protean depravity

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 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!

Here are some crime reads for you in this last phase of summer (that we never had this year). I hope you enjoy!

The past couple of weeks were great for reading, so I already have some new short reviews, enjoy!

Alright, constant reader, let's finish up this first chapter in the series A Short Story Reader's Guide to Stephen King, by taking a look at the last four short stories in King's first collection  Night Shift . The four stories discussed here are The Last Rung on the Ladder , The Man Who Loved Flowers , One for the Road , and finally, The Woman in the Room , two of them are horror stories and are pre-published before being included in Night Shift , while the remaining two are rather contemporary, or even literary short stories that are rather on the emotional side and which have been written specifically for this work. As usual, it might be better to read the short stories beforehand, because I will spoil everything.

As the summer goes on raining, I hope my short reviews help you finding good books to read, enjoy!

Finally did I collect enough short reviews to post here... I have been reading a lot of non-speculative fiction and the birthday week of the Hammett bookstore plus my regular day job finished my energy off, resulting in me not being able to read everything I wanted. But I'm still happy there were a couple of really good books amongst the ones I managed to read. So, here are the short reviews, I hope you enjoy them!

In the age of never-ending reinvention of the vampire trope (and frankly, of every other trope too), it is pretty damn hard to create something original, and more importantly, something meaningful out of this rusted, crusted, dusted motif. One way of achieving such originality is putting the vampire in all sorts of unconventional, unexpected, surprising, sometimes even silly or compromising situations, which, if we're being honest, isn't all that original anymore. Another way is to dive into the heart of what vampires are about, and use or maybe modify that foundation in order to suit your story and to make your point. Horror author Stephen Graham Jones makes exactly that in his latest novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter , and to make a meaningful point, as is well known, is his strong suit. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is the nested narrative of present-day academic Etsy Beaucarne who wants to write a book about the 1912 diary of her great great great grandfather Arthur after it wa...

There's a special kind of sadness reserved for the week after a film festival, and I'm going through that right now, post fantasy filmfest. I'm all the more sad because I only saw four movies this spring, although the complete lineup was fantastic and when I sat in my comfy seat at Zoo Palast, I felt that wish in me to just keep sitting and watching more movies, to watch them everyday for three-four days... (It's not that dramatic, they expect you to go out and walk around, eat something between movies and they actively make you stand up, so you don't have to die watching movies.) Let's look at the films I was able to see, not every one of them was amazing, I have to say, but at least one was!

Finally, I've managed to accumulate some books, some crime and thriller books to discuss here, it took me long enough... Enjoy these reviews, and don't forget that the world's very best crime fiction bookshop, Hammett Berlin , is turning 30 years old in the first week of June and we are celebrating throughout the whole week with games, food, non-alcoholic drinks, reinforced presence (I'll be there on Monday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons) in the shop and a raffle in which you can win dapper new books which the publishing houses gave us for free to give away to you! It will be fun, mark your calendar; June 2 - 7, at Hammett! Now, off to the reviews.

Heyo! Finally some short reviews before the spring, the academic semester and Easter holidays begin - hope you enjoy!

In line with my previous statement that it is inherent to Stephen King's short work that the endings be utterly unhappy, with lingering pessimism, dreadful twists and erasure of all hope for better days, I've assembled his stories from Night Shift that end on a particularly negatively striking, evil, or pessimist note, giving you the chills even long after you close the book. Everything will not be OK in the end, and the worst is yet to come. And film adaptations should stop changing that to make King's horror more palatable for the mainstream audience.   It would be generally good if you read along the stories I'm discussing in this column, even more so for this particular blog post since I'm talking about some of the best endings in all of King's work and spoilers are inevitable.

Ugh, I really didn't read a lot this past month, too often was I at the cinema watching movies, so unfortunately the short reviews are a little meager. In fact, I hope that will change since I received a TON of new reads which look amazing, so much that it will need some organizing and planing, but I'll get through, I guess. There are quite some amazing events coming up too, like the upcoming Thomas Olde Heuvelt reading at the Otherland on March 31st, and there's rumors (it's a little more than rumors, but there's no date yet) that Brian Evenson is here in Berlin and might join some discussions, and Caro wants to revive the Otherland Horror Book Club, and I have an interview in progress... Lots of things to anticipate there. Before, though, enjoy the short reviews, I did not love every book I've read recently, but they were mostly okay.

With February gone, a wonderful film time lies behind me and I'm glad I was able to achieve most of my film goals, but also thrilled to be able to do so in smashingly crunchy, sunny weather and I can't imagine closing the winter time in a better way. The last station of Film February 2025 was The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, which took place quite late this year, in March, but considering the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights and Berlinale both took place in succession in February, this was a good choice. I missed/passed all feature film screenings due to a combination of lack of time and lack of interest/already having seen most, but apart from the last two showings on Sunday, I watched all short films, which were divided into following blocks; Hostile Environments, Capitalist Horror, Het Horror, Cults, Midnight, Life Cycles, Pop Horror/Carnevalesque, Sensory Overload, Queer Horror, Revenge, Grief and Nightmares. As each year, I'm super happy with the Final Girls' sel...

Enjoy thriller time!

Enjoy the new short reviews!

As I previously mentioned in my introduction to this series, very few short stories from King's debut collection Night Shift haven't been adapted into other media; notably films, short films, series or even radio adaptations, and that's one of the reasons this work is a staple to have set standards for horror fiction to come. That entails setting up new tropes, pushing existing tropes into the horror domain or reinforcement thereof, creating a "hype" around them. The next short stories I'll discuss, Graveyard Shift (originally published in 1970 in Cavalier Magazine), Night Shift (Ubris Magazine 1969) and I Am the Doorway (Cavalier Magazine 1971) are all writings that boosted tropes that were both sort of hanging in the realm between science fiction and horror as well as pushed them into the mainstream horror of its time. As always, I recommend reading the short stories along.

The Fantasy Filmfest White Nights, a mini-festival which took place this past weekend, was both a lovely launch of Film February as well as a warm-up for the upcoming Berlinale (February 13-23) followed by the Final Girls Berlin Filmfest (March 5-9). So as to not exhaust myself and my finances early on, I only did two films per day, totaling four films; Above the Knee , Presence , MadS and Street Trash - I liked them all, although I have little critiques, comments and opinions I want to dump here. It is noteworthy that three out of four (horror) films I saw rely on narrative or technical methods that are experimental in nature. Now of course, I'm referring to my personal selection and not the entirety of the festival, and I may have been unconsciously drawn towards a certain kind of film, but I can assure that it wasn't apparent in their description, at least not necessarily for all of them. The thing is, it's awesome that more and more filmmakers dare breaking through the...

Hey everyone! Here's the wrap-up of the past month or so. I have been mostly mood reading, and all over the place, which I'm afraid won't change in the near future because I probably won't be able to read as much in the upcoming month, due to Berlinale. I'll do my best, though. Hope you enjoy the short reviews! P.S. A couple of notes for your calendar: Dutch horror author Thomas Olde Heuvelt will be at the Otherland Bookshop on March 31st (!), and Nine Inch Nails are touring Europe this summer and will be in Köln as well as Berlin (!!!). Very  - very - psyched about these! Wild Seed by Octavia Butler Wild Seed is the inaugural book of the "Patternist" series by Octavia Butler, which I have owned as a collection entitled Seed to Harvest for at least a decade, unread. Since I'm very serious about finishing up all the unread books I have in my home library, this is the book/collection I'm starting in the year 2025. I'm secretly proud of wh...

Hey everyone! Hope your passage to the new year was smooth and you've made it healthy and happy and maybe a little drunk into 2025! In my first post of the new year I give you mostly reads from the end of last year which I had somehow left unreviewed (mainly because I didn't enjoy them too much, but there are a couple I really loved too), so here are the short reviews, enjoy!