The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

Previously on The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan: I began an odyssey through film history ( See the 1920s post here ) I'm deep into a big project to watch my way through the book  1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die . I'm pleased to say I've now watched every film in the book that was released in the 1930s! It's been a fascinating journey so far, watching cinema develop in front of my very eyes and observing the world itself change too. Whilst Charlie Chaplin was still making silent films throughout the 1930s, everyone else was now making sound films. Chaplin remained famous but the decade saw the rise of the comedy group. The Marx Brothers have both Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera  on the list and I struggled with them. I enjoyed Laurel and Hardy in Sons of the Desert a lot more and the pair exist as a middle ground between the verbal gags of the Marx Brothers and the pratfalls of the silent era. Many of the genres of film we know and love today were refined in...

In which I recall a celebrity experience... I've previously written here about my celebrity encounters including accidentally giving celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh a pen and bumping elbows with the Archbishop of Canterbury. But there was one celebrity encounter which wasn't awkward at all and turned out to be really inspiring.  I was about eleven or twelve I think and most weeks a magazine or newsletter would arrive in the post for me from one environmental organisation or another, be it from the RSPB or in this case the local Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. Their quarterly newsletter for kids included a writing competition where you had to write a five hundred word short story on about the environment.  This was very much in my wheelhouse and I barely had to think about it before an idea developed in my head. A quick bit of research later- well not that quick because this was still the days of dial-up internet- and I'd identified the star of my story. Withi...

In which I discuss loneliness for Mental Health Awareness Week... It's been a good few weeks since I last wrote here and the main reason for that is I was feeling a bit down for in the last few weeks of April. It's perhaps appropriate then that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week and the theme this year is loneliness.  Loneliness feels like a really important theme as the pandemic has reduced our contact with each other. Due to isolation periods, not being allowed to cross bubbles and only meeting on Zoom, I have regularly felt cut off from the world over the last few years.  I have never considered myself a particularly outgoing or sociable person, indeed I am generally something of an introvert, but I've come to recognise the value of interacting with other people. Humans have evolved to be together and every human brain needs interaction with other human brains to really function properly. If I spend a day on my own I start to feel an emptiness, a sense that my bra...