iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

My late and much-missed dog Monty, with his ears artfully rearranged over the top of his head to make him look vaguely leonine. I am of course posting this particular picture during this particular week entirely at random.

A blond working cocker spaniel with his ears rearranged over the top of his head to form a quasi-wig arrangement.

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Neil Snowdon @neilsnowdon.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

More new work! New 4K restoration from the original camera negative. Ft new commentary by @johnnymains.co.uk & @marbleicehook.bsky.social, plus archival extras, and new booklet essays by @horrornonna.com and @cathode-ray-tube.bsky.social, + new art by @Nat Marsh www.arrowfilms.com/p/4k/soylent...

arrowfilms.com

Soylent Green Limited Edition 4K UHD | Arrow Films

Shop Soylent Green Limited Edition 4K UHD at Arrow Films. Free UK Delivery

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Two decades ago, I had to edit the work of a fair number of people who’d never written professionally before. Many were great, but some screamed blue murder if I tweaked so much as a comma—and they invariably needed a lot more than that to make their work publishable.

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Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Saying Trump was "snubbed" for the Nobel Peace Prize is like saying Goonies 3 was snubbed for the Best Picture Oscar. He was never in contention because he is a war mongering fascist.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

"I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) smoking a cigarette in 'Schindler's List'.

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Justin Nisly @justinnisly.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Three drunk college kids just walked past my place at midnight, loudly singing the Hindi version of "We Shall Overcome" while one of them accompanied (quite deftly) on a harmonium. Good shit.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

This was supposed to be Friday's last Substack post, but I ran into a subtitle-sync problem and had to fix that first. I actually have this as a legitimate DVD, but the Facets edition is so poor that the fact that I preferred to watch a YouTube rip with manually added subtitles tells its own story!

marbleicehook.substack.com

Samson

Poland, 1960, 117 mins, black and white

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

This was Andrzej Wajda's first flop, both commercially and artistically—and aside from it not being a comedy, broadly equivalent to his friend Steven Spielberg's equally ill-fated 1941, both films being about their respective countries' messy, confused, and decidedly involuntary entry into WWII.

marbleicehook.substack.com

Lotna

Poland, 1959, 85 mins, colour

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Today's contextual piece in my ongoing Andrzej Wajda survey on Substack is my most self-indulgent to date, but now that I've covered all three films in the 1950s War Trilogy I had an excellent excuse to write about the logistical challenges of planning and recording commentaries for them—with clips.

marbleicehook.substack.com

Talking about Wajda...

Recording commentaries for Second Run's War Trilogy Blu-ray box set

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

To mark the passing of the great Béla Tarr, I’ve republished my Sight & Sound lead review of his penultimate film on my Substack.

marbleicehook.substack.com

The Man from London

A Londoni férfi, Hungary/France/Germany, 2007, 139 mins, black and white

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

“Well, if you won’t give me the Nobel Peace Prize that I totally deserved, I’ll just go and bomb another country, and *then* you’ll be sorry.” <stamps foot> “And it’s all your fault. You made me do it.”

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

If Ukraine had had fifteen years of security guarantees following the 1994 Budapest Agreement that persuaded them to give up their nuclear weapons, those guarantees would have expired by 2010.

theguardian.com

Ukraine war live: US has offered 15 years of security guarantees, says Zelenskyy

Ukrainian leader had sought up to 50 years of security guarantees at Florida meeting with Trump

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Probably just as well I had no plans to go there anyway. A review of up to five *days* of my social media history would most likely get me barred.

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BlogMyWiki @blogmywiki.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Found when sorting an old drive. I still, very occasionally, say 'not many badgers in the House of Lords' and this is why:

Letter to the Guardian.
The protection of badgers has a long pedigree (Report, 29 August). Arthur Gore, known as "Boofy", the eighth Earl of Arran, was a fanatical defender of them. He was also a tireless campaigner for the rights of homosexuals. In 1967 he managed to push through a law in the Lords that decriminalised homosexuality but failed to pass a bill to outlaw the cruel hunting of badgers. When asked why he had not received enough support for his badger bill, he replied: "Not many badgers in the House of Lords." Tony Lywood Keswick, Cumbria

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

A thing what I wroted. Usual caveat: everything in these BFI listpieces has to be currently in print in English-friendly form, preferably on a UK label, but I reckon I'd have gone for most of these even if I'd had a completely clear run at the entire corpus of Hungarian cinema.

bfi.org.uk

10 great Hungarian films

From a seven-and-a-half hour masterpiece to one of the most beautiful colour films ever made: as a trio of István Szabó films arrive on Blu-ray, we present a 10-film primer on the glories of Hungarian...

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Richard Pettigrew @wiglet1981.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Finally getting some theological clarity on the ethics of reclining in one’s plane seat

Pope stands holding a baseball bat on a plane

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

I had to check to see if this had been published today, as opposed to half a century ago during the last Harold Wilson administration, which was the last time that Britain had anything even vaguely paying the most token lip service to the concept of full-blooded socialism. But no, it was today.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

RIP Udo Kier. In late 1983 and early 1984 I saw his Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr Jekyll on assorted big screens, in all cases absurdly too young, in films that had a worryingly disproportionate impact on my entire cultural worldview. He truly fucked life in the gall bladder and no mistake. RIP.

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Caustic Cover Critic @causticcovercritic.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Not sure how "sophisticated" this supposedly sophisticated publishing scam is when their fake photos haven't even been cropped to hide the watermarks showing that they're fake. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Faked profiles of three publishing executives with faked "AI" photos, each of which has the watermark in the bottom right corner showing they are AI-generated fakes.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

My latest commentary commission. I was honoured to be asked, and I hope I did these incredible films something vaguely approaching justice—although I can definitely say that I’m as proud of my work here as I’ve been of pretty much anything else I’ve ever done.

deafcrocodile.com

Treasures of Soviet Animation Vol 3 - The Short Films of Yuri Nostein

THIS IS A PRE-ORDER SCHEDULED TO RELEASE LATE DECEMBER/JANUARY.PRE-ORDERS CANNOT BE CANCELLED OR MODIFIED.YOU WILL BE CHARGED AT CHECKOUT. ALL ITEMS ORDERED WITH A PRE-ORDER WILL SHIP TOGETHER. IF YOU...

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Proofreading an OCRed document about Turkish popular cinema, I find that the name of the director Çetin İnanç has been misread as “Cretin Inane”. Everyone’s a critic.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

I’m absolutely thrilled for my New York friends who - expectedly but still gratifyingly - cut through the same bullshit that Londoners were fed in 2016. And, ten years later, London still hasn’t become the hotbed of Islamist Communist terrorism that we were assured was inevitable under Sadiq Khan.

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Ronil Patel @randomronil.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

1) She has proof Salt & Vinegar and Cheese & Onion colour swapped 2) Mrs Doubtfire & Rose from Titanic are the worst 3) She has a 3rd, correct, way of putting Jam and Cream on a Scone 4) Arsenal scoring from set pieces is perfectly acceptable and whining about it makes you a loser 5) Han shot first

BBC News article click baity headline Five Surprising Mary Berry facts

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

@ohsinnerman.bsky.social has probably seen this already, but just in case...

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Boo-tros Boo-tros Ghoulish @dlbowman76.com · 15/09/2025

FERAT VAMPIRE is fantastic. Not only is it a fun "Car Horror Film" but it's a nifty little snapshot of Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Iron Curtain. @severinfilms.bsky.social put the transmission into top gear for this one. Also, @marbleicehook.bsky.social gives a fascinating commentary.

severinfilms.com

Ferat Vampire [Blu-ray w/LE Slipcase]

“IT REMAINS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN…Communist reality merges with horror realityin the spookiest film to emerge from the former Soviet bloc.”Blu-ray.com THE NORTH AMERICAN HOME VIDEO PREMIEREWITH 5+ HO...

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

If someone gave me $30bn, I wouldn't become "energised and focused", I'd say "thank you very much", put my feet up and enjoy the rest of my now extremely pampered existence in a state of blissed-out relaxation. (Actually, I'd most likely give 99.999% of it away and live comfortably off the rest.)

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John Coulthart @johncoulthart.com · 24/07/2025

After watching Michael Brooke's hour-long history of Polish animation on this set last night I now have a better idea of how to pronounce the names of directors that I've been mispronouncing for years. Also a much better idea of the history of Polish animation.

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Tony Keetch @tonykeetch.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

There are 3 types of newspapers columns I am an utter sociopath I am extraordinarily thick Thank Christ for nepotism They can, obviously, overlap

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Daniel Pietersen @pietersender.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

I’m no expert but I would’ve got a person to do it.

A BBC news headline which says “Penguin says it did “all necessary due diligence” with The Salt Path

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Cleaning up the automated transcript of @horrornonna.com and @joshnelsonfilm.bsky.social's latest commentary (which I'm having to create for Sony's legal department; oh, the glamour), I note that one of these esteemed speakers has been rendered as the distinctly Greek-sounding "Alex Helenikos".

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

This month’s nearly 1,200-page extravagance. I’d been umming and aahing about it for ages, my now 30-year-old copy of Bendazzi’s single-volume ‘Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation’ was getting a bit long in the tooth, and I’ve had than one animation-related commission this year, so...

Three shrinkwrapped hardback volumes comprising Giannalberto Bendazzi's 2015 magnum opus 'Animation: A World History'. Volume 1 is subtitled 'Foundations - The Golden Age', volume 2 'The Birth of a Style - The Three Markets', and volume 3 'Contemporary Times'.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Today's post, courtesy of the estimable @johnnymains.co.uk (as its creator, not its donor; I was happy to pay for it!). I'm very glad I went for the almost 550-page hardback, as it feels seriously meaty in a way that I imagine the paperback doesn't quite match.

A hardback copy of 'His Beautiful Hands: The Short Fiction of Oscar Cook, Edited & Introduced by Johnny Mains'.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Deeply sobering, but hard to deny right now.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

The last couple of minutes of @horrornonna.com and ‪@joshnelsonfilm.bsky.social's commentary for Indicator's upcoming The Taming of the Shrew is now right up there with my favourite commentary endings. (It's not all like this, by the way - the rest is admirably scholarly and informative.) ‬

A transcript of the end of Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson's Blu-ray audio commentary for Franco Zeffirelli's 'The Taming of the Shrew':

AHN: Josh, it has been a delight. I feel like we should have squabbled more.

JN: Wench!

AHN: Dick!

JN: Shrew!

AHN: Maybe we can do this again and we’ll just fight all the way through it. We’ll just disagree on everything.

JN: Fatty!

AHN: Okay, settle down.

JN: Sorry, I went too far there.

AHN: Wow. I wish you had acne scars like Richard Burton and I could give you shit about them.

JN: Let’s be honest, if there’s a fatty here, it’s definitely me. That’s my soft spot.

AHN: Thank you for joining us in this increasingly shouting, but very agreeable, except for the end bit, commentary. This has been really fun to revisit.

JN: It’s been a delight. Thank you for listening.

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Phil Norman @mrphilnorman.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Nancy Banks-Smith meets Dennis Potter.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders/Valerie a týden divů (Jaromil Jireš, Czechoslovakia, 1970) This celebrated Gothic-Surrealist fantasy about a young girl on the cusp of womanhood explored, to quote its director, "the juncture of reality and dream and the playful struggle between horror and humour".

The Czech poster for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, featuring the vampiric Tchoř (Jiří Prýmek) embracing Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) from behind, with both surrounded by various symbolic illustrations.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Children of Glory/Szabadság, szerelem (Krisztina Goda, Hungary, 2006) By some distance the biggest and splashiest of the handful of films made in Hungary to mark the abortive 1956 uprising's 50th anniversary, this is an unwieldy but often fascinating fusion of local and Hollywood approaches.

The Hungarian poster for 'Children of Glory', featuring protagonists Viki (Kata Dobó) and Karcsi (Iván Fenyő) shown from behind, arm in arm, while in the foreground there are images of a Soviet tank, a waterpolo game in progress, and Hungarians waving their national flag.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Vassilisa the Beautiful/Василиса Прекрасная (Aleksandr Rou, USSR, 1939) Long-term fairytale specialist Rou's second feature was based on a Russian folk tale about a beautiful young maiden cursed by an evil serpent after she spurns its advances, and who is finally freed by the love of an honest man.

The Russian poster for 'Vassilisa the Beautiful', featuring (clockwise from top left) Valentina Sorogozhaya in the title role, Sergei Stolyarov as the heroic Ivan, and Georgy Millyar as the legendary witch Baba Yaga, complete with owl with terrifyingly illuminated eyes.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

I'm contributing an extensive video essay about the history of Polish animation, and as a result I've had a sneak preview of the high-definition masters fuelling this release; the level of fine detail knocks spots off the now ancient PWA Polish animation DVD compilations, as fine as those once were.

radiancefilms.co.uk

Essential Polish Animation (LE)

A collection of 27 classic films, spanning the breakthrough works of the late 1950s to the close of the classic era in the 1980s.

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Michael Brooke @marbleicehook.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

The Conductor/Dyrygent (Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1980) Made just before (and therefore subsequently completely eclipsed by) the monumental Man of Iron, this low-key oddity is quite unlike anything else in Wajda's output, thanks not least to the eye-catching casting of John Gielgud in the title role.

The Polish poster for 'The Conductor', featuring a votive candle burning inside an otherwise empty vertically-positioned violin case.

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Martin Koerner @koernputer.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Can’t help but think that my watch and glasses want to put me away for a very long stretch.

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