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Post by dem bones on Jan 1, 2013 10:05:56 GMT
Same drill as ever. The novels, novellas, shorts, multiple and single author collections, mags, films, tv, blogs, events & co. that most thrilled you in 2012. Anything and everything you read / watched is up for inclusion - it doesn't have to be stuff published in past twelve months!
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 1, 2013 10:39:18 GMT
My great reading experience of 2012 was Wilkie Collins's ARMADALE. This wacky epic about trying to avoid having a prophetic dream come true makes THE WOMAN IN WHITE seem relatively restrained.
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Post by David A. Riley on Jan 1, 2013 10:45:12 GMT
The best reading experience for me from 2012 was discovering the Charlie Parker novels of John Connolly. They wiped out all the other books I read last year.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 1, 2013 11:02:24 GMT
Benson and Whitehead - (Wordsworth editions ). I'd read both authors before in snippets in anthologies but reading the whole bunch of stories together I was extremely impressed by both authors: Premier league players who definitely deserve a higher profile in the horror canon. On balance I favour Whitehead although Benson, when he moved from a certain stereotypical Benson plot, perhaps surpassed Whitehead in a few stories
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Post by Calenture on Jan 1, 2013 11:30:21 GMT
The Honey in the Wall: Found this in The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions (Wordsworth).
Asked someone here once if Onions ever wrote anything as good as Beckoning Fair One and the consensus was that he hadn't. Then I found Honey..., long story of repressed sexual tension set in a huge country house before the Wars, and I haven't forgotten it after months.
Um, are we allowed to choose one short, and one novel?
Then again, maybe forget that.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 1, 2013 14:30:10 GMT
BEST COLLECTIONS: Mary Danby, Party Pieces; Henry S. Whitehead, Voodoo Tales. Two long overdue collections.
BEST NOVELS: Jack Mann, Maker of Shadows; A. Merritt, Creep Shadow Creep; Robert Lory, The Hand of Dracula
BEST ANTHOLOGIES: Hugh Lamb, Star Book of Horror No. 1 and Star Book of Horror No. 2; Richard Dalby, The Virago Book of Ghost Stories
BEST CHILDREN'S COLLECTIONS: Alison Prince, Haunted Children, The Ghost Within, and A Haunting Refrain
BEST CHILDREN'S ANTHOLOGY: Mary Danby, The Green Ghost and Other Stories
BEST NONFICTION BOOK: Neil Barron, Horror Literature: A Reader's Guide
BEST FILM, THEATRICAL RELEASE: Cabin in the Woods. I only saw one film in the theater this year--this one, twice.
BEST FILM, VIDEO RELEASE: Troll Hunter.
BEST MUSICAL: Evil Dead: The Musical. Featuring the show-stopping number "Do the Necronomicon."
BEST TELEVISION SERIES: The River was the only horror-themed series that I watched this year, and it was mostly a disappointment. However, the sixth episode ("Dr. Emmet Cole") lived up to the otherwise wasted potential.
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Post by Calenture on Jan 1, 2013 16:28:48 GMT
Seeing cauldronbrewer's post above reminded me of a DVD I got in 2012 which would probably be appreciated here. Sick Nurses is a Tai film which came admittedly came out some years before and picks up where Dr Phibes signed off. Cropping the synopsis from Wickipedia: In a run-down, suburban Bangkok hospital, young Dr. Tar (Wichan Jarujinda) and seven nurses have been running a scheme to sell dead bodies on the black market. However, one nurse, Tahwaan (Chol Wachananont), has found out that her boyfriend, Dr. Tar, has been having an affair with her sister, Nook (Chidjun Rujiphan). Growing tired of the body-selling scam and enraged by her sister and boyfriend's betrayal, Tahwaan threatens to call the police.
However, before Tahwaan can take action, the doctor and six resident nurses at the hospital strap Tahwaan to an operating table, kill her, and then wrap her in a black plastic garbage bag. They then dump her in the trunk of the doctor’s car, where her corpse will be kept on dry ice until it can be sold.
All the women have their own obsessions and weaknesses. The spirit of Tahwaan uses these obsessions to torment and ultimately kill the other six nurses. Scenes shown toward the end of the film indicate that many of these obsessions were in part encouraged by Dr. Tar, or in some cases, used by him to seduce some of the women. For example, Aeh (Kanya Rattanapetch) seems unhealthily attracted to material possession such as jewelry, dresses, and handbags. One brief scene shows Dr. Tar giving Aeh a handbag that was shown sewn to her head and neck earlier in such a manner that when Nook tries to undo the stitching, Aeh is left decapitated.
It is eventually revealed that Tahwaan was actually a homosexual male who had undergone a sex change so that he could marry Dr. Tar. He finally kills his own sister by being literally reborn through her and as he stares at Tar, he mutters "marriage" and the screen goes black.The bathtub scene is to die for. It goes on quite a long time...
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Post by dem bones on Jan 2, 2013 7:31:29 GMT
here's some:
Best book read in 2012: Theodore Roszac's Flicker!
Other novels hugely enjoyed: C. [Cherry] Veheyne - Horror: A Grim Story Of Jack the Ripper John Ajivide Lindqvist - Let The Right One In Tim Greaves - Vampyres Jackie Askew - SunDown, SunRise Basil Copper - The Curse Of The Fleers
Anthologies & single author collections:
Stephen Jones (ed.) - Zombie Apocalypse - Fightback Stephen Jones (ed.) - Best New Horror 23 Charles Black (ed.) - The Ninth Black Book Of Horror Jack Adrian (ed.) - Sexton Blake Wins Richard Dalby (ed.) - Mammoth Book Of Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories Paul Kane & Mary O'Regan (eds.) - Body Horror
It was the year of the debut collections, in the cases of the late Richard Davis (Female Of The Species), Mary Danby (Party Pieces), Craig Herbertson (The Heaven Makers and David Riley (His Own Mad Demons) several decades overdue. Thana Niveau's From Hell To Eternity and Paul Finch's Enemies At The Door were other highlights. Also, I took the scenic route about it, but finally got to read the six stories that comprise Leslie Charteris's The Fantastic Saint!
Magazine: Paperback Fanatic, with issue 22 being personal best of the best.
Non fiction: Bruce Pennington - A portrait of a master fantasy artist Vols 1 & 2 James Chapman - British Comics: A Cultural History Robin Ince - Bad Book Club Patrick Pringle - Stand And Deliver: The Story Of The Highwaymen
Event: Screening of Zombie Apocalypse: Fightback promo Down Among The Dead Men at Camden. Many thanks to Stephen Jones for unexpected invite and kindness extended me all evening by himself and guests. Paperback & Pulp Fair Substitute of the Year. Car boot sale at Saint Mary's and St. Michael's School, Sutton Road, London E1 on June 30th 2012. Theodore Roszac's Flicker, Book Of Lists: Horror, Murder Ink: The Mystery Readers Companion, Peter Haining's Pictorial History Of Horror, Romero & Sparrow's Dawn Of The Dead, and Will Eisner's True Haunted Houses And Ghosts.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 2, 2013 11:28:31 GMT
Bought and read a lot of stuff, a lot after recommendations here in the vault. BEST NOVEL: Most fun was Christopher Fowler's Horror Train. BEST ANTHO/COLLECTION: I was never a "fan" of the short-story, but I think I read more anthos then novels this year, maybe thanks to the Kindle. I know I would never have bought some of them for the original prices. Top position is Reggie Oliver with Mrs. Midnight & Masques of Satan. Gaslight Grotesque:Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes had some surprisingly strong stories. Honorable mention (as I didn't made enough progress to judge) to Zombie Apocalypse 1&2 and Best New Horror 23. Also to the still waiting to be read From Hell to Eternity & Black Book of Horror. MAGAZINES: Paperback Fanatic comes first. Well done, Justin. Little Shoppe of Horrors was also a good one. MOVIES: I have to thank again the vaulters for informing me. Special thanks for H.P.Saucecraft and Lord P.. You guys should receive royalties Most interesting was Theater Bizarre. Old 70s movies like Satan's Slave and Devil's Nightmare were also a lot of fun. Worsts one of the bunch was The Wicker Tree, though. I know, I should have heeded the warning, but boy, this screenplay never should have been produced. TV: Too much to list all. The Walking Dead still leave me cold. True Blood with its "who cares if it makes sense" attitude is still fun though. Blood and Boobs of course also help. Dr.Who also was fun. I can understand why people hate it, sometimes it is unbearably saccharine, also it often operates on the premise "to hell with internal logic", but when Moffat is on, it is like a runaway train and you just want to see how his sleight of hand is done. Midsomer Murder Season 14 was a bit hit and miss, but overall I liked it. Lewis I loved unconditionally.[/i] Most pleasant surprise: Kim Newman's new edition of Anno Dracula at Titan's was worth its money with all its new material. COMICS: The only thing I still follow is everything Hellboy and 2000AD. Loved the end of Nikolai Dante. Well done! But Marvel and DC finally managed to kill my interest in their product. Soulless and overpriced books with obnoxious advertising.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 2, 2013 22:40:16 GMT
Read a lot of crime last year - Ian Rankin, Reginald Hill, Donna Leon, Henning Mankell (whose Depths is a pretty disturbing book). Joe Lansdale's The Bottoms, set in the deep South in the 1930s, was great. Enjoyed Peter Straub's Dark Matter. Adrian Ross's The Hole of the Pit in Uncanny Banquet was a highlight. Non fiction - Johnny Mains' Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares was great, the biography of Dennis Wheatley, The Devil is a Gentleman, was brilliant, as was Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives, about the many biographers of the great man over the centuries. The Invention of Murder, about 19th century crime and its reporting was terrific. Magazines - Paperback Fanatic of course, especially the Pennington volumes, and Wormwood, which is always good. Of other older stuff, highlights were The House on the Borderland, various Creeps volumes, The Wizard of Berner's Abbey, in the complete original edition, and the '30s werewolf novel, Lycanthia. Also The Weird, which is a great anthology, and Ray Russell's collection Ghosts and the accompanying CD. Loved reading pre-code horror comics in the form of the Haunted Horror series of reprints.
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Post by Robert Adam Gilmour on Jan 5, 2013 18:10:24 GMT
BOOKS: Sadly I barely read any fiction this year, therefor not much to say on the forums, but I read my first Tanith Lee in a short story and it was easily the prose fiction highlight of the year.
COMICS: Strangely after largely losing interest in comics (even though I still love making them) I find two of the best series ever that I passed on like five years ago. Berserk by Miura and Drifting Classroom by Umezu are like no other comics I've read. Getting into Dave Cooper, Mattotti and Carlos Nine too. Some stuff by old favorite Richard Corben. Now that I barely pay much attention to comics, I'm enjoying them more than in years.
ART: Josef Fenneker, Guo Fengyi, Andre Ethier, Charles Burchfield, Fenwick Lawson
TV: I'm really appreciating how much more rich and complete an experience Mad Men is compared to even a lot of the better tv shows. Breaking Bad gripped me by the throat this year, the end of the 4th season had me more excited than I've probably ever been by a tv drama.
FILM: Compared to the amount of films I've seen this year, very little I'd recommend sadly. Kotoko, Kaboom and The Red Shoes are probably the highlights but some of them may have been from the year before and I may be forgetting some.
MUSIC: Art Zoyd, Comus, His Name Is Alive, Immortal, DeathSpell Omega, Lowlife, Wolves In Throne Room, King Diamond/Mercyful Fate, Skinny Puppy, Ruins/Koenjihyakkei, Queen Adreena/Daisy Chainsaw, The Church, Breathless, Bathory. But my discovery of the year is solo Peter Hammill.
PRETTY PEOPLE: Topless models Tessa Fowler, Charlotte, Suzie Q and Sarah Rae. Actresses Mia Wasikowska and Meg Tilly (I cant believe she isnt more famous). Mancrush on actor Vincent Kartheiser.
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Post by Calenture on Jan 5, 2013 19:39:26 GMT
FILM: Compared to the amount of films I've seen this year, very little I'd recommend sadly. Kotoko, Kaboom and The Red Shoes are probably the highlights... By The Red Shoes, you mean the Korean horror movie?
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Post by Robert Adam Gilmour on Jan 5, 2013 21:27:24 GMT
The old Powell version.
Is the Korean one good?
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Post by Calenture on Jan 5, 2013 21:39:35 GMT
The old Powell version. Is the Korean one good? I think the Powell version must be the better film. Love his films. The Korean version seems to be a more gruesome take on the Hans Christian Anderson story. I did watch a lot of Asian cinema in past years - the best Asian (Korean) horror film I've found is A Tale of Two Sisters. I need to watch the Korean Red Shoes again, but I'll just say I've probably seen better.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 5, 2013 23:56:42 GMT
BOOKS: Sadly I barely read any fiction this year, therefor not much to say on the forums, but I read my first Tanith Lee in a short story and it was easily the prose fiction highlight of the year. Which story was it? She's written a number of brilliant ones (along with some I found too flowery or philosophical for my tastes). Off the top of my head, here are five of my favorites: Huzdra (The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series V, ed. Gerald W. Page) When the Clock Strikes (Red as Blood) Wolfland (Red As Blood) The Princess and Her Future (Red as Blood) The Hill (The Mammoth Book of Monsters, ed. Stephen Jones)In terms of collections, I've read--and enjoyed--both Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer (1983; all retellings of fairy tales) and The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales (1985). Her Cyrion stories (collected in a 1982 fix-up novel) are also fun (and relatively light) if you like fantasy-adventure. She's written dozens of novels, though I haven't read any of them. I'd like to give Lycanthia a try sometime in the near future ( this book, not to be confused with the 1930s novel mentioned by James a few posts above).
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