If you want to be part of the next run of my online writing course, it’s starting mid August. Details at www.gralefrit.co.uk

If you want to join in with this fun new series of podcasts I’ve been making about The Great Sci Fi Movies That Led Somehow To Star Wars and have an objection to Substack, I’ve reopened the Comfort Blanket Patreon and cut the price… www.patreon.com/comfortblank...

Thinking about Obsession again this morning, and how different it is to the older low budget film it echoes: the first segment of the original V/H/S anthology with Hannah Fierman as the “I like you” girl. Those questions of consent, coercion, male gaze and toxic masculinity. It’s fascinating.

If you want to hear the new Comfort Blanket series about Ten Great Sci Fi Movies, and also get all the CB back catalogue ad free, and support making new series like this, then join either the Comfort Blanket Patreon or the Gralefrit Substack…

Proof, if proof be need be, courtesy of the excellent Viv Groskop. Andrei Kurkov and Bonnie Tyler, together at last.

Count Bungface

In 2024, I was at the Hay Festival, and so was Ukrainian author and public intellectual Andrei Kurkov, author of Death and the Penguin. Also appearing at the festival was Bonnie Tyler. They were in the green room at the same time, so the event photographer snapped a picture of the pair of them.

This starts today. Ten podcast essays on the Greatest Sci Fi Films Of All Time (up to Star Wars) according to the guys at 2000AD. It’s been great fun making these. A time-twisting retrospective on where all those weird ideas in space movies came from. Subscribe to the Substack / Patreon.

Have had to cue up this bugger. It’s that sort of a day. #AceRecords

This is something I’ve been wanting to make for ages, and it was a fascinating project. Rewatching the ten great SF movies which 2000AD recommended to its young readers around the first Star Wars craze. Starting with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis…

Just watched the highlights. That was fun.

Popped in to show @willmac23.bsky.social the brilliant Jock McFadyen exhibition at the Guildhall. Heavy Broken Veil aesthetic. Beautiful, haunting paintings that make you look at Essex brownfield landscapes and underground London spaces with fresh eyes. It’s free. Go along if you’re in the City.

This is coming on Wednesday. It’s been massive fun to make, and I hope you enjoy it. Ten classic SF movies, from a vintage shortlist, rewatched and dissected with love… First up: METROPOLIS! joelmorris.substack.com www.patreon.com

WOOHOO! We’ve made the longlist! #BrokenVeil #BritishPodcastAwards

This soundtrack is out tomorrow. A few limited edition CDs left… Get em while you’re hot. Digital download otherwise… Preorder via Broken Veil on Bandcamp.

This borderline irritating opinion - and some much more generous takes on 2001 - will be aired in the forthcoming Comfort Blanket podcast series on 2000AD’s Top Ten Sci Fi Movies, available via my Substack and the Comfort Blanket Patreon.

French Hydration Break.

Fluffles is a giver.

July The Fourth Be With You!

This agency picture of Jimmy Savile dressed as a lion-bear while surrounded by uncomfortable / hysterical children is what Britain sees when it peers in a door in the Overlook Hotel in one of its regular nightmares.

Well, we’ve been away for a few days on an inaccessible island and I can only assume last year’s harvest was fine, cos we’re back safe and sound.

Broken Veil “The best thing ever recorded by human beings.” “As if The Detectorists investigated The X-Files” “Brilliant” “Brilliant” “F*cking Hell” “Quite simply the best podcast series I have ever listened to.” Series 1 wherever you get your podcasts / Series 2 exclusively on Patreon.

Broken Veil II SOUNDTRACK available on BANDCAMP

I’d have gone with “the Ewok”.

I’ve been watching the football. Haven’t seen any.

DON’T MISS OUT Series one available everywhere. Series two exclusively on the Broken Veil Channel. Patreon.com/brokenveil

If wrestling is fake then explain THIS.

I cannot wait to pop into the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street one lunchtime and get some work done on my laptop. I might ask, with a smile, for a pint of Man In Box, and meet some gay friends for a drink and maybe even a swear. Good riddance, you mad, mad, mad brewery lunatic.

Ah. Beautiful wee thing. BV2 OST out on 7th July. Digital and ridiculously limited edition CD. Preorders open now on Bandcamp.

BROKEN VEIL II Join the channel. Hear everything. Patreon.com/brokenveil