protean depravity

We haven't even reached the middle mark of October yet, but turns out this month truly IS golden. Socializing with the science fiction crowd the last couple of weeks I was made aware of two more events which had escaped me, but I think are definitely worth visiting. The weekends are full this fall! Next Saturday, October 19th, the Berlin SciFi Filmfest opens its doors at the splendid Urania in Charlottenburg. This year's program is interesting as usual and consists of mostly short film screenings divided into thematic blocs such as Dystopia, Latin Science Fiction, Psychopunk (??!! I have no idea what this is but I already love it), AI, Canadian Science Fiction, and... Weirded Out , the bloc about weird fiction, unfortunately at 8 pm, the very last showing. It figures that the one bloc I want to see most would be the last, which gets me in a scrape. I have to work the morning shift at Hammett that day, and for the late evening I already have my ticket for the "In a Violen

Dark, darker, American Narcissus … Chandler Morrison surprises with an unusually grim novel about the vapid, vile, self-serving, chain smoking rich people of Los Angeles. Against the backdrop of the wildfires that consume the city, we follow four people who are both part of this empty, shallow, cruel social system but also struggle to fit in: Arden Coover, rich junkie and proud owner of a useless philosophy degree from Berkeley; his sister Tess who tries to figure out if her affair with a narcissistic writer (“the” Writer , mind you) is worth it; Ryland Richter, an insurance executive, addicted to coke, to work and the new employee in his company who turns out to be unhinged and dangerous. And finally sweet Baxter Kent, surfer boy addicted to porn and afraid of real women, who meets an unlikely person to soothe his loneliness.

Hey all, I hope you're doing great! Here we go, finally some book reviews on this blog, and there are more to come, please do enjoy!

There's no shame in wondering about the background of people who do terrible things, and the extensive coverage of the lives of shooters, monsters or serial killers in the news, in literature, and especially in cinema is proof of that. Schroeder certainly isn't the first book to explore the mind of a killer, and yet I feel unusually torn thinking about this tormented character and the one fateful day in his life, his very last day after the last straw broke the camel's back.

Ah, the woman’s search for eternal beauty… The trope as old as time has always been a grab bag for storytellers, but in the last couple of years it has been seeing a true revival explosion, especially in horror. The wish to hold on to the one source of power granted to her in a world in which she is sexualized and measured by her youthfulness, fertility and sex-appeal is naturally a huge source of anxiety. Efforts to stop her body from aging and decaying, to appear desirable and pretty, not to lose “it” and not to succumb to cruel reality, and all this eventually leading to her self-destruction, are all themes organic to horror. Add to it a little snip snip here, a nip tuck there, a little blood, a couple of needles into the flesh, some body modification and you have yourself the perfect template for a class A body horror story that reminds us that ultimately we are nothing but meat. Books like Natural Beauty (Ling Ling Huang), #thighgap (Chandler Morrison) or Rouge (Mona Awad) disc

It always sucks a little bit when the summer ends; the days get darker and shorter, the weather gets chillier, the city gets fuller, the leaves change colors... But pre-fall, September and early October, is still a nice enough time before hell ascends to Berlin and stupid winter begins. And this year it's an even better time than usual, because there's so much going on that it's head-spinning!

Since its emergence in the early 70s, the rape-revenge trope has become a staple of horror fiction equally hailed as loathed. A painfully necessary and yet controversial evil to tap the full cathartic potential of the genre, it usually relies on exploitation, provocation, transgression, shock-value and preferably lots of gore, over the top and graphic sexual violence, and bad taste in order to point at a specific social ill . Critics rail at a certain kind of voyeurism as well as instrumentalizing, making light of, and even glorifying of sexual violence against women while others, such as Australian scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, call for film-specific interpretations. Although meant as a negative opinion on the subgenre, instrumentalizing or exploiting a subject in art, no matter how hideous, traumatic, and real it is for its survivors in real life, are valid and effective ways of handling that subject and should be seen in an objective light. All the more in the case of the l

And here I go with the second part of my favorite FFF movies of this year's 38th edition. While writing these I realized that I watched and really enjoyed a lot of French and French language movies this past week. Having studied and spoken French for my whole life, but not being able to connect with the country per se, I actually miss French, just not the French, lol. I also enjoyed watching light-hearted movies and laughed a lot during this festival. Here are some more reviews, some funny, some serious.