This isn’t for me. That’s my first thought on seeing the redoubtable Bill Skarsgård playing this wish-version of Eric Draven. Well, that, and a lot more multilingual swearing. Written by James O’Barr in 1989 as a reaction to his wife’s death at the hands of a drunk driver, the comic-book that later spawned a multi-film […]
I am no luddite, despite my reservations around the use of AI-Created art and images. I was born in the last century, back when the word digital was enmeshed in our lives as something exciting. My school days were in rooms lit with flourescents, my nights, by the warm glow of a cathode-ray tube TV. I […]
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”-Mark Twain Brutalism, Beaux-Arts, Nouveau, Deco, Gothic, Palladian, Romanesque, MiMo, Bauhaus, and so many more, are the words we use to describe the forms stamped into the buildings around us, whose shapes and shadows speak to the nature […]
Mono no aware is a Japanese phrase that is translated as “the pathos of things” or “a sensitivity to ephemera”. It was a phrase I first encountered on finishing the quasi-historical epic game ‘Ghost of Tsushima’, a story whose themes struck a deeper chord than its historiography aimed to. Characterised as a kind of wistfull […]
“Can you compose a symphony?”“Can you?” These lines from 2004’s I, Robot – itself to some an entry that runs against what I am about to argue – echo in my mind as I prepare this carefully-considered brain vomit. More than technical ability, because those eight-fingered hands and triple-cheeked butts will soon fade beneath better […]
“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.” –Homer (Not Simpson) Loyalty, honour, generosity; rare qualities which are often undervalued. In a world where everything from steel to the unreal has a dollar value, it should not seem strange that these intangible concepts are often discarded or seen as […]
Just what the hell is happening in gaming? Expect answers? Guess again…
The appellation “of a generation” is one too-often applied. Both cliche, and short-sighted, it would be easy to use it now to call the late, great, Kevin Conroy, the Batman of Our Generation, but he was more than this, with his voice and the warmth and power it conveyed crossing generations and remaining a touchstone […]
Messala-V was meant to be a dead planet. That didn’t mean it was useless, not in the least. With great seas of hydrocarbon, an atmosphere of chill-blue methane, it was to be the latest source of plastics and fuel that propelled mankind’s journey across the stars. Harkness was one of the latest explorers to the […]
Skoptsi was the first of his kind. That was something of a surprise. All his life he had thought himself prudent. A practical man. He had never needed much. Death, they said, was too cruel and too kind a punishment for a man like him. He was no murderer. Not directly, no. Nor a profiteer, […]
Alessandro Guarrera 