Book Review: Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

“Loneliness came over him, like an avalanche of snow. He was alone. Where he had always wanted to be. You can only trust yourself. There’s a rat buried deep in everybody and they’ll rat on you if they get pushed far enough.”

With the film tie-in paperback due to be released on 9th December, Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham was first published in 1946 and follows a young and ambitious carny, Stan Carlisle, who plays a mentalist on stage alongside his harried wife. Soon enough, he graduates to a full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking.

Book Review: Guillermo del Toro: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work by Ian Nathan

“A complete and intimate study of the life and work of one of modern cinema’s most truly unique directors, whose distinct aesthetic and imagination are unmatched in contemporary film.”

Guillermo del Toro: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work is an unauthorised and unofficial biography by Ian Nathan of one of modern cinema’s most truly unique directors. A complete and intimate study of the life and work of Guillermo del Toro, the book charts the progression of a career that has produced some of contemporary cinema’s most revered scenes and idiosyncratic characters.

Film Review: The Shape of Water

Directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water is set in a top secret research facility in the 1960s, where a lonely mute janitor, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), discovers a secret classified experiment – a mysterious, scaled creature from South America that lives in a water tank. With the help of her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins), Elisa rescues the creature from being captive by a hostile government agent, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), after the two form a unique relationship.

DVD Review: Crimson Peak

Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Crimson Peak is set in the aftermath of a family tragedy, when a young, aspiring author (Mia Wasikowska) is torn between love for her childhood friend (Charlie Hunnan) and the temptation of a mysteriously seductive outsider (Tom Hiddleston). Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak.

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DVD Review: Pacific Rim

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Directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, Pacific Rim is a science-fiction monster film set in a dystopian future when legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, rise from the sea from an inter-dimensional portal on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. On the brink of a war that would take millions of lives and consume all of humanity’s resources, a special type of weapon is devised to combat the giant Kaiju: massive robots called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. On the verge of defeat, commanding officer Stacker Pentecos (Idris Elba) turns to two unlikely heroes – a washed up former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi) – who, together, stand as mankind’s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.

Guillermo del Toro and Paul Williams To Make Pan’s Labyrinth Sing

(Written for Lost In The Multiplex)

Guillermo del Toro and Paul Williams have teamed up to make a staged musical production of Pan’s Labyrinth, it has been reported this week.

Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Del Toro and originally released in 2006, is a Spanish-language fantasy horror/drama that follows a young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer who escapes into an eerie but captivating world of magic and mythical creatures.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio Promises A “More Complex” Puppet Adventure

(Written for Lost In The Multiplex)

A set of new images released earlier this month give us the first look at Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming 3D stop-motion animation, Pinocchio.

The fantasy adventure will be based on the 1883 children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio written by Carlo Collodi, which was famously adapted by Disney in 1940, and which follows the beloved puppet Pinocchio who embarks on a series of extraordinary and thrilling adventures.

Guillermo Del Toro To Direct Emma Watson In A Retelling Of ‘Beauty And The Beast’

(Written for BritScene)

We have seen a number of re-imaginations of children’s fairytales lately, with Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland in 2010 and Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood in 2011, and we can expect to see many more classics being retold in a darker context over the next couple of years, including Mirror Mirror: The Untold Adventures of Snow White and Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012, and in 2013 with Jack The Giant Killer and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.