Monthly Archives: July 2007

Both morbid and lighthearted, here’s the paradigmatic Bergman parody De Düva by George Coe. (It’s also the first film of the unspeakably great Madeline Kahn, apparently.) If the embedded video below doesn’t work you might try Google video directly or … Continue reading →

John O’Neill has put up a preview of Black Gate 11 (which will include a Morlock novella, “The Lawless Hours”). Things I never knew (or forgot about) until recently: There are “Black Gates” all over the world: in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, in … Continue reading →

Ingmar Bergman has died. Fritz Leiber (one of the world’s great fantasists) considered him one of the world’s great fantasists.

Hilary Mantel mulls over myth, death, music and a production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, mixed up with memories of her ghostlike father and (incongruously) Princess Diana. The myth that Diana-cult makes me think of isn’t so much Orpheus & Eurydice but … Continue reading →

The Weekly World News “the world’s only reliable newspaper” is ceasing publication. It was just like Lucian’s True History with ugly black and white photos. The cool thing about reading The Weekly World News was that you never really knew … Continue reading →

Synchronicity can happen at any time (as someone cleverer than me once said–probably Sting or Harlan Ellison). Yesterday I ran across two Troy-related items on the web. First, Cecil Adams at The Straight Dope gave a fairly accurate rundown of … Continue reading →

This is not a review of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Partly because it doesn’t make sense to review a bestselling, prize-winning novel from three years ago. From thirty years ago, yes, or three hundred (if they were giving prizes … Continue reading →

Herbert West–Reanimator: the Musical! On reflection, it doesn’t seem as weird as the Lord of the Rings musical which is actually running now.

There’s a recent interview with Michael Chabon (the recent target of Ruth Frank’s condescension) online at the Onion AV Club. I still haven’t read The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, but I did pick up one of his earlier books, The Final … Continue reading →

It may be a nonce-word but the best new vocab I’ve seen lately is “terror clown,” coined to describe the recent less-than-professional outings of the ideological wing of SPECTRE in the UK. Clearly, this is no time for complacency, but … Continue reading →