Two Kinds of Horror

To further my apprenticeship as a fledgling blogger I thought it would be a good idea to expose myself to genres that I don’t usually follow. With this in mind, I came across a film, which stirred my curiosity. The blurb described ‘Thirst’ as everything you'd expect from from Korean director Park Chan- wook – violent, surreal, different – and full of moments of genius that breathe new life into the genre.
Friends had told me that the vampire genre is all the rage and as the last vampire film I saw was back in the ‘70’s and starred Christopher Lee, I thought I could do with a bit of a horror update.
Newsflash – vampire stories still contain gallons of false blood and deranged non-humans who just want their daily pinta and a place out of the sun. The film started off well and portrayed a priest who wanted to do good, but who ended up as blood sucking sex fiend with a conscience. I have to admit that the second half of the film made me quite squemish and I thought of leaving - something that I have never done in a film. But looking back on on all the blood and gore, I have to give it credit for being well done. The female lead is a fine actor, changing from a down trodden ‘dog of the family’ to super charged and evil vampire with a strong desire to drink blood. One thing that I noticed was that they don’t use vampire fangs anymore, people were dispatched with some very sharp sissors.
So, the lesson learned from this experience is that, I wont be writing any vampire stories in the near future. But now that Haloween is just around the corner, maybe I should dust down my very own (non vampire) horror story. Set in Haddington and called ‘Bridge over the Panny.’

Last night, a different type of horror was descirbed by Avi Shlaim, who discussed his new book Isreal and Palestine, at the Independent and Radical Book Fair, hosted by Word Power books, in the Drill Hall, Leith. Avi is an Oxford don, who was once conscripted into Isreal’s army. He described himself as a revisionist historian who believes in a two state solution to the conflict based on the boundaries which existed before the war 1967. His view's are forthright and he speaks with humour and honesty. Avi quoted another revisionist historian to describe the essence of the conflict, 'The Jews are the victims of the Holocost and the Palistinians are the victims of the Jews.’
Avi talked about the complex history and events of the area for an hour and then responded to three rounds of questions from the audience. Not bad for a 63 year old man suffering from a nasty cold.
He has written several books about the Arab – Isreali conflict, which are all available at the book fair.