Cameraperson Kirsten Johnson asked her father if she could make a documentary about his death. He agreed. The film spans years, chronicling a daughter documenting the last years of her father’s life. Going into this Netflix documentary, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did; but I was blown away by the…
Music, Venue
Deep Cuts-Elliott Smith – A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free
Elliott Smith’s ‘A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free’ is concealed quite nicely within Smith’s oeuvre. Like most of his work, ‘Distorted Reality’ is pessimistic indie-pop delving into Smith’s addiction and depression. The final track on the posthumous release From A Basement On The Hill, the song was also the last single…
TV, Venue
The Best of Adaptations: Preacher
AMC’s ‘Preacher’ is an example of how you adapt a comic book well. Fundamentally similar to the comic, the show stands out on its own as something unique, in some regard better. ‘Preacher’ tells the story of Jesse Custer, a preacher who mysteriously gains the power to make others obey his will, his criminal ex-girlfriend…
Film
Halloween Horror: The Cabin in the Woods
Five teenagers spend the weekend at a cabin in the woods and encounter a mysterious evil. You think you know how this premise is going to end, but The Cabin in the Woods is not your typical horror movie. The story begins like every other film in the genre, but a few things are deliberately…
Music, Venue
Dark and disturbing songs: I Have A Special Plan For This World by Current 93
The word “disturbing” gets thrown around a lot to describe any slightly unnerving music, but Current 93’s experimental “I Have A Special Plan For This World” embodies the word. This genuinely frightening piece is a twenty-minute surrealist nightmare, wherein a disembodied narrator describes his ambiguous “special plan” to ambient drone music, interrupted by a series…
TV
A Rewatch of… The Midnight Gospel (2020)
When you rewatch something, that overall experience can never be the same again – the mental circumstances occurring as you watch will always be different. This was my mindset going into my latest rewatch of ‘The Midnight Gospel’ (2020), a show I’ve now seen three times. ‘The Midnight Gospel’ is an adaption of sorts of…
Arts, Venue
Guilty pleasures
Darkly Dreaming Dexter Everyone has watched the TV show, and basically everyone was disappointed by the ending, but I feel as if the book avoids that criticism. Well, the first one does, anyway. While it is unnecessarily edgy at times, the portrayal of Dexter here is far more playful and sarcastic than in the adaptation,…
Music
Best Film Soundtracks
Alex Grenfell Nothing quite captures the mechanical bleakness of cyberpunk like Hans Zimmer’s masterful score for Blade Runner 2049. Zimmer reimagines Vangelis’s original score, including the infamous Tears in the Rain, using a 1980’s Yamaha CS-80 synthesizer for additional authenticity, while adding the same electronically-orchestral feel he became known for with Arrival and Inception. Every…
Arts, Books, Venue
When eroticism comes across as comedic
A couple of days ago, my friends and I were sitting in our living room paying ‘Catan’, and the conversation got onto what we wanted to do after uni. My friend James Ward said that he wanted ideally to be a writer, but that his chosen writerly name, J. R. Ward, had already been taken,…
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