Tom Bosher takes us through a selection of iconic screen villains to understand their enduring importance in stories.
Feature
Tales around the campfire: The Anthology Film
With The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen Brothers have pushed the anthology film back into the awards sphere and popular conversation. It’s notoriously a genre so often varying in quality and consistency that it can be tricky to garner much serious attention, let alone awards buzz. Yet these films can be gleefully unorthodox in structure, […]
Celebrating Groundhog Day
My morning wake-up alarm is Sonny & Cher’s I’ve Got You Babe. I can’t say I’m exactly a big fan of Sonny & Cher, nor would I say it’s the kind of thing I’m going to stick on in my free time. No, the main reason I have it as my alarm is it’s the […]
“The Times, They Are a’Changin'”: Thoughts on Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize
It was the first year of my English literature degree, and I had earnestly proposed to my seminar leader that I write my summative essay on Bob Dylan’s lyrics to A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall. I was not a little upset when the slightly bemused professor replied that I could not write an analysis of […]
National Poetry Day: what’s the fuss?
Since 1994, our rainy island nation has set aside the otherwise dreary first Thursday of October every year to celebrate an art form that writers have begged, borrowed, stolen, manipulated, warped and loved since before being “British” was even a thing: the poem. From the moment Homer set down his Iliad, poetry has been firmly […]
A criticism of the Man Booker Prize
I’d like to start by pointing out that I’m partially playing devil’s advocate here. For what it’s worth, I’m highly supportive of awards in the arts – on the sole condition that they always help to drum up interest and enthusiasm for literature from the general public. At first glance, the Man Booker Prize seems […]
Gregory Crewdson: The common horrors of everyday life
Gregory Crewdson is a photographer like you’ve never seen before. In fact, I’m not even sure if the word ‘photographer’ covers it all. This artist from Brooklyn doesn’t just go out on the street to take a picture, he creates the picture. He uses typical American suburbs to build a stage-set, as if it was […]