*Please Note – This Piece is Full of Spoilers*
There are ideas that seem to be of a certain place and time. Call them icons, if you will. One of the most powerful icons of the early to mid twentieth century is the femme fatale. Born of a cultural climate where gender was not divorced from [...]
Entries from March 2009
March 30, 2009
Don’t Let The Wrong One In : Re-inventing the Femme Fatale
March 13, 2009
Zack Snyder’s Orgasm Death Gimmick
I have always found my view of the genius perceived by others in Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1987) to be obscured by the looming presence of the bleeding obvious. I respect the form, less so the matter. Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009) failed to turn this respect into love. For most of the film I felt the [...]
March 9, 2009
Cinematic Vocabulary – Opening Scene of Touch of Evil (1958)
Write enough reviews and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of films as discrete cultural units. Artefacts cut asunder from the rest of the world and presented to the audience in a neat little package. Thinking of films in these terms tends to lead one to focus upon macroscopic issues such [...]
March 5, 2009
Blasphemous Geometries 12
My latest Blasphemous Geometries column has gone up over at Futurismic.
It’s an attempt to lay down some thoughts on a different way of looking at story-telling in video games, but it’s also an excuse for me to make wise-arse comments about a number of different games I’ve played over the years. Speaking of being a [...]
March 4, 2009
SF Signal’s Mind Meld – Non-Genre Reading Suggestions
For the first time in a while, I have been invited to participate in one of SF Signal’s regular Mind Meld features. Karen Burnham’s question is :
SF conventions often have panels on “What sf books would you recommend to someone who hadn’t encountered the field before?” Let’s turn that around: “What non-sf/fantasy books would you [...]
March 4, 2009
REVIEW : He Died with His Eyes Open (1984) by Derek Raymond
In order to grasp the devastating beauty of Derek Raymond’s He Died with His Eyes Open (1984), it is first necessary to grasp the devastating beauty of another text; Conrad’s altogether more famous Heart of Darkness (1899). Conrad’s book ends with one of the most memorable soliloquies in British literature :
“Anything approaching the change that [...]
March 2, 2009
REVIEW : Socket (2007)
Videovista has my review of Sean Abley’s Socket. A film that is not only a work of indie SF, but also of indie gay cinema.
The film itself is not particularly interesting or worthy of note (much like Rocco DeVilliers Pure Race [1995], which I also reviewed) except when you consider how close the film came [...]
March 2, 2009
REVIEW : The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
Videovista have just put up my review of William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster.
A couple of notes on this review. Firstly, Masters of Cinema always include a little booklet with their DVDs containing essays. These serve as DVD extras by whetting your thematic apetite and filling you in on historical context. If I don’t [...]
