Sorry the blog’s been quiet! Not because nothing’s been going on… just that it’s been going on in other forums. One day I’ll get around to updating the bibliography and other pages, but in the meantime they’re like a peek back. Hard to believe the first posts are nearly 10 years old, moved here when I switched to WordPress all the way back in 2008!
RSS supporting our friends at Black Gate- Fantasia 2021, Part XXI: Ghosting Gloria“The Last Word” (“Le dernier mot”) is a five-minute-long short film written and directed by Lucas Warin. It starts outside a café: a man (Owen Little) is writing in a notebook, turning over phrases as he works on a story. He appears to discover a bizarre power; but appearances can be deceiving. This is a fun piece about the relation between writer and text, […]
- Goth Chick News: Welcome to the Blumhouse…Though I can’t say I love everything Jason Blum produces, I would say that if he ever calls the Black Gate office looking for me, someone bloody well transfer him to my cell phone pronto. Though Blum has been the driving force behind nearly 200 films dating back to 1995, it was when he created his own micro-budget company, Blumhouse Productions, in 2000 that […]
- Fantasia 2021, Part XX: The 12 Day Tale Of The Monster That Died In EightIn 2020 a group of Japanese directors launched ‘Kaiju Defeats Covid,’ a viral scheme in which kaiju fans were encouraged to send in clips of themselves using the kaiju they had around the house (well, or models thereof) to destroy the COVID-19 virus. There’s something appealing about this idea, enlisting the very large to defeat the very small: like a revers […]
- Arthur C. Clarke: Omnibuses, Collections, and RemixesOmnibuses: Across the Sea of Stars (Harcourt Brace World, 1959) From the Ocean, From the Stars (Harcourt Brace World, 1961) Prelude to Mars (Harcourt Brace World, 1965; book club edition shown) The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night (Harcourt Brace World, 1968; book club edition shown) Arthur C. Clarke was one of the major science fiction writers […]
- Fantasia 2021, Part XIX: Small Gauge Trauma 2021The Small Gauge Trauma showcase is the Fantasia Film Festival’s annual collection of short genre films. Mostly these are horror movies, sometimes action; science fiction shorts get their own showcase. Small Gauge Trauma 2021 featured 10 movies from a total of 8 different countries. It started with “Aria,” from the UK. It’s a 13-minute piece from writer-direc […]
- Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Arthur, King of the BritonsMonty Python and the Holy Grail (UK, 1975) So, you think The Green Knight is a different cinematic take on the Arthurian legends? Well, okay, it is, but let’s go back to the early Seventies, the first time the Brits were really breaking the mold of Camelot and rolling out the Round Table. Arthur of the Britons, Season One Rating: *** Origin: UK, 1972 Directo […]
- Introduction to DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1972–1994), edited by Richard Davis, Gerald W. Page, and Karl Edward Wagner20 of the 22 volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories (DAW Books) Today I’m beginning a new series of posts investigating DAW Books’ Year’s Best Horror Stories series, which ran from 1971 to 1994. As a fan of literary horror, I’m excited to sequentially read through these volumes and share my thoughts with you. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to discover some […]
- Fantasia 2021, Part XVIII: Hotel Poseidon“Choulequec” is a 26-minute short film from France, written and directed by Benoit Blanc and Matthias Girbig, and it’s quite charming in an absurd way. It follows a man, Lucas Lesol (Girbig), searching for Alma (Billie Blain), his missing 16-year-old daughter. On a rural highway he crosses the city limits of the town of Choulequec and finds himself in a biza […]
- Exploring and Adventuring the Traveller Way: The Sky Raiders, Part 2The is the second of two articles covering FASA’s published adventures in the Sky Raiders trilogy for Traveller. You can read the first here. The Keith brothers, so prominent in creating Traveller materials during early years of the game, did not end the story of the Sky Raiders with The Legends of the Sky Raiders, but continued it on The Trail of the Sky Ra […]
- When the Goddess Wakes by Howard Andrew JonesWhen comes my numbered day, I will meet it smiling. For I’ll have kept this oath. I shall use my arms to shield the weak. I shall use my lips to speak the truth, and my eyes to seek it. I shall use my hand to mete justice to high and to low, and I will weigh all things with heart and mind. Where I walk the laws will follow, for I am the sword of my people an […]
- Fantasia 2021, Part XXI: Ghosting Gloria
