Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 142 i SciFi Now

Jessica Jones’ first season hit Netflix in November 2015, so if it feels like you’ve been waiting forever for her return, you have (at least in TV terms). While it’s been a hell of a long sabbatical for NY’s toughest private investigator (if you don’t count The Defenders, sure), what has been heartening in the interim is seeing just how many people found and loved the show and the character. She didn’t just cross the fiercely fought but ultimately nonsensical studio partisan lines, she struck a chord with viewers who might not normally sit down to watch a comic book show. Not only was Jessica a badass, foulmouthed, funny and flawed hero, she was dealing with issues rarely addressed in a series like this. We spoke to Krysten Ritter and…

On 22 January, the great author Ursula K Le Guin passed away and we lost one of the most important voices in genre fiction. The word ‘important’ always feels like it implies a weight, a significance that removes the work from things as frivolous as entertainment or warmth, but as anyone who has read her fiction will tell you, this is not the case with Le Guin. One of her most impressive gifts was the ability to bring you into a world so completely and utterly immersive and compelling in a blink of an eye. Her Earthsea books, starting with 1968’s A Wizard Of Earthsea, were the doorway into fantasy literature for a huge number of readers and a clear influence on writers like George RR Martin, JK Rowling and…

2018 13 NOMINATIONS Everyone expected The Shape Of Water to do well (13 nominations in total) but Get Out surprised and delighted everyone with nods for best film, best leading actor and best director. Logan became a rare superhero film to get an adapted screenplay nomination and Blade Runner 2049 is up for best cinematography. 2017 4 NOMINATIONS Denis Villenueve’s Arrival picked up three big nominations (although somehow Amy Adams didn’t get one for her brilliant performance), and, in the grand tradition of weird films getting recognised in writing categories, The Lobster got an original screenplay nod. 2016 7 NOMINATIONS We can thank The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road for 2016’s reasonable haul of genre nominations, as well as a screenplay nod for Ex Machina. We’re still amazed that…

HOUSE OF DEMONS This month’s very deserving winner is the poster for the new supernatural thriller House Of Demons, which stars Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s rather brilliant Amber Benson as a woman who has found herself trapped in a remote house with some estranged friends. The problem is, that house is actually haunted, and it once belonged to a Charles Manson Family-like cult back in the Sixties… We hate it when that happens! The poster for House Of Demons is certainly reminiscent of other great genre posters that have preceded it without actually ripping any of them off, which is certainly a feat in itself! But mainly we have to admit that mostly it’s just a really nice piece of art to look at… ANNIHILATION With Annihilation coming from Alex…

BOB PARR/MR INCREDIBLE Mr Incredible (Craig T Nelson) is taking on the stay-at-home dad role in the sequel, which means handling his three super-powered children. DASHIELL ‘DASH’ PARR The middle Parr child has amazing superspeed and is itching to show it off. Given that the original voice actor hit puberty quite some time ago, Dash is voiced this time by Huck Milner. EVELYN DEAVOR Voiced by Catherine Keener, tech genius Evelyn is Winston’s business partner and sister. We’d expect one or both of the Deavors to be up to no good. AMBASSADOR Isabella Rossellini is playing an ambassador who is keen to have Supers legalised – but what are her reasons? HELEN PARR/ ELASTIGIRL Helen, voiced by Holly Hunter, is roped into leading a campaign to rehabilitate the image of…

TRISH WALKER Jessica’s adopted sister and best friend Trish might be the one who tries to convince Jessica to become a superhero, but she’s also pretty paranoid, training in Krav Maga and having state-of-the-art security installed in her home. Towards the end of Season One she took dangerous strength-enhancing drugs to help Jessica defeat her former lover, Will Simpson. Trish is clearly willing to go to great lengths to be able to protect herself and those she loves – how far will she go in Season Two? MALCOLM DUCASSE Jessica’s neighbour has his own trauma to work on – Kilgrave made him become addicted to drugs, and used him to spy on Jessica. After going cold turkey in Season One, Malcolm was clean and sober in The Defenders. He led…

SUPER MARIO BROS (1993)  Director: Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton Cast: Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper The game: It’s the most famous platform game of all time. The 1983 arcade game had Mario and Luigi heading into the sewers, before the 1985 NES game headed into the Mushroom Kingdom. The film: Pre-production was a revolving door of stars, directors and writers. Things got worse once filming began. The directors were unpopular, the production went over budget and schedule, the cast was miserable, and chaos reigned. The end result is a muddled, ugly but fascinating piece of bad movie history. Key line: “Remember: trust the fungus.” Success?: An oddly fascinating failure. Sequels: Absolutely not. STREET FIGHTER (1994)  Director: Steven E de Souza Cast: Jean-Claude…

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO A single father who lost his wife to the Borg, Sisko is a good, if tough, man with a strict moral code. Also, the Bajorans think he’s the emissary of the prophets. MAJOR KIRA NERYS Sisko’s Bajoran first officer is a veteran who was part of the guerilla uprising against the Cardassians. She doesn’t make friends lightly and distrusts easily, but she soon realises that she’s part of something important. ODO Like Kira, Odo has a fair few trust issues, although he will always have the Major’s back. He’s the shape-shifting Chief of Security who was raised by a Bajoran scientist with no knowledge of his own people. QUARK Every Wild West town needs a Quark. He’s the guy who can get you whatever you want, on…

Battlestar Galactica Helfer’s career began with her turn(s) as the various Number Sixes – she even contributed her voice to a new model of Cylon in the prequel Blood And Chrome. Supernatural During her BSG days, Helfer made a cameo as a murder victim who doesn’t know she’s dead in Supernatural – where for once she was shorter than her male co-stars. Various Spider-Man games and cartoons She’s voiced Black Cat in the cartoon series The Spectacular Spider-Man, and the video game Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows. Katee Sackhoff later voiced the same character. Falling Skies Who better to play the Espheni Queen in the show’s finale than Tricia Helfer? Powers Helfer played Angela Lange, a former villain with cat-like abilities who has become an FBI agent.…

DEE REES In 2011 semi-autobiographical drama Pariah made waves at festivals. Since then, Rees has directed a Bessie Smith biopic, awards favourite Mudbound and an episode of Electric Dreams. Her next few projects are a political thriller, a feminist drama and a Blumhouse horror centred around a lesbian couple living in rural America. RYAN COOGLER The man who revived the Rocky franchise with Michael B Jordan has made Marvel history by selling a record number of first-day ticket pre-sales for Black Panther. Coogler and Jordan have been a team since Fruitvale Station, which told the story of the last day of Oscar Grant, killed by a BART police officer in Oakland in 2009. JORDAN PEELE From watching Get Out the entire world should now be aware of Peele’s knowledge and…

Karen Berger is sort of a big deal. She joined DC Comics as a non-comics-fan at the age of 21 and within a decade she had changed the industry forever. She helped to establish the careers of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, oversawSandman and Hellblazer, and launched Vertigo, the DC imprint that gave us Transmetropolitan, Y: The Last Man, Preacher and loads more. She left Vertigo in 2013, and since then she has been working on small, personal projects. But now she’s back with her own line of comics at Dark Horse – the Berger Books. “I was just anxious creatively to get back in the game,” Berger admits. “The election happened and it was like, shit, what’s going on with the world? I felt like I needed…

AFTER FOUR SEASONS, DYSTOPIAN YA SERIES THE 100 HAS BECOME KNOWN FOR ITS MIND-BLOWING SEASON FINALE CLIFFHANGERS. Season One left the teens in a sterile quarantine ward in Mount Weather with brand new characters, even though we were led to believe they and the grounders were the only people on Earth, the Season Two finale introduced the mysterious AI known as ALIE, discovered by Jaha in a luxuriant mansion on his quest for the City of Light, and Season Three saw Clarke destroying ALIE and Octavia executing Pike. Season Four, however, might have dropped the biggest bombshell of all: it pulled the old passing of time trick, travelling six years and seven days into the future, where Clarke is revealed to have survived the death wave and is now living…

Details 15 // 103 mins // Out now Director Adam Robitel Screenwriter Leigh Whannell Cast Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Josh Stewart, Spencer Locke, Caitlin Gerard Distributor Sony Pictures The best decision the fi rst Insidious movie made, back in 2010, was casting Lin Shaye as maverick demon-hunter Elise Rainier. The worst decision? Killing her off at the end of the film. Because as the franchise has gone on, it’s only become clearer than Shaye – already a horror icon thanks to appearances in countless scary movies, from 1984’s A Nightmare On Elm Street onwards – is its strongest asset. In The Last Key, a prequel to Insidious and a sequel to Insidious: Chapter 3, Elise is both demon hunter and demon hunted. When she receives a call from…

Details 18 TBC // 83 mins // 2 March Director Brian Taylor Screenwriter Brian Taylor Cast Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair, Anne Winters, Zackary Arthur, Lance Henriksen Distributor Vertigo Releasing Crank and Gamer co-director Brian Taylor goes solo for the first time with this gleefully nasty horror comedy that will not disappoint fans of his work with Mark Neveldine. Mom And Dad has the kind of premise that could be played relatively straight, or at least in a more chilling, low-key fashion, but Taylor instead channels his signature lunatic energy and pitch-black humour to deliver a midnight movie that will have you cackling and gasping in equal measure. The set-up is classic Seventies outbreak horror (something Taylor plays up with a lovely retro title sequence), as some kind of signal transmitted…

Details 18 // 95 mins // 2014 // VOD // Released Out now Director Hilary Brougher Cast Sophie Lane Curtis, Kelly Reilly, Graham Phillips, Stephanie March Distributor Ace Entertainment After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Beckett (Sophie Lane Curtis) and her father (Linus Roache) move to a new town, trying to get a fresh start. Inevitably, though, things take a turn for the spooky. Beckett’s new school has an unusually high teen suicide rate, and her teachers – all of whom are improbably young and beautiful – seem weirdly invested in making sure the kids stay virgins… Everything about Innocence feels familiar: from the Suspirialite story of supernatural monsters and secret societies to the very basic special effects; if you’ve ever seen a horror movie you’ll have seen…

Details 15// 105 mins // 2016// // Released 19 February Director Derek Nguyen Cast Kate Nhung, Jean-Michel Richaud, Kim Xuan, Phi Phung Distributor Eureka Entertainment Vengeful spirits lurk in the depths of a French colonial plantation in Derek Nguyen’s beautifully shot, 1953-set directorial debut, but whose spirits are they? Is timid new housekeeper Linh (Kate Nhung) being targeted by the ghost of her employer’s late wife, or are the countless brutalised Vietnamese dead finally making their voices heard? Writer-director Nguyen has a great sense of atmosphere, and the vast mansion, endless forests and huge lakes providing an ideal setting for a Gothic ghost story. The remorseless exploitation of colonialism also gives the increasingly personal relationship between Linh and Captain Laurent (Jean-Michel Richaud) a greater complexity. As tumultuous and terrifying as…

Details 15// 94 mins // 2017// // Released 22 January Director David Bruckner Cast Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Rob James-Collier, Sam Troughton Distributor Entertainment One The Ritual begins with a scene of real horror as boozy, boorish Luke (Rafe Spall) watches his best friend being murdered while he stays hidden, frozen with fear. That gut-wrenching shock is the film’s most powerful moment but it sets a tone of grief, guilt and grieving as Luke and his three friends hike through the wilds of Sweden to bid farewell to Robert. The atmosphere and unspoken resentment (well, not unspoken for long) is The Ritual’s biggest strength and the strong cast is led by an excellent turn from Spall but the film (based on Adam Nevill’s novel) finds the genre element a bit…

Details 15// 92 mins// 2016// // Released Out now Director Griff Furst Cast Josh Stewart, Candy Clark, Robbie Kay, Frank Whaley, Christopher Lloyd Distributor Bulldog Film Distribution There’s something interesting fl oating at the bottom of this Southern Gothic ghost story, but while director Griff Furst seems to understand his story’s potential (based on a novel by Beetlejuice writer Michael McDowell), he can’t quite get it to function as a film. There are some memorable images as the ghost of the murdered young woman hurtles around after her killer (the sequences in which she appears to be riding a spectral bicycle are kind of fascinating), but despite the setting, there’s precious little atmosphere. It doesn’t help that the story sets itself up as a mystery before revealing the murderer’s identity…

Details 15// 119 mins // 2017// • // Released 19 February Director Tomas Alfredson Cast Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jonas Karlsson, J.K. Simmons Distributor Universal The Snowman is based on a bestseller by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø, though it’s hard to detect the reason for the novel’s popularity from this borderline indecipherable adaptation. Director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) was quick to discuss production problems while promoting the film’s theatrical release, which is unusual in that talent involved with misfires like this tend to at least wait a while before attempted penance. Since the cinema run, Val Kilmer’s going public with his recent struggle with throat cancer goes some way to explaining bizarre dubbing in one of the film’s numerous baffling subplots, many of which go…

Details 15// 116 mins // 2017// • // Released 26 February Director Joachim Trier Cast Eili Harboe, Kaya Wilkins, Henrik Rafaelson, Ellen Dorrit Petersen Distributor Thunderbird Releasing The latest film from arthouse darling Joachim Trier ( Oslo, August 31st) blends Cronenberg and Carrie for an excellent coming-of-age story set in a Norwegian university. Shy Thelma (Eili Harboe) has led a sheltered life with her devoutly Christian family, and when she moves to Oslo to study, she begins to form a romantic relationship with Anja (Kaya Wilkins). As she does so, inexplicable, possibly supernatural events start occurring around her. Is she having a guilt-induced breakdown, or is there something powerful inside Thelma that has been lying dormant? We’ve seen a lot of these types of stories in the horror genre recently,…

Details 15// 400 minutes // 2017// // Released Out now Creator Jeremy Slater Cast Alfonso Herrera, Ben Daniels, Kurt Egyiawan, John Cho, Brianna Hildebrand Distributor Syfy, Amazon Following an excellent fi rst season, Jeremy Slater and Sean Crouch have taken The Exorcist from strength to strength by leading the story away from the established mythology and creating a world of their own. Season Two finds Father Tomas (Alfonso Herrera) and Marcus (Ben Daniels) on the road as they bicker about which side of good and evil the former’s powers come from. Meanwhile, the main focus of the season is a foster home in the middle of the Seattle woods, where a group of orphans cared for by widower Andrew Kim (John Cho) comes under threat from a demonic force. The…

Details Author: Alastair Reynolds Publisher: Gollancz Price: £18.99 Released: Out now Alastair Reynolds’ latest Revelation Space novel is a sequel to The Prefect but presents itself as a standalone mystery, and although Elysium Fire doesn’t require homework, it should be noted that newcomers will have to keep their wits about them to get up to speed with the complex world the author has created. With that being said, the fast-moving plot grabs you from the off, with an escalating series of gruesome deaths acting as the catalyst for potentially devastating political unrest. The story opens with Prefect Thalia Ng being ordered to decapitate a corpse in front of a crowd of locals (to bring it back as evidence, naturally), with her gruesome task seen as yet another example of the…

Details Author: Holly Cave Publisher: Quercus Price: £12.99 Released: 22 February Imagine you could design your own heaven. You’d never have to worry about what’ll happen after you die, because scientists can guarantee that when your time comes, they’ll scoop out the part of your brain that contains your consciousness and plug you into an eternal montage of all your most treasured memories. Sounds too good to be true, right? Inevitably, it is. When heaven architect Isobel falls in love with one of her terminally ill clients, she knows she’s setting herself up for pain, but she doesn’t expect to find herself in the middle of a murder investigation that’ll push the heaven-building technology – and her own sanity – to its limits. There’s something Black Mirror-y about this story,…

Details Author: Snorri Kristjansson Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books Price: £16.99 Released: 8 March Unnthor Reginsson calls for a reunion of his children and with the legend of their father’s treasure hoard ringing in their heads, three sons and a daughter return to the farmstead with their respective families. Snorri Kristjansson’s Kin plays out rather like a small scale Viking Gosford Park, but it’s not the patriarch who ends up dead, rather another member of the family, ripping open years of suppressed familial resentment. It is up to Unnthor and his wife Hildigunner’s adopted daughter, Helga, to find out whodunnit. Helga can sometimes get lost amongst the more fearsome characters of the family in the ensemble scenes. She is there as an observer and is primarily used to convey information about…

“I don’t know what I’m allowed to tell you!” RJ Barker stage-whispers, but don’t worry. For the time being his current WIP will stay shrouded in secrecy; we’re here to talk about what’s next for Girton Club-Foot and Merela Karn, the apprentice-master duo of last year’s hit Age Of Assassins who are soon to reappear in book two: Blood Of Assassins. Barker’s debut was an entertaining epic fantasy tale that kept things grounded and engaging, following its teenage narrator Girton as he helped his teacher track down a possible murderer in the deadly environs of Castle Maniyadoc. Now, the duo’s back, and Girton is a little older, if not a little wiser. “It’s different in many ways while being the same,” Barker tells us. “There’s been five years between the…

Fans of Holly Black’s work will tell you that she has always been interested in the darker side of fairy tales. The author, who made her name with The Spiderwick Chronicles, has consistently pushed at the shadows of the genre while (mostly) working in YA, from the vampiric The Coldest Girl In Coldtown to the fantasy of The Curse Worker series. Her latest, The Cruel Prince, is the first instalment in a new dark fairy tale trilogy, in which our heroine, Jude, and her sisters live in the High Court of Faerie with their parents’ murderer. When the King’s imminent retirement causes upheaval, Jude sees opportunity as well as danger… “I think the sinister bits of Faerie are always the most fun for me,” Black tells us. Was there an…

THE BIONIC WOMAN (SEASON TWO, EPISODE 19 OF THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN) Lindsay Wagner’s introduction as Jaime Sommers occurred during this romantic two-part episode of Lee Majors’ flagship show. Rekindling his childhood romance with Jaime, Austin persuades Oscar Goldman to install her with bionics following a skydiving accident. However, Jaime’s body starts rejecting the bionics leading to tragic circumstances… WELCOME HOME JAIME SOMMERS (SEASON ONE, THE BIONIC WOMAN SERIES PREMIERE) This sets up the premise for ensuing missions and recaps Jaime’s transformation into the Bionic Woman. It’s a somber affair, with Jaime failing to recall her romance with Austin, however there’s comedy with her aptly demonstrating her abilities to some disobedient students by tearing an encyclopedia in half like a sheet of paper. MIRROR IMAGE (SEASON ONE, EPISODE 13)…

Joey Fane (The Nanny) Nobody listens to poor Joey when he tells them that Nanny is trying to off him. Fortunately, Joey is a cunning kid and won’t let Nanny put him to bed without a fight. Regan MacNeil (The Exorcist) Possessed by a demon, Regan is absolutely terrifying, but you really care for the poor girl fighting for her soul. Newt (Aliens) Her entire neighbourhood is killed by aliens, but feisty Newt survives on chocolate bars and courage until help arrives. Jamie Lloyd (Halloween 4-6) Little Jamie not only has to deal with her supernaturally powerful uncle Michael Myers killing off everyone she loves but also being the target of an evil cult. Summer, Colin and Jason (Dead Shack)…

” WELCOME TO FRIGHT NIGHT… FOR REAL.” JERRY DANDRIDGE “OH, YOU’RE SO COOL, BREWSTER!” EVIL ED “I HAVE JUST BEEN FIRED BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS TO SEE VAMPIRE KILLERS ANYMORE, OR VAMPIRES EITHER. APPARENTLY, ALL THEY WANT TO SEE ARE DEMENTED MADMEN RUNNING AROUND IN SKI-MASKS, HACKING UP YOUNG VIRGINS.” PETER VINCENT “KILL ME, CHARLEY… BEFORE I TURN GIVE INTO YOU A VAMPIRE A HICKEY , AND !” ... EVIL ED “YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF ME. I KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE BEING DIFFERENT. ONLY THEY WON’T PICK ON YOU ANYMORE… OR BEAT YOU UP. I’LL SEE TO THAT. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TAKE MY HAND.” JERRY DANDRIDGE “YOU SHOULDN’T LOSE YOUR TEMPER ’ , CHARLEY ” . IT ISN T POLITE. JERRY DANDRIDGE “NOW WE WOULDN’T…

”Excellent movie! Perfect balance of horror and comedy with great special effects! Loved Roddy McDowall in this. What a legend! # FrightNight” @indianamulder “Huge fun, a classic.” @dept42 “Loved it, knowing and great premise. McDowall grounds it. Much prefer it to The Lost Boys.” @Loxley_1975 “It was ‘so cool Brewster’. Watched it so many times back in the day. Never saw the remake (never saw the point).” @andyangel44 “Loved it! This tongue in cheek, darkly comic, moody and atmospheric film gave both Roddy McDowall and Chris Sarandon the chance to shine and show off their talents.” @AshokWhybother “It was good but I think overrated now. There were better Eighties comedy horrors like Monster Squad and The Lost Boys.” @ParsonsFiction “LOVE!” @themeatispeople…

Stephen King once wrote: ’Who’s the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum.’ Horror fans will know the name, the pseudonym used by Dallas Mayr, from his groundbreaking, controversial and unforgettable novels like Off Season, The Girl Next Door and The Woman (which would be adapted into a film by his frequent collaborator Lucky McKee). The godfather of splatterpunk wrote fiction that was hard to stomach but impossible to look away from, throwing you into nightmares where any sense of safety you had as a reader was gone. He had you in the palm of his hand, and it’s hard to think of many horror authors with such a sense of control and a willingness to push your buttons. Mayr worked as a soda jerk, lumber salesman, actor, literary agent…

“ALIEN IS THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, THEY SHOULD DEFINITELY EVOLVE IT” The phrase ‘hardest- working person in Hollywood’ gets thrown around a lot, but in the case of Ridley Scott, it might actually be true. It’s hard to think of anyone apart from The Rock and Kathleen Kennedy who have so much on their plates, but at the age of 80, Scott shows no sign of slowing down. Last year, he directed Alien: Covenant and All The Money In The World and produced Blade Runner: 2049, and he’s already got his sights set on Disney’s Merlin origin story movie and another xenomorph film. We caught up with the filmmaker at an event for his J Paul Getty movie and got his thoughts on the Disney-Fox merger, Blade Runner…

Welcome to Memory Bank, the corner of the magazine in which we look through old issues of SciFiNow and reminisce about days of sci-fi past. This month we are idly flicking through Issue 43, which featured Anna Torv as Fringe’s Olivia Dunham on the cover for our 2010-2011 TV preview. Only two of the 19 shows we featured in this issue are still actually running, and unsurprisingly those two shows are Game Of Thrones (which was one of the biggest TV hits of 2011) and Supernatural (which famously won’t die. It was entering its sixth season when we wrote about it way back in issue 43, and now it’s on its 13th season). Elsewhere, the new Predator film, creatively named Predators, was on the horizon so we spoke to the…

If Bright and Suicide Squad are anything to go by, Will Smith is keen for returning to his Nineties action heyday – which he is doing rather more literally in Gemini Man. Directed by Oscar-winner Ang Lee, Gemini Man sees Smith play a tired aging assassin who is targeted by a new hitman – a 25-years-younger clone of himself. Yes, it’s basically Will Smith versus the Fresh Prince, and we are there with bells on. Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been cast as Smith’s enemy-turned-ally, with Clive Owen in the villain role.…

ALIAS This is the series that launched Jessica, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos. It handles the Kilgrave story (or the Purple Man, as he is known here), shows the early days of her dysfunctional romance with Luke Cage, and features a scene in which she throws up on Thor’s shoes. It’s a stone-cold classic. JESSICA JONES: THE PULSE Bendis followed Alias up with The Pulse, with art by Mark Bagley and Brent Anderson. The series sees Jessica join the Daily Bugle, investigating stories relating to superheroes. It also gives us some nice back story about her time as a costumed hero, and includes the issue where she and Luke get married. Oh, and they have a baby too (spoilers). NEW AVENGERS Jessica appears throughout Bendis’ run on New…

1993 While developing Lara for Eidos’ Core Design, creator Toby Guard looked to the comic book heroine Tank Girl and musician Neneh Cherry for visual inspiration. 1993 The character started as a South American woman called Laura Cruz. However, Eidos decided they wanted a more ‘UK friendly’ name, and so Laura Cruz was renamed Lara Croft. 1996 The very first instalment of the Tomb Raider series debuted on the Sega Saturn. Lara consisted of 540 polygons. The design now looks crude compared to what we’re used to. 1997 Lara’s character design evolved for Tomb Raider II and III; her bootlaces changed colour, her blue top was cut lower and her in-game model acquired the signature ponytail. 1999 The in-game model became curvier for The Last Revelation and Chronicles and the…

House Of The Dead (2003) A group of kids show up to an island rave only to discover that everyone has turned into zombies. It’s stupid and it’s trying hard to be cool, but it’s probably his best work. Alone In The Dark (2005) A disaster in which Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff and Tara Reid fight off demons in a museum. Muddled editing, terrible dialogue and bad performances make it tough to sit through but hard to look away from. BloodRayne (2005) A rogues’ gallery of B-movie actors including Michael Madsen, Billy Zen, Udo Kier, Meat Loaf and Ben Kingsley populate this medieval vampire nonsense, with Kristianna Loken as the half-vamp heroine. In The Name Of The King (2007) Arguably the pinnacle of Boll’s Boll-ness, as Ray Liotta and Burt…

EMISSARY (Season One, episodes one-two) The feature-length opener to Deep Space Nine has a lot to set up, but it’s the story of Benjamin Sisko; a man with a deep sense of duty and grief, that drives this excellent pilot. DUET (Season One, episode 19) This early highlight showed much potential DS9 had, as Kira interrogates a potential war criminal. It’s brilliant and shows how deep the scars of the Cardassian-Bajoran conflict go. CROSSOVER (Season Two, episode 23) When a wormhole incident sends Bashir and Kira spinning into it, we get to see how the DS9 crew differs from their alternates. Nana Visitor in particular has a lot of fun as Intendant Kira. PAST TENSE (Season Three, episodes 11-12) Sisko, Bashir and Dax try to beam down and end up…

Rick And Morty Helfer put in a brief cameo as Tammy’s mother/a robot, alongside BSG co-star James Callis. The characters were cheekily modelled on Six and Gaius. Dollhouse BigBSG fan Joss Whedon stuffed Dollhouse with BSG alumni. Tahmoh Penikett was a lead actor, but the show also featured Mark Sheppard as Penikett’s on-screen boss, who played Romo Lampkin in Battlestar, and Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh) and Jamie Bamber (Apollo) also put in appearances. Smallville Michael Hogan and Alessandro Juliani (Gaeta) crossed paths in Smallville. Portlandia The classic episode ‘One Moore Episode’ focuses around a couple developing a BSG addiction and features cameos from Edward James Olmos and James Callis, playing themselves. Showrunner Ronald D. Moore even turns up.…

In the midst of The CW’s huge collection of superhero shows (usually led by young white protagonists looking to prove themselves), the latest offering, Black Lightning, is looking to change the game. Not only is the new hero black, he’s middle-aged with a stable job and a close-knit family. As far as the current superhero climate is concerned, that’s practically unheard of. Actor Cress Williams plays Black Lightning and his alter-ego Jefferson Pierce, the principle of a high school that also happens to be a retired superhero. He hung up the super suit long ago, leaving his crime-busting days behind to start a family. But there wouldn’t be a story if that was it: Season One opens with a disruption to Jefferson’s routine when a gang threatens the safety of…

HUNGRY GHOSTS A group of chefs are challenged to tell the scariest food-related stories they can. Released 31 January INCOGNEGRO: RENAISSANCE Journalist Zane Pinchback investigates the murder of a black man in Twenties Harlem. Released 7 February MATA HARI ‘Stripper-spy’ Mata Hari tells the story of her colourful life as she faces execution in 1917. Released 21 February THE SEEDS In a world where plant-life has begun to mutate, a journalist stumbles across a story she can’t tell. Released 28 March…

CLARKE (ALIVE) LEXA (DEAD, first kiss: ‘Bodyguard Of Lies’) FINN (DEAD, first kiss: ‘Murphy’s Law’) NIYLAH (ALIVE, first kiss: ‘Wanheda Part 1’) OCTAVIA (ALIVE) LINCOLN (DEAD, first kiss: ‘Day Trip’) ILIAN (DEAD, first kiss: ‘Gimme Shelter’) ATOM (DEAD, first kiss: ‘Earth Skills’) RAVEN (ALIVE) FINN (DEAD, first kiss: before the start of the series) BELLAMY (ALIVE, first kiss: ‘The Calm’) WICK (UNKNOWN, first kiss: ‘Bodyguard Of Lies’) SUB-RELATIONSHIPS NATHAN (ALIVE) & BRYAN (ALIVE) First kiss: ‘Terms And Conditions’ MARCUS (ALIVE) & ABBY (ALIVE) First kiss: ‘Bitter Harvest’ MONTY (ALIVE) & HARPER (ALIVE) First kiss: ‘Red Sky At Morning’ JASPER (DEAD) & MAYA (DEAD) First kiss: ‘Remember Me’ MURPHY (ALIVE) & EMORI (ALIVE)…

Details 12A // 142 mins // Out now Director Wes Ball Screenwriter TS Nowlin Cast Dylan O’Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Rosa Salazar, Kaya Scodelario, Ki Hong Lee Distributor Twentieth Century Fox The Death Cure, the final adaptation of James Dashner’s dystopian Maze Runner novels, starts with a combination train robbery/prison break sequence that recalls not one, but two set-pieces from the first act of Fast & Furious 5 – or Fast Five as it’s known outside the UK. The success of that formula-shifting entry in the Fast series is credited with rejuvenating a franchise that had gone stale, bringing aboard lots of new fans who were entertained by the change-up in execution. Fittingly, considering the possible homage in the opening action scene, The Death Cure is akin to Fast Five in…

Details 12A // 86 mins // 23 February Director Daniel Fitzsimmons Screenwriters Neil Atkinson, Daniel Fitzsimmons Cast Rupert Graves, Ellie Kendrick, Leanne Best Distributor Miracle Comms Director Daniel Fitzsimmons turns in a promising and thoughtful debut feature film that takes inspiration from the work of Samuel Beckett and Time For The Stars by Robert Heinlein. It’s a pared back, yet strikingly designed and detailed British indie that deals with big ideas such as the physical relativity conundrum of the Twin Paradox to investigate emotional connections over large distances. Bleak themes such as solitude, blind ambition and isolation in space have been well toured over the years, but Fitzsimmons’ low-budget film has shades of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris thanks to its suffocating atmosphere. Ellie Kendrick and Rupert Graves star in what is…

Details N/A//22 mins // 2017// // Released Out now Director Don Hertzfeldt Cast Julia Pott, Winona Mae Distributor Bitter Films The sequel to Don Hertzfeldt’s Oscar-nominated animation, World Of Tomorrow, is just as profound, funny and charming as the original with the return of the excitable exclamations and pitter-patter of Emily Prime’s feet still as cute and endearing as the first time round. Hertzfeldt wrote both films around secretly recorded audio of his five-year-old niece just going about her day drawing and playing. The original saw Emily whisked through a neural network by a future adult clone of herself and this time Hertzfeldt expands his universe of animated stick people and eye-popping backdrops with a bizarre adventure led by a partial copy of the clone from the first film called…

Details 12//130 mins //2017// • // Released 26 February Director Taika Waititi Cast Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, Tessa Thompson, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum Distributor Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment When Thor: Ragnarok was still in its early days, Bruce Banner actor Mark Ruffalo described the film as an “intergalactic buddy road-trip movie”. As weird as that sounded, particularly for a big budget superhero story, Ruffalo ended up being pretty much on the money with that description. Though Ragnarok might not be as big a deal as the likes of Avengers Assemble and Captain America: Winter Soldier, both of which promised to be bigger and more intense than anything any MCU fan had seen before, it’s definitely the most fun. Director Taika Waititi, who was previously mostly…

Details 15//94 mins //2017// // Released Out now Directors Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote Cast Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Sharif Atkins Distributor Netfl ix When Logan Wallace’s father passes away in a tragic accident, his mother drags him to her sister’s isolated mountain home in the hopes that it will help them grieve. There’s just one catch, the lavish accommodation is on the market and the pair would have to vacate the premises every so often while strangers have a wander round (there’s nothing scarier than the thought of someone seeing how full your laundry basket is two weeks running, right?). Unfortunately for the Wallaces, it seems like some are sticking around after the estate agent calls it a day too. For the majority of its runtime, The Open House relies…

Details 18// 92 mins// 2017// • // Released 26 February Director Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig Cast Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Laura Vandervoort, Matt Passmore Distributor Lionsgate Home Entertainment Ah, it’s good to have Jigsaw back. While there were some understandable concerns about reviving a franchise that had run itself into the dirt with its terrible ‘final’ instalment, Jigsaw managed to lay all those fears to rest. While it’s not as grimy or merciless as some of its predecessors, it’s a fiendishly entertaining puzzle with great traps, strong performances and some really damn impressive gore effects. It also manages that rare feat of acting as a decent jumping on point for new viewers. John Kramer is dead, but somehow a game is in motion. Can the cops find out who…

Details 15//88 mins //1977// // Released 23 February Director Nobuhiko Obayashi Cast Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba Distributor Eureka Entertainment Where to start with House? If you’ve seen it, you get it. If you haven’t experienced it, then there is nothing we can say that will possibly do justice to its unique style, madness and heart. Using drug analogies seems to rob it of its sweetness, to call it insane would seem to belittle the incredible craft at work. But there’s no doubt that watching House is a strange experience that forces you to abandon expectations of logic. It’s a fantastical horror comedy, a dark fairytale that is both a throwback and a dizzying feat of invention. It’s impossible to describe because there’s nothing like it. The story begins…

Details 18// 600 minutes // 2018// // Released Out now Creator Laeta Kalogridis Cast Joel Kinnaman, Martha Higareda, James Purefoy, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Dichen Lachman Distributor Netflix Altered Carbon has been a passion project of showrunner Laeta Kalogridis for years now, and it’s easy to see the appeal of the material: a Blade Runner-esque setting, endless cyberpunk twists, a pissed off morally ambiguous hero, and a rich world of complex mythology and endless seediness to explore. Add in Netflix’s seemingly bottomless pockets and the carte blanche of the R-rating, and there’s a lot of potential. But the end result of Season One is something of a mixed bag. It starts with a bang, there’s incredible production design, thrilling action sequences and a striking vision of a class-structured society. Beneath that,…

Details 15//84 mins //2017// // Released Out now Creators Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith Cast Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith Distributor BBC Though people had pretty much stopped quoting Papa Lazarou, the news of The League Of Gentlemen returning for some anniversary specials was a very welcome surprise. When we join the Gentlemen 15 years after Season Three, the northern town of Royston Vasey is under mundane threat again. This time it’s a planned change to the county boundary, brought on by an error made by former reverend Bernice Woodall (she’s the mayor now). As a result, the town is drenched in panic, and a journalist for the Vasey Chronicle starts sniffing around, trying to get a scoop. Even after 15 years, it’s still all good…

1. Restoration “Restoration by @AngelaSlatter will be the third Verity Fassbinder novel and I can’t wait to get my hands on it! #BookClub” @indianamulder 2. The Winds Of Winter “The Winds Of Winter. Well, we can hope can’t we?” @Craigsg1 3. Agency “The new book from William Gibson as it seems like he might be challenging some ideas of near future global tech chaos once again. #BookClub” @ParsonsFiction 4. Darksoul “Darksoul by @AnnaSmithWrites. Godblind was awesome and ended on quite a cliffhanger so looking forward to getting back into that world.” @andyangel44 “IT DOESN’T OPERATE AS A TRADITIONAL MANHUNT” 5. New Cassandra Khaw “I am looking forward to more from @ JonathanLHoward, @casskhaw & @ therobertrankin #BookClub” @Baldrick2Dogs…

“Trying to get into @ BrandSanderson #TheWayofKings but I find it all a bit confusing. Can’t for the life of me work out what’s going on but I’m going to stick it, as so many people recommend it. #BookClub” @StuN_UK “Just finished @joe_hill’s #StrangeWeather and I believe I will forever be haunted by the story ‘Loaded’! #BookClub” @Cascararogue “The Complete Ack-Ack Macaque by @ garethlpowell - it’s awesome. A gun-totin’, cigar-chompin’, AI monkey pilot - what more could you wish for? #BookClub” @andyangel44 “Last chapter of Senlin Ascends tonight by @ TheBooksofBabel. #BookClub” @arnoldpb73 “Just fi nishing The Prince Of Thorns by @Mark__ Lawrence & absolutely loving it! Can’t wait to dive straight into King Of Thorns. #BookClub” @ Tim_M_Matthews “Just started Mr Mercedes by Stephen King, excellent so far!!…

Details Author: Dhonielle Clayton Publisher: Gollancz Price: £10.99 Released: Out now In the fictional world of Orléans, where people are born grey, only the Belles can bestow beauty. Raised in isolation, Camellia, one of the Belles, and her five sisters, are sent to the capital city on their 16th birthday to begin serving the beauty needs of the rich and powerful. As you might expect, this beauty-obsessed world is very ugly, but not on the outside. Author Dhonielle Clayton creates a detailed world that is hard to define – a world where telephones exist but most communication is via post-balloon, where, in lieu of cameras, paparazzi have to sketch their celebrity prey with magical pencils. Clayton’s prose batters the reader with every colour ever given a name, and all manner…

Details Writer: Bill Gaines, Al Feldstein et al Artists: Bill Gaines, Al Feldstein et al Publisher: Dark Horse Price:$49.99 Released: 14 February Continuing Dark Horse’s series of deluxe reprints, this bumper collection exhumes the first six issues of EC’s influential (and controversial) horror comic The Vault Of Horror. First published in 1950, The Vault Of Horror, along with The Crypt Of Terror (later retitledTales From The Crypt), The Haunt Of Fear, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, ushered in the publisher’s ‘new trend’ in comic books, inspiring the change in company title from Educational Comics to Entertaining Comics. These were ‘illustrated SuspenStories we dare you to read!’ and they weren’t afraid to explore the unseemly extremes of the fictional spectrum. As with most Golden Age comics, Vault Of Horror’s stories can…

With the current penchant for shared screen universes it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that spin-offs aren’t a contemporary concept. After being introduced at the end of the second season of Seventies American science fiction TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and reappearing in the third, the character of Jaime Sommers – the ‘Bionic Woman’ - became such a hit with audiences that despite being subsequently killed off, she was ultimately resurrected for her own equally successful show. “One of the first things I said was: ‘Why don’t we do the Bride Of Frankenstein?’” tells producer Kenneth Johnson, who was initially hired as a writer on the Lee Majors sci-fi series (which was based on Martin Caidin’s 1972 sci-fi-secret agent novel Cyborg) and came up with the…

After the big screen atrocity that was 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, it took six years for the man of steel to leap back on to our screens in the form of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman. Thankfully it was a winning formula with Dean Cain magnificent in the cape and tights and sharing incredible chemistry with Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane over four seasons between 1993-1997. Since its cancellation Dean Cain has guest stared in Supes’ coming-of-age series Smallville and recently featured as Jeremiah Danvers, enigmatic husband of Eliza Danvers (played by former Supergirl Helen Slater) and adopted father of Kara Danvers/ Supergirl, in the new adventures of superman’s equally airborne cousin. We caught up with the now 50-year-old actor at the Sydney Supanova Comic…

“REAR WINDOW MEETS DRACULA IS A BRILLIANT HOOK FOR A GENRE MOVIE” There can’t be many horror fans who don’t feel a warm glow upon hearing the words “Fright Night” and who won’t insist on doing the full quote back at you. Hell, there can’t be many genre fans in general who don’t have happy memories of watching Tom Holland’s directorial debut, because its appeal goes beyond gorehounds and scare-seekers. It’s funny, it’s a little creepy, it’s got unforgettable characters, an endless supply of pop-culture-enshrined one-liners, and subtext for days. But what really makes Fright Night so much fun to revisit is that it manages to show how much it loves classic genre cinema and still has a huge amount of fun with it. The clothes may have dated but…

1 ARMAND (INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE) Lestat may own the series, but it’s Antonio Banderas’ grand guignol-owner who swaggers away with the film’s second half with long locks and red gowns. 2 MIRIAM BLAYLOCK (THE HUNGER) Catherine Deneuve is perfectly cast as the luminous vamp who is constantly on the look-out for her next companion and keeps her old ones in the attic. 3 EVE AND ADAM (ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE) Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are glorious as the arts-loving, bloodsicle-sucking vampires who have so much love for music, books and each other. 4 PRINCE MAMUWALDE (BLACULA) There’s plenty about this film that doesn’t work but there’s no arguing with William Marshall’s performance as the immortal African prince. 5 COUNTESS MARYA ZALESKA (DRACULA’S DAUGHTER) Gloria Holdens wide-eyed pining vampire…

THE BASICS 1.In which century is Starship Troopers set? 2. By what other name are the film’s Bugs known? 3. In which city did the main characters attend high school? 4. What is the name of the Mobile Infantry platoon originally led by Lieutenant Jean Rasczak? 5. What is the Bugs’ home planet? PEOPLE PERSON 6. Who is Dizzy in love with? 7. Who becomes a pilot after graduating high school? 8. Who does Kitten Smith refer to as a ‘Future Sky Marshall’? 9. Who has their brain eaten by a Bug? 10. Carmen was the commanding officer of the Athena and which other ship? IN THE DETAILS 11. What species is Cyrano? 12. Approximately how many people died during the Meteor Attack on Buenos Aires? 13. Where was the…

Big names at Netflix... MARTIN SCORSESE The legend has made his new crime epic with Netflix, starring De Niro, Pacino, Pesci and Keitel. JEREMY SAULNIER The man behind Blue Ruin and Green Room is abandoning colour-based titles for Hold The Dark, in which a man sets off into the wilderness to find a young boy taken by wolves. GARETH EVANS We’re excited about The Apostle, as Dan Stevens and Michael Sheen take the leads in the latest from The Raid director about a man who sets out to rescue his sister from a murderous cult. ANDREW NICCOL The Gattaca director’s latest is Anon, a SF tale starring Clive Owen set in a society where crime no longer exists… but neither does anonymity.…

1 We are sailing In 1846, HMS Terror and HSM Erebus set out on an Arctic expedition. Everything’s set to go smoothly. Can’t see anything going wrong here. 2 Lady Silence Singer-songwriter Nive Nielsen plays Lady Silence, a young Inuit woman who joins the Terror after her companion is killed by a member of the crew. 3 A bit of a pickle The ships hit a bit of a bump when they become trapped in the ice, leaving both crews to slowly die unless they can come up with a plan. 4 Captain John Franklin The excellent Ciaran Hinds is the captain of the HMS Erebus, wanting one last chance at glory after screwing up so many other Arctic expeditions. 5 Captain Francis Crozier Franklin’s second-in-command is Jared Harris as…

JESSICA JONES IS THE GO-TO COUNTERARGUMENT TO ANYONE WHO THINKS COMIC BOOK SHOWS HAVE TO BE FUN AND FRIVOLOUS. THEY CAN BE, SURE, BUT JESSICA JONES SURE ISN’T. FEW SHOWS – COMIC BOOK OR OTHERWISE – HAVE DEALT WITH PTSD AND SEXUAL ABUSE AS EXPLICITLY AND EFFECTIVELY AS JESSICA JONES DID IN SEASON ONE. AND NOW THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR IS BACK, AFTER HER BRIEF FLIRTATION WITH THE DEFENDERS, TO DREDGE UP HER DARK PAST ONCE AGAIN. And if anyone hopes that her Defenders experience might have lightened Jessica’s load, they’re about to be disappointed. “The Defenders was a blip that played over less than a week,” Krysten Ritter, who plays Jessica, tells us when we catch up with her. “So I don’t think that really affected her personal growth or…

Batman Begins Grittiness: 8 Execution: 9 Dredd Grittiness: 10 Execution: Yes Fantastic Four Grittiness: 7 Execution: 4 The Wolfman Grittiness: 3 Execution: 4 Total Recall Grittiness: 5 Execution: 2 Alice In Wonderland Grittiness: 6 Execution: 6 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Grittiness: 4 Execution: 5 King Arthur Grittiness: 8 Execution: 3 Battlestar Galactica Grittiness: 10 Execution: 10 Daredevil Grittiness: 9 Execution: 7 Man Of Steel Grittiness: 8 Execution: 5 Halloween Grittiness: 10 Execution: 5 A Nightmare On Elm Street Grittiness: 9 Execution: 1 Snow White And The Huntsman Grittiness: 7 Execution: 4…

THIS EXCERPT FROM THE BESTSELLING STAR TREK ORAL HISTORY, THE FIFTY-YEAR MISSION: THE NEXT 25 YEARS (THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS), BY AUTHORS AND TREKSPERTS EDWARD GROSS AND MARK A. ALTMAN, CHRONICLES THE TURBULENT CREATION OF THE FIRST SPIN-OFF FROM THE SUCCESSFUL STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION. DEBUTING 3 JANUARY 1993, DEEP SPACE NINE WAS DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT FROM ITS PROGENITOR. It was an ensemble piece set on a space station on the fringes of Federation space and tied to Trek mythology that had been created for Next Generation in which the Bajor had been an occupied planet for years, victimised by the Cardassian empire. In addition to being the show’s darkest and most nihilistic effort (if you doubt that, check out the brilliant, but darkly fatalistic ‘In The Pale Moonlight’ episode) forged in…

FOR A WOMAN who’s literally been to hell and back, Tricia Helfer is pretty chirpy. We catch up with her in her home in LA, and our chat is regularly interrupted by belly laughs and her cats demanding attention (“sorry, my cat is screaming at me...”). She’s currently working on Season Three of Lucifer, where her character Charlotte has recently returned from hell, with no memory of the full season the devil’s mother spent using her body to paint the town red. Playing multiple characters within the same show isn’t unusual for Helfer, who played countless versions of the Cylon Number Six in Battlestar Galactica for years. But Charlotte is having a little more trouble adjusting than Helfer is. “She’s having these recurring nightmares and she’s had her whole world…

REPRESENTATION MATTERS IN FILM, TV, MAGAZINES AND LITERATURE. That’s something that Madeleine L’ Engle knew when trying to get her novel, A Wrinkle In Time, published in the Sixties. She stood by the radical notion of a flawed, adolescent woman being at the centre of a high-concept YA science fantasy novel, usually dominated by male protagonists, even though it turned publishers off and was rejected by all of them except John Farrar of FSG. On publication in 1962 it was widely praised and since then has been translated into 35 languages, sold more than ten million copies, been turned into a graphic novel and is now being adapted by Ava DuVernay into a live action feature film with a budget reportedly exceeding $100 million. DuVernay is also a woman making…

With a wealth of superhero stories to choose from, what drew show creator Salim Akil to the Black Lightning comics was simply the character himself: “He’s a father and I’m a father, he has an ex-wife and he loves them all, and he has superpowers that have affected his life,” he explains. “The thought of a man having powers and the powers being taken away from him was interesting. And I love the fact that he’s in love with his community and wants to help people, not only by using his powers but by being the principal of the school.” Pretty much as soon as Akil met Cress Williams it was evident that the actor would be a perfect fit for the role. “I mean, look at him, right?” he…

1979 After graduating from Brooklyn College, Karen Berger takes a job as Paul Levitz’s assistant at DC Comics. 1981 Berger edits House Of Mystery – her first DC editing job. 1983 Berger edits The Legion Of Super-Heroes during Paul Levitz’s run – a rare foray into superhero comics for her. 1984 Berger is handed editorial control of Swamp Thing, and gives the recently-hired Alan Moore free-rein to reinvent the character. 1987 Berger is the editor of George Perez’s legendary run on Wonder Woman. 1993 Berger founds the Vertigo imprint. 1992 She wins the Eisner Award for editing Sandman, Shade: The Changing Man, Kid Eternity and more. She‘d win the award twice more. 1990 She wins the Inkpot Award. 1989 Berger hires Neil Gaiman to write Sandman. The rest is history.…

FILM INFO Released Out now Certifi cate 15 Directors Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig Screenwriters Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig Cast Helen Mirren, Jason Clark, Sarah Snook, Angus Sampson Distributor Lionsgate Running Time 99 mins HERE ARE THE FACTS... The real Winchester house was designed like a maze to confuse and discourage bad spirits. By 1922, when Sarah Winchester died of heart failure in her sleep, the house, which was apparently worked on 24/7, had 160 rooms and 47 staircases. At the turn of the 20th century the Winchester Arms company turned their hand to household goods and roller skates. Though this didn’t last all that long, the Spierig brothers include the history of their toy business in the film with a creepy roller skate scene or two. Most of the interior…

Details 15 // 135 mins // Out now Director Alexander Payne Screenwriters Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor Cast Matt Damon, Hong Chau, Christoph Waltz, Kristen Wiig Distributor Paramount Pictures Downsizing has just about the best concept you’ll find in a film all year. In a bid to cut down on the environmental impact of humans, scientists find a way to shrink humans. And because everything is so tiny, normal mid-level workers can sell up, downsize, and live like millionaires. That’s the idea Paul (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) have – but it doesn’t quite go to plan, as Paul realises that ‘downsizing’ has an ugly side. The set-up is genius, and the first half an hour of the film is excellent – it’s funny, clever, and allows Matt…

Details 15 // 78 mins // 2018 // • // Released Out now Director Sam Liu Cast Bruce Greenwood, Jennifer Carpenter, Anthony Head Distributor Warner Bros Home Entertainment Inc A masked mad man known as Jack The Ripper stalks through Victorian-era Gotham City in Batman: Gotham By Gaslight, hunting down destitute women and brutally killing them, while amateur detective Bruce Wayne attempts to connect the dots and bring the murderer to justice. The Caped Crusader channels Sherlock Holmes in his latest animated adventure, based on the 1989 one-shot graphic novel of the same name. Pulling Batman from the modern day and dropping him into the grimy streets of the 1800s sounds like a fun concept on paper, but in reality — at least how it’s been executed here — it…

Details 15// 99 mins // 2017// • // Released Out now Director Michael Almereyda Cast Lois Smith, Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Tim Robbins Distributor Bulldog Films There’s some pretty high-concept sci-fi at the core of Michael Almereyda’s adaptation of Jordan Harrison’s play Marjorie Prime. The idea that you can not only have a hologram of a dead loved one in your home, but that you can programme it to look how you want to remember that loved one, and that you can programme it to recall events as you’d like to remember them yourself. But rather than take a judgmental approach or tell a Black Mirror-style nightmare, the film refuses to take a side, simply allowing the AI to provoke contemplation and emotion in its characters. For the most part,…

Details 15 // 88 mins // 2017 // • // Released Out now Directors Shinji Aramaki, Masaru Matsumoto Cast Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, DeRay Davis, Justin Doran Distributor Sony Pictures The Starship Troopers franchise continues with its second animated feature, following 2012’s Invasion, and the struggle to balance the… shall we say dumber elements of the series with the anti-establishment wit that Paul Verhoeven brought continues to be a problem. Original writer Edward Neumeier is still on screenplay duties so there’s plenty of evil commanders using blue-collar grunts as chess pieces, but a lot of the broader attempts at comedy fall flat. Appleseed director Shinji Aramaki has fun with the endless swathes of bugs that lay siege to Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his team, but the action…

Details 15// 96 mins // 2017// • // Released 19 February Director Christopher Landon Cast Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken Distributor Universal Pictures UK In addition to being one the great horror success stories of 2017, Happy Death Day is an absolute treat for genre fans. It’s funny, it’s inventive, and it’s anchored by what should by all rights be a star-making performance from Jessica Rothe. She plays the improbably named Tree Gelbman, a snarky misanthropic college student who is already having the birthday from hell before she’s brutally murdered. When she wakes up, she realises that she’s stuck in a time-loop, repeating the day of her death over and over. Can she find out who the killer is before the last roll of the dice? Blumhouse…

Details N/A // 144 mins // 2018 // Audio Download // Released Out now Creator Simon Barnard, Mark Morris (from the 1971 film) Cast Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Thomas Turgoose, Linda Hayden Distributor Baffl egab Audio producers Baffl egab (The Scarifyers, Baker’s End) have brought together a pretty impressive cast for their remake of Tigon’s 1971 chiller The Blood On Satan’s Claw (aka Satan’s Skin). After farm boy Ralph Gower uncovers some creepy remains outside the village of Hexbridge, strange, unsettling events begin to occur. Crows screech across the land, people start disappearing and dying horribly, and a wave of madness seems to grip the youth of the town. The adults, including the local squire and the reverend, must try and defeat the evil overtaking Hexbridge – but are they…

Details 15// 121 mins // 1967// // Released Out now Directors Mauro Bolognini, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi, Luchino Visconti Cast Silvana Mangano, Clint Eastwood Distributor Arrow Video This eccentric 1967 anthology film by some of Italy’s most important directors gets a lovely restoration from Arrow Video, and while there are moments that are disposable and segments that go on too long, there are some wonderful discoveries to be made here. The only brief given to the filmmakers was to make a short film in which Silvana Mangano plays a witch, and don’t be misled by the title: the only short with a genre element is Pasolini’s ‘The Earth As Seen From The Moon’, which refuses to let its father and son end their story on a…

Details 12//89 mins // 2017 // // Released Out now Directors Hiroyuki Seshita, Kôbun Shizuno Cast Mamoru Miyano, Takahiro Sakurai, Tomokazu Sugita, Junichi Suwabe Distributor Netflix Hot on the heels of Toho’s live-action Godzilla reboot comes its very first official Godzilla animated movie, and it seems fair to say that while they are very, very different films, both projects show the company making a real effort to push the iconic monster in new and unexpected directions. While Shin Godzilla was a surprisingly boardroom-bound political satire, Monster Planet (the first in a trilogy) is a full-blown sci-fi epic. It also begins at the end, kind of, as a voice-over from our hero Captain Haruo Sadaki explains how the world was ravaged by monsters at the end of the 20th Century, culminating…

Whenever I talk about him, I start with this moment. In a Woolworths in Newry, on a Saturday trip with my parents. Just after a big, fresh teenage heartbreak. I must have been intolerable, moping around, sore and bored with it. Exactly 15. At the bottom of an aisle, my father plucked a cold looking blue box-set off the shelf and said: “This’ll take your mind off it.” On the cover of the box, a dead girl, icy, wrapped in plastic. I wasn’t convinced, because how could a weird soap opera from the Nineties distract me from the hormone soup I was floundering in? How could a TV show make any difference to my life at all? I learned, quickly, that Twin Peaks could not only could make a difference…

Details Author: Josiah Bancroft Publisher: Orbit Price: £8.99 Released: Out now Like a blend of Kafka’s The Castle and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, Josiah Bancroft’s ambitious first chapter in his The Books Of Babel series is an impressive display of imagination and humour that makes it clear why his self-published story was picked up by Orbit. At the centre of story is the tower, an incredible feat of human achievement which has fascinated Thomas Senlin for years. He and his wife Marya have decided to spend their honeymoon there, but when Marya goes missing, Tom realises that reality is nothing like the guidebooks. He sets off to find her but discovers that staying alive in this den of thieves, drunks and killers will be just as arduous as finding his bride.…

“THERE’S A CLEVERNESS TO IT THAT’S DEEPLY PLEASURABLE” Details Author: Sarah Maria Griffin Publisher: Titan Books Price: £8.99 Released: Out now In Frankenstein, a man breathes life into dead parts, but he’s so horrified by what he’s done that he makes a monster of his creation. Here, a teenage girl breathes life into, well, spare and found parts, and the result is very different. Optimistic, warm, and beautiful, Griffin’s take on the Frankenstein myth demonstrates how things could’ve gone with just a little bit of love and imagination. There’s still plenty of horror along the way. Teen genius Nell Crane is kind of a monster herself: in the dystopian future she lives in, children are routinely born with organs or limbs missing, and her father, a brilliant inventor, builds prosthetics…

“EVEN THE ACTION SEQUENCES FEEL POETICAL...PERFECT AS A GATEWAY FOR WUXIA NEWCOMERS” Details Author: Jin Yong Publisher: MacLehose Press Price: £14.99 Released: 22 February Jin Yong’s Legend Of The Condor Heroes has spawned many adaptations. Until now, there has never been a mainstream translation into English, which makes the arrival of the first book in the series, A Hero Born, special. Set in China and Mongolia in the 13th century, A Hero Born begins with an act of kindness by Skyfury Guo and Ironheart Yang. When the men are killed, their unborn sons, Guo and Yang, are sworn brothers, but end up on different paths. The book follows Guo Jing, who grows up in Mongolia (encountering Temujin, later known as Genghis Khan). With the careful teachings, Guo Jing becomes an…

Details Writer: Mike Mignola & Chris Roberson Artists: Various Publisher: Dark Horse Price: $19.99 Released: Out now Has there ever been a bad Hellboy comic? Thinking over the 25 years since its debut, no outright duds come to mind. And after scores of spin-offs and long-running epics, creator Mike Mignola and co are back doing what first distinguished the series: creating consistent stories of varying length that land somewhere between the narrative poles of horror, fantasy and folklore. Now in its third collection, Hellboy And The BPRD finds a small, hitherto untapped continuity nook in the Mignolaverse, chronicling Hellboy’s early, post-war adventures, tackling mysteries the world over with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, before the original Hellboy series put the character on the path to discover his diabolical…

Why a highly anticipated 2007 reimagining of the famed Seventies series proved disastrous… “I think it’s always dangerous when you have lightning in a bottle and try to go back and recreate that lightning another time, unless you’re very respectful of what you did originally,” says Kenneth Johnson, reflecting on the time The Bionic Woman received the reboot treatment a decade ago by writer-producer David Eick, who had successfully revived Battlestar Galactica. “I was in the office of Peter Law, who was president of Warner TV at the time, just before the reimagined Bionic Woman was to go on air,” reveals Johnson. “[Law] anticipated it was going to be the greatest hit in the history of western civilisation [because] the tracking estimates were the highest they’d ever been. “I told…