I was Krampus before Krampus was cool…
Throwback Thursday: Krampus
I was Krampus before Krampus was cool…
Tag: films
TOA/V: Anna Karenina
The eternal struggle in Belle Ombre: agreeing on something to watch with my brother. One of the places our largely divergent tastes overlap is in the realm of costume drama, so the other night after one or the other of us voting down this or that film we finally agreed on the 2012 version of…
TOA/V: The Bed Sitting Room
As a preamble, let me say WHOOHOO Fox Spirit! Nominated (for the second year in a row) for best small press in the British Fantasy Awards — as well as several other skulk noms. Well done! I finally got the Blu-Ray/DVD package of The Bed Sitting Room because it came up in conversation on the…
TOA/V — Tea: The Dark Side of the Cup
“Billions of cups are sunk a day for centuries and nobody says a word – until now.” A mockumentary exploring the silent epidemic of tea dependence. A plight, engulfing our society for a millennia – undocumented. Click here to watch on Vimeo I supported their kickstarter and received a lovely tea coaster like the image…
The Drums of Fury Road
The late Layne Redmond, musician and scholar, put together the study When the Drummers were Women to explore the ancient connection with the instrument often seen as the embodiment of masculinity. In the clay and carvings, friezes and frescoes she discovered an ancient bond mostly overlooked or mislabeled by male curators (women with cake?!). In…
On Medievalism and ‘Realism’
I’m going to be brief because I don’t watch the television show that prompted this post, yet I’m irritated by the notions behind a certain author’s constant defensive claims about ‘realism’ as the excuse to fill a narrative with frequent rapes of women (although seemingly the show runners are more interested in how the rapes…
TOA/V: Valhalla Rising
Valhalla Rising (2009) Dir. Nicholas Winding Refn Mad Mikkelson, Gary Lewis, Maarten Stevenson, et. al. BBC Two showed this the other night and we DVR’d it. Medieval-ish and Mads: I was sold! Where did I know that director’s name from? Hmmm, oh yeah, Drive. A movie people loved and I didn’t. I am going to…
VexMosaic & Medieval Masculinities
Today I’ve got an essay up at a new site, VexMosaic, along with folks like the esteemed Alasdair Stuart. What is VexMosaic, you ask? Good Speculative Fiction transforms “what is” into “what could be”. It vexes, disturbs, and inspires us, becoming a catalyst for new ways of thinking that expand our awareness and subvert the…
TOA/V – Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem
THE HARD PROBLEM by Tom Stoppard Dir: Nicholas Hytner I love that Tom Stoppard’s idea of a fast-paced, breezy play because he wanted to do something ‘light’ is to focus on whether science can measure consciousness and whether it is something that can be measured. I can understand not wanting all that palaver. It’s in…
Kinski Butterfly
Richard Sanderson is doing another one of his free-for-all projects Two Minutes Left over at Linear Obsessional Recordings (Submissions open until December 15th). I took part in last year’s Button Box with a spoken word piece from my story “Carlos” that appears in the second Fox Pockets anthology, Shapeshifters. That recording is free to download: So…