Author: Declan Tan

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) Review

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First published on Spike Magazine (8th November 2011) //

Lynne Ramsay’s deranged adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s equally deranged novel (which Shriver quite garishly lauds on the film’s poster) is a decent stretch of film that concentrates more on the director’s ambition than it does on the novel’s. The result is a sometimes over-stylised but darkly entertaining genre-mix of gallows humour, psychological horror and suspense; likely to resonate more with shit-scared parents out on ‘date night’ than with their demonic kids, who have probably seen it all before, in more detail, and probably with gory special effects.

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Doc Brown Interview

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First published on The British Comedy Guide (3rd November 2011) //

Before turning to stand-up, Doc Brown (aka Ben Smith) was a successful rapper releasing three full-length solo records, and one other with the politically conscious London collective Poisonous Poets.

Since his departure from the UK rap scene in 2007, he has appeared on Comedy Rocks With Jason Manford before going on to perform critically-acclaimed shows at the Royal Albert Hall, the Soho Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival, picking up credits in The Inbetweeners, Miranda and Joe Cornish’s film Attack the Block along the way. All while co-creating the forthcoming BBC teen comedy-drama The Four O’Clock Club.

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‘Tequila Tales: An Anthology of Short Fiction’ Book Review

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First published on Spike Magazine (2nd November 2011) //

The Tequila Tales anthology (edited by Millie Johanna Heur and Roy Anthony Shabla) is an eclectic mixture of genre, style and content that unites a well-published group of writers on the single and divisive subject of, yes, tequila. All of the work has in some way been licked by the liquid sting of the Mexican favourite and, like a night on the stuff, there are ups and downs in the success of each tale’s telling. But it has the kind of lively, straight-talking touch of some of the better literary magazines circulating today, the sort that these writers appear in regularly and consistently.

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Eugene Mirman Interview

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First published on Splitsider (25th October 2011) //

I don’t make it a habit to go meeting comedians, especially American ones who live far away, and especially funny ones who have the power to embarrass and slight me on my little voice recorder. But I made the exception for Eugene Mirman, a long-standing cornerstone of the New York comedy circuit. Because he was nearby, in the town of London, where I live.

As well as an actor in person (Flight of the Conchords) and in voice (Bob’s Burgers, Aqua Teen Hunger Force), Mirman is currently shooting his very own show, and will also soon be seen taking down The Dictator in Larry Charles and Sacha Baron-Cohen’s latest collaboration next year.

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Lint The Movie (2011) Review

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First published on Don’t Panic (23rd October 2011) //

Until recently, the promise of Steve Aylett’s £750 foray into feature-length film productions had seemingly been wandering desultorily around the Internet for quite some time, indulging in some shallow vanishing since 2009, popping up here and there on blogs, before triumphantly reappearing for its premiere in Brighton earlier this year. Followed closely by a London screening, it has since been saddled up for a couple more dates, in Northampton (October) and Portland at Bizarro Con 2011 (November).

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Biography, of a man you don’t know, never will, in pictures // fiction

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First published in Paraphilia Magazine Issue 12 (August 23rd 2011) //

First there was a thump with no screams, then an audible sagging like a paper bag deflating like a person sinking under the weight of his own bodily fluids like a fish drowning. Upstairs they were desperately trying to get dizzy from smoking flash burn cigarettes made almost entirely of gum paper save for an insufficient streak of tobacco that lit and disappeared into instant ash.

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