protean depravity

Thinking about where to start with Black City Skyline and Darker Horizons , my thoughts keep on going in circles which always end in the same one word: Providence. "I can't tell you what's going on in this city, Detective. Maybe it's a combination of gentrification, global warming, and crime, with a hefty dose of lockdown anxiety. Maybe it's something else." Courting ground to Edgar Allan Poe as well as home to H.P. Lovecraft, Cormac Mc Carthy and yes, Barry Lee Dejasu, Providence has a substantial claim to fame when it comes to North American literature. In the tradition of other evil small towns like King's Salem, Levin's Stepford, or the more recent examples of Baxter's Gulpepper, Jones' Proofrock, Junji Ito's Kurouzu-cho, Dejasu's Providence too plays a crucial, almost characterlike part in his debut short story collection. So much so that this horrible place, of which characters often complain but never do or even can leave, is th...

I have been told to specify here that one of the co-authors of this book, Clarence A. Haynes, is one of my best friends in life and although I don't think so, I may be biased in my review of his book. Irrespective of my friendship with one of the authors, it is a little hard to review a Young Adult book as someone who doesn't enjoy the genre, but I think it speaks for the book that it was a pleasure to read for me, it doesn't follow the same path conventional YA does and managed to keep me interested through an "adult" approach to the themes it treats. Is it possible for a YA novel to not undermine the intelligence of its readers, represent them with respect and not be condescending? Is it possible for a YA novel to have characters not feel like naive caricatures, but actual people with valid worries and struggles? In the case of the urban fantasy Nubia: The Awakening , yes. Yes, it is. The world building, plot and social commentaries in this debut of actor Omar E...

Further reads from the past month; a little poetry, a little Gothic and lots of food for thought.

While the whole world talks about the Oscars, I'm still lagging behind with my report of the past Berlinale. To close this subject Film February once and for all for this year, I selected my highlights of the Berlinale Film Festival 2023 and will try and give a short introduction with my impressions, here and now. It was a delight to be able to go into movie theatres, stand in line and chat with fellow cinema enthusiasts, listen to directors and contributors talk about their work and lose yourself and forget about the world for a couple of hours. Gosh, I had missed it so during lockdown, even though I tried to do my own festival at home, it is no comparison, really. Here , here and here you can read my lineups for the PD Horror at Home Film Festival and even follow the progress of my sadness and frustration for not being able to go into the movies. Let's hope those times are over and never come back, and concentrate on now and future, on all the great movies we will yet see. H...

The past month I haven't read as much horror as I'm used to mainly because I was out and about watching movies at various festivals. Now if you ask, "What does watching movies have to do with that?", the answer is "A lot". I want to sit down in peace and quiet and let the dread sink in when I'm reading horror and not be quickly hopping from one cinema to the other and waiting in long queues to get a good sitting place and all the while trying to listen to some audiobook or narrowing my tired eyes in dim cinema lights to read my crumbled paperback before the next movie begins. I discovered that the best genre to go with these frenetic and restless times are thrillers and that's what I ended up reading most in February . Plus, sometimes that's just what your soul wants. Looking back, I ended up discovering lots of interesting authors and reading good books which finally ended up here. Enjoy!

I'm so sorry I haven't posted here as often as I should have, but the past February really was a whirlwind month with that outrageous earthquake at home, but also on the positive side with the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival as well as the Berlinale both rocking their post-COVID comeback. Putting the real life horrors of past month aside I'll focus on the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival (FGBFF) which took place February 1 -5 in this first part describing my cinematic experiences. For those of you who don't know - the FGBFF is a festival that showcases movies directed/written/produced by women* in order to strengthen their perspectives in the horror genre. The festival usually spans over four or five days in February and comprises feature films, horror talks, a self-defense workshop and my favorites, the short films. This year the short films were divided into the subcategories Female Pacts, Body Horror, Menacing Presences, Close to Home, Creatures, Bodily Autonomy, Qu...