Slavoj Zizek. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. My rating: *** Zizek paraphrases and inverts de Quincey’s famous propositions concerning murder: If a person renounces Stephen King, soon Hitchcock himself will appear to him dubious, and from here it is just a step to a disdain …
My rating: *** Season 4 episode 7: ‘It’s the great pumpkin, Sam Winchester’ Well, while I am on a roll, I thought I might as well continue with this discussion of God, angels and demons and the supernatural and so on and so forth. Perhaps a more lengthy piece on the emergence of a neo-gnostic …
My rating: *** Spoiler alert My post on episode one Episode 2 of Apparitions is perhaps a little less convincing than the first one but what is interesting about it is how it manages to foreground contemporary cultural clichés about good and evil. There are some fairly absurd plot twists concerning the Chief Exorcist of …
My rating: **** Imdb link Recently I had an interesting discussion with a couple of friends about the complete disappearance of the twentieth century futurist vision, a vision which perhaps reached its culmination in the 1980s. 2001 is a reminder of that vision. The camera lingers languorously over the beautifully designed sets and models. The …
Sheenagh Pugh, The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend: Seren, 2005. My rating: **** The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context by Sheenagh Pugh This book offers an excellent and sympathetic overview of fan fiction as a literary form. The author uses material from both media and literary fandoms as …
My rating: ** Imdb link Mild spoilers This film is a real disappointment after the excellent Casino Royale. It is forgotten five minutes after walking out of the cinema. Daniel Craig, however, remains first rate and cuts a stylish figure in every scene. He handles himself with exemplary cool and poise and whatever he wears …
My rating: **** Imdb link This film is the result of a collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman, artist Dave McKean and the Jim Henson Company. It is about a British teenager whose parents run a circus. Her mother falls ill in Brighton and she enters into a parallel dream-like world which is made up of …
My rating: * Spoiler Alert The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman My review This book is well written and the story really hooks you in, but I really disliked the philosophy Pullman is pushing. This philosophy seems to be a kind of Nietzschean materialist version of gnosticism (phew!). His is a universe which allows only …
My rating: *** The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman My review I found this book a bit disappointing after the first one. It has taken me a while to analyse why. I think it is a combination of a number of things. First of all I’m not quite convinced by Pullman’s cosmology. Somehow it isn’t …
My rating: **** Northern Lights (His Dark Materials I) Tenth Anniversary 1995-2005 by Philip Pullman My review I enjoyed this book a great deal. Well-written and well-plotted with interesting characters. It also created a most convincing alternative world. Of particular interest is the idea that humans have souls which manifest themselves in physical animal form …
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