Forthcoming Publications

The Directory of World Cinema: Britain will be published June 2012. Edited by Emma Bell and Neil Mitchell and published by Intellect Books, I contributed a historic account of the emergence and development of the British horror film alongside a series of reviews of various horror films, including The Haunted Curiosity Shop (Walter R. Booth, 1901), The Dead of Night (Various Directors, 1945) and Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987).

Bringing to mind rockers and royals, Buckingham Palace and the Scottish Highlands, Britain holds a special interest for international audiences who have flocked in recent years to quality British exports like Fish Tank, Trainspotting and The King’s Speech. A series of essays and articles exploring the definitive films of Great Britain, this addition to Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema series turns the focus on England together with Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

The Book can be preordered from either Intellect Books or Amazon.

Recently Published

My Case Study on the hugely popular Electronic Arts game franchise Dead Space has just been published in the April 2012 edition of MediaMagazine. The article examines the game's production, marketing and reception as well as critiquing the various trans-media texts that surround the core narrative of the game. Here is a brief extract:

As a brand, EA has released a growing number of Dead Space games across the increasing number of gaming platforms: Dead Space was initially released on the three major gaming platforms – the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. While it was expected that the next game in the series, Dead Space: Extraction, would be released onto all three platforms it wasn’t. Instead, it was released just onto the Wii. Whereas Dead Space was a Survival Horror/Third-Person Shooter, Extraction would be a Survival Horror/Rail Shooter game in order to take advantage of the controller system the Wii operates upon. Releasing Extraction just on the Wii was an interesting decision for EA to make for two reasons, primarily because the platform is not known for its mature content titles and, secondly, as a supposition, the experimental idea that the Wii’s controller system might make for a more immersive means for a Survival Horror/Shooter game.

To order a copy of this edition of MediaMagazine follow this link.