A Literary Life

I never blog as often as I'd like.  This doesn't mean that my life has become a hollow void, no siree, it actually means I'm very busy.  Somehow we've gotten almost to April and it seems like just yesterday it was 2012.  So the world can know what is new in my world, here is where we're at: I've a script with a small film production company, currently in the semi-finals of one of their talent searches.  This is good.  Very good indeed.  Even if it goes no further, I had such great fun writing it, and it has me thinking about writing something else in the genre the script is in. 'Adam Strauss and the Three Sisters', my novel, is currently doing the rounds of literary agents and publishers.  One has come back to me so far, with a rejection, but a rejection letter in which they called me, and I quote, " clearly a talented writer" and had this to say of my abilities, "your narrative style is understated, elegant and very compelling." ...

Origin (2010): A Review Origin (Dir. Danny Stack) ***Please Note that this Review Contains Spoilers*** ***You have been warned*** Lee Ross and Katy Carmichael play the parents of a young man, Freddy (Jack Blumenau), whose life is upturned when their son is bitten by a mysterious creature in the local woodland.   Such a logline will leave many with the impression that this will be a supernatural horror film, and the mise-en-scène would seem to support this impression.   The atmospheric, eerily shot woodland, punctuated with a scream that open this short, bolt you solidly into the world.   “Were you in the woods again?”   Claire asks her son as he stumbles into the kitchen.   “He’s been bitten,” his father observes.   Through these tense, nervous observations, Stack opens his film. Katy Karmichael as Claire Holmes What follows, however, is not a movie that foregrounds the supernatural.   As their son’s illness, contracted t...

Andrea Heiberg’s short story collection, ‘Next Stop: Sejer Island’, is an adroit introduction to this extremely talented writer.   It appears a rather slight collection, just 84 pages in the Salt publication that I read.   There are eight stories here, of varying lengths, but all eight have a cohesive bond in that they present snapshots of life on the isolated Sejer Island, where Heiberg calls home. Andrea Heiberg's 'Next Stop: Sejer Island' In Denmark, Heiberg is known for her work in the theatre (she has had work performed on television there), but there are huge ellipses in her writing life – theatre in the 80s, and then little or nothing until the early 2000s.   During this time she clearly honed her talent for writing in English, and ‘Next Stop: Sejer Island’ is untranslated.   She displays a deft ear for English, and at many times throughout this collection, Heiberg’s prose sings beautifully. A few stories in this collection, despite their br...

The Two Faces of Alfred Hitchcock Hitchcock (2012) Dir. Sacha Gervasi The Girl (2012) Dir. Julian Jarrold --- Please note that these reviews contain discussion of major plot points of both films and so should be considered spoiler heavy. --- Alfred Hitchcock was notoriously difficult with women.   The sound tests he made with Anny Ondra for the 1929 film Blackmail see him quizzing her about her sex life.   Just under a decade later, he maximised discomfort for Madeleine Carroll on The 39 Steps by handcuffing her to co-star Robert Donat.   Such incidents were presented as part of Hitchcock’s playful nature; they fit with the man known for directing such suspenseful pictures with tongue firmly in cheek. When Hitch decamped to Hollywood in 1940 he was already an international star, and the studio system wanted some of that glory for themselves.   He made three pictures with super-producer David O. Selznick, and Selznick kept loaning him out to oth...