring lots of that pop sound she’s become famous for. Quite a lot of the time, I could almost visualise her dancing along with her troop on stage. Yay for pop! There really wasn’t a standout song on the album, though, a couple were better than others but no real anthems, unlike the first record which was stacked full of them. Fun but not particularly memorable.

This was a free book of the week from Apple Books, so low stakes investment but actually it was a really good read. I whipped through it in super quick time, and enjoyed watching the characters gradually relax and unfold into their surroundings. The bit where there was a supposed mystery over the emails and money and stuff was annoying because it was so obvious what was going on and our hero Maeve even laid out the facts and still couldn’t see it… annoying. BUT once that was out in the open, the rest read like a dream. I’m curious what the other books in the series are like too.

I was excited for this movie - getting the gang back together - who wouldn’t be? And it was fantastic to see Dern and Neill, Alan and Ellie, back on our screens with their will-they won’t-they chemistry. The trouble is, that’s really all that was good about this movie.

Not long ago, I wrote of a new fondness for gin, particularly as June celebrated World Gin Day. Since then, I’ve learnt even more about the tipple and even managed to find a whole gin universe to be unravelled. Bear with me on this. I talked of James May’s gin, the cleverly titled James Gin, which has the broadcaster’s traditional understated marketing and labelling but is packed full of taste. Recent efforts to sell the gin have seen James May recruiting fellow Grand Tour star Richard Hammond, a noted gin-fan, for various things, such as talking about gin, or playing chess whilst under the influence of gin. All fun and games.

I’m not great at planning or being organised or looking too far ahead, although it’s something I’ve been working on for a long time (especially if the number of to-do apps I’ve reviewed on this blog are anything to go by). However, when it comes to gardening, apparently, a bit of forward planning is necessary.

Overall I think I enjoyed this book but I have to admit to find it quite slow going. There’s a murder and a mystery at the heart of it, but it seems to take such a long time to make any progress at any point. It has the problem of a non-police character getting involved where they probably shouldn’t but then as a relationship was developing with one of the detectives, it kind of worked. I liked the character building and really felt part of the family of Ericka and Anna, but, yea, it just seemed to take a long time to get to the big reveal.

I love stories about time travel so I was very intrigued by Sky’s new TV show, The Lazarus Project, an eight part series about a covert group trying to stop the end of the world. The premise is that this group keep an eye on world events and if there’s an extinction-level threat, they press a reset button that loops time back to the 1st July.

This is a great resource book for kids and adults alike, delving into all aspects of space. There are breakdowns of each planet in our solar system as well as a view of what’s further afield. There are details about space travel, what has been discovered so far and what future missions might find. And there’s talk of the big bang, of the various types of stars, and quite a big section on constellations and looking up into the night sky. Great book to refer back to in the future.

After whipping through the TV show in super quick time, I was curious to see what the source material was like. I’m not a huge graphic novel reader but had to dip into this one and was glad I did. The art is of a unique style, quite scrappy, but it draws you in and you connect as if you could have drawn it yourself. The story is very similar to what occurs on TV, although it finishes much sooner than the episodes do, so I’m already interested to read what happens in volume two.

It’s not clear whether this book is fact or fiction, it presents as a diary recovered from a German prisoner-of-war, as a factual record of his progress through the German navy and the first World War. But there’s not a lot known about it so it could be fabrication. Regardless, it does a great job of showing how human both sides of a war can be, people just doing their jobs, falling in love, missing home and doing their duty. A good, quick, read.

I’m relatively new to this John Le Carre journey so it’s a bit odd to be reading this, his last book, at this point. However, the title just called out to me. The book was basically finished before the author died, and it was polished by his son before release. I thought the writing was incredible and the characters are so well drawn… but I’m not sure I understood the point of it. What was the story, what was the plot? Review suggest it was showing the author’s disillusionment with the security services but, I don’t know, I think I just missed it all. It’s short though, so nice to just revel amongst these odd characters for a while.

I knew more of these songs than I was expecting which is always a nice bonus, and it was really interesting to hear The Police trying to figure out their sound. It did raise questions in my head when the tracks dipped into reggae - is there an element of cultural appropriation here or should people be allowed to experiment with inspiration wherever it comes from? I wasn’t expecting a wider philosophical discussion to come out of listening to this album but it did! Good songs, though, that stand the test of time.

What a fantastic album this one is! Great songs, great vibe, wonderful pop and inspiring lyrics. I appreciate the change she made to Grrls in response to the wider conversation, but I don’t necessarily appreciate sampling the worst Beastie Boys song I’ve experienced. And it’s so weird listening to About Damn Time because I’m so familiar with that one section from TikTok that it’s like when you suddenly hear the rest of a theme song from your favourite TV show. But loved it!

I was expecting your classic rom-com read here but actually it was a lot more nuanced than that. There was the romance (quite detailed in places!) and there was the comedy (I loved some of the back-and-forths between Gus and January), but there were other layers, the troubled history of our pair, the writer battle between them, and more than anything, how to deal with the fact that your parents are human too. A good read and a satisfying ending.

I loved the way this was written, I’ve always liked Ken Follett books but there were too many characters to keep track of in this, and all of them doing similar things. Dashing around trying to find a painting that may or may not exist whilst also making forgeries of paintings that may not exist. It’s short, so there wasn’t a huge amount of room for character development and so even though I usually love a good heist, this really didn’t do it for me.

I got a couple of episodes into The Undeclared War before I realised I needed to get Mr C on board with this show. It’s airing on Channel 4 at the moment, or available as a boxset via streaming, and we very quickly demolished the lot.

I saw this clip on YouTube recently of Olivia Rodrigo on tour in London, bringing out Natalie Imbruglia to sing the Australian’s big hit Torn. It’s fun and frothy and, of course, an excellent song. Unfortunately, the video isn’t available to embed but it’s worth going over to YouTube to watch it for the frankly incredible quality.

This is so good, fantastic beats, great vibes, and that wonderful voice on top. At first, it felt like a shame to have to wait through the whole album to get to One Love, but then it turns out the rest of the album is great too. I did have Jamming stuck in my head for a significant amount of time, but there are worse songs to keep bursting into! Loved it.

I love Imagine Dragons and this is some good stuff from them - very similar to a lot of their other work, and, if I’m honest, nothing that particularly stands out. But it’s a good set of songs and easy to listen to. I don’t fully understand what’s going on with the album set up - Part 1 came out a while back, and Part 2 now, but it seems like Part 2 is just added on to the existing album, rather than being a release in itself. Slightly odd, but I just made it work.

Firstly, the trailer made this look like a very different film to what it ended up being. A fun little comedy about giving up technology for a weekend? Okay! But actually it was a weird movie about two people who are failing to communicate, finding a small town full of slightly odd people (and really odd people - Lea Thompson?) that think there’s a big espionage conspiracy surrounding them, trying to get back home by stealing tampons, chickens and cars and with very few laughs along the way.

I liked the format of this book, the way it skipped through years and only dipped in and out of the lives of our two main characters. It reminded me of One Day, which also only visits the characters on one day a year. You really get a good sense of the life being lived, and it was worth going on the journey with these two. Actually, [spoiler alert] just like One Day, there’s a super sad ending, and if I’m honest I could have done without it. It’s well written and winds to a satisfying ending but just left me feeling despondent.

This was an interesting story - a child was snatched by his father and then some years later, returned to the grieving mother. It was fascinating because she could be confident the boy was still alive but had absolutely no idea where he was. Dealing with a child six years older and now with some trauma put the pressure on our protagonist which added to the intrigue. I did guess the twist but it was still a good read to get to the end.

I love Kerry Wilkinson’s books, and this was another really good thriller mystery, where two sisters return to a Cornish village from their childhoods to move on from trauma, but in turn finding more to deal with as they go along. There are some really great, but potentially triggering, descriptions of struggling with an eating disorder, and the scenes in the cave were genuinely very tense. The rising stakes, the feeling that the truth might never come out, it was really well-paced and well-written. Good times.

Two weeks of tennis drew to a close yesterday, with the Wimbledon 2022 tennis tournament crowning its final champion and then standing down to give the grass its well-earned rest. It wasn’t a simple fortnight, with plenty of discussion points and controversies, and a final day of tennis that included a fight for the men’s singles championship between two less-than-ideal candidates. I kept abreast of the men’s side of things only because I was listening, as I do every year, to the wonderful Wimbledon Radio Channel - a fantastically fun broadcast that covers everything going on every day with a rotating set of presenters, guests, experts and commentators. Otherwise, I would only have focused on the women’s game, which itself was full of intrigue.

At the end of the June, the fabulous West End live celebration returned to the heart of London - two days of various musicals and productions putting on their best efforts to show the crowds what they can see in the West End at the moment. I missed keeping track of what was on during the weekend, mostly because of Wimbledon, but was surprised and thrilled to find lots of clips on YouTube.

I bought this a long time ago and only really started reading it to see how alike the TV show it was. This aligns with the first series and I was surprised how faithful they had been to the book - I could see scene for scene what was happening in my mind’s eye whilst reading, having previously witnessed it on screen. It’s long, and there are a lot of characters and a lot of history, and I think if I hadn’t already watched the TV show, I’m not sure I would have got to the end.

Recently, I watched The Butterfly Effect - a film I’ve seen before a long time ago and couldn’t remember a lot about. The movie features some kids going to the cinema in the 90s, opting to watch the thriller crime drama Se7en, and we get to see a few clips from that film-within-a-film. I hadn’t seen Se7en, something which was instantly rectified, but the fact that I watched it specifically because it was mentioned in another movie got me thinking.

I was surprised how many of these songs I knew, turns out there were five singles from this one album! It’s great, KT is so talented, strong voice, great lyrics, and some nice singer/songwriter style tracks. Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See stand out but they’re all good. It’s definitely an album you can listen to over and over.

Loved this! Allen starts off with a full on country vibe, but then dips into some other genres - particularly going latino with CeeLo Green and then belting it out with Jennifer Lopez. It’s long but it’s so good that you’re on board the whole way through, ending back with the country beats ringing out again. Great stuff.