Archive for May, 2011

Fascination (1979)

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This is why you don't bring a knife to scythe fight.

Note: this review contains spoilers. Proceed with caution.

According to exploitation legend, the story of Fascination started when Jean Rollin imagined two turn-of-the-century women dancing, and indeed that is the image that opens the film. The women are Elizabeth (Franca Mai) and Eva (Brigitte Lahaie), two of a circle of noblewomen, led by Hélène (Fanny Magier), who have developed a taste for human blood and lure unsuspecting men to their midnight ceremonies. Into their clutches wanders Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), a thief on the run from the partners he’s double-crossed. In short, it’s pretty much lesbian vampire story 1A.

The Diamond Age (1995)

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"I wear the beard, it does not wear me."

The Diamond Age is a, somewhat indirect, sequel to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel, Snow Crash, which explored a world where nation-states had broken down and been replaced by distributed republics called “Franchise Oriented Quasi-National Entities” (FOQNEs)—autonomous enclaves run as franchises of some corporation, party, or ideal, e.g. “Narcolombia” (the Medellin cartel), “CosaNostra Pizza” (the mafia), and so on. The plot concerned a memetic virus modelled on the Sumerian concept of me—a sort of programming language for human brains.