#Spooktober 3 – A Haunting in Venice

October 3, 2023

I recently went to see this movie with some friends, and it’s perfectly fitting for the haunting season whether you like Banagh’s Poirot or not (I personally have mixed feelings).

It has a couple of things in common with the book of Spooktober Day 1, particularly a detective trying to shed rational light on apparently supernatural events and a general strength in the haunting atmosphere. The story draws from some of Agatha Christie’s short stories and the movie adaptation has a lot of things one might need on a Halloween night: a haunted palace in Venice, creepy masked people, the ghost of a girl who went mad and drowned herself (or did she?), ghosts of orphans out for revenge and an ancient curse, dead flowers and dead bees, a fake medium, a haunted doctor.

The mystery was very Agatha Christie: solidly built, a little obvious once you put the pieces together, with some nice twists you might not expect.

The main weakness, as far as I’m concerned, was the pursue of horror movie tropes, but – CONFESSION TIME! – I really don’t like horror movies. I find them silly. And this movie was a little silly, at times, with its attempt at jump scares.

architecture, engineering and construction

BIM and Facility Management, with a little help from LEGO and AI

There is a question we often forget to ask, and it became the centrepiece of a three-hour workshop I delivered last week at Politecnico di Milano as part of a BIM Management master’s programme. When an information model is delivered to the client,how do we

June 17, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

Osamu Dazai’s The Student and Other Stories

The collection I have, features three stories: The Student (Joseito), Applause (Kassai), and The Tale of Urashima (Urashimasan). They’re very different, not so much in mood (it’s Dazai Osamu after all) but in scope and purpose, and that makes this book a little weird. The

June 14, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

Carson McCuller’s The Ballad of the Sad Cafè

Carson McCullers (1917 – 1967) was an influential American novelist, playwright, and short-story writer renowned for her depictions of the spiritual isolation, identity struggles, and inner lives of outcasts in the American South. Her acclaimed debut novel is The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940),

June 13, 2026 9:00 am