Francis Matthews is Paul Temple while Captain Scarlet looks on
To coincide with the release of the little known BBC TV adaptation of the Paul Temple mysteries on DVD, Alex Fitch and Robin Warren talk to actor Francis Matthews about his career from playing the aforementioned suave mystery writer turned detective to voicing the indestructible puppet Captain Scarlet and fighting Christopher Lee’s Rasputin in the underrated Hammer film about The Mad Monk.
This seminal atmospheric horror film influenced such masters of fright and strangeness as George A Romero and David Lynch. After surviving a car crash that left her friends dead, Mary Henry is beset by nightmarish visions involving a menacing ghost and becomes increasingly isolated from her community. As daily life is gradually contaminated by the otherworldly, the film takes on the texture of a horrific dream, fluid and eerie, rich, dark, deep and infinitely memorable.
Next screening: WEDNESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER – Special preview of White Lightnin’ + director Q&A!
Goblin circa 2009 - Fabio Pignatelli / Massimo Morante / Maurizio Guarini / Agostino MarangoloSupersonic festival 2009 poster
This weekend, the cult Italian rock band Goblin are headlining the Supersonic festival in Birmingham, playing the final gig of the event at 11pm on Sunday 26 July. The band will be doing a Q & A on stage about their music with Electric Sheep Magazine‘s assistant editor Alex Fitch at 6.15pm. The name Goblin first appeared on the map in 1975, when the band recorded the soundtrack for Dario Argento’s film Profondo Rosso. This was the starting point for a decade-long, highly creative and widely influential collaboration between the eccentric filmmaker and Goblin, which turned the group into the aural signifier of Italian horror films of the 70s and 80s. They created soundtracks to such cult classics as Suspiria (1977) and Dawn of the Dead (Zombi, 1978).
For more info about the Supersonic festival and how to buy tickets, visit the festival website at www.capsule.org.uk/supersonic.
Ghosted I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
Monika Treut is an independent German filmmaker who has explored female and lesbian sexuality in her films since her debut feature, the controversial Seduction: The Cruel Woman, in 1985. She followed it up with the coming-out tale Virgin Machine in 1988. She turned to documentary in 1992 with Female Misbehavior, four portraits of ‘bad girls’ including Camille Paglia, and made the acclaimed Gendernauts in 1999, which portrayed a group of transgendered people in San Francisco. In 2001, Treut made Warrior of Light, a documentary on Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, an artist and human rights activist who works with slum children in Rio de Janeiro. In 2002, Treut travelled to Taiwan and became fascinated by the country. She made the documentary Tigerwomen Grow Wings about three generations of women, and recently returned to fiction with Ghosted, an unconventional love story between a German artist and a Taiwanese woman set between Hamburg and Taipei.
Virginie Sélavy talked to Monika Treut during the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where Ghosted has its UK premiere.
Listen to the podcast: The second of two podcasts looking at the current state of gay cinema includes Virginie Sélavy’s interview with Monika Treut + guest interviewer Chris Patmore, from Films and Festivals magazine talks to director Paul Morrison about his film Little Ashes, which looks at the relationship between Dali and the poet Federico García Lorca, as played by Twilight star Robert Pattinson and Javier Beltrí¡n respectively. (Part 2 of 2)
Federico García Lorca played by Javier Beltrí¡n and Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes
On the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, Alex Fitch talks to two television pioneers who were inspired by the events of July 16, 1969.
Alex Fitch talks to Gerry Anderson about how the space race and technological innovations of the 1960s inspired such shows as Supercar and Thunderbirds. Anderson also talks about his stint in the RAF as an aircraft controller, responding to the fashions in genre with Four Feathers Falls and Fireball XL5 and mixing animation styles in lesser known series such as Lavender Castle and The Secret Service.
Sir Patrick Moore and Apollo 11, photo by Paul Grover
Sir Patrick Moore covered the events of the Apollo 11 mission live on TV and discusses the events of that day with Alex Fitch as well as the highlights of his six decades presenting The Sky at Night.
(N.B. The interview with Sir Patrick is available to download now at Sci-Fi London)
Thursday 16/07/09 10.30pm Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com
Kenneth Anger at the Imperial War Museum, photo by Damon Cleary I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
To herald the arrival of London Gay Pride weekend, Virginie Sélavy talks to infamous experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger about his career, from his ground-breaking Magick Lantern Cycle to his recent return to the medium after a 20-year break.
Listen to the podcast: In the first of two podcasts exploring the current state of gay cinema, Alex Fitch looks at this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and at the short film collection Boys on Film 2: In Too Deep + Virginie Sélavy’s interview with Kenneth Anger. (Part 1 of 2)
To coincide with the release of updates of the Terminator franchise and Blood: The last Vampire, Alex Fitch talks to actress Linda Hamilton about her career, working with Arnold Schwarzenegger and becoming a feminist icon. Alex also talks to anime expert Helen McCarthy about the various incarnations of Blood: The Last Vampire, the Japanese version of Buffy which has moved from TV animation to manga, video games and now live action cinema.
In Park Chan-wook’s extraordinary visual assault, a man is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years without knowing why. When he is finally released from this Kafka-esque nightmare, he is hell-bent on revenge and seeks to uncover his tormentor’s identity. What follows is a twisted cat and mouse game that takes the protagonist and the audience through extremes of emotion, exploring the dark energy of vengeance. Exhilarating, horrifying, blackly humorous and heart-wrenching in equal measure, this is an unmissable masterpiece of cinematic cruelty. Oldboy was Park’s breakthrough movie in the UK, cementing his reputation as one of the most original and challenging directors currently making movies in the Far East.
Next screening: WEDNESDAY 5 AUGUST – Carnival of Souls
Substitute is the theme of the summer 09 issue of Electric Sheep, with articles on the fraught relationship between Takeshi Kitano and ‘Beat’ Takeshi, the various cinematic incarnations of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley, interchanging identities in Joseph Losey’s films, the dangers of false impersonation in Danish neo-noir Just Another Love Story, the paradoxes of black and white twins in offbeat lost classic Suture, not to mention cross-dressing criminals, androids and body snatchers.
The magazine is no longer available and we are no longer published by Wallflower Press.
Also in this issue: interview with Marc Caro, profile of whiz-kid animator David OReilly, comic strip review of Hardware, and The Phantom Band’s favourite films!
Enfant terrible Takashi Miike’s most notorious work remains genuinely shocking. The story of a middle-aged man who, following his son’s advice, holds auditions to find a new wife is the pretext for an exploration of fantasy, desire, cruelty and obsession that is as visually beautiful as it is gruesomely disturbing.
WEDNESDAY 5 AUGUST, 
