As typical when finishing a book that attempts to build a canon, as I have tried to do with Folk Horror, the signalling of its publishing means a whole host of new potential examples surface and come to light. Though there were things in the Folk Horror book that I simply left out by sheer chance – Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (2007) being a key … Continue reading Folk Horror Curios
It was a rather surreal feeling to find that, whilst watching this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in a flat in France, the work of writer and filmmaker, Alain Robbe-Grillet, continually kept coming to mind. At first I failed to understand what exactly it was that was bringing his typical visual and narrative ploy of human beings frozen, in front of my mind’s eye. I soon … Continue reading The Frozen Time Of Alain Robbe-Grillet
A few months back, I visited the retrospective of Vanessa Bell’s paintings at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The exhibition is still ongoing and an essential visit for anyone with a passion for those strange groups of English rebels that seemed to flourish in the arts around the Fin de siècle. It confirmed for me Bell’s position as one of the most underrated artists from that period, … Continue reading Responses: Virginia Woolf (1912) – Vanessa Bell
At the time of writing this, my book on Folk Horror is a few weeks away from being printed. By the time you read this, however, it should be available to buy. I’ve written about the detail of the book earlier when it was due to be published late last year. However, I wanted to get a few words down again now that it is … Continue reading Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange
Interest in Robert Smithson’s landwork, Spiral Jetty (1970), peaked for me recently when reading Geoff Dyer’s interesting collection of travel works, White Sands (2016). Dyer described in his chapter, entitled Time in Space, his journey to the artwork and the delayed reaction in appreciating it; in fact most of White Sands deals with the delayed and perhaps even nonexistent reaction to the finale of a … Continue reading Responses: Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970)
It came with a great sense of relief that, on the 29th of March, I had a plane to catch. This plane that I was to catch on the afternoon of the 29th was heading to Strasbourg; a visit to ma chérie and an escape from the 29th of March or what the 29th of March now represented which was everything contrary to reason. Exactly … Continue reading Wanders: Goethe Dies (Strasbourg)
If asked to choose a particular sound that defined London in cinema, it would not be the bustling noise of traffic or an iconic piece of soundtrack music. It would, in fact, be the very simple but endlessly mysterious sound of the wind rustling through the trees in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966). Having visited all of the locations of the film last summer for the British Film … Continue reading The Breeze in the Trees
Having recently finished all of the remaining episodes of the early 1970s BBC series, Doomwatch, I had the strange feeling that I had slipped into a parallel world; one where the BBC had worked closely with the writer, J.G. Ballard, to make a series that addressed his themes. Though the series largely resembles Ballard’s earlier novels with their constant post-civilisation eco-disasters similar to The Drowned World … Continue reading Doomwatch, J.G. Ballard and High-Rise
Late last year, I became obsessed with visiting a certain item in the British Museum. Deliberately choosing to work in or near Bloomsbury, I would often wander into the building in between working, making my way straight to one of the room’s (on the right of the building) with a confidence and determination that clearly unnerved my various tourist companions. I would stride into the … Continue reading Responses: John Dee’s Obsidian Mirror
Having walked down the Lea Valley late last year with Gary Budden, we endeavoured to continue on from our point of departure in Planet Stratford and to follow the river right the way down to Leamouth where it finally pours into the Thames. Though on paper the walk was effectively a south-following meander, mapped largely (or at least so we thought) by potentially walking along … Continue reading Wanders: Leamouth Labyrinth
Celluloid Wicker Man 