Fergal Casey has been writing about film for nearly two decades. First as a film columnist for University College Dublin’s The University Observer while he completed a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature & Drama as an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar, and then as the film critic for InDublin magazine and indublin.ie, and later dublinks.com, while teaching English at UCD. He later contributed film reviews & features and theatre reviews & interviews to HeadStuff.org. He was for three years the film critic for Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle on 103.2 Dublin City FM.
Prof. Peter Evans and Dr. Fergal Casey, Graham Greene Festival 2012
His most recent academic papers delivered include ‘A Philosophy of Absurdity in The Barracks and That They May Face the Rising Sun‘ at the first British John McGahern conference in Swansea University, ‘A Celtic Twilight in Little England: WB Yeats and GK Chesterton’ at the Reconstructing the Revival conference in UCD, ‘A Philosophy of Revolt in The Leavetaking and The Pornographer‘ at the ‘A Way of Seeing: 50 Years of John McGahern Conference‘ in Queen’s University Belfast, and ‘Self-Delusion and Self-Destruction in Richard Yates and John McGahern’ at the ‘Ireland & America: The Writer and the Nation’ conference in St Patrick’s College, DCU.
His most recent academic publications include the journal articles ‘Competing Philosophies in That They May Face the Rising Sun‘ in the Irish University Review and ‘A Celtic Twilight in Little England: GK Chesterton and WB Yeats’ in Irish Studies Review, and the book chapters ‘The Greening of Cardinal Manning’ in Irish Catholic Identities and ‘Camus’ Philosophy of Revolt in The Leavetaking and The Pornographer‘ in John McGahern: Critical Essays.
He won two prizes in the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust Creative Writing Awards in 2012 for his short story ‘For Whom H.R. Tolls’ and his short screenplay ‘Sir Joshua’s Macaw’, and was commended in 2013 for his short play ‘The Bungalows of Old Hollywood’.
He had previously written and co-directed several successful satirical comedy scripts for Dramsoc, UCD’s award-winning Drama Society, including Colin Farrell Begins, 1960s Batman and Roland Emmerich Movie. His collaborators in Dramsoc included John Healy, Fiachra MacNamara, and the theatrical svengali Patrick Doyle.
Talking Movies will be updated monthly with reviews of films about to hit cinemas in Ireland and with observations serious and nonsensical about the state of cinema. There will also be semi-regular pieces on theatre, books and music.
When not writing this blog Fergal Casey is currently reading Give People Money by Annie Lowrey, watching Daria season 4 and listening to Lykke Li’s I Never Learn.
His favourite films from 1991 include Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Point Break and My Own Private Idaho.
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