Category: Arts
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Revolutionaries or Decorators? | Art, Brutality and Transformation
Been meaning to post something on this for a few weeks: on holiday this summer I read (recommended by an Italian friend) Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility of an Island. He’s a very good but pretty bleak writer, with a very disturbing vision of humanity. The TLS describe the book as ‘a charging bull in…
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Man of Steel (Not God of Krypton) – A Radical Review
I saw Man of Steel last night, and, as a big ‘superhero’ film thought I’d post some reflections on it in the light of After Magic, which deals with the superhero archetypes seen in the recent Batman and Spiderman films. Spoiler Alert As a quick outline, the film opens with a crisis on Krypton. The people…
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I don’t Believe in Ghosts, I Believe in Ghosts
I’ve been really enjoying The Returned – a French thriller currently airing in the UK on Sunday evenings. (Watch the latest episode here.) It concerns the (apparent) return of some young people to a small town in the Alps, some 10 years after they had died. Giving lie to the easy words ‘I wish they…
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Iron Man 3 | After Magic | Mechanics and Craftsmen
Having been urged by lots of After Magic readers to go and see Iron Man 3, I saw it last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The series has always had more biting wit that similar franchises, and has done well combining that with some thoughtful content too. I don’t want to talk much about the…
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The Book of Mor(m)on
Went to see The Book of Mormon last night. I’ll be reviewing it on William Crawley’s BBC Radio show on Sunday morning, but thought I’d blog a few thoughts here too. Firstly, it’s a great musical. I’m no great fan of musical theatre to be honest [in mathematical terms, it’s non-additive 😉 music (fab) +…
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After Magic – Preview 2 – Tell All The Truth, But Tell It Slant
Very excited that After Magic will be available in the next few days now. It’s a compact read at around 25,000 words, but covers a lot of ground within that. As I’ve increasingly found with the books I’ve written, the source material that’s given rise to After Magic isn’t really the kind of stuff you’d…