Day 1: Häxan (1922)
Posted in2016 31 Days of Horror Classics

Day 1: Häxan (1922)

We're officially starting this year's 31 Days of Horror with Häxan, which is a silent horror film from writer / director Benjamin Christensen. It's an interesting movie because it's sort of an enigma by seemingly being all things at once. It's a documentary and history lesson about witchcraft but it's also a fictional horror narrative with "reenactments" of the torture methods used on those found guilty of being witches. It's both very tame and approachable, yet it also could never have been released in the US at the time it was made due to the sexuality, violence and nudity on…
100-Book Challenge (Part 2)
Posted in100-Book Challenge Blog Posts Classics

100-Book Challenge (Part 2)

Hello again readers! Mark here with the second installment of my 100-Book Challenge. One of the (many) motivations for this undertaking was to get to those novels I felt embarrassed not to have read yet, so books 11-20 bring us some literary heavy-hitters like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Austen, Morrison and more. That said, I do not intend my reviews as scholarly commentary, just the opposite; I want to give general readers a quick impression of each work and how much it lends itself to an enjoyable and fulfilling read. Of course, you could teach a full college semester on many of…
The Light Between Oceans
Posted inBlog Posts Reviews

The Light Between Oceans

Tonight, I was excited to be able to attend an advanced screening of the new Derek Cianfrance film, The Light Between Oceans. TLBO is adapted from the best-selling novel by M.L. Stedman (which, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I have not yet read), and at 7pm I walked into the historic Belcourt Theatre in Nashville not really knowing what to expect. I knew that the film's three most prominent cast members (Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz) are historically known for killin' it on the silver screen, so if nothing else, I was intrigued. I'd heard…