Silence is an intriguing film placed somewhere between documentary and fiction. The debut feature of filmmaker Pat Collins can most accurately be described as film art and may, therefore, not be to everyone’s taste. Collins has opted to create a calm, meditative film that coolly unfolds as its protagonist and audience are forced to reflect Read More
Collaborative film direction can be a tricky proposition, which often results in a disjointed final product – a movie which appears to be the sum of two distinct parts rather than a coherent whole. However, when done expertly, such an approach can be beneficial to the final result; as the saying goes “Two heads are Read More
The debut novel by Australian writer Christopher Currie, The Ottoman Motel is a mystery centred around eleven year old Simon Sawyers. The plot follows Simon and his parents as they reach the small town of Reception on a family holiday caused ostensibly by a sudden need to visit Simon’s estranged grandmother. However, after falling asleep Read More
Simon Mundy’s fourth poetry collection, More for Helen of Troy, is, in many ways, a mixed bag. It ranges from vignettes of Helen of Troy in the opening ten-poem sequence to poems of landscape, personal incident and ideas. And it explores themes as varied as gender relations, war, ageing and ideals. Mundy brings a deftness Read More
The celebrated New York poet Jorie Graham has published numerous collections of verse, including Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, Erosion, The End of Beauty, Region of Unlikeness, Materialism, The Errancy, Swarm, and Never. Her first edition of selected poems, The Dream of the Unified Field, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996. A sequel to Read More
It’s not often that you hear an original new voice in writing, but Dickson Telfer’s debut collection of short stories seems to signal him as owning just such a voice. The stories have impressive imaginative power, depicting kaleidoscopic worlds seen from skewed angles through highly coloured prisms. There is great variation in his narrative style Read More
The spirit of Edwin Morgan is at large in Bill Herbert. But Herbert’s new double collection also belongs in the tradition initiated by Wordsworth’s Prelude, in that it exhibits the poetic mind contemplating itself. As in the great Romantic poem, which remained unfinished, there is a sense in which Herbert’s two books of specular poetry, Read More
Expectations are curious creatures; sometimes they are too weighty and hinder the book’s or film’s imaginative flight. I’ve always looked forward to an Ian McEwan novel. I loved his Austenite homage in Atonement, the reflective stock-taking in Saturday and the inventiveness of Amsterdam. In the main, I am deaf to accusations that he writes middle-brow Read More
Studio Ghibli is perhaps Japan’s best known animation studio with accolades and awards (including an Oscar) heaped upon Hayao Mayazaki and his team. I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a hardcore Ghibli fan, having seen most of their films (some even obsessively). Ghibli’s narratives use children or young adults as main characters who, Read More
Only God Forgives is a fascinating film. That being said, it is definitely not for everybody. It takes some time to warm to director Nicolas Winding Refn’s style but once you have adjusted to the disorientating cinematography, it is incredibly intense and moving. Central to the plot are the emotional and psychological issues that Julian Read More