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#this is the daphne du maurier adaptation you want to watch
findyourrp · 15 days
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💋 hello ! i'm looking for new longterm writing partners for a wlw / sapphic plot on discord. i’m slowly getting back into writing and i need more partners. now for a quick intro: i'm female, 20+, she/her and i only write with writers aged 20 and over. i would prefer to write with people in their 20s, i feel like i don’t mesh well with anyone older than 30. sorry! men & minors dni.
i currently only rp on discord, 1x1 in a private server using tupperbox. it’s optional but preferred. i consider myself to be a literate writer, and my replies range from para to multi-para. i love nuanced characters, developing said characters, dramatic storylines and dark undertones. while i do love darker plots and enjoy nsfw, i’m not a fan of salaciousness. i want to deal with topics such as r*pe, for example, in a respectful manner and do not want to write with writers who romanticize it.
so, now to the plot itself. i have a plot in mind loosely based off of daphne du maurier’s rebecca, specifically the dynamic between mrs. danvers and rebecca, before her death, BUT with a twist. you do not need to have read the book or watched any of the adaptations to write this with me. muse a (rebecca) is this wealthy, beautiful woman, on the surface a devoted wife and perfect hostess, but manipulative, cunning and selfish on the inside. she uses her charm to get what she wants, men fall at her feet. she is a closeted lesbian. muse b (mrs. danvers) is the head housekeeper, obsessively in love with muse a and the only one who can see through her façade. muse a is her whole world, and she is everything muse b is not. she would do everything for muse a. they are both a little bit .. insane but !!! they are insane together.
i would absolutely love to expand on this with a writing partner. i just want something dark and deliciously smutty. i heavily prefer writing muse a for this! the ideal age of the muses is between 26-45. perhaps even a lil bit of an age gap if we want to make it spicier? 10 years or so? optional, of course! sjhdjssk please i’m begging.
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nicollekidman · 1 year
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Ive never seen phantom thread, if you wanted to convince someone to watch it, what would you say about it?
that movie takes two of the craziest people on earth and plonks them into a lush, sumptuous fever dream that's essentially daphne du maurier's rebecca, adapted by a perfectionist weirdo who understands and celebrates people who can only be loved by each other...... it's a christmas movie and a new year's eve movie, it's sneakily a very smart comedy and it's also one of the most romantic movies ever filmed....... i can make you worse, and then i can make you better again <3
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byneddiedingo · 1 year
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Tippi Hedren in The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
Cast: Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Tippi Hedren, Veronica Cartwright, Ethel Griffies, Charles McGraw, Ruth McDevitt, Lonny Chapman, Joe Mantel, Doodles Weaver, Malcolm Atterbury, John McGovern, Karl Swenson, Richard Deacon. Screenplay: Evan Hansen, based on a story by Daphne DuMaurier. Cinematography: Robert Burks. Production design: Robert F. Boyle. Film editing: George Tomasini.
There's something decadent about The Birds, and I'm not referring to the sordid tattle about Alfred Hitchcock's alleged pursuit and torment of Tippi Hedren. I mean the conspicuous use of great talent and technique on material that doesn't deserve it. David Thomson has called it Hitchcock's "last unflawed film," but he also observed it was "more abstract than anything he had done before," which I think is absolutely right if you take "abstract" to mean devoted to form without connection to observable reality. For neither the birds nor the people in the film behave as we know actual birds and people to do. They are cinematic constructs: special effects (birds) and the fantasies of a screenwriter (people), manipulated by a director more engaged in playing with his audience than in telling us about nature, human or otherwise. Screenwriter Evan Hunter, very loosely adapting a short story by Daphne Du Maurier, makes a feint at creating plausible characters: the rich playgirl, Melanie Daniels (Hedren); the San Francisco lawyer, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), who plays around in the city during the week but goes home to his emotionally needy mother (Jessica Tandy) on the weekends; the schoolteacher, Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), who followed him home to the small coastal community one weekend but could never quite win over his mother and yet decided to stay on among the stereotypically quirky residents of Bodega Bay. But Hitchcock doesn't make us care about them except when they're being attacked by birds. They don't even care that much about one another: Melanie has to remind Mitch to take Annie's body inside after she's found dead from a bird attack on the steps of her house. Mother Brenner is a mildly sinister presence, who clings to Mitch because he reminds her of her dead husband. She casually yields the task of comforting her daughter, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright), to Melanie, although by film's end she has become a kind of surrogate mother for the traumatized Melanie. The Hitchcock who had handled sinister motherhood so deftly in Notorious (1946) and Psycho (1960) has turned unaccountably soft here. The acting is only passable. There are times in the film when I sense Tandy, a great actress, trying but failing to find a character to play. As for Hedren, she's quite good as the Melanie who schemes to find a way to connect with Mitch, but if you watch her in scenes when she's talking with someone else you see an actress who hasn't yet been taught to register what she's hearing on her face. The film is elevated above the mundane -- turned into a classic, in fact -- by Hitchcock's gift for pacing, by the extraordinarily intelligent decision not to provide a music score but to let the sound design supervised by composer Bernard Herrmann serve in its place, by Robert Burks's cinematography, by George Tomasini's film editing, and of course by the Oscar-nominated special effects supervised by Disney pioneer Ub Iwerks. But is it anything more than a movie for people who like to be scared and a case study for film students who want to learn how to scare them?
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mzannthropy · 3 years
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My Cousin Rachel (2017), dir. Roger Michell
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bloody-wonder · 2 years
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Top 5 Books to Read This Year
thanks @beeblackburn for tagging me :)
1. casket of souls by lynn flewelling. i want to finish several fantasy series this year and nightrunner is my top priority. i love these books and the only reason i'm not done with them yet is bc i don't have the audiobook versions and my attention span is minuscule
2. the power of the dog by thomas savage. after watching the movie i need to investigate the inner monologue of one evil gay cowboy
3. with fire and sword by henryk sienkiewicz. i have challenged myself to read more classics this year and this historical novel is the first one i picked up. i've wanted to read it ever since i saw the adaptation but it's very chunky and intimidating. we'll take our time with it tho and we won't get frustrated at ourselves for reading slowly 😬
4. fire and hemlock by diana wynne jones. so i Loved howl's moving castle but was lukewarm about all the subsequent dwj books i read. a connoisseur told me i was doing it wrong and had to read fire and hemlock next in order to get back to the good stuff. i really hope this one will do it for me, i don't know anything about it tho. does it have fae? for some reason i think it does, let's hope it does
5. rebecca by daphne du maurier. another classic i've been wanting to read for ages but kept putting off bc i'm actually a big fan of rebecca das musical and so i know the plot in detail and even can sing it to you in german lol. there are other books on this list which i experienced through an adaptation first but it left me curious about the source material which for some reason was not the case with rebecca. idk why really but this year i'm determined to finally cross it off my tbr
i’m tagging @moonsandstarsaregay @oliviermiraarmstrongs @fandomreferencepending @pemberlaey @jimscoffee @counterwiddershins @raelis1 @figuringthengsout @fugitoidkry @bibliophilic-vacillator @thehalcyonharbinger @bellaroles @magpiefngrl @mrs-storm-andrews @sugarbabywenkexing if you guys wanna do this
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sirgawin · 2 years
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five books to read this year
tagged by @saintbronte, thank you!
1. the testaments by margaret atwood  i’ve had this on my shelf for over 2 years oops... i know it will be brilliant though
2. the book of the city of ladies by christine de pizan i first heard of christine de pizan last year when i was reading a history book - she was a poet and author at the court of charles vi of france and is considered one of the earliest feminist writers in history. this book is about an imagined alternative world that is entirely designed women and she celebrates the achievements of notable women throughout history. i just couldn’t believe something like this exists.
3. the name of the rose by umberto eco because i’m a slut for historical fiction. wanted to read this after watching the recent 2019 adaptation which was fab. i still need to see the sean connery film!
4. my cousin rachel by daphne du maurier rebecca is one of my favourite books ever and i’ve been meaning to read this one for ages. gothic houses and scary ladies innit.
5. black tudors by miranda kaufmann i love anything to do with seeing history from new perspectives and i’ve heard excellent things about this!
tagging: @uselesmagic @thominho @iskarieot @knifeprtys @keanureves ​
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steveharrington · 3 years
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ms steveharrington do u have any book recommendations
YES starting with my most recent fav
The Secret History by Donna Tartt: this book is always just pitched as dark academia and while the label definitely applies, i would mostly describe this book as a slow burn thriller with a fantastic cast of characters. the story centers around the narrator, richard papen, who enrolls in a prestigious college and becomes involved with a mysterious and closely knit group of greek students who drag him into a very high stakes mystery. donna tartt’s prose is so vivid and beautiful and she creates both protagonists and antagonists that give meaning to characters you love to hate. i can’t express enough how much i absolutely love this book and i highly recommend trying it out
Summer of Night by Dan Simmons: if you’ve ever wanted a book that captures the same vibes as It or Stranger Things but a little more brutal and willing to lean into the horror genre, i Highly recommend summer of night. it’s about young boys in a small town where weird shit (that adults either can’t see or may be involved in) starts happening at the start of their summer break. i’m not kidding when i say this book actually shocked me halfway through and totally upended what i thought was going to happen. also made me cry!
Pet Sematary by Stephen King: i’m sorry i have to <3 this book essentially confirmed for me that books can be terrifying! it handles the topic of death and grief so well through the lens of a family living in their new home right by a pet cemetery, where buried things come back to life slightly…off! of all king’s books i’ve read (a lot 😔) this one has stuck with me the most and i firmly believe it remains his best idea
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: this remains my favorite book i’ve ever read for any class ever!! the narrator of this book is one of my favorite female characters in literature because she feels so real throughout the entirety of her insane twisting story that focuses on her new life as the bride of the wealthy maxim de winter, stepping into the shoes of his deceased former wife rebecca. there’s an amazing alfred hitchcock movie adaptation but i really suggest reading this beforehand so the twists hopefully surprise you as much as they surprised me!
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple: okay i feel like all my recommendations thus far have been really dark and kinda heavy so here’s a book that’s just really fun and entertaining. it’s so clever in the way it satirizes wealthy suburban communities through bernadette, a wife and mother with a successful past who suddenly disappears from her average lifestyle. another book with really good twists and turns that’s genuinely funny without trying too hard. there’s a movie as well but i never watched it bc i don’t like cate blanchett <3
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Mid Year Book Freak Out Tag 2021 edition
The best book you have read this year so far:
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra destroyed me. It was so clever and both detached as well as full of emotions.
The best sequel you have read this year so far:
Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire. That said I only read one other sequel so I did not have many to pick from.
New release you haven´t read yet but want to:
Many! But two that immediately came to mind were Circus of Wonders by Elizabeth Macneal as well as Love and Fury by Samantha Silva
The most anticipated release for the second half of the year:
Again, many :D But I think Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune takes the cake.
The biggest disappointment:
As far as fiction goes, I had been really curious about The Deep by Alma Katsu but it turned out to be both boring and outlandish (and that is saying something considering I was expecting ghosts and hauntings). I have to mention a nonfiction book also though, since I had been really looking forward to it. Sadly Death of a Romanov Prince by Terry Boland gave me nothing new.
The biggest surprise:
The book that I loved in spite of being hesitant about it was The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. The book that fucked with my mind and I could not predict even the next page was Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergei Dyachenko.
New favourite author:
Anthony Marra by default I guess.
New fictional crush:
I don´t do book crushes. (anymore)
New favourite character:
The whole cast from The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith
Book that made you cry:
The Tsar of Love and Techno but also The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, because the cruelty of the real events was just too much to take.
Book that made you happy:
The previously mentioned The Library of the Unwritten was just such a balm for my soul, I cannot wait for the rest of the series. So wholesome.
The best audiobook you´ve listened so far:
Maybe The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders
Favourite book to movie adaptation you have watched this year:
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood has a bomb of an adaptation
The most beautiful book you have bought:
I am going to go with “Our Father” prayer illustrated by Alfons Mucha and printed as a book. 
What other books you have loved but did not mention in the above answers:
The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley
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weremarkable · 4 years
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"I wanted to make something that had more love in it."
Ben Wheatley about Rebecca
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Speaking to Empire, Wheatley talked about his upcoming Netflix film, which is based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The film tells the story of a young, newly married woman that has to grapple with the shadow of her new husband’s first, now-deceased wife, “Rebecca.” And though that premise is the same as the 1940 film by the legendary director, Wheatley has no interest in remaking a classic.
Ben Wheatley Says His ‘Rebecca’ Is “Firmly Not” A Remake Of The Hitchcock Classic
READ MORE: ‘Rebecca’ Remake: First Look At Ben Wheatley’s Adaptation Of The Hitchcock Classic, Starring Lily James And Armie Hammer
“It’s not, in any sense, a remake of the Hitchcock film, firmly not,” explained Wheatley. “Remaking a film is not that interesting to me, but the original source material is. I watched all the adaptations. It’s important to see what’s gone before, but that’s certainly not the focus.”
He added, “I wanted to make something that had more love in it. It’s part of trying to investigate other parts of being human. Rebecca has dark elements, and it has a psychological, haunting story within it, but it’s also about these two people in love. That was the main thing.”
The 1940 version of “Rebecca” is often regarded as one of the best from Hitchcock. The film earned 11 Oscar nominations and won Best Picture and Best Cinematography. The film stars Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.
Wheatley’s new “Rebecca” stars Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Tom Goodman-Hill, Keeley Hawes, Sam Riley, and Ann Dowd. “Rebecca” is set to be released by Netflix on October 21. You can see a new image from the film below.
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harryisntstraight · 3 years
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I’m trying to get into reading again to avoid the boredom while on lockdown - is there any books you’d recommend? xx
omg yes! I’ve been reading a loooot recently so here are just some of my faves I’ve read in like the past year:
my year of rest and relaxation- Ottessa Moshfegh : I loved this so much and finished it in about a day, it’s funny, harrowing, relatable disturbing, you love and also hate the main character, has an ending that you might see coming but still kinda makes you sit back and stare into space for a few hours in contemplation of what you just read
Where the crawdads sing - delia Owens: this book is so immerseively written I couldn’t put it down. has the most beautiful descriptions of nature and the way the author talks about loneliness and heartbreak and betrayal and then blends it perfectly with the environment she sets the book in is *chefs kiss* it’s a very easy read and the style of writing is almost a bit reminiscent of YA novels but for an adult audience imo
Queenie - candice Carty-Williams : again another book I almost finished in one sitting. It’s literally impossible not to fall in love w the main character and ur rooting for her the whole way I felt like she was my best friend by the end of it. Talks about mental illness in such a refreshing and new way and it manages to be hilariously funny yet also heartbreakingly sad all at the same time
Rebecca - daphne du Maurier : if you haven’t read this before here is your sign to read it now! My all time favourite modern classic. It’s a gothic novel set in the 1930s but I have never felt so connected and related to a main character as much as I did w this book. It’s beautiful and tense and tragic and there were so many times when I wanted to jump into the pages and just give the characters a hug or a punch in the face lollll I love this book so much can’t recommend it enough but do NOT watch the Netflix adaptation it is genuinely trash and does not do the book the slightest bit of justice
My sister the serial killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite : I literally finished this in one sitting bc I couldn’t put it down. so face paced, so easy to read yet so fun and so original. Great concept and executed perfectly, loved it
Paul takes the form of a mortal girl - Andrea lower : honestly like no other queer coming of age novel I have read before. Has (a lot of) sex scenes that manage to be graphic without being cringey or uncomfortable to read which is a big ask imo. It’s a really funny and intelligent book yet it also feels super urgent and evocative and really plays into the quirkinesses of the 90s when it’s set without the pop culture references feeling forced or awkward
Eleanor oliphant is completely fine - Gail honeyman: I put off reading this for so long bc I hated the title but honestly I loved it so much. A super interesting and unusual main character who I started off hating and then absolutely fell in love with and was rooting for her at all costs. really truthfully and powerfully describes loneliness and trauma in a way that I haven’t seen a lot of similar books pull off
A little life - Hanya Yanagihara : literally just finished this yesterday but I don’t think I will be over it for a while. Possibly the most viscerally sad book I have ever read. Massive trigger warnings for self harm and sexual abuse like seriously be careful about this book if ur wary of triggers but aside from that it is so beautifully written and so intimate that by the time you finish you almost feel like you lived alongside these characters and know them as real people and feel their real pains and traumas. Seriously this book is fucked up and I think I cried at every chapter but there are still these gorgeous lighthearted moments scattered throughout that made me laugh and smile and it really genuinely felt like I was falling in and out of love alongside the characters. WHEW!
This is long enough already so I’ve only covered fiction here but I can also hit u up with some non fiction recs if that kinda thing takes ur fancy! Hope this helped a bit and let me know if u do decide to read any!! ❤️❤️
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angelagualtieri · 3 years
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Mid-year Book Freakout
Thanks @olivieblake for the tag! 
Best Book You’ve Read So Far in 2021? Since this said best book, not series, I’ll go with KINDRED by Octavia Butler.  
Best Sequel You’ve Read So Far in 2021? Specifically, the second book in a series: WUNDERSMITH: THE CALLING OF MORRIGAN CROW by Jessica Townsend. (I’ve been really preferring third and/or final books in series more than second books.)
New Release You Haven’t Read Yet, But Want To?  KINGDOM OF SHADOW AND LIGHT by Karen Marie Moning.
Most Anticipated Release For Second Half of 2021? WINGS OF SHADOW by Nicki Pau Preto.
Biggest Disappointment? Only looking at books I finished and not DNFs, this has to be SENLIN ASCENDS by Josiah Bancroft. I still enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it like I thought I would.
Biggest Surprise? My current read, A SHADOW IN SUMMER by Daniel Abraham.
Favorite New Author? Steven Erikson.
Newest Fiction Crush? I don’t know that I have one.
Newest Favorite Character? Kest Murrowson from Sebastien de Castell’s THE GREATCOATS series. I love him so much lol.
Book That Made You Cry? I don’t really cry at books, but if I was going to cry out of rage and wasting my time, then THE THOUSAND DEATHS OF ARDOR BENN by Tyler Whitesands. (I do not recommend this.)
Book That Made You Happy? PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen.
Favorite Book Adaption You Saw This Year? Borrowing Olivie’s answer for this one: MY COUSIN RACHEL by Daphne du Maurier. (Do not watch the 2020 Netflix adaptation of REBECCA.)
Favorite Review You’ve Written This Year? My instagram review of THE GREATCOATS series by Sebastien de Castell. It was a fun one to write.
Most Beautiful Book You Bought So Far This Year? Probably my illustrated editions of LOTR and THE HOBBIT.
What Books Do You Need To Read By The End of The Year? Ugh. Everything? Abercrombie’s new series, Jemisin’s INHERITANCE TRILOGY, more Butler, and CITY OF BRASS by S.A. Chakraborty.
Tag: Anyone who wants to do it.
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recurring-polynya · 3 years
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Arright friendos, I have finished reading Jamaica Inn, and now it is time for my Jamaica Inn book report, because this is a fun and cool blog for fun and cool people who like to read and write book reports.
Jamaica Inn is one of those period books that was written in the 1930s, but takes place in the 1820s, so it’s got that weird double-period thing going for it. I was written by Daphne du Maurier, who wrote other books you may have read in English class, namely Rebecca, but also The Birds, as in, Alfred Hitchcock The Birds. This book was recommended to me by my good friend @thegreenfaery because I talk shit all the time about how much I love Cornwall (I went on a day-trip once during in 2003 during the summer I lived in London, also, I watched Poldark) and I had never actually read anything by Daphne du Maurier.
SO! Jamaica Inn is about a girl named Mary, whose family dies, so she goes to live with her mother’s sister, who she hasn’t seen in 20 years, when she got married and moved away. Turns out, Aunt Patience married Joss Merlyn, A Terrible Dude who Drinks and Smuggles and Sometimes Murders People. They live in an inn that used to be nice, but now is just a HQ for the smuggling, hence the name of the book.
The Good: Do you like the musical stylings of Loreena McKennit and/or Boiled in Lead? Have you ever said “Fuck yeah” when someone take a musketball to the sleeve of their puffy shirt and blood blooms forth? This book is a fucking mood. The drama is palpable. Characters in this book actually said “Dead men tell no tales” more than once. Also, there were so many loving descriptions of the moors and people running around in the moors and thinking about how easy it would be to take a wrong step and die on the moors and no one would ever find your body. Towards the end, I turned to my husband and said, “I love a book where the final confrontation is determined by who has better knowledge of how to make their ways through the moors,” and he was like “fuckin’ right.”
Also, it’s short. My attention span is very poor and I love it when a book is considerate enough to be short.
The Bad: I am going to get a few things out of the way.
1) Spoiler, except that it’s extremely obvious from the moment you meet him: The big bad of the book is an albino vicar and it’s pretty gross by modern day standards with his “otherworldliness”, etc, etc. I do give him points for going completely off the rails in the final pages of the book and ranting about Old Gods and stuff, but the albino thing was completely unnecessary and it looks like they at least toned it down a bunch for the tv adaptations.
2) Period-”appropriate” sexism/gender essentialism. I like period stuff, and I have a pretty high tolerance for this bullshit, but I am just throwing this out there as a warning that this book has a ton of “If only you were a man” and “A woman is cannot be expected to have the strength to do such-and-such” so if that is a deal-killer for you, you should probably skip this one.
Speaking of deal-killers: If you are thinking of reading this book, I want to reassure you right away that no one gets raped. I went through this book in great fear that Mary was gonna get raped (I despise rape plots and it usually will ruin a book for me) and she did not. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had known that ahead of time. The book has a bit of a rapey vibe-- she’s constantly getting thrown into carriages and Joss will grab her cheeks and say “Ayyyyyy Mary if only I were twenty years younger yeh’d be sharin’ me bed” but nothing ever comes of it.
The Very, Very Good: I have not mentioned what is both the most and least important part of this book, Joss Meryln’s hot younger brother, dirtbaggy horse thief Jem Merlyn, who Mary falls in love with. Now, Mary is a tough lady, and has a very pragmatic view of marriage, namely that it is for suckers and she is having none of it. That being said, she meets Jem and is like “oh no he’s hot.” Her entire attitude toward this man is “WELP, you can’t help who you fall in love with, might as well make out with this thotty dumpster fire.”
For a lot of the book there’s this suspicion that Jem might be the Secret Head Boss of the Smuggling Ring, and every time Mary would get suspicious of him, I would go “Noooooo, Mary, he’s so hot!” and every time she would go “fuck it time for makeouts” I would go “Noooooo, Mary, he’s so terrible!” This was the ultimate in reading experiences for me. The chapter in the middle of the book where he takes her on a date on Christmas Eve to go sell a stolen horse and then they make out in a doorway while it rains was my literal everything, I tell you, reading the entire book was worth it for that one chapter which contained all the dirtbag romance my withered little heart could stand.
Jem does a bunch of heroic stuff toward the end of the book, including chasing Mary’s kidnapper across the moor in the fog in the middle of the night and shooting him from really far away, but it all happens in the background and the book does not make a big deal of it at all, he just shows up being a himbo shitlord at the end and she’s like “this may as well happen” and off they go. Perfection.
TV Shows? TV Shows! So, I knew there was a BBC version because PBS tried to convince me I wanted to watch it after I finished Poldark. I would definitely watch a tv version of this, but only if the actors are sufficiently hot. It does appear that they are, although Wikipedia says everyone hates it because all the actors mumble the whole time. More importantly, while I was looking this up, I found out there was also a 1983 version starring Jane Seymore as Mary and Patrick fuckin’ McGoohan as Problematic Drunk Smuggler Joss Merlyn!!! I lost my shit. I love Patrick McGoohan so, so much. I cannot imagine anyone who could play Joss Merlyn as well as Patrick McGoohan. It’s on YouTube and the two minutes of it I watched looked amazeballs, I will watch it and report back.
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streetlamphalo · 4 years
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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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Rating: ★★★★★
Many thanks to Quercus Books, Jo Fletcher Books and NetGalley for the copy of this book.
How do you even begin to talk about something as phenomenally good as Mexican Gothic? I read and enjoyed Gods of Jade and Shadow last year and it really make me stand up and take notice of Moreno-Garcia. So when this book was announced and I was approved for the ARC, I hoped it would be just as good, if not better, than the previous work. And I am so pleased that it turned out to be an even better novel: atmospheric, layered and complex, with a female main character that I couldn't help but love. It's a belter of a novel, a clear spiritual successor to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, with an insidious mystery at its core - one that captures you and holds on to you with tendrils.
Noemí Taboada is a debutante, who's interested in parties, champagne and flouting her beauty and provocative wiles. When she receives a letter from her cousin Catalina begging for her help, she finds herself in the unlikely position of rescuer: for Catalina is worried that she's going mad, that she can hear voices and no one is willing to take her seriously. So Noemí must travel to High Place, a house built off the back of a now defunct silver mine, a house owned by a family who live by very different rules from what Noemí is used to. And in High Place, there lurks a danger that even she may not be prepared to face. Armed with her wits and her charms, Noemí must do more than rescue Catalina: she must find it in her to survive if she has any hopes of ever escaping High Place.
From the very beginning, as soon as Noemí leaves Mexico City, you are enveloped in the gloom and sheer weirdness of High Place: from how strange the family behaves to the mould that seems to envelop the house; from the almost godlike reverence that the patriarch instils in his children to the way Catalina speak. And soon, just like Noemí, you find yourself feeling like you're losing your grip on reality, that nothing is quite as it seems and that maybe you can't leave High Place either. Moreno-Garcia is adept at building atmosphere and as you see everything through Noemí's eyes, it's very easy to believe in the supernatural/weird just as she does. There are moments of horror in the novel and were it to be adapted to a film, I would seriously struggle to watch it, because reading the descriptions was bad enough. Her characterisation is also top notch; Noemí herself is brash, but clever and I really enjoyed watching her use her skills to get what she wants, without compromising herself or her morals. Virgil, Catalina's husband, is himself a magnetic and creepy figure: handsome and somehow lewd, a man who never lets on what he's truly thinking. Catalina, though a backseat figure for most of the novel, really shines in its climax and throughout the narrative I really found myself warming to her: it's hard not to, because you can see why she would have been swept off her feet by Virgil, but also because at no point does Noemí think badly of her cousin. There is genuine affection here between them and I love that Moreno-Garcia spends time building their relationship. You want Noemí to succeed in her endeavour because she really cares about Catalina and she won't back down.
Mexican Gothic isn't just an exploration of a gothic novel with a different backdrop. It becomes a narrative on colonialism and gender politics, on the limits of a woman's power in 1950s Mexico (and maybe even today), on how white people can come to a different country and simply take over its riches, its cultural hallmarks and twist them to their perverted needs. It is telling that the immortality that Howard seeks for his family comes from an indigenous ritual that he appropriates and then twists to his own perverted needs. That his first wife is an indigenous woman, whom he uses without a care. That he doesn't understand the value of sacrifice for the sake of preserving the knowledge and instead makes his wife Agnes die for it, so that he gets to be the one to live on, forever reincarnated into the body of his son. It is not he who must die, but instead the weaker woman, whose body is only good for producing heirs and then going into the gloom. This entire narrative is brought sharply into focus through the use of eugenics. The Doyles are obsessed with purity, lineage and blood and from the moment Noemí steps into the house, she is assaulted by the ideas they are so happy to promote: that she is passionate and wanton because of her nature, that the Doyles are the height of purity and well breeding, that somehow she is a wild animal to be tamed by a "good white man". Noemí fights against this at every turn, but she is simply one woman and at times I truly doubted whether she would succeed.
This "fear of the unknown", of the "other", is a theme throughout the novel. The Doyles live the way they do because to do this in any other way would be to accept outside influence. The bodies of the miners who perished in the name of their silver fortunes, buried in unmarked mass graves, are just more fodder for their greed. Those nameless workers do not matter and it is clear in the attitude of Virgil and Florence that they consider Noemí to be no better than those miners; a Mexican without proper breeding, a mongrel to be tamed, a wastrel woman who gives in to her base desires. The Doyles themselves elicit a feeling of unease and despite Francis being the most "normal" of the lot, by the end I still found something rotten about it, though Noemí felt differently. The monstrosity of Virgil, hiding beneath the veneer of good looks and better breeding (ha!), just highlights how effective people like him are at tricking you into believing they are something better. Between him, his icy sister Florence and the rotting Howard, it is hard not to feel like you are trapped in a circle of cloying, miasmic poison and that you should escape as quickly as possible.
Mexican Gothic is also an absolute page turner. The kind of book I found myself reading late into the night, horrified and transfixed but unable to stop reading. It is enchanting and beguiling and deadly, but equally beautiful and empowering. I loved Noemí, I loved her narrative arc, her steely determination and her no nonsense attitude, but I equally grew to like Catalina, who moves from being a convalescent Victorian character to proving she has mettle of her own. This is a novel ultimately driven by its female characters and one that excels at keeping you interested and reading. It is a gem that takes the staples of the gothic novel you'd find in du Maurier or the works of the Bronte sisters and turns them into something more fitting for the 21st century. It is exceptionally well written and I hope more people get to read it and enjoy its darkness and its triumphs.
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icantwritegood · 4 years
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You’re work got me back into reading so I was wondering if you have any good book recommendations :)
Thank you! One of the main reasons I write is to try and get people back into reading :) like I think fanfiction is good and all but I also think it's really important to read original fiction that an author created from scratch!
Here's my fav books I've read so far this year (in no particular order):
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal
It's about a woman, Iris, and her life goal to be a painter. She becomes a model for another painter, Louis, who promises to teach her to paint in return. They fall for each other, but it's by far the main plot of the story. There's a sinister man called Silas Reed who runs a taxidermy shop, and he becomes obsessed with Iris from a distance. He begins to stalk her and make up wild scenarios in his head where she falls in love with him, all while she's entirely unaware. He's a horrible character but also strangely pitiful :( but I thought it was great! A happy ending too.
The Confession by Jessie Burton
A woman wants to find out what happened to her mother, who abandoned her as a child. She finds out from her dad that her mother used to go out with a successful writer called Connie (yes, the main character's mother is specifically said to be bisexual, and Connie is specifically said to be a lesbian. There's no ambiguity to it!). The main character hides her identity and ends up getting hired by Connie to be her typist. She learns bit by bit what happened to her mam. It's a great story and Connie is a really realistic character - at the end I still wasn't sure whether to like her or not. She was still my favourite character in the book lol
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
A girl, Kaya (I think?) lives in the marshes near a town where a man, Chase, is murdered. She's ostracized and grows up more or less entirely alone, except for becoming involved with two men - Tate and Chase. There's two stories told simultaneously - Kaya's life story, and the investigation into Chase's death. Evidence begins to point towards Kaya. It's really beautiful and Kaya gets a happy ending, and I just loved the ending so much, it blew my tits off.
Blackberry and Wild Rose by Sonia Velton
I loved this so much! It's about two women, both very much morally grey, who meet and eventually ruin each other. The first one, Esther, thinks she's saving the second woman from a life of hardship by hiring her in her home, but they don't exactly get along. I thought it would've been a great lesbian story, and there are slight hints that one has a crush on the other, but they both become involved with men throughout the course of the story. Esther wants to make a silk design, as her husband is a silk weaver, but her husband ridicules her for it, so she does it in secret. The second woman begins to get nosy, and it all goes downhill from there. A sad but hopeful ending.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Super creepy, took me a little while to get into it but it's so worth it (and it's getting a movie adaptation this year!!!). An unnamed girl marries a widower, Max de Winter, and moves to his home, where she begins to find the memory of his dead wife, Rebecca, lingers in every corner. Everyone loved Rebecca, everyone misses Rebecca, the house still goes by what she used to like, and Max won't discuss her. Eventually the protagonist finds out Rebecca drowned, but she begins to wonder if it was an accident or not, and whether she really knows her new husband... The ending is great and the twist was so good!!
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
I can't remember any names, so forgive me!! The main character, a prostitute in Istanbul, dies at the beginning, and she has 10 minutes and 38 seconds before her body actually shuts down. She remembers different smells and tastes, and her story is told through them. There's a great cast of characters as her friends, including a transgender woman who's main plot isn't just the fact she's transgender! It's really heartwarming, beautifully told. It really stuck with me!
The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
A pregnant woman moves into a house temporarily for the baby. She brings her friend with her. But things begin to get unsettling, with strange wooden figures turning up in random places, and the main character wonders if they're beginning to move around by themselves when she's not looking... Super atmospheric, really creepy at times, and the ending is chilling.
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
A young woman marries a rich man and moves into his home in the Netherlands (at least I think that's where it's set, I can't quite remember). His sister lives with them, along with some interesting side characters. She goes to visit her husband spontaneously in his work only to find him having an affair with a man. Upon finding out he's gay, she reacts badly (it's set in maybe the 1600s?) but decides to love him regardless. Throughout she keeps getting little dolls delivered to her, and they're all replicas of real people in her life. She begins to think that someone is watching her and trying to warn her of upcoming events, but can never understand what's being told. Things spiral out of control for all the characters. From what I remember it's a sad ending, but it's such a great story, told so well, and again really atmospheric and captivating!
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Helen Franklin moved to Prague to get away from something terrible she did in her past. She puts herself through a private penance day to day, depriving herself of the nice things in life. Her friend Karel comes to her in a panic one day, saying he found a bunch of letters telling of a creepy folklore figure, Melmoth, who haunts those who have done something bad in their pasts and never paid for it. Helen begins to wonder if she's truly alone on the streets of Prague... When Karel vanishes, her paranoia increases. There's great side characters, multiple smaller stories told throughout the book, and it's honestly such a heady book in a great way - the setting just sucks you in. This book definitely put me on the trail of loads of others in and around the genre of horror-but-not-quite-horror, definitely more psychological than physical. Happy ending I think!
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
The book that got me back into reading! Count Alexander Rostov is put under house arrest by the Bolsheviks in Moscow. He's told to stay in the Metropol hotel and is not allowed step outside. It's a lovely, nostalgic, wonderful story that follows the Count from his 30s to his 60s, and all the friends (and enemies) he makes along the way. I loved his friendship with the hotel's chef and maitre d', they were such a heartwarming trio. There's a happy ending too, and it's honestly one of my favourite books!
Jessie Burton, Sarah Perry and Laura Purcell all really influence my writing style! They're super descriptive while not being overly descriptive, really well-paced, and have this particular theme where it's slightly eerie or supernatural and there's a really interesting female lead.
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letterboxd · 3 years
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Life in Film: Ben Wheatley.
As Netflix goes gothic with a new Rebecca adaptation, director Ben Wheatley tells Jack Moulton about his favorite Hitchcock film, the teenagers who will save cinema, and a memorable experience with The Thing.
“The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it.” —Ben Wheatley
Winter’s coming, still no vaccine, the four walls of home are getting pretty samey… and what Netflix has decided we need right now is a lavish, gaslight-y psychological thriller about a clifftop manor filled with the personality of its dead mistress—and a revival of one of the best menaces in screen history. Bring on the ‘Mrs Danvers’ Hallowe’en costumes, because Rebecca is back.
In Ben Wheatley’s new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling 1938 novel, scripted by Jane Goldman, Lily James plays an orphaned lady’s maid—a complete nobody, with no known first name—who catches the eye of the dashing, cashed-up Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer).
Very quickly, the young second Mrs de Winter is flung into the intimidating role of lady of Manderley, and into the shadow of de Winter’s late first wife, Rebecca. The whirlwind romance is over; the obsession has begun, and it’s hotly fuelled by Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas, perfectly cast).
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Each adaptation of du Maurier’s story has its own quirks, and early Letterboxd reactions suggest viewers will experience varying levels of satisfaction with Wheatley’s, depending on how familiar they are with both the novel and earlier screen versions—most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 Best Picture winner, starring Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson.
Why would you follow Hitchcock? It’s been 80 years; Netflix is likely banking on an audience of Rebecca virgins (the same kind of studio calculation that worked for Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born). Plus, the new Rebecca is a Working Title affair; it has glamor, camp, Armie Hammer in a three-piece suit, the sunny South of France, sports cars, horses, the wild Cornish coast, Lily James in full dramatic heat, and—controversial!—a fresh twist on the denouement.
A big-budget thriller made for a streamer is Wheatley coming full circle, in a way: he made his name early on with viral internet capers and a blog (“Mr and Mrs Wheatley”) of shorts co-created with his wife and longtime collaborator, Amy Jump. Between then and now, they have gained fans for their well-received low-to-no budget thrillers, including High-Rise, Kill List and Free Fire (which also starred Hammer).
Over Zoom, Wheatley spoke to Letterboxd about the process of scaling up, the challenge of casting already-iconic characters, and being a year-round horror lover. [The Rebecca plot discussion may be spoilery to some. Wheatley is specifically talking about the du Maurier version, not his film.]
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Armie Hammer and Ben Wheatley on the set of ‘Rebecca’.
Can you tell us how you overcame any concerns in adapting a famous novel that already has a very famous adaptation? How did you want to make a 1930s story relevant to modern audiences? Ben Wheatley: When you go back to the novel and look at how it works, you see it’s a very modern book. [Author Daphne du Maurier is] doing stuff that people are still picking up the pieces of now. It’s almost like the Rosetta Stone of thrillers—it tells you everything on how to put a thriller together. The genre jumping and Russian-doll nature of the structure is so delicious. When you look at the characters in the book, they’re still popping up in other stuff—there’s Mrs Danvers in all sorts of movies.
It remains fresh because of its boldness. Du Maurier is writing in a way that’s almost like a dare. She’s going, “right, okay, you like romantic fiction do you? I’ll write you romantic fiction; here’s Maxim de Winter, he’s a widower, he’s a good-looking guy, and owns a big house. Here’s a rags-to-riches, Cinderella-style girl. They’re going to fall in love. Then I’m going to ruin romantic fiction for you forever by making him into a murdering swine and implicating you in the murder because you’re so excited about a couple getting away with it!”
That’s the happy ending—Maxim doesn’t go to prison. How does that work? He’s pretty evil by the end. It’s so subtly done that you only see the trap of it after you finish reading the book. That’s clearly represented in Jane Goldman’s adaptation that couldn’t be done in 1940 because of the Hays Code. That whole element of the book is missing [in Hitchcock’s Rebecca]. But I do really like this style of storytelling in the 1930s and ’40s that is not winky, sarcastic, and cynical. It’s going, “here’s Entertainment with a big ‘E’. We’re going to take you on holiday, then we’re gonna scare you, then we’re gonna take you around these beautiful houses that you would never get a chance to go around, and we’re gonna show you these big emotions.”
After High-Rise, you ended up circling back to more contained types of films, whereas Rebecca is your lushest and largest production. How was scaling up for you? Free Fire does feel like a more contained film, but in many ways it was just as complicated and had the same budget as High-Rise, since it’s just in one space. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is literally a contained film, that’s right. What [the bigger budget] gave me was the chance to have a conversation where I say I want a hotel that’s full of people and no-one says you can’t have any people in it. You don’t have to shoot in a corner, so that scale is suddenly allowed.
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Elisabeth Moss and Tom Hiddlestone in Wheatley’s ‘High-Rise’ (2015).
The other movies I did are seen as no-budget or, I don’t even know the word for how little money they are, and even though High-Rise and Free Fire were eight million dollars each, they’re still seen as ultra-low budget. This is the first film that I’ve done that’s just a standard Hollywood-style movie budget and it makes a massive difference. It gives you extra time to work. All the schemes you might have had to work out in order to cheat and get around faster, but now it’s fine, let’s only shoot two pages today. We can go out on the road and close down all of the south of France—don’t worry about all the holidaymakers screaming at you and getting cross! That side of it is great.
You had the challenge to cast iconic actors for iconic roles. What were you looking for in the casting? What points of reference did you give the actors? I don’t think we really talked about it, but [Armie Hammer] definitely didn’t watch the Hitchcock version. I can understand why he wouldn’t. There was no way he was going to accidentally mimic [Laurence] Olivier’s performance without seeing it and he just didn’t want to have the pressure of that. I think that’s quite right. It’s an 80-year-old film, it��s a beloved classic, and we’d be mad if we were trying to remake it. We’re not.
The thing about the shadow that the film cast is that it’s hard enough making stuff without thinking about other filmmakers. I’ve had this in the past where journalists ask me “what were your influences on the day?” and I wish I could say “it was a really complicated set of movies that the whole thing was based around”, but it’s not like that. When you watch documentaries about filmmakers screening loads of movies for their actors before they make something—it’s lovely, but it’s not something I’ve ever done.
The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. That’s enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it—“we’ll use this shot from 1952, that will really make this scene sing!”—then you’re in a world of pain. Basically, it’s my interpretation of the adaptation. The book is its own place, and for something like High-Rise, [screenwriter Amy Jump] has the nightmare of sitting down with 112 pages of blank paper and taking a novel and smashing it into a script. That’s the hard bit.
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Armie Hammer and Lily James in ‘Rebecca’.
Current industry news is not so great—cinemas are facing bankruptcy, film festivals in the USA are mostly virtual, Disney is focusing on Disney+ only. How do you feel about a future where streaming dominates the market and the theatrical experience becomes, as we fear, an exclusive niche? Independent cinema was born out of very few movies. If you look at the history of Eraserhead—that film on its own almost created all of cult cinema programming. One movie can do that. It can create an audience that is replicated and becomes a whole industry. And that can happen again, but it needs those films to do that. They will come as things ebb and flow. The streamers will control the whole market and then one day someone will go “I don’t want to watch this stuff, I want to watch something else” and they’ll go make it.
It’s like The Matrix, it’s a repeating cycle. There’ll always be ‘the One’. There’s Barbara Loden in 1970 making Wanda, basically inventing American independent cinema. So I don’t worry massively about it. I know it’s awkward and awful for people to go bankrupt and the cinemas to close down, but in time they’ll re-open because people will wanna see stuff. The figures for cinemagoers were massive before Covid. Are you saying that people with money are not going to exploit that? Life will find a way. Remember that the cinema industry from the beginning is one that’s in a tailspin. Every year is a disaster and they’re going bust. But they survived the Spanish Flu, which is basically the same thing.
Two months ago, you quickly made a horror movie. We’re going to get a lot of these from filmmakers who just need to create something this year. What can you identify now about this inevitable next wave of micro-budget, micro-schedule pandemic-era cinema? I’ve always made micro-budget films so that side of it is not so crazy. There will be a lot of Zoom and people-locked-in-houses films but they won’t be so interesting. They’re more to-keep-you-sane kind of filmmaking which is absolutely fine. Where you should look for [the ‘pandemic-era’ films] is from the kids and young adults through 14 to 25 who’ve been the most affected by it. They will be the ones making the true movies about the pandemic which will be in like five years’ time.
People going through GCSEs and A-Levels [final high-school exams in England] will have had their social contracts thoroughly smashed by the government after society tells them that this is the most important thing you’re ever gonna do in your life. Then the next day the government tells them “actually, you’ve all passed”, then the next day they go “no, you’ve all failed”, and then “oh no, you’ve all passed”. It’s totally bizarre. Anyone who’s in university at the moment [is] thinking about how they’ve worked really hard to get to that position and now they’ve had it taken away from them. That type of schism in that group will make for a unique set of storytelling impetus. Much more interesting than from my perspective of being a middle-age bloke and having to stay in my house for a bit, which was alright. Their experience is extreme and that will change cinema.
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Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs Danvers in ‘Rebecca’.
It’s time to probe into your taste in film. Firstly, three questions about Alfred Hitchcock: his best film, most underrated film, and most overrated film? It’s tricky, there’s a lot to choose from. I think Psycho is his best film because, much like Wanda, it was the invention of indie cinema. He took a TV crew to go and do a personal project and then completely redefined horror, and he did it in the same year as Peeping Tom.
There’s stuff I really like in Torn Curtain. Certainly the murder scene where they’re trying to stick the guy in the oven. It’s a gut-wrenching sequence. Overrated, I don’t know. It’s just a bit mean, isn’t it? Overrated by who? They’re all massively rated, aren’t they?
Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? The slightly uncool version of my answer is the first fifteen minutes of Dr. No before I got sent to bed. We used to watch movies on the telly when I was a kid, so movies would start at 7pm and I had to go to bed at 7:30pm. You would get to see the first half-hour and that would be it. The opening was really intriguing. I never actually saw a lot of these movies until I was much older.
The more grown-up answer is a film like Taxi Driver. It was the first time where I felt like I’d been transported in a way where there was an authorship to a film that I didn’t understand. It had done something to me that television and straightforward movies hadn’t done and made me feel very strange. It was something to do with the very, very intense mixture of sound, music and image and I started to understand that that was cinema.
What horror movie do you watch every Hallowe’en? I watch The Thing every year but I don’t tend to celebrate Hallowe’en, to be honest. I’m of an age where it wasn’t a big deal and was never particularly celebrated. I find it a bit like “what’s all this Hallowe’en about?”—horror films for me are for all year-round.
What’s a brilliant mindfuck movie that perhaps even cinephiles haven’t seen? What grade of cinephile are we talking? All of the work by Jan Švankmajer, maybe. Hard to Be a God is pretty mindfucky if you want a bit of that, but cinephiles should know about it. It’s pretty intense. Marketa Lazarová too.
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‘Marketa Lazarová’ (1967) directed by František Vláčil.
What is the greatest screen romance that you totally fell head over heels for? I guess it’s Casablanca for me. That would be it.
Which coming-of-age film did you connect to the most as a teenager? [Pauses for effect] Scum.
Who is an exciting newcomer director we should keep our eyes on? God, I don’t know. I would say Jim Hosking but he’s older than me and he’s not a newcomer because he’s done two movies. So, that’s rubbish. He doesn’t count.
[Editor’s note: Hosking contributed to ABCs of Death 2 with the segment “G is for Grandad” while Wheatley contributed to The ABCs of Death with the segment “U is for Unearthed” and also executive produced the follow-up film.]
What was your best cinema experience? [Spoiler warning for The Thing.]
Oh, one that speaks in my mind is seeing The Thing at an all-nighter in the Scala at King’s Cross, and I was sitting right next to this drunk guy who was talking along to the screen. It was a packed cinema with about 300 people, and someone at the front told him “will you just shut up?” The guy says “I won’t shut up. You tell me to shut up again and I’ll spoil the whole film!” The whole audience goes “no, no, no!” and he went “it’s the black guy and the guy with the beard—everyone else dies!” That made me laugh so much.
Do you have a favorite film you’ve watched so far this year? Yeah, Zombie Flesh Eaters.
Related content
Classic Gothic Literature to Film—Jennifer Boddaert’s list
Ava’s Dark Romance list
Ben Wheatley’s Life in Film list
Follow Jack on Letterboxd
‘Rebecca’ is in select US theaters on October 17, and streaming on Netflix everywhere on October 21.
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bookofmirth · 4 years
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My Spooptober Readathon TBR
Here is the announcement, and here is my list of suggestions for the challenges! This readathon is going from October 18th-31st, so there’s plenty of time to read however much or little you’d like! I like to do all the challenges, so here we go. I’m also reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier for my bookclub, so I’ll have an extra creepy book or two that I’m reading this month. Also maybe Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo would count for something? idk.
Undead Girl Gang, by Lily Anderson, a story about two teens who are murdered, then come back from the dead to solve the mystery of how they died. (a book with a dead character)
The Beautiful, by Renee Adhieh, a book about vampires, that’s literally all I know. (a book with red on the cover)
The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. Something about a governess who has a ghost experience? I just need to read before the adaptation comes out next year! (read a horror classic)
I’ll Be Gone In the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, by Michelle McNamara, nonfiction. I tend to read nonfiction before bed, and I’ve heard this is good or bad one to read in bed, depending on how you enjoy being terrified before sleep. (read a book only at night)
Tokyo Ghoul, by Sui Ishida. A boy in Japan is turned into a ghoul and learns about their underworld. I’ve read the first three volumes but I want to read the rest that I have. (read a creepy graphic book)
Ring, by Koji Suzuki. I watch this movie several times every October, it’s time I read the book. (read a translated book)
White Is For Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi. (read a horror or thriller by an author of color)
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