Issue 72: Fortresses

Fortresses: Hidden, black, ancient, high-rise and alternative

This month we are proud to present a 35mm screening of Michael Mann’s rare 1983 film The Keep in collaboration with Cigarette Burns at the Prince Charles in London on 21 February. This is the occasion for a look at fortresses on film, with reviews of The Keep, Akira Kurosawa’s feudal Japan tale The Hidden Fortress and housing project-set shocker Citadel, an interview with Citadel director Ciaran Foy, a feature on alternative fortresses and a Comic Strip Review of Time Bandits. And we also have a Reel Sounds column on the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to Michael Mann’s Thief.

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Issue 68: Freedom

Freedom: Skid row outsiders, uninhibited deviants and liberating servitude

As fantastical paean to harsh, wild freedom Beasts of the Southern Wild hits the screens this month, we look at various forms of cinematic freedom, from John Waters’s outrageous black comedy Female Trouble to The Master and the films of Paul Thomas Anderson while our Comic Strip Review is on The Prisoner. And Greg Klymkiw talks about freedom and servitude with the Brothers Quay to mark the American DVD release of Institute Benjamenta.

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Issue 67: Memory

Memory: Lost love remembered, ghosts of the living and the dead, bygone cinema

Memory is our autumnal theme this month with reviews of Miguel Gomes’s wonderful tale of past wrong love Tabu and The Swimmer, Frank Perry’s startling 1968 portrayal of a man coming to terms with his life. We have an interview with Guy Maddin about his latest ghostly reverie Keyhole and a feature on Hirokazu Kore-eda, director of After Life and Nobody Knows. Our Comic Strip Review remembers an episode from a BBC TV series from the past, A Ghost Story for ChristmasWhistle and I’ll Come to You. In Alter Ego, writer Will Wiles is Grosse Pointe Blank‘s Martin Blank.

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Issue 66: Fakes

Fakes: False child, art forgery, duplicitous moles, unreliable reality

August is full of fakes: in Bart Layton’s jaw-dropping documentary The Imposter, a man impersonates a missing child; James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer is a fictional account of an IRA member turned informer; Orson Welles explores art forgery in F for Fake; Israeli series Prisoners of War deals with released prisoners who may have been ‘turned’; Powell and Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! creates authenticity through cinema trickery. We have features on myth fabrication in Searching for Sugar Man and fakery in Christopher Nolan’s films. Peter Strickland talks about his giallo homage Berberian Sound Studio while our Comic Review is on The Rutles.

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Issue 65: Mutations

Mutations: Metal men, werewolf girls, freaks and hybrids

July is all about mutations as the East End Film Festival presents brand new restorations of Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s cyberpunk landmark Tetsuo: Iron Man and its sequel Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. We also a feature on Prometheus and panspermia and reviews of David Cronenberg’s tragic horror movie The Fly, John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps, in which a misfit teenage girl’s struggles with puberty and fitting in are played out as werewolf transformation, and Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect, about an obsessed man dying of cancer. In Alter Ego, Tom Pollock is Jurassic Park‘s Dr Henry Wu and our Comic Strip Review is on Italian techno Western The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, starring Vincent Gallo.

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Issue 64: Sion Sono

Sion Sono: Social earthquakes, secret cults and strange perversions

The release of Himizu, a powerful manga-adapted teen drama set in post-tsunami Japan, is the occasion to take a closer look at the work of maverick director Sion Sono. We have an interview with Sono and a review of Exte: Hair Extensions, as well as previous reviews of Guilty of Romance, Cold Fish, Love Exposure and Suicide Club.

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Issue 63: Treachery

Treachery: Cheaters, liars, tricksters and traitors

Treachery is this month’s theme: we have reviews of True Love, a thriller that explores the dangerous consequences of lying to your spouse, and Extracted, a cerebral puzzler that explores the truths and lies we tell ourselves, both screening at SCI-FI-LONDON, Vincente Minelli’s take on glamorous betrayal in Hollywood The Bad and the Beautiful, Australian tale of scapegoats in the Boer War Breaker Morant and high-octane Welsh-directed Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid, which is released this month.

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Issue 62: Manga Adaptations


Crows Zero

Manga Adaptations: Tackling Fukushima, delinquent school boys and vengeful women

As the Terracotta Festival presents the UK premiere of Sion Sono’s Himizu this month, using a comic to tackle the fallout from Fukushima, we take a look at manga adaptations with Takashi Miike’s stylised, violent high school movie Crows Zero, Toshiya Fujita’s 70s revenge tale Lady Snowblood: Blizzard from the Netherworld, Korean manhwa vampire Western Priest and SF actioner Gantz while the Reel Sounds column focuses on Ichi the Killer.

La Grande Illusion, Aki Kaurism&#228ki’s light-hearted fable Le Havre, Pablo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place, Norwegian crime thriller Headhunters, revisionist Western Blackthorn and striking Austrian debut Breathing, about an ex-convict. In DVDs, we look at Pasolini’s The Gospel according to Matthew, Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Tree and Peter de Rome’s erotic gay films.

We have an interview with French director Dominik Moll for The Monk, adapted from Matthew Lewis’s Gothic novel. In Short Cuts we report back on the Flatpack festival, in Alter Ego Darran McCann is George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life and the Dominion of Canada column looks at ice hockey movies.

PODCASTS:
Roee Rosen: Vile, Evil Veil: Israeli artist, writer and filmmaker Roee Rosen talks about his first UK solo exhibition Vile, Evil Veil, which consists of the installation Live and Die as Eva Braun, exploring the life of Hitler’s lover in the bunker at the end of the Second World War, and the film Out (Tse), which stages a sado-masochist exorcism between a queer left-wing activist and a possessed ultra-nationalist woman. Rosen discusses the dynamic of power in human relationships, both personal and political, the importance of the victim/victimiser dichotomy in Israeli identity and how to exorcise the demon in all of us.

Issue 61: Ken Russell


The Devils

Ken Russell: Master of Excess

In March we celebrate the flamboyant brilliance of the late British director Ken Russell with articles on The Devils, his famously outrageous depiction of possession in 17th-century France, released on DVD in its original version for the first time, his psychedelic drug movie Altered States, his take on Byron and Shelley’s famous ghost story writing competition Gothic, and Savage Messiah, his portrayal of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, as well as a defence of his much decried Litztomania and an article about his fraught relationship with the press. In this month’s Alter Ego, Nick Harkaway is Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer in Billion Dollar Brain while Reel Sounds is about Russell’s composers and we have a Comic Strip Review of Women in Love.

In cinemas we review Werner Herzog’s death row documentary Into the Abyss, uncompromising Spanish award-winner Black Bread, disquieting Austrian paedophile portrait Michael, Argentine corruption drama Carancho and Norwegian thriller Babycall. We have a feature on Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan to mark the release of Once upon a Time in Anatolia and an article on avant-garde Japanese filmmaker Sh&#251ji Terayama, whose work is being shown at Tate Modern.

In the DVDs, we look at Polish master Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1959 Night Train and affecting, original A Horrible Way to Die. CineLit reviews books on Spaghetti Westerns while in the Jukebox East Asian culture connoisseur and DJ Zo&#235 Baxter picks her favourite films. In the blog, we report back on the Berlinale and FrightFest Glasgow.

PODCASTS:
Exploring The Lair of the White Worm: In a panel discussion recorded at The Horse Hospital arts club after a screening of Ken Russell’s lurid Bram Stoker adaptation on Wednesday 14 March, Mark Pilkington discusses The Lair of the White Worm (1988) with BFI Flipside programmers Vic Pratt and Will Fowler, touching on the legend of the Lambton Worm, titillation and absurdity in British cinema and Russell’s three-picture deal with Vestron Pictures in the 1980s.

Ken Russell: ‘All Art Is Sex!’: In a special programme to honour the late Ken Russell, Virginie Sélavy is joined by Strange Attractor Press editor Mark Pilkington, Electric Sheep contributor Richard Bancroft and Electric Sheep assistant editor Alex Fitch to discuss the director’s achievements, including The Devils, Altered States, Lair of the White Worm, Lisztomania, Dance of the Seven Veils and Music Lovers.

Issue 60: Femmes Fatales


Laura

Femmes Fatales: Deadly dames and murderous man-eaters

To mark the restoration of Otto Preminger’s magnificent Laura, we celebrate femmes fatales, including Peggy Cummins’s gutsy bank robber in Gun Crazy and Barbara Stanwyck’s sassy social climber in Baby Face. We have a feature on the female action hero and a Comic Strip on David Lynch’s temptresses while Reel Sounds is enthused by a wild jazz scene in Phantom Lady and in Alter Ego Katy Darby is Bridget Gregory in The Last Seduction.

New cinema releases include the intelligent, creepy cult victim tale Martha Marcy May Marlene, the excellent James Ellroy-scripted LA crime thriller Rampart, Polanski’s ferociously funny middle-class satire Carnage, and Cronenberg’s disappointing A Dangerous Method. And we have a feature on doyenne of lesbian cinema Barbara Hammer, who is the subject of a retrospective at Tate Modern.

In the DVDs, we look back at 80s classic Repo Man and we have an interview with Alex Cox. We also review 70s Vietnam vet vigilante drama Rolling Thunder and Bulgarian neo-noir Zift, and to give context to the latter’s interest in bodily waste, we have an article on toilet scenes in the movies.

In Short Cuts, we review the screening of Swedish feminist porn shorts Dirty Diaries at the London Short Film Festival while Cine Lit peruses Auteur books on 60s British cinema. In the Film Jukebox, soulful, dreamy chamber popsters The Tindersticks pick their favourite films.

PODCAST:
Making Film Interactive: Interviews with Alex Cox and Julian Napier: In a pair of interviews about innovations in filmmaking, Alex Fitch talks to two directors who have embraced new technology: Alex Cox talks about Repo Man, computer generated backgrounds its sequel Repo Chick, interactive cinema and using CGI in the re-release of his Western Straight to Hell. Julian Napier, director of Madame Butterfly 3D, a new film of the Royal Opera House’s production of Puccini’s classic tale, explains how filming the opera using 3D cameras makes the cinema presentation a more immersive experience.