Best books I read in 2013

I read quite a few books this year ranging from film studies analyses to the far less academic 50 Shade of Grey trilogy. I also made a start on the Song of Ice and Fire/ Game of Thrones books and hope to get through the rest in 2014. I even got to do quite a few book reviews at both Starburst Magazine and Filmoria. Click the titles to check out my full reviews.

Saw by Benjamin Poole

I'm writing a book on The Blair Witch Project for the Devil's Advocate series published by Auteur and in order to get a better sense of what they are looking for, I read this analysis of Saw from the same series of books. It's a fascinating read and gave me an even greater appreciation for the film.

Studying Fight Club

Seeing as I spend 9 weeks of every year doing exactly what the title says with my A2 Film Studies students, I though it best to read this from cover to cover and make notes on it. Again, a brilliant read for fans of the film!

The Art of Epic

'The Art of Epic does not simply look pretty. Bennett’s prose is also a joy to read; the input from the Blue Sky team being expertly woven into the text and enlightening and inspiring throughout. The Art of Epic is luscious in its level of detail; in short, it’s epic.'

 

Boy Nobody

'Boy Nobody is an easy read and hard to put down from the brusque opening to the explosive climax. It contains a few surprises and a character that has the potential to become more and more interesting as the series continues. It’s not a great piece of literature but it knows its audience and hits the target precisely.'

The Hobbit

I didn't particularly like this book as a child and I didn't particularly like it that much when I read it again this year. That said, there were a couple of moments that Peter Jackson did not include from the book in The Desolation of Smaug that I was not happy about him dismissing. Firstly the way the dwarves enter Beorn's house and secondly the way the dwarves are led off the path in Mirkwood by the wood elves. It's a shame that Jackson felt the need to change these parts as they were two of the most memorable bits from the books.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by James Rose

'Highly recommended for fans of the film or anyone with an academic interest in horror.'

Are You Talking To Me? A Life Through the Movies

'This was much more biography than I expected with author Walsh detailing his youth in London as he was growing up and the films that helped him make it through to adulthood.'

Green Zone: Imperial Life in the Emerald City

'A depressing look at what happened after America invaded Iraq, tainted by the infrequent promise of what could have been.'

A Game of Thrones

'The dialogue is so brilliantly written that I found myself wanting to talk like the characters all the time.'

Middle Earth Envisioned: The Hobbit and The Lord of theRings: On Screen, On Stage and Beyond

'Middle-earth Envisioned is not for readers who are only interested in Peter Jackson's films or casual Tolkien fans. It is an exhaustive illustrated history of all those who have attempted to bring Tolkien's writing to life. Unless you are already a Tolkien know-it-all who speaks Elvish, you are bound to find plenty here that will leave you inspired to search the internet for further evidence of the weird and the wonderful adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.'

A Clash of Kings  

Even better than the first, I just cannot get enough of these books. New characters, more bloodshed and a bloody great battle to top it all off. I can't wait to get started on A Storm of Swords next.

50 Shades of Grey

50 Shades Darker

 I'm only reading these so I can contribute to Yahoo on the upcoming film versions. Please don't think any less of me. Here's what I've written so far:
Why aren't more men reading 50 Shades of Grey?
How much sex can 50 Shades of Grey movie get away with?
Do women really love 50 Shades of Grey's Christian Grey?
Will 50 Shades of Grey lingerie make a kinky killing at Christmas?
Why Jamie Dornan must go full frontal in 50 Shades of Grey 

To top it all off, I'm about half way through 50 Shades Freed and have read the first chapter of A Storm of Swords.

My reading for the year sorted!

What have you read in 2013?

Why don't you stay awhile? More 2013 lists from I Love That Film:

TV in 2013: Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Walking Dead, Homeland and more

World Cinema in 2013

Top Documentaries of 2013

2013 List of Shame or 25 films I should have seen this year

2013 Top 10 Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction

2013 Top 10 So Far (written in July)

Best British Films of 2013

Top 25 Films to see in 2014

Blair Witch Book Just Got Really Real

For the past four and a half months, I've been hard at work on writing my first book to be published by Auteur in their Devil's Advocate series on classic horror films. My entry in this series will be on The Blair Witch Project and though I've been writing it for four and half months and already long ago signed a contract saying when I should be delivering the manuscript, it suddenly just got very real to me the other day.

For Christmas I asked for the Devil's Advocate book on Saw by Benjamin Poole so I could get a better sense of the writing style of this series of books and the kinds of things they cover. Not only was it an excellent book but it also filled me with new respect for the film and a renewed determination to do The Blair Witch Project justice with my own book. Also my old Film Studies teacher Ian Cooper from Amersham and Wycombe College and the guy who made me think being a teacher might be fun and even more so, made me fall in love with the subject has also written a book in this series on Witchfinder General.

Anyway after reading and loving the Saw one, I thought I'd buy James Rose's Devil's Advocate book on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. James Rose is a writer who is constantly in Media Magazine, another publication I write for and his articles always interest me as I suspect we have similar taste in movies and interests. So I opened up my copy of the Texas Chain Saw book and what did I see as soon as I flipped over the first page? You'll have to excuse the crappy photo from my phone but yes that is my name under the heading Forthcoming. I got very excited. This makes it just that extra bit real.

Now I just have to finish writing the damn thing, then redraft it until its properly ready and then wait for it to be put together and published in a beautiful way. I can't wait to see what image gets used for the cover. Hopefully then it obviously sells millions and millions of copies, becomes a phenomenon like the film itself and makes me hugely rich so I can retire to a private island and just write about films for the rest of my life!

Splice Cinema Journal: Will Ferrell article

I have just received my copy of the Winter 2012 issue of Splice: Studying Contemporary Cinema journal. Volume 6, issue 2 is all about sports films and I was commissioned to write an article about the four sports movies Of Will Ferrell. I titled it Mockery, Masculinity and Misogyny: The Sports Movies of Will Ferrell. It deals with representations of gender in Kicking and Screaming, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro.

This is the second article I have had published in Splice after my previous article on the recent trend of star documentary directors such as Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. Below you can see the covers of the two issues that I have been published in and the title pages of the articles I have contributed. I am now off to write my third article for the next issue on two very different prison films from the 90s.

Here is a snippet from the Will Ferrell article:

'Will Ferrell frequently plays characters that are either parodying traditional representations of masculinity and border on misogynist and homophobic or he plays more progressive, sensitive and gentle characters that provide a much more modern representation of men and their role in contemporary society.  Whether his characters are traditional or progressive, the films are comedies and therefore there is a great deal of parody and irony involved in the representation of men.  It is also interesting to examine the role of women and homosexuals and references to these social groups in the films as this can lead to further justification of the films as either misogynist or more progressive texts.' 

Splice is published by Auteur so if you want to subscribe, you can find their website here. For at least the next six months I will be in the process of writing my first book for Auteur to be published as part of the Devil's Advocate series. For Christmas, I received Benjamin Poole's book on Saw which I am looking forward to reading.

Writing for Static Mass Emporium

In my continuing quest to make a portfolio of all my online scribblings, I am now moving from the interviews and news stories I have written for Filmoria to my writing for another fantastic film website Static Mass Emporium.

This site takes a slightly more academic but also personal approach to film criticism and analysis.  There are many different sections on the site including those on cult cinema, new releases, directors, and deconstructing cinema one scene at a time.  It is a great honour to be published alongside the other works on there.

The first ever article I had published was on the work of director Michael Moore and had already appeared in Media Magazine. This is the only article I have had published for the Director's Chair part of the site but I am very keen to contribute something on Danny Boyle in the future.

The article on Michael Moore is here.

I have contributed three articles for the Deconstructing Cinema section so far. The first was on the monster attack scene in Cloverfield where the statue of liberty is beheaded.  The next were on the open ending of La Haine and the dinner table scenein American History X.

Cloverfield

La Haine

American History X 

I have written some reviews for the Cult Cinema section mainly leading up to Halloween and focusing on some horror classics:

Night of the Living Dead

28 Days Later

Saw

For the New Releases section, I have contributed the following:

Grabbers

Safety Not Guaranteed
 

Life of Pi

End of Watch

Sightseers

The Hunt

And my first article for The Emporium section is a review of Dangerous Minds.

I will update this post as I have more articles published over at Static Mass Emporium.  For now head over and check out some of the other brilliant articles there.

Lionsgate UK Horrothon

On Saturday I was invited to a one day horror film festival at the Soho Screening Rooms in London.  It was all part of an elaborate plan for Lionsgate UK to promote the upcoming release of Silent Hill: Revelation.  Unfortunately I've got precisely zero interest in that film so am not the best person to help them with promotion.  They showed us a couple of clips between the film screenings.  It looks like more of the same to me.  Strange creepy monster things tormenting a girl in some weird alternative reality.  And this time it's got Sean Bean in it.

I guess fans of the first film and fans of the game will be interested.  I'm not sure many other people will be queuing up for this one.  I got a Silent Hill t-shirt and poster and some The Cabin in the Woods goodies like a keyring to take away so that was nice too.

The programme of films was extensive.  They had three running at one time and I'd seen a lot of them.  I sat through four films between 10am and 5pm.

To start with I had the choice of Blair Witch or Jeepers Creepers.  I went for Jeepers Creepers as I'd just watched Blair Witch for this post last week.  Jeepers Creepers is so frustrating.  There is so much to like about it; the opening stuff with the truck, Justin Long, the old-school vibe and the tantalising early glimpses of the monster.  It then gets farcical and can be quite amusing but overall it's a bit boring, a bit too silly and definitely flounders in the final police station climax.

Then it was straight into Sam Raimi's return to horror with Drag Me To Hell.  This was fun but far from vintage Raimi.  He still knows how to bring the gross-out moments, wild bits of cinematography and the script revels in the suffering of the heroine played by Alison Lohman.  Strangely this turned out to be a Justin Long double bill so I was pleased to be rid of him by the end.

After a ten minute break for lunch, it was into The Cabin in the Woods.  I chose this over The Possession which I hadn't seen but thought was old.  Turns out it's a new film so I wish I'd gone for that.  Nothing against The Cabin in the Woods, I've just seen it already and reviewed it here.  Great film, one of the best of the year.  Really fun, funny and clever.  See it if you haven't already!

Starting to tire of the darkness now, I headed into the final film of the day.  Out of the three choices, the only one I hadn't seen was My Bloody Valentine 3D.  There was a good reason I hadn't watched it.  It didn't look very good.  And it wasn't very good.  It's notable for having one of the longest and most gratuitous nude scenes ever!  The 3D is rubbish and the killer isn't anywhere near as cool as the great slashers.  It did manage to spring a last minute surprise as to the identity of the killer though!

So four horror films in one day!  Not bad for the price of a train ticket!

In other news, Saw is my must-see horror movie of the day over at Filmoria. Check out other must-see horror movies here from Carrie to Scream to Evil Dead!

Thanks to Lionsgate UK.  It was a fun day out.  A whole day of horror!  It doesn't get much better than that.  Silent Hill: Revelation is out Wednesday 31st October.  The trailer is below.  Will you be seeing it?

More horror posts: Creepy Kids, Scream and Saw

Filmoria's 10 days of Halloween continues with the publishing of the feature 10 Movies with Killer Kids.  I contributed the entry on Macauley Culkin in The Good Son.  Any excuse to watch that film again and I'm there.  I was only twelve when this film came out and I loved Home Alone so much that I was determined to see the return of Culkin.  Unfortunately I had to wait for it to be released on video but I wasn't disappointed.  Culkin swears, smokes and turns seriously psychotic.  And sweet little future hobbit Elijah Wood has to put up with Culkin gradually becoming more and more threatening to all around him.

It's a great thriller and I highly recommend it.  The rest of the feature is written by Filmoria's Lesley Coffin and features a range of really creepy kids from films like The Omen to Children of the Corn.  You can check out the 10 Movies with Killer Kids at Filmoria here.

Also published today is the first of Filmoria's must-see horror movies from Amanda.  This time it's Wes Craven's classic post-modern slasher with smarts Scream.

Finally for today, the first of two articles I have written this week on Saw.  For this one I wrote a slightly personal and vaguely academic review of the film that started the biggest horror franchise of the new millenium.  Check out my review of Saw at Static Mass Empororium now.

What are your favourite creepy kids from horror movies?

What do you like better, Saw or Scream?

Filmoria's 10 Days of Halloween

You got to love this time of year.  The days might be getting shorter.  The shops might be getting be ready for Christmas already.  And worst of it all, it's getting colder and wetter (unless you are reading this from the southern hemisphere).  But on the other hand it's the run-up to Halloween and every film blogger is getting into the spirit by talking horror, horror and more horror!

So Filmoria are going all evil and scary over the next 10 days and it's given me all the excuse I need to watch as much horror as possible.  Some new, some old but all scary as a dark night in the woods all alone with only a masked psycho with a huge machete to keep you company!  Now that's what I'm taking about.

So over the next 10 days, look out for the following:

Today I review the not very scary but pretty damn funny London based comedy horror Cockneys vs Zombies.

On Tuesday, there's a killer kids feature that includes that loveable Macauley Culkin in an even more sadistic role than he had in Home Alone.

On Thursday, the Filmoria team discuss the most effective music in horror films.

On Friday, I take a look at the must-see movie, Danny Boyle's rage infected 28 Days Later.

On Saturday, I take a look at the top 10 best films in found footage horror.  And yes there really are some great examples of the technique being used out there.  Trust me.  I'll also be taking a closer look at The Blair Witch Project as another must-see horror movie.

On Monday I cut open the original Saw film to reveal the bloody brilliant contents.

Finally on Halloween, the Filmoria team come together for another epic horror feature to argue over which film deserves the title of the scariest horror film ever made! 

There's going to be loads more over the 10 days and I'll also be doing a special Halloween I LOVE THAT BLOG POST where I'll be sharing the best of the horror-related stuff that I've read between now and Halloween.

So if you're not a horror fan, grab the pillows and hide under the sheets but if you love a good scary movie, then join Filmoria in celebrating the wonderful world of the malicious, the macabre and the downright terrifying!

Why I love that Sundance Film Festival

It's just a week until the Sundance Film Festival 2012 opens its doors on 19th January.  Showcasing new work from independent filmmakers from all around the world, it's always a good place to start searching for the next big thing.

Documentaries, dramas, short films and features are all given their time to shine in the many venues of the festival, held annually in Park City, Utah.  Peter Biskind's brilliant book Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film details the festivals humble origins through its rise to the largest independent film festival in the USA.  Biskind's book is highly critical of Harvey Weinstein and is less than complimentary about the success of Miramax through it's distribution of indie films often picked up at the Sundance Film Festival.  But the book does highlight why Sundance is such an influential and important fixture on any movie lover's calendar.

People might be wary of the commercialisation of the independent sector and film festivals like Sundance and Cannes that are becoming more and more about selling mainstream product masquerading as quirky indies but there is no doubting the importance of this festival and others like it to young, low budget drama and documentary filmmakers.  Incredibly popular films like Saw and Four Weddings and a Funeral got a huge boost from their screenings at Sundance before becoming box-office behemoths. 

Sundance has also kick-started the careers of some of the most excting directors of our generation.  Tarantino took Reservoir Dogs in 1992 and despite not winning anything in competition and a slow-start to the box-office success of the film, there is no doubt that its popularity is indebted to its start at Sundance.  And without Tarantino, we wouldn't have the masterpiece Pulp Fiction and one of the most exciting prospects for 2012, Django Unchained.  The same year, Robert Rodriguez took his $7000 action movie El Mariachi to the festival and the praise heaped on it kicked off his career that would take in kids movies (Spy Kids), Tarantino collaborations (Sin City, Grindhouse) and sequels/remakes (Desperado) to his original DIY creation. 

Similarly, Sundance can be thanked for the career launching of indie/mainstream straddlers Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater.  Clerks and Slacker, none more cheap, independent and inspiring were screened at the festival leading to interesting and diverse careers for both filmmakers.  Smith might misfire every time he tries to go mainstream (Jersey Girl, Cop Out) but his recent Red State suggests a return to form as well as a risky move away from letting the big corporations handle distribution.  Linklater has similarly flirted with the mainstream with the successful School of Rock but is probably best loved for his indie charmers Before Sunrise and Sunset.

Among other films that have benefitted from their showcasing at Sundance are Primer, Memento, Precious, Little Miss Sunshine, the phenomenon that became The Blair Witch Project and last year's Another Earth.  And that's without even mentioning some of the great documentaries that have been given an all-important push by their prize-winning turns at the festival; Hoop Dreams, When We Were Kings, Murderball, Supersize Me and Senna among many, many others.  It really is a breeding ground for young talent who have struggled to make interesting, independent films on small budgets.  And if they happen to get picked up by rich distributors ready to spread the word of these little gems in return for profits, then so be it. 

This year Quentin Dupieux brings his surreal-looking follow-up to Rubber to the festival.  Despite being titled Wrong, I hope it gets it head-fucking right.  The First Time sounds like a sweet bit of teen romance and The Imposter looks like one of the documentaries to keep an eye out for.  But after Aussie crime drama Animal Kingdom's success, perhaps new Aussie mystery Wish You Were Here (again starring Joel Edgerton) is the film that has the biggest chance of smashing through to the mainstream.  Only time will tell.  One thing I know for certain is that I wish I was at the Sundance Film Festival to find out.


The festival kicks off next Thursday and just in case you didn't know, unfortunately I won't be there.  Anyone reading this going?  Anyone heard of any other hot tips for this year?  Anyone think indie film is being ruined by the commercialisation of film festivals like Sundance?  I'd love to hear from you.