John Baker’s Blog

Persepolis directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, is an animation with the voices of Catherine Deneuve, Sean Penn, Chiara Mastroianni, Iggy Pop.
It’s an expressionistic piece, minimally drawn in black and white, featuring the life of a young Iranian girl. On one level a coming-of-age story, it is outspokenly political, showing the hopes of everyday [...]

Mario Balzic is the Police Chief of Rocksburg, a town in Pennsylvania where the mills have closed and the mines shut down. In this 1974 novel, as in other novels in the series, the Chief lives with his wife Ruth, their two daughters, and Balzic’s elderly mother.
It had taken years for the hedges to [...]

I’m not going to go on at length about the latest Mike Leigh film because he is one of my favourite directors and the film falls a long way short of his best work.
Sally Hawkins as Poppy is a primary-school teacher who is relentlessly cheerful. No negative thoughts or attitudes inhabit this thirty-year-old woman. She [...]

The Taster:
Billy was on the point of drifting off to sleep when a single sentence drew him right in close.
‘But that day for some reason, I was all alone . . .’
Billy roused himself. ‘Sorry. Where was this?’
‘In Manchester. A place called Fallowfield.’
A white car pulled alongside him, Trevor said, as he was walking. The [...]