Reviews

11 September 2015

Victorian Gothic Embodied: Penny Dreadful

Gothic is a literary genre that is as popular today as it was in the past. First attributed to Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), it has inspired an entire array of subgenres, such as horror, the supernatural and even science fiction. Not only do these genres still play an important role in present day literature, film and television – also, the Gothic genre has sparked an entire subculture that mostly defines itself around its music and dresscode. A recent television series that embodies everything about the spirit of Gothic literature is Penny Dreadful, which is set in a […]

23 May 2015

The Future is looking Grimm

Or is it? Over its past four seasons, Grimm has established itself as a rather serene show. Despite it dark and gritty outward appearance, its serialized plots always tend towards a happy ending – as one would expect of a show that is largely inspired by fairy tales. The world of Grimm is inhabited by creatures (‘Wesen’) that cannot be seen by the majority of the population. They are sort of creatures that live inside people, but the people themselves are the creatures. They only show this when they want to or when they get emotional (‘Woge’). Some of them […]

26 September 2013

The Glory of Spartacus

Let us break words on most glorious entertainment! When my ears first received tale of a television spectacle bearing the name of Spartacus, they did not stand to attention. “Meh”, was the only thought that sprang to mind, “gladiators, Romans, they have been so numerous on our screens in the past. Why bother…” The thought fell from mind and was not brought back to surface for many moons. But word from trusted friend left impression and action was taken. Familiar names among scribes accelerated process – Steven S. DeKnight and Jed Whedon of Whedonverse fame stand among them. Thus, shortly […]

18 August 2013

Farscape: Not sure if good or bad TV show.

Imagine the impossible: coincidentally ending up at the other end of the universe, being unable to ever lay eyes on planet earth again. It happened to John Crichton, protagonist and only human of the TV show Farscape. Farscape is essentially one thing: far. Far away. By far one of the most imaginative shows. Far and wide. So far out there. John Crichton is an astronaut from the good old US of A. He is apparently also a talented engineer or something, since he built a module by the name of Farscape which he volunteered to take out into space. It […]

7 August 2013

Hannibal will eat you up inside

Oh my god, that’s fucking disgusting! Excuse my language, but it’s absolutely necessary, because that’s essentially what you will keep telling yourself if you decide to watch the TV adaptation of Hannibal. Initially I was hesitant to watch this at all, because I have the feeling that Hannibal Lecter is a topic as worn out as a pair of twenty year old sneakers. Sure, we all love Anthony Hopkins for his creepy-ass portrayal of fiction’s most famous cannibal. But after Silence of the Lambs, things got a bit less mind-blowing. The feature film Hannibal was fucking disgusting (tough in a […]

27 June 2013

The Handmaid’s Tale: Feminist Dystopia

In my recent post on apocalyptic fiction, I promised you a post on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – and here it is! The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985 and is therefore the most recent of my reviewed books of Atwood (I have previously written reviews on The Edible Woman and Surfacing). However, it is actually the first book I read by Atwood – I read The Handmaid’s Tale about a year and a half ago for the first time because it kept appearing in connection with science fiction and dystopian literature. That sparked my interested and I was […]

17 June 2013

Only the End of the World again: Jericho vs. Revolution

Do Americans have a (sub)conscious desire to eliminate their society? This is a question you could ask yourself when you look at the vast amount of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction out there, seemingly all of which seems to take place on the North American Continent. The Walking Dead, I Am Legend and Falling Skies depict the US as overrun by zombies/vampires/aliens, The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a totalitarian theocracy, Jericho shows us the immediate aftermath of nuclear annihilation and Revolution shows us a world without electricity. [This is probably a good time to warn you about the massive spoilers in this […]

13 June 2013

Vikings: Raiding your TV

The History Channel wants to ride the wave of success many American TV channels are currently experiencing with their serial productions. They have attempted this by creating a fictionalized TV show about the Vikings, the people who lived in Scandinavia in the middle ages and who are probably most famous as seafarers. Fun side note: 99% of vikings were farmers. The TV show was brought to life by none other than Michael Hirst, most famous for the two Elizabeth films with Cate Blanchett in the lead, as well as for the TV show The Tudors, about which I blogged a […]

8 June 2013

Surfacing: Identity

Margaret Atwood’s second novel Surfacing (1972) follows in the footsteps of her debut novel The Edible Woman: it also portrays a woman who undergoes a transformation, albeit a strikingly different one. The Narrator of Surfacing has no name, which I think is deliberate: she has no identity, but she could also represent something bigger – all women, all Canadians. In the novel, the Narrator, together with her boyfriend Joe and her friends, married couple Anna and David, travel to the Narrator’s family cabin next to a lake in a remote area of Quebec. There, the Narrator wants to find her […]