Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says that #1 Wuthering Heights, written and directed by Saltburn's Emerald Fennell, is not a close adaptation of the novel and has attracted criticism for casting Jacob Elordi alongside Margot Robbie. However, it is thoroughly entertaining, has a great score and production design and is also quite funny. He found it a cinematic delight and feels Fennell is a national treasure. #3 Crime 101 with Chris Hemsworth and a great cast is a rare LA movie actually filmed there. James enjoyed it. Not only is it a good crime thriller, but the characters are very human. On Blu-Ray for the first time is the Oscar-nominated 1974 East German film Jacob the Liar. A darkly comic movie set in a Jewish ghetto in 1944, it is in similar vein to the much later Life Is Beautiful. The disc comes with lots of great extras.
Guests: james cameron-wilson
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Financial Outlook for Personal Investors
Russ Mould of A J Bell says that AI interest has switched from looking for winners to searching for potential losers. But it's been indiscriminate and has included quality software services and data analytic companies. They have a walled garden of data, sticky customers, high margins, predictable cash flows and consistent dividend growth. In fact, their share prices peaked last year, probably because they were on very high ratings compared to the market and thus had a small margin of safety. The question now is, when are the doubts priced in? What multiple would you be prepared to pay, given that the market is on a 13.5 PE and that they mostly have proprietary data which can't be scraped by AI?
Guests: Russ Mould
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Bigger Picture
Political commentator Mike Indian marvels at the Prime Minister's extraordinary survival act over the past fortnight or so, despite the circling vultures. His new cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, has just been appointed to disprove the talk of an inner circle "boys' club", but it's a moment of maximum danger for the Labour government with public anger at central government and the elite at a peak. Starmer probably only has weeks left, particularly after the astonishing U-turn over cancelling local elections and the revelation that the legal advice on this only came to light just ahead of Reform's court case. However, the battle for Starmer's soul is not over. This week also saw the unveiling of Reform's "shadow cabinet", aiming to show that they can be seen as a credible political force with a broad team ready to govern. If they do as well as predicted in the local elections, this will make life for the party more complex and expose them to yet more scrutiny. It would be ironic after what has transpired if there is a low turnout.
Guests: Mike Indian
Published:
Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin is surprised by research showing that children are mostly watching YouTube on television. 20 years on, the V&A is mounting an exhibition on YouTube. The GPT-4o chatbot, which served as virtual boyfriend and girlfriend to many, was turned off the day before Valentine's Day. Hollywood is nervous about the Seedance 2.0 AI video generator which has produced a clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting as realistically as if from a big-budget action movie. Somebody has paid a quarter of a million dollars for a toy car, though admittedly a Ferrari. A proposed airship wind energy system will need to rise up on a 2km cable. Apparently 1 in 15 cars have a ghost number plate that can't be read by traffic cameras. A crowd-funded badge will let you display photos or even videos. Elon Musk has switched his future city from Mars to the Moon. And Steve warns of a new "gifting" scam.
Guests: Steve Caplin
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Financial Outlook for Personal Investors
Liam O'Byrne of Edison Group highlights HG Capital Trust, a £2bn private equity investment trust in the FTSE 250 which specialises in unquoted software companies in Europe and North America. It was recently hit by the widespread worries about AI's effect on software businesses but in fact most SMEs don't have the ability or confidence to develop their own in-house software and, as a result, HGT's shares have recovered somewhat. However, they are still at a 17% discount to NAV whereas normally there's little or no discount. With AI complicating things so much, it makes sense to get exposure to the sector through good fund managers. Patria Private Equity Trust is an £850m investment trust which concentrates on lower and mid-market companies and is at a 28% discount to NAV. It anticipates a strong rebound in 2026 with many investments ripe for realisation. It aims to exit half of its top 10 holdings this year.
Guests: Liam O'Byrne
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says that #1 Sam Raimi's Send Help, with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien, the tale of a work couple being stranded on a desert island, seems overfamiliar. Blending comedy and thrills, he enjoyed it in a schlocky way. #19 is 100 Nights of Hero, a bonkers movie based on a graphic novel with Richard E. Grant and Felicity Jones. Set in a parallel, colour-blind world it's about storytelling and the empowering of women. It does have a distinctive look but is all too flat and needs a stronger director and style. Far more impressive is Anniversary on Netflix. It stars Diane Lane as the matriarch of a close-knit family and is a state-of-the-nation epic with a frighteningly prescient script. There's so much going on, James had to watch it again. Very credible, often tense and with a strong cast, it's a really brilliant movie he discovered completely by accident.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Bigger Picture
Professor Tim Evans of Middlesex University says that the increasing unaffordability of daily living is something politicians won't admit to. It was masked for a time by the influx of cheap Chinese goods but no longer, pushed up by Net Zero, the minimum wage, tax rises and ever more burdensome regulations and government interventions. The costs of energy and housing are having the biggest effect, with property up by 250% since 2000. Only in the remaining free market areas is it not the case, thanks to the magic of capitalism. Less than two years after the election, Labour is now as divided and fractious as the Tories were and Tim cannot foresee the Labour Party patching things up. The electorate is increasingly reminded of the last Tory government. He also considers how Trump is rapidly reshaping our world, with his actions towards Venezuela, Cuba and Iran effectively taking some of Putin's chess pieces off the board.
Guests: Professor Tim Evans
Published:
Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin reports on the Chinese village which lost power after a farmer transporting a pig to the abbatoir by drone managed to get it tangled in a power line. There's a new eVTOL single-seat aircraft available to buy next year. Network Rail is to use drones to predict crimes on train lines, though it hasn't revealed what they'll do if they spot one. Criminal gangs are using lifestyle surveys to clone pensioners' voices and then raid their bank accounts. ROLI have devised an AI music coach to teach people how to play the piano. There's a crowd-funded visual soldering iron, eyedrops to treat presbyopia and the extraordinary project The Line in Saudi Arabia is being reduced from a city 105 miles long to just 1.5 miles, which might be used to host AI data centres.
Guests: Steve Caplin
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says the bump up of Hamnet to #1 in the charts shows the important of award nominations. The latest Jason Statham thriller, Shelter, is #3. He's a recluse living in a lighthouse whose past comes back to bite him when he rescues a girl from the sea. It's the same old, same old, but done slightly better than usual. #10 Is This Thing On, about a stand-up comic's marriage with Will Arnett and Laura Dern, is inspired by Liverpool comedian John Bishop. But Bradley Cooper's annoying directorial style obscures and confuses the story. James recommends #38, docu-drama The Voice of Hind Rajab, which is one of the most traumatising war films he has ever sat through. He also discusses the current awards season and the London Film Critics Circle awards last weekend.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
Published:
Original Broadcast: The Financial Outlook for Personal Investors
Russ Mould of A J Bell discusses the precious metals meltdown and the ongoing volatility, with silver diving from $122 to $72. He reminds us, though, that both gold and silver are still up 9-10% in a month. Russ runs through the things that might have caused the collapse, including Trump's appointment to the Fed chair, that things had gone too far too fast, that leveraged positions were flushed out and the changes in Comex's margin requirements. But what has changed apart from the price? Nothing, really, so bears and bulls of precious metals are still likely to feel as they did before the past week. It's notable that miners have been nowhere near as volatile as the metals and we are about to see results from some of the majors. Will this be an opportunity? How indeed do you value gold and silver? Russ compares them to other commodities.
Guests: Russ Mould
Published:
