September 06 2020, 15:38
Doing 31 Days of Horror, 2020
With 2020 being a demented shitshow, I did fleetingly wonder if I wanted to do #31DaysOfHorror again this year, but then I remembered why I love horror films — they are an escape from reality. [more...]
July 12 2020, 05:28
Reality Bites
Reality Bites is still surprisingly affecting. I had low expectations. I’m not sure why. There is something about your early twenties that is particularly painful and potent. [more...]
May 18 2020, 06:09
Rebecca
It’s hard to pinpoint when I stopped reading Rebecca. I started in the middle of April, and I chose it for many reasons. There were so many little cues from the universe that it felt rude not to read it. [more...]
May 16 2020, 11:40
Website as digital garden
I’m doing okay in my little lockdown bubble. We live in a relatively rural spot, we have a garden, and we are working remotely pretty successfully. The days are going really fast. [more...]
April 21 2020, 14:22
The inner Wonder Woman
Last night, I had a deep dream of stasis and being held. I seemed to accept it, though there was a suggestion of pressing against constraints. I can’t remember any details. It’s a feeling from a fragment. [more...]
April 17 2020, 10:34
My favourite five books of 2019
In 2019, on Goodreads, I set myself the challenge of reading 52 books. Here are my favourite five. [more...]
April 12 2020, 15:55
A walk around my writer’s block
It took me thirty years to get from wanting to write a novel to finishing one. I walked away from writing several times, but I always came back... [more...]
July 12 2019, 17:12
On writing ‘The Complex’
The first shoots of the ideas that would combine to become The Complex appeared way back in November 2012, when I was fascinated by Lars von Trier’s film, Antichrist. [more...]
February 03 2019, 18:12
Anomalisa (2015)
Everyone looks the same to Michael Stone. He is in Cincinnati to give a talk at a conference. He is desperate for something real in his life, an authentic person who is not like everyone else. [more...]
August 20 2018, 11:15
Point Break
It’s tricky to find films that my fifteen-year-old son will want to watch with his forty-something parents, but this seemed to sit in the sweet spot — surfing, armed robbers, a cocky young hero, skydiving, a love interest and lots of banter. [more...]
August 19 2018, 09:15
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Siblings Sally and Franklin come to a remote part of Texas to make sure their relatives remains haven’t been dug up from a local cemetery in a bizarre, gruesome local crime. But Franklin’s curiosity gets them into trouble. [more...]
August 15 2018, 19:35
Exhibition (2013)
A married couple, D and H, have created their own emotional ecosystem, balancing intimacy and distance, in a big modernist house somewhere in Central London. [more...]
March 03 2018, 21:09
High Rise
I read several Ballard books in the late nineties — my mid-twenties — starting with short stories, before being entranced by the shiny silver paperback cover of Super-Cannes. I thought I’d read High Rise, but I quickly realised on starting it that I hadn’t. [more...]
December 08 2017, 21:14
It Follows (2014)
I avoided watching It Follows because the idea was unsettling. It’s a genius concept embedded in a homage to John Carpenter and Halloween. The characters are all on the cusp of adulthood with their parents barely around... [more...]