Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 160 i SciFi Now

GET EXCITED ABOUT JOKER It’s been three months or so since the first trailer for Todd Phillips’ Joker arrived and since then things have been pretty quiet. However, that teaser got everyone’s attention, showing off the film’s Scorsese influences and what is sure to be an unforgettable performance from Joaquin Phoenix. Sure, we’ve still got a lot of questions but with a supporting cast that good and an actor like that fully committed (hopefully in a non-Leto way) this could be something special and we’re all in favour of DC jumping out of cinematic universes. We’ve seen a lot of big genre favourites come to an end this year. Proper leviathans, the kind that will be described as phenomena in the books that people are almost certainly pitching as we…

Multiple petitions have been launched against Warner Bros over the casting of Robert Pattinson, with Batman fans calling for his removal from the role. Those aren’t the only petitions circulating at the moment, with over 1.5 million people signing a petition to remake Game Of Thrones Season Eight ‘with competent writers’. The success of some online campaigns to rescue cancelled shows may have given fans an overinflated sense of their own importance when it comes to creative decisions made by filmmakers and TV producers. If fans were only given what they think they want, we would never have had the likes of Heath Ledger’s Joker, or Katee Sackhoff’s gender-swapped Starbuck. Sure, sometimes things don’t work out quite as you would like, but the people who make the creative decisions on…

We’re in the midst of a golden age for Stephen King adaptations (The Dark Tower notwithstanding), with IT and Pet Sematary delivering the sort of ticket sales rarely seen for horror movies. Now we’re in for another treat, albeit one that’s a far trickier prospect: an adaptation of Doctor Sleep, which is a sequel to both King’s book The Shining, and Stanley Kubrick’s film of the same name. “Marrying the literary with the cinematic, you’re standing on the shoulders of two giants and we wanted to be respectful of and inclusive of both visions,” producer Trevor Macy says. “We always approached it as an adaptation of the novel Doctor Sleep that takes place within the cinematic universe that Kubrick established,” director Mike Flanagan adds. “It’s a tough tightrope.” The book…

“YOU DON’T WANNA KNOW EVERYTHING,” deadpans Noah Hawley. “What I like about Legion is that I could tell you everything that happened on the show and you still wouldn’t know what happened on the show, so it’s helpful that way.” The man has a point. Anyone who’s taken the plunge into the world of the Fargocreator’sX-Menspin-off show Legion knows that knowing exactly what’s going on isn’t really part of the deal. It’s fantastically stylish, it’s consistently daring and it has a tendency to wander off on a weird tangent or a bad trip as opposed to following a simple narrative. And with a lead character like David Haller (Dan Stevens), a mutant with almost unlimited power and serious mental health issues who was also carrying an ancient mutant called the…

From the club dance R battle d T to the animeh-esque confrontation between David and Farouk at the end of Season Two, which played out as drawings behind the two characters singing The Who’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ at each other, all the way back to the Bollywood-inspired dance between David and Syd at the beginning of the show, Legion has fully embraced the power of moving the music. Hawley has said that we can expect something different this year but he assures us that finding creative ways to present these battles is a priority. “None of it is meant to be a gimmick, I don’t want to do something visual just to do something visual,” he tells us. “Part of the process when the directors come in is to try…

WITH COMIC BOOK series Preacher set to end this summer after a victorious four-season run, Amazon Prime Video has continued rifling through the works of Garth Ennis with its next comic book series, The Boys, for an eight-episode first season. And we can expect it to be even more outrageous. DevelopedbySupernatural’sEric Kripke andSuperbad’sEvan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (also ofPreacherfame),The Boystakes place in a world where superheroes are embracing the darker side of the celebrity status that comes with saving the world, and revolves around a group of misfit vigilantes, informally known as ‘the boys’, that sets out to take down the corrupt heroes by any means necessary. The vigilante group itself is led by the brutal Billy Butcher (played by Karl Urban), a man with a personal but secret agenda,…

ASGARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Thor’s adventures in space with the Guardians! Thor and Peter Quill, quipping it out, battling for dominance of the gang, it’s a hilarious hit! Jameson comment: CRAP! The people want Ragnarok part two! You’re telling me they’re going to merge two hugely popular franchises for an entire movie? Get outta here! IRON LAD! Remember that kid at Stark’s funeral? That’s Harley Keener from Iron Man 3, the audiences have been waiting for him to come back and step up as a new Iron hero. Jameson comment: MEGACRAP! Let me know when he scores his own Disney+ series. KEANU REEVES IN THE MCU! Apparently he’s up for a role in The Eternals, and Keanu has never been hotter than he is right now. Jameson comment: MEGA… Not…

We need to talk about Kal-El Release Out now Director David Yarovesky Cast Jackson A Dunne, Elizabeth Banks, David Denman Distributor Sony Pictures Certificate 15 Between the red cape and the heat vision, Brightburn clearly has no pretences about what exactly it is drawing from. Intentionally hemming extremely close to the Superman mythos ingrained in the minds of most people on the planet, the film is set in the fictional rural town of Brightburn, Kansas (strongly resembling Smallville). The film opens small, on a scene where Tori (Banks) and her husband Kyle (Denman), struggling with infertility, are trying to conceive. They’re interrupted by a spaceship crashing into their barn – housing a boy that they adopt, and name Brandon. The script is very canny about the audience’s familiarity with this…

Friend till the end Release 21 June Director Lars Klevberg Cast Aubrey Plaza, Mark Hamill, Brian Tyree Henry, Gabriel Bateman, Tim Matheson Distributor Vertigo Releasing Certificate 15 A few years into our current cycle of horror reboots, Hollywood now reaches for the furthest possible shelf of dusty horror franchises. Child’s Play isn’t widely regarded as a masterpiece or as a turning point in horror history, and its basic concept — a doll who sets out on a murder spree — doesn’t really lend itself particularly well to a contemporary setting (original screenwriter Don Mancini, who is publicly very unhappy about this remake, has wandered far from the original film in his consistently inventive sequels). What Child’s Play does have is a deeply morbid premise. In the original film, a single…

Release Out now Director AT White Cast Virginia Gardner, Christina Masterson, Eric Beecroft Distributor Orchard Certificate 15 Format This heartfelt genre hybrid deserves to find a bigger audience than a VOD-only release might typically suggest, and fans of ‘this choice might break your heart’ games like Life Is Strange or What Remains Of Edith Finch will find much to appreciate here. Virginia Gardner gives another excellent performance as Aubrey, a young woman who holes up in her recently deceased best friend’s apartment after her funeral. As she struggles to cope with her loss, she discovers cassette tapes that may hold the clue to the world-ending event that seems to be brewing outside. With the apartment full of warm yellows and browns and the outside world cold and snow-bound, and increasingly…

MAX Everyone should be so lucky as to grow up with a book – wandering through its pages enchanted on first acquaintance only to learn new secrets on each rereading, unlocking its sense of humour, its central concerns and layers of reference. I found Roger Zelazny’s Lord Of Light in a box of books my uncle passed along when I told him that I liked science fiction – meaning, at age eight, that I liked the Star Trek reruns, and had a general sense spaceships were neat. My uncle and that box have a lot to answer for: inside were Foundationand its sequels,Stranger In A Strange Land,andThe Left Hand Of Darkness. And there was a small black book in the box as well, with a man seated in meditation on…

Release 18 July Writers Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Publisher Jo Fletcher Books Price £9.99 Star-crossed romances don’t come much more crossed than this one. In a distant future (and a distant past, and everything in between) two warring factions are battling it out to take control of the timeline. Zooming up and down multiple timelines, operatives from the Agency and from Garden try to outmanoeuvre one another by killing an important person here, seducing a key person there, and generally doing whatever it takes to ensure that their side will triumph. But one day, standing on a battlefield, Red finds a letter from a rival operative who identifies herself as Blue, and an epic love story begins. Through space and time, Red and Blue exchange letters – written on…

Release Out now Writer Deirdre Sullivan Publisher Hot Key Books Price £7.99 Moving into an actual, honest-to-God castle sounds like a fairy tale. But fairy tales don’t always have happy endings, and even the ones that do usually involve hardship, terror, and dark magic… Twins Madeline and Catlin think they’ve hit the jackpot when their mum remarries and moves the sisters into their new stepfather’s ancestral home. But while they explore their new surroundings and dream of handsome local boys, something nasty is waiting to pounce. Teenage girls have been going missing from the nearby village for years, lured away by an unknown horror, and their castle is more Hammer Horror than Disney. No-one is what they seem here, least of all Madeline and Catlin themselves. Despite the witty dialogue…

Release Out now Writer Agnes Gomillion Publisher Titan Books Price £8.99 There’s a real power to Agnes Gomillion’s debut that the author wields like a knife. Afrofuturist The Record Keeper begins in familiar YA territory, with a student at an elite school realising that the stories she’s been told about the world outside may be very wrong. But there’s nothing easy about this story. Any complacency in the reader is met with a sharp shock, much as our heroine Arika Cobane is made to realise how her world works. In the years since World War III, the surviving factions made an uneasy peace with each culture taking on an important role. The Kongo received the largest amount of territory, and they’re also given all the backbreaking work harvesting the world’s…

CURSE OF THE BLAIR WITCH (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) A brilliant accompanying film to the real deal, Curse Of The Blair Witch offers some intriguing back story to the legend that the 1999 blockbuster crafts so effectively. However, if anything, this talking head mockumentary does not distract from the events of the main course – and actually lends some further personality traits to the doomed trio of filmmakers that inhabit the narrative of The Blair Witch Project. Available on most home video releases of the accompanying motion picture, Curse Of The Blair Witch is an excellent introduction to the franchise. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) Using sound and suggestion better than perhaps any genre film since Robert Wise’s The Haunting back in 1963, this surprise…

WONDER WOMAN 1984 We hate to exaggerate, but this poster for Wonder Woman 1984 might just be our favourite poster of the year so far. Much like Diana herself, it’s badass, it’s flamboyant, it’s iconic… It has everything. Setting the sequel in 1984 sounded like a fun move, and the poster is pulling no punches in bringing out those colourful Eighties vibes. It also gives us a look at a new costume, complete with shoulder pads and big hair, and Diana has never looked better. FROZEN 2 The sequel to Frozen is already going hard on its marketing campaign. We love that this looks like a horror poster. SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME This poster for Far From Home kind of looks like a page from an eight-year-old’s favourite sticker book……

Veteran producer R Lauren d Shuler T Donner h has been a part of the X-Men universe since the first movie back in 2000 and has shepherded the movies ever since. She recently announced that she’d be taking a step back, and we grabbed the chance to talk to her about what sets Legion apart and her time with the mutants… Do you think there’s room for more stories in Legion? I think we’d rather spin it off into something else. We did this in the X-Men movies too, we did the first three movies and it evolved. Once we were into the second one we thought it was building towards Dark Phoenix, and then we’ll cap it off. Although at that point it was a little bit of a…

Home-grown sci-fi TV shows are few and far between in the UK – let alone ones that are smart, populated by brilliant acting talent and have something to say about the world we live in. So it was with a heavy heart that we heard of the cancellation of Humans, Channel 4 and AMC’s AI drama. Season Three drew to a close in July last year, ending with murder of leading synth rights campaigner – and one of the first conscious synths – Mia (Gemma Chan), the UK narrowly stepping away from the brink of a human-synth war, and hope existing in the form of Mattie and Leo (Lucy Carless and Colin Morgan)’s part-synth baby. “After this length of time it doesn’t come as a massive surprise to our fans…

The first season of The Outpost focussed on Talon (Jessica Green), survivor of the massacre of her people, the Blackbloods, and her quest for revenge. Ending up at Gallwood Outpost, Talon fell in with knight Garret Spears (Jake Stormoen) and his crush, Gwynn (Imogen Waterhouse), daughter of the Outpost’s commander. Joined by brewer and part-time alchemist Janzo (Anand Desai-Barochia) and various other rogueish types, Talon learned about her past whilst at the same time getting embroiled in intrigues including drugs that turn people into monsters, power plays by the rulers of the land and the small matter of a voracious demon she accidentally brought into the world. Deep breath, start again. The Season One finale set up a number of new storylines, suggesting that big changes were ahead. This sense…

It’s a wonderful time to be a horror fan. Whether you want things that go bump in the night, bloodthirsty slashers or out-there folk madness, there’s something for everyone. Indeed, one of the most wonderful things about the genre is how broad it is, and British chiller The Isle feels like something we don’t see enough of. The film is set in 1846 and begins with three ship-wrecked sailors landing on a small island off the coast of Scotland. They’re taken in by the few locals who stuck around after the famine, but it quickly becomes apparent that all is not well there… If you think you know where this is going, think again. Matthew and his co-writer/co-producer/star Tori Butler Hart have crafted something that avoids the expected genre tropes,…

We’re all so worried about spoilers these days, living in constant fear that someone will give away some key piece of information about the final act of our current obsession and ruin our enjoyment. However, when it comes to classics, the big dramatic rug-pulls are a part of our pop culture knowledge from a young age. Rosebud is the name of the sled, Darth Vader is Luke’s father, and that figure in the red raincoat that Donald Sutherland’s bereaved John Baxter has been chasing around Venice definitely isn’t his dearly departed daughter. “Yeah, it was the ending,” enthuses Allan Scott, who co-wrote Don’t Look Now with Chris Bryant and would go on to collaborate with the late, great Nicolas Roeg on many more filmsincluding The Witches and Castaway. We caught…

WE’LL BE HONEST, WHEN KRYPTON WAS FIRST ANNOUNCED WE WEREN’T SURE WHERE A SUPERMAN PREQUEL SERIES THAT DOESN’T FEATURE SUPERMAN COULD POSSIBLY GO. THE ANSWER, ACCORDING TO SEASON ONE OF KRYPTON, IS ‘ANYWHERE IT WANTS’. We now have a version of the Superman myth in which the fearsome General Zod is Kal-El’s uncle, Earth has been conquered twice – first by Zod, then by Brainiac – and Superman is possibly never going to exist at all. “We don’t have to slavishly follow the mythology that’s been set up; especially now that we’re on a divergent timeline,” showrunner Cameron Welsh says, stating the obvious. Krypton is most definitely going off on its own tangent at this point, and will continue to do so in Season Two. The Season One finale ended…

Zombie nation Release 12 July Director Jim Jarmusch Cast Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop Distributor Universal Certificate 15 Polar fracking has thrown the Earth off its axis – a pretty big deal that most of the people of Centreville are barely taking in. Political differences and environmental disasters alike are easily set aside, not necessarily out of ignorance, but rather because big events and ideas seem to have little impact on the everyday lives of all involved. That is, until zombies start popping out of the ground. Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive showed his keen interest in the macabre and he demonstrated a real eye for the poetry and serenity of small-town America in Paterson. In its earlier moments, The Dead Don’t Die juxtaposes these…

Burn, burn, burn Release Out now Director Simon Kinberg Cast Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence Distributor Twentieth Century Fox Certificate 12A At one point in the 12th film of the X-Men franchise that concludes after its 18-year run, a 20-something Jean Grey demands that a man simply get out of her head. She is raging and confused after absorbing a cosmic entity that she can’t seem to control. It’s a moment where you think the film is about to do something provocative and even progressive when it comes to a young woman’s emotions, in a similar way to something like Stephen King’s Carrie. The fire symbolism is already implanted in the film’s DNA as the phoenix rises from the ashes. And yet this is a film where…

Beatles for sale Release Out now Director Danny Boyle Cast Himesh Patel, Lily James, Kate McKinnon, Ed Sheeran Distributor Universal Certificate 12A Yesterday imagines an alternate reality where The Beatles never existed. During a global blackout, struggling musician Jack Malik (played by EastEnders’ Himesh Patel), gets hit by a bus and awakes to the realisation that he is the only person in the world who remembers the Fab Four. He’s yet to have his big break so hastily recalls the songs from memory to launch himself into the big time. This costly concept for a crowd-pleasing musical was dreamt up by Jack Barth with a screenplay written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle. As the film celebrates The Beatles’ music played out via Patel’s endearing performance, the what-if…

Release Out now Director Grant Sputore Cast Clara Rugaard, Hilary Swank, Rose Byrne Distributor Netflix Certificate 15 Format After premiering at Sundance, Grant Sputore’s debut feature is the latest in Netflix’s ever-expanding SF movie slate but is there enough here to make it stand out from all of those thumbnails? Well, it’s certainly an impressive achievement on a visual level and is yet another win for WETA. However, genre fans may be a little disappointed by a story that struggles to find a new spin on a familiar set-up. After the extinction of mankind, an AI (voiced by Rose Byrne) grows the first new human being in a secure lab. This girl grows up to be a precocious teenager (played Clara Rugaard) who only knows what she has been told…

Wild and weird Release Out now Showrunners Brian Taylor, Grant Morrison Cast Christopher Meloni, Patton Oswalt, Lili Mirojnick, Medina Senghore, Bryce Lorenzo, Patrick Fischler Distributor Netflix Certificate 15 Format Shortly after Happy! Season Two finished airing in the US, it was announced that Syfy had cancelled Brian Taylor and Grant Morrison’s adaptation of the latter’s comic. If this is indeed the end (it’s reportedly being shopped around other networks and streaming outlets at the time of writing), we should at least be glad that something this batshit was given 18 episodes. While this second season lacks some of its predecessor’s focus, it’s a delirious but deceptively sharp run that slowly pulls a big beating heart out of its bleeding chest. Sure, the sentimentality is hidden behind an array of grotesquely…

Release Out now Writer Paul Tremblay Publisher Titan Books Price £8.99 In ‘Notes From The Dog Walkers’, the most overtly meta story in Paul Tremblay’s new book, a character bemoans the fact that short story collections never do well commercially. By this point we’re over halfway through the set and this sinister figure’s point is a reminder of what a treat it is to have a book of short, sharp tales from someone this talented and interesting. Horror fans know the value of a good anthology and rest assured: if you’ve enjoyed Tremblay’s work in the past, you’ll have a brilliant time with this. An obvious statement, sure, but it’s particularly true here given how much interconnection there is between these stories and his longer work. Take the titular ‘Growing…

Release Out now Writer Megan E O’Keefe Publisher Orbit Price £8.99 For Ada Prime Sergeant, Sanda Greeve, things could be a lot better to say the least. Not only has she just woken up in a medbay on an enemy ship minus one leg, courtesy of the battle she was recently engaged in, but she has just found out that she has been in stasis for 230 years, after the Icarion enemy triggered a deadly weapon that destroyed the entire system. Now she is decades away from anything at all resembling civilisation, with only a temperamental experimental AI ship named Bero for company. Megan E O’Keefe, who is making the jump from steampunk fantasy to full-blown space opera here, splits her story into two points of view for the most…

Release Out now Writer Maria Lewis Publisher Orbit Price £8.99 Having introduced her Berlin-based supernatural governing body squad The Treize in her Who’s Afraid? novels, Maria Lewis explores her stylish, action-packed underworld from a different angle in this standalone novel. Twins Corvossier and Barastin, known to most as Casper and Creeper, are the Treize’s mediums. They can talk to the dead and move them on to the next stage of their afterlife by force if necessary. When they’re attacked, they embark on a…

In Megan O’Keefe’s gripping SF Velocity Weapon, a fighter pilot has woken up to find that the war she was fighting in ended in the worst way and her only companion in this newly empty world is the prickly AI ship she’s been rescued by (created by the enemy, no less). As Sanda Greeve begins the process of patching herself and her new vessel, Bero, up, she begins to discover how it all led to this… What was the starting point for Velocity Weapon? Velocity Weapon began with Sanda Greeve, marooned in space, the sole survivor of a war that burned itself to the ground while she was in stasis. After I wrote that first chapter, I moved onto the world building, and then to plotting all the bits that…

The Blair Witch Project was not the original ‘found footage’ film but nor was it the celebrated video nasty Cannibal Holocaust. At the height of the Vietnam War, director Peter Watkins was the man who unwittingly made the genre (if we can label it such) a brief cause célèbre with his harrowing masterpiece Punishment Park (1971). The film highlights a crew of fictional European documentarians recording the trials of young radical leftist activists who are sent into the hot Californian desert as retribution for trying to subvert the hard-line rule of the Nixon presidency. They are then hunted by the national guard for sport. The amazing thing about Punishment Park is how realistic it all feels and unlike Cannibal Holocaust the entire narrative is presented as genuine, with no fictional…

To dramatically elevate the film even further, Shyamalan wanted to uniquely convey the multi-dimensional otherworldly feeling of this ‘sixth sense’ for audiences. The director gave an unorthodox scenario to inspire James Newton Howard. He told the composer, (who would also serve him well in Unbreakable, Signs and The Village) to imagine being in a room with a threatening, unseen, animalistic entity that he could hear crawling around him and who’s presence would dissipate shortly before attack. The composer consequently spliced subtle, unidentifiable sounds of a host of cries, snarls and even screams into his chilling yet beautifully hypnotic score for truly unsettling affect. Another sonic aspect that was worked on imaginatively within the soundtrack was the subtle use of background noises to further elicit a discomforting ambiance. Shyamalan had people…

16-20 THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY People know a work of art when they see one. Witty, razor sharp and adventurous, all eyes are always on you and you know it. Why mess with perfection? 11-15 THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE You may be engaging, and fun to spend time, but you’re not the first on everyone’s list. Everyone strives to be the best and, though you’re close, you’re not it. 6-10 MOSTLY HARMLESS Not as great a final instalment as some might expect, you are depressing and occasionally veer towards dull. But the standards were high from the start so we don’t blame you. 0-5 AND ANOTHER THING… You might be a laugh but you are not really one of the gang unfortunately. People tend…

SCIFINOW IS STANDING in the middle of a huge sound stage in Atlanta, Georgia. The Duffer Brothers busy themselves behind monitors at one end of the vast space, while Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler) and David Harbour (Jim Hopper) patiently wait for someone to call “action.” It’s week two of filming and today’s scene will be seen in the first episode of the monster drama’s third season. Welcome back to Hawkins, Indiana. Welcome back to Stranger Things. DIRECTING DUTIES… “Thanks for coming to the set,” exclaims Matt Duffer, who wanders over with his brother during a quick break from filming. “Season Three is set in the summer of 1985 and we are excited about this fact because we have always been set in the dreary fall. The…

Where do we find Hopper at the start of Season Three? Hopper has a teenager daughter, Eleven. They got the birth certificate at the end of last season, so he’s on a mission to recreate a family. He’s an Eighties dad who doesn’t necessarily have the emotional intelligence that modern men perhaps have around certain areas of having a teenage daughter. In that sense, he’s going through a different sort of stress than he’s gone through before. He’s been a father before… Yes, but his daughter died at five years old, so he never had to live with a teenage daughter. In a weird way, he is reawakened and he is a new man. It’s very fulfilling, but it’s difficult when he has to deal with the extra added pressures…

THE L NEW gi MUTANTS Pitch: A teen horror take on the X-Men set in a secret facility starring Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy. Status: Well! We saw the first trailer back in October 2017 and it was set for an April 2018 release, but it’s been booted down through release schedules like a football ever since. Reportedly those long-discussed reshoots will finally happen this year and its new release date is April 2020, and Disney claims it will be theatrical. Likelihood of release: Well, they’ve made it so they probably will release it at some point in some form. At this point we’ll believe it when we see it. GAMBIT Pitch: A freewheelin’ rom-com/heist movie set in New Orleans starring Channing Tatum as everyone’s favourite telekinetic Cajun. Status: Given…

“I love The Wicker Man with Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. It is one of the most terrifying, unsettling, insane things. “It takes darkness and suffering and puts it right next to joy and celebration. It’s hard to do and it doesn’t feel forced. Anything dealing with faith or supernatural elements frightens me because there’s a fatalism to it. There’s nothing you can do. If it’s a person, a serial killer running around, it’s like ‘okay, there’s a chance you can fight this person and come out on top.’ But when it comes to systems of belief and when it comes to the supernatural, there’s no physical or mental way to overcome these people with their feelings and beliefs. There’s something about that which is infinitely more frightening to me…

STEP 1: CHOOSE THEIR DESIGN Human-looking designs are certainly de rigueur, but don’t overlook a more classical robotic appearance – they’re classics for a reason! And if you choose a human look, remember: sex appeal is key, regardless of the robot’s actual purpose. STEP 2: DEFINE THEIR PERSONALITY Decide what the purpose of your robot is, and set their personality accordingly. True AI learns, so be very careful when you programme them – you don’t want your sexbot to develop an interest in human rights, for example. STEP 3: SET THEIR PARAMETERS AI has been known to turn on its creators, so we’d advise that all AI robots be hard-wired not to cause harm to humans. Just don’t make them too intelligent, or they are likely to find ways to…

MAKE SURE TO VISIT THE NIGHTSHADE INN It would be hard to find a sorrier den of iniquity in all the realm but they have an ace brewer and there isn’t much else in the way of nightlife. DON’T TAKE DRUGS Yes, a nice hit of hot new drug colipsum will pep you up but you also become susceptible to turning into a spike-tongued plagueling. Avoid. BUY AN UMBRELLA Trust us – pigeon traffic is extremely heavy. DON’T HANG OUT YOUR WASHING Nobody wants condensation from drying clothes indoors but a bit of mould is better than being mauled by a demon. Invest in a mangle. STAY OUT OF THE GARDEN Tidying up that herbaceous border might seem like an innocent enough pastime, but chances are you’ll unearth a shallow…

Bringing the 4K version of Don’t Look Now to life Working with cinematographer, Anthony Richmond, the team at Silversalt Restoration have brought Don’t Look Now as close as possible to how it was originally intended to be seen back in 1973. We talk to senior colourist, Steve Bearman, and head of restoration, Anthony Badger, to find out more… HOW WAS THE CONDITION OF THE ORIGINAL PRINT? Anthony Badger: What tends to happen is the more famous the film is, the more damaged it gets because they’re gone back to a lot of times. This is the third time this has been scanned from the original negative. On the whole, from a damage point of view, it was in good condition but you had issues that would have been inherent within…

THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS Sure, this is long before Hal Jordan, John Stewart et al became Green Lanterns, but the Corps were already up and running. It would be a big surprise if they don’t show up in one form or another on Krypton. If the Green Lanterns are off the table, the Darkstars would be a decent stand-in. MONITOR The character might currently be popping up in the Arrowverse, but a cosmic being with the responsibility of keeping the multiverse aligned would work well in a show that messes around with the timeline so much. TAMARAN AND THANAGAR Two of DC’s most well-known planets. Tamaran is the home planet of Starfire, while Thanagar is home to a race of fierce winged warriors, including Hawkman and Hawkwoman. It would be…

Mommy fearest Release Out now Director Tate Taylor Cast Octavia Spencer, Diana Silvers, Juliette Lewis, Luke Evans Distributor Universal Certificate 15 It’s always exciting when a consistently brilliant character actor gets a leading role they can really sink their teeth into, but nothing can quite prepare you for how much fun Octavia Spencer is having in the title role of Tate Taylor’s gleefully outrageous horror Ma. The Oscar-winning star of Hidden Figures and The Shape Of Water takes centre stage with a magnificent performance that is at once creepy and hilarious, skin-crawling and sympathetic. While there’s a lot of work put in to make sure that we keep rooting for plucky teen heroine Maggie(Booksmart’s Diana Silvers, continuing to seriously impress), there’s never any question whose film this is. Which is…

Action, aliens and awkwardness Release Out now Director F Gary Gray Cast Tessa Thompson, Chris Hemsworth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Rafe Spall Distributor Sony Pictures Releasing Certificate 12A In 1997 sci-fi hit Men In Black, Will Smith‘s energetic, wise-cracking rookie was the perfect foil for Tommy Lee Jones’ wearied, straight-talking veteran. In Men In Black: International, Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth’s characters are both glorified goofballs, making it hard for them to match the predecessor’s dynamic. Having infiltrated the organisation’s New York branch, Agent M (Thompson) – who’s been obsessed with the MIB since she saw an extra-terrestrial and two suited men wipe her parents’ memories when she was little – persuades big boss Agent O (Emma Thompson) to take a chance on her and is assigned to a case…

Welcome to prime time Release Out now Director Paul Michael Glaser Cast Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Dawson Distributor Fabulous Films Certificate 18 Format Infamously one of the least faithful Stephen King adaptations (only the not-actually-a-Stephen-King-adaptation The Lawnmower Man actually beats it), the hyperviolent Arnie actioner The Running Man grows closer and closer to plausibility each day. Sure, it’s still absolutely ridiculous but its vision of a future where convicts face a gauntlet packed with murderous gladiators for America’s entertainment doesn’t seem all that far-fetched these days. There are plenty of aspects that have dated, of course, from the casting to the gladiators’ get up (Christmas tree opera singer Dynamo is still baffling), but it’s the film’s cruel and sexualised treatment of heroine Amber (Maria Conchita Alonso)…

MR James “I’ve been reading short ghost stories. MR James leaves so much to your imagination - & that’s why his stories are so darn creepy! #BookClub” @horror_magic The Cabin At The End of the World “Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin At The End Of The World. It’s properly timely and traumatic. #BookClub” @NakMac Fevre Dream “Fevre Dream. Unnerving, discomforting & discombobulating! #BookClub” @Nootlin 20th Century Ghosts “@joe_hill’s 20th Century Ghosts - at turns deeply disturbing but also sweetly haunting and full of pathos. #BookClub” @kashfiakabir A Head Full Of Ghosts “...by Paul Tremblay - bought it for Stephen King’s review on the front cover, kept reading for the nightmares! #BookClub” @mrslaurenwayne…

“Going with Ubik by Philip K Dick. Good to get back to his darkly comic and paranoid future tales. #BookClub” @ParsonsFiction “It was impossible for me to resist re-reading #GoodOmens after watching the brilliant mini-series! #BookClub” @PasmineJalmer “The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde, it’s that good I might jump straight into the second book in the series The Fourth Bear. #BookClub” @christopherhow9 “Just finished @lil_cam_ron’s Disco Deathtrap. A fun slasher romp. #BookClub” @bloodyflicks “Reading Year One by Nora Roberts at the moment. It’s dystopian with magic, really good so far! #BookClub” @WesKirkSmith “Saga Volume 3. It gets better as it goes on. #BookClub” @Jbarnes532 “Snakeskins by Tim Major - Fantastic central premise and wonderfully inventive alternate history timeline. #BookClub” @Rozza1210 “I am reading Deep Silence by @JonathanMaberry and I…

Release 8 August Writer Breanna Teintze Publisher Jo Fletcher Books Price £14.99 Corcoran Gray is a wizard operating outside of the laws of his society and he’s on a mission to track down his estranged and abducted grandfather. He is pursued by the dogmatic Mages’ Guild and helped by a runaway slave, Brix, who may or may not have an agenda of her own. Gray’s determination to find his grandfather leads him down a path of necromancy, soul traps, and maybe even to the gods themselves. Gray is an entertaining narrator, as capable with a quip as he is with magic and with a Locke Lamora-like tendency of doing the right thing. There are also a lot of interesting ideas at play in Breanna Teintze’s debut, particularly around the rules…

After seeing their bank account go from the red to the green, film school graduates Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez had every right to want to consider their next move pretty carefully after The Blair Witch Project. Unfortunately, contractual obligations to Artisan forced the pair into producing the rushed and almost universally panned sequel to the film, Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in 2000. However, in the rubble of that disastrous project, the two filmmakers would eventually grow as independent genre names in their own rights. Sánchez would return to the film industry in 2006 with the accomplished and slow-burning Altered (2006) and subsequent direct-to-DVD titles such as Seventh Moon, as well as the bigfoot thriller Exists (2014) – which is his most blatant tribute to The Legend Of…

Back in the days before social media or tell-all trailers threatened cinematic secrecy, The Sixth Sense emergedas a sleeper hit that was able to keep its big twist denouement respectfully shrouded in mystery. A seemingly straightforward supernatural thriller about a troubled boy who sees ghosts and finds a kindred spirit with a dismayed child psychologist, it caught audiences completely off-guard when a climatic twist turned proceedings on its head. The movie demanded reassessment and cinemagoers flocked back to rewatch the chilling flick from an entirely different context. As a result The Sixth Sense became a discussion movie that took the ‘highest grossing horror movie’ mantle for almost 20 years. For his genre breakthrough, writer-director M Night Shyamalan partially based the story on his own childhood that was spent, in his…