Homer’s epic has always prompted strong responses ever since its first appearance during Greece’s archaic period. Poets and playwrights ransacked it for stories in the later centuries BCE (Before the Common Era). The process continued through the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance, on through the various literary Augustan, Romantic, Victorian and Modernist periods, and Read More
Ravaged by grief, Scottish couple John (Paul Higgins) and Karen (Kate Dickie) go feral in the French Pyrenees after losing their son in Tom Green’s suspenseful thriller, Couple in a Hole. Leaving the technology and pressures of civilisation for the calm of the forest is hardly a new concept in cinema (Into the Wild, Antichrist, Read More
It seems that any filmmaker taking on the task of telling their story through one ambitious and seamless take will now, inevitably, have their film compared to Birdman, be labelled a gimmick, or both. Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria has fallen prey to both critiques and comparisons. However, while Victoria shares Birdman’s impeccably sensitive and intelligent camera-work, traces Read More
The cityscape of Cork, in which Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies finds itself unfolding, is a paradoxical M.C. Escheresque backdrop. This is the debut of a seasoned and celebrated blogger, the ‘sweary-lady’ (as McInerney titles herself), and while her first expedition into extended prose fiction comes with a few teething problems, the novel finds itself Read More
This is the first novel by Robyn Cadwallader, an Australian Medieval Scholar who has won several prizes and awards for poetry, short stories and reviews. She has also published a non-fiction book, based on her PhD. The novel is set in the thirteenth century, in an English village. In the Middle Ages, an Anchoress was Read More
The Secret Chord in the title of Geraldine Brooks’s latest publication about the life of David is the same Secret Chord celebrated in songwriter Leonard Cohen’s very successful song, Hallelujah, the first lines of which read: “I heard there was a Secret Chord That David played and it pleased the Lord” In tackling the telling Read More
Australian Shirley Barrett is predominantly known for her screenwriting and directing, with her first film Love Serenade winning Best First Feature at Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and her script for South Solitary winning the Queensland Premier’s Prize in 2010. Rush OH! is Barrett’s first novel, chronicling the whaling industry in a small community in Read More
I went into the screening of Dawn of Justice preceded by a dark cloud of poor reviews that surrounded the film upon its release; I can definitely say that these were an injustice to the almost wholly positive experience I enjoyed. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is by no means a masterpiece and there Read More
Scene: 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. One British ski jumper went from an ordinary household, where generations upon generations worked themselves into the simple family plastering business, and reached heights that only he could dream of. Michael “Eddie” Edwards (Taron Egerton) goes against all the odds in this touching and comedic true story directed Read More
Having studied Creative writing at Keele University, North Londoner Deborah Alma taught poetry. At the same time, based in a 1970s ambulance, she was also operating as an “Emergency Poet”, which involved working primarily with people reaching the end of their lives and with individuals suffering from dementia. Alma’s 2015 debut pamphlet True Tales of Read More