Notes from the sketch book

How do you take the guy in a cowl and dresses as a bat—someone who’s been drawn and redrawn until he’s basically just a corporate logo—and make him feel like he’s actually breathing? That’s the big trap with iconic heroes: they turn into statues. By the late ‘80s, Batman was headed straight for a pedestal. He was becoming this grim, stiff monument of "detective fiction" that had lost its spark. To look at a Breyfogle page is to remember why we fell in love with this stuff in the first place, before everyone started insisting that "graphic novels" had to...

Hearing the news about Robert Duvall passing at the age of 95 didn't feel like a sudden shock. It was more like watching a massive, weathered book finally snap shut, one that I've been thumbing through my whole life.  Duvall always felt omnipresent to me, he was old even when he was young. Think back to his flickering moments as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. I was probably first aware of Duvall during my first trips to the cinema during the 90s where despite the standard of the actual movie he would always be a stand out giving...

There is a certain kind of film that, in its ambition, in its sheer, manic refusal to be categorised, begins to feel less like a work of art and more like a force of nature. It’s a storm of images and ideas, a hurricane of cinematic energy that doesn't just ask you to watch but demands that you go along with the ride. Paul Thomas Anderson has, for years, been carving out this particular, ferocious territory, a landscape of American obsession and delusion, but with One Battle After Another he has done something altogether different, something so sprawling and audacious...

It’s a peculiar thing, the way certain art, at a certain moment, feels less like something to be looked at and more like a living thing, an environment you can step into. This is the feeling that stayed with me after leaving the British Museum’s Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road. The show is gone now, a shame that's one of the unfortunate downsides of the vast collection at the British Museum. This wasn't a collection of objects to be catalogued and admired from a safe distance; it was an invitation, an almost virtual journey into a world that was...

It feels like going to the movies today is less an event and more a transaction— an overpriced and sterile one. It’s a far cry from the traditional cinematic experience. But tucked away in the heart of London, a city full of fleeting trends and corporate glitz, there's a real gem: the Prince Charles Cinema. This isn't just a place that shows films; it's a place that lives and breathes them. As someone who weirdly loves spending a sunny Friday afternoon in a dark, slightly worn-out theatre, I can tell you that watching a movie on a big screen is...