After graduating a media degree, Sam tried her hand at teaching English in a failed attempt to escape the UK. Until another plan presents itself, she currently devotes her spare time to penning petty rants about whatever happens to capture her heart or incur her wrath. Intermittent ruminations appear on Fringe magazine’s blog.  Her debut novel - a rather unnecessary tale of disconnection, sex, and Spectacle - is a work in progress, and likely to remain (safely) unpublished.

Meatloaf

Just imagine; people simply get bored of consumerism, vandalism, of all isms in general. The good times when we bought all manner of unnecessary things with borrowed money were merely a blip on our otherwise toilsome shared existence; the recession was a return to the norm, rather than a rough patch. 

From a tower block’s heady heights

Michael Fassbender dances with remarkable grace around a very fine and precarious line between loosely paternal amicability towards Mia and something altogether more adult. Without having to speak, Katie Jarvis conveys pitch perfect responses to the attentions and charms of this older man.

Face-based landscapes

RAGE made its debut simultaneously onscreen, on DVD, online and as a mobile download. Gimmicky? Perhaps. But it may well be the film’s saving grace.

A multifunctional gem

Would you have thought a self-described ‘fuckumentory’ featuring Ice-T couldn’t be enlightening? Think again. Perhaps surprisingly, it is wordsmith Ice who provides some of the funniest and most convincing examples of when no other word will do. 

Future un-presented

Unlike a typical documentary photograph, making reference to an event which has already occurred, these images can be seen to inhabit a more flexible, perhaps even timeless, space, allowing the viewer to contemplate both a possible past and future.

The hypnotic power of television

Despite the abundance of homage within the film, it is distinctive and innovative enough to have its own individual presence. The story itself is familiar territory, but it is told with enough vigour and flair to keep things interesting.

Seeds of rebellion

Paronnaud’s rendering of Satrapi’s graphic novel is such a joy to behold. This is a film that simply had to be animated, not only because it is maintaining the style and mood of the source material, but mainly for the fact that it enables the entire story to be imbued with Marjane’s vibrant personality.

A life with no hope of escape

The film bathes in the banal: during a fantastically impressive storm, one luckless man finds no respite in the overcrowded bus shelter, another repeatedly tries (and fails) to choose the fastest queue to wait in, another runs for an elevator whose doors close just a moment too soon – its occupants unmoved and unresponsive.

Social graces gone askew

Heller has a keen eye for nuances in behaviour; her books are chronicles of social graces gone askew, awkward moments, miscommunication and tension.