Women in Red

It’s both International Women’s Day today and Day Without a Woman, and taking the day off (in red) to celebrate. In honour of one of my favourite red-clad heroines, here’s an excerpt from Angela Carter’s short story ‘Wolf-Alice’ (full text available on Biblioklept): Could this ragged girl with brindled lugs have spoken like we do she would have … Read more

The 7 Worst Academics in Popular Culture

A recent article on the Times Higher Education website marked the release of Barbara Tobolowsky’s new edited collection, Anti-intellectual Representations of American Colleges and Universities: Fictional Higher Education, by doing a short piece on how popular culture portrayals ‘devalue academia’, and the real work students and academics are actually doing. Since I’m deep in piles of academic work at … Read more

‘Embrace Your Dark Side’: Penny Dreadful‘s Season 3 Trailer

About two weeks ago a proper trailer for the next season of Penny Dreadful was released. Various other obligations have kept me from looking at it properly, but this week I’ve finally been able to sink my teeth into it. Without further ado, then, my take on this 1-minute-and-45-second trailer. (Note: there will be spoilers for seasons 1 and … Read more

What They Do in the Shadows is Basically What We Do, Too

Whatever I had been expecting from vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, it wasn’t what I got in the end. And I mean that in the best possible way. Where to start? With plot, I suppose, though that may be the least interesting part about this film. What We Do in the Shadows follows a film … Read more