Flame Tree Fiction

Skyscraper focuses on a drawn out fight between Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and his latest nemesis: an extremely high-tech skyscraper filled with fire. It’s a battle for the ages filled more plot lines than a guy Ritchie Gangster flick.

Animals play key roles in the myths and legends of many cultures around the world. In Babylon and Ancient Egypt animals can be found in multiple forms throughout art and religious worship. Often these creatures will be part animal, part human or comprised of many different animals. Sometimes certain characteristics are prescribed to an animal that causes it to be considered either evil or holy. In this blog post we’re going to take a look at a couple of examples of this from Egyptian and Babylonian culture.

The first scenes of the new Sicario film set the tone for the whole feature. They are gritty, violent and difficult to watch. It pulls no punches with the visuals, which, in an age of action films being dominated by superheroes and The Rock, feels increasingly unfamiliar. You expect the camera to pull out or cutaway but it holds and lets you see everything as it happens.

Often, the best way to understand a text is to understand the context in which it was written. A central part of this involves the story of the writers themselves. As such, learning about their lives, or what led to their writing of a text, can be very important in fully appreciating what they wrote. In our new editions of essential Gothic, Sci-Fi and Dark Fantasy books, we have included biographies of the authors so you can learn more about them and see how their life may have affected the tales they told. We thought, for this week’s blog, we would pick out singular moments in each author’s life that highlight the influence their background might have had on their work…

It’s always intriguing when a film is met with rave reviews from critics but a lukewarm reception from the public. At the time of writing this Hereditary holds a 91% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes and only a 58% with audiences. I’ve read some reviews that put this down to audiences expecting a different kind of horror that they’ve been conditioned to want by countless Purge and Final Destination movies. I’m not sure that that’s very fair.

The new Jurassic world falls firmly into the category of recent films showing the viewer something they’ve seen and enjoyed before and expecting them to enjoy it again. To be quite fair to it, it doesn’t literally replay a previous film in its franchise, which we have seen done recently, but rather goes to the effort of borrowing the greatest hits from all the previous Jurassic Park films.

With a release that had next to no advertising, ‘Verónica’ sort of slipped people by. It was released to Toronto film festival and some Spanish markets in late 2017 but was then released on to Netflix in late February of this year. It gained some traction online at the time but over the recent bank holiday weekend it seems to have exploded. I read several articles with headlines like ‘The scariest movie you’ll watch this year!’ or ‘The film so scary people have to turn it off!’ and I was understandably intrigued.

Mermaids have a long history that dates back almost as far as the first humans. Early human civilisations saw gods and magic everywhere. Whether it be on the top of unscalable mountains or in the deepest darkest caves, magical creatures lurked in every corner of the ancient world. Due to the importance of water for survival, many early humans lived near rivers, oceans and lakes. This was the perfect combination to conjure up mermaids.

In this blog we thought we’d look at some of the most famous representations of mermaids in history! From dangerous ancient sirens to modern Disney princesses, mermaids have taken many forms…

Marvel’s Infinity War is rather aptly named. When they first said that there would be more than 50 characters from films gone by, I think the general reaction was that the film would be cluttered and unwatchable. If Justice League struggled to make six characters function in a single story line, more than 50 would be ridiculous.

Adapted from an earlier play by Dyson and Nyman, Ghost Stories focuses on the tale of Professor Goodman (played by Nyman himself). Goodman works as an investigator and as an exposer of fake and fraudulent psychics. The film begins its main plotline when Goodman receives a mysterious package from a famed psychic investigator who is looking for closure about three cases he cannot explain.