The BBC’s failed attempt to create the definitive set of the complete works of Shakespeare adapted for TV demonstrates just how hard to pin down the bugger can be. From his rediscovery at the end of the eighteenth century through …
This week’s post is an interview with the owner of It Figures Models, Siobhan Marshall-Jones. It’s fascinated me how, in this era of computer games, Virtual Reality and 3D, actual modelling seems to be on an upsurge. What brought it …
My favourite John Hurt film has to be Michael Radford’s 1984, released in the same year, with Hurt as Winston Smith, Richard Burton as O’Brien and Suzanna Hamilton as Julia. Finally reaching the year inevitably prompted endless discussions about whether …
Looking at the practicalities of even showing Abel Gance’s Napoleon makes you wonder how on earth it ever got made. Not only is the full version five and a half hours long but at the very end the film goes …
When Hideo Nakata’s Ring came out in 1998, followed by Ring 2 in 1999 – they looked like groundbreaking Japanese horror movies. The Japanese film industry is, on the whole, very conservative and tight-fisted, relying on endless low-budget formula comedies …
Here’s another film that seems pretty apt for the current state of the UK post-Brexit – Robert Fuest’s end of the world-lite version of Michael Moorcock’s classic novel The Final Progamme (released in the US as The Last Days of …
I’ve been scrabbling around for an appropriate metaphor for the colossally surreal act of self-harm the UK inflicted on itself 48 hours ago, and early this morning, on the borders between waking and sleeping, the sentence the final collapse will …
One of the oddest worst movies ever made has to be the Penthouse ‘erotic epic’ Caligula, released in 1979. It’s an extreme example of a massive gap between proclaimed artistic worthiness at the start and a finished result that can …
As a companion post to my review of Mansfield Dark’s Count Magnus and The Story of A Disappearance and an Appearance, Richard Mansfield very kindly agreed to answer some questions about the movies: Why make M. R. James ghost stories …
Interview with Richard Mansfield of Mansfield Dark Read more »
What better way to recover from New Year’s Eve than a leisurely afternoon watching John Boorman’s cult classic Zardoz. Putting aside the seriously disturbing sight of a post-Bond ever so slightly flabby Sean Connery dressed in Vampirella’s swimming costume and …
In 1977 the film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky wrote an introduction to Dragon Dream’s monograph on the paintings of Chris Foss, 21st Century Foss (1977). The essay describes the artist as ‘a being who carried his drawings with the same ultra-maternal care …
Mad Max Fury Road was just as brilliant the second time round I saw it. For what is essentially a colossal car chase in one direction, followed by a 180 degree turn and a colossal car chase all the way …
The sexual politics of Imperator Furiosa’s left arm Read more »
In many ways Alex Garland’s film Ex Machina treads the same ground as A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), I, Robot (2004) and The Machine (2013) in its portrayal of a robot trying to break out of its pre-programmed existence to become human. Geeky programmer …
**WARNING – Major Spoiler Alerts** I’ve been face down writing AntiHelix for the last month so I’ve neglected this blog a little, but having seen Interstellar on its opening night yesterday I thought I’d jot down my thoughts. It’s a …
Wandering through Kate Bush’s imagination a couple of weeks ago made me think of a peculiarly English brand of dark fantasy that started in the late Victorian era with writers like George MacDonald and Lucy Clifford. These and others managed …
Last night I went to a Sin City double feature where I watched the original followed by the sequel in 3D. Very entertaining and well made, the 3d enhances the unique visual style of the original and yet, and yet… …
I came back from Japan with a five year old and a three year old with heads full of Sailor Moon, Anpanman and Miyazaki Hayao, so inevitably when we signed up for cable back in the UK we turned to …
Movies and dreams have always been closely linked. Cinema history is full of movies of dreams, from the films of Georges Méliès and the 1911 cartoon of Little Nemo in Slumberland to the world of Freddy Kreuger and Nightmare on …
Spoiler Alert News from Space last week confirmed the existence of an ocean underneath the icy surface of Enceladus. Furthermore it seems that this immense body of water is in contact with the moon’s rocky core, allowing minerals to leach …
The history of British TV is littered with brilliant one-off series and TV programmes that appeared once or twice and then vanished, seemingly forever. John Hurt as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1979), Nigel Kneale’s horror series Beasts (1976) and the Bavarian film …