The secret behind horror author Michael McDowell’s greatness? Watching Hong Kong horror movies

happy birthday kiyoshi kurosawa

Pulse (2001), Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Cure (1997), Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Bright Future (2002), Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Bright Future (2002) /// Cloud (2024)

Bright Future (2003), Kiyoshi Kurosawa /// A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (2016), Shunji Iwai

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s recurrence of passive suicide. Disassociating out of life, fading into malaise or thin-air apathy. Giving up without actually hurting yourself. Self-harm as simply slipping into intangibility.

Ugh, the original Serpent’s Path is sooooooooooo fucking good. Absolutely one of my favorites of his.

Retribution (2006), Kiyoshi Kurosawa The Blue Hour (2015), Anucha Boonyawatana

ya ever just. Just. Think about Pulse?

Cure (1996), Kiyoshi Kurosawa /// Bilocation (2013), Mari Asato

Bright Future (2003), Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Images from the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa - BOTD in 1955 Even in his non-horror films, Kurosawa is fond of shots where the audience has to strain to make out the details Pulse (2001) Tokyo Sonata (2008) Journey to the Shore (2015) Creepy (2016)

We are the words “I love you”, and the hope that people may learn to one day understand each other.

Garden of Earthly Delights

I have a lot of back and forths about The Odyssey but the Zendayathena reveal almost sent me through the fucking ceiling and I’m gonna be thinking for a long time about how Nolan just made it a prequel to Oppenheimer. The Trojan Horse is the atom bomb. This too is atomic horror.

The End of Evangelion Episode 25' Air Love is Destructive

The End of Evangelion Episode 25' Air Love is Destructive

I understand that it sucks to have to read a book you didn't choose as a kid but when people are like 40 and still going, "well assigned reading turned me off from reading" it's like, ok but you're 40. No one has assigned you a book in like 20 years.

Starting over as a woodland wanderer 🎨 Lily Seika Jones

The National Film Awards in India awarded this best feature in 1960. In 2026, they awarded a pro-regime propaganda film about how Kashmir deserved to be stripped of its autonomy. & the Bengal Ray portrays so beautifully here is under fascist Hindutva rule. A heavy pang seeing these beautiful stills.

The link for Monday's Season 4 premiere is now live! Join @hamishsteele.bsky.social and @dmuma.bsky.social at midday UK time on Monday to hear us catch up about what we've been playing and deep dive on the history of Mario anniversaries - including the infamous Year of Luigi. youtu.be/eQddfemgBcw

The train ends up haunting the rest of the trilogy in really impactful ways, and the major payoff in The World of Apu/Apur Sansar (1959) being Apu’s dissociative near suicide… man 😩😮‍💨

The World of Apu (1959), Satyajit Ray

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Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Story the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) is complicated, a ghostly moment of Imperial critique that feels wilted and wasted by Mizoguchi’s soon-after (and self-preserving) turn to propaganda, but seeing that opening performance of Yotsuya Kaidan in the long-gone nitrate night… WOW.

It’s a triumph, certainly (Mizoguchi’s rejection of closeups is so cool, intimacy from measured and misted distance), but it leaves me thoughtful. How differently would we think on Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and the like if he, to protect himself, accepted Goebbels’ offer, y’know?

About as perfect a crack at the Martians as I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot!)

Cannot be stressed enough how good we’re all about to eat.

The Mad Fox (1962), Tomu Uchida An Actor’s Revenge (1963), Kon Ichikawa Himiko (1974), Masahiro Shinoda Resurrection (2025), Bi Gan

While still very much the same breed as his later Demon Pond, Masahiro Shinoda’s Himiko (1974) worked on me far more like Kaneto Shindo’s oblique The Iron Crown: a blending of Japanese film and theater so precise, experimental, and actively hostile as to be a disarming, frightening experience.

A visual stunner, an off-kilter world of spirits as half dreamy natural splendor and half distressingly liminal avant-garde sets against black, but tortuously cruel as an ensnarement in a purposeful and intricate cultural nightmare. Butoh brutality as a New Wave psychotic episode.

The black and white across the Apu trilogy is just SO beautiful and lovely. Aparajito (1956) is so sad and a little hollowing (stepping away from Pather Panchali’s sitar accompaniment makes the mortal tragedies feel colder), but it’s such a feast to watch Ray figure himself out in real time.

Much love and gratitude to Satyajit Ray as I continue to explore his, uh, masterful storytelling and, erm, plots.

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