Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:
IMDB: Elysium
Showing posts with label SCI-FI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SCI-FI. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
Elysium (full article at The Guardian Australia)
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
ARENA (full article at The Guardian Australia)
Two people who definitely thought this were the director, Peter Manoogian, and the B-movie impresario Charles Band, whose Empire International Pictures made a raft of other terrific horror and sci-fi throughout the 80s including Re-Animator, From Beyond and the underrated Trancers.
Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:
IMDB: Arena
Wednesday, 10 May 2023
POSSESSOR (full article at The Guardian Australia)
Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:
IMDB: Possessor
Tuesday, 8 November 2022
THE GUEST (full article at The Guardian Australia)
Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:
IMDB: The Guest
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
THE FLY (full article at The Guardian Australia)
Proving itself an exception to the commonly held belief that all remakes are inferior, The Fly is a tight 96 minutes of vomit-soaked bedlam, as Jeff Goldblum inadvertently mutates himself into an ill-tempered insect. On its deeper level, you might want to ponder The Fly as a disease allegory, or perhaps a stern warning against scientific hubris – or maybe you’re just a sick puppy who wants to see a bloke’s hand dissolve in acidic fly puke. They’re all fine reasons to revisit the film which, for my money, is Cronenberg’s best.
Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:
IMDB: The Fly
Saturday, 7 May 2022
WRITERS VICTORIA - FLASH FICTION APRIL 2022
As with the last two years, April marked the Writer’s Victoria daily Flash Fiction Challenge. The purpose is to write a 30 word short story, based on the daily prompt and once again it was good fun with the Twitter writing community being as inventive and supportive as ever. This year, I did not manage a story every day. COVID-19 threw a spanner in the works, which was not fun. But I was also working on a longer short story, two pieces of other writing and my day job at the same time, which meant a few days got missed. On the final day, for the first time since I started doing this in 2020, I flat out could not think of an idea!
All the daily winners can be found at the Writers Victoria website here:
https://writersvictoria.org.au/flash-fiction-2022/
Collected here, are my entries for this year’s contest. Twenty three tales of spiralling doom, unrelenting morbidity and deviant science. Where lycanthrope dentists run amok, where interstellar capitalism ruins lives (just like real capitalism); where Necromancers forget their instructions and Santa is a litigious bastard. So prepare yourself, traveller. Open your mind to the strange and the weird. Cross the cosmic threshold and feast on the twisted, corrupted wonders inside…
HINT – 1 April 2022
With hindsight, I ignored the hints: no appointments on a full moon, suspicious allergy to silver, killed all those sheep. I just never thought my dentist could be a werewolf.
PYRITE – 2 April 2022
As instructed, I gripped the lumpen nugget of pyrite, focussed on my energy centres and closed my eyes tight. When I opened them, he’d stolen my tent… and my dog.
GLOW – 3 April 2022
Our interstellar visitors stepped from their glowing spacecraft, and were immediately electrocuted in the light evening drizzle. Apparently, beings of pure light and energy do not react well to water.
FORTUNE – 4 April 2022
Earth soil is worth an absolute fortune on Klebmar. Goddamn space millipedes keep digging it up to sell on Space eBay. All I can do is leave ‘em bad feedback.
IDOL – 5 April 2022
The pentagram was drawn, the candles lit and the sacrificial blood spilled across the transdimensional portal. We were awaiting The Traveller, when we realised… Trevor forgot to bring the idol.
INTERMITTENT – 6 April 2022
Space Slug control need not be unpleasant. My advice? Lean into it. Initially, loss of free thought will be intermittent, but soon enough your mind will go ‘full gastropod’
BRIGHT – 7 April 2022
Earth-17 underwent Planetary Relocation because their Sun was (apparently) “too bright.” They were re-orbited around a gas giant, but immediately complained it was “too stinky.” Rich people are never happy.
MOON – 8 April 2022
“Dry your tears Timmy. Remember, when you look up at that moon tomorrow, even though I’m not here I’ll be doing the same thing… right before I blow it up.”
PERCEIVE – 9 April 2022
“Despite my name, bone fide invisibility is patently impossible. I simply ‘persuade’ your brain you can’t see me. And Marketing just felt ‘The Unperceived Man’ wouldn’t test well.”
TWINKLE – 10 April 2022
Your honour, counsel agrees my client’s eyes ‘twinkle’ delightfully. However, his belly does not shake ‘like a bowl full of jelly’ and we will be seeking damages to that effect.
SEQUIN – 11 April 2022
The Fancy Killer, who terrorised the city for months, was finally apprehended when a single sequin from his bedazzled strangling gloves, was found in the gullet of his final victim
SHIMMER – 12 April 2022
The lake shimmered in the afternoon sun. Family picnics buzzed with spring optimism. Birds sang. Children laughed. Until the bloated, toothless corpse of an unidentified state witness breached the surface.
ALTAR – 13 April 2022
Most other cults spend all their money on expensive altars, forgetting you can’t summon a Goat Lord on an empty stomach. That’s why we always budget well for apocalypse catering.
HORIZON – 14 April 2022
We were stationed near that black hole, which we couldn’t see, because no light escapes. It took us two months to realise the event horizon was in the opposite direction.
SUBDUED – 15 April 2022
He thought Bigfoot was subdued, but he never got the full three count. He surprised him with a double suplex, pinned him and Bigfoot was crowned World Sasquatch Wrestling Champion
OASIS – 16 April 2022
Human brains are succulent. Of the billion minds we have subsumed, they are an oasis. My larva thirst. They will find water here. Humanity’s parched consciousness scattered to the void
DAPPLE – 17 April 2022
As his face became dappled with the fluorescent buboes of the Martian Plague, there was nothing left to do other than admire the terrifying beauty of a toxic universe.
BLINK – 19 April 2022
On your first day as an interstellar zookeeper you must establish dominance. Stare the creatures down. Blink first and you’re liable to get your throat torn out by Space Gerbils
HOPE – 23 April 2022
They said you can’t put a price on hope. But we wrote an algorithm to simulate hope in robots and it sold quite nicely. The price of hope is $99.95
SPARKLE – 25 April 2022
The Fancy Killer got the chair but crime scenes across the city continued to sparkle. His valet continued his work. Turns out, for once, the butler actually did it.
SOFT – 27 April 2022
He went soft in his later years. Acquiring a conscience. Muttering regrets about making people cry. But we never forgot. He was the most thrilling Evil Hypnotist in the business.
FLASH – 28 April 2022
Weirdly, I felt the strike first, then I hit the ground, THEN I heard the thunder. Also weird: the smell of your own flash fried skin is kind of chicken-y.
EYE – 29 April 2022
Interviewer: Mr Cyclops, what would you say is your biggest weakness?
Mr Cyclops: Most people assume it’s having one eye, but actually, I can’t do maths without a calculator.
Missed Days
18 April 2022
WAVER – 20 April 2022
GOLD – 21 April 2022
SCINTILLATE – 22 April 2022
INKLING – 24 April 2022
NEON – 26 April 2022
GLIMMER – 30 April 2022
EX MACHINA (full article at The Guardian Australia)
trailer, or you enjoyed either his acclaimed TV series Devs, or the sci-fi horror of Annihilation, then Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina is well worth investigating.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a competition at his workplace to visit the home of the company’s reclusive CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Caleb travels to his vast and remote Norwegian estate and upon arrival discovers the contest was a smokescreen.
Identified as a gifted employee, Caleb has been summoned to work on Nathan’s latest project: an artificial intelligence named Ava (Alicia Vikander). It is Caleb’s job to administer the Turing Test (named after its creator, mathematician Alan Turing), to determine whether Ava has consciousness. If the tester cannot determine if the subject is machine or human, then the test is passed.
Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:
IMDB: Ex Machina
Thursday, 9 December 2021
DUNE (full review at Screen Realm)
House Atreides, a powerful ruling house in the Imperium, is ordered by Emperor Shaddam IV to leave their homeworld, Caladan, and relocate to the desert planet Arrakis, otherwise known as Dune. The Atreides are to oversee the production of spice, the most valuable substance in the universe. The spice enables Guild Navigators to find a path through the stars and is thus, the key to space travel.
House Atreides inherits the stewardship of Arrakis from their sworn enemies, the brutal and merciless House Harkonnen. Led by the megalomaniacal Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), they have overseen spice production with an iron fist, brutalizing the local population. The Atreides, led by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and their son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) travel to the desert world seeking an alliance with the Fremen, and to avoid the multitude of Harkonnen traps they expect to encounter.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://www.screenrealm.com/dune-movie-review-2021-denis-villeneuve/
IMDB: Dune
Saturday, 8 May 2021
FRIED BARRY (full review at Screen Realm)
Barry (Gary Green) is a drug addict and verbally abusive spouse and father. He is, to put it mildly, a thoroughly unpleasant individual. On his way home from shooting up heroin, Barry is drawn to a strange, red beam of light, wherein he is abducted by an alien spacecraft, subjected to experimentation and ultimately becomes the victim of an invasive extra-terrestrial possession.
Returned to the streets of Cape Town, Barry / the alien entity (we are never entirely sure which) stumbles from one bizarre interaction to another. Without even trying, Barry finds himself having sex with anything that moves and running into a wide variety of seedy lowlifes, unable to differentiate between a mind altering cosmic experience and a mind altering chemical one.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/fried-barry-movie-review-2021-shudder/
IMDB: Fried Barry
Wednesday, 5 May 2021
WRITERS VICTORIA - FLASH FICTION APRIL 2021
Once again, I very much enjoyed the daily Flash Fiction Challenge, set
by Writers Victoria here in Melbourne. It runs each April and is open to
everyone, with the very simple rule to compose a short story in no more
than thirty words, using the featured word of the day, one submission
per day. The rest is up to interpretation. The story can be inspired by
the daily prompt, it does not necessarily have to feature it. There were
a lot of great entries again this year, and everyone contributing on
Twitter seems to have bucked the trend for that website and been
genuinely encouraging and supportive of each other, which is really
quite lovely. You can check out Writers Victoria and all the daily
winners here:
https://writersvictoria.org.au/flash-fiction-2021
Strangely,
although no less enjoyable, I found this years’ challenge a lot harder
than 2020. Perhaps lockdown brain atrophy has finally taken hold, since
as of writing I am still working from home; and although Melbourne has
been Covid free for a while, we’re still a ways off being back to
normal. But somehow I managed to write thirty one stories in thirty days
(I wrote two on 5 April for the prompt ‘Hands’, submitting only the
second one).
It was however, very exciting to win the daily challenge on 24 April for the story ‘Letter’.
So
collected here in once place, thirty one tales of intrigue, paranoia
and violence, designed to drive the reader quite mad. Do you dare turn
the page on these lunatic ravings? Where weird and unspeakable terrors
sit across the page from you - physically touchable, yet mentally
unreachable. Where cosmic real estate, Martian haute cuisine and Hell’s
admin assistant wait in line to liquefy your mind. Where city officials
live in fear of sea beasts, where the dread book Necronomicon taunts you
from your ‘must read’ pile, where primates fight with tooth and blade.
I
invite you, friend, until our paths cross again in this dimension or
the next, to open this portal to madness and discover the truths that
lie within….
CREASE
1 April 2021
Several hours passed before I realised we followed a crease in the map, instead of the road. By which time we’d crossed into Bigfoot turf… without a tourist visa
DEVELOP
2 April 2021
Mind Control takes time to develop, you know? Whether it’s heartless assassination, government destabilization or making you a cup of tea, you gotta finesse that brain. They gotta WANT it.
SEGMENTATION
3 April 2021
Armageddon was bureaucratic. Earth was found to be the legal property of cosmic real estate centipedes from beyond Jupiter. They subdivided and sold the segments for crass, but lucrative profit
BLOSSOM
4 April 2021
She melded with their tech. Vital signs went horizon flat. But answers flowed and consciousness blossomed. Corporeal existence exposed as a lie. She was a ghost in their machine.
HANDS
5 April 2021
In his final moments he recalled the hands of his newborn son. Those same hands, now wrapped tight around his throat, squeezing the last breath from his lungs.
HANDS
5 April 2021
There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. If I have to break all twenty-seven to see to it you never use a Rubik’s Cube again, believe me, I will.
ILLUMINATE
6 April 2021
Pro tip: Immortal Night Spider nests are badly illuminated, so bring a torch. It’s dark and they don’t like it when you step on their egg sacks
CRUMPLE
7 April 2021
His breath plumed in the cold morning air. Jamming freezing hands into pockets, he discovered a note, crumpled and age indeterminate. In a hyperactive scrawl it read, simply, ‘you’re next’
RENEW
8 April 2021
The lair was filthy, unkempt and the pentagram on the floor had been drawn without a ruler. The final indignity was this joker’s failure to renew his Necromancy License.
OPEN
9 April 2021
As a lifestyle, cannibalism has an image problem. So I think it’s important we are clear and open with our food. Sir, I am going to fricassee your eyeballs.
POP
10 April 2021
Knuckles broken, hands bloodied, he remembered how his ears popped as he descended from high ground. Unable to determine if the root of his pain was air pressure or guilt.
ELABORATE
11 April 2021
It turns out, it was all an elaborate lie. How could we know he was not the rightful King of Spain? Other than the fact he could not speak Spanish…
UNRAVEL
12 April 2021
Across the room, the cat rotated in three full circles, before settling on my favourite jumper. Unravelling the sleeves with his claws, feigning innocence, he was untouchable. That smug bastard
MANIFEST
13 April 2021
Thank you for contacting Pandemonium Head Office. We will endeavour to respond, via demonic manifestation or email, within 5 business days. Your bargain with Satan is important to us
SCRUNCH
14 April 2021
He found it underneath the bookcase, among the dustmotes. A scrunched up page from the dread book Necronomicon (abridged). An incantation to raise the dead and locate missing car keys.
CONSCIOUSNESS
15 April 2021
The creature rose awkwardly, blinking into consciousness. Headed for the door upon lumpen gait.
“He really built a Frankenstein,” I said.
The creature offered a wry smile
“Frankenstein’s monster, actually”
BURST
16 April 2021
That’s the thing everybody always gets wrong about Pyrokinesis. I don’t burst into FLAME, I burst into THOUGHT. To put it simply, I can’t catch on fire… but you can.
LEARN
17 April 2021
As an intergalactic food critic, the most valuable lessons I learned were invariably accompanied by casualties. For example, if Martian food is labelled ‘hot’, that means it will vaporise you.
EXPLORE
18 April 2021
With every possibility explored, it appeared silver bullets were the only cure for my Lycanthropy. But then I bought this new shampoo and that seemed to work quite well too.
REVEAL
19 April 2021
The Mayor’s GPS revealed his location and we found him, partially digested and somewhat liquefied, in the gullet of a giant squid. The sea beast choked on his mayoral robes.
ORIGAMI
20 April 2021
He folded countless paper cranes, like the conflicted protagonist in a John Woo movie. But his work was crude and imprecise, and this innate lack of aptitude derailed his ambition.
EXPAND
21 April 2021
Industry expansion was unprecedented, with Warlocks on every street corner. But many of our Demons were summoned on a casual basis, without sick pay or overtime. We had to unionize.
EMERGE
22 April 2021
Pod People aren’t so bad. Sure, they want to subjugate the Earth. But when you see one emerge from its husk, looking just like you, the resemblance is quite flattering
UNFURL
23 April 2021
“So, the scorpion climbed onto my pack, unfurling its stinger”
“Unfurling? Ooh là là! Was it a fancy scorpion?”
“Well, how should I describe it?”
“It chucked its stinger up”
LETTER
24 April 2021
Dear Heathrow Airport,
R.e. Penalty Notice
I did not believe I required a flyover permit, on account of the fact I was a bat at the time.
Yours sincerely
Dracula
UNWRAP
25 April 2021
He found the box on the stoop. Embossed with gold, perfumed, exquisitely packaged. He tentatively unwrapped it. There was no note, but instead a single, clean, human eyeball. Tendons attached.
DISPLAY
26 April 2021
“Retail’s for suckers,” apparently. So now we’re stuck with a display model time machine, region locked to 3.7 billion years ago. And I still haven’t seen any freakin’ dinosaurs.
BETRAY
27 April 2021
It’s my job to account for all the expenses, see. In court they called it a ‘betrayal’, but on my balance sheet it was down as fiscally motivated allegiance fluidity
BECOME
28 April
It became increasingly apparent that growing giant, competition vegetables was not for the faint of heart. If he wanted to win Best Cauliflower he’d have to break Reverend Hoskins’ shins.
DISCOVER
29 April 2021
It was with mild surprise I discovered a portal to the Eldritch Dimension in my shed. But the associated costs of mollifying an Elder God’s bloodlust, destroyed my household budget.
UNFOLD
30 April 2021
He watched events unfold on the news. The club president implicated in a chimpanzee fighting ring. Each belligerent primate equipped with a tiny switchblade, rotten attitude and lucrative earning potential.
Monday, 26 April 2021
LOVE AND MONSTERS (full review at Screen Realm)
Crippled by a paralysing fear of the monsters, Joel gets by as the colony’s(reluctant) chef. But when he reconnects over the radio with his pre-apocalypse girlfriend, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), Joel decides to head out to find her. Along the way Joel befriends stray dog, Boy, who accompanies him on his journey and meets fellow survivors, Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt), who teach him survival skills and self-belief.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/love-and-monsters-movie-review-netflix-dylan-obrien/
IMDB: Love And Monsters
Tuesday, 30 March 2021
EMBRYO (EMBRIÓN) (full review at Screen Realm)
Kevin rushes Evelyn to the local hospital, where they discover she has developed a taste for human flesh and the alien creature inside her is insatiably hungry.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/embryo-movie-review-horror/
IMDB: Embryo
Tuesday, 16 March 2021
COME TRUE (full review at Screen Realm)
Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) is experiencing a hard time at home. Unable to sleep at her house, she alternates between a friends house and sleeping rough in a playground, returning home only to shower and collect her things for the day ahead. When she learns of a local sleep study she leaps at the chance to be a part of it. All she has to do is turn up at night and be monitored sleeping and so it seems to be the ideal solution to her predicament.
The purpose of the study is withheld from Sarah by research assistants Riff (aka Jeremy) (Landon Liboiron) and Anita (Carlee Ryski) and head scientist Dr Meyer (Christopher Heatherington). But as Sarah spends more nights at the experiment she beings to experience terrifying and visceral nightmares. It soon becomes apparent that all the participants in the study are collectively dreaming about a shadowy, glow-eyed figure.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/come-true-movie-review-scifi-horror-2021/
IMDB: Come True
Wednesday, 10 February 2021
SPACE SWEEPERS (SEUNGRIHO) (full review at Screen Realm)
In 2092 the Earth is dying. The planet is on its last legs, decaying and polluted and abandoned (by the wealthy at least) for an orbiting habitat, built by the ruling UTS Corporation. Those left behind in the murk and the ash are the poor and lower classes.
Tae-ho (Song Joong-ki) works aboard salvage ship The Victory, with his fellow crew members Tiger Park (Jin Seon-kyu), humanoid robot Bubs (Yoo Hae-jin) and the hard-as-nails Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri). They operate as a clean-up crew, intercepting space junk, to prevent damage to the satellite utopia above the planet. Think: The Guardians of the Galaxy, if they were super into recycling.
Things are not as utopian as they present, however. The Victory’s missions to retrieve and salvage cosmic detritus are heroic, but not well paid. Invariably they accrue fines and wrack up debt and find themselves deeper in the hole than when they started.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/space-sweepers-movie-review-netflix/
IMDB: Space Sweepers (Seungriho)
Sunday, 27 December 2020
THE MALEVOLENT SCIENCES CONFERENCE - FURIOUS FICTION - AUSTRALIAN WRITERS' CENTRE - NOVEMBER 2020
This is the short story I wrote for the Australian Writers' Centre's Furious Fiction competition in November. I have to be honest here and admit it doesn't really work. I like the concept a lot and I transferred the weird superhero angle from another story I was toying around with, in the hope it would fit better.
I think the problem is that the idea is too big for a 500 word story, and I didn't want to admit it, even though I knew it at the time. The idea that we shouldn't quit things is a fallacy, I think. There is value in knowing when to cut your losses. My favourite author is Michael Chabon and when I went to see him speak in Melbourne several years ago he talked about giving up on a sprawling, early novel he had been working on for many years (serving as inspiration, no doubt, for Grady Tripp's behemoth work-in-progress in Chabon's sublime and hilarious Wonder Boys). Not that I'm comparing myself to that level of genius for one second, but if Chabon can recognise the failures in his blood, sweat and tears, then I should certainly be able to trust my instincts and pull the plug on a 500 word short story I know is struggling.
Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike The Malevolent Sciences Conference. While I can't pretend this is the strongest thing I've ever written, there are still ideas and characters in here that I like very much, and it's still better for me to post this story and give it some form of existence, rather than let it remain severed, floating in limbo on my computer forever. So here it is, for better or worse, The Malevolent Sciences Conference.
The rules:
In addition to the 500 word maximum and a three day window to write it, the rules for October were:
LOCATION: Your story must take place at a HOTEL.
OBJECT/PROP: Your story must include a PHOTOGRAPH. (In the story itself – do not send us a photo!)
WORDS: Your story must include the following words:
COLLAR, GLOOMY, POLICE, RHYTHM, SAPPHIRE
THE MALEVOLENT SCIENCES CONFERENCE
I was in town for the MSC, or Malevolent Sciences Conference, to use the full name. To stop the spread of misinformation, let me clarify, this is about what the illicitly wealthy call Dark Research and Development.
The police refer to it as the Supervillain AGM, but I take offense. Villainy is in the eye of the beholder and if we’re gathered to challenge conventions of accepted science, why shouldn’t we challenge morality, also?
Where do you think Dr Vampire would be without Dark R&D? His ‘Truth Fangs’ aren’t magic. They inject a serum into a victim’s bloodstream that eliminates discretion. Or Baron von Gravity’s Reverse-O-Tron? Sure, he took credit for those UN delegates’ internal gravity reversal. As a result, The Baron now owns Tahiti. But it was the laboratories that put the hard work in.
With all the various Doomsday Devices on show, there’s a sense these conventions are a little gloomy. But contrary to popular opinion, put a bunch of megalomaniacs in a room together and they know how to have a good time. Lot of laughs and pranks. Last year I used my invisibility gown to steal The Atomizer’s glasses. He couldn’t see anything and inadvertently rearranged thirty-seven convention volunteers at a subatomic level. It was hilarious. And messy.
The morning of the conference is when my breakfast went missing. I am very much a breakfast person. If I don’t eat first thing, I can’t think straight. I get cranky. Everyone knows it.
Room service knocked, set the tray on a table and I went for a quick shower. When I returned, the tray was gone and my room remained locked from the inside. A classic mystery, you might say, were it not for the fact I knew exactly what happened. Monsieur Téléporte – French-Canadian heist expert and master of international matter transfer – was staying in the room next door. He could steal everything his heart desired, but that didn’t stop him from being one tight bastard. That sonovabitch never paid for a meal in his life. So I marched round there to set him straight.
The hotel concierge interrupted me as I was pounding out a pretty good rhythm on Téléporte’s skull. I had tight hold of his collar too, and he was in and out of consciousness. Paramedics later said he turned blue, but it was really more of a sapphire colour, if you want to be accurate.
The concierge handed me a fan of squared paper.
Polaroids.
The Atomizer, seated in front of my breakfast, peering over the rims of his glasses, shit eating grin telling me I’d made a big mistake. A series of other photos showing he was staying in the room above mine, his rearranged form blending through the ceiling, stealing my breakfast, emptying the mini-bar like some kind of smug poltergeist.
Fortunately Monsieur Téléporte wasn’t too sore about it. I sweetened things up with a loan of my invisibility gown and we shook hands. Next year I’m staying in a motel.
Tuesday, 6 October 2020
UTOPIA (full article at The Guardian Australia)
This is my first time writing for The Guardian Australia website, which is very exciting. I have a piece on Dennis Kelly's brilliant UK conspiracy thriller, Utopia, at the link below.
Utopia is one of the most powerful and electrifying pieces of television I’ve seen. At the time of that first watch, I duly expected it to feature on “best of TV” lists for years to come, alongside the likes of The Wire, Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, of which Utopia is more than an equal. It was quite a surprise then to learn that Utopia existed only as a cult hit (albeit one with fervent fans), was dismissed from its home on the UK’s Channel 4 after only two seasons, and remains criminally under-seen almost everywhere else, including in Australia.
Read the full review at The Guardian Australia:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/oct/07/utopia-one-of-the-decades-most-electrifying-and-criminally-under-seen-thrillers
IMDB: Utopia
Tuesday, 29 September 2020
SPUTNIK (full review at Screen Realm)
Sputnik is set in the USSR in 1983. Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) is a psychiatrist, prone to go to unconventional lengths in order to get results. She is approached by Colonel Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) and asked to assess the mental health of a cosmonaut, Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov), in the aftermath of an orbital mission.
Tatyana agrees and travels to an isolated military base in Kazakhstan. All is not as it first seems and it soon becomes clear that Konstantin has returned to Earth with an uninvited visitor – a parasitical alien that lives inside his body cavity and emerges at night to feed. Tatyana must devise a way to separate the pair before Konstantin’s health becomes too reliant on the presence of the alien.
Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/sputnik-movie-review-russia-scifi/
IMDB: Sputnik
Saturday, 15 August 2020
THE ART OF MOURNING - FURIOUS FICTION - AUSTRALIAN WRITERS' CENTRE - JULY 2020
This is a short story I wrote for the Australian Writers' Centre's Furious Fiction competition in July. I'm not very comfortable with the self-promoting side of things, but if you'll allow me to indulge my ego for a second, I really like this story a lot and I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I think if I can find a way to expand it - even if it's just as a longer short story - then it would be pretty fun to elaborate on.
So anyway, here's an everyday tale about an alien funeral taking place inside the corpse of the deceased. Normal, normal stuff, I think we can all agree.
The rules:
In addition to the 500 word maximum and a three day window to write it, the rules for July were:
Each story had to take place at either WEDDING or a FUNERAL.
Each story had to include something being cut.
Each story had to include the words “UNDER”, “OVER” and “BETWEEN”.
THE ART OF MOURNING
Art was my friend and business partner. I’d known Art since college and we made a lot of money together in solar gravitational adjustment, or ‘planet shuffling’ to the layperson. Planet too hot or cold? Crops fail every year? Too many bugs? Not enough bugs? Want year-round summer? Easy, we’ll move you to a nicer cosmic neighbourhood... for a fee, of course.
Art died when his heart gave out. To put it in perspective, Art was a hefty fellow - a 623 tonne, building-sized Gigantoboar, three times the size of a Blue Whale to be exact. His heart – the size of a frickin’ small car, let me remind you - crushed itself under its own weight when the support fluid in his life tank drained away. The death certificate cited operator malfunction. Death by misadventure was the conclusion.
Art never struck me as being particularly religious. I kind of assumed people worshipped him as opposed to the other way round. But extra-terrestrial whale entities have a way of surprising you. Art’s will stipulated a funeral in observance of The Old Ways, and let me tell you, his species’ ‘ways’ aren’t so much old, as primordial. In cosmic terms, Art’s ancestors were around when our sun was only just flickering into existence.
So there I was, along with two hundred and forty nine other mourners, entering Art’s humungous, pristinely embalmed body cavity through the rectum, on course for his skull. According to the funeral pamphlet, the walk (a 1.8 kilometre round trip in case you were wondering) allowed us to experience the ‘Journey of Art’s Life.’ There were pictures, video installations, mementoes and reminders of Art everywhere inside, but it’s tricky to get the mood when you’re trying not to trip over his intestines or duck under his spleen. It makes sense now, in retrospect, why the funeral notice said to dress ‘practically.’
The route to Art’s head was slow and punctuated by melancholy pauses and moments of reflection, as his friends and family stopped often to remember him. Our eventual arrival at the skull meant the Transference Ritual – the ceremonial excision and consumption of the brain, by all in attendance, believed to ‘absorb the knowledge of the deceased’. A deed Art had alternately described to me as either “mythical claptrap” or “religious bunk” whenever the subject arose. But it turns out Art was wrong about his religion. Just as he was wrong in blocking me from accepting that bribe to move a rich planetoid closer to the sun. Because as soon as Art’s nearest and dearest chowed down on his moist, chewy and slightly over-spiced grey matter, I knew what was happening.
Nobody said a word but I could see it in their eyes and their twitching ganglia. Their febrile, alien protuberances quivering with the shock of sudden onset religious awakening. Alien and human minds, flooded with darkness alike. A shared moral eclipse. Between them, they knew everything. He cost me billions. Art didn’t drain the tank. I did.
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