The View From the Marché

The announcement of the winning films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival left me as ever with the feeling that an opportunity had been missed. There was no sense of excitement about the event. Prizes went to delicate two-handers filmed in single rooms, or wry Scottish comedies. Where was the thrill of cinema, the transgressive, the sheer lunacy? 

Fortunately, those of us who have been to the Festival know that the big premieres at the Palais only tell a small fraction of the whole story, and the underbelly of the Festival is ripe with oddities. 

In the first of our exclusive Cannes reports for Excuses And Half Truths, Stuart Wright shows us his picks for the films that will be lighting up the Croisette this time next year. 

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The Saturday Tracks: Dead In Love

I wanted to try something a little different, in the interests of sharing my broad musical tastes with all-a-y’all. If nothing else, it’ll be a way of getting some quick and dirty postings up. I’ve been lax this week. There have been reasons for this. I choose not to share them.

Continue reading The Saturday Tracks: Dead In Love

The Dead Files, Vol. 1 – An Update

It’s been a pretty crazy week for the UKZDL and our first zombie compilation, The Dead Files, Vol. 1. To say it’s exceeded our expectations is … well, putting it mildly.

On Thursday afternoon, four days after launch, it was in the top 100 Kindle Horror chart, and top 10 for Horror Short Stories overall. That’s Kindle and book downloads, I’ll have you know. At one point we were actually sitting between two Stephen King books at no. 9 on the chart. Don’t believe me?

The notion of outselling the King Of Horror, even if only for a moment and in a niche market is a giddy one, I can tell you.

Things have calmed down slightly, but after this first flush we’re keen to keep things moving. We’re actively looking for readers to review The Dead Files, Vol. 1 on their own sites. We’d especially like a few reviews on Amazon itself – a few star ratings would really help us out. If you’ve read it and liked it – let the world know!

Looking ahead, we’re already planning Vol. 2, which we hope to launch in late June/early July. My contribution will be an expansion of the world I introduced in The Key To The Gates Of Hell. We’re very excited about it, and think you guys are in for a treat. It’s vital that we continue to expand the remit, and make sure our Readership is well supplied with tales of the zombie apocalypse.

Furthermore, we’re in the final stages of prepping a print run, which means you can read The Dead Files on actual paper made out of actual wood pulp veeery soon. Keep this channel open for further communications.

It’s all been a bit manic and humbling, and we’re incredibly grateful for the love and suport we’ve had in our first week. A massive thanks is due to everyone that’s bought the book. And we won’t let you down. Believe us – this is only the beginning…

Not bought The Dead Files, Vol. 1 yet? Well, my goodness, what are you waiting for? The links are right here!

The Dead Files, Vol. 1 on Amazon.co.uk

The Dead Files, Vol. 1 on Amazon.com

Fairytale Of Le Havre

Sometimes, it’s tough not to come across as a film snob. I try to be inclusive and open – honest, really, I do. But in a pub earlier this week with MovieBrit Kate, I found myself uttering these immortal words about Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film, Le Havre: “I thought it was great. But you’d hate it.”

In my defence, I know Kate’s tastes. She has no patience for subtitled misery, and my delight in depressing foreign movies usually ends up with me on the wrong end of the finest display of lip-curling this side of Elvis.

But I do think I’m on safe ground when I say that Kaurismäki’s films are not for everyone. They’re deadpan, deliberately paced (oh, alright, slow) and deal with small stories set in poor locations acted out by sad, ugly people.

Tempted?
Continue reading Fairytale Of Le Havre

The Dead Files Are Open!

 

Exciting news, Readership! It’s been hellish having to wait until now to share the news but, at last, finally, I can announce the arrival of the first UKZDL anthology, The Dead Files, Vol. 1.

We are the United Kingdom Zombie Defence League – a group of writers and fans that have teamed up to give you, the discerning horror aficionado, new twists and takes on the zombie apocalypse tale. There’s a lot of fun stuff in here, and even a cautionary nursery rhyme!

I’m especially excited because of course, I’m a part of the group and my novella, The Key To The Gates Of Hell, is the finale of the whole book. It’s a tale of adventure and electrical zombies set five hundred years after Z-Day, in a world that’s very different. I think it’s sci-fi horror with a difference, and I really hope you enjoy it. Here’s an extract, just to give you an idea of what to expect.

 

Continue reading The Dead Files Are Open!

Introducing The Band: Against The Auteur Theory

When you start making film, you come to realise very quickly (or at least you do if you have the faintest scrap of self-awareness) that the auteur theory is bullshit. The very idea of a film being “by” one person is simply untrue.

Continue reading Introducing The Band: Against The Auteur Theory

Tanglefoot Rice

In the unlikely event that I ever make it onto Desert Island Discs, there’s one decision with which I would struggle massively. Not the music – a heady mix of northern soul, chiming indie rock and squelchy electronica. Sod that one book nonsense – I’d be taking a Kindle fully loaded with William Gibson, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.

It would be the luxury item that would give me pause. Although the notion of a fast satellite uplink feeding a hot-rodded MacBook Pro appeals, I think in the end I’d have to plump for a rice cooker.

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Sure Shot

We were in a Soho pub on Friday, enjoying a quiet, late celebration of Rev Sherlock’s fortyhurhurff birthday. It was a busy night, but the staff were their usual peppy, on-the-ball self. The drinks were flowing smoothly.

All of a sudden, everyone behind the bar stopped what they were doing, and poured out a line of shots. The music was cut. A solemn toast was pronounced, and when the music came back up it was the Beastie Boys, played boneshakingly loud.

I took a moment to lift a glass, as I had just seen the news that the bar staff at the Ship on Wardour Street had needed to mark. Adam Yauch, MCA of the Beastie Boys, had just died of cancer. He was 47. His sandpaper-and-whiskey voice had made him my favourite, and he was a prime mover of the Beastie’s shift to a more conscious, if just as funky, lyrical stance.

His loss is a kick in the nuts. MCA was a richly talented musician, a rapper with a unique flow, a generous and intelligent presence. This shot is for him.

 

Gods And Monsters – X&HT Saw Avengers Assemble

Superheroes are mythology. They stand above us, their concerns otherworldly, epic. The fate of worlds rests on their shoulders. They have little time for us, the people they pledge to protect. We get in the way. We’re cannon fodder. However much they claim to care, superheroes pledge their fealty to larger concepts than we can embody. They owe allegiance (and often claim ownership) to flags, cities, whole worlds. The people that give life to those ideals are messy little details, and boy does it ever get annoying just when you’re about to deliver the coup de grace to Dr. Villain and all of a sudden there’s a bus full of schoolkids that’s about to drop off a cliff.

And heaven help any mortal that a superhero chooses as a companion. A life of peril and an early, messy death awaits. The flimsy protection of a secret identity is no help once the mask inevitably comes off. I could reel off a loooong list of companions, wives and lovers that have lost their lives while their super-powered paramours have wept a single, perfect tear and moved on to the next battle.

And goddamit, Avengers Assemble does nothing to break that poisonous cycle.

 

(Are there spoilers after the cut? Are there EVER, True Believer!)

Continue reading Gods And Monsters – X&HT Saw Avengers Assemble

Locked And Loaded: X&HT Saw Lockout

If you had to pin me down, knees on my shoulders, threaten to flob in my mouth, and get me to confess to the kind of film I like more than any other, of course I would thrash and scream, and dissemble, and throw out some bullpucky about French crime movies of the early sixties, about Tarkovsky, Joderowsky and Kurismaki, but sooner or later, probably at the point where you start tickling me, I’d have to fess up and say it’s cheap, fast and dirty early eighties SF that really does it for me.

 

And that, Readership, is why I loved Lockout.

 

(as ever, ‘ware spoilers.)

Continue reading Locked And Loaded: X&HT Saw Lockout