Michael Walters
Notes from the peninsula
Welcome!
This is my little word garden on the internet—Michael Walters, author (it’s true!). I have a speculative fiction novel, THE COMPLEX, out with Salt Publishing, and I’m deep in the writing of a follow-up. I would love it if you gave it a try.
I use Bluesky to connect with people, Letterboxd to track films, and StoryGraph to track books. Follow me and say hello in all those places.
And if you want more of my thoughts on writing in particular, you can subscribe to my posts on PATREON. There’s a Weird and Wonderful tier if you want to support me with a donation, and that now includes notes on the novels I’m reading, but I post regularly to all patrons.
Switching
I’ve always switched between interests. When I beat myself up over it, it never ends well. Different parts of my life need attention at different times—health, family, creative writing, cinema and film, food and cooking, playing a musical instrument, learning another language, software development—when I neglect one, it invariably comes up as a desire in some shape or form sooner or later, and ignoring that intuitive reminder is when the trouble starts.
I can be too rigid around these identities. If I’m not writing, I’m not a writer. Not helpful. Life is much more interesting and complicated than that. I write in my notebook every day. I cook meals for myself and my family every day. I manage a software team in a full-time job. It’s not like in those Richard Scarry books about what adults do all day. We are not the jobs we do, and I can’t believe I need to remind myself of the trap, but it’s been in the back of my mind most of my life.
We can be everything we want to be, perhaps swimming more in the shallows than getting out into the deep water for most things, and for me, that is a healthy space to be creatively.
I know why I beat myself up over the writing for so long. It took the reality of being published (Nobody cares! There’s no money for writers! It’s a racket for the publishing industry!) and then my father slowly dying to break the narrative in my head.
We can only do one thing at a time and there’s a cost to switching. That’s true. We are also complex beings that thrive on making connections between things. A meal I make might find its way into a story I’m writing. While practicing guitar, a solution to a coding problem might pop into my head.
Intuition doesn’t care what you’re doing. It connects. When I put down fixed ideas of success and pay attention in all areas of my life, everything becomes easier. The internal drama dissolves. I feel calmer, the whole is clearer, and everything is more meaningful and fun.
Seen, Read: 2024
- FILMS IN ALL CAPS (C if in cinema)
- Books, by author, on end date (with start date)
- Short stories in italics
In the spirit of Steven Soderbergh’s media list:
- 01.01 SILENT NIGHT
- 02.01 Assembly, Natasha Brown (01.01)
- 06.01 Infidelities, Kirsty Gunn (31.12)
- 07.01 PRISCILLA (C)
- 10.01 OLD HENRY
- 13.01 SISU
- 14.01 THE ACCOUNTANT
- 21.01 THE HOLDOVERS (C)
- 23.01 SHOWING UP
- 27.01 ALL OF US STRANGERS (C)
- 30.01 SLY
- 07.02 ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL
- 11.02 ARGYLLE (C)
- 13.02 August Blue, Deborah Levy (07.01)
- 15.02 THE ZONE OF INTEREST (C)
- 17.02 AMERICAN FICTION (C)
- 24.02 APOCALYPSE NOW
- 04.03 THE KILLING
- 06.03 CASABLANCA
- 08.03 THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
- 10.03 DUNE: PART TWO (C)
- 11.03 HOLLYWOOD DREAMS & NIGHTMARES: THE ROBERT ENGLUND STORY
- 13.03 THE TASTE OF THINGS (C)
- 16.03 NO HARD FEELINGS
- 19.03 BREATHLESS
- 20.03 PERFECT DAYS (C)
- 21.03 BLUE JAY
- 23.03 GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE
- 24.03 GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (C)
- 27.03 IMMACULATE (C); The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks (18.03)
- 29.03 CELL
- 30.03 THE BEEKEEPER
- 31.03 GODZILLA × KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (C); Luster, Raven Leilani (29.03)
- 05.04 KUNG FU PANDA 4 (C)
- 07.04 GOLDENEYE (C)
- 10.04 THE TOMB OF LIGEIA
- 14.04 CIVIL WAR (C)
- 15.04 THE PIGEON TUNNEL
- 16.04 The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories, Edgar Allan Poe (14.03)
- 20.04 ABIGAIL (C)
- 22.04 TAKEN
- 24.04 DEATH RACE 2000 (1975)
- 25.04 ZOMBIES CREEPING FLESH
- 26.04 MONOLITH; A Man Named Doll, Jonathan Ames (17.04)
- 27.04 HOUSE OF USHER (1960)
- 28.04 MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (C)
- 04.05 X; PEARL
- 06.05 THE FALL GUY (C)
- 11.05 Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, ed. Joan Passey (08.04)
- 13.05 ROLLING THUNDER
- 15.05 You Were Never Really Here, Jonathan Ames (15.05)
- 17.05 STEVE! (MARTIN) A DOCUMENTARY IN 2 PIECES
- 19.05 BLUE BLOOD
- 19.05 KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (C)
- 20.05 The Sea Inside Me, Sarah Dobbs (16.05)
- 23.05 FALLEN LEAVES
- 25.05 RESULTS
- 26.05 FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (C)
- 31.05 All Fours, Miranda July (26.05)
- 03.06 LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL
- 04.06 CASINO ROYALE (C)
- 06.06 DARIO ARGENTO: PANICO
- 08.06 THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE
- 12.06 A Far Cry From Kensington, Muriel Spark (03.06)
- 13.06 THE CAT O’NINE TAILS
- 15.06 GODZILLA MINUS ONE
- 16.06 INSIDE OUT 2
- 17.06 FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET
- 18.06 THE GODFATHER (C)
- 19.06 Parade, Rachel Cusk (12.06)
- 21.06 DEEP RED
- 06.07 SUSPIRIA (1977); MAXXXINE (C)
- 07.07 A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE (C)
- 08.07 INFERNO (1980)
- 09.07 TENEBRE
- 12.07 UNDER PARIS
- 13.07 DESPICABLE ME 4 (C)
- 17.07 TWISTERS (C)
- 21.07 FLY ME TO THE MOON (C)
- 22.07 In Ascension, Martin MacInnes (09.07)
- 23.07 LONGLEGS (C)
- 27.07 PHENOMENA; Double Fault, Lionel Shriver (27.07)
- 28.07 DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (C)
- 31.07 OPERA
- 07.08 TWO EVIL EYES
- 10.08 BORDERLANDS (C)
- 11.08 TRAP (C)
- 12.08 TRAUMA
- 14.08 SHARK SKIN MAN AND PEACH HIP GIRL
- 15.08 Seraglio, Graham Swift
- 16.08 The Tunnel, Graham Swift
- 17.08 TWISTER; The Lonely Songs of Lauren Dorr, George R.R. Martin
- 18.08 ALIEN: ROMULUS (C); Sun and Moon, Katherine Mansfield
- 20.08 THE STENDHAL SYNDROME
- 22.08 CHILDREN OF MEN
- 28.08 Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, Terrance Dicks (27.08)
- 01.09 JAWS (C)
- 09.09 UNRELATED
- 14.09 BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (C)
- 15.09 LEE (C)
- 21.09 HIT MAN
- 27.09 A HISTORY OF HORROR
- 28.09 WHITE HOUSE DOWN
- 29.09 WOLFS
- 01.10 Alison, Lizzy Stewart (20.09)
- 06.10 JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX (C)
- 13.10 GLADIATOR (C)
- 18.10 BLOOD AND BLACK LACE
- 31.10 The Last Supper, Rachel Cusk
- 03.11 PIG
- 04.11 BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
- 10.11 PADDINGTON IN PERU (C)
- 12.11 ANORA (C)
- 13.11 THE CAR
- 15.11 AMERICAN MOVIE
- 16.11 ENYS MEN
- 17.11 THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER
- 19.11 DRACULA
- 21.11 THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
- 22.11 GOTHIC
- 24.11 GLADIATOR 2
- 25.11 SLEEPLESS
- 28.11 THE CARD PLAYER
- 29.11 RED ROOMS
- 30.11 CONCLAVE (C); The Labyrinth, Amanda Lohrey (23.11)
- 02.12 I SAW THE TV GLOW
- 03.12 THE APPOINTMENT; Next to Nature, Art, Penelope Lively (01.12)
- 04.12 THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS
- 05.12 THE DAY OF THE BEAST
- 07.12 BLITZ
- 08.12 SAINT MAUD
- 09.12 CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS; VIOLENT NIGHT
- 10.12 Orbital, Samantha Harvey (03.12)
- 11.12 SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT
- 14.12 IN A VIOLENT NATURE; ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE; The First Bad Man, Miranda July (09.12)
- 15.12 NIGHTMARE CITY
- 16.12 Hide and Seek, Dennis Potter (15.12); MANIAC COP
- 21.12 MOTHER OF TEARS
- 22.12 GIALLO
- 22.12 WHAM!
- 23.12 THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
- 23.12 Binary, Michael Crichton (17.12); MADS
- 24.12 TWISTERS
- 25.12 REBEL RIDGE
- 26.12 ARGENTO’S DRACULA
- 27.12 DARIO ARGENTO: PANICO
- 28.12 DARK GLASSES
- 29.12 CUCKOO
- 30.12 THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS
- 31.12 The Music of Chance, Paul Auster (23.12); BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)
Black Christmas
Director: Bob Clark
Release year: 1974
In the days before the Christmas break, a killer breaks into a sorority house and begins to pick off the girls one by one. The girls are also being plagued by obscene phone calls from someone who calls himself Billy. When a concerned parent involves the police, can they find the killer before he kills again?
This film didn’t do well when it was released and was disparaged by critics, but has gone through a reappraisal in recent years as one of the first slashers, after the Italian giallo films of the early seventies but before Halloween. It is well acted with plenty of heart in how the girls are presented, and funny, knowing the younger audience it’s aiming at. The killer, Billy, is disturbing, the effect made almost entirely by voice as he talks to himself in the attic and to the girls on the house phone. His garbled obscenities got under my skin.
Jess, the girl who lasts to the final scenes, is pregnant by a manipulative boyfriend, Peter. She is clear she wants an abortion, and he won’t listen, the outcome of which leads to the semi-ambiguous ending. Billy speaks to Jess the most on the phone, talking about something terrible he once did to a baby, and one reading of the film is that Jess is being tormented by a patriarchal society for her decision to terminate the pregnancy.
It’s a richly layered film with plenty of political meat on its bones for what could have been a cheap thriller for teens.
2024: Films, books, music
More lists! Nine films came out in the UK in 2024 that I gave 5 stars and a heart to on Letterboxd. (A heart means it’s to my particular taste). That rule of nine continued with nine film discoveries, nine books that got my brain engaged, and the nine albums I listened to the most on Apple Music.
My favourite films of 2024 (in order of preference)
- Civil War
- Hit Man
- Red Rooms
- The Taste of Things
- Perfect Days
- Conclave
- Anora
- The Zone of Interest
- In a Violent Nature
My favourite film discoveries (in order of preference)
- Showing Up (2023)
- Monolith (2023)
- Gothic (1986)
- Results (2015)
- The House with Laughing Windows (1976)
- Enys Men (2022)
- Death Race 2000 (1975)
- Old Henry (2021)
- Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Books that pulled me in (in order of reading)
- Assembly, Natasha Brown (2021)
- All Fours, Miranda July (2024)
- A Far Cry from Kensington, Muriel Spark (1988)
- Rare Singles, Benjamin Myers (2024)
- The Labyrinth, Amanda Lohrey (2020)
- Next to Nature, Art, Penelope Lively (1982)
- Orbital, Samantha Harvey (2024)
- Hide and Seek, Dennis Potter (1973)
- The Music of Chance, Paul Auster (1990)
Albums I listened to most on Apple Music (in order of listens)
- Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa
- The Past is Still Alive, Hurray for the Riff Raff
- Tension I/II, Kylie Minogue
- The Ballad of Darren, Blur
- Harry’s House, Harry Styles
- Dear Happy, Gabrielle Aplin
- Snow, Angus & Julia Stone
- The Visitors, ABBA
- Toxicity, System of a Down
I do love an earnest end-of-year blog post, and I appreciate a quality summary of anything. I don’t have much time this year, and I’m low on energy, so instead here’s an earnest end-of-year list.
I did a light version in 2023, but one of my fleeting YouTube crushes this year extolled the benefits of keeping closer track of projects (so you know what you’ve actually done), and he was right. When I see how much shit I got done while thinking I was procrastinating, I feel a lot better.
Achievements and life events that I put my energy into (in chronological order):
- Started a new job
- Dad’s death and funeral
- Son went to Australia with a working visa
- Dealt with Dad’s estate and finances
- Cleared and sold Dad’s house
- Restarted my Patreon
- Migrated my website from Jekyll to Hugo
- Went to GP/physio for hip problems
- Joined the gym (and still going)
- Started meditating most mornings (and still going)
- Grew as a software engineering Team Leader
- Went on holiday to St Ives
- Wrote a short story and submitted it to Nightjar
- Travelled to Australia and saw my son
- Started practicing guitar with Museo app (and still going)
- Glute work: shock waves on tendons, dry needling into piriformis, rehab/prehab exercises
- Mother-in-law’s unexpected and ongoing illness
- Re-read and sorted through a partial draft of my next novel
- Watched and reviewed all the films of Dario Argento
- 31 horror films in December a.k.a. #31DaysofBlackXmas
- Logged 22 books in StoryGraph
- Logged 137 films in Letterboxd
Director: Pupi Avati
Release year: 1976
Stefano arrives in a half-empty Italian town at the behest of the mayor to restore a fresco inside a local church. The fresco shows the suffering of St. Sebastiano and was painted by a long-dead artist, Bueno Legnani. The locals seem to always be listening to Stefano’s conversations, and when he has to move from his hotel to a remote local house, he discovers in the attic a tape recording of a man’s voice who he begins to believe is Legnani, sending him down a rabbit hole he might not come out of alive.
Highly recommended on podcasts and online, I had no idea from the title what to expect, but this is impeccably crafted and scuzzy Italian folk horror. There is a yellow tint that makes the viewer feel dirty, and the barren landscape of river inlets, abandoned houses and deserted roads is endlessly unsettling. The fresco looks disturbingly modern in the old church, and the gradual uncovering of morbid details adds to the increasing sense of dread.
It’s described as a giallo, but it’s not. There are few deaths. Instead, there is a skillful ratcheting up of tension through artful use of the camera, the deserted locations, and the script taking its sweet time revealing key details through Stefano’s conversations with local townsfolk. The final fifteen minutes are wild and strange. The quality of the print on Amazon Prime wasn’t great—this deserves to be in HD.
Dario Argento: Panico
Director: Dario Argento
Release year: 2024
This is the documentary that gave me the idea to watch all of Dario Argento’s films this year, and it was interesting to watch it again at the end of the project. It’s a good inclusion for #31DaysofBlackXmas as well. Knowing the list of Argento’s films in advance made it more of a chore, whereas with #31Days I could twist and pivot as my mood took me. I wish I wasn’t so susceptible to the power of a list. Perhaps keeping it organic and taking some pressure off is something to try in 2025.
The documentary’s conceit is that Argento is going to a hotel for a few weeks to finish writing a manuscript for his next film, which is something he’s done all his life, and a film crew will interview him while he’s there. We see the maestro arrive, and we see him leave, awkwardly and sweetly interacting with the staff all the while. The main section is a series of interviews with him about his life and career, backed up with the views and memories of family members and key collaborators.
What becomes clear is that Dario is a complicated man, and in the first half of his life he carried a lot of anger and competitiveness to be successful because, as he openly says in a seventies interview clip, he wanted to be loved. His mother was a famous film star photographer, and his father was a film producer, Salvatore Argento, who backed his son’s films right up to his death in the late eighties. He seems to have been brought up in great privilege, but also to have a lack that he was always trying to fill. He was a maverick, a risk-taker, a public personality, and he used film as a way to channel his darker instincts.
After his father died, his daughter Asia became a muse, and she starred in many of his later films. Asia’s thoughts on her father and family are the most poignant in the whole documentary. Some of the fire went out of his films in the nineties. Yes, television money became dominant and contracts required less violence, but he was still writing the scripts (with collaborators), and the later films lack the vitality and narrative quality of earlier ones.
There is almost always something to admire in even a disappointing Dario Argento film. Dracula and Giallo are the only true stinkers. He describes his need to continue to make films as an ongoing investigation of the depths inside himself. He seems to have lived the classic Jungian arc of creating a career and family with the first half of his life, then switched to a more inward journey in the second. It’s inspiring.
Cuckoo
Director: Tilman Singer
Release year: 2024
After her mother dies, Gretchen moves with her estranged father’s family to a resort in the German Alps. To stave off boredom, Gretchen takes a job at the resort reception, where she notices the odd behaviour of the residents and of her boss, Herr König.
I don’t want to say much more than that, because it’s a fun story with a few surprising twists. The tone switches skilfully from unsettling to amusing to frightening, but it’s held together by Gretchen’s grounded teenager vibe.
Hunter Schafer is sensational as Gretchen and commands every scene she is in. I loved her facial responses to the increasingly disturbing events, first surprised, then disbelieving, and she always makes sensible decisions. She also plays guitar, has a liaison with a flirty customer, and knows how to use a switchblade. Top drawer heroine.
Dark Glasses
Director: Dario Argento
Release year: 2022
Diana, a sex worker, is chased by an unknown assailant, leading to a car accident that kills the parents of a young boy and leaves her blind. She slowly adapts to her new life and temporarily takes in the orphaned boy, but the killer returns to finish the job.
This was the final Dario Argento film in my 2024 challenge and an interesting contrast to what’s come before. Giallo was modern, but still had an otherworldly quality because of the flashbacks and Adrien Brody’s energy in his dual performance. Dracula was a straight-up homage to Hammer. Dark Glasses is a straight thriller that feels like it was made today, but includes classic Argento moves—the blind protagonist and child (as in Cat O’ Nine Tails), a random animal attack (see Inferno), a black-gloved killer, and a pounding soundtrack.
This is Argento reckoning with all the people he’s killed in his films, mostly female, and presenting a more empathic view of what it might be like to survive an attack by one of his murderers. Ilenia Pastorelli does an excellent job of playing a woman who goes through incredible trauma only to have it continue when she’s most vulnerable.
I can’t think of an Argento film before this one where we see an actor really act. That’s quite a statement, right? One of the joys of his earlier films are the lightness of the characters while terrible things happen. People show emotions, but his characters don’t go through an arc—they don’t change. The Stendhal Syndrome’s Detective Anna Manni is the closest I can think of, but Asia Argento was young and relatively inexperienced, and her transformation was from sane to insane. Diana’s world is portrayed sensitively and the horrors of her blindness not ignored.
That realism also makes the film less fun. The initial draw of Dario Argento was the wildness, the unexpected, the ideas, the return always to art, theatre, performance, architecture, and the charismatic faces, the variety of characters, the roving camera. Empathy seems to have replaced experimentation, but that can be no surprise in a director who is eighty-four years old. I wonder if he has another film in him?
Argento’s Dracula
Director: Dario Argento
Release year: 2012
There’s a moment when Rutger Hauer’s Van Helsing arrives two-thirds in and my spirits lifted because perhaps the film could be saved, but the moment he started to say his lines, I knew it was actually a stake through my heart.
There are shades of Phenomena in the wildlife and insects being sometimes sentient, but here they are in league with the villain. This Count Dracula has lots of powers not given to the 1959 Hammer Dracula, and seems closer to the original novel. He can project an image of himself into others’ minds, has telekinesis, can transform into animals, and mesmerise people to do his will.
I wonder what changed between the rather good Mother of Tears in 2007, the troubled (and terrible) Giallo in 2009, and this monstrosity. It was made in 3D, which might explain the bad CGI. Perhaps they were the bits that would have come out of the screen. The scene where Dracula is a seven-foot preying mantis and ripping a man to pieces in a hallway wouldn’t look good in any format. I don’t know what happened. Was there no money? Did something go wrong behind the scenes? What’s the story behind this film?