Stephen Graves

@stephengraves.co.uk

1624 Followers 1592 Following

Special Projects Editor at Decrypt, director of short films (The Dead of Winter, @frightfest.bsky.social @screamfest.bsky.social alumnus), player of D&D, painter of little Warhammer/MESBG men. @stephengraves on Twitter.

Penguin edition of Benighted by J.B. Priestley. Cover depicts an old dark house in silhouette, as a lightning bolt cracks across a green, rain-lashed sky.
Batman and Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises.
Poster for I SCREAM 2: THE SECOND SCOOP, depicting a twin soft serve cone drizzled with red liquid against a black backdrop. A pair of severed fingers are jammed into the swirls of ice cream, in the manner of 99 Flakes, and an eyeball is wedged between them. The overall effect is that of an 80s horror paperback. Text reads: From Beyond the Graves presents I SCREAM 2 THE SECOND SCOOP MORE SHORT HORROR FILMS FOR SUMMER NIGHTS Reading Biscuit Factory September 5th at 8pm
A Rogue Trader-era 40K Commissar
Pamela Anderson in the Criterion Closet.
A liminal, deserted bit of a shopping mall.
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: The Invite (4.5 stars), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (4 stars), The American (4 stars), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (5 stars)
Thomas, a grey worm-like creature, emerging from his Tank Engine shell like a hermit crab.
Doctor Who: System Shock
The sad Oompa-Loompa from Willy's Chocolate Experience.
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: Disclosure Day (4 stars) Police Story (4 stars) Fantastic Mr. Fox (4 stars) Down With Love (4 stars)
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: The Life of Chuck (4 stars) Wonka (4 stars) Backrooms (4 stars) Nightmare Alley (5 stars)
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: The Draughtsman's Contract (4 stars) Bright Young Things (3.5 stars) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (3.5 stars) Obsession (4 stars)
Otter AI transcript: Speaker 1 0:01 So strange. I've been there myself, but it's nice to see your shining faces. Speaker 1 0:06 So just a couple of recap again, my name is Barbara calendar
2nd Edition Warhammer 40,000 box art featuring a Blood Angels Captain brandishing a boltgun at some Orks.
A poster for MISTER MITTENS, depicting a black cat's eye with the title in spooky green text. Text reads: MISTER MITTENS A FILM BY STEPHEN GRAVES Below are two laurels for CenterFrame Selects and Killer Shorts
The 1995 Warhammer Quest heroes, painted and ready for adventure.
My work completed at First Army, McClain suggested a light luncheon at a little inn he had heard about from Captain Bob Low, an ex-Time reporter, now working in First Army Intelligence. 'Low says it's in a backwater, he said, 'no krauts there - nobody - untouched by the war - let's go.' Quetthou, on the coast about five miles south of Barfleur, was all that Bob Low had predicted and the inn, 'Aux Trois Cents Hommes', was unforgettable. The disapproving sergeant refused to join us and sat outside morosely chewing his 'C' rations, while McClain and I, the first Allied combatants they had seen, were treated like royalty by the three bosomy ladies who ran the place. We were given a sumptuous meal of omelettes, delicious little flat fish and Camembert cheese, washed down by bottles of Bordeaux which they dug up from the cabbage patch where they had been hidden from the Germans.
A snotling from the 1995 Warhammer Quest.
Travis Bickle having an excruciatingly awkward date with Betsy in "Taxi Driver."
From time to time he sipped his whisky, but more cautiously than at first, for he knew that this keen psychical activity was the forerunner of helpless collapse. Only for a minute or two would he be at the top of his power. The frontier was a dreadfully narrow one, and already he had lost control of his fingers, and was scrawling a shorthand that bore no resemblance to the original system of its inventor.
And the second fundamental thing he grasped— due even more than the first to psychic intuition—was the certainty that he could drink more, up to a certain point, with distinct advantage to his power and lucidity-but up to a given point only. After that would come unconsciousness, a single sip too much and he would cross the frontier—a very narrow one. It was as though he knew intuitively that "the drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness. At present he was only fuddled and fearful, but additional stimulant would inhibit the effects of the other emo-tions, give him unbounded confidence, clarify his judgment and increase his capacity to a stage far beyond the normal. Only-he must stop in time. His chances of escape, therefore, so far as he could understand, depended on these two things: he must drink till he became self-confident and arrived at the abnormally clear-minded stage of drunkenness; and he must wait for the moment when Hensig had so filled him up with fear that he no longer could react to it. Then would be the time to strike. Then his will would be free and have judgment behind it.
Alanis Morissette questioning if something is ironic, don't you think?
A Henry vacuum cleaner wearing its characteristic knowing smile, waiting to send granny tumbling down the stairs tangled up in its hose.
Letterbox Last Four Watched: Hokum (4 stars), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (4 stars), Theatre of Blood (4.5 stars), Akira (4.5 stars)
The latest issues of the General Witchfinders and Hellebore zines.
Ray Newman's "Thin Places in Hard Concrete" on a cafe table.
Spider-Man confronting Sauron. Spider-Man's saying: "But with tech like that, you could cure cancer!" Sauron replies: "But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to give cocaine to salmon."
Count Dooku's signature look of superiority.
According to tradition, the "Tutti-men" would walk through Hungerford collecting rent from commoners on Hock Monday, while on Hock Tuesday both Tutti men and Tutti women would collect kisses in exchange for an orange.
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: Love & Friendship (4 stars) Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (4 stars) A Little Chaos (3.5 stars) Octopussy (2.5 stars)
The "what year is this?" meme.
Warhammer Quest Barbarian
Fabergé Easter egg from Octopussy.
A modern Mini Countryman SUV next to an original Mini, dwarfing it.
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: The Man Who Would Be King (4 stars) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (5 stars) Honey Don't! (4 stars) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (5 stars)
Vintage Citadel Miniatures catalogue page showing Rough Riders on plastic horses.
William Hartnell making a funny face.
Poster art for MISTER MITTENS depicting a black cat with the film's title in a spooky green typeface. A Centerframe Selects laurel is superimposed at the top.
Poster for MISTER MITTENS depicting a black cat with the title in a spooky green font. A CenterFrame selects laurel is placed at the top of the image.
Poster depicting a black cat with Killer Shorts quarterfinalist laurels and the title "Mister Mittens"
Criterion Collection Blue-ray of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" with a cheery little "Director Approved" sticker on the front, bearing the renowned nonce's signature.
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: Game Night (3.5 stars), 28 Weeks Later (3.5 stars), Marty Supreme (4 stars), The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (5 stars)
Aronofsky cites 2001: A Space Odyssey as a key influence in his desire to avoid CGI, because that film's FX powerfully illustrate how well real photography of real objects can hold up, even viewing the film decades later. An article from Wired goes into even greater detail about the work of macrophotographer/marine biologist Peter Parks, who masterminded and filmed the chemical and biological elements key to the effects:
Excerpt from BFI Sight & Sound article "Trimming Tolkien: on the faithfulness of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings." Text reads: Sauron’s eye, which sucks at the souls of those tempted by the Ring when it appears in the seeing stone the Palantir and Galadriel’s mirror, resembles an all-consuming vaginal slit, in contrast with the horizontal eye that adorned covers of the book.
Letterboxd Last Four Watched: The Old Man and the Gun, Hamnet, Tamara Drewe, The Day of the Jackal.
A pot of 1980s Blood Angel Orange paint, held over a shoebox full of Citadel paints of similar vintage.
Poster for MirrorMask, written by absolute cunt Neil Gaiman.
Screenshot of Apple Music settings showing the option to disable animated album artwork.
Gaten Matarazzo
Poster for THE DEAD OF WINTER, depicting an eerie hooded Figure standing at the far end of a moonlit alleyway. Text reads: The Dead of Winter Now available on ShortsTV Prime Video
By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion the ape descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed. Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this. This friend of his had first arrived on the planet Earth some fifteen Earth years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society - with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out-of-work actor, which was plausible enough. He had made one careless blunder, though, because he had skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him to choose the name 'Ford Prefect' as being nicely inconspicuous.
A giant plush swan slumped in a chair.
A mock vintage horror paperback cover depicting a snowbound house resembling a skull, with windows for eyes and icicles for teeth. Text reads: ActOne presents COLD SNAP Short horror films for Winter nights December 11th at 7pm
An unsettlingly large toilet with chipboard walls, strip lighting and a bare concrete floor. The toilet itself is located in the far right corner of the room. The Lifeform from The Backrooms has been superimposed on the photo.
Monty, a black cat.
The bloodless, fanged visage of Tiny Tim.
A festive decoration made of fir branches and baubles, at the centre of which is a gold skull.