protean depravity

Probably everyone has some kind of story revolving around the first author they enjoyed reading, and for many people in my broader generation that author is Stephen King, since fear as he writes it moves children and younger people on a deeper level. I first read The Stand  in middle school and back then it was already all the hype to read Stephen King, it was even more impressive to read this particular book because it was so thick and the cover was so crazy. Still, then and now, it has never been my favorite King book. The reasons for that are many, but mainly because I see it more like a dark Fantasy book and it has many religious implications I personally don't very much enjoy. I can still acknowledge the importance of a book without necessarily loving it, though, and that's what I'll do in this case. So, ever since I heard about The End of the World As We Know It , this mammoth project of 35 short stories set in the The Stand universe by 35 contemporary horror authors ...

Hello everyone! I hope you're enjoying the nice autumn weather and prepare for Halloween and the darkness that follows by reading great books! Here are some you might like, enjoy!

Cults! It seems like they are everywhere right now; in the independent news, in conspiracy theories, in media we consume, in movies we watch... Whether an organized group of powerful extremists controlling our lives really exists, or it is the mere paranoid fear thereof mirroring into horror fiction, it is worth to take a look at this fear and the way it is reflected in recent horror movies.  A cult is a group of people who have an unusual, even abnormal or extreme, socially deviant religious or spiritual, in any case a numinous belief, combining a set of particular elements such as  devotion to a particular person or object,  rituals and practices, a secret or forbidden  knowledge that they either covertly use to gain advantages in life, or are chasing the opportunity to put into use to reach their goal. And as is well known, knowledge is ultimately power . In  Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems,  Alexandra S...

Are you still hanging on to the dated (and frankly, creepy) Oktoberfest, the fest of the drunks doing drunk things? Well, there's so much better fests and events in Berlin, and you needn't be drunk to endure them - in October alone we have not one but two indie genre film fests going, plus Halloween screenings, plus an author's evening with Samanta Schweblin who will present her new book (And it's possible another author will be presenting her new book at the Otherland, but I'll announce that when it is certain!). Let's take a look at what's coming up!

For the first chapter of the second book in the series A Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King , I thought I'd do something quirky and combine it with my dormant column Based on Books since Skeleton Crew  opens with The Mist , a short story (or rather novella) as masterly written  by Stephen King  as legendarily adapted to film by director/writer/producer Frank Darabont. Straight up from the start, some useful multimedia links; the movie ,  a good audiobook narration , a ZBS radio drama , and  some fun fan art . There is a TV series somewhere too, but I'm personally not crazy about series/serializations, so you need to find where to stream it yourself. I WILL SPOIL EVERYTHING SO READ THE BOOK, WATCH THE MOVIE BEFORE READING AND DON'T BLAME ME! 

Another September has come, another Fantasy Filmfest has ended with nothing left behind but the memory of more or less awesome films and a week-long escape into other worlds (and, in my case, with a DVD set of a film I miraculously WON at the FFF! More about it under my review for Sweetness ⬇). I watched twelve feature films in total (I walked out on one of them because it was getting very late and I was worrying I might miss my last train as it was a week day), nineteen short films, of which three were animated and three stop motion. Let's see which ones I saw and my personal winners of this year's Fantasy Filmfest (There is an official winner of the festival you can find on their website  when they are through with every city on their program.)

In between films and life I have been able to read only a handful of books, but unfortunately none of them felt really great, although all of them worthwhile if you're possibly the right reader, maybe I just wasn't it, and that's fine. Hope you enjoy the short reviews, maybe you find something that speaks to you!

As with each of my film reviews, I will talk spoilers for sure, so go and watch the movie first, then come back and let's discuss this film!   So we're in the middle of the Fantasy Filmfest fever with lots of great sounding movies coming our way, but there have been lots of good horror movies showing in regular movies too, and it's time I address them in a series of posts here.  Weapons is the first movie I want to discuss because I was smitten with it, although I would not give it the 100% it allegedly got on Rotten Tomatoes.   We start off with a mystery; at 2.17 am on a given night, all children from one single class at Maybrook Elementary School disappear, except for one little boy, Alex. They just wake up in the middle of the night, open the door and make that Naruto run for an unknown place. (I have to say at this point that I don't get this running gesture, the Naruto run, and it's one of my critique points that it looks just a little bit ridiculous, but ulti...