Medium • 17/11/2024

Review: Blood Curse (2023) — A Haunting Blend of Historical Depth, Character Focus and Cinematic…

Blood Curse (Indonesian: Teluh Darah) is an Indonesian horror miniseries that debuted on Disney+ Hotstar in February 2023. The series is directed and co-written by Kimo Stamboel, Indonesian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stamboel previously gained recognition for titles such as DreadOut (2019), The Queen of Black Magic (2019), and Ivanna (2022), all of which are characterized by horror and thriller elements. Blood Curse continues Stamboel’s legacy in the horror genre, drawing its inspiration from Indonesian black magic.

12/11/2024

Building a Cohesive Storyworld: Balancing Narrative, Art, and Design

An extended version of the slides from my talk at Guildford College & Bracknell and Wokingham College.

Virtual Talk • 23/10/2024

Virtual Talk at Guildford College & Bracknell and Wokingham College

On October 22, 2024, I was invited to give a virtual talk to students from the CreaTech Faculty at Guildford College & Bracknell and Wokingham College.

Medium • 29/09/2024

Exploring Sibling Dynamics in Alien: Romulus (2024) — A Review

Directed by Fede Álvarez, Alien: Romulus (2024) is the latest installment in the Alien franchise. Álvarez gained recognition for directing the horror films Evil Dead (2013) and Don’t Breathe (2016), setting high expectations for audiences familiar with his cinematic style.

Medium • 15/06/2024

Book Review: Stephen King’s Pet Seminary (1983)

Stephen King is undoubtedly a masterful writer with a unique ability to tap into our deepest fears. “Pet Sematary,” like many of King’s works, is a finely crafted tale of horror. The story is structured with precision, the sentences are meticulously composed to support the ebb and flow of tension, and the characters’ thoughts offer a raw glimpse into the dread and horror they experience as the story unfolds.

Medium • 27/12/2022

Circularity in Storytelling — with The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers of Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022).

It’s simple: The story ends where it begins.

Circular storytelling means that some elements from the beginning of the story (re-)appear at the end of the story. Elements (re-)appearing at the end of the story are usually in a stark contrast to the elements at the beginning of the story.

Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022) is a heart-warming story that ema

Medium • 05/12/2022

Parasite (2019) Review: A Violent Collision of Two Worlds

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Parasite (2019) is a Korean dark comedy-drama that masterfully exposes the reality of class division, following two families whose worlds violently collide as one infiltrates the life of the other. Beyond the narrative, Bong employs visual architecture and beautiful camera movements to emphasize the contrasting worlds of these families.

animationstudies 2.0 • 20/01/2020

If You Heat It, It Melts: How Andersen’s Icy-Cold Queen Evolved into a Heart-Warming Sister

It is well-known that a major source of inspiration for Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee’s Frozen (2013) was Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen (1844). Buck and Lee follow the Danish writer’s story by building the feature’s plot on a search for the Snow Queen.

Honors Review 11 • 15/06/2018

Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant: A Dialectical Fusion of Memory, Remembrance, and Forgetting

The possibility of interpreting the characters’ past in multiple ways produces alternative narrative tracks, or alternative histories, within the story world.