Vincent Lannoo's Vampires is a Belgian comedy / mockumentary that definitely seems worth a look.

Rather a good marketing ploy for both True Blood and Entertainment Weekly! I'd certainly buy these 'collector's copies' if I had the opportunity. Season 4 starts tonight (June 26) on HBO. This season is based on Dead to the World, in which Eric is cursed by witches and has amnesia. He takes shelter in Sookie’s house and completely devoid of power and politics, they fall in love. Here's a brief preview, gets better as it goes on: Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMRPpjOJ70 Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pt-clMON2E&feature=related

It’s a dark and rainy day in Scarborough and I’m attending a very interesting interdisciplinary symposium (which you can see here) which brings together academics, performance artists/practitioners, digital artists, and musicians to discuss commonalities and synergies. I’m talking later about my research on Gothic fiction but was wondering how it would fit with such a broad spectrum of themes. There seems to be no need for concern. There has been talk of an art installation that only operates when there is no one in the room, making absence central to the subjectivity of the viewer. A pr

Radio 4, 11.30 am, today, or available on the BBC's Listen Again service. How did vampires make the transition from Transylvanian castles to California?

Edinburgh Festival Venue: Charlotte Square Gardens 13/082011 If gothic fiction is usually associated with the 19th century, then two British authors have brought the genre bang up to date. Richard T Kelly's novel The Possessions of Doctor Forrest and Kevin MacNeil's A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde use the classic gothic rejection of rationality to craft contemporary stories that are paranoid, deliciously dark, sometimes erotically charged and often downright terrifying. From the Official Edinburgh Festival website.

See Andrew Gallix on 'Hauntology: A not-so-new critical manifestation' in Friday's Guardian online.

A couple of years ago I found myself on a long haul flight watching, without a hint of irony, a very Gothic film with a heavily environmental message. It concerned a sentient robot stranded on a dead planet amidst the ruins of civilisation, and proceeded to portray a dystopian vision of the decadent remains of humanity, wallowing in their own corpulence, slaves to mega-corporations and a psychotic computer overlord. The film in question was Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E (2008). Wall-E revolves around the discovery of the first plant to grow on Earth in centuries following our wasteful destruction o

Today marks the European release of the long-awaited sequel to American McGee’s Alice (2000), Alice: Madness Returns, now available on the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

First B&Q, now Woolite.

The next Twisted Tales event takes place on Friday 5th August at 6.00 pm, Waterstone's Liverpool One. Link to Official Facebook page.