Suffice it to say that 2021 has been a big year for author Mike Thorn. February saw the publication of his debut novel, Shelter for the Damned, June witnessed the release of his revamped short story collection, Darkest Hours: Expanded Edition, and October set the stage for his third book of the year, Peel Back and See, featuring 16 new short stories lurking between the covers of what Thorn says could be his "bleakest book to date."
With the horror holiday shopping season upon us (it should be noted that Peel Back and See would fit very nicely in a stocking), we caught up with Thorn in a new Q&a feature to discuss the timely themes rippling through his latest short story collection, the collaborative joys of working with JournalStone on all three of his book releases this year, and some of his holiday horror movie recommendations to help get you...
With the horror holiday shopping season upon us (it should be noted that Peel Back and See would fit very nicely in a stocking), we caught up with Thorn in a new Q&a feature to discuss the timely themes rippling through his latest short story collection, the collaborative joys of working with JournalStone on all three of his book releases this year, and some of his holiday horror movie recommendations to help get you...
- 12/13/2021
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
Editor’s note: The following is an exclusive excerpt from “’Castles of Subversion’ Continued: From the Roman Noir and Surrealism to Jean Rollin” by Virginie Sélavy. This essay is featured in “Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollins,” which is available now. To celebrate the book’s release, curator and editor Samm Deighan will be on hand to introduce a special screening of Rollin’s 1971 film “The Shiver of the Vampires” at the Brooklyn Horror Festival on October 14.
Usually deserted or abandoned, often in ruins or in a state of decay, sometimes captured just before demolition, always bearing the melancholy traces of human presence, locations are key to Jean Rollin’s cinema and often were the starting points for his films. Three in particular recur throughout his work: the famous Dieppe beach (specifically Pourville-sur-Mer), the cemetery, and the castle. The latter two are typical Gothic locations and an...
Usually deserted or abandoned, often in ruins or in a state of decay, sometimes captured just before demolition, always bearing the melancholy traces of human presence, locations are key to Jean Rollin’s cinema and often were the starting points for his films. Three in particular recur throughout his work: the famous Dieppe beach (specifically Pourville-sur-Mer), the cemetery, and the castle. The latter two are typical Gothic locations and an...
- 9/25/2017
- by Indiewire Staff
- Indiewire
Gothicism has been around for centuries, pervading architecture, music, literature, and film alike. Its roots are deep, and its identifying factors are strong—baroque style, high passion, and a healthy heap of darkness. Compared to architecture and music, Gothic fiction is fairly young, developing in the late 18th century with English authors such as Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe. No one was prepared, however, for the arrival of Matthew Gregory Lewis, who published his deliciously controversial novel The Monk at the ripe age of 19.
When The Monk was unleashed, the literary world had already been introduced to Radcliffe and Walpole’s gloomy melodramas, along with Romantic works from Germany and France. None of these stories contained the moral quandaries, the viciousness, or the sex and violence of Lewis’ novel. It tells the story of Ambrosio, the titular Monk, who is considered the holiest man in all of Madrid, until he...
When The Monk was unleashed, the literary world had already been introduced to Radcliffe and Walpole’s gloomy melodramas, along with Romantic works from Germany and France. None of these stories contained the moral quandaries, the viciousness, or the sex and violence of Lewis’ novel. It tells the story of Ambrosio, the titular Monk, who is considered the holiest man in all of Madrid, until he...
- 8/25/2017
- by Ben Larned
- DailyDead
Today I’m delighted to welcome Leanna Renee Hieber! Her debut novel, the enjoyable Prism-Award-winning The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, was recently reissued as Strangely Beautiful, a single volume containing revised editions of the first two novels in this saga. She is also the author of the Magic Most Foul trilogy beginning with Darker Still, and the second book in her Eterna Files series, Eterna and Omega, was just released earlier this month.
Penny Dreadful’s Betrayal and the Complexity of Feminism in the Gothic Tradition
Hello friends, this is the topic for a graduate thesis, not a blog post, so strap in.
Anyone who has seen my presentations at workshops and conventions across the country knows how passionate I am about Gothic fiction. As the author of ten Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy novels, now with Tor, beginning with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker back...
Penny Dreadful’s Betrayal and the Complexity of Feminism in the Gothic Tradition
Hello friends, this is the topic for a graduate thesis, not a blog post, so strap in.
Anyone who has seen my presentations at workshops and conventions across the country knows how passionate I am about Gothic fiction. As the author of ten Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy novels, now with Tor, beginning with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker back...
- 8/30/2016
- by Dominie Lee
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
Today I’m delighted to welcome Leanna Renee Hieber! Her debut novel, the enjoyable Prism-Award-winning The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, was recently reissued as Strangely Beautiful, a single volume containing revised editions of the first two novels in this saga. She is also the author of the Magic Most Foul trilogy beginning with Darker Still, and the second book in her Eterna Files series, Eterna and Omega, was just released earlier this month.
Penny Dreadful’s Betrayal and the Complexity of Feminism in the Gothic Tradition
Hello friends, this is the topic for a graduate thesis, not a blog post, so strap in.
Anyone who has seen my presentations at workshops and conventions across the country knows how passionate I am about Gothic fiction. As the author of ten Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy novels, now with Tor, beginning with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker back...
Penny Dreadful’s Betrayal and the Complexity of Feminism in the Gothic Tradition
Hello friends, this is the topic for a graduate thesis, not a blog post, so strap in.
Anyone who has seen my presentations at workshops and conventions across the country knows how passionate I am about Gothic fiction. As the author of ten Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy novels, now with Tor, beginning with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker back...
- 8/30/2016
- by Dominie Lee
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
Toronto, Ontario. As you've discovered if you've ever sent out a tweet containing the word "Hiddleston," the "Thor" star and British Shakespeare veteran has a legion of passionate fans. On Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Victorian haunted house drama "Crimson Peak," Hiddleston was a late arrival, stepping in for one of the few actors capable of engendering comparable levels of online hyperventilation, Benedict Cumberbatch. For Hiddleston, there was no hesitation when first his agent, then del Toro, then Jessica Chastain all called to woo him to play Sir Thomas Sharpe, a fading British aristocrat who brings his new American bride Edith (Mia Wasikowska) home to his familial estate as part of an attempt to reboot his fortunes, setting in motion initially creepy and eventually terrifying happenings. "[T]here was no possible way I was going to say no," Hiddleston laughs, sitting in a prop warehouse near the Toronto sound stages housing...
- 5/14/2015
- by Daniel Fienberg
- Hitfix
Toronto - On movie set visits, occasionally journalists won't get the chance to talk to directors at all. Sometimes the directors are artistes, too far down the cinematic rabbit hole to engage in casual chit-chat with the fourth estate. Sometimes the directors merely glorified puppets, but the producers are happy to put themselves forward instead. And sometimes the directors are friendly, smart and well-adjusted, but making movies is such complicated work that they can't spare more than two minutes for a smile-and-wave, lest the production between to teeter like an ill-formed game of Mouse Trap. Guillermo del Toro plays by his own rules. It's mid-March on the Toronto set of Legendary/Universal’s "Crimson Peak" and del Toro is literally lifting the roof off of his production to let a small group of reporters see the inner-workings of his Victorian haunted house drama. Actually, over the course of a lengthy day on set,...
- 7/17/2014
- by Daniel Fienberg
- Hitfix
Tuesdays are when new books are typically released, and horror fans usually don’t have too much trouble finding something to read. There is Amazon of course and publishers like Samhain and Cemetery Dance…
We also boast authors ranging from "The King" himself to Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, the late Thomas Tryon, Tim Curran, Aussies Stephen Irwin, Brett McBean, and Aaron Dries as well as Brits such as David Moody, anthologist Stephen Jones, and Mark Morris, to name just a very few.
But what if you long for the paperback originals which seemed to flood bookstores back in the 80s or want to read even earlier horror that is long out of print? What to do? Well, you turn to Valancourt Books to assuage those yearnings. And we recently spoke with Ryan Cagle, one half of the publishing team that brings those long unavailable titles to life for readers to enjoy again,...
We also boast authors ranging from "The King" himself to Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon, the late Thomas Tryon, Tim Curran, Aussies Stephen Irwin, Brett McBean, and Aaron Dries as well as Brits such as David Moody, anthologist Stephen Jones, and Mark Morris, to name just a very few.
But what if you long for the paperback originals which seemed to flood bookstores back in the 80s or want to read even earlier horror that is long out of print? What to do? Well, you turn to Valancourt Books to assuage those yearnings. And we recently spoke with Ryan Cagle, one half of the publishing team that brings those long unavailable titles to life for readers to enjoy again,...
- 4/22/2014
- by thebellefromhell
- DreadCentral.com
From Nosferatu to Twilight, gothic films have explored what frightens us – and why we are willing victims of our fear. A few days before Halloween, and as the BFI begins a nationwide season, Michael Newton is seduced by horror, sex and satanism
Beyond high castle walls, the wolves howl. The Count intones: "Listen to them! The children of the night! What music they make!" And those words usher you into a faintly ludicrous cosiness, the comfortable darkness of gothic. For gothic properties are altogether snug, as familiar as Halloween costumes – a Boris Karloff mask, the Bela Lugosi cape, an Elsa Lanchester wig. So it is that many of us first come to the form through its parodies; I knew Carry On Screaming! by heart before I saw my first Hammer film. And yet, within the homely restfulness, something genuinely disturbing lurks; an authentic dread. And watching these films again, we...
Beyond high castle walls, the wolves howl. The Count intones: "Listen to them! The children of the night! What music they make!" And those words usher you into a faintly ludicrous cosiness, the comfortable darkness of gothic. For gothic properties are altogether snug, as familiar as Halloween costumes – a Boris Karloff mask, the Bela Lugosi cape, an Elsa Lanchester wig. So it is that many of us first come to the form through its parodies; I knew Carry On Screaming! by heart before I saw my first Hammer film. And yet, within the homely restfulness, something genuinely disturbing lurks; an authentic dread. And watching these films again, we...
- 10/26/2013
- by Michael Newton
- The Guardian - Film News
Hollywood horror producers manipulate us on the back of Mri scan data, but King has the power of characterisation on his side
Stephen King is apparently afraid that he may have lost the capacity to make the rest of us quake with terror. Doctor Sleep, his sequel to The Shining, is out next Tuesday and he's jittery about his readers' familiarity with the tropes and tricks of horror stories. It's good to know that there are still things in this world that can shake up even this most seasoned fright-meister. But is it really true that audiences are more terror savvy?
Certainly, it can be annoying when, yet again, a story ends with the villain being shot from behind by someone who's appeared just on time to save the imperilled hero or heroine. This really shouldn't be allowed any more. (It's so great in The Shining when Halloran, the chef,...
Stephen King is apparently afraid that he may have lost the capacity to make the rest of us quake with terror. Doctor Sleep, his sequel to The Shining, is out next Tuesday and he's jittery about his readers' familiarity with the tropes and tricks of horror stories. It's good to know that there are still things in this world that can shake up even this most seasoned fright-meister. But is it really true that audiences are more terror savvy?
Certainly, it can be annoying when, yet again, a story ends with the villain being shot from behind by someone who's appeared just on time to save the imperilled hero or heroine. This really shouldn't be allowed any more. (It's so great in The Shining when Halloran, the chef,...
- 9/19/2013
- by Anouchka Grose
- The Guardian - Film News
With his weird, giallo-inspired drama about an English sound engineer coming apart in Italy, director Peter Strickland confirms himself as a serious British film-making talent
Three years ago, British film-maker Peter Strickland grabbed us with his debut, Katalin Varga, an eerie revenge drama unfolding in the central European countryside. Arresting as it was, nothing in that movie could have given us any clue to this quite extraordinary followup: utterly distinctive and all but unclassifiable, a musique concrète nightmare, a psycho-metaphysical implosion of anxiety, with strange-tasting traces of black comedy and movie-buff riffs. It is seriously weird and seriously good.
Toby Jones plays a mousy sound engineer called Gilderoy from Dorking in the 1970s; he has taken a job in a post-production studio in Italy, the Berberian sound studio of the title. These facilities are presumably in Rome, but there is to be no high-minded cinephile swooning over the history of Cinecittà and the like.
Three years ago, British film-maker Peter Strickland grabbed us with his debut, Katalin Varga, an eerie revenge drama unfolding in the central European countryside. Arresting as it was, nothing in that movie could have given us any clue to this quite extraordinary followup: utterly distinctive and all but unclassifiable, a musique concrète nightmare, a psycho-metaphysical implosion of anxiety, with strange-tasting traces of black comedy and movie-buff riffs. It is seriously weird and seriously good.
Toby Jones plays a mousy sound engineer called Gilderoy from Dorking in the 1970s; he has taken a job in a post-production studio in Italy, the Berberian sound studio of the title. These facilities are presumably in Rome, but there is to be no high-minded cinephile swooning over the history of Cinecittà and the like.
- 8/30/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
It may be more than four hours long, but Raúl Ruiz's final film is an entrancingly strange, beautifully eccentric fable set in 19th-century Portugal
This is the last completed work from the remarkable and prolific Chilean film-maker Raúl Ruiz, who died in August this year at the age of 70. Originally intended as a TV mini-series, it has now been boldly put together as a dream-epic feature in two parts, lasting four-and-a-half hours. Mysteries of Lisbon is intensely and captivatingly strange, a sinuous melodrama about secrecy, destiny and memory in which everyone involved appears to be in a state of hypnosis and on the edge of departing for some Magrittean alternative universe. "Mysteries" is exactly right.
Ruiz's screenwriter Carlos Saboga has adapted an 1854 novel, Mistérios de Lisboa, by the Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco, set around the turn of the 19th century. Branco's story is an involved tale of coincidences,...
This is the last completed work from the remarkable and prolific Chilean film-maker Raúl Ruiz, who died in August this year at the age of 70. Originally intended as a TV mini-series, it has now been boldly put together as a dream-epic feature in two parts, lasting four-and-a-half hours. Mysteries of Lisbon is intensely and captivatingly strange, a sinuous melodrama about secrecy, destiny and memory in which everyone involved appears to be in a state of hypnosis and on the edge of departing for some Magrittean alternative universe. "Mysteries" is exactly right.
Ruiz's screenwriter Carlos Saboga has adapted an 1854 novel, Mistérios de Lisboa, by the Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco, set around the turn of the 19th century. Branco's story is an involved tale of coincidences,...
- 12/9/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Between garbage-themed shoots and Alexandria’s trash talk, thinks are getting rotten here on Cycle 16 of "America’s Next Top Model". Here’s a theme for you: Recycling! Forget Molly and Brittani and “fiercely real” token fatty Kasia! Bring back Ann Ward from the last season! Now there was a classy broad. No complaints about pigeons! No meltdowns during panel! No horrific weaves! Come back, 2010, come back! [Full recap of Wednesday's (April 27) "Top Model" after the break...] Well, at least we’re in an amazing new location: Morocco, land of the casbah, if not a blazing fashion industry. “It’s a camel!” Alexandria...
- 4/28/2011
- by Leslie Gornstein
- Hitfix
Everyone is skipping breakfast this morning over news that that chick with the smallest waist of all time won America’s Next Top Model. The buzz around Ann Ward started when Miss J was able to fit his hands around her waist. Tyra Banks said at the time, "You have the smallest waist in the world. Look at that waist!" She later apologized, saying, "As a leader in celebrating and promoting healthy body image, I must admit that I regrettably didn’t see this clip before it was released to the public. But on behalf of the Top Model team,...
- 12/2/2010
- Hollyscoop.com
The wannabe model whose ridiculously small waist has landed Tyra Banks in trouble is now "America's Next Top Model." 19-year-old Ann Ward beat Chelsey Hersley in the cycle 15 show finale Wednesday.
It can be remembered that Banks faced criticism after the commercial of the show surfaced in September, wherein she seemed in awe of Ann's really slim waist. She then apologized for making it appear that she was glamorizing extreme thinness in modeling, blaming it on how the preview was edited.
But Ann, a 6'2" self-confessed insecure girl from Dallas, Texas, was able to impress the judges week after week with her photos. She was able to nab the title from fourteen other girls who made it to the show's first episode, and ultimately beat Chelsey for the crown.
Ann wins a spread and a cover on Italian Vogue, a modeling contract with Img, and a 0,000 Cover Girl Cosmetics contract.
It can be remembered that Banks faced criticism after the commercial of the show surfaced in September, wherein she seemed in awe of Ann's really slim waist. She then apologized for making it appear that she was glamorizing extreme thinness in modeling, blaming it on how the preview was edited.
But Ann, a 6'2" self-confessed insecure girl from Dallas, Texas, was able to impress the judges week after week with her photos. She was able to nab the title from fourteen other girls who made it to the show's first episode, and ultimately beat Chelsey for the crown.
Ann wins a spread and a cover on Italian Vogue, a modeling contract with Img, and a 0,000 Cover Girl Cosmetics contract.
- 12/2/2010
- icelebz.com
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