amber can walk

Oh hey! I've been away for a while. Had a bit of breakdown and hit a major depressive episode in which I could not get myself to write. I have been around, mostly working on my podcast and trying to be a normal human being again. This very much implies that I was one in the first place which has been hotly debating and regularly debunked. But I have returned for Halloween. 'Tis in fact the season. I've started doing this thing on my side twitter where I create a recommendations thread for Halloween because I love horror films and I want to recommend films people might not have seen. Last year, I did a list of films directed by women . This year, it's the gays . Horror is an excellent genre to explore queer issues because life is a nightmare and queerness is often viewed as inherently abject (particularly recently).  I'll link my full list here  but for now, here are 5 films you should watch celebrate the spooky season: The 4th Man (1983, directed by Paul Verhoeven)...

In a 2007 interview with BAFTA , David Lynch described his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), as his 'most spiritual film'. When asked to elaborate, he said no, causing the audience to laugh at his bluntness. This would eventually become a meme format, still used today, in response to making outlandish statements and refusing the clarify. Lynch is a deliberately obtuse director when it comes to the meaning behind his films, stating in the same interview that he has given the audience the tools to decipher the film in it, and that he has no more work to do as an artist once the film has been released. As an audience member, I do really love the idea that it's up to me to pull apart what the filmmaker was trying to convey, what they wanted me to feel, and I think this small nugget, this notion of spirituality in the film is a good place to start when trying to explain what Eraserhead is 'about'. He won't give a definitive answer. Neither will I. But I will t...

Source: Roger Ebert What's most frustrating about the representation of the internet in films and on TV is how incurious it is. Generally being portrayed as a vapid outlet for teenagers who are desperate for attention, social media, that is pretty much ubiquitous at this point and almost essential in staying up to date on socio-political issues, is villainised in a way that only comes across as insecure from the point of view of the writers. And I don't want to be ageist, but it does seem like the fear-mongering attitudes of someone too detached from young people's lives to even try to understand what it's function is in them. We're All Going To The World's Fair (2021) is refreshing, not just because of its transgressive use of form, but because it was so obviously made by someone who spent hours on the internet as a teenager, like myself and many other people now in their twenties. Jane Schoenbrun's bizarre coming of age story follows Casey as she plays an ...

Source: Rue Morgue The Velvet Vampire (1971) is a vampire horror hellbent on destabilising heterosexual monogamy through its exploration of desire and isolation. We follow Lee and Susan as their marriage becomes threatened through the presence of the ever-alluring Diane, a mysterious woman, who has invited them to her estate in the middle of the desert. Whilst there, their marriage and respective identities are troubled as they both seem to be attracted to Diane, who they suspect is actually a vampire. Playing on old stereotypes about the evil, promiscuous bisexual and made in a time of political unrest, it seems to be wrestling with the panic of change and the possibility of dual identities, as if those who are marginalised by normative society actually have something sinister to hide. Diane gets to punish those who seek to use her for sex and discard her afterwards and there is a certain amount catharsis that can be had from watching this film as a bisexual woman, whose identity is p...