Poster for Nosferatu (dir. Robert Eggers, 2024) It's been a while since we've discussed vampires here, and as the nights are now drawing in and the leaves are turning their autumnal colours, I wanted to go back to my roots and discuss my favourite subject. Back in January of this year, on another cold, dark,… Continue reading On Nosferatu
Tag: film
On Pervy Old Men: Part 2
"Finding oneself in the position of the beloved is so violent a discovery, even traumatic: being loved makes me feel directly the gap between what I am as a determinate being and the unfathomable X in me that causes love. Lacan's definition of love - 'love is giving something one doesn't have ...' has to… Continue reading On Pervy Old Men: Part 2
On ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’
“The problem for us is not whether our desires are satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire? There is nothing spontaneous, nothing natural about human desires. Our desires are artificial - we have to be taught to desire. Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what… Continue reading On ‘The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology’
On ‘Tàr’
On my thirtieth birthday I returned again to the Castle Cinema for another double bill, same as last year's celebration when Titane blew my tiny mind. This time around it is Tàr, the first of the double feature, that I am going to discuss.
On ‘Antichrist’ and ‘MEN’
“The definition of women as demonic beings, and the atrocious and humiliating practices to which so many of them were subjected left indelible marks on the female psyche and in women’s sense of possibilities. … For the witch-hunt destroyed a whole world of female practices, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the… Continue reading On ‘Antichrist’ and ‘MEN’
On Pervy Old Men: Part 1
“But the picture of the Madonna went with him. Continually, even as he sat in his small hard narrow room or knelt in the cool churches, it stood before his outraged soul with its sultry, dark-rimmed eyes, with a mysterious smile on its lips, naked and beautiful. And no prayer could exorcise it.” Thomas Mann,… Continue reading On Pervy Old Men: Part 1
On Delphyne: Part 4
Smoke and Visions Rosie Dahlstrom: digital collage of Delphyne with a cigarette, 2018 'Feet don't fail me now,Take me to the finish line,Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take,But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine.'Lana Del Rey, 'Born to Die' (from Born to Die, Polyador/Interscope Records, 2012)… Continue reading On Delphyne: Part 4
On Delphyne: Part 2
Martyrdom "One of the signs of a true seer was the feeling of unworthiness, of not meriting God's grace. What better way to show this than to ask God for physical suffering? Many female saints had undertaken such penitance and had been blessed with debilitating ailments that allowed them to exercise both their humility and… Continue reading On Delphyne: Part 2
On ‘Suspiria’
It has been a long and lazy Christmas break for me, with two weeks at home in Glasgow doing nothing apart from drinking gin and taking the dog for walks. However, I am now back in London and in real life again, and ready to atone for my abandonment of writing, life admin and looking… Continue reading On ‘Suspiria’
On Leonora Carrington
My mother entered, pale with rage. 'We'd just sat down at table,' she said, 'when that thing, sitting in your place, got up and shouted: "So I smell a bit strong, what? Well I don't eat cakes." Whereupon it tore off its face and ate it, and with one great bound, disappeared through the window.'… Continue reading On Leonora Carrington
Sertraline Dreams 