Table of contents for September 2017 in SFX

Bringing Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Hulk together in one movie? It seemed like a crazy idea when Marvel first announced Avengers Assemble, but they had the last laugh when it became the highest grossing comic book movie of all time – and launched the franchise into new levels of success and creativity. Now Netflix’s gritty, street-level, New York-based corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is poised to repeat the trick with The Defenders, and we’re rather excited to see the results. That’s why we’ve been on set in New York to see how Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist are getting on (p42). Which of our four newsstand collector’s covers did you choose? Elsewhere in the mag, we’ve looked ahead at the jam-packed future of…

You play a couple with a mysterious past. Tell us about Samuel and Esther. ANTHONY LAPAGLIA Samuel’s an optimistic person but, after the experiences he and his wife have had, they’re crushed individuals. After what happened to them, Esther really wanted to have children around, which is why they allow these kids to stay. MIRANDA OTTO In my mind, it was something they’d heard about or read about; they were so moved by the story of these orphaned children that they thought it’d be great for them to come and stay. Had you seen the first film before this? AL No, I hadn’t and I didn’t watch it because this is a prequel and I didn’t want to be influenced by anything in the film. I had seen The Conjuring…

Because famous people are fans too FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY MOVIE I love District 9 – “naughty prawn” is a common utterance in our house! It’s original and funny and was extremely prescient. “What do we do with these people who are different?” It was ahead of its time, clever and interesting and thought-provoking, but also sensitive and very funny in parts. Sharlto Copley brought such charm and humour to the main role. We even called our goldfish Christopher Johnson after one of the characters. FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY TV Stranger Things – I’m sure it’s many people’s answer to this question, it was so fantastically compelling and different. The acting was superb, and the child actors were above and beyond in their performances. The storyline, the direction, the grade, the writing, the whole…

When KS Merbeth’s debut, Bite, hit shelves in 2016, its lightningpaced blend of apocalyptic action and crazed characters bore immediate Mad Max: Fury Road comparisons – even if the book was already underway when the movie came out. Now Merbeth’s seen it, did it influence follow-up novel, Raid? “I absolutely loved Fury Road. It’s one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen. Furiosa definitely influenced my desire to write a really badass female protagonist.” Ah yes, that protagonist. Raid’s lead, Clementine, is “a badass bounty hunter with a half-burnt face and a whole lot of pent-up anger,” according to Merbeth. “She follows a tip that lands her right in the bedroom of Jedediah Johnson, self-declared raider king of the wastelands, and takes him prisoner.” Johnson introduces a new strand…

Richard Alpert in Lost 128 Lost may have ended in 2010 but that hasn’t stopped fans and critics from speculating over every obscure plot point and ambiguous character. Nestor Carbonell’s ageless Richard Alpert quite literally flew off into the sunset in the finale, but the actor has since been busy appearing in films like The Dark Knight and on the small screen in Bates Motel. That, however, doesn’t seem to have diminished his soft spot for his role as the 19th century Spanish Doctor who became the mysterious island’s Peter Pan. Would you like to play Richard Alpert again? I would love to play Richard Alpert again, in a heartbeat. In fact I wouldn’t mind having a reunion – I don’t think that’s in the works but I think there’s…

RICH The brilliance of the original Flatliners’ premise was eclipsed by its flashy but throwaway Brat Pack sheen. If this is scary, sign me up – otherwise file under “unnecessary”. JAYNE After watching that I don’t think I need to see the film because it was all there. “Starts as a great, refreshing update; turns into a generic horror; ends up a bit rubbish.” There you go. IAN Confession: somehow I’ve never seen the original movie… but that felt mightily familiar, and in less than three minutes I came to hate all these people. My interest flatlined. WILL Generic trailer for a fairly generic-looking film. The cast is solid and it’s a fun premise so maybe they’ll make it work in the end, but at the moment I’m feeling thoroughly…

Conventions, shows and beyond DATE 4-6 August LOCATION Novotel, Hammersmith It’s sci-fi, Jim, but not as we know it... Boasting an extensive programme that literally has something for everyone, this year’s Nine Worlds Geekfest is also its fourth instalment, and what better way to celebrate than dusting off your finest steampunk corset and joining your fellow geeks at the Novotel West in Hammersmith? The official line-up will have been announced by the time you read this – so far scribblers Jason Arnopp, Jen Williams and Kieron Gillen are confirmed as in attendance to fulfil your literary desires, with Arnopp explaining: “Nine Worlds is such a wonderfully inclusive fixture in the genre event calendar, with a real passion for fantastic fiction.” Film and TV fans will be treated to the usual…

Zhang Ziyi joining Godzilla: King Of The Monsters… Tommy Lee Jones in talks to co-star with Brad Pitt in SF epic Ad Astra… Oona Chaplin joining the Avatar sequels… Danny Elfman replacing Junkie XL as the composer of Justice League… Mahershala Ali joining the voice cast of Sony’s animated Spider- Man movie… The production team behind megashark movie Meg also looking to bring Steven Alten’s Nessie tale The Loch to the screen… Christine Lavaf the latest writer to tackle The Twilight Zone for Warner Bros… Reginald Hudlin bringing Valiant’s Shadowman to the screen… Shioli Kutsuna and Julian Dennison joining the Deadpool sequel… Columbia Pictures adapting Melissa Albert’s YA novel The Hazel Wood… Helen Hunt starring in horror thriller I See You… Stephen and Robbie Amell joining indie SF Code 8… Simon Kinberg directing X-Men: Dark Phoenix with Jessica Chastain as the villain and Evan Peters back as Quicksilver… Christophe Beck returning to…

Free Speak “IT BEGUILES ME THAT ALL OF TIME IS HAPPENING ALL AT ONCE” W e understand about 5% of our observable universe, but history has shown us that as great as the advances that have been made in the last 500 years are, they are only ever glimpses of the great mysterious whole, glimpses that lead to a million more questions. When we know so little of the dimension in which we exist, we can fill the void with possibilities that can stretch human creativity to the limit, and sometimes even inspire science in return. And of all the things we do not know, the most fascinating for me is the concept of time and what it would be like if we could bend it to our will. Fiction…

Hyped as “The most fabulous fighting-team of all!”, the Defenders officially debuted in Marvel Feature 1 in 1971. Created by writer Roy Thomas, the original line-up united the titanic trio of Doctor Strange, the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner. The self-styled non-team earned their own title in 1972, written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Sal Buscema. Based in Doctor Strange’s Greenwich Village sanctum, the loose, endlessly rolling membership expanded to include reformed villain Nighthawk and Asgardian demigoddess Valkyrie. Other Defenders over the years: X-Men’s Beast, the Son of Satan and Luke Cage. Led by Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme, the team frequently faced occult or reality-bending threats. Writer Steve Gerber introduced a rich streak of absurdity and surrealism during his ’70s run, including a crossover with his own Howard the Duck. The…

Given the comic book history between Luke and Danny, does it feel like a natural pairing? FINN The dynamic between the characters is working really well. Before we started this, because there was such hype around our characters coming together for the first time, there was a worry that it might be too oversensationalised or too overwritten or too overanticipated. But the way that it’s written and the way that we’re getting on and working together, it feels really natural. MIKE They’re trying to organically allow our characters to get to know each other, without just going, “Hey, I like you, you like me, let’s hang out!” What’s it like working with Sigourney Weaver? FINN Sigourney’s amazing. She’s very talented, very generous and kind. Genuine. Just has an excellent energy…

FIN FANG FOOM Named by Stan Lee after the British stage musical Chu Chin Chow, this green alien dragon in underpants was one of the atomic age monsters Kirby created for the nascent Marvel Universe. THE BLACK RACER A kind of alternate Silver Surfer, this paralysed Vietnam War vet was recruited into the New Gods’ war as Death itself, pre-dating Neil Gaiman’s more sprightly reaper by almost 20 years. KING SOLOMON’S FROGS Sure, you could travel through time in a TARDIS. Or you could just use one of the 1970s Black Panther’s little bronze frogs. GALAXY GREEN Created for DC’s short-lived ’70s anthology Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix, Galaxy Green – leader of the planet-prowling, man-hungry Astro-Chicks – was Kirby’s sole foray into erotica. ARNIM ZOLA The man with his…

THE SHINING (1980) A movie that Stephen King dislikes so much that he made his own version, Stanley Kubrick’s claustrophobic stay at The Overlook Hotel is still definitively terrifying. Heere’s… Oh, never mind. MISERY (1990) If you needed an excuse not to be a successful writer, Kathy Bates’ terrifying uber-fan Annie Wilkes is surely enough. Tense and brutal, Misery is a masterclass in grim horror. THE MIST (2007) The Shawshank Redemption’s Frank Darabont proving again he should direct every King adap, this supermarket trip descends into fog swirling horror. Watch in black-and-white for peak fear. CARRIE (1976) What’s the saying? Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl scorned? Well, almost. Brian De Palma’s revenge-fest is a gory journey into hell for Sissy Spacek’s Carrie but is worth the disturbing…

When you realised that Cara Delevingne would be cast as Valerian’s companion, Laureline, what did you think? I was excited. She impressed me all the way through. It’s not like I knew exactly what to expect from her as an actress. But she really made the job a pleasure. Every day that I saw her, she lit up and I was super-happy to see her. In that way, it was easy to establish the Valerian- Laureline dynamic. There was a lot of blue-screen involved in the making of the film. Did you get to see sketches of the aliens before you started filming? Yeah, there were mock-ups of the aliens, digital renderings, and there was always pre-viz of what we were shooting – renderings of the worlds. And also just…

SO MANY DIFFERENT VERSIONS of the Caped Crusader have appeared in the last few decades that it’s easy to forget there was once, in the eyes of the world for almost 25 years, just one – Adam West. Born William West Anderson on 19 September 1928 in Walla Walla, Washington, the man who would be Batman performed in a number of TV and film roles (including science fiction classic Robinson Crusoe On Mars and the Three Stooges’ last movie, The Outlaw Is Coming) but was looking for a vehicle to elevate his career. While auditioning for bigger projects, he featured in a commercial for Nestlé Quik, in which he played a James Bond-like character called “Captain Q”. It showcased his ability to be dashing in the midst of madness, and…

Crime Traveller had a shortchanged legacy but the show’s fan base shone briefly. Anthony Horowitz cites the existence of an appreciation society (since missing in action) and there is a Facebook group, Bring Back Crime Traveller, clamouring for its return (current membership: one). One fan, Liane Frydland, hosts dedicated fansite, crimetraveller.co.uk. Were there many fans back then? “A few. One lady in particular was a big Michael French fan; she was lovely, always sending me clippings from magazines about Michael! I got a few fan fiction pieces, but it was mostly me doing the website.”…

What was your approach to the look of the film? I wanted this movie to be on the ground with Peter; it’s like, you’re up in the clouds with Tony, and now here you are down in the dirt with Peter. I only wanted to shoot shots that you could actually shoot – no videogame camera flying around, doing impossible things. It has to always be within the realm of you could shoot this with a drone, you could shoot this with a 100-foot technocrane – that was an essential part of creating the visual language. We had to keep it as realistic as possible. Was there anything that surprised you about Tom’s performance? What caught me off guard is he’s such a precise technical actor. It was amazing. He…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | U | 90 minutes Directors Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin, Eric Guillon Cast Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Trey Parker, Pierre Coffin You wouldn’t think that a film about a retired supervillain, his wife, three uber-adorable kids and a bunch of yellow Minions could be influenced by something as leftfield as Guardians Of The Galaxy, but Despicable Me 3 has the soundtrack to prove it. The film actually writes iconic tunes – from Michael Jackson’s “Bad” to a-ha’s “Take On Me” – into the script; there’s even a moment featuring a cassette tape. Hopefully kids too young to see Guardians will be able to figure out what one does... It all makes perfect sense, however, because the bad guy for this third adventure is the grown-up child…

RELEASED 21 JULY PG | 82 minutes In this Mexican animated film from the writer of Madagascar, a teenage boy discovers his true form is a monster, and travels to the titular location to tussle with a mad scientist. On the upside, it has some interesting design work and a few good jokes, including a gender-reversed nod to Carrie. Unfortunately the film is still very dull, with no standout characters beyond a faintly funny two-headed guru, while the look is ugly. Still, it might placate pre-teens who love Monsters, Inc.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 JULY (Blu-ray/ DVD/VOD)/OUT NOW! (download) 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/VOD/download Director Jordan Peele Cast Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones Can you name a horror movie in which racial issues are tackled? Candyman, maybe? Its vengeful bogeyman is a murdered slave. Blacula?! As a Joss Whedon character once put it, this genre is “not exactly a haven for the brothers”. Writer/director Jordan Peele’s extraordinary feature debut might just help change that. We follow Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) as he visits the parents of his girlfriend Rose for the first time – a trip made a shade more daunting by the fact that Chris is black and Rose is white. Initially he encounters a little seemingly well-meaning awkwardness, as Rose’s neurosurgeon dad practically trips over himself to…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 JULY 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/ download On a colony world, a rough diamond army officer teams with an escaped crim to dodge bio-weapon monsters (think giant, angry, de-shelled tortoises) and find his daughter before reactors go kablooey. The set-up is videogameshallow, there’s 2000-megaton infodumping, and it can’t compete with the megablockbusters, but frantic pacing, stunning landscapes and neat ideas – such as isolation cells resembling tumbledryers – make this Aussie indie an engaging sci-fi actioner. Extras A Q&A.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1956 | PG | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) BLU-RAY DEBUT Not everything that lives underground is as friendly as the Wombles: here, archaeologists find remnants of an ancient civilisation who enslave mole-like creatures. It’s guff of course, but even guilty B-movie thrills are in short supply. Despite a few spooky moments – such as Mole Men claws arising from the earth – it’s perfunctorily told, and you’ll likely be bored with all the padding, which includes a studious five-minute introduction by a “professor”. Extras None.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2001 | 15 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa Cast Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Katô, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka BLU-RAY DEBUT Loneliness and isolation are at the heart of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ghost story. Almost all of the characters here are cut off and alone in some way, and the emergence of the internet (charmingly characterised by burbling dial-up sounds and flickering CRT computer monitors) only exacerbates the problem, bringing not connection, but sinister apparitions. The film follows two obliquely connected strands. A group of friends are horrified by their colleague’s suicide. Inspecting the computer disc he left behind sparks a series of hauntings that prefigure madness and death. Elsewhere, Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) signs up to an internet provider (amusingly called Ur@nus) and encounters a deeply…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1972 | 15 | Blu-ray Director George Roy Hill Cast Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche, Sharon Gans BLU-RAY DEBUT Your reaction to Slaughterhouse-Five will depend on how familiar you are with the original 1969 novel – and unusually for a literary adaptation, in this case you’re probably going to respond better to the film if you have. Michael Sacks plays “unstuck in time” hero Billy Pilgrim, who finds his life jumbled like a deck of cards, experiences coming achronologically as he slips between being a POW during the firebombing of Dresden; a family man post-WW2; and an alien abductee on the planet Tralfamadore. Newcomers will find Pilgrim a rather watery presence and may be frustrated by the minimal SF content – with Billy only installed in…

RELEASED 3 AUGUST 253 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Benjamin Percy Publisher Hodder & Stoughton The internet can be quite a scary place – and according to Benjamin Percy’s technohorror novel we don’t know the half of it. The Dark Net blends ancient myth and a Satanic “End of Days” fable with ultra-modern paranoia as Percy delves into the teeming underside of the web – the parts of the net that aren’t searchable and which are largely concerned with conducting illegal activity. Think Mr Robot meets The Prophecy, with elements of Tron thrown in. Spiralling down a dizzying rabbit hole, The Dark Net leads us from character to character, building a picture of a city (Portland, Oregon) on the verge of crisis. Lela is the journalist investigating the appearance of strange…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES Wonder Woman last month, War For The Planet Of The Apes and Spider- Man: Homecoming this issue: five-star blockbuster reviews have returned! As a fan of Tremors, I’m loving the prospect of Kevin Bacon returning to the franchise for a new Syfy show. RANTS Ron Howard feels like too safe a choice for Han Solo. NICK SETCHFIELD FEATURES EDITOR RAVES I’ve been enjoying the Bond & Beyond podcast. Some really engaging chats about the 007 movies. I’ll forgive them the lack of Moonraker love. RIP Adam West. What a brilliant, ironic take on Batman, just as valid as all the doomy, growly ones. 2017’s a bruising year for us. IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES Scary: Robert Patrick fixing me with his T-1000 stare as he mimed…

Who’s the hero of Age Of Assassins? Girton Club-Foot, assassin. He lives in quite a harsh world and has never questioned it – in the book he discovers he has quite a strong moral compass and a desire to do the right thing. He’s also disabled, and that informs his character, though it doesn’t define him. What’s the role of magic in this world? Magic takes life from the land and nothing will grow where it was used – it’s seen as a frightening and dark force. You can’t just use a spell, there are consequences and these can be terrible; it weaves itself through the plot like some sort of bad vine simile. What sparked the idea? A long conversation about Agatha Christie and another book with an editor at…

In recent years, Marvel has been gradually introducing more youthful, diverse versions of iconic characters like Thor and Captain America. Next month, the young upstarts will meet their older counterparts in Generations, a new 10-parter that springs out of the ongoing Secret Empire crossover. “While it catapults out of something that occurs during Secret Empire, Generations is very much it’s own thing,” Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort tells Red Alert. “It’s a lot more intimate and characterisation-based than what you’d typically think of as an event book.” It’s written and drawn by various creative teams – Brian Michael Bendis will script both Miles Morales’ liaison with Peter Parker in Generations: The Spiders and Riri Williams’s encounter with Tony Stark in Generations: The Iron. “Most of Generations will have the modern…

DATE 28-30 July LOCATION Olympia, London Bananas about Buffy? Hankering after some Harry Potter? Fret not, for the London Film & Comic Con is back (oh yes), and this year they’re pulling out all the stops with some of the finest A-list guests ever. The list is longer than a Kraken’s tentacle but, among many others, there’ll be Alyson Hannigan, Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, Ron Perlman, the entire casts of Iron Fist and The Walking Dead. There are also photo ops aplenty – get a selfie with Groot as the life-size model comes to town, or burn rubber with the original ’60s Batmobile. Comic crafters in attendance include Marv Wolfman, Geoff Senior, Tommy Yune and Jess Bradley, while author-types are represented by the likes of Jo Harris, VE Schwab and Laure…

New Charlie Brooker-edited Black Mirror book series announced, featuring all-new stories in the style of the show. Derek Jacobi returning as the Master in Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio dramas. Babylon 5’s Stephen Furst (Vir Cotto) has passed away at 63. Marvel reveals Captain Phasma comic that will explain what happened to the Stormtrooper after she wound up in that rubbish chute. Hermione Granger voted favourite Harry Potter character in poll to mark the series’ 20th anniversary. Jennifer Connelly joins TV adaptation of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer film. Billy Zane to play PT Barnum in season three of Legends Of Tomorrow. Jane Levy and Sissy Spacek are heading to Castle Rock, the JJ Abrams-produced Stephen King anthology show. Netflix’s first Danish show, The Rain, will be set in the aftermath of a virus…

THIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR Nobody has a clue what David Lynch is on about, but that hasn’t stopped you loving the return of Twin Peaks. Looks like it may have been worth the 26-year wait… There was also plenty of positivity pointed in the direction of Wonder Woman, plus letters about Pirates Of The Caribbean 5, 12 Monkeys and a bizarre Boris Johnson lookalike. We love to hear from you, so why not start bashing your keyboard about Spider-Man: Homecoming, War For The Planet Of The Apes or the end of Doctor Who series 10! Contact details opposite. #THE RETURN OF TWIN PEAKS Chris Thorpe, email I just wanted to drop you my thoughts on the new Twin Peaks. The main one being that maybe I shouldn’t have invited people…

One of my deep loves is the “What If” scenario. It is the question that a lot of alternate history books spring from. Philip K Dick’s The Man In The High Castle, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Stephen King’s 11/22/63. You can continue the list not just with novels, but comics and films. Yet, my favourite “What If” book is not a piece of alternate history, but rather a book about our present world, Lydia Millet’s Oh Pure And Radiant Heart. In Millet’s 2005 novel, Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard wake up in 2003, reborn through the dream of a librarian, Ann. One of the scientists wakes up in a hotel, one in a gutter and one beneath the table of a university cafeteria, where he is…

Has Jessica changed from her own series? She hasn’t changed much. She’s still kind of an asshole. She’s still hitting the bottle. She is dealing with popularity and eyes on her – that’s not the easiest thing for someone that’s reclusive and as isolated as she is, and prefers to be. So she’s just kind of trying to figure out how to fit in. We’re picking up not too long after we see her at the end of [Jessica Jones] season one. She’s dealing with the aftermath of killing someone, which is not easy. And as someone who already hates herself, the self-loathing is running pretty deep. But she’s still funny! What’s the mood like on set? Honestly, it’s the fucking best! I think it’s the most fun on-set experience…

How much can you tell us about who you play? I’m allowed to say that I’m a multilayered character! And I get to have quite a lot of interaction with the four heroes, which is fun for me. I’m having a great time. We don’t share the same priorities but it’s a delicious character. This is longform television. Are you relishing the chance to build a character over these eight episodes? The funny thing is, you get one script and you do that, then you get the others, so you don’t really know quite where you’re going to end up, which is interesting. It’s suspenseful. It’s like opening a surprise package every couple of weeks and you go, “Oh! I didn’t know that that would happen!” How important is New…

HORROR Some of Marvel’s horror titles are the best out there. You thought Daredevil was grim? Check out assassin story Terror, Inc, vampire series Elsa Bloodstine, and the black magic-infused The Darkhold Redeemers. If anything’s crying out for a movie adaptation, though, it’s Werewolf At Night. Ha-woooo. WESTERNS Their popularity was huge in the 1950s, and Marvel jumped on the Western wagon with a series of comic titles, including Kid Colt, who enjoyed 30-plus years in publication alongside his horse Steel. Rawhide Kid was revived in the 2000s, where the gunslinger was depicted as gay. MONSTERS Marvel has published comics starring classic monsters like Dracula, the Mummy and Frankenstein’s Monster, but it’s the original titles that are most tantalising. Man-Thing is desperate for a adaptation (get Gareth Edwards on the…

FACE TO FACE WITH THE BIGGEST STARS “MAKING YOGI BEAR 3D WAS A DEFINING TIME IN MY LIFE” H e does stand-up. He hosts a podcast. He released a comedy rap record (The Extended Play EP). And they’re just the things you probably haven’t heard about. TJ Miller is everywhere right now, thanks in part to playing Weasel, the wise-ass bartender in Deadpool and tech entrepreneur Erlich on HBO’s Silicon Valley. This month, he can be heard voicing Gene in The Emoji Movie (yes, they have made a cartoon based on texting icons – at least he’s not voicing the poo emoji, like Patrick Stewart). Gene is a multi-expressional emoji who must seek out normality. As for Miller’s own journey, it’s about to get real – with the upcoming sequel…

How would you describe the Valerian- Laureline relationship? They are basically alone together most of the time in their spaceship, travelling around, trying to rescue or save people and trying to keep the universe at peace. They have a rapport that’s very teasing: they know each other very well. Are you a big sci-fi geek? No. The Fifth Element was probably my first – and favourite – sci-fi movie. To me, the characters and stories were the most exciting things about films, generally. Not just sci-fi. But with this movie, I feel like you get so much of everything. It’s not just about the sci-fi element. There are so many different eclectic parts of other kinds of films. You did Suicide Squad, which had a lot of visual effects. Did…

“THE NYQUIST BOOKS ARE THE MOST COMPLICATED I’VE DONE” I n Dayzone, the main setting for Jeff Noon’s new novel A Man Of Shadows, night never truly falls. Instead, its inhabitants move through an urban landscape that’s constantly illuminated by electric lights. It was an idea, says Noon, keyed off by reading about Japan. “There are these 24-hour areas of Tokyo that are lit very brightly,” he says. “There’s lots of music playing and young people hanging out, and lots of video and computer games going on. That fascinated me in terms of a space in which to set a narrative because writers are always looking for locations that narrative can grow out of, especially if you’re a science fiction writer.” If that brings forth visions of Blade Runner-like vistas,…

Since Crime Traveller’s early bath, creator Anthony Horowitz hasn’t stopped to so much as boil a kettle. Creating ITV invisibility drama The Vanishing Man (which, well, vanished), he then went on to establish the teen spy series, Alex Rider. Further novels and a film followed. He then took the chance to show his true 007 mettle by writing James Bond novel Trigger Mortis As well as picking up an OBE for services to literature, he also took time out to create tweedy detective drama Foyle’s War.…

RELEASED 28 JULY 2017 | 15 | 90 minutes Director John R Leonetti Cast Joey King, Ryan Phillippe, Sherilyn Fenn, Shannon Purser Is there any genre but horror which can traverse the sublime and the ridiculous with such ease? So it is with Wish Upon, a highly derivative “The Monkey’s Paw” knock-off directed by John R Leonetti, who made the cynical, joyless Annabelle. A recipe for straight-to-DVD crud if ever we heard one. Yet somehow with its appealing teens (including Barb from Stranger Things in a supporting role), Final Destination-style tension and vein of (possibly unintentional) humour, Wish Upon, against all odds, is good, gory fun. Joey King plays high-school outsider Claire, living with her dad after her mum died by suicide when she was a child. Her dad (Ryan…

RELEASED 11 AUGUST 15 | 109 minutes Director David F Sandberg Cast Miranda Otto, Anthony LaPaglia, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson Ramshackle houses, contorting demons, eerily upbeat records… this prequel features all the Conjuring-verse hallmarks, but Lights Out’s David F Sandberg delivers an effective standalone that eradicates the memory of its fumbled forebear, Annabelle. Delving into the origins of the titular doll, this is a pared-back horror in the classic mould. Eking tension out of a creaky single location, it sees orphans Janice (Talitha Bateman) and Linda (Lulu Wilson) move into the isolated California home of dollmaker Samuel (Anthony LaPaglia) and his wife Esther (Miranda Otto, fantastically tragic), only to find themselves at the eye of a supernatural storm. There’s an old-school elegance to both the set-up and the scares, and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 91 minutes Director Trey Edward Shults Cast Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Christopher Abbott, Riley Keough Post-apocalyptic dramas are not, by their nature, joyous affairs full of dance numbers and belly laughs. But there is still entertainment to be mined, depending where they sit on the scale of, say, Threads to the more action-packed Children Of Men. It Comes At Night sits closer to the former. It’s a low-key, low-budget affair, focused on Paul (Joel Edgerton), Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr), in the early stages of an unspecified apocalypse. Something has gone wrong, but we’re never told what – beyond the lingering fear of infection, seen initially through Sarah’s father. When another family shows up, tensions rise as they try to live…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 JULY (Blu-ray/ DVD)/OUT NOW (download) 2017 | 12 | 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray 3D/ Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts Cast Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Jing Tian, John C Reilly, Corey Hawkins After Peter Jackson’s reverential big-budget remake and that Jeff Bridges abomination from the ’70s, few were screaming for Hollywood to have another crack at the oversized gorilla legend – even Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts admits his first reaction on hearing about the project was “Why?”. While Skull Island is unlikely to kickstart a new evolution in blockbuster entertainment, however, it brings enough new stuff to the party to justify its existence. Just... That this Kong is not a retread is its biggest strength, even if the set-up is somewhat familiar – y’know, that…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2016 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Olivier Assayas Cast Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie Although packaged as a horror film, Olivier Assayas’s elegant foray into the supernatural often feels like a celebration of muse Kristen Stewart. In a role moulded for her slouchy style, Stewart plays Maureen, a young medium living in Paris. By day she drives around the city on her moped picking up clothes for a tyrannical model; by night she trails around an empty mansion trying to make contact with her recently deceased twin. Following her revelatory performance in Assayas’s Clouds Of Sils Maria, Stewart impresses here. Her face strained and sickly pale, she’s a bundle of barely composed nerves. One scene sees her crying out for her brother’s…

RELEASED 21 JULY 2017 | SVOD Director Flying Lotus Cast Iesha Coston, Zack Fox The Buttress, Shane Carpenter SHUDDER Back in the day you could outrage audiences by filming someone eating dog poo, as in John Waters’s Pink Flamingos. The bar’s been raised considerably since then, but producer/musician Flying Lotus’s Kuso (it’s Japanese for “crap”) flops over it with several metres’ clearance. Even Waters might sick up in his mouth. Less a film and more an assault course of transgressive imagery, it’s basically a series of provocatively perverse shorts, heavy with gross physicality, interspersed with animated collages cut from medical textbooks and pornography. Just a couple of peaks in its Himalayas of offence include a woman having a foetus magically ripped from her womb and tossed at her, and a…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2016 | 15 | DVD/download Three Oxford students open a wormhole in a college laboratory, unlocking the secret of instantaneous teleportation. Cue dreams of riches and glory – “We’re going to be gods!” and a descent into paranoia when a human test subject discovers she’s unable to create new memories after being transported. Artfully shot but tonally a little stilted, this take on the new moral frontiers of quantum science is redeemed by its high-concept ambition and a genuinely moving ending. Extras Deleted scenes.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 JULY 1964 | 12 | Blu-ray Director Antonio Margheriti Cast Barbara Steele, George Ardisson, Halina Zalewska, Umberto Raho This Italian gothic horror is very much in the vein of 1960’s Black Sunday. Like Mario Bava’s classic, it stars sulky-eyed goth pin-up Barbara Steele, begins with a woman being burned to death, and sees her curse befalling the family responsible. Director Antonio Margheriti may be best known for 1980’s trashy Cannibal Apocalypse, but this is more atmospheric work. Expect ominous music, much nostril-flare acting, and altogether too much 15th century sexual assault of the “I will have you, woman!” kind. Riccardo Pallottini’s shadowy, black-and-white cinematography is ravishingly beautiful. It’s a shame the script makes little sense. For example: when Steele’s character turns up, why doesn’t everyone spot she’s…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1921 | PG | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Director Fritz Lang Cast Bernhard Goetzke, Lil Dagover, Walter Janssen, Rudolf Klein-Rogge Pop culture has picked Metropolis as the movie to make Fritz Lang immortal but there was more to the master of Expressionism than Maria. Der Müde Tod ended up falling through the cracks of cinema’s first century, for all that it impressed Hitchcock and inspired everyone from Luis Buñuel to Ingmar Bergman. Impeccably restored for Blu-ray, Lang’s dreamy silent fable matches a pair of young lovers against Death in “a town lost to memory”. Bernhard Goetzke makes for a weary, sympathetic Reaper, his gaunt face half- Puritan, half-poet as he shares three tragic romantic vignettes that allow the movie to leap genres from Arabian swashbuckler to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Matt Haig Publisher Canongate Books For a novel that’s basically Highlander without all the decapitation, this is surprisingly fun. Admittedly, protagonist Tom Hazard isn’t immortal, but he is exceptionally long-lived – over half a millennium old when the book opens in the present day – and has the same commitment problems as Connor MacLeod, having watched the great love of his life grow old while he remained youthful. There are also lots of flashbacks. You can almost see the transition shots. Despite the superficial similarities, there’s little else that connects How To Stop Time and Highlander. This is a charming, often dark, character-led story in which time only ever stops on a metaphorical level, with a kiss. Tom belongs to an organisation of…

RELEASED 27 JULY 435 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Ed McDonald Publisher Gollancz Magic is a weapon of mass destruction. That’s the conceit at the heart of Ed McDonald’s debut novel, and it feels very pertinent given today’s ominous political climate. Although it’s grim, this is not textbook grimdark. Instead it summons memories of Scott Lynch’s The Lies Of Locke Lamora or John Hornor Jacobs’s The Incorruptibles. It features the giant looms of the industrial revolution, though these weave magical Phos, which powers a defensive Engine protecting Valengrad. When it was last used against the demonic Deep Kings, it blew a chunk out of the world and left a poisonous no-man’sland. Our hero Galharrow ventures into this Misery in search of a magic Spinner who could be vital in the next…

RELEASED 25 JULY 96 pages | Hardback Author Greg Stones Publisher Chronicle Books The Empire’s, er, finest get the “10 Green Bottles” countdown treatment – as any nerf herder knows, Stormtroopers are to meeting a sticky end as green bottles are to falling off walls. Every spread features an endearing illustration of one or more Stormtroopers losing their job or their life – with a brief explanation. Some of the more amusing deaths involve Carbonite, being crushed by an AT-AT, Bossk and failing to shoot first... ... though stationing 36 of them on Alderaan feels like a convenient way to save on thinking up ideas. While the doomed Stormtroopers are in classic armour, the book’s up-to-date enough to feature Rathtars, Death Troopers and K-2SO.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 318 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Christina Henry Publisher Titan Books We all know the classic heroes’ stories, but what about the bad guys? Were they always evil? And how did they get there? This isn’t exactly an original concept for a book (Wicked is probably the most successful example of the trope) but Christina Henry’s novel is a captivating new take on the story behind Peter Pan and the world’s most famous fictional pirate, Captain Hook. Set years before the tales we all know, Lost Boy shows the darker side of a childhood that never ends. Peter is a selfish and self-centred child, demanding of the world and caring nothing for anyone beyond the entertainment they can provide him. And though he might be the leader and…

Star Trek: Discovery has an official airdate! It’s coming to Netflix from 25 September. Jonathan “Riker” Frakes will direct an episode. Having been cancelled by Netflix last month, Sense8 is getting a small reprieve in the form of a twohour finale. “Your love has brought Sense8 back to life,” says cocreator Lana Wachowski. Sherlock cocreators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss to reunite for TV retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Kevin Bacon has rediscovered Perfection… He’s returning to the Tremors universe for the first time since the original movie, in Syfy’s pilot for a new TV spin-off. Supernatural’s 13th season to feature a “backdoor pilot” episode for Wayward Sisters spin-off series, starring Kim Rhodes (Sheriff Jody Mills). David Goyer and Josh Friedman working on a TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.…

BRIEF ENCOUNTER “I actually was on the film for just a week. In this scenario, the task for me was to be able to make some sense out of my character and make some good character choices. Mauro Borrelli, fantastic artist, his vision is absolutely spectacular. In that week’s time, we did have a great opportunity to bond as friends, as fellow artists and in our own ways collaborate on the film.” THEY WALK AMONG US! “I’ve seen a couple of aliens myself. I’m absolutely convinced they were aliens. They didn’t act with the same humanity I’m accustomed to dealing with humans!” NOVEL IDEAS “A little something to spread the wings and test the creative muscles, Talon Of God [Snipes’s novel] is a supernatural thriller which centres around a young…

RULING THE WAVES Anyone still want to try those “talks to the fishes” gags? Didn’t think so. Aquaman isn’t just a cheap Family Guy punchline anymore, but a rugged, drinkin’ son-of-an-Atlantean who’ll trident your ass to the wall if you make with the wisecracks. But that’s not say that the Justice League’s resident badass – as played by Khal Drogo himself, Jason Momoa – won’t be having fun on his first solo outing. “The spirit that I’m going for is a classic sort swashbuckling action adventure,” says director James Wan, fresh from the Fast And The Furious franchise’s driving seat. UP FOR A CURRY Of course, by the time Aquaman comes out, we’ll already have shaken fins with Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry, who could be the Justice League’s growly MVP.…

OUT 29 SEPT 2017 “Do you want to have fun with me later?” Ellen Page’s medical student Courtney hits on James Norton’s Jamie – or so he thinks. Turns out she actually wants him to stop her heart and then revive her. He’d probably have preferred Mexican food and a cheeky snog. “What happens to us after we die? The only way to find out is to see for ourselves.” Great plan, guys, but we think we’ll sit this one out. Apparently coming back from the dead is a major rush. Time seems to slow down and Courtney says she sees “pure energy”. Courtney and friends (Diego Luna as Ray; Nina Dobrev as Marlo and Kiersey Clemons as Sophia) set out to document their experiences. When they come back to…

Combining dark fantasy with equally bleak science fiction and some real-life history, Nora “NK” Jemisin admits that some readers have found The Broken Earth trilogy hard going. Now after first instalment The Fifth Season won the 2016 Hugo Award for best novel, the New York-based author is bringing the series to a close with final volume, The Stone Sky. “What people are finding grim and disturbing about it aren’t things that I guess you typically see in post-apocalyptic films or grimdark fantasy,” she tells Red Alert. “The Fifth Season opens with a dead toddler in the first chapter, so I don’t blame people for reacting intensely and maybe finding it a little too close to home.” However, The Stone Sky promises to not be quite so gloomy. “I believe it’s…

FANTOM FILMS 22 July A signing spectacular at the St Michael’s Centre in Chiswick, with Mark Strickson, Karen Gledhill and Simon Williams all popping caps off sharpies. fantomfilms.co.uk LLANGOLLEN COMIC CON 23 July Competitions, comics and fun for all the family at the Llangollen Pavilion, open 10am till 5pm. Plus dancing contests for young ’uns and oldies. bit.ly/SFXLlan DUBLIN COMIC CON 11-13 August Interactive sets (The Walking Dead, Skyrim), guest panels and craft tables abound at the Convention Centre in Dublin. bit.ly/SFXDub LONDON FRIGHTFEST 24-28 August Hair-raising horror gems aplenty as FrightFest returns to Leicester Square. Festival and day passes are available now, with film tickets on sale from 29 July. Confirmed films include Cult Of Chucky and Netflix horror Death Note. frightfest.co.uk FIGHTING FANTASY FEST 2 2 September Steve…

THEY SHOT FIRST! HAN SOLO Directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord have exited the Han Solo prequel, three-quarters of the way through principal photography. The official word is creative differences but by all accounts that’s like calling the battle of Rorke’s Drift a creative difference. Sources say Lucasfilm baulked at the screwball vibe Lord and Miller were creating, concerned that their irreverent impulses were warping the traditional Star Wars tone. The pair’s freewheeling, improvisional style was also said to have clashed with the company’s more premeditated production methods. Now Ron Howard will complete the movie, which has been granted an extra two months of filming to complete reshoots. “We have a great cast, we have a great script and we have a great director,” insists Disney CEO Bob Iger. “It’s…

There’s more Conjuring, the ’90s are back and girls only want you for your body... NIGHT AND DAY Movie of the month goes to It Comes At Night – what a bleak, fascinating chiller this is. A horrible coming-of-age apocalypser, it stars Joel Edgerton as the patriarch trying to protect his family, holed up in a cabin in the woods after a vicious disease has wiped out great swathes of the population. With him is his wife (Carmen Ejogo) and 17-year-old stepson (Kevin Harrison Jr), until another family arrives – a man and his young wife and child – bringing with them jealousy and paranoia which threaten to destroy the lot of them. It’s terrific, but my god, the trailer is misleading. If you’ve checked it out you’d rightly be…

LATE NIGHT, BROOKLYN’S CHINATOWN. The January air has a bitter edge even as it carries the chemically sweet scent of detergent from neighbourhood laundries. Above the five-storey buildings and glinting fire escapes a bridge looms, dominating the street. It quakes and rattles as an overground train scrapes along its length, rolling into the dark, destined for another New York borough. The sound is harsh, a shudder of metal, loud enough to halt a film crew. “We got a train!” The clattering roar finally retreats and another cry goes up. “Action!” A group of figures emerge from the door of a dojo. They walk to a bullet-riddled van waiting at kerbside. Individually they’re instantly recognisable: the mountainous stride of Luke Cage; Jessica Jones in her fingerless urchin gloves and biker jacket;…

What’s the essential difference between the Defenders and the Avengers? With the Avengers, there’s a pride about who they are, they’re very chest-out, gung-ho, and that’s very cool to watch. To make this work on TV, with these street-level heroes, we have to go the opposite way. We go to a place of shame, and a place of loneliness for these guys. We’re trying to find moments where Matt is essentially learning not just what these guys can and cannot do but how they deal with the same pain he deals with on a daily basis. How do they not feel like they’re freaks of nature and outcasts of society? Are there tensions between Matt and the other characters? A lot. Initially they don’t trust each other. It’s particularly difficult…

What appealed to you about The Defenders? I very much liked the comic book concept, of the dark, powerful outsiders being forced to work together: the Hulk, Sub-Mariner and Dr Strange. It had a real frisson to it, and was a brilliant idea on Roy Thomas’s part. What’s the secret to making a team comic book work? For me, it’s the characters who are on the team. There definitely has to be a team spirit that encompasses them all – even with the non-team Defenders – but it’s the individuals who make you care if the team succeeds. The Netflix version of Defenders includes Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil. How would you have handled that dynamic? An excellent question, and one that excites me just thinking about it, because…

SECRET WARS A reality-bending 2015 comic set on Battleworld, a patchwork planet that’s made up of the various Marvel universes, Secret Wars would be perfect for if/when Marvel are ever allowed to throw together the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four and Guardians. There’s epic and then there’s this. CAPTAIN BRITAIN America have their hero, surely it’s time for Britons to get a suited-n-booted champion of their own? Created by Chris Claremont in 1976, Captain Britain is powered by an amulet from the days of Merlin: it gives him super-strength and the ability to fly. Basically how we feel after a cup of tea. MARVEL 1985 Think Suicide Squad meets Last Action Hero only with Marvel characters. In Mark Millar’s 2008 limited series, a kid reading Secret Wars discovers that Marvel villains…

When Valerian debuted on 9 November 1967 in issue 420 of Pilote, the weekly anthology was home to super-powered Gallic rebel Asterix and atypical Western hero Lieutenant Blueberry, and science fiction was largely absent from French comics. The genre’s main predecessors in France were the earnest post-war serial Les Pionniers de l’Espérance and the strictly adults-only Barbarella. So in Valerian’s almost virgin territory, writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières unveiled a distinctly French and fresh vision of tomorrow, one undeniably influential on comics and movies to come. The Frenchmen had been childhood friends and avid readers of the masters of science fiction. In 1965 they reconnected in the USA, where Christin was a university teacher of French literature and journalism in Salt Lake City, and Mézières, a jobbing illustrator,…

THE STORY BEHIND THE SF AND FANTASY OF YESTERYEAR 1997 In 1997, there was one problem-solving time traveller fans wanted to watch on Saturday evenings. What they actually got wasn’t exactly Gallifreyan. As everyone’s favourite TARDIS-dwelling hero was left twiddling his sonic in America, weighed down by legal issues, Saturday night was getting on without the good Doctor quite happily. Not to mention noisily. Hi-octane, quasi-futuristic espionage series Bugs had been waving the explosive flag for action family drama. It was a solid hit for BBC One and the channel soon sought out another show to fit the same post-National Lottery, pre-watershed timeslot. Bugs’ production company, Carnival Films, pitched an idea from writer Anthony Horowitz. “The BBC wanted another Saturday evening show so we were able to persuade them to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 133 minutes Director Jon Watts Cast Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Marisa Tomei, Zendaya, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Favreau We’re sure you all agree that if there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s another version of bloody Peter Parker being bitten by a bloody spider and learning how to be bloody Spider-Man from bloody scratch. It’s been done too many times – most recently in the enjoyable but ultimately rathertoo- familiar The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 – and we’re sick of it. If he needs to be rebooted at all (and he does, after a deal between Sony/Marvel Studios that left poor Andrew Garfield out in the cold), all we ask is that filmmakers bring on the fully hatched Spidey and just... well, let rip.…

RELEASED 11 AUGUST 12A | 92 minutes Director David Lowery Cast Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham. Sonia Acevedo Generating critical buzz after its Sundance premiere, A Ghost Story is a movie that probably won’t appeal to people who like ghost stories. It’s not a chiller but a slow, arthouse pondering on death and grief, starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck with a bedsheet over his head. When “C” (Affleck) is killed, his wife “M” (Mara) is distraught, and though C returns to the house as a ghost decked in a sheet, M can’t see him. There are interesting ideas at play here – ghost-C is tied to the house even when M moves out, and time for C is no longer linear, so it’s as if he’s always been…

RELEASED 28 JULY U | 89 minutes Some family movies offer life lessons and heartwarming homilies. Captain Underpants would rather be a delivery system for wacky high jinks. The story of two pranksters (Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch) who turn their mean headmaster (Ed Helms) into the clumsy superhero they dreamt up, it’s diverting enough for kids, front-loading fourth wall-breaking and fart gags. And while it’s noisy and mostly nonsense, it doesn’t ever try to be something it isn’t.…

TITANO THE SUPER-APE Superman #127 (1959) sees performing chimp Toto launched into space, where a collision between uranium and Kryptonite meteors makes him grow and gives him Kryptonite eye-beams. Thankfully, Lois tricks him into putting on lead glasses! KONGA In 1961’s Konga, a mad scientist tests a growth serum on a chimp, then hypnotises it to kill his enemies. The exciting climax sees the enraged ape – now giant-sized – menacing Big Ben. GORGA A circus owner journeys to Africa to capture an enormous gorilla in 1969’s The Mighty Gorga. Writer/director David L Hewitt donned the pop-eyed ape suit to wrestle a laughably rubbery T-rex. QUEEN KONG Big Ben is under threat again in this genderswapped 1976 parody, featuring a female ape with sizeable breasts (at one point a promoter…

EXTRAS RELEASED 31 JULY (Blu-ray/ DVD)/OUT NOW! (download) 2017 | 15 | 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray/ DVD/download Director Daniel Espinosa Cast Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds “This is some Re-Animator shit!” Ryan Reynolds’s character exclaims at one point during Life. Well, not quite – no-one ends up receiving oral sex from a decapitated head... But the film certainly has some horror in its DNA, albeit gene-spliced with Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. We follow a multinational crew on the International Space Station as they conduct research on “Calvin”, a single-cell organism found frozen on Mars. After they unwisely opt to stimulate it using heat and electric shocks, it’s not long before the surprisingly intelligent, adaptable critter has woken up, escaped from the lab, grown into a vaguely Lovecraftian mash-up of squid and stingray,…

EXTRAS RELEASED 31 JULY 1984 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT A girl, a guy and a jealous home computer given sentience following a champagne spillage… It’s not your average love triangle. Feeling rather like a series of pop music videos (director Steve Barron was an old hand), this quirky love story now functions as a time capsule of the early ’80s. Best remembered for its Phil Oakey/Giorgio Moroder song (which is teasingly held back until the finale), it’s frothy nonsense, but oddly, innocently charming. Extras Three new interviews with cast and crew.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | PG | Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/ download Director Bill Condon Cast Emma Watson, Luke Evans, Dan Stevens, Gugu Mbatha-Raw Come to Disney’s live-action remake for the visuals and you’ll have hearts in your eyes. With its birthday cake of an enchanted castle, postcard-perfect French countryside and sugared roses, you’ll be licking the screen. But that’s where a lot of the charm ends. Instead of going bold with the source material, director Bill Condon has crafted a note-for-note remake of Disney’s 1991 animated classic that tries to be genuinely earnest but is little more than pretty pantomime. Stripping away the fairytale’s intensity for a breezier confection, it has none of the dreaminess or sexuality that punctuate prior versions of the story. Its artifice extends to the performances.…

There’s outlandish action aplenty in RESIDENT EVIL: VENDETTA (out now, Blu-ray/DVD), the third of a series of CG movies more faithful to the mythology of the videogame series. In it, three RE heroes team up against a vengeful arms dealer who’s created a version of the T-virus which allows zombies to be targeted at individuals. The animation is a step up from previous entries, but the clichéd script means it’s still rather like watching a feature-length cut scene. In 1957’s THE LAND UNKNOWN (Blu-ray & DVD, OUT NOW!) an Antarctic expedition’s chopper lands in a tropical valley full of prehistoric creatures. The effects – including a bloke in a rubber T rex suit and photographically enlarged lizards – are ropey, but decent performances and elaborate sets mean it should entertain…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Nina Allan Publisher Titan Books Leo Tolstoy (bear with us) once wrote that every happy family is alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Reading Nina Allan’s latest novel makes you wonder if the real issue with an unhappy family is that the people in it can’t agree on why, or how, they’re unhappy. One summer evening in the mid-’90s, Selena’s older sister, Julie, goes missing without a trace. Twenty years later, a mysterious woman walks into Selena’s life, claiming to be Julie returned – but with a tale of where she’s been in the meantime that’s so outlandish it seems to defy possibility. This isn’t a book about finding out What Really Happened, so much as one…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 326 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Scott Oden Publisher Bantam Press It was only a matter of time before someone decided to Tolkien-up Beowulf. Unfortunately, author Scott Oden appears to have more of an affinity with JRR’s linguistic scholarship than with his storytelling acumen. A Gathering Of Ravens often feels more like an exercise in etymological willy waving: “I know where my ð glyph is and I’m going to use it!” Set at the turn of the first millennium AD, Ravens is a Dark Ages American Gods, set at a time when Christianity is snuffing out older gods. A fantasy road trip, it follows female-pretending-to-be-male monk Étaín, who’s forced to accompany a vile monster from Norse myth – a skraelingr called Grimnir – from Europe to Ireland in…