AS English Language Coursework!

Lovecraft Homage Piece:
The Woods

I.

School is a strange place. It lies far to the north, hidden amongst the darkened woods of the Boreal climes that enshrouded it from the rest of the world. It is those unhallowed woods into which no wise student has dared to set foot, lest he or she be lost amongst the nigh endless tangle of brambles, whose sharpened thorns claw at the lone walkers underneath the malign canopy.
We were always told to never enter those woods, and many chose to listen, and many chose to oblige the sage wisdom of the staff, for none wished to risk their hides in those trees, but some students, dared to tread to untread paths, whose entrances loomed into the treetops, and yawned like the gaping maws of the hell-mouths of Medieval bestiaries, beckoning all into the twilit bush, rustling as though they were possessed.
There were, apparently, paths that lead into what some of the older students deemed as Hell's Orchard, and those who walked those paths never returned quite the same, if they did return at all. Those who did, though, were not in a right state of mind. They spoke of things that lurked in the corners of their vision, faces in the trees, and of things. Flabby, gelatinous things that flopped and writhed over the half rotted logs, and the thick carpets of mosses. We all dismissed those claims, accusing drugs, or possibly pareidolia, but we still feared of what may lurk in there. All of us, that is, except from my friend, Salazar Cake.

Salazar Cake was a relatively new arrival in school, and he had already gained a peculiar reputation in such a short time. He was known for his lust for odd going-ons, the unusual, and expanding his already vast repertoire of strange knowledge, and pioneered his classes, leaving all in the wake of his formidable intellect.
It was unsurprising that I often found him staring into woods, as though in deep thought, and so began to find out as much as possible about the baleful grove. He spoke with the Headmaster, a man of advanced years, who had been at the school longer than any other member of the staff. He spoke with the older students, who have been there since the earliest years. He spoke also with the gossipers, the grounds man, and even to those who had returned from their fated jaunt into the woods, who now resided in the medical centre, locked away in the brick-lined basement of the building. And so, it was through this line of inquiry, that he found himself in the Library, looking for school records, when he found mention in the earliest text of a book kept by one of the owners of what was now the campus.
This man was a magician of ill-repute, and had done many deeds of which had entered the legends of the area. Practicing black magic, said the patriarch of the Mackenzie's,  consorting with the Devil himself, said the grand-dames of the nearest village, but according to one old man, who's house is built on top of a cliff overlooking the sea, had said that the wizard had ownership of a book. It was this book that had been the source of the wizard’s power, and also was behind the veil that was drawn by the woods. So it was then that Cake had an idea.
To find the book.

II.

It was a few days later that Cake and myself standing at the edge of those woods, gazing into its gloomy abysses. I do not remember quite how Cake had managed to persuade me into joining him into the arboreal nightmare, but yet I felt an unusual compulsion to see what others have not seen, to discover the undiscovered, and to travel upon paths whose mystery was infused into the earth, like flavourings in a tea blend. 

And so, we began our trek into the woods. It seemed idyllic enough at the time, I suppose, but there was a strange taste to the air their. It was metallic and heady, and seemed to drain our energy, like a leech on an unsuspecting swimmer, but we continued on anyway. The interior was heavily overgrown, and the path that we walked on was covered in thick, lush grass, but nothing else grew there. We moved in deeper and deeper, moving briskly, but with as much care as we could muster, for we did not wish to stray off the path. Later, it became apparent that the only noise in there was the wind rustling amongst the breeze. No birds. No insects. Nothing. Just the wind against the leaves. But we still continued deeper into the woods.

It was a few hours into the undergrowth when we stumbled upon an ancient tumulus, to which we stared at in amazement. There wasn’t supposed to be anything out there, but there was, and so Cake began to climb up the barrow, and at the top he noticed a entryway at the top. I scrambled up behind him and as I reached the summit, Cake began to climb down into the blacked depths of the mound. And all alone in the forest I decided to follow him down into what could be hell, for all I knew. 

It was cold down there. Not cold like a midwinter chill, but the chill that you get when the clouds cover the Sun on a cool day. It was damp too, as though the stones that lined the walls have been sweating gently over a long period of time. And I still continued downwards into the darkness. Upon reaching the bottom, the only light was the faint glimmer that shone down from the heavens, but was obscured by the canopy far above. Cake suddenly pulled out a small pocket torch from his pocket, and began to move deeper into the tunnels that surrounded us. The walls where lined in cyclopean masonry, which made me suspect that the structure had been built by the Celts in the time of Sulla. There were no cobwebs down here, just stone, dirt and the shadows which enshrouded the caverns like some primal sunken veil. We continued. Then before us the tunnel began to open outwards, becoming what felt like a dome, in the centre of which was a raised area, which Cake began to approach immediately. I followed closely after him, for I did not wish to be caught be something that haunted the dark. As we drew close to the dais, it became apparent that it was an ancient wooden seat, in which was sitting a shrivelled, desiccated husk of what could have been a man, but as I gazed in shock at the figure, Cake gazed at what it held in it’s hands. What it clutched was what Cake had been searching for ever since his visit to the strange old man whose house was by the sea. For it was the book. 

Sculptural Stuff!

Book Review: Every Dead Thing

The Travelling Man is on the move,

Few will survive the journey.

Charlie Parker is a man fuelled by revenge. A revenge so strong and powerful that it consumes his very being. The cause of his need for violence is The Travelling Man, an enigmatic, demonic man who has taken his wife and child, blinding them and peeling off their faces. This book is a modern Dante's Inferno, following one mans descent into Hell.

The protagonist, Parker, is a private detective, known for his violence and ability to get the job done, but he is a man with a dark past. His wife and daughter where brutally murdered while he was drunk at a bar, and now is a broken man. Until the day where he is drawn in to investigate the disappearance of a young woman, and the mysterious killer begins to kill again, and Parker is thrown back into a world of grief, pain, and suffering. 

As a general rule, I'm not big into detective fiction. Maybe a bit of Conan Doyle, but not a lot else seems to interest me there. Until one day, I picked up a copy of the fifth book in the Charlie Parker series, The Black Angel (also to be reviewed later), and I was hooked. Here was a beautifully crafted story, so brilliantly written, and nigh poetic in it's structure that I fell into it's smothering embrace.

John Connolly, the author of the series, paints a world that at first glance is peaceful and idyllic, but as soon as you turn a corner, bang! The world becomes a dark and dreary thing, populated by criminals, killers, and horrific deeds.

This book, being the first of the series, is also one of the best, with it's gritty labyrinthine narrative,  believable characters and flowing structure.

The author does a fantastic job of making his characters human, but at the same time, making some of his more vicious characters less human, more like supernatural entities driven by some dark power, and all somehow connected, each of these man-monsters all seem to be dragging the world around them into the darkness, maybe pushing others into the darkness of their being, or the darkness of their graves, from which there is no escape. 

And he makes one point clear throughout his books.

Here be monsters.

Fim Review: Tetsuo: The Iron Man

"Game Over"


When you first watch this movie, you may do as I did and rub your eyes, and stare at the screen with astonishment, wondering "What the fuck just happened to me?" This is a natural reaction to Shinya Tsukamoto's seminal cyberpunk classic, Tetsuo: The Iron Man.  This cerebral, black and white mind-fuck was released in 1989, when the once glorious Japanese film industry was floating dead in the water, and the only director who was churning out half-decent movies, Sogo Ishii, was suffering from a creative crisis. Times were dire, and the nations film-makers needed a miracle.
So out from the dark, came roaring and screaming in metallic tones, Tetsuo, a hyperkinetic, surreal, bleak, sterile, and overly mindblowing piece of art, was born, and sent it's father Tsukamoto into the international spotlight.


The basic plot of the film starts off with a man, The Fetishist (played by Shinya Tsukamoto himself), cutting his own leg open and inserting a piece of rebar. Seconds later, he finds the wound infested with maggots, so he runs out of his junk-filled home, into the street, where he is run down, by the Salaryman (Japanese cult actor Tomorowo Taguchi) who's presence is announced by loud and trashy jazz. Then, later in his home, the Salaryman cuts himself while shaving, discovering that a chunk of metal growing out of his face. From there on out, the film descends into some pretty surreal territory, with a five minute phone conversation consisting of nothing but "Hello?" being spoken, the Salaryman being chased by a woman with a metal hand in a train station, some seriously Giger-esque erotic dreams, a giant metal drill-penis (!), and the grande finale, the showdown between the Fetishist and the Salaryman, in what can only be described as the most overly trippy piece of cinematography ever, period.


This movie covers themes that Tsukamoto will return to in his later films, including heightened eroticism as portrayed by the sodomy dream sequence, urban decay shown through the various sets on in the film are cluttered and strewn with junk, how an urban environment is a hostile environment with the harsh black and white film, the near abandonment of the streets in the film, and also the fusion of man and metal, the final metamorphosis into the Iron Man. Sound is also a very important factor in this film, the soundtrack, composed by Chu Ishikawa, is loud, and abrasive, filled with the metallic noises of industrial machinery, combined with synthesiser and drumbeats. This soundtrack is in turn juxtaposed against the relative lack of dialogue, creating what I can guarantee as the loudest silent movie you'll ever see. Spawning two sequels, Tetsuo: The Body Hammer (1992), and Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009) which have met mixed reviews, Iron Man is by far the best of the the three.


If you want to even dare to compare this masterpiece with the works of others, I guess you could say that  if David Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet), and David Cronenburg (Videodrome, The Fly), accidentally got fused together by the Telepods in Cronenburg's The Fly, and they decided to make a movie. While on acid. Apart from that, I don't believe it is actually possible to compare Tsukamoto's films with any Western film, let alone, any film.
Shinya Tsukamoto is a god. 'Nuff said.

First Post!

Greetings!
This is the first post I've posted on this blog, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now.
 So, I feel like introductions are in order!
My name is Nick, a globe-trotting Australian with a perchance for the weird and wonderful, I've lived in many countries, including Australia, Pakistan, Thailand, Uganda, and Rwanda, so it's fair to say that I've seen a lot in my brief time on this earth.
An aspiring artist, I hope to do a foundation course in London, and then go on to get a degree and move into the art world, as well as make some films along the way (hopefully)!
So the idea is to be a bit of everything, a space where I'll put up links that I find interesting, personal art, book and film reviews, opinions, mini-essays, and other odds and ends. I don't know how often I'll update this blog, but I'll try to do it as often as I can.
So, as we have been introduced, I hope that you enjoy this blog, and my ramblings through the things that I find inspiring!

Nick Curnow