Propaganda: Revolutionary Soviets, Nazi bombast, apolitical America

This month’s propaganda theme was prompted by the recent releases of Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth and Dziga Vertov’s A Sixth Part of the World. We also have a feature on the absence of propaganda in recent American war films and a Reel Sounds column on the soundtrack of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

New cinema releases include the notorious extreme body horror movie The Human Centipede, and we have an interview with Bong Joon-ho, whose extraordinary Mother is out this month. We also interview Sylvain Chomet about The Illusionist and Fran&#231ois Ozon about The Refuge.

In the DVDs, we look at classic Technicolor romance Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Hammer’s excellent atmospheric thriller Paranoiac and disappointing ninja movie Kamui. We also have a comic strip review of Swiss sci-fi thriller Cargo. And we interview Peter Whitehead on Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts.

In the Blog, we have previews of FrightFest and the London Animation Film Festival. And you can watch the trailer for Oddsac, a film by Animal Collective and Danny Perez.

PODCAST:
The Films of Vincenzo Natali: Alex Fitch talks to director Vincenzo Natali about Splice, his previous films with actor David Hewlett, and his forthcoming adaptation of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer.

Confined Spaces: From tanks to locked rooms and futuristic cubes

As the powerful war drama Lebanon, which is entirely set in a tank, is released this month, we look at confined spaces, with articles on bird-watching British thriller The Hide and metaphysical horror film Cube as well as Krzysztof Komeda’s soundtrack for Knife in the Water.

This month’s new movies include Herzog’s demented Bad Lieutenant, charming punk sci-fi tale Fish Story and the documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story. We also review Kafkaesque Estonian drama The Temptation of St Tony and we have an interview with Teddy Chen.

In the DVDs, we look at Paradjanov’s lyrical film poem Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and Australian cannibal drama Van Diemen’s Land. We have a comic strip review of Dario Argento’s The Card Player and our online movie is Girl Number 9.

We are very excited to present our very first Colonial Report from the Dominion of Canada from Careful producer Greg Klymkiw and we also have a feature on Magic Lanterns. In the Blog, we have a preview of the Terracotta Film Festival, and reviews of the Nippon Connection, American backwater documentary Zoomer, Iceland’s first horror film Reykjavik Whale-Watching Massacre and Joe Dante’s rarely seen pop culture film collage The Movie Orgy.

In the Short Cuts, we look at Georges Pal’s puppet animation while Lali Puna pick their favourite movies in the Film Jukebox. And you can read the winning review of Battle Royale in our April film writing competition.

PODCASTS: Until the End of the World: In the latest Electric Sheep podcast, we’re looking at apocalyptic movies: Virginie Sélavy talks to John Hillcoat, director of the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in an interview recorded at last year’s London Film Festival, plus Alex Fitch talks to Helen McCarthy, a British expert on manga, anime and Japanese visual culture, in a Q&A recorded before the Electric Sheep screening of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale at the Prince Charles Cinema.

If you only see one film this month, make it Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a masterful, richly enigmatic evocation of the ‘Nazi generation’ as children. Lighter entertainment comes courtesy of whimsical comedy Bunny and the Bull, directed by Mighty Boosh‘s Paul King, and outrageous Japanese porn farce Lalapipo. The Korean Film Festival is at the Barbican and there is a Bong Joon-ho retrospective at the BFI Southbank, which includes screenings of his latest, Mother, as well as The Host and Memories of Murder.

Also in UK cinemas in November are Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, a documentary investigating the gorgeous-looking crime thriller the French master could not complete, and low-fi indie romance Paper Heart, for which we have capsule reviews as part of our round-up of the 53rd London Film Festival – read about unknown gems as well as films you can look forward to see on UK screens in the near future. We Live in Public, a documentary about internet pioneer Joshua Harris that also screened at the LFF, is out this month and we have an interview with director Ondi Timoner.

In the DVD section, we look at two very different French works, the acclaimed documentary on France under German occupation during the Second World War The Sorrow and the Pity, and extreme horror thriller Inside and its connection to the Paris riots of 2005. We also review a documentary on the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival.

We have an interview with Momoko Ando, the young director of the wonderful Kakera – A Piece of our Lives, conducted during the Raindance Film Festival last month. You can read the winning review in our Rollerball film writing competition, which we run every month in connection with the Electric Sheep Film Club at the Prince Charles. And our Film Jukebox this month features the very unusual Non-Commissioned Officers, who formed a band to promote a film – or was it the other way around?

The Electric Sheep Magazine team