Ghost Ship
The Fear
Dead End
Silent Hill
Stigmata
Ravenous

If you’ve seen any of these before let me know, but you’ll have to be damn quick, as in tonight (tomorrow morning at latest), as I am sending them tomorrow. By the by, have I ever sent you Mr Brooks, or have you seen it? Let me know and I’ll send it up to you next time, if not. You’ll like it.

And talking of B. Empire, I just watched a film called Take Shelter starring Michael Shannon (the FBI[?] agent from Empire who stalks the Irish heroine). I love him as an actor and would watch him peeling earhtworms, but the film is good in its own right; an end of the world fable - or IS IT? But my real surprise treat of the week was Chalet Girl. Have you seen it? I’d had it on my back-up list forever at Lovefilm and promoted it up to High Priority on a whim. I expected zero of it and was really only wathcing it to see if Westwick was any better than Pattinson when removed from his stomping ground, and it turned out to be really well-written and funny with engaging characters and all-round sweet, in a good way. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it, between bouts of Hardy angst and nightmarish horror.

ALSO…. have you seen the trailer for the new Hardy? Lawless, I think it’s called. Looks good. Or how about Killer Joe with one of my all-time underused actors, Matthew McConneghey (can’t spell it and can’t be bothered looking it up so that hilarious abortion will do) playing a hitman? Made for him, and I love to see him in a good villain’s role. Man’s the goods. Oh, and did you see the new Great Expectations when it was on TV? I just saw it recently and loved it, loved it, LOVED IT. The only flaw was Pip was more beautiful than Estella (a real shoo-in for Danny if you dyed his hair), which kind of ruins the whole loving her for her beauty thing, but they managed to just about stay above water with it. Gillian Anderson was great as Miss Havisham, in a completely different interpretation. Of course, everybody hated it because it broke all the filmic traditions (note, not the Dickensian ones, just the filmic, but you know folks, got to have what they know). It was written by the same screenwriter as the Hardy Oliver Twist, which also offended everyone. I loved that one too. She’s a top-notch writer, really original with her interpretaions. It fills my cynical old heart with joy to see a writer who breaks the rules like she does being given more work after she’s been criticised for the first lot.

Okay, I’ll get a half dozen eerie, weird, disquieting horrors off to you tomorrow. Enjoy…

I have informed the workmates to buy the next volumes from your website, I may do it for them if they don’t get their arse in gear, then they can pay me back. One of them has bought the second one from somewhere because she’s finished it and has read the except of 3 on amazon. She’s like lightening.

I will give Mad Men a go at some point, I bet I’d like it once I got into it. I’m currently into Smash, musical on Sky Atlantic. Also I’m waiting for the DVD of Boardwalk Empire series and the new True Blood, I shall send them when they arrive. Warrior was my favourite film on the cinema that year, it was so well made and the characters were fantastic. Tom Hardy is fast becoming one of my favourites. Tyrannosaur man is definitely Ian, especially in Happy Go Lucky, he was the only good thing in the film, that woman annoys me to hell.

I’m definitely jumping on the horror band wagon, my fear seems to have vanished, I don’t know what happened. The horror stories used to play on my mind for weeks but I’ve watched a few now where the adverts used to terrify me and I have no fear. I think I’ve finally tipped over into psychopath. I think send me some on, because there’s very little chance I will have seen only. Bring on the horror.

I shall gather another handful of new ones I’ve bought and send you a list.

It was all going swimmingly, if slowly, with nothing catastrophic until the last quarter of the book and I discovered I’d decided to change the sexual inclinations of one of the major characters - actually two of them - in a very dramatic and, sadly, totally useless way, so now it’s a nightmare, which will all need to be rewritten/purged. Fuck. Ah well….. I shall march ever onwards.

Yes, you have completely baffled me with your latest TM analysis. I shall await your outpourings on LJ and see what mad and crazed road you’re off down now on your ever-strange route to enlightenment. Oh, that reminds me, I think one of your workmates has put a review on DANNY - Mya? If so, thank her for me. But will she be buying any (more) of the books? Money, that’s what they need. Without money there is no life…

Yes, Pete Campbell is the other subsidiary character in Madmen that I mentioned. Creepy doesn’t do him justice. He’d make a great American Ian, if Hollywood is listening… I am both surprised and not that you couldn’t get into Madmen. I think Draper is devastatingly handsome, BUT, and it is a BIG but, he is such a cunt. I mean, seriously. He is so particularly awful in the first series he’s very hard to forgive or like. But yes, it does get ‘better’, as in you see more of him in a way that makes him understandable, if not adorable. He could never really be that; he’s too stupid, and did I say a cunt? When you feel like tackling it, let me know. It really is supremely addictive once you get into it, and it is sublimely well-written and acted, and, of course, it looks beautiful.

Tyrannosaur was fabulous. Well-nigh bloody perfect. And yes, Eddie is a gem, in any role he jumps into. Another perfect Ian, if you could only have got him younger! I really enjoyed Warrior. Beautifully put together and really compelling. One of the best films I’ve seen recently. Unfortunately, you wasted your postage sending me the other two, I’d already seen them both. Damn. But The Awakening was very good regardless. And what’s this, you getting into horror? My flabber is gasted. But I’ve always told you, it’s where you can see the best, most dysfunctional stories. Do you want me to put a list of titles on here and you can tell me what you’ve seen/want? Or do you want me just to send you a half dozen? Let me know.

Thanks for the Sherlock, by the way. Love those too. Particularly liked the Scandal in Belgravia (?) one. Didn’t much like their Baskervilles, but it was a tough story to try and take on. Couldn’t believe they’d killed off Moriarty though. God, I love him.

Let me know if you want a mystery bundle of horror goodies or a big fat list for your perusal.

I wasn’t sure if you could redo reviews, I’ll keep picking at it till I’m happy. Not spoilering is a massive handicap for me, I tend to let my mouth run away with me then I don’t know what I’ve said, there’s so much I can’t say by this book, I was a bit scared to say anything about the plot at all in case I slip up. Also if I haven’t got 4 pages worth of space to write about DANNY in, I may as well have non. You know how I like to ramble.

About the Road Movie Chancery, you were right about my opinion of TM (not entirely, but more than I thought), I didn’t see how you could be because I would have taken any bad thing he could have done. No matter how dark, evil, dirty, violent, fucked up, you name it, like Danny I would have rolled around in it and had my fill without losing one bit of adoration for him. I never expected the thing that I might not like was his normality, his wanting to be a normal person when they were growing up. I felt like he had a bit of the reason I don’t like Rab in him, the keeping his eyes shut and pretending everything is ok. I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, and this is what my first rambling is going to be about on live journal, I’m going to work out what it was I didn’t like that came out about him. I do still think he is God of all the world but he has a chink in his armor now.

Danny accepted that everything around him was fucked, he walked through it with his eyes open, he took his strength from being able to survive it, by being himself, not pretending he was somewhere else, someone else, or that it wasn’t happening. Danny and Ian both went, ‘right, that’s how it is, let’s see what I can learn’. I feel that TM maybe made him self a bit of an outsider, like he was separate from it. That doesn’t sound exactly right but I will get there. I like all TM’s fucked behavior because it shows he’s a part of what happened, so no matter how bad he gets it’s all him being honest and himself, I think I don’t like that he tried to make himself, someone else (or more normal), like it hadn’t effected him, that always seems a little weak to me. This probably makes no sense.

Anyway, I tried to watch the first series of Mad Men but never really got into it, I liked Peggy though (I remember her) and the boy she slept with in the first series, the little strange boy who tried to be cocky but was really creepy. I don’t find the main man attractive, he has such a big face, like being attacked by face. I didn’t watch enough of it to see anything about him though, I’ve been told it gets better as the series goes on, I may have to give it another try.

I didn’t send Appropriate Adult by the way, my friend still has it, I’ll get it from her and send it next time. I’ve started watching horror films lately, if you have any good ones you think I’d like, I’ll have some of those please.

P.S. What did you think of Tyrannosaur? Wasn’t the woman beating husband fantastic, he was so small and unassuming and then terrifying. I thought he was perfect. And Olivia Coleman was amazing.