Ben

I'm engaging with you as a human being

2026-09-10T00:00:00+01:00

He’s back. Nathan Fielder is a genius. An avant-garde artist who makes the weirdest, funniest stuff I’ve seen, managing to be conceptually thrilling in its unpredictability. Nathan For You is a longtime fave, and The Rehearsal bent my mind into loops. The logline of his newest project You Can See Everything is unsurprisingly compelling:

Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss.

Nathan moving from reality TV, to prestige reality TV, to cinematic documentary makes so much sense. The trailer is just a brief, haunting, exchange between Nathan and Elizabeth.

My favourite comment was:

It debuted last weekend at the Telluride Film Festival as a surprise film, where Nathan joked “For those of you who don’t know who we are and are disappointed, I apologize, but hopefully by the end of the film, you’ll be slightly less disappointed.”

Reading about it this morning, I was immediately interested in this line:

Fielder finds himself drawn from behind the camera into the story, struggling to determine whether Holmes and Evans are being candid with him or manipulating him.

I had no idea what to expect after season 1 of The Rehearsal, and season 2 blew me away. I can’t wait to see this.

Just finished Agrippa

2026-09-07T00:00:00+01:00

Finished this one today.

I’ve read Harris’ other Roman books, and this story in particular overlaps with his amazing trilogy on Cicero, especially Dictator.

Agrippa

Robert Harris

Read in 11 days

...and we're back

2026-09-07T00:00:00+01:00

Even though the post before this one is from months ago, I have started and abandoned a few others inbetween. This summer was an absolute joy, we had so many adventures, so much fun. It was bonkers, it was busy, and yet we took plenty of breaks.

That said, it was not structured, or in balance, and so constructive habits like blogging fell away while we camped, fairgrounded, visited, hosted and built beautiful memories. Which is ok! Something had to give, and I made the right call.

Other constructive habits like going to the gym I did manage to keep up though, which is great.

I even managed to get a bit more gaming in, logging some time in God of War and Cyberpunk 2077. I baked more incredible bread.

Printed more cool stuff, including a badass fruit-fly catcher the designer calls “Flycatraz”.

Oh! And Nathalie and I caught The Odyssey on a very rare night out to the cinema – I don’t think we’ve done that together since the summer of 2018 – and we loved it, it’s a triumph.

We said goodbye to lovely Kali Café in Salthill (I wish them the very best!).

Played a surprising amount of Wordle.

Nathalie and I share our Wordles into a dedicated Matrix room as a nearly-daily ritual. It’s craic!

I’m going into this new year – and for every child and parent, the year starts in September, not January – with optimism, even though all signs point to the opposite probably being the wiser choice…

Just watched Coyote vs. Acme

2026-08-30T00:00:00+01:00

This had no right to be as much fun as it was. And yet, how did it take someone this long to make more Wile E. Coyote material? It’s such a winner!

P.S. this is the original piece that inspired the movie, which in turn reminds me of the excellent segment that Scriptnotes sometimes does, called “Is this a movie?” where they take a new story or other kind of article and suss out its screenplay potential. This would obviously have been a yes.

Just watched The Odyssey

2026-07-27T00:00:00+01:00

Nathalie and I got away on a rare date tonight to see The Odyssey in our local cinema.

This is just a quick post - I absolutely loved it, it was so beautiful, such a spectacle that earned its long running time. The ending was surprisingly chaotic, performances were amazing and several lines just hit harder than I expected.

In particular, the thematic twist that this has been a parable of our times was an amazing thing to land right at the end.