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Andrei Tarkovsky’s painterly, moody films capture something that is hard to describe, a sense of searching and bleakness at the same time. There are deep, fundamental questions at the centre of his films: it is as though the structures of the world are recognisable but translucent, as though something exists but has lost its essential… Read More The Memory of Embers
“Crime takes the pulse of a culture: it tells us the truth about ourselves”. Terrorism is the darkened ground where we grow our own monsters. Historically commentators on terrorism have likened it to mythical beasts – the hydra of carnage, the monster from the depths, the serpent of jihadism, the vengeful fire bearing figure who… Read More So, you Write About Terrorism?
Japanese cinema has a dark, often subversive narrative of violence. In the years since local terrorist group, Aum Shin Rikyo carried out a series of devastating attacks on an unsuspecting urban population, there appears to be an upward trend in violence in Japanese cinema. At a talk at the Japan foundation in London in 2018,… Read More Aum Shin Rikyo: Terrorism in Japanese Cinema
Terrorism is text, whether it is the printed pamphlets of Sendero Luminoso or the PLO in the 1970s, messages delivered by hooded IRA spokesmen at hastily arranged news conferences in Belfast, or Al-Qaeda leaders issuing proclamations, videos of Osama Bin Laden discussing attacks or pro-violence websites extolling supporters to participate in violence. People do not… Read More Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism as Communication
Loving foreign cities is a bit like having an illicit love affair with someone you know is bad for you, but damn, he smells of hotel rooms and leather motorcycle jackets on hot summer evenings when time is nothing but a concept. You just cannot help yourself: salvation might be a wonderful thing but the… Read More The Allure of Cities
Perfumes with an amber base scent are the sultry bombshellls of the perfume world. They appear sophisticated and warm, but can get downright naughty on a summer’s night when the sun is lingering on the horizon. Amber base scents came from ambergris, which is produced from sperm whales and must mature over a long period… Read More Amber Perfumes
Film Noir evokes rain drenched streets, femme fatales with a gun in their purse, and most of all, the cynical, perversely honourable men who populate these black and white films. George Raft, handsome, sexy and just this side of civilised leaning against a lamppost in 1930s Shanghai; Humphrey Bogart cradling the Maltese Falcon in his… Read More Men of Film Noir
In My Dark Places, James Ellroy’s brutally honest memoir of his journey into his mother’s unsolved murder, he writes “he learned some things about murder early on. He learned that men killed with less provocation than women. Men killed because they were drunk, stoned or pissed. Men killed for money. Men killed because other men… Read More The Black Dahlia and The Writer’s Imagination
