This is a vampire film which treats vampirism as a very direct metaphor for drug addiction, to such a degree that it quite often reminded me of Requiem for a Dream (2000). It sets itself up as challenging and intellectually-driven early on, opening with footage of American atrocities committed in Vietnam combined with a voice-over musing over ( Read more... )

It's taken me a fair old while to finish this book: in fact, I interrupted it for The Merlin Conspiracy for a while, as it seemed a bit much back in late February, and I was in need of something lighter. Bulwer-Lytton's prose style is so famously overblown that there is an annual bad fiction contest named in his honour; and as for the florid ( Read more... )

Yesterday evening, I ventured along with nalsa, big_daz, myfirstkitchen and two other folk (who are probably on LJ but I don't know their usernames) into the remarkably friendly and agenda-free territory of the University Chaplaincy, for the sake of an audience with Doctor Who writer, Paul Cornell. We got there a bit early, so had time to settle down with free cups of ( Read more... )

Aww, it is Valentine's Day! Le cute. :)

I hope that you have all been checking out the messages on 021407. Some of you have reason to, y'know! ;)

Edit: now with bonus discussion of the 'relationship' between Valentine's Day and the Lupercalia in the comments!

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My favourite painting is 'A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary / Priest [1] from the Persecution of the Druids', by William Holman Hunt (1850).

I can't put it in this post because I don't have suitable web-space to host it, but you can see dodgy internet-quality images of it:

• here (yellow and blurry),
  
• here (very gloomy) or ( Read more... )

... that's according to The Passion of The Christ at least, which I have just seen with James, Hugh and Zahra ( Read more... )