Escape from New York (1981) and Escape from L.A. (1996) are two dystopian action movies directed by John Carpenter and featuring Kurt Russell in the role of Snake Plissken; unfortunately, although there was a third entry planned to complete the trilogy, it never quite happened. The movies are by no stretch of the imagination excellent,…
Category: Articles in English
One Ghost, scrambled
Mardock Scramble is an anime movie (divided in three parts), adapted from its homonymous light novel. It presents some very thought-provoking scenarios and deals with crude themes such as rape, suicide, murder and the ontological dilemma of the worth of a life. It behaves somewhat as a noir and a murder mystery narration, while also…
Spins on Stampedes
It has always difficult to take a classic and try to give it a different spin, even more so in anime. This approach thrived on occasion and for various reasons: think for instance of Hellsing Ultimate (which to be fair, the OAV was just a better visual overhaul) or for the innovative style in JoJo…
Boron – B
The Fifth Element is a 1997 science fiction action film directed by Luc Beson. Given how much appreciation I have for this movie, this article will not only be biased (obviously) but it will not be as professional as with other movies I take into consideration for this column. I won’t talk much about the…
A song of the sea
This short story is something I wrote for Haunted Shores, the blog of a research group that investigates coasts and littoral spaces in Gothic, horror and fantastic media. I had the pleasure of meeting them during an online event they organized in which I spoke about WaterWorld. Link: https://haunted-shores.com/2023/05/25/a-song-of-the-sea-by-bogdan-groza/ I have always found that truths…
Of Ojisans and Isekais
The Isekai genre This is not going to be an in-depth or exhaustive article on the anime genre itself since that would lead me to open too many parenthesis and I would probably end up wasting too much space. I will however give a brief overlook on this subgenre to at least make you understand…
This is not The Office
Office space is a 1999 black comedy, directed by Mike Judge (the same one that would later direct Idiocracy) and featuring Ron Livingstone with several co-stars such as Jennifer Aniston and John C. McGinley. The movie begins by depicting the soul-sucking and demoralizing day of a white-collar employee; the work environment makes the main character…
Admiral, reach for the stars
This article is about Star Trek: Picard, my thoughts and especially my feelings for one of the few series that managed to surprise me in recent years; that is no small feat in itself. Quite possibly the second season felt a bit lacklustre, but when dealing with Q and time paradoxes, it was to be…
The quirky fil rouge
This is a bit of a tie-in article. Given that I have a Youtube channel that is called Be a quirky writer, you can understand why the blog has a similar name. Recently I did a video about Waterworld for the Haunted Shores 2023 online conference. The theme was “Aquatic Surfaces & Depths” and I…
Dredging through memories
In an era where most triple-A game companies are not concerned with delivering a good product but rather prefer to just perfecting a formula for a standardized gaming experience that will in turn make them money, where would a gamer search for something more? I found myself more and more invested in smaller indie companies…