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Talking Twin Peaks
Thanks to Emmet O’Cuana for inviting me onto The Hopscotch Friday Podcast to discuss my book on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and the new series, Twin Peaks: The Return. I’ve thought a lot about the series since it aired, and it was great to have a chance to trash through some of the issues – we could have gone on for hours more, and there were aspects we didn’t get a chance to discuss. I think we hit many of the major points, and I’m looking forward to going back to the series after a time apart from it, and pondering it further.
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Working the Blue Rose Case
I’m pleased to announce that I’m part of the autumn season of lectures organised by the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in London. MIHS is a ‘community-based organisation that offers university-level history, theory and production-based workshops for people of all ages. The Miskatonic is a non-profit endeavour through which established horror writers, directors, scholars and programmers/curators celebrate horror history and culture with a unique blend of enthusiasm and critical perspective.’ Here’s the blurb for the autumn schedule: Mark Pilkington (Owner of Strange Attractor Press, writer/director of MIRAGE MEN) launches the season in September with his lecture “Rituals in the Dark: Evoking Magic on Film”. From the grit of medieval grimoires and…
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Little Crackers
Over the past couple of years the satellite broadcaster Sky has been venturing into commissioning original television programmes, which is generally a good thing as I’m always happy to see screenwriters getting work. Even though Sky is part of the Murdoch MegaCorp, it can have its benefits (as long as you avoid the news channels). This holiday season Sky has been airing a series of short films by male and female comedians called Little Crackers. Most of them are autobiographical, or at least represent the essence of the comedian (and the comedians usually appear in the short as a character). I’ve seen five of them so far and they are…
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Octocon 2010
This weekend I’ll be a guest at the 2010 Octocon convention in the Camden Court Hotel, Dublin. The Guest of Honour is George R.R. Martin, best known as the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels. The first novel in the series, Game of Thrones, is currently being filmed in Northern Ireland as a HBO mini-series. Its tone has been described as ‘Sopranos with Swords’, and since HBO rarely does anything badly, this could be the fantasy television series of a generation. It’s a considerable coup for an Irish convention to have such an established author as a guest, and I hope there will be a…
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avoidance
Today I’m finishing my dreaded task of the year: sorting out my tax returns. It’s a vicious cycle: because I loathe doing this job I avoid doing it. That means, despite the promptings of my accountant, I tend to leave it until rather late. Each year I get stressed about it and once it’s done I swear I will never leave it this late again… until the following year rolls round. One of my favourite observations about this particular form of task avoidance is from the first episode of Black Books, called ‘Cooking the Books‘ (written by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan). First, is the conversation between Bernard Black, with…
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"His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him."
A few days ago I saw three films in a row I hadn’t seen before on different television channels. It was a lucky dip. First up was Miss Congeniality (2000), a comedy about Gracie Hart (Sandra Bollock) a FBI agent who goes undercover in a Miss USA contest to locate a killer. The story is one of those transformation comedies that is based upon the Pygmalion structure. Overall, what saves this predictable romp is some snappy dialogue, and likable performances by Bullock, and a heap of excellent supporting cast members: Michael Caine, William Shatner, Candice Bergen, and Ernie Hudson. The film doesn’t offer any surprises but it’s good-natured, and Bullock…
