January 12, 2026: Film and Faith

We’re back from vacation, and into more movies and books!We chat with local author and professor of creative writing at Emerson College Margot Douaihy about the brand new book in her Sister Holiday series that gets released tomorrow. Divine Ruin sees the queer almost-nun with vice and faith in equal measure thrust into the throes of the fentanyl epidemic at her school, and we’ll talk about the series’ beautifully flawed heroine, the power of faith, the mystery genre and much more before you can meet the author herself at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley on Tuesday, Jan 13th. Then it’s off to Turners falls where at the Shea Theater we got much insight to one of last year’s most intricate spectacles. Dennis Berardi, founder of the special effects company Mr. X, is the driving force behind the special effects not just of Frankenstein, but a great number of other movies and tv shows and an important part of Guillermo del Toro’s creative team. We speak with him about his history in the field, his work with del Toro especially with this rework of the Shelley classic, the nuances of making a movie look amazing, and the connections to local filmmaker and producer Bob Krzykowski that bring him to the area.