Some Like It Hot (1959)

 

Miller time . . .

 

37/50

The Deep (1977)

 

Ghostbusters (1984)

 

The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)

 

Clerks (1994)

 

Stand by Me (1986)

 

Kingpin (1996)

 

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)

 

The Front Page (1931)

 

21/501

 

36/50

The Outlaws (2022)

 

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

 

Phoenix Nights (2001/02)

 

Nine Inches by Colin Bateman (Headline 2011)

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Shankill Road, even though it’s hard as nails. One and a half miles of arterial road through a twenty-five-thousand-strong Unionist working-class ghetto. It’s one of the few places you can still buy a pasty, rather than a panini or a panacotta without them looking at you like you’re a fucking space cadet. The Shankill bore the brunt of, and equally was responsible for, some of the worst violence of the Troubles. Paramilitaries ruled it, and they still do, only they’ve transmogrified from Loyalist freedom fighters financing their struggle through robbery, drugs, protection and murder into gangsters who finance their lifestyles through robbery, drugs, protection and murder. They justify their continued existence in the face of widespread peace by occasionally rolling out their flags and yelling about their loyalty to the Queen and the imminent danger of a Republican uprising. Republicans usually oblige by shooting someone. It is the gangster equivalent of fixing the market. It works equally well for both sides.

Ghost World (2001)

 

Top Darts Tips . . . an ongoing series.

 Top darts tip. Sharpen your darts more than once a month.

If I hadn't sharpened my darts earlier today, this would not have been a 180. Instead there would have been a gif of me screaming 'Why me, God? Why me' . . .as the second dart drops out of the board.

35/50

Belfast Confidential by Colin Bateman (CB Creative Books 2005)

 

It used to be that I was the well-known one – I had a column in the local paper, I stirred up all kinds of shit – but just as terrorists eventually hang up their guns and enter politics, I had long since resigned myself to the security and boredom of the post-Troubles newsroom. Belfast is like any city that has suffered war or pestilence or disaster – hugely relieved to no longer be the focus of world attention, but also slightly aggrieved that it isn't. In the old days you could say, 'I'm from Belfast,' anywhere in the world and it was like shorthand: a thousand images of explosions and soldiers and barbed wire and rioting and foam-mouthed politicians were thrown up by that simple statement. You were automatically hard, even if you were a freckle-armed accountant in National Health specs; you earned the sympathy of slack-jawed women for surviving so long, and you habitually buffed up your life story like you'd just crawled out of the Warsaw ghetto. You joked about the Troubles, but in such a way that you made it seem like you were covering something up. Perhaps you said you were once in a lift with that Gerry Adams and you thought he bore a remarkable resemblance to Rolf Harris, and you pointed out that you never saw the two of them in the same place at the same time, and your audience laughed and said, 'Right enough,' but at the same time you knew what they were thinking, that you were making light of it because actually you'd suffered horribly at the hands of masked terrorists or your mother had been blown through a window at Omagh or your father was shot down on the Bogside for demanding basic human rights. To say you were from Belfast was to say you were a Jew in Berlin, or a soldier of the Somme. But no longer. And as the Troubles had waned, so had the world's interest, and so had my star.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936)

 

Divorcing Jack (1998)

 

'When I'm 34 . . . '

 I'm all out of John Sayles references. 

34/50

That John Sayles film . . .

Popped into my local bar after my annual haircut, and actually scored a 180 on their battered and bruised board. Turns out they have a better board  . . . but they only put it up on league nights. 😂

I didn't even know they had a darts team.

33/50