Author Archives: Rick

Apeeee Burseday Leeeeerick

  By Rick | May 1, 2009 - 9:44 am | In The News, Radio, The Culch
1 Comment

May 1st 1999, ten years ago today RTE Lyric FM was launched in a blaze…. well, hush of publicity. Most days it is my soundtrack from waking up, through Paul Herriott and JK to Carl Corcoran in the blue of most of my nights. As someone who has worked in pop and rock music radio for most of my life it’s rarely what I personally want to listen to at the end of the day and if it wasn’t for my friends down in Limerick I’d go spare some days. They don’t know this, maybe they will know how much I appreciate them now. Yesterday they had a bit of cake and a quick photo shoot, as is evidenced below, with one of my radio heroes Aedin Gormley (who I still haven’t gotten the gumption to go up to and introduce myself when I see her in the coffee bar) and one of my … There’s more →

Win The Demon’s Lexicon. Now.

  By Rick | April 30, 2009 - 11:34 pm | Books, Competitions, Site News, The Culch
82 Comments

This is our first Culch author exclusive and, like all good things, comes from a few pints. I was at a glorious hat party last weekend and met, through fellow Culchers Sinead and Mr D, the Irish blogger Sarah Rees Brennan who was similarly spectacularly hatted. From that comes this. Sarah’s first and highly anticipated novel The Demon’s Lexicon isn’t out in the shops until June but we have a first copy, signed for you by the author herself. As is the fashion we’ll award it to the best comment below by midday on Thursday of next week (May 7th). Sarah herself will be choosing the winner. Off ya go now

Jack Cardiff Dies…

  By Rick | April 23, 2009 - 4:08 pm | The Culch
2 Comments

This won’t mean a lot to many people but the legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff has died at the age of 94. If you ever watched the images of the most famous of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s films, Black Narcissus, A Matter Of Life And Death or The Red Shoes for instance or John Huston’s The African Queen then he lit them all and in doing so created some of the most memorable images of 20th century cinema. More here: http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=24652

Beam Me Down…

  By Rick | April 21, 2009 - 3:30 pm | In The News, Movies & TV, The Culch
14 Comments

The pocket sized (see attached photo) and lovely Amanda Fennelly who used to work with me here in RTE was in London yesterday interviewing director and cast of Star Trek and asked me if Culch could big it up. Glad to She talks about it here: http://2fm.rte.ie/blogs/the_slate/2009/04/the-final-frontier—amanda-meets-kirk-spock-and-jj-abrams.html And you can hear JJ Abrams here: http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2009/pc/pod-v-210409-6m49s-theslate.mp3 and Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine here: http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2009/pc/pod-v-210409-7m15s-theslate.mp3

99 Problems But A Ship Ain’t One

  By Rick | April 20, 2009 - 8:25 pm | Movies & TV, The Culch
14 Comments

You genuinely have to admire JJ Abrams these days. A man with his fingers in some of the most Zeitgeisty of pies he had his work cut out for him when he was asked to take on what has been known in Paramount Pictures for decades as, simply, “the franchise”. Not only did he take on the task asked of him, he did it in the hardest fashion possible. Non-trekkies, bear with me for two paragraphs here.

You Should Let The Right One In

  By Rick | April 14, 2009 - 11:42 am | Movies & TV, The Culch
5 Comments

I’m not going to tell you anything about Let The Right One In as I think if you’re going to see it you should let the story unfold for you blind as much as you can, don’t even watch the trailer. All you need to know is that it’s a supernatural movie with kids set in the suburbs of Stockholm. I hesitate to brand it horror because these days that means something radically different than it used to mean in the 1970s, the decade this movie so obviously belongs in. It belongs in the same family tree as the bastard child of The Wicker Man and The Exorcist, the half-brother of The Omen.

The Ultimate Bank Holiday Timewaster

  By Rick | April 13, 2009 - 4:37 pm | Comedy, Movies & TV, The Culch
8 Comments

Orpington and I have been playing THE GREATEST GAME EVER(!!!!!) over the last day or so. Take a movie title, remove the last letter, make a new movie title, write a tagline for it. Such as: Strictly Ballroo - A young kangaroo defies his family to become a champion dancer. American Pi - a man eats 3.14 percent of his apple tart. Gets into trouble with ma. The Damned Unite - Zombies visit Leeds, attempt to play football. Psych - where Norman Bates only pretends to go nuts and kill eveyone in an elaborate practical joke… The Wizard of O - Where one man shows off the world’s most incredible technique with his wand. Into the Wes - A trio of Dublin 15 year olds try to sneak into to famous disco Seriously, you won’t be able to stop yourself… There’s more here: http://raptureponies.com/2009/04/13/i-wish-id-just-come-up-with-the-best-game-in-the-world-ever/

Run

  By Rick | April 7, 2009 - 3:10 pm | The Culch, The Internet
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Yes, I’m aware this has little to do with pop culture (alright, nothing) but you really should check Culch’s sister site The Lives Of Others if you’ve never been over. It allows people the facility to write a blog post on whatever they like, entirely anonymously and the last few days it’s gotten very, very busy. Maybe you’d start here: http://thelivesofothers.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/run/

I Pity The Fool…

  By Rick | April 1, 2009 - 11:37 am | Comedy, In The News, Newspapers, Random Whimsy, The Culch, The Internet
12 Comments

Where do I begin? Thought I might briefly highlight some of the most interesting April Fools on the web - feel free to contribute ones you’ve seen in comments… There’s the sponsored funerals: The Guardian publishing on Twitter - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology The Sun’s one is average - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2353120.ece The Economist is opening a theme park - http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13395767&source=features_box4 The Irish Times one actually has a lot going for it… http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0401/1224243795000.html And Gmail autopilot is a brilliant idea!!! http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html And Boards.ie have been taken over by Facebook… http://www.face.boards.ie/ Strangely, this story appears to be real… http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/apr/01/newcastle-united-alan-shearer-manager Any more really, really good ones?