Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 1m

Tonight’s viewing:

A title screen for a film. It reads in black and white text ‘A Samuel Fuller Film’

A title screen for a film. It reads, in white text ‘White Dog’

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 5h

‘Gruselstories’ is a great word

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 5h

Question: Young guy sitting next to me on the train has his notification alert sounds turned onto maximum volume, is posting on Insta and is currently getting notifications at a rate of about once every 30 seconds. At what point is it socially acceptable to hurl his phone out of the window?

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 20h

RIP to the great Diane Keaton. If you can find it, her book on Clown Paintings - for which she curated a large selection of flea market amateur clown portraits -mostly fantastically creepy - accompanied by the thoughts of famous people regarding clowns - is well worth a look.

Diane Keaton standing in front of of an impressive array of creepy clown paintings

Dusne Keaton’s book ‘Clown Paintings’ which features an ultra close up view of a clown’s jeering face.

A portrait from the book - an incredibly creepy black-eyed clown

John Waters on clowns, with the headline ‘Clowns are usually assholes’

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 1d

I have a few of these Dover editions and I really like their commitment to quality - “This is a permanent book”

A photo of the back of the book “A DOVER EDITION DESIGNED FOR YEARS OF USE!
We have made every effort to make this the best book possible. Our paper is opaque, with minimal show-through; it will not discolor or become brittle with age. Pages are sewn in signatures, in the method traditionally used for the best books, and will not drop out, as often happens with paperbacks held together with glue. Books open flat for easy reference. The binding will not crack or split. This is a permanent book.”

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 1d

Today’s reading:

A paperback book from the 1970s - Best “Thinking Machine” Detective Stories by Jacques Futrelle. The cover is a green tinted photo of a Victorian era street

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 1d

No that’s new to me - a good one though!

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 2d

I'm on the Britflicks podcast this week, talking about 21 years of @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social, + three horror films that changed my life - Theatre Of Blood, Deep Red and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s...

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5QRp...

Steven Sheil on 21 years of Mayhem Film Festival and Movies That Changed Your Life: Theatre Of Blood, Deep Red, Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Podcast Episode · 3 FILMS THAT HAVE IMPACTED EVERYTHING IN YOUR ADULT LIFE: A Britflicks Podcast with screenwriter Stuart Wright · 10/10/2025 · 33m

podcasts.apple.com

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 2d

100%. Could only have been more English if he was eating a curry/kebab/Greggs at the time.

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 2d

Not on tiktok so only just learning of the Goose King of Nottingham, who has been climbing and riding the giant Goose Fair goose on the Mansfield Road roundabout and draping it with England flags, but fell off a few days ago, landing head first, breaking multiple bones and ending up in hospital.

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 2d

Didn't realise you were in Sitges - have a great time!

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Stuart Wright @stuartwright.bsky.social · 2d

Since 2005, what horror movies have excited you the most?

@scsheil.bsky.social on 21 years of @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social
16-19 Oct 2025 @broadwaycinemauk

Apple Pods podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/3...

Spotify open.spotify.com/episode/5QRp...

@chriscooke.bsky.social @melimoi.bsky.social

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 2d

I'm on the Britflicks podcast this week, talking about 21 years of @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social, + three horror films that changed my life - Theatre Of Blood, Deep Red and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s...

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5QRp...

Steven Sheil on 21 years of Mayhem Film Festival and Movies That Changed Your Life: Theatre Of Blood, Deep Red, Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Podcast Episode · 3 FILMS THAT HAVE IMPACTED EVERYTHING IN YOUR ADULT LIFE: A Britflicks Podcast with screenwriter Stuart Wright · 10/10/2025 · 33m

podcasts.apple.com

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Rose Ruane @regretteruane.bsky.social · 4d

They’re just so good, little bit dada, little bit pop, all creep and spook, divine

A book page with a collage of black and white painted bats surrounding a black and white photo of two smartly dressed white men, against a purple painted background

A book page with a collage of black and white painted witches with skulls for faces and a photo of a clown in harlequin costume, against a spattering purple painted background

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Rose Ruane @regretteruane.bsky.social · 4d

Every single one of the illustrations is a brilliant brooding exercise in evoking dread & doom.
I’d never seen his art before I picked up this book, but after an Earl E. Mayan internet odyssey I’m completely smitten

A collage painting with black and white cut out photos of human faces and a snarling Alsatian dog surrounding a white painted sheet ghost, all against a black and purple background made of paint drips suggesting a spooky wood, above which door shapes are scratched in black ink

A collage painting in which a phot of two white men, one standing wearing a cowboy hat and crumpled shirt and trousers, the other squatting wearing preppy clothes and a sailor hat, are surrounded by an ominous purple painted background, above them a black and white painted skull, to their left a black white and grey painted area which is fairly abstract but suggests tv static intermixed with shadowy branches

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

I've written a new Adrian Chills story (short horror stories inspired by the Guardian columns of Adrian Chiles).

This one's called 'Priscilla'

bsky.app/profile/adri...

Adrian Chills @adrianchills.bsky.social · 3d

#28: Priscilla

A screengrab of a headline to a Guardian Adrian Chiles column. It reads 'I met Priscilla Presley this week - and couldn't believe she was in the same building as me'

At first I thought it was a trick of the mind, another ruse by the building in which I had been imprisoned these long weeks…months…years…?—another attempt to addle my wits, turn me into one of those pitiful, loathsome Unmen who range the desolate landscape which surrounds The Old House, their brains destroyed, their bodies become little more than flesh-draped skeletons, lurching on unsteady feet as though strung like marionettes. But quickly I realised that the woman I saw, wandering distressed through the cavernous hallways, confused at finding herself untethered from her own reality, was as much a captive as I.
How Priscilla—for that was the name that she gave—came to be trapped here too, in this crumbling, shifting, ever-deceitful puzzle of a building, I could not fully discern, for her memories were as confused as my own. I asked her if she too had read that mysterious journal which I had found abandoned at the castle ruins, but she knew not of what I spoke. Instead her tale was one of ‘television studios’ and ‘PR junkets’ and other things beyond my ken. I began to surmise that this dreadful structure in which we were contained was not only at the nexus of other universes but also served as a waypoint for travellers through time. And another revelation came too—that the house was growing hungrier.

It has now been a week since myself and Priscilla joined forces to fortify the defences of this malevolent edifice. The keening of the Unmen has become only louder, and has been joined by another, more unsettling sound—the expectant gnashing of swinish teeth. I fear we have not yet seen the worst inhabitants of the boundless nightmare landscape beyond these walls and I shudder to think of what that means for maintaining our safety. All I know is that with the arrival of Priscilla—whose courage and resilience is both boundless and vitalizing—I have, for the first time in months, found a reason—even in the midst of this mind-bending terrror—to hope.

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Adrian Chills @adrianchills.bsky.social · 3d

#28: Priscilla

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

It's great on the big screen - that dreamlike atmosphere really works.

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Reposted by Steven Sheil

Oscar Goff @theoscargoff.bsky.social · 3d

Legitimately incredible film. Think Maya Deren disguised as Ed Wood.

Mutual I'm Sure @mutualimsure.bsky.social · 3d

Dementia (1955) is a dialogueless fever dream film about a woman's nightmare experience on a single night in LA. Made a decade too early to be a hit, it's a mix of German expressionism and American noir and closer to 60s films like Carnival of Souls and Polanski's Repulsion. It's worth an hour of

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

Fantastic film. We put on a screening of it about ten years ago at @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social with a specially composed new soundtrack by a local rock/electronic band called 8mm Orchestra. It was incredible.

A shot of a cinema screen with the title 'Dementia'. A silhouette of a guitarist is standing in front of it.

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

No-one seems to be trying to make AI Succession, or Normal People or Sex Education, because that would mean working on writing and concentrating on character and trying to make something that makes people feel something more than just 'wow that was cool' or 'what a spectacle'.

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

AI can't yet handle face to face conversations between people with any degree of conviction or consistency, so despite what people claim, it's nowhere near replacing Hollywood or Netflix, at least at the moment. But there doesn't seem to be such a push to create human dramas with AI.

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

From what I've seen, a significant amount of AI filmmakers want to create something looks like a $100 million sci-fi blockbuster, and AI can - at least in terms of random screenshots - do that for them, so there is a kind of egalitarianism there, but it's such a narrow aim.

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

#binspiration

A photo of a green wheelie bin on a city street. Printed on the side of hte bin, taking up nearly the whole space are the words 'Winning is not the Point - the Effort to Win is'

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Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 3d

Had a look at some of the films featured previously at this festival plus some other AI-produced shorts to see if this aim of 'HBO-level' film was accurate, and at a basic level AI can't yet even create a convincing 1 minute scene of 2 people talking in a room without them regenerating in every shot

A shot from an AI produced short. 8 screenshots show a supposed continuous conversation between two people. On the left a woman in black sci-fi armour, with her hair tied back, on the right a man in a black polo neck. They are in a grey and black room. Every shot of the woman shows a different face and so does every shot of the man.

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