I made another appearance on KBS Korea 24, this time discussing Korean fantasy novel Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim. It’s archived on their site and available on all good podcast platforms, but if you’re a Spotify user you can click here to be taken straight to my appearance.
Issue 238 of The Dark Side magazine carries my article on the Indonesian horror star Suzzanna. Suzzanna is one of my favourite ever performers, and I tried to convey – in a more chatty and informal style than I usually use – some of her intensity, and the bracing shifts of tone – from horror to comedy – in her films. I did try to contact Severin films about their upcoming documentary, but they didn’t reply. Trying to further cultivate Suzzanna’s mystique, perhaps?
The Dark Side is available in all good newsagents now.
Over at The Asian Review of Books I’ve reviewed this fascinating new academic book about media consumption in North Korea. A fascinating book, it charts the technological developments in NK since the turn of the century, profiles North Korean millennials as a group, offers NK-centric reading of key K-dramas and films, and most importantly shows how North Korean people are relentless and creative when it comes to accessing forbidden information. Click on the hyperlink above for the full review.
I recently reviewed Ashley Lawson’s On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett for The Journal of Popular Culture. For me, the main draw was to read some sustained work on Leigh Brackett, one of my favourite authors, who I have a long-cherished project on that I hope to begin very soon. Secondly, all three authors have had a powerful impact on popular culture: Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is the Platonic form of the haunted house story, and Highsmith’s grippingly amoral character Tom Ripley has been featured in film and TV numerous times. As to Brackett, you’ll be hearing more from me about her soon enough.
Lawson’s book is an impressively researched and argued work on three brilliant authors, and you can read the full review by clicking on the hyperlink above.
I’m delighted to share that I’ll be appearing regularly on KBS radio’s Korea 24 programme, sharing their Wednesday Korea Book Club segment with other critics. These are archived after broadcast on KBS’s website here.
For my first two appearances, I’ve added links to the Spotify archives of my appearances below:
Jan 2: Your Neighbour’s Table by Gu Byeong-mo.
Dec 4: The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim.
I’ll update the site with any future appearances.
I’ve decided to resurrect this site and use it to keep all my writing for other outlets in one place. Expect regular updates on my writing activities from now on.
A few months back, I got word that my friend – and in some ways mentor and inspiration – the filmmaker C.S. Leigh – passed away in 2016. For Christian to be out of touch for long periods of time was not unusual (he always protested against suggestions that he had once “vanished” by saying that this was merely ex-directory before mobile technology became commonplace) but when I emailed him letting him know I’d been to the Seoul MMCA’s Jonas Mekas exhibition and complementary sprawling retrospective, and didn’t hear back, I felt a pang of worry. Christian hated talking about himself and his work (at least to me), but he loved to talk about films. Continue reading
Like my fascination with folk horror, I can trace my interest in Terence Fisher to my early teens, when I stayed up late to watch a TV screening of Curse of the Werewolf. Hoping for something lurid and fast-paced, I both did and didn’t get what I bargained for, as a slow-burning film – that seemed less a horror and more a sadistic tragedy – unfolded. Continue reading
Folk horror is like obscenity in Potter Stewart’s famous definition: you know it when you see it. Characterised by eerie rural landscapes, malevolent forces that work through ancient objects unearthed by hapless farmhands, and bloodthirsty cults that flourish in secret behind a peculiarly British veneer of village green propriety. Closely associated with the 60s and 70s, it’s the sort of stuff that was a mainstay of late-night television during my adolescence. Does folk horror then refer to a style of horror past – to once-chilling fireside ghost stories that are now occasionally disinterred for a nostalgia rush or for camp value? Continue reading
NB. This is a cannibalised, barely recognisable version of an article originally written in 2010 for a now-offline website. The original article holds the rare distinction of being a piece I was actually paid to write.
To the long-suffering near-masochists known as Zappa fans, the unmistakable work of Bruce Bickford is a familiar sight. Easily the best thing about Baby Snakes, his fascinating animated sequences mitigate against the longeurs of Roy Estrada and that doll. But Bickford has had a long career independently of Zappa’s patronage, and is perhaps the only outsider artist to work in the medium of animation. A personal appearance at London’s Horse Hospital in 2010 – along with a screening of the documentary portrait Monster Road and of his film Cas’l – still seemingly a work in progress at that time – offered a chance to find out more. Continue reading
The Scientific Anglian 