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Bottle Shock (movie)

This is the 2008 film of the Judgement of Paris which I recently reviewed. It stars Alan Rickman – excellent as he always is – as the wine expert Stephen Spurrier who set up a wine-tasting competition in Paris in which the Californian chardonnay Montelena and Stag’s Head red beat the [...]

July 4, 2023 // 0 Comments

(Second Test): final thoughts on the final day

After a final day of controversial incident after which England are now two down in the series, one hopes there can be some consensus that Test cricket was the winner. It was a most enthralling day, epitomised by Ben Stokes playing a truly captain’s innings of bravura. The game of cricket is in [...]

July 3, 2023 // 0 Comments

Fourth day of the Test: stasis and surprise

At 2-30pm the drift of this match into stasis induced a siesta in me and – when I came round – it was to one of the most extraordinary passages of cricket I have ever witnessed. We saw two bowlers – one of whom Nathan Lyon was immobile – forced to hit boundaries as, although [...]

July 2, 2023 // 0 Comments

Third day of Test: dull and ominous

Both the weather conditions and cricket were dull yesterday. Australia look like building an unassailable lead, 221 runs ahead and Steve Smith and Usman Khuwaji still at the crease. Ben Stokes went early in the morning and Harry Brook to an injudicious swat to a shorter ball.  Once Jonny Bairstow [...]

July 1, 2023 // 0 Comments

2nd day of Test: Bazball confounds and delights

The day belonged to England but the view of such sages as Jonathan Agnew and Michael Vaughan was that it could have been better. Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope set up a platform of parity only for Australia – bereft of Nat Lyon for possibly the Series – to bowl short and [...]

June 30, 2023 // 0 Comments

First day of the Second Test: grey clouds and grey cricket

The overcast weather produced a more attritional day in which the most notable event was Jonny Bairstow carrying off a protester. Given he can break a leg on the golf course, my concern was he would sustain another unusual injury. He did not – Ollie Pope after dropping a dolly catch was off [...]

June 29, 2023 // 0 Comments

Don Giovanni/Glyndebourne

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s  Don Giovanni purports to be opera buffa (light comic opera) but there is a dark side: the killing of the Commendatore, father of Don Giovanni’s (Amdrey Zhilikovsky) latest quest Donna Anna (Venera Gimlieva), and the predatory nature of Don Giovanni himself. The [...]

June 25, 2023 // 0 Comments

Another day at the home office

Coming to readers of The Rust from the “You Just Couldn’t Make It Up” department: Writing as someone in my eighth decade, I hereby forgive in advance all Rusters of more junior years for either passing straight on to the next piece of wisdom from this mighty organ and/or heaving a sigh of [...]

June 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

Ten pound Poms

I saw the last episode of this drama last Sunday and enjoyed it. To a certain extent it rounded things off to another it left matters open as the director and producer James  Brockenhurst and cast must surely hope for a second series. It deserves it but there may not be enough for the [...]

June 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

Thoughts on the First Test

I hope that after this most enthralling of matches the media – conventional and social – does not turn on Ben Stokes and Baz-ball after the Aussies won, albeit narrowly, the vital First Test. Of course catches were dropped – and the declaration deprived England of vital runs [...]

June 22, 2023 // 0 Comments

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