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Manchester Film Festival closes with exactly the right kind of film. Not something inflated for the sake of a finale, but a work that catches hold of one of the festival’s deeper currents. California Schemin’ arrives at the end of 11 days of screenings, conversations, applause and immersion. In its story of borrowed voices and improvised […]

The Floral Pavilion sits out on the edge of New Brighton, facing the Mersey with Liverpool’s docks looming across the water. Around it, the place holds that familiar seaside mix: arcades, food stalls, families drifting, a slight wear that never tips into decline because there is too much life moving through it. It feels right […]

A fight broke out on the station platform, one man versus himself, and it got messy. Blood wasn’t spilt, but his can was, and beyond the frantic flailing at invisible enemies I could see across the platform, in that grey half light on the tarmac, the Vue cinema where I’ve spent hours hiding from the […]

I should probably admit that my knowledge of wrestling is not contemporary. It lives somewhere back in the strange, televised world of the 1970s with characters like Catweazle and Kendo Nagasaki, looming out of World of Sport broadcasts with their beards, masks and half-mythical personas. Modern wrestling, for me at least, remains largely unexplored territory. As it […]