Dan Berlinka

A Brief History of Men are Becoming Less Manly

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A few more Evil Squirrel cartoons 😈 🐿️

Right, if you know Robert Eggers, please put in a good word for me - I have fired off an email to his people to see if I can visit the set of WERWULF. It's not a no unless you're told it is, I suppose!

Last night I watched psychological horror, Delirium. (There's are several films with that title - this is the one with Topher Grace that just landed on Netflix.) There's a fair bit of "is this real or a hallucination", but once it starts answering that question there's silly twisty fun to be had.

I'm British but I always thought frowning was done with the mouth and was the opposite of a smile - as in "turn that frown upside down". (I trace this back to Fats Waller's Don't Let It Bother You" which was on an album my dad played a lot when I was a kid.)

I saw John Woodvine as Gens in the 1989 National Theatre production of Ghetto - one of the best things I have ever seen. Prior to that I'd loved him in An American Werewolf in London. He brought a quiet seriousness to the werewolf fun that helps ground it and earn that surprisingly bleak ending. RIP

That for me has always been the hardest part (and why I never quit.) I think deep down I always expected some external force to "allow" me to start again. The minute I realised "no, you just carry on not smoking for ever" I'd crack.

Last night at the Hampstead Theatre I saw Max Webster's stunning production of Titus Andronicus. Standout performances from John Hodgkinson, Wendy Kweh, Max Bennett and Ken Nwosu (his scaffold speech is superb.) And a play about the mad cycle of violence and revenge certainly resonates. I loved it.

I pray there's a theatrical re-release too. Even if it's just for a week. Or a day.

I still think a stage show would be great. One could actually *do* the mentalist act.

Same. (Though I came to the book later.) We talked about a stage adaptation. And then GDT hoovered up all the rights to everything Everywhere.

If I remember rightly, Paul, you and I "met" on the other place talking about trying to adapt Nightmare Alley.

Ah like in wrestling where you'd have colour commentary and play by play...

Oh thank you - will check it out.

I did indeed. I'd love to see more set in that world. The potential lore is so rich, it could be a series. (And my wife is an ethnomusicologist which is why I love any film that mentions them. So far it's yours and Inside Out 2.)

Oh I should give that a go. Or maybe I'll just ask Johnny to perform it live for me when I next see him!

Fine. I'll settle for you being on a panel together.

This film marked me more than any other I've seen in the genre recently. I can't recommend it enough. You do need to mentally prepare yourself for how little happens. Or how little you can even see. But I've never seen anything else that captures a childhood nightmare as well as this.

I should have known you'd be all over this! Ah what I would give for a Mains / Duane collab!

Last night I watched Irish folk horror All You Need Is Death - it has a great, eerie premise and a brilliant cameo performance by Olwen Fouéré. I'd love to see what writer / director Paul Duane could do with a bigger budget, but until then I'll always support films about shady ethnomusicologists.

Cartoon of three panels. The first shows a flamingo standing in water, one leg bent, caption: Flamingo. The second panel shows the same scene, but just the flamingo's head and neck are above the water, caption: Flamingoing. In the third panel there are now just a few ripples in the water. Caption: Flamingone

www.worldofmoose.com/products/fla...

It's not the Napoleonic sea battle reenactments that count so much as the French ships you make along the way.

Well at least "elevated horror" is no longer my least favourite way to be snobby about genre...

Pretty great reading list for anyone looking for random recommendations.

It's taken till now for it to come back to me. But when I was 17, I played Alceste in a 6th form production of Tony Harrison's version of Molière's The Misanthrope. (I think I based my whole personality on that role.) He made the verse so alive and exciting and fun to say aloud. RIP Tony Harrison.

Audience review:

One Battle After Another. Odeon Luxe Holloway. September 29th.

Some fidgeting, noisy snacks and walkabouts, but this wasn't an arthouse crowd, so extra points for watching 2.5 hours of antifascist propaganda. And this doesn't affect the rating but Screen 1 is *beautiful*.

****/5

Yesterday I saw One Battle After Another. It took me a moment to tune in to it, but once I did I had a great time. Sean Penn's posture deserves a spin-off movie of its own. I have quibbles we can discuss, but any film that points audiences to The Battle of Algiers is ok by me. And it sure is timely.

I finished Lavie Tidhar's intensely readable novella, The Vanishing Kind, which is set in a similar counterfactual world (but another alternative timeline) to A Man Lies Dreaming. I think his pulp noirs are a kind of righteous vengeance and I love them.

Yesterday at the Barbican I saw Lacrima. I was skeptical about a 3 hour play (with no interval, yet!) but writer / director Caroline Guiela Nguyen borrows from live events and studio television, using a screen and cameras, so it's like bingeing a French Netflix show (complimentary) live. I loved it.

I'm still here. I've been unable to find an exit. When I think I have it brings me back to this flat. The residents of this place...they all have...*undefinable* faces. There is a low hum in the air. Static. I'm...I'm...slipping...