Hello!

For those of you who do not know who I am – I’m Antony or “Ant” and welcome to my blog! I am a Brunel alumnus with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film and Television. After being a freelancer and working for some shockingly awful companies (you know who you are), I fell into marketing to become Head of Content at an awesome agency, while being an aspiring screenwriter/ filmmaker in my spare time.

How did my career in content begin?

Well, after contributing culture and entertainment articles to the student newspaper Le Nurb (it’s not French; it spells ‘Brunel’ backwards), I landed an internship at Film3Sixty magazine during my studies. Here, I interviewed Spandau Ballet, Joe Dante, James Callis, Gregg Araki, Maziar Bahari and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to name a few. Through writing for Arrow Films’ Nordic Noir & Beyond, I have also had the amazing opportunities to speak with Sofie Gråbøl, Sofia Helin, Jesper Christensen, Trine Dyrholm, Marie Bach Hansen, Marie Tourell Søderberg, Moa Gammel and Ola Rapace. Oh, and I shook the hand of Pilou Asbæk. No word of a lie.

The pinnacle of my passion for film centres largely around horror and its many sub-genres: slasher, splatter, sci-fi, supernatural, psychological, Gothic, etc. In cinema, I would say the directors who really get me are John Carpenter and Dario Argento, leading up to Ti West and Lucky McKee. In television – the prevalent anthology format is definitely ticking my boxes with American Horror Story (nothing beats the Asylum season, in my opinion). Also, Hannibal (while it lasted), The Walking Dead and the Canadian viral-themed show Darknet. I should also give a shout-out here for Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel – I would be nothing without them. Nothing.

In a slight deviation from the macabre, yet still veiled with an equally dramatic and dark hue, I am proud to be a fan of the Nordic Noir phenomenon – personally and professionally. The Faroese jumpers, Sarah Lund and the 24-style narrative pace of Forbrydelsen/ The Killing cemented the neo-genre for me. Then I re-visited the Millennium trilogy and became obsessed to the point of writing my dissertation on examining the evolution and international impact of the Nordic Noir from its Film Noir roots. As well as the stupefyingly sensational Scandi crime series including Bron-Broen/ The Bridge (Saga Norén is my reigning heroine), the award-winning Nordic dramas Borgen and Arvingerne/ The Legacy are sheer brilliance. Both are masterfully written and shine a light on Scandinavian politics and culture. Birgitte Nyborg is an incredible character as the first female Prime Minister, however, you probably would not want to be part of the Grønnegaard family… Unless you thought Festen was a romantic comedy.

Saying that, I do enjoy comedy; laughing and smiling is welcomed in the appropriate context. I see myself in the antics of Tim Bisley, Liz Lemon, Leslie Knope and Frances Ha. I cry at a lot of films (The Impossible, Road to Perdition, Toy Story 3) and television (Band of Brothers, Cold Feet, The Office: An American Workplace, This is England ’86, ’88 and ’90) but rarely in real life.

Beyond the local VUE and warm glow of my laptop screen, I have visited Prague, Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Verona, Zürich, New York, Bergen, Toronto and Paris. Despite being coined as the ‘Second City’, I vehemently choose Toronto as the first and foremost place I plan to live… In the hopefully not too distant future. I guess it also helps that Toronto just so happened to be the location I met Mads Mikkelsen and chatted nonchalantly to Neve Campbell at Fan Expo Canada 2015.

I love making lists, especially ‘Top 10s’. So here are my Top 10 films:

The Thing (1982), Brief Encounter (1945),  Metropolis (1927),  Amélie (2001),  Double Indemnity (1945),  Melancholia (2011), Blue Velvet (1986),  Manhattan (1979), Clue (1985) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).

My Top 10 TV series at the moment would be: Spaced (1999-2001), Angel (1999-2004), Twin Peaks (1990-1991), 30 Rock (2006-2013), Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), Forbrydelsen/ The Killing (2007-2012), The Office: An American Workplace (2005-2013), Six Feet Under (2001-2005), Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) and Alias (2001-2006).

You may also like to know that I love knitting and woolly jumpers but I hate onions, coriander and I cannot fathom spicy dishes. Nevertheless, I love food and I watch The Food Network religiously; namely for Nigella, the Barefoot Contessa and Andy Bates for his focus on pies. When it comes to writing I enjoy using alliteration and ellipses. My favourite words are ‘bombastic’ and ‘phantasmagorical’; which I discovered, to my delight, frequently appear in tales by Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. ‘Nefarious’ and ‘Shenanigans’ would rank as number three and four.

Enjoy my blog. I will be discussing film and television with reviews from past and present, not to mention anything else that my fingers will happily word process.

I leave you with the words of Natacha Von Braun from Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution: “I’m very well, thank you, you’re welcome.”