Nepenthe

TLS Twenty years ago, Terry Gilliam, founder member of Monty Python (designer of that famous foot) and director of such cinematic fantasies as Brazil, Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, sat down to lunch with Alan Moore, a writer of comic books, and as celebrated in his own field as Gilliam was in his. They had agreed to talk about Watchmen, Moore’s eccentrically brilliant, 400-page graphic novel. How, Gilliam asked, would one go about transposing such a book on to film? “Well actually”, said Moore, “I wouldn’t.” Gilliam took the advice but others in Hollywood, scenting a potential hit, were less easily dissuaded. The project spent years in larval form, existing only as draft scripts and airily speculative cast lists while a conga line of directors was rumoured, one by one, first to be weeks away from production then to have washed their hands of it entirely. Only now, two decades after Moore deterred Gilliam from the attempt, has a film finally arrived, borne upon a ...

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Rebecca Stephens for Nth Position The vampire is now an archetypal figure, shrouded in cliché, but as a folk-belief one of its earliest incarnations was within Hebrew tales of Lilith and other demons. Ironically, it was an image which was to be turned against Judaism by the Christians of the middle ages, and used as a cipher for many monstrous desires and fears ever since. "If any man whosoever of the house of Israel... eat blood, I will set my face against his soul, and will cut him off from among his people. Because the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you, that you may make atonement with it upon the altar of your souls." "Only beware of this, that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is for the soul. And therefore thou must not eat the soul with the flesh: But thou shalt pour it on the earth as water." [ 1 ] Long before the workings of the circulatory system were discovered, many of the world's cultures accorded blood mystical pro...

In this groundbreaking new look at rape edited by writer and activist Jaclyn Freidman and Full Frontal Feminism and He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut author Jessica Valenti, the way we view rape in our culture is finally dismantled and replaced with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure. Feminist, political, and activist writers alike will present their ideas for a paradigm shift from the “No Means No” model—an approach that while necessary for where we were in 1974, needs an overhaul today. Yes Means Yes will bring to the table a dazzling variety of perspectives and experiences focused on the theory that educating all people to value female sexuality and pleasure leads to viewing women differently, and ending rape. Yes Means Yes aims to have radical and far-reaching effects: from teaching men to treat women as collaborators and not conquests, encouraging men and women that women can enjoy sex instead of being shamed for it, and ultimately, that our children can i...

Accompanying this review is a photograph of Michael Douglas looking like Whiskers McCrazy. Why do people who look like this resent being treated as if they look like this? Security guards are attracted to him like bears to honey. Did it occur to anyone that "King of California" might have been funnier if he'd been groomed like the tycoons he's played in all those corporate roles, his hair slicked back like Pat Riley's? To be sure, it would be hard to explain how his character, Charlie, got the wardrobe and the grooming in the institution he has just been discharged from, but that could be part of the fun: "I cut my hair in a mirror with a nail clipper, and didn't you ever see one of those prison-break movies where they make Nazi uniforms out of old blankets?" He would be explaining that to his 16-year-old daughter, Miranda ( Evan Rachel Wood ), who has been living parentless at home for the last two years; her mother walked out some time ago, and s...