Pomona for Facebook

SPILT MILK Recently I got to rewatch Lenny Abrahamson's ' Adam and Paul '. The heartbreaking story of two Dublin heroin addicts, Abrahamson's debut film is a rare example of an Irish director directly confronting the disparity between rich and poor in the age of the Celtic Tiger.  A ' Ulysses ' style trek through the Irish capital with two characters who are also like something out of a Samuel Beckett play mixed with Vittorio da Sica's ' Bicycle Thieves ,' 22 years on its humour and shade still hit hard. Sadly, it remains pertinent. The drugs may have changed in Dublin since Abrahamson's film was initially screened but the problems of addiction and homelessness remain. Brian Durnin's period family drama 'Spilt Milk' also deals with addiction in a different way - telling it from the perspective of a 11 year old ' Kojak ' obsessed boy. Set in Dublin in the 1980s when unemployment and immigration gripped the nation, we gradually ...

  THE WALSH SISTERS What is it about dramas in recent years with dysfunctional Dublin families? First we had the Garveys in Sharon Horgan's Apple TV series ' Bad Sisters '. Then there we got the Sheridans in Nancy Harris' ITV and RTE collaboration ' The Dry '. Then, of course, there was the murderous Kinsellas in AMC and RTE's gangland drama ' KIN '. Now we've got 'The Walsh Sisters,' RTE's six part adaptation of a series of Marian Keyes' books. At the heart is Louisa Harland's Anna Walsh, a great girl altogether whose life of bliss is suddenly overturned when her American boyfriend, Samuel Anderson 's Aidan is seriously injured in a car crash. Then there's Danielle Galligan's single mum Claire who is struggling with raising a young kid weekdays and sharing custody with her ex husband at weekends while desiring his more carefree life. Stefanie Preissner's Maggie desperately wants to conceive and is trying to do...

  PEAKY BLINDERS: THE IMMORTAL MAN ' Peaky Blinders ' was a strange TV phenomenon. Deeply loved by its fans across the world, the stylish English gangster series was undoubtedly full of working class swagger. Very cinematic, it drew a cast most series would have died for and had some powerful TV moments. Yet Steven Knight's Brummie gangster show also lacked consistency and often tied itself up in knots with convoluted plots. Now it's back with another outing for Cillian Murphy's haunted Romany Gypsy mob boss Tommy Shelby in a typically star studded Netflix movie. With Knight back on board as the writer and Tom Harper in the director's chair, 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man' is set  seven years after Shelby tried to stop the rise of British fascism . Britain is at war with the Nazis in 1940, with Luftwaffe bombers decimating cities from the skies. In addition to taking lives, the Nazis are producing counterfeit pound notes in Germany to flood and weaken...

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE UK - OPENING SHOW 'Saturday Night Live' is an American comedy institution. It's turbo boosted the careers of many of performers and writers from Chevvy Chase to Kate McKinnon, Larry David to Conan O'Brien, Eddie Murphy to Seth Meyers. So you can kind of understand why Lorne Michaels, its legendary executive producer, has decided to stick to a successful formula when creating a British franchise version for Sky One. But given Britain has a long and proud tradition of acerbic satirical humour, surely something's gotta give and it doesn't have to stick rigidly to the old 'SNL' formula? 'Saturday Night Live UK' landed on Sky One looking like the American version, sounding like the American version and pretty much waddling like the American version. The opening credits of various members of the cast on the streets of London was a direct recreation of the US show. The set was an exact replica. The trademark opening monologue, Week...

  OSCARS 2026: THE RESULTS It had been billed as the tightest Oscars race in years. In the end, the statuettes largely went to the movies tipped to win at the start of this year's race - with one or two exceptions. 2026 will be remembered, though, as a year of a straight fight in many categories between Paul Thomas Anderson's Trump era epic 'One Battle After Another' and Ryan Coogler's vampire box office sensation 'Sinners'. Both would have been worthy winners of Best Picture and they ended up taking away a range of statuettes. However the Academy made the decision to reward Anderson with the big prizes and you suspect that wasn't just for his dazzling film but for a career packed full of dazzling films. An early indicator that 'One Battle After Another' was going to edge out 'Sinners' came when Cassandra Kulukundis took the first ever Oscar for Best Casting. 'One Battle After Another' would go on to land five other awards for Bes...

  F1 Ever wondered what ' Top Gun ' on wheels might be like? ' Top Gun: Maverick ' director Joseph Kosinski answers that question with 'F1' - a blockbuster hit in cinemas last summer which has made this year's Best Picture Oscar shortlist. Costing somewhere in the region of $200-300 million, it's a sleek, petrol fumed tale of Formula One drivers in an underdog team trying to make their mark in the sport. At its core is Brad Pitt's Sonny Hayes, a former F1 prodigy in the autumn of his career, eking out a living at Daytona and other US race tracks. Sonny is wooed back into Formula One racing 30 years after a career ending crash at the Spanish Grand Prix by Javier Bardem's friend and former Lotus teammate turned team owner, Ruben Cervantes. Ruben wants Sonny to join his struggling APXGP team as the second driver to help Damson Idris' up and coming star Joshua Pearce win one Grand Prix race. Failure to achieve that goal will result in APXGP's...

  TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA Could a quirky black and white French short film about a dystopian world where kissing is outlawed win an Academy Award? It seems it could do, with directors Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh scooping up awards left, right and centre including at film festivals in San Francisco, the American Film Institute and Clermont Ferrand. The winner of the Cesar for Best Live Action Short, it stars Luana Bajrami as Malaise, a shop assistant in a luxury fashion store. In a society where goods are exchanged not for money but slaps across the face, Malaise finds a customer, Zar Amir Ebrahimi's Angine who keeps coming back to her and who she develops an attraction to. As Malaise delivers blows across Angine's face, her colleague Aurelie Boquien's Petulante bristles with envy as Angine was once a valued customer. Because kissing is outlawed, people live in fear as young women are seized off the streets by guards and are placed kicking and screaming into ta...

  OSCARS 2026: THE PREDICTIONS It seems odd to quote Weird Al Yankovic in an awards season piece but 2026's Academy Awards seems to be the year where critics are starting to believe: "Everything you know is wrong." In all but one of the major categories, pundits are struggling to identify a clear favourite. And we have to admit, Pomona is no exception. This could be thr year when this blog racks up its worst ever score in the Oscars predictions game. But hey, let's give it a go anyway. BEST PICTURE Bugonia F1 Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme  One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sentimental Value  Sinners  Train Dreams At the outset of this year's race, 2026 looked like the year the Academy would finally shower Paul Thomas Anderson with a host of statuettes. Anderson's mesmerising satirical action thriller ' One Battle After Another ' was an early favourite for Best Picture and it very much felt like a film with its finge...

  A FRIEND OF DOROTHY Right from the moment Stephen Fry appears onscreen, you can see why Academy voters were swayed enough to nominate the English 21 minute comedy 'A Friend of Dorothy' for Best Live Action Short. A sweet natured tale of an unlikely friendship between Miriam Margolyes' pensioner Dorothy and Alistair Nwachukwu's Afro-Caribbean teen JJ, Lee Knight's short has a cheeky title for a start. It has two British national treasures as well in the shape of Margolyes and Fry. But there's also a delightful English eccentricity to it. In Knight's short, Margolyes' Dorothy Woodley first encounters JJ after he kicks a football into her back garden and knocks on her door to retrieve it. Inviting him inside her house to retrieve the ball on condition that he also opens a can of prunes for her, they quickly bond as he waits for her to retrieve her keys and marvels at her collection of plays in her bookcase. Noticing his interest, Dorothy elicits from JJ t...

THE SMASHING MACHINE At the start of awards season, it seemed like there was a clear path for Benny Safdie's 'The Smashing Machine to be a real Oscars contender. It's easy to see why. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson underwent a physical transformation for his role in the biopic of MMA fighter Mark Kerr and really tested his acting prowess. Emily Blunt also waded into new territory as well as Kerr's girlfriend. But despite securing Golden Globe nominations for both stars, Safdie's film never quite built momentum during awards season to land nominations at the key ceremonies. As a result, the film landed justbone solitary Academy Awards nomination for Best Make Up and Hairstyling and deservedly so. Should Safdie's movie, however, have landed more? 'The Smashing Machine' charts the downfall of Kerr, a two time MMA heavyweight champion. Sporting a wig, Johnson plays the Ohio MMA fighter whose reliance on painkillers tore him down from the heights in his sp...

THE SINGERS As anyone who has ever dropped into an impromptu musical session in a bar can tell you, sometimes the most memorable renditions of a song can come from the most unlikely of people. That's the basic premise of Sam A Davis' Netflix acquired Best Live Action Short Oscar nominee, 'The Sinners'. Based on a short story from the 19th Century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, Davis' beautifully filmed tale transposes the story to a sad looking, isolated blue collar bar in the dead of winter. As the regulars prop up the counter, one patron, Will Harrington's construction worker badgers the others for money to buy drink. Irritated by his behaviour, Mike Yung's bartender cuts a deal with him and Chris Smither's frail customer. Whoever sings the best will win a $100 note he has stashed away in a cluster of  dollar bills decorating the bar. And so after a few feeble starts, a game of musical one upmanship emerges with the ailing man impressively belting out ...

JANE AUSTEN'S PERIOD DRAMA In 1995, Scottish actor Peter Capaldi shared the Oscar for the Best Live Action Short with another competitor Peggy Rajski for his 23 minute comedy ' Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life '. With its tongue in cheek title, the film starring Richard E Grant and Ken Stott was an amusing tale about Kafka's struggle to write his daring 1915 novella ' Metamorphosis '. Its tie with Rajski's ' Trevor ' showed an eye catching title could go a long way with Oscar voters who 12 years later awarded a statuette to Ari Sandel's musical comedy 'West Bank Story' about the rivalry between Palestinian and Israeli falafel restaurants. Now Julia Aks and Steve Pinder are hoping to do the same with their mischievously titled 'Jane Austen's Period Drama'. A spoof of ' Pride and Prejudice ,' ' Sense and Sensibility ' and other English costume dramas, it stars Aks as the heroine, Miss Estrogenia Talbo...