Of all the unlikely evergreen subjects, famous serial killers might seem the most unlikely, yet there are new media about the big ones—and Ted Bundy certainly is one of those—every year. With The Bundy Archive: Genealogies of White Masculinity (University Press of Mississippi, 2026), Bryan J. McCann has exhumed Bundy to explain the relationship between… Continue reading Bryan J. McCann: Tending the Bundy Archive
Human culture has been deeply interested in murder and the macabre since our ancient ghost stories and monster tales. We’ve since made celebrities of our real-life serial killers. With the recent release of Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built (2018), which can be seen as a much longer, artier version of Mary Harron… Continue reading If Books Could Kill
Somehow over the past decade or so, Scarlett Johansson has emerged in film as the ultimate human. She shook Bob Harris (Bill Murray) out of a late-life lull in Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003). She repeated Logan’s Run in The Island (2005). She’s the voice of the artificially intelligent operating system in Spike Jonze’s… Continue reading Blank Solitude: The Alien Gaze of Under the Skin
Cinema is our most viable and enduring form of design fiction. More than any other medium, it lets us peer into possible futures projected from the raw materials of the recent past, simulate scenes based on new visions via science and technology, gauge our reactions, and adjust our plans accordingly. These visions are equipment for… Continue reading Is Anyone There? On her and Transcendence
No surprise: Veronica Mars: The Movie plays to the strengths of the franchise: Veronica’s chronically conflicted convictions, Keith’s ever-watchful eye, Logan’s inability to avoid controversy, the stability of Wallace, Mac, and Piz, and the loyal support of its fans. Full disclosure: I am one of the 91,585 Kickstarter backers of this movie, I watched it three times… Continue reading Veronica Mars: Take the Long Way Home
