Calm and Chaos: An Interview with Rebeccah Love by Mike Thorn (In Review Online)

Preceded by RipeParlour Palm, and A Woman’s BlockEve’s Parade is filmmaker Rebeccah Love’s final entry in a quartet of films depicting women who struggle against societal expectations, fall into madness, and recover with the help of neighbours. The first three films in this quartet have played through TIFF, VIFF, FNC, and CBC; been featured in the Montreal Gazette, the Psychiatric Eye (the Royal College of Psychiatry’s quarterly publication, UK); and premiered alongside talks by CAMH’s Chief Psychiatrists. In May, Love has been invited to deliver talks in London and Cambridge, UK through the NHS and residents’ associations about her creative depictions of psychosis and her vision for community crisis care.

Eve Parade will premiere on April 16 at the Paradise Theatre in Toronto. Author and film critic Mike Thorn sat down with Love to discuss her political and artistic visions, aesthetics, and form in Eve’s Parade, and her quartet’s various thematic concerns.

Read Thorn’s interview with Love.

Film International, “The Houses That Hooper Built – American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper”

“This juxtaposition between some admittedly cheesy films and their serious thematic undercurrents can be jarring, and nowhere is this effect more evident than in Mike Thorn’s ‘Lizard Brain Ouroboros: Human Antiexceptionalism in Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive and Crocodile.’ These films are not the director’s best by a longshot (although the former, his 1976 follow-up to Texas Chain Saw, has enjoyed a cult following), but Thorn skillfully dissects how they illustrate ‘the [triune brain] theory…that human cognition’s roots can be traced to the nonhuman animal world’ (106). The boundary separating these worlds dissolves, and viewers may find themselves rooting more for the so-called ‘monsters’ than the oblivious humans exploiting them.”

Read the full review.

Kendall Reviews Guest Post: A Cinematic Mood Board for Peel Back and See

“As a whole, Peel Back and See is probably my bleakest book to date, with only a few diversions into more playful genre territory (e.g. ‘Mr. Mucata’s Final Requests’, ‘The Furnace Room Mutant’, and ‘Virus’). For the most part, these stories are awash in the personal affective experiences of chronic depression, anxiety, psychological ruptures, post-postmodern despair, addiction, loss, grief, nihilism, pessimism, and suicidal ideation.”

Read the full post and see the list.

STORM WARNING/CRAWLSPACE Double-disc now available (featuring Mike Thorn’s foreword, “An Auteur is Born”)

Howlin’ Wolf Records proudly presents a 2-CD set with music composed and performed by accomplished Director and Composer Jamie Blanks – Storm Warning (2007) and Crawlspace (2012). Both scores won “Best Musical Score” at Screamfest the only two years Blanks entered scores for competition at the festival.

With a foreword by author Mike Thorn, detailed notes on both scores by Jamie Blanks, and an epilogue by author Adrian Roe, STORM WARNING/CRAWLSPACE features Howlin’ Wolf Records’ most extensive packaging to date with a 32-page, full-color booklet, stunning photography by both Terry Hope and Hugh Fleming, and gorgeous original artwork by Hugh Fleming, all gloriously crafted and designed by longtime Howlin’ Wolf Records Art Director, Luis Miguel Rojas.

Order now.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑