They Spat on My Fest

My thoughts on not seeing A Serbian Film at FrightFest 2010. Not a big revelation to say I won't be adding a link where readers can buy the DVD right now...

Q and you (and me)

Someone liked my piece on the Video Recordings Act 1984, calling it "an excellent and comprehensive article". In a thematically connected development - and despite this slipping through on his watch - my editorial colleague Michael Benton is not impressed with Tarantino and his new war movie. I've yet to see it - although Michael has seen it twice already - so I will be witholding comment for now. (Apparently US fans of Inglourious Basterds make two busloads of English footballers look like discerning cineastes. Interesting.)

For now, it's worth noting that a) the Italian pulp movie of (almost) the same name is pretty good; b) Death Proof was pretty rubbish and c) whereas Michael is uneasy with Tarantino's negative effects on audiences, at least one author - another colleague, Paul Gormley - has praised Tarantino for his "cinema of affect" where producing visceral movements was the name of the game. More on this later (when I've seen the film).

Straight to Video

Over at Spiked, I'm taking a chainsaw to the Video Recordings Act 1984. Enjoy!

Ebay versus the Canon

Some censorship is just stupid. Take Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai (2005/2007). Its blurb promises readers this: "Through readings of Herman Melville, Nella La*sen, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Hitchco*k, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, John Yau, and Bruce Andrews, among others, Ngai shows how art turns to ugly feelings as a site for interrogating its own suspended agency in the affirmative culture of a market society, where art is tolerated as essentially unthreatening." I haven't read the book; I definitely don't recognise La*sen and Hitchco*k, although I watched Stage Fright by one Alfred Hitchcock just this weekend.

The asterisks presumably come from Buy-It-Now Books, which seems to fret over either bizarre levels of perceived obscenity or worries about the crudity of spam filters and net nanny software. Either way, don't expect this store to relocate to Cockfosters anytime soon.