TheKeep

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.

Out at the cinema we review classic Hollywood melodrama A Place in the Sun, unique Belgian crime drama Bullhead, supernatural thriller Mama, Brandon Cronenberg’s first feature Antiviral and Pablo Larraín’s No, which continues the director’s exploration of Chile’s politics and history.

In home entertainment releases we look at two new Mario Bava Blu-rays, Barbara Steele witch chiller Black Sunday and nightmarish fairy tale Lisa and the Devil, as well as Kaneto Shindô′s stunning tale of demons, greed and desire Onibaba. In Alter Ego, author Travis Elborough is James Mason in The London That Nobody Knows.

Repulsion

Repulsion: The strange attraction of dark emotions, vile acts and messed up characters

To coincide with the BFI’s extended run of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, we look at the repellent anti-hero of Maniac in our Comic Strip Review, the disgust caused by the hellish David Mamet-scripted Edmond, and vomit in film. Our Reel Sounds column is on the beautiful score to the shockingly disturbing Cannibal Holocaust.

In cinema releases, we review great horror anthology V/H/S, melancholy vampire reverie Midnight Son and harsh animation The King of Pigs, which deals with the brutality of South Korean society. We have a feature on Tarantino’s latest cult homage Django Unchained and its place in the long-running Django saga. And we have an interview with Jen and Sylvia Soska about their brilliant American Mary, starring Katharine Isabelle as a disillusioned former medical student who gets increasingly drawn into the underground world of illicit surgery.

We also have an interview with Klaus Maria Brandauer about The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich. And in Alter Ego, author Jack Wolf is JF Sebastian in Blade Runner.

PODCAST:
American Mary: A feminist horror film?: Writer and director Jennifer Eiss and freelance journalist Evrim Ersoy discuss the Soska twins’ description of their provocative American Mary as ‘feminist horror’ with Virginie Sélavy.

Ecstasy of the Angels

Kôji Wakamatsu: Porn, politics and provocation

This month we honour the late Kôji Wakamatsu, great provocateur and ‘godfather of the pink movie’, who mixed sex, violence and politics to explosive effect. We have reviews of Violent Virgin, Running in Madness, Dying in Love, Go, Go Second-Time Virgin, Secret Acts behind Walls, Pool without Water and Caterpillar, as well as a Comic Strip Review of Naked Bullet and a Reel Sounds column on the Ecstasy of the Angels soundtrack. An article taken from Behind the Pink Curtain by Jasper Sharp looks at Wakamatsu’s career and we have an interview with the man himself on his Mishima film, 11.25. The Day He Chose His Own Fate, one of his last to be completed.

In cinemas this month we review Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to In Bruges, comedy crime thriller Seven Psychopaths, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, fun Irish monster movie Grabbers, which was a hit on the festival circuit, and American documentary West of Memphis, about the fascinating case of alleged teen murderers.

In DVDs and Blu-rays we review the new restoration of Lucio Fulci’s classic Zombie Flesh Eaters. In Alter Ego, novelist Tanya Byrne is Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. In the blog, we report back on the Toronto festival and the Viennale, and the demise of the China Independent Film Festival due to the Chinese government’s recent clampdown on cultural events.

PODCASTS:

Kôji Wakamatsu: Sexual politics and political sex: Behind the Pink Curtain author Jasper Sharp talks about the late Kôji Wakamatsu, one of the most radical and provocative filmmakers of post-war Japan, and explains the context of the soft porn industry and the period of social and political unrest in which his work developed.

Spencer Hickman on Death Waltz Records: Spencer Hickman, founder of Death Waltz Records, specialising in cult film soundtracks on limited coloured vinyl with exclusive new artwork, talks to Virginie Sélavy about his label and plays tracks from his releases, which include Halloween II and III, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Donnie Darko and Let the Right One In, and music that has influenced him.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

Creatures: Ancient beasts, mystical monsters, sleepwalking murderers

As winter sets in the creatures come out of the dark: The Golem is conjured up, Conrad Veidt is the puppet of a sinister hypnotist in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, a primitive beast terrorizes Trans-Siberian passengers in 70s Spanish horror movie Horror Express and we have a feature on ‘Female Creatures and Science Experiments Gone Amiss’. In Alter Ego, Sam Hawken is Underworld’s Selene while our Comic Strip Review is on Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen.

We have interviews with Yorgos Lanthimos about his follow-up to Dogtooth, the equally oddball Alps, with Michael Haneke about the acclaimed Love, and with Ben Wheatley about his new horror comedy Sightseers. Not to be missed, two films are out on UK screens for the first time this month: the extended US version of The Shining and Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s landmark 90s animé Ninja Scroll.

In the second part of our London Film Festival coverage we review Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt and crime thriller End of Watch, out in cinemas this month. Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral screens at SCI-FI-LONDON’s Post-Apocolympic Weekender (Nov 9-11). And we report on L’Etrange Festival, Sitges and Toronto and our Cine Lit column looks at Kier-La Janisse’s House of Psychotic Women.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

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.

At the cinema we also review The Shining documentary Room 237, and we report on the East Asian films at the London Film Festival, as well as San Sebastian and Venice. We have a preview of the London International Animation Festival, which includes a focus on Japan.

Our Reel Sounds column takes a timely look at the soundtrack of Halloween III. We have a feature on underground cult filmmaker Trent Harris, whose work was the subject of a retrospective at Raindance. And we look at new Tate Modern gallery space The Tanks.

PODCAST:
The Hallowe’en Sessions: Acclaimed writer Kim Newman and director Sean Hogan talk about their exciting new project, the horror play The Hallowe’en Sessions, presented by Cigarette Burns and an award-winning team of horror/fantasy creators, which will be at the Leicester Square Theatre from 29 October to 3 November.

Tabu

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 Christmas‘ Whistle and I’ll Come to You. In Alter Ego, writer Will Wiles is Grosse Pointe Blank‘s Martin Blank.

At the cinema we review Leos Carax’s brilliantly enjoyable oddity Holy Motors, Andrew Dominik’s clear-sighted crime drama Killing Them Softly and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s sumptuous circus nightmare Santa Sangre, and we have an interview with Christian Petzold for his 1980s-set East German drama Barbara.

In the blog we report on Film4 FrightFest and Karlovy Vary while CineLit focuses on books on horror film.

PODCAST:
Philosophy, Murder and Forgotten TV series: Alex Fitch talks to film critic and historian Kim Newman about The Edgar Wallace Mysteries, a series of British B-movies made in the 1960s and subsequently rebranded as a TV series, based on novels by the co-creator of King Kong. Plus: in a Q&A recorded at the Raindance Film Festival, Alex talks to director M.A. Littler about his documentary The Kingdom of Survival, a road movie that explores the current state of scepticism and philosophy in modern America and features interviews with Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Kanaan and Joe Bageant.

The Imposter

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.

In other cinema releases, we look at Ole Bornedal’s The Possession. In DVD releases, we review Francis Ford Coppola’s 80s classic Rumble Fish, and as the BFI start releasing the BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas films, adapted from M.R. James, we look at the first two volumes.

Our online movie is Secret Number, an award-winning student film about a scientific conspiracy theory. We have a feature on the German festival dOCUMENTA (13) and our report on Sheffield includes a review of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, out this month, and we have the second part of our Cannes coverage, while in Alter Ego, author Kerry Hudson is Working Girl Tess McGill.

PODCASTS:
Unreliable Images: In a pair of Q&As recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON, the London International Science Fiction and Fantastic Film Festival, Alex Fitch talks to director John Simon about his adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Radio Free Albemuth and to director Berton Pierce and special effects expert Greg Aronowitz about the film Sense of Scale, a documentary on model making in the cinema.

Tetsuo: Iron Man

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.

Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s latest, Kotoko, the study of a disturbed woman, is also showing at the East End Film Festival, as are inventive French science fiction film Carré blanc, triumphantly surreal Romanian fantasy Somewhere in Palilula and Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair’s eccentric Hastings-to-Hackney travelogue Swandown.

In the blog, we report on the Edinburgh Film Festival, and we have an interview with Filipino director Khavn de la Cruz, whose outrageously fun freak show Mondomanila impressed us in Edinburgh. Abstract folk trio Dead Rat Orchestra select their favourite films in the Jukebox.

PODCASTS:
Scala Beyond: The unstoppable rise of fringe cinema: After the success of Scala Forever last year, a season of events programmed by film clubs and independent film exhibitors to pay homage to the legendary London cinema, and the Ken Russell Forever tribute in March, season producer Michael Pierce and director Phil Wood return with the even bigger Scala Beyond, which intends to widen the scope beyond nostalgic celebration. They talk to Virginie Sélavy about the aims of the season, the unique filmic delights it will offer and the growth of alternative film screenings around the UK.

Himizu

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.

At the cinema we review William Friedkin’s acclaimed comeback feature Killer Joe, David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, Billy Wilder’s classic The Apartment and Kaneto Shindô′s poetic portrait of the struggles of peasant life The Naked Island. We have a Comic Strip Review of Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and an interview with Belá Tarr for his austerely apocalyptic final film, The Turin Horse.

In DVDs, we look at 1930s horror gem Island of Lost Souls, Fritz Lang’s lovers on the run tale You Only Live Once, and documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.

In the blog we report on the Cannes festival. In Alter Ego, Carol Rifka Brunt is Harold but would like to be Maude.

PODCASTS:
Modern Hauntings:: Alex Fitch talks to Eduardo Sánchez about his debut film The Blair Witch Project and his latest movie, Lovely Molly, which follows the mental breakdown of a young woman tormented by the ghosts of her past. Also, in an interview recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON, Shawn Holmes talks about his micro-budget feature Memory Lane, which sees an Afghanistan veteran cheating death repeatedly to revisit his memories of a dead girlfriend and solve the riddle of her death.

True Love

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.

We have articles on Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s theatre of treachery from All about Eve to Cleopatra, manly betrayal in Westerns and the treachery of memory in Blade Runner. In Alter Ego, Elizabeth Wilson is Wicked Lady Margaret Lockwood while Reel Sounds delves into Roman Polanski’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.

At the cinema we look at Marcel Carné poetic realist classic Le quai des brumes, She Monkeys, a Swedish debut about two young women’s competitive friendship set in the world of equestrian acrobatics, and dark sci-fi drama Clone, and we have an interview with Udo Kier, who stars in sci-fi extravaganza Iron Sky. Hammer thriller The Plague of the Zombies is the subject of our Comic Strip Review while Cine Lit looks at books on Iranian cinema, conspiracy cinema and saucy British cinema.

PODCASTS:
True Love:: In an interview recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON, Virginie Sélavy talks to the makers of sci-fi drama True Love, about a young married couple who find themselves locked in separate sealed rooms and forced to answer questions about how much they trust each other. Writer-producer Fabio Guaglione and director Enrico Clerico Nasino discuss trust and betrayal, using genre to analyse a romantic relationship, and other ‘locked room’ films, including Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997).