protean depravity

I'm a little bit crushed and inconsolable right now... February is the one month I am waiting for the whole year because of all the amazing film festivals, and this year I missed a big chunk of the biggest one, of the Berlinale, due to some personal issues combined with a health condition. So I ended up watching only three films. Not in a day, mind you, I'm talking about the whole duration of the festival... I watched them on the first and last day of the festival, before and after my sick dates. Quite some money on unused tickets and days from my annual leave burnt up; but it is the films I haven't been able to watch for which I mourne and I can't recover from. This year started so bad already, I hope I can stop crying some time and get over everything quickly.

A couple of months ago Caro had offered me a copy of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, to review for the Otherland Newsletter. Even though I was really anxious to read it and I knew I would eventually get my hands on it, I declined nevertheless, because it's 400 pages long and I didn't see myself finishing and reviewing it any time soon. It was then a surprise to find an audiobook edition at my local library, not only because it was available so quickly after the publication of the print book, but also because it is very seldom to find audiobooks of anthologies or short story collections in general. I put a hold on the audiobook edition and eventually had the chance to listen to it, which I'm SO glad to have done! In the printed text, each story is already of a very high quality level - I wouldn't expect it any other way with two gigantic names like Peele and Adams printed on the cover. I love a good au...

Hmm... I feel like I haven't reviewed books in ages and at times like that the books usually accumulate and the shorts section is lusher, but that's not the case this time. Interesting... Anyway, I have been watching a lot of movies, work was crazy, all the while I'm giving my book translation its finishing touches and I'm desperately trying to assemble the ikea couch my mom gifted me (more to herself, so she can sleep on it, lol) so that my living room doesn't look like a battlefield anymore. And tomorrow I'm starting my Berlinale marathon, so I'll probably not have more time to read. Still, I'm just a little bit proud of myself because I have been able to stick to my plan of mostly reading books I already own and not to buy new ones, which I have been able to do in January. I only bought one new book in the past month, which is an enormous show of discipline for me, I hope I can keep it up. So I have been able to cross a few titles off my list, and I h...

The 9th Edition of the Final Girl Berlin Film Festival, a film festival which showcases horror made by women*, has been on since last Wednesday and is ending tonight. As usual, my go-to section in this festival is the short film category and I was able to put together for myself an online-presence mixed schedule in order to be able to watch as many shorts as possible, plus one feature film. The shorts were divided into the festival's stable categories of Tech, Family, Queer, Close to Home, Folk Horror, Midnight Movies and Body Horror. I'm not one hundred percent sure but I think there were some new categories this time around, namely Workplace, Eco Horror, le Petit Mort and Absurd and Surreal Horror. I had a blast as usual, and here are my highlights of this year's festival.

Cory was in Berlin this week and presented his latest two books at the Otherland Bookshop - not once but TWICE! While I'm not one hundred percent sure what he talked about on his first event on Sunday (I guess it was The Lost Cause ?), tonight he read from his latest, the second Martin Hench book The Bezzle. The series which started with Red Team Blues , Hench's last adventure, goes back in time, so each newly released book goes in reverse chronological order - it's because following the success of Red Team Blues the publishers wanted more of the main character, not really taking into account that the book is about his last case, so Cory told, he just started to write the cases that come before, lol, and as a positive side effect doesn't have to worry about continuity. So he read to us a good chunk out of The Bezzle which starts off with the US prison system, and I guess there's a lot to say about that.

I have been a little too anxiously waiting for Film February and have been watching a lot of movies, so I have the feeling that I didn't read as much as I want to. Still, here are some short reviews, I hope you enjoy!

  While the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights are still on at this very moment I am writing this blog post, and I would actually really like to be there and watch the last two films in the program, I feel like with three movies in two days I am all set and done with the White Nights for this year, but up and ready for the upcoming film festivals.

It has totally slipped my mind that the Fantasy Filmfest takes place twice a year (kind of - the second part called White Nights is much shorter than the main festival and a mere weekend long) and the second part, or depending from where you look the first part, takes place this weekend, January 27 and 28. I can't say I'm excited about the whole program, and since I was negligent some shows are unfortunately already sold out. But I'll se what I can do to still grab some tickets.

This post has lots of spoilers in it and assumes that you've already watched John Carpenter's The Thing at some point in your life. I re-watched John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) this weekend and have been dreaming of dogs in my sleep ever since, hah. So, I thought, if a work has affected me on such an unconscious level it deserves to be discussed here, and the fact that it is based on a little novella written by John W. Campbell provides a perfect frame to pack this under Based on Books.