Matt smith

Tuesday

August 6, 2024

What is the point of the George R.R. Martin extended universe?

And so House of the Dragon has come to the end of its second season. It is fair to say that, for all the intrigue and fruity British character actors on screen (first place as far as I’m concerned: the great Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong, “the only gentleman in an ungentlemanly world”), the series is still finding its feet and has yet to provide the visceral thrills that might be expected of it. As my esteemed colleague Matt McDonald described it, “the second season was basically all foreplay. The first season ended with ‘wow, they’re about to fight some dragons.’ Then this season ends after one dragon fight and the promise ‘oh wow, now they’re really going to fight some dragons.’” There are undoubted improvements in this more confident second outing.

Tuesday

November 14, 2023

Ross Anderson

The birth, death and rebirth of American Psycho: The Musical

American Psycho was never supposed to be a hit. Bret Easton Ellis thought Glamorama would be his big seller, and Psycho was just an odd interlude; an experiment with form that mocked the disconnection, inanity and opulent obliviousness of America’s new, young, hyper-materialist upper crust. It was also a cloaked reflection of repressed homosexuality, written by a gay author who once dated a closeted financier. It’s not even that violent. Most of it is just the interior monologue of this cold man listing the clothes and food and bad music that occupies his hollow mind. And it was intensely funny, but dryly, darkly so. In short, it wasn’t an obvious literary smash.