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Gary WhitehouseSearch
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Recent Posts
- What’s New for the 22nd of June: books about baseball, air travel most unusual, some music about baseball (and some not)
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Handfasting (A Letter to Katrina)
- What’s New for the 8th of June: kibbles and bits — lots of fairy tales, steamy anime, a Cairo comic, new jazz, an archival grab bag, and a Kitchen tale
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Our Cats
- What’s New for the 25th of May: new and notable SFF books; Murderbot on TV, and some Star Wars prequel movies; new jazz music and some tasty archival selections; food & steelworker strikes; and a novel Tarot deck
- What’s New for the 11th of May: Special Jack Zipes edition on fairy tales; an obsure Tam Lin film treatment; songs that tell stories; new jazz, Danish fiddle tunes, Norwegian women’s vocal music; Russian and Eastern European food and cooking, and more
- What’s New for the 27th of April: Tim Pratt & Heather Shaw’s fiction and Flytrap zine; Tea with Jane Austen; a fine French fairy tale film; some new jazz and archival francophone music reviews; and the Stones!
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Most Beguiling Cookbook
- What’s New for the 13th of April: Anthony Bourdain in print and video; Calexico, Giant Sand and related music; new recordings of ragas, Nordic songs, and vocal jazz, ‘The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down’ performed by The Band
- A Kinrowan Story: We Lost The Cheshire Cat
- What’s New for the 30th of March: Space Opera by Niven & Pournell, Arkady Martine, C. J. Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear, Simon Jimenez and more; Kage reads for us ‘The Empress of Mars’, a novella she wrote; a grab bag of music including new Buryat folk music; The Ukrainians; live music from the Scottish band Iron Horse; Gail Simone graphic novels; Farscape; and of course chocolate
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Our Rooms
- What’s New of 16th of March: A variety of mysteries; some new Scottish music by an old band, new jazz, and splendid archival reviews; ballads in graphic novel form; and chocolate in Paris
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pub Ghoulies
- What’s New of 2nd of March: Kibbles and Bits including ghostly stories, the Hotel California, music picked by Gary of course
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Quotes that aren’t
- What’s New for the 16th of February: Books by and about Bob Dylan, and music by Dylan and others; plus some new world music and jazz
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Unreliable Narrators
- What’s New for the 2nd of February: All about the Oz books, green man lore, and gargoyles; Baltic polyphony, East-West ambient psychedelia, and a grab bag of other music
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Knit One, Purl Two
- What’s New for the 19th of January: Go Ahead, Be Pleasantly Surprised At What’s Here
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Ancients and Venerables of Guild of St. Nicholas
- What’s New for the 5th of January: A look back at books Gary reviewed in 2024; some seasonally appropriate Nordic music and a little new jazz
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Biscuits
- What’s New for the 22nd of December: A Solstice Story, Crow Girls, Scrooge, Marley, Elizabeth I, Revels and more festive holiday reading; The Lion in Winter on stage and screen; Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Christine Lavin, swinging jazz and more holiday sounds
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Fireplaces
- What’s New for the 8th of December: Elizabeth Bear fiction; some holiday related offerings including new music from The Unthanks, Americana tinged jazz, Polar Express, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Eggnog
- What’s New for the 24th of November: Norwegian winter holiday music, archival jazz, new roots music from around Europe, and more; books and what not about things fictional & medæival
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pudding
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Category Archives: Film
Michael Bayley Hughes and Bob Hewitt’s Strat Masters: The Definitive History Of The World’s Most Famous Guitar
In recent months I have seen some excellent films. But, not features. No… the lowly documentary film has roared back with a vengeance. The House That Ahmet Built (about Ahmet Ertegun & Atlantic Records,) Life Through A Lens (the story … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Music
Tagged guitars, rock and roll, stratocaster
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Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy
Rachel Manija Brown wrote this review. Steamboy looks great in the trailers. The camera swoops through an impossibly detailed animated world filled with elaborate machinery emitting clouds of exquisitely rendered fog: steampunk in sepia. So you rush to buy your … Continue reading
Apple TV+’s Murderbot, Episodes 1-2
The wait is over! The small screen adaptation of Martha Wells’s Hugo and Nebula winning book series The Murderbot Diaries began in mid-May (2025) on Apple TV+. Cutting to the chase: It’s good! The series opened with the first two … Continue reading
George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
This is it. The journey’s over. There’s no more new ground to cover, movie-wise. The new trilogy is officially at an end. Almost anyone who has more than a passing interest in these films has seen this movie already, most … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged science fiction, Star Wars
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George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a man took a whole slew of mythic elements and cultural themes, and wove them into one of the great stories of the 20th Century. The farm boy, ignorant of … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged science fiction, Star Wars
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Ernst Reijseger, Tenore e Cuncordu de Orosei, and Mola Sylla’s Requiem For A Dying Planet
Rarely have I learned as much when preparing to write a review as I have learned because of this album. Not only is this the most beautiful recording I’ve heard in years, listening to and learning about it has been … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Music
Tagged soundtrack
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Roddy McDowall’s Tam Lin, a.k.a., The Devil’s Widow
Lahri Bond wrote this review. Visitors to this website may well be familiar with the famous Scottish Borders legend of Tam Lin. The original ballad, though ancient, was in the collections of both Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, as … Continue reading
Posted in Film
Tagged fairy tales, Tam Lin
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Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete
Jean Cocteau’s sumptuous black and white retelling of this beloved fairy tale is inarguably the finest version committed to celluloid. Drawing heavily from Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s 18th century written version, Cocteau wrote La Belle et la Bete’s story and … Continue reading
Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations: Iceland Special Edition
Joseph Thompson wrote this review. In January 2010 Anthony Bourdain may possibly have visited my favorite bar. I say “possibly” because his trip to Portland, Maine, won’t air on the Travel Channel until 12 April 2010, a few months after … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Food and Drink
Tagged food and drink
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James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown
A lot has been said and written about A Complete Unknown, pretty much all of it of it good. There are so many ways for a movie like this to go wrong, and director James Mangold seems to have avoided … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Music
Tagged Americana music, folk music, rock and roll
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