To coincide with the release of the new sci-fi thriller Splice, in which scientists Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley create a dangerous half-human hybrid via genetic manipulation, Alex Fitch talks to director Vincenzo Natali about the film and the other three movies he’s collaborated on with actor David Hewlett – Cypher, Nothing, the cult classic Cube – and his forthcoming adaptation of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer.
An edited version of this interview was broadcast 23/07/10 on Resonance 104.4 FM as an episode of I’m ready for my close-up.
Zhang Yimou’s breakthrough martial arts epic is a lavish visual feast best appreciated on the largest screen possible! Set in the third century BC as the ambitious, war-mongering king of Qin is trying to unite China by force, it stars Jet Li as a nameless swordsman granted a rare audience with his sovereign after killing three fearsome assassins (played by some of Hong Kong cinema’s greatest, Donnie Yen, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung). As the sly king questions the ‘hero’, we are presented with three different versions of the events, each colour-coded. The result is a sumptuous spectacle combining graceful fight scenes, magnificent décors, dubious truths and questionable politics.
Guest speaker: Zoë Baxter, presenter of Resonance FM’s radio show on East Asian culture.
FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Hero and send it to ladyvengeance [at] electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. A film expert to be announced shortly will pick the best entry. Deadline: Thursday 26 August. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in September. Read the May winning review of Midnight Cowboy.
Unusual images of the Western: Gene Autry comic no. 4; Western Fighters vol.3 no.4; Midnight Cowboy poster; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
In a pair of Q&As recorded at the Electric Sheep Film Club, in the Prince Charles Cinema in London, Alex Fitch talks to BFI programmer Emma Smart about gay themes in Westerns after a screening of Midnight Cowboy and to Ian Rakoff about the crossover between Western-themed comics and movies before a screening of For a few Dollars More.
Ian Rakoff will talk about ‘Magical realism and social realism in comics’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 21 July 2010.
Listen to Alex Fitch’s first interview with Ian Rakoff, about writing for The Prisoner and his experiences in the world of film.
This blaxploitation classic has it all: sleaze, violence, badasss mamas, nasty drug pushers, mean inner city streets and a funky score by Willie Hutch. But what makes it truly special is the formidable Pam ‘a whole lotta woman’ Grier (who returned as Jackie Brown in Tarantino’s homage to the genre), handing out magnificently spirited ass-whippings to the bad guys in this outré tale of revenge in the ghetto. Exploitation specialist Jack Hill directs, and Foxy’s no-good brother is played by Antonio Vargas, better known as Huggy Bear in Starsky and Hutch.
Guest speaker: Rebecca Johnson, award-winning writer/filmmaker, director of Top Girl, the Brixton-set story of a fearless young girl coming of age in a man’s world.
FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Foxy Brown and send it to ladyvengeance [at] electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. A film expert to be announced shortly will pick the best entry. Deadline: Thursday 29 July. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in August. Read the May winning review of Midnight Cowboy.
On the Silver Globe is an esoteric Polish sci-fi epic directed by Andrzej Żuławski in 1977 – then lost and believed destroyed by the authorities for a decade before its cinema release. In 2009, the film was screened at Tate Modern as part of a mini-season of films titled ‘Polish New Wave – The History of a Phenomenon that Never Existed’. Looking ahead to the release of this film on DVD in the UK, Alex Fitch talks to Andrzej Żuławski about his struggles in getting the film released and the travails involved in making his horror films The Third Part of the Night (1971) and Possession (1981) under the eyes of a communist regime.
Alex Fitch also talks to Polish poster designer Andrzej Klimowski and his wife Danusia Schejbal (famously depicted as the victim of an assassin’s bullet on Klimowski’s poster for Robert Altman’s Nashville) about working on the fringes of Polish filmmaking in the late 1970s and whether the films of the time could be seen as belonging to an artistic movement.
Andrzej Żuławski will be the focus of a retrospective at this year’s Kinoteka festival which runs from 7-28 April 2016.
In Sergio Leone’s masterful follow-up to A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood is a laconic money-driven bounty hunter who forms an uneasy partnership with Lee Van Cleef’s justice-seeking Colonel Mortimer as they pursue Gian Maria Volonté’s deranged, psychotic bandit. Add Klaus Kinski to that already phenomenal cast, and you have one hell of a movie, with Leone’s cynical world view, sadistically inventive violence, black humour and epic grandeur enriched by Ennio Morricone’s lush score. This one absolutely has to be seen on the big screen to appreciate its full splendour!
Guest speaker: Comic artists Tim Keable and Andrew Cheverton, creators of the ongoing West series, are no longer able to attend the screening but we are very pleased to welcome Ian Rakoff, screenwriter, film editor, comic book collector, author of Inside The Prisoner: Radical Television and Film in the 1960s, and writer of the Western episode of Patrick McGoohan’s TV series The Prisoner, who will introduce the screening with a discussion of Westerns with Electric Sheep’s Alex Fitch.
FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of For a Few Dollars More and send it to ladyvengeance [at] electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. Howard Hughes, author of Spaghetti Westerns (Kamera Books), a well-researched, detailed analysis of the genre illustrated with rare colour posters and stills, will select the best review. Deadline: Thursday 24 June. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in July. Read the April winning review of Battle Royale.
Next screening: WEDNESDAY 14 JULY: Blaxploitation classic Foxy Brown!
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 and A recorded before the Electric Sheep screening of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale at the Prince Charles Cinema.
To coincide with the release of the new sci-fi thriller Splice, in which scientists Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley create a dangerous half-human hybrid via genetic manipulation, Alex Fitch talks to director Vincenzo Natali about the film and the other three movies he’s collaborated on with actor David Hewlett – Cypher, Nothing, the cult classic Cube – and his forthcoming adaptation of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer.
