By Roy Mathur, on 2025-06-21, at 23:47:02 to 00:49:31 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Herge's The Adventures of Tintin 18, 1960 Methuen, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, was taken out by me, along with Tintin in Tibet, on 2025-06-06, after rejoining my local public library, and for the purpose of cheering me up after a stupid injury.
Prof. Calculus is kidnapped to develop a WMD by those Bordurian rotters bent on world domination.
This may be the 10th time I've read them since the 70s. These books about the adventures of a young intrepid reporter and his friends, like Indiana Jones, Dan Brown, etc., and are universally appealing to geek and non-geek alike. Without getting into the controversy about Herge, there are a wonderful way to lose yourself in his famous colourful defined ligne claire (clear line) art, nicked shamelessly by Wes Anderson. The occasional large and detailed Where's Walley-style spreads particularly reward long perusal.
Of interest to British Tintin enthusiasts, however, not directly related to The Calculus Affair (though the villain mentions our heroes' Moon escapades), I came across Chris Owens' interview of Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner for The Tintinologist in 2004. He asks whether Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon were hard to translate, due to the space technology content. LLC replies, "We enlisted the help of Patrick Moore. He was very, very good and we checked the moon rocket with him and the sort of dialogue we should have---we didn't actually have, at that stage, the term 'mission control'."
Herge's The Adventures of Tintin 20, 1962 Methuen, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner.
Tintin rescues old friend from plane crash in the Himalayas, with the help of Captain Haddock, a levitating monk, and the Yeti.
The usual jet set romp with beautiful mountainous locales and in which Captain Haddock meets his match in a rude porter. For more Tintin talk, see pod 521 for The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure.
David Cronenberg's 2022 science fiction body horror about sado-masochistic surgical performance artists; cancer sufferer, Viggo Mortensen, and his surgeon, Lea Seydoux.
In the future, we get perfect health and, in return, we make it grubby and icky. Black-clad Mortenson lurks in the shadows like a medieval leper and Seydoux is a quiet version of Andreas Vesalius. It's nasty, it's dystopic, it's Cronenberg.
2025 technothriller, in which a woman on date night has her phone hacked with demands from people holding her family to ransom.
Red Eye in a restaurant, with a saccharine ending.
Rami Malek in 2025 remake of 1981 spy thriller about a nerdy CIA analyst's quest for vengeance for his wife's murder by terrorists (in the employ of his own agency) by becoming a fiendishly Macgyveresque assassin.
A bit The Little Drummer Girl or The Rhythm Section, if the protagonist turned the tables on the manipulators.
Beautiful as an oil painting and bloody enough to suggest war might not be a good idea.
I'm in a bit of a swashbuckling mood, so I also have Salkind's The Three Musketeers stacked on the player to cheer me before moving onto Chevalier.
Yet another adaptation of John Wyndham's 1957 science fiction alien invasion novel, this time from 2022, in which Midwich women are seeded with hyper-intelligent humanoid, but alien children, with designs on domination.
Keeley Hawes is effective as the lead and overall, the modern adaptation is good, but I enjoyed Village of the Damned (1960) and Village of the Damned (1995) (Christopher Reeve) more. This is one of those rare pieces of prose enjoying multiple excellent adaptations, so the bar is set high, though I enjoyed that it was set in the UK with a diverse cast.
Amazon Prime Video's 2023-- series about North Sea oil rig, presided over by boss Iain Glen (GoT's Jorah Mormont), disturbing ancient god-like colonial organism.
It's Alien, Event Horizon, and The Abyss. Its almost hard science fiction offers an exciting, but ultimately nonsensical explanation for the drowning of Doggerland. Not bad, but slow pace and bland FX didn't hold my interest past season 1.
I said I wouldn't, but I watched the final season 6 to distract me from a recent embarrassing and painful incident. Spoiler: America starts winning and June returns to where it all began.
A while ago, I became sick of the misery porn and stupid radio chatter. Leading up to the finale, though, I found every violent misfortune Gilead suffered, highly cathartic. Don't let the bastards grind you down.
Once I saw a macho Mule at the end of season two and three's trailer, I was out.
It's beautiful looking, but more a vehicle for Goyer to tell a story he wants, rather than an adaptation of the books.
Raven is BBC's CBBC answer to ITV cult CITV fantasy game show, Knightmare. Imagine a fantasy version of It's a Knock Out, with James Mackenzie and Aisha Toussaint in place of Hugo Myatt.
Scandi noir adaptation moved to Scottish police cold case squad run by arrogant cop, who got his team shot.
The Netflix series has garnered praise and comparison to Slow Horses, which it is not. Slow Horses is fun and the usually excellent Matthew Goode is the unlikeable lead played annoyingly and blandly, who's eclipsed by every single other actor.
Omissions from my review in 584. "...the Bone Palace turned back into the TARDIS, with the Doctor realising what it really was..." (tardis.wiki/wiki/Bone_Palace). Wait, what?! So, not Kroll. I also completely forgot 13 was in it for a minute.
Episodes that were unequivocally great, even if RTD was rightly panned overall for his work as New Who's returning showrunner, were series 14's 73 Yards (pod 542) and series 15's Lucky Day (pod 579).
The actors generally did their best with the material they were given, so goodbye, best wishes, and we salute you, Millie Gibson and Varada Sethu, and Ncuti Gatwa, the good Doctor himself.
I can't believe it's gone, so I wish the BBC would put fans out of their misery and make an official statement, because I don't really know the full story. It's highly irritating that there's non-stop Doctor Who news about everything---Ace's jacket, Jodie's birthday, Tennant charity something-or-other---except regarding the main show. It's as if they are trying to distract us.
Following in the artistic footsteps of NASA's Exoplanet Travel Bureau campaign, that produced posters of some of the major exo-planets, Anderson Design Group have published similarly retro-style art posters of cryptids like Big Foot.