August 05 2024, 18:34
Early summer books
All Fours, by Miranda July. I haven’t laughed out loud so much at a book since Bridget Jones’s Diary. The unnamed artist makes terrible, hilarious decisions over and over, but she’s also just trying to have the horny creative life she wants. [more...]
July 31 2024, 17:48
Opera
Opera is the last of what’s regarded as Argento’s unimpeachable run of giallo-horror-thrillers through the seventies and eighties. For me, there are hits and misses, but Opera is one of his best. [more...]
July 28 2024, 11:09
Phenomena
Like in Suspiria, a young woman arrives at a female-run school where students are being murdered by an unseen killer, but there are no witches in Zürich, just a girl who has an unconscious connection with insects. [more...]
July 12 2024, 21:45
Tenebre
You see different things in a good piece of art as you get older. I wrote about Tenebre back in October 2020 for the #31DaysofHorror challenge. I loved it then, and I love it now, but the protagonist is far less likeable than I remember, and the twists more surprising. [more...]
July 10 2024, 21:40
Inferno
If Suspiria was a step away from the narrative rigours of a whodunnit, Inferno is a giant leap, with four (four!) protagonists in two cities — but it starts with a woman, Rose, being sold a rare occult book called The Three Mothers and coming to believe her apartment block was built for a witch. [more...]
July 07 2024, 10:35
Suspiria
Suspiria is a vivid, colourful dream where death stalks us, out of sight but ever-present. Characters die in complicated and fantastical ways to Goblin’s driving mix of Moog synths, bells, whispered vocals and a drum beat for the ages. And it’s a film filled with strong women. The men are all ineffectual side characters. [more...]
June 23 2024, 08:11
Deep Red
After making a couple of thrillers for television and a hard-to-find historical comedy that was a commercial flop, Argento returned to Giallo with a twisty, colourful, Goblin-scored mystery. [more...]
June 19 2024, 06:15
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Roberto, an American drummer in a band recording in Milan, chases a man who has been following him and accidentally kills him. A masked figure takes photographs and begins to torment Roberto, but what is their motive? [more...]
June 16 2024, 10:34
The Cat O’ Nine Tails
A blind ex-journalist overhears a conversation about blackmail outside his apartment. A newspaper reporter investigates a burglary in a nearby laboratory. As people at the lab start to die, the two men join forces to uncover the story. [more...]
June 08 2024, 13:10
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
In Panico, Dario Argento describes himself as being of two halves — the contented person at home, and the person who is compelled to investigate the darkness inside himself through making films. [more...]
June 02 2024, 12:22
Changing
I’m six months into a new job. My father’s house is for sale. My son is living in Australia. My daughter is gearing up for GCSEs next year. My wife and I are looking at each other and thinking, this is the time we’ve been waiting for, and yet neither of us have clear plans. [more...]
May 26 2024, 15:35
Darling buds
Four days off work! My plan was to not have a plan and trust I would do what I needed to do. It’s day two and I’m excited because things are changing — my glute tendons are healing (YES), my meditation habit has bedded in (now I miss it when I can’t do it), I’ve... [more...]
May 14 2024, 19:48
Gathering ideas
The heart of this project is writing new material. I also want a mechanism to let me easily share my work as I go, including selling it (shock horror!), without getting hung up on finding an agent and getting published. [more...]
May 11 2024, 10:45
Cornish horrors
I took my time with Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, a collection of short stories I bought in Swansea Waterstones on one of my visits to see my father. Research can quickly become procrastination. [more...]
May 05 2024, 10:03
Impatience
Making art means making a mess. It means tidying up, organising, and discovering something in doing it. There are unexpected emotions. There are doubts and dead ends. There are technical problems. [more...]
