The Book of Strange New Things

“Do not judge a book by its cover” would be a highly useful warning for the potential reader, who might be put off by the extreme vagueness of the title. Any concern that the content of the novel might be some kind of abstract, pseudo-existential pretentiousness is absolutely ungrounded. On the contrary, the eponymous Book Read More

Ida

It is rare nowadays to see a contemporary feature film which is entirely devoid of colour. Whilethere has been a renewed interest in filming in monochrome in recent years, including Frances Ha (2012), The Artist (2011), and Tim Burton’s laborious remake of his 1984 short Frankenweenie (2012), the aesthetic is used largely as pastiche, referring Read More

Maps to the Stars

Coming a long way from what is perhaps his best known film, The Fly (1986), David Cronenberg’s new satirical drama Maps to the Stars (2014), as the title implies, centres on a group of Hollywood celebrities that are desperately searching for fame and success. Anxiety, stress, longing for ultimate triumph but also fear of failure seem Read More

Lilting

Harold Pinter once remarked that silences were revelatory spaces “below the word spoken”. The last essay in Kei Miller’s Writing Down the Vision, “A space between the poems” turns on the word “space”; Miller’s incantatory repetition of the word, turning it around this way and that to pick up nuances of meaning, crafts a perfect Read More

Gone Girl

There are certain qualities you expect from A David Fincher film, given his track record. Seven, Zodiac, and even the maligned Girl with the Dragon Tattoo re-adaptation all share stunning cinematography, jet black humour, psychological analysis, explorations and impeccable casting. Gone Girl is no exception. Adapted from her novel, the screenplay by Gillian Flynn is Read More

Fold of the Map

Joseph P. Wood’s Fold of the Map has a consistency of voice which is at once brutal and reflective, encouraging a range of open associations through a style which can only be described as consistently fragmentary. At times, especially when the poems are read aloud, the speaker flits between a sensory bombardment with descriptions of Read More

Voices of the Benares

 On September 13th, 1940, the Ellerman Line ship “the S.S. City of Benares’”set sail from Liverpool for Canada. Among the passengers on board were 90 evacuee children. Late in the evening, on September 17th, the ship was sighted by a German U-boat, which fired two torpedoes. The torpedoes missed, but just after midnight, a third Read More

Pride

The UK film industry has a track record of producing clichéd feel-good films about underdogs being pushed around; The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Made in Dagenham and Billy Elliott are key examples here, and Pride now adds itself to the list. Pride could have been quite a serious, emotional drama, but thankfully, and quite rightly, it Read More