Author: marielcalloway

  • Quick Book Review: “The Passenger” by Cormac McCarthy

    Quick Book Review: “The Passenger” by Cormac McCarthy

    I’ve been a fan of Cormac McCarthy since reading his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road while in college. Very soon after reading it, I incorporated it into my seminar paper on post-apocalyptic depictions in literature during my junior year at Princeton. Since then, I’ve meticulously added more of McCarthy’s…

  • You Gave Me Life, Now Show Me How to Live

    You Gave Me Life, Now Show Me How to Live

    This seems like the perfect pair of shows to launch my inaugural Spec Fic Archives blog. I’ll be honest, I always get a little queasy when I delve into the idea of writing about theatre, but I’m going to do it anyway.  My preference is to focus strictly on storytelling,…

  • Hamlet and My Problems: Infinity,  Madness, and Literary Paralysis

    Hamlet and My Problems: Infinity, Madness, and Literary Paralysis

    While much of this site has primarily concerned itself with the nexus of film and screenwriting, I expect that this will change more and more in the near future. I’ve had a religious conversion of sorts back to the written word. A repentance brought on by night visions and fever…

  • Persistence of Time: A Review of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk

    Persistence of Time: A Review of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk

    Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk begins an existential nightmare and ends as nihilistic commentary on time and fate. But really, what war film doesn’t? And what could Nolan’s Dunkirk stand to teach us that Patton didn’t? That Saving Private Ryan didn’t? Or The Longest Day? The Thin Red Line? Atonement?

  • Hipsters & Daggers: “Hamlet” London Theatre Review

    “I thought it was dystopian!” “I thought it was modern?” “I thought it was the past…” The Millennials are confused, and understandably so. The Barbican Centre’s production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, directed by Lyndsey Turner and filmed before a live audience, presents a unique and refreshing perspective on the 400-year-old…

  • Obsession and Madness: “Pawn Sacrifice” Review

    Full disclosure: I’m a bit of a chess nerd. That might come as a shock considering how terrible of a chess player I am, but I can confidently say that the magnitude of my theoretical knowledge of the sport in comparison to my deficit of skill is quite large. (Although…

  • Requiem for Nightmares: “Black Mass” Review

    Black Mass is not the typical glorified gangster film of mob bosses living lives of splendor and decadence while wielding exceptional power. Rather, it is a cold and distant examination of violence and manipulative cruelty.

  • U2

    NOTE: I’d like to warn everyone that this memoir is super long and fairly detailed. I’ve broken it up into chapters to aid with navigation. Feel free to read as much or as little as you please. Or, if you prefer, just skim through and look at the pictures. I wrote…

  • Interlude

    THURSDAY 5/28 AND FRIDAY 5/29

  • Wednesday 5/27 – Night 2

    I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know Houston had been flooding.  I woke up around 6:00am that morning in both a state of blissful delirium but also uncertain foreboding. I couldn’t sleep; a phenomenon that would reoccur mercilessly over the next several days as the needling pangs of excitement for…