I have always been a fan of the slasher-horror genre. The raw and chilling, but sometimes passionate, horror that provides a continuous thrill of the chase in which you never know whether the predator or prey will win. Some slasher movies can be almost comedic but Halloween from 1978 is a quintessential horror classic that … Continue reading Forty Years of Terror: Halloween (1978) vs Halloween (2018)
Ever since my mid-teens, the music of Pink Floyd has had an immense impression on me (I thank my older brothers David and Paul for their encouragement). So this post is really just an excuse to talk about their music through the largely tenuous, but admittedly relevant, link of films - films, of course, that … Continue reading Absolutely Curtains: The Movies of Pink Floyd
Prologue – A Man With No Name This is the story of a story. Not the whole story of course just the highlights. The greatest stories are timeless. They crop up again and again. Christopher Booker, in his 2004 book, described seven basic plots. Leo Tolstoy thought that there were only two: a man goes … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa meets The Man With No Name
Foreword by Robin Stevens Akira Kurosawa (黒沢 明 1910 – 1998) was a master of film craft, and one of the greatest directors of all time. He grew up in Tokyo, watching silent films from around the world and going to see traditional and modern Japanese theatre. He became a painter, and in his 20s … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa – A Master of Film Part 3: Dersu Uzala and the Russian Wilderness
Did you know there is going to be a sequel to Braveheart (1995)? I know! If ever there was a movie which needed a sequel. So many questions were left unanswered. Did Scotland’s nobles universally accept Robert Bruce? How did the writing of the ‘Declaration of Arbroath’ effect the legal position of the Scottish royal … Continue reading Dramatis Scocie – The Effective Use of the Scottish Landscape in Film
As the book The Silence of the Lambs (1988) begins Jack Crawford is already hunting a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill”. He is short of personnel and resources and he is without his former protégé, Will Graham. He is also dealing with the increasing ill health of his wife as she struggles with cancer. If … Continue reading Hunting the Cannibal: The Heroes of Thomas Harris, Part 2 – Clarice Starling
Thomas Harris has created some chilling and hideously memorable characters. Of course, everyone remembers Hannibal Lecter (or ‘Lecktor’ in some versions of the character). This is not surprising. After all, everyone remembers Dracula and the Wolfman but few can enthusiastically list all the brave men and women who hunted the monsters. What are the serial … Continue reading Hunting the Cannibal: The Heroes of Thomas Harris, Part 1 – Will Graham
Akira Kurosawa (黒沢 明 1910 – 1998) was a master of film craft, and one of the greatest directors of all time. He grew up in Tokyo, watching silent films from around the world and going to see traditional and modern Japanese theatre. He became a painter, and in his 20s got into script writing, editing and … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa – A Master of Film Part 2: The Humanity of the Seven Samurai
Akira Kurosawa (黒沢 明 1910 – 1998) was a master of film craft, and one of the greatest directors of all time. He grew up in Tokyo watching silent films from around the world and going to see traditional and modern Japanese theatre. He became a painter, and in his 20s got into script writing, editing and … Continue reading Akira Kurosawa – A Master of Film Part 1: The Rashomon Effect
The Frenchman Henri Girard authored his debut novel Le salaire de la peur (literally translated as ‘The salary of fear’) under his pseudonym Georges Arnaud in 1950. The novel was a fiction inspired by his time spent in South America in the late 1940s and 1950s. Girard/Arnaud had an eventful life up until then having … Continue reading Adaptations Part 4: The Wages of Fear – Clouzot’s Explosive Drama and Friedkin’s Thrilling Sorcery
