Table of contents for September 2020 in SFX

Time On Your Hands Thom Whalen has adapted his 50th anniversary art of the USS Enterprise for the first Star Trek x Vannen watch collection. Strictly limited to 200 pieces – in grey and white – each watch has artwork on the straps, dial and crystal (not dilithium), as well as custom Star Trek etchings on casing and crown. Random watches have had packaging signed by the artist too. $65, vannenwatches.com/collections/star-trek What The Schlock?! The creator of 2000 AD, Pat Mills, is back with a brand new sci-fi comic – 2020 just keeps coming up with the twists. A love letter to the past, with one foot firmly in the future, Spacewarp contains six “DNA-warping stories”. The 70-page publication is available now digitally, with a print edition planned for the…

SCI-FACT! This is the third Samurai Jack videogame, but the first involving Genndy Tartakovsky and which is considered canon. IN 2017, GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY AND HIS team finally brought the tale of the time-wandering hero Samurai Jack to a close. And that was that. Considering that it took 16 years to complete five seasons of what is now considered a modern animation classic, Tartakovsky was content with how they concluded their tale. But then Adult Swim, home to the finale season, approached him about making a canonical videogame developed by Soleil Ltd in Japan, which would translate the visual essence of the series into a playable format. Initially sceptical, Tartakovsky tells Red Alert that his first reaction was to say, “If you’re just gonna crap it out, I don’t really want to be…

GUESS WHO JUST GOT BACK today? (Er, well, they’re back in September, anyway.) Yes, it’s them wild-eyed Boys that had been away. But there are some changes for them on the way… Amazon Prime’s comic book adaptation The Boys pits the titular team of vigilantes against the world’s premier superhero squad, the Seven. The Boys’ members include Billy Butcher, Hughie, Mother’s Milk, Frenchie and the Female. On the flip side, the Seven’s roster consists of Homelander, Starlight, The Deep, A-Train, Queen Maeve, Black Noir and new recruit Stormfront. Turns out these costume-clad do-gooders abuse their powers for fame and fortune rather than simply using them to protect the innocent. The Boys’ mission: to expose the truth about the Seven and take down Vought International, the shady, multibillion-dollar conglomerate that manages…

Design Philosophy CM When I first met Zetna [Fuentes], the director, we were very much in agreement that the tone of the piece should have its grounding in reality, and research: use all the Arthurian legends and the medieval traditions, but then take it to another level. So you’re starting with something very true and natural, then picking out various elements and exploring them, and maybe highlighting certain things and pushing others to the background. I went back to the Mabinogi, which is the Welsh version [of Arthurian lore] that I was taught in school, being a Welsh girl. But then I looked at all the Celtic world, and how those stories transformed across Europe, as they travelled by word of mouth, with various subtle differences. Hawksbridge CM That was…

SIRENA ARMOURY Two weeks before we started shooting the second block of episodes, after the Sirena set had more or less finally been built, we realised that the transporter room needed an armoury or kit-up room for away missions. Not only that, but it should be a collection of weapons from alien cultures and times throughout the galaxy, not just our new guns. Oh well, jeez, no big deal! Well, it is a big deal because all these past Star Trek props don’t exist any more, and on a CBS show I can’t use props from the Paramount movies, so I would have to build everything from scratch – which I don’t have time to do. I called up my friend Mario Moreira, prop master from Star Trek: Discovery, and…

UK BBC Four, finished Creators Alexis Le Sec, Raphaëlle Roudaut Cast David Kammenos, Marie Dompnier, Théo Christine, Capucine Valmary EPISODES 1.01-1.06 “Magic isn’t real, there’s always a trick.” So says Ben, one of The Last Wave’s key leads, in the opening moments of the first episode. There’s plenty of wizardry here, with compelling characters, excellent music, pretty cinematography and an intriguing mystery keeping things as dazzling as sunlight on seawater. Question is, does it still impress once the trick’s revealed? After all, the mystery box of Lost (this French series’ closest comparison point) was frustratingly empty. Is The Last Wave worth the beach trip? The story sees a strange cloud appearing over a small French town during a surfing competition, engulfing the entrants until they vanish. Five hours later, they…

RELEASED 14 AUGUST TBC | 124 minutes Director Matteo Garrone Cast Roberto Benigni, Frederico Ielapi, Massimo Ceccherini If you were wondering, this isn’t the critically mauled 2002 Pinocchio, which Roberto Benigni directed and starred in as the puppet. Rather, this is a 2019 Italian film where Benigni plays – perfectly well – Pinocchio’s creator Gepetto, in a version clearly made out of respect for Carlo Collodi’s original children’s book. Outside Italy, the tale has been obscured by Disney’s cartoon, though it continues to echo today – for example, Alita: Battle Angel felt extremely Pinocchio-ish. This version is an extremely low-key, pale-palette treatment, set against the backdrop of Italy’s countryside and tumbledown rural towns. Dubbed acceptably, it’s utterly nonchalant in presenting its bizarre story and fantasy characters, as a matronly snail…

RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 77 minutes Riffing heavily on Inside Out, this Danish adventure adds nothing new to the genre of stories about children adapting to their parents’ divorce with the aid of something magical. Here, young Minna discovers she can control the dreams of those around her, so sets about making her vile new stepsister less of a bitch by infiltrating her sleep. Alas, the results are predictable. The dubbing’s uninspiring; some of the voice artists actually sound bored. Still, Minna gets bonus points for calling her hamster “Viggo Mortensen”.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1981 | 12 | Blu-ray Director Michael Crichton Cast Albert Finney, James Coburn, Susan Dey, Leigh Taylor-Young BLU-RAY DEBUT From Coma to Westworld, Michael Crichton explored the (frequently literal) bleeding edge of technology and horror. Viewed from a 2020 perspective, 1981’s Looker – both written and directed by him – is shockingly prescient. Albert Finney is a plastic surgeon caught up in a murderous conspiracy where supermodels plunge from tower block balconies, and high-end computer sorcery replicates human beings in the name of consumerism. It’s very much a parable for the glossy ’80s, warning of the poison beneath the sheen. What’s astonishing, though, is how much it anticipates 21st century realities, from motion capture to digital doubling to Photoshop – and weaponised media manipulation. What undoes the…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | DVD/VOD Remember The Exorcist? Unfortunately, so do the makers of The Assent, because this is almost fanfic. Single dad Joel (Captain Marvel’s Rob Kazinsky, with an unplaceable accent) sees some blurry Polaroid snaps and is persuaded his son Mason is possessed. He calls in a couple of priests to help, and sure enough, his kid starts manifesting supernatural goo and growly demonic voices. Drearily familiar, with a murky colour palette enlivened only by some creepy home décor, there’s nothing new to see here. Extras None.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | SVOD NETFLIX Anime director Masaaki Yuasa often delights in whimsy, as in his Pratchett-ish film Night Is Short, Walk On Girl. This serial is far more sombre, depicting the destruction of present-day Japan by massive natural disasters, as an ordinary family struggles to escape. There’s powerful spectacle and real shocks, but also some lacklustre stretches and a misconceived subplot about a cult in the middle section. But the final scenes come together splendidly in a moving tribute to the country.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 17 AUGUST 1998 | PG | Blu-ray Director Hirokazu Kore-eda Cast Arata Iura, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima, Taketoshi Naito Life, death and the importance of making memories are at the core of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s quietly reflective late–’90s classic. 22 people are interviewed in a bland office. They are dead and, before they pass over, must choose a single memory that will be painstakingly recreated for them. Helping them are the staff, including Takashi (Arata Iura) and Shiori (Erika Oda), whose job is rather more difficult than it first appears, with one of the clients having a direct connection to Takashi. With almost no music and lengthy scenes of characters (largely portrayed by first-time actors) monologuing straight to camera, After Life may sound like a difficult watch. In fact,…

EXTRAS RELEASED 17 AUGUST 2000 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard) Director David Twohy Cast Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Vin Diesel, Keith David Staying out of the dark to stay alive is the killer hook of this classy sci-fi horror. With unfortunate timing, the mismatched survivors of a crashed spaceship arrive on a perpetually sun-drenched desert planet just in time to witness a rare solar eclipse – a once-every-22-years event that allows nocturnal local food chain-toppers to run amok. Director/co-writer David Twohy makes the most of his visceral high concept, crafting a rare extraterrestrial monster movie that doesn’t feel like an Alien rip-off. Just as importantly, he gives most of the flawed characters a chance to shine before they become creature fodder – none more so than Richard B Riddick, the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 496 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Jordan Ifueko Publisher Hot Key Books This is Jordan Ifueko’s first novel, and it’s already evident that this young Nigerian-American author is going to be one hell of a force once she really gets going. Dripping with pseudo-African imagery and ideas, and set in a world that lives and breathes on its own terms, this YA tale follows Tarisai, whose mother – the mysterious and distant The Lady – birthed her with the sole purpose of exacting a horrible curse. Tarisai’s destiny is to kill Dayo, the emperor-in-waiting of a far-off land. Instead, however, she ends up joining him as part of his telepathically-linked council… but some curses can lie in wait for years, which is obviously a bummer when committing a…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 324 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Micaiah Johnson Publisher Hodder & Stoughton Fresh takes on sci-fi staples aren’t easy to find, but this debut novel from Micaiah Johnson pulls off a demanding and mind-bending approach to the much-explored concept of multiple universes. In the dark future of The Space Between Worlds, only a few hundred of the infinity of universes are accessible, and to travel to an alternate your duplicate has to be dead already – so outsiders with short life expectancies make the best “traversers”. The story follows one such traverser, Cara, who’s looking to use her work to finally gain citizenship to the wealthy Wiley City, but then she stumbles upon a secret that fully exposes the way the multiverse is being exploited by the rich.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 388 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Mats Strandberg Publisher Jo Fletcher Books The true horror of The Home is not the mysterious entity which seems to be haunting a care facility populated by patients with degrees of dementia, but the terrifying reality of getting old. This is an English translation of Swedish author Mats Strandberg’s 2017 novel, and while it has an incredibly strong sense of place and character, the material as a whole feels stretched. It’s a horror story where the horror is second to the drama, and where personal demons are far more interesting than actual ones. It begins with recovering addict Joel returning to the childhood town he abandoned, to help his deteriorating mother move into a specialist hospice. Once there, Joel is confronted by ghosts…

RELEASED 20 AUGUST 384 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author KJ Parker Publisher Orbit Books With How To Rule An Empire… KJ Parker (aka Tom Holt) takes the risky decision to try and breathe new life into a well-worn premise. Notker, a common-born actor, is forced to impersonate the slain figurehead of a city under siege, to prevent a collapse in public morale. Inevitably, he grows into the role and embarks on a plan to save the city. The author cheekily acknowledges the familiarity of the concept, opening the story with Notker trying to sell a play on that topic to a reluctant investor. The book is a sequel to last year’s Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City, but stands on its own, as Parker provides the necessary backstory, and his primary…

Starship captain Nia Imani returns home to one of the great trade Stations with an unexpected passenger who will change the course of history… Umbai’s Ark departed from the Colombian Elevator two years later, in early June. It was the third to leave Earth, followed by 12 more, from the Singaporean Elevator, and the Kenyan, on their way to other stations, which belonged to rival companies. The stations were still in active construction, but the trip would be long enough that they would be habitable once the people arrived. It was the leaving that was unpleasant. There were revolts, battles over rights to board the ships, all of which were lost by the rebels under the salute of gunfire, and the vague promises on the Feed that one day the…

RELEASED AUGUST 74 minutes | CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Multi-Doctor stories can be tricky things: for every punch-the-air moment in “The Day Of The Doctor” there’s a head-in-hands scene in “The Two Doctors”. It’s exciting to see our heroes on-screen together, but it’s all too easy for the resulting stories to be a fan-pleasing mess. Fortunately, Big Finish has hit the right mark with the first of its new series of multi-Doctor adventures, Out Of Time. It’s the beginning of a trilogy, each featuring two different Doctors, and this one stars Tom Baker and David Tennant – a fan-pleasing combination if ever there was one. The Tenth Doctor, still trying to outrun his upcoming regeneration, visits the Cathedral of Contemplation, a piece of architecture that exists outside of…

SCI-FACTS! Joost and Schulman co-directed the third and fourth instalments of the Paranormal Activity franchise. NO SUPERHEROES, ONLY SUPERPOWERS. That’s the mantra directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman adopted for their new Netflix feature Project Power. The crime thriller/action film’s premise involves a drug that grants its user extraordinary abilities – but only for five minutes. From that premise, Project Power could have spiralled into a metahuman free-for-all. Well, this isn’t that movie. “That’s part of what attracted us to the project,” Joost tells Red Alert. “It doesn’t go in the direction I think you might assume it would based on the concept. We hadn’t really seen superpowers that had consequences and side effects the way they did in this script. The man who catches on fire gets horribly burned and disfigured…

GIVEN THAT THE FRANCHISE has birthed eight television series and 13 films, it’s perhaps surprising that (barring a couple of recent shorts) Star Trek has only boldly gone into the world of animation once – way back in 1973 with Star Trek: The Animated Series. But since we’re experiencing quite the creative Treknaissance of late, it was only a matter of time before a course was charted back to the drawing board. At the helm of new 2D animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks is executive producer (and unabashed Trekkie) Mike McMahan. An Emmy-winner, he’s made a name for himself in animation as a showrunner for Rick And Morty and co-creator of Solar Opposites. But charting new Trek adventures is where McMahan always hoped to be. After all, as he…

BOWLING AVERAGES were supposed to be way up, mini-golf averages were supposed to be way down. Alas, you only have to look at the news to see that the utopian future ushered in by the music of Bill S Preston, Esq, and Ted “Theodore” Logan has yet to come to pass. Turns out there’s a good reason for that… When we catch up with the duo also known as Wyld Stallyns some three decades after their Bogus Journey, history hasn’t quite panned out as they expected. They’re still best friends, of course – Bill without Ted is like Kirk without Spock – but they’re yet to write the song that will bring the planets into universal harmony. Instead, in long-awaited threequel Bill & Ted Face The Music, original stars Alex…

LUCIFER HAS BEEN TO HELL AND back. The supernatural TV procedural, based on the DC Comics character, sees a bored Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) abandoning his fiery realm for Los Angeles. He quickly establishes his own nightclub, assists the LAPD in cracking cases and unexpectedly falls in love with Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German). The charming series aired on Fox in the US for its first three seasons before the network axed it. Netflix subsequently saved the show from eternal damnation, but also cancelled it, announcing that its upcoming fifth season would be the last. However, Lucifer is one lucky devil; the streaming service recently relented and commissioned the drama for a sixth and final season. In the meantime, the first eight episodes of season five arrive later this month.…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Showrunner Steve Blackman Cast Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, Robert Sheehan, Emmy Raver-Lampman EPISODES 1.01-1.10 The kooky emo teen of the current batch of off-the-wall superhero shows, Netflix’s adaptation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s flamboyantly weird comic enters its second season with a refreshing dose of retro style. Very loosely borrowing a couple of concepts from the second run of the original comic, the story picks up from season one’s world-ending cliffhanger by hurling all seven adoptive Hargreeve siblings through time to Dallas, Texas in the early ’60s, where they’re soon involved in the run-up to the Kennedy assassination and another potential apocalypse. Not as mind-bending as Legion or as ballistically weird as Doom Patrol, The Umbrella Academy’s biggest strength is the engaging cast and the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 89 minutes Director Keith Thomas Cast Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Lynn Cohen Though Jewish-themed horror isn’t new, it’s not exactly a densely populated subgenre: only silent classic The Golem and 2012’s The Possession spring to mind. So if nothing else, this indie effort has some novelty value. Set over one night, it centres on Yakov (Dave Davis), who’s quit the orthodox community but, short on cash, agrees to act as a “shomer”, guarding the laid-out body of a Buchenwald survivor until dawn. As he receives calls from the dead and glimpses a Sadako-esque something, it becomes apparent that a mind-warping demon which plagued the old man has latched onto him. What with this “Mazik” having its head turned backwards, and Yakov hung up…

RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 95 MINUTES It’s bizarre that 100% Wolf, which is ostensibly about werewolves, is in actuality a film about… a poodle. The werewolves seem like mere afterthoughts in this fish-out-of-water story, which follows a young werewolf who turns canine rather than lupine during a full moon, then needs help to rejoin his clan. As is always the case in such tales, a female character helps him to reach his full potential (yawn). Younger kids will be tickled, but this Aussie animation is mostly yap with no snap.…

Poe defaced? EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1932-1935 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Robert Florey, Edgar G Ulmer, Louis Friedland Cast Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Sidney Fox, David Manners BLU-RAY DEBUT Any student of Edgar Allan Poe planning to skip the reading should avoid these pre-Production Code shockers. Murders In The Rue Morgue does feature a deadly ape, but centres on a bizarre plot to inject women with gorilla blood. The Raven concerns a sadist surgeon who has recreated Poe’s pendulum blade to enact “delicious torture”. As for The Black Cat… well, a moggy does briefly appear. But they do share a certain morbidity with their source material, with perverse undercurrents of necrophilia and even bestiality. All three star Lugosi; two pair him with Boris Karloff. The Black Cat, in which…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | PG | VOD Director Oliver Krimpas Cast Cara Theobold, Gethin Anthony The notion of the multiverse has, over the years, provided rich pickings for jumbo-sized SF blockbusters, but with Around The Sun first-time director Oliver Krimpas has gone the other way with the concept, crafting an intimate, character-driven indie that positively fizzes with a love of both science and science fiction. It begins with estate agent Maggie (Cara Theobold) waiting for her client, a movie location scout named Bernard (Gethin Anthony), inside the grounds of a crumbling French chateau. It’s not hard to spot the Before Sunrise inspiration as the two flirt their way through the greenery. Then, without warning, the movie stops… and then starts anew, showing the couple meeting again. Only this time,…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 AUGUST 2020 | 15 | DVD/download Three awful blokes torment three “teenage” girls in this terrible werewolf movie from debut director Michael Caissie. Talent in front of the camera – Thomas Jane, Jay Mohr, Katrina Bowden – suggests this is more than an indie curio, but the story is painfully disjointed, beginning as an offensive exploitationer and building to an embarrassingly telegraphed twist that’s the whole movie’s raison d’etre. There aren’t any werewolves in the first hour either, so it doesn’t even scratch that itch. All bark, no bite. Extras None.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 17 AUGUST (download out now) 2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Sung Jin Ahn Cast Michael Chiklis, Sasha Alexander, Chris Jai Alex, Faye Mata Surprise one: the latest DC animated release doesn’t feature Batman, Superman or any other member of the Justice League. Surprise two: it’s actually a compilation of a web series originally released on the streaming site CW Seed and executive produced by Arrowverse overseer Greg Berlanti – which explains both the noticeable difference in its visual approach and the massively increased level of carnage. This out-of-continuity adventure for grizzled super-enhanced mercenary Slade Wilson pitches the one-eyed killer known as Deathstroke against a secret organisation that has abducted his son. The resulting Bondstyle shenanigans benefit from an above-average script from veteran comics writer J.M. Dematteis, stylish…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1989 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Herbert Wise Cast Adrian Rawlins, Bernard Hepton, David Daker, Pauline Moran BLU-RAY DEBUT Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale was arguably a logical choice to take on Susan Hill’s ghost story: his classic TV plays The Stone Tape and The Road both concerned trauma “recorded” onto the environment. Hill’s 1983 novel, which sees a young solicitor (Adrian Rawlins) sent to tidy up the affairs of a reclusive widow after her death, plays with a similar idea – the sounds of a pony and trap fatally straying into marshland echo down the years. Kneale’s adaptation is a slow-burn affair, taking 27 minutes to get its hero to the house. It updates the time period from the Victorian era to 1925, bringing in wax…

The work of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, composer of the score for Arrival, art film LAST AND FIRST MEN (VOD, out now on BFI Player) sees Tilda Swinton impassively declaiming passages from Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 SF novel, recounting mankind’s post-human evolution. This voice from billions of years in the future is overlaid on B&W footage of the spomeniks: war memorials erected by Marshal Tito, dictator of Yugoslavia. With floating camerawork rendering this brutalist architecture as sinister and alien as 2001’s Monolith, the combination is quite hypnotic. BATWOMAN SEASON ONE (Blu-ray/DVD, 17 August) didn’t wow our reviewer. We said: “The characters are thin and one-note. The action scenes are visually incomprehensible. And the scripts tear though clichés like they’re on a two-forone offer… The worst Arrowverse show by some margin.” Extras:…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 456 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Authors Laura Lam, Elizabeth May Publisher Gollancz Seven Devils began life as a dream one of its two authors had about Mad Max: Fury Road being set in space, though it actually feels more like a feminist revision of Blake’s 7, with a plucky band of (mostly) female outlaws smashing an intergalactic patriarchy. Joyously embracing its pulpy roots along with its unapologetic womanifesto, the load-of-old-trope plot has an ever-growing, increasingly motley group of rebels – a kick-ass princess, a reformed solder, a super-tech brain, an empathic “companion”… you can probably fill in the rest – planet-hopping in a desperate mission to overthrow a totalitarian regime. Led by men. Of course. It’s not subtle. The women are all multilayered, intriguing characters while the men…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 256 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Mary South Publisher Picador People seek solace in technology, but often only end up more alone in this bracingly bleak short story collection. In “Keith Prime”, a nurse takes home a clone – one of untold many “Keiths” bred on an organ farm – and develops a strong attachment. Grieving the death of her husband, she’s longing for a connection that this blank copy can never provide. “Not Setsuko” sees a mother tries to erase the trauma of her daughter’s murder by bringing up a precise copy of her child in the same circumstances as the original. Many of these stories are less overtly SF, feeling like plausible dispatches from the Twitter age. In the title story a woman stalks the man…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Rik Hoskin Publisher Angry Robot For a genre that’s successfully hijacked Hollywood, superhero adventures have yet to make an equal impact in the world of sci-fi literature – and despite having some intriguing elements, Bystander 27 isn’t about to change this. Set in a world where superheroes are part of everyday life, the story opens with a major debt to comicbook satire The Boys, as ex-soldier Hayes suffers tragedy when his pregnant wife ends up as collateral damage during a super-powered showdown. Hayes soon embarks on a quest for revenge, but while the story initially lays down some promising twists, most of the book is a frustrating slow-burn that prioritises imaginative world-building over narrative momentum. It doesn’t help that author Rik Hoskin…

RELEASED 20 AUGUST 457 pages pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Stephen Baxter Publisher Gollancz It’s no coincidence that Stephen Baxter is so often compared to Arthur C Clarke. Here is a novelist whose books combine spectacle and adventure, whose heroes are often engineers and scientists. But if that makes him sound old-fashioned, nothing could be further from the truth; it’s more that classic SF tropes and scenarios are so often Baxter’s starting point. Creator, the concluding volume in his World Engines duology, is an alternate history/multiversal tale of stranded explorers – including recurring Baxter characters, spacefarers Reid Malenfant and his sometime partner Emma – trying to get off a super-sized Earth-like planet where they face being trapped forever. From this starting point, Baxter weaves a story that touches on evolutionary biology,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Grant Morrison Artist Liam Sharp ISSUES 1-5 Grant Morrison’s superhero comics come in one of two forms. Some, like All-Star Superman or his run on Batman, strike a balance between comic book heroics and his more esoteric inclinations. Others, like this absolutely bananas run on Green Lantern, now in its second season, plunge fully off the deep end into cosmic madness. Space cop Hal Jordan is having a blast exploring the galaxy, when he’s pulled onto a stake-out duty. Unfortunately it’s on the one planet where he has no desire to be right now: Earth. Still, it’s far from a boring mission. While there he has to contend with a race of giant birds, a Lovecraftian weather god and a deadly married couple.…

RELEASED 14 AUGUST 70 minutes | Vinyl/download Publisher Varèse Sarabande Records SOUNDTRACK Harold Faltermeyer’s soundtrack for the middling Arnie actioner gets a new Deluxe Edition. The original 1987 release had 17 tracks, while this features a whopping 35, including numerous alternate and previously unreleased cues. Hardcore Running Man fans – should such people exist – will no doubt be delighted. That said, it’s hard to imagine anyone listening to the whole thing in one go. The main theme is a good ’un: a John Carpenter-esque synth line over a brooding pulse, it’s perfectly of its time, and you imagine one of the key inspirations on Survive’s Stranger Things theme. It recurs throughout the release in various forms and is at its best when combined with a creepy arpeggio, as on…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PlayStation 4 Also on Xbox One, PC, Stadia Publisher THQ Nordic VIDEOGAME This remake has come from 2005 to chew bubblegum and extract brains, and it’s all out of bubblegum. The Furons are running low on DNA to fuel their survival, so Crypto-137 is sent to Earth to harvest human brains. Things escalate and soon Crypto’s fighting the US Army, a robo-President and the Men In Black-like Majestic. Set in a number of small sandbox maps, each cluster of missions blends stealth and all-out destruction. Crypto has a wealth of upgradable alien tech to turn on these uppity humans, including a ray gun to turn targets into fizzing skeletons, and an anal probe to tug brains from humans (used to boost shields and spend on…

Darren Scott, Dungeon Master Forget Game Of Thrones (what do you mean, you already have?). I grew up loving an epic dragon-filled fantasy and nothing’s ever going to beat it. Dungeons & Dragons was a Marvel Productions cartoon, based on TSR’s roleplaying game of the same name. The series, which ran for 27 episodes over three seasons from 1983, saw six American children transported to the realm of Dungeons & Dragons via a magical theme park ride. Each granted a powerful weapon by their guide the Dungeon Master, the kids are joined by Uni the baby unicorn as they search for a way home. Along the way, evil wizard Venger seeks to steal their weapons in order to increase his power – when he’s not doing battle with five-headed dragon…

ROSWELL? NOT BAD, THANKS Russell Guppy, email Just wanted to write in and say what a great watch Roswell, New Mexico has been [now on ITV2!]. It is such a great adaptation of the books/reimagining of the ’90s TV show (depending on your previous exposure). For those familiar with the ’90s TV iteration it’s a fun retelling and trying to work out familiarities and differences with characters is a fun part of watching it. We have heard the name Tess a few times but are still waiting for her to appear (nothing as of season two, episode six). Musical themes are great too, from Counting Crows to Oasis and even the actual ’90s Roswell theme at one point. As for the season two guest star surprise… truly brilliant! The plots…

SCI-FACT! Leadworth is really Llandaff in Cardiff, birthplace of Daleks creator Terry Nation. Fancy pretending you’ve paid a visit to fictional places from classic Doctor Who stories, such as Devil’s End (“The Daemons”), Devesham (“The Android Invasion”), Maiden’s Point (“The Curse Of Fenric”) and Leadworth (“The Eleventh Hour” and so on)? Well, now you can with this “Who Goes There!” pack of four picture postcards. Designer Sean Coleman took photos shot on trips to the locations by fellow fan Paul Dykes, and tweaked the colours to make them look older: “The hardest thing was making them look so run-of-the-mill that you wouldn’t believe a designer had been anywhere near them!” They’re available now for £8 plus P&P. colemandesign.co.uk/shop…

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THE CONUNDRUM OF HOW to deal with controversial artists is having a moment right now. Plenty of contemporary creative figures whose misdeeds are coming to light are getting their reckonings in the glare of the zeitgeist. But what about those who, in the past, made seminal works, and whose deeply racist, homophobic, and/or fascist ideologies have come to light in the ensuing years? How do we separate a love for the art from the artist? HP Lovecraft is a prime example. The 20th century American author brought the Cthulhu Mythos into existence and is considered one of the most influential writers of supernatural horror fiction. But he also was a deeply troubled misanthrope, and an unrepentant racist. What do we do regarding that overshadowing legacy today? If you’re Misha Green,…

TAWNY NEWSOME AS THE MAVERICK ENSIGN MARINER “The first person that we found who really clicked was Tawny. She was doing her audition and she started, in character, talking about stuff that had happened on The Next Generation. She was just ad-libbing stuff about Star Trek. To hear somebody that’s already funny and a great actor but also clearly has an emotional relationship with Star Trek and is comfortable knowing where the line is and being able to improv in the world of Star Trek… that was our guiding light at first.” JACK QUAID AS THE NEUROTIC ENSIGN BOIMLER “That character could be played as a straight man, but Jack brings such an aspirational, funny emotion to this guy that just desperately wants to be the best in Starfleet.” NOËL WELLS AS ORION MEDIC ENSIGN TENDI…

Have Bill and Ted got wiser with age? Alex Winter: You know what? I think we have, a little bit. Keanu Reeves: They’re not jaded, though. I just think they have a lot of life experience. They’ve got children, they’ve been in a relationship, they’ve been having the hard knocks of their lives, of trying to write this song, but I don’t think they’re jaded. I think they’re a little bit weary, but that indomitable spirit is still in there, and that’s really what the course of this story is about. Winter: These aren’t cartoon characters, they’re human beings. So, what has that time done to them? Who are they now? A lot of the comedy and the pathos lives in that core idea. With the whole of existence on…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Showrunner Tom Wheeler Cast Katherine Langford, Gustaf Skarsgård, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Lily Newmark, Devon Terrell, Daniel Sharman EPISODES 1.01-1.10 There’s a classic pub quiz question that asks “Which character has been played by the most actors on screen?” This usually leads to heated debates about whether it’s Sherlock Holmes or Santa Claus. That question might soon be moot. With new versions of the Arthurian legends currently springing up at what seems like an exponential rate, surely King Arthur, Merlin and Guinevere must be galloping up the rankings? At least Netflix’s Cursed gives centre stage to a less-exposed character: Nimue. This adaptation of a Tom Wheeler/Frank Millerillustrated YA novel – developed for TV by the same creative team – creates a coming-of-age tale for the future Lady of the…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Creators Toshinori Yamaguchi, Kazutaka Sakamoto Cast Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, Yuina Kuroshima, Ririka, Koki Osamura EPISODES 1.01-1.06 At this point, trying to untangle the mythology of the Ju-On/Grudge franchise is like trying to read a plate of spaghetti, so it’s understandable that this Japanese six-parter refuses any sense of continuity. Instead, it’s pitched as a meta-horror, revealing the allegedly true story behind the movies. Paranormal researcher Yasuo (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) is our way in, as he interviews actress Haruka (Yuina Kuroshima) about the eerie footsteps she keeps hearing in her apartment. Turns out her boyfriend went into a haunted house, and something followed him home. Meanwhile, in another timeline, student Kiyomi (YouTuber Ririka) is invited to an abandoned house by new classmates who aren’t as friendly as they seem.…

RELEASED 28 AUGUST U | 75 minutes Like the French-made The Red Turtle, this is a wordless animation with a protagonist trapped on a strange island. This one is chased by an ominous phantom giant. The entire film was animated by Latvian director Gints Zillbalodis. Said animation is extremely rudimentary, though with lovely individual moments and a powerful soundscape. The pacing is often soporific and the meaning is ambiguous. Recommended to broadminded animation fans; anyone else should stick with the more artful Red Turtle.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1985 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Ricky Lau Cast Lam Ching-ying, Ricky Hui, Chin Siu-ho, Moon Lee BLU-RAY DEBUT Mr Vampire isn’t five minutes in before someone gets bitten by a grinning skull lurching out of a closed coffin. That’s just the first insane image of many that this film throws at you. It’s preposterously good fun. The story follows a Taoist priest, Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying), who, along with his students Man-Choi (Ricky Hui) and Chau-Sang (Chin Siu-ho), has been tasked with reburying the father of a rich businessman. Unfortunately, dad has gone Dracula, transforming into a vampire – a hopping vampire from Chinese folklore, no less – who escapes from his tomb, blue fingernails first. Chaos reigns, and the gang have to get the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | PG | SVOD Director Tony Cervone Cast Will Forte, Frank Welker, Mark Wahlberg, Jason Isaacs AMAZON PRIME Robbed of a theatrical release as the pandemic hit, Scoob! still betrays its big-screen ambitions. While the Hanna-Barbera original chased down ghoulish hoaxers in the backroads and boondocks of America – no town was complete without a crooked janitor, a decaying funfair or both – this computer-animated reboot raises the stakes considerably. Now those meddling kids are facing cyber-scorpions, a resurrected hound of Hades, the spectre of global apocalypse and, god help them, Simon Cowell. Like, gangway! If such Endgame-worthy escalation feels an unlikely fit for Mystery Inc, the movie is clearly made by people who dig the source material. Once the mawkish opening is out of the…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | DVD It’s rarely a good sign when a horror movie only has one main character. Sure enough, way too much of Echoes Of Fear’s runtime is spent in the dark, in silence, as Alisa (Trista Robinson) wanders around her dead grandfather’s house jumping at shadows. There’s an amusingly bonkers bit where her pet rat helps her uncover the door to a secret room, but that aside this is a pretty dull mash-up of tropes nicked from late-’90s J-horror and J-horror-adjacent ghost stories. Extras None.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1966/2020 | PG | Blu-ray Directors Christopher Barry/Charles Norton Cast Patrick Troughton, Anneke Wills, Michael Craze, Robert James No, we’re not caught in a space-time trap: this is a thoroughly retooled version of the 2016 release that animated Patrick Troughton’s long-lost debut as the Doctor. It’s a noticeably more polished production, with improved movement, richer detail and an effective sense of atmosphere. While the plot’s a plod, the Daleks have never been creepier, exhumed from the shadows as silent, half-dead shells, conspiring inside their casings. Extras A technically-minded documentary (46 minutes) explores the realities of TV production in the ’60s, while a vintage, horror-themed episode of documentary series Whicker’s World proves a glorious time capsule, complete with self-made “Dalek man” Terry Nation at the wheel of…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1992 | 18 | Blu-ray Directors Tony Maylam, Ian Sharp Cast Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattrall, Alastair Duncan, Alun Armstrong BLU-RAY DEBUT Empty your bladder before watching this Rutger Hauer vehicle: the sound of trickling water recurs so often that otherwise you may need to dash for a pee. The year: 2008. Postglobal warming, London is waterlogged – well, the disused jam factory where most of the shooting took place is, anyway. Hauer, striding about in a duster coat and leather kegs to a Vangelis/Terminator ripoff score, is a trigger-happy maverick cop, slamming people against walls as he investigates a series of heart-removal murders. Basically, it’s ITV does Blade Runner. The title’s meaningless, and the plot is half-baked, with the killer profiled as a returning serial killer,…

RELEASED 20 AUGUST 608 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Adrian Tchaikovsky Publisher Tor The portal-to-another-world story is one of the oldest fantasy staples. Often these narratives are about escape and imagination, which is perhaps because writers can relate to them so easily: storytellers create other worlds in their minds, and books are the portals they make to allow readers to access them. But in The Doors Of Eden, Adrian Tchaikovsky applies the trope to contemporary fears: this is a novel about borders. It begins when Lee Pryor goes hunting for monsters on Bodmin Moor with her girlfriend Elsinore “Mal” Mallory, who vanishes during the expedition. Mal reappears a few years later, very much changed – stronger, weathered by brutal experience – and she’s not the only person to cross to our…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 368 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Matthew Baker Publisher Bloomsbury In the title story of Matthew Baker’s second short story collection, the small town of Plainfield decides to secede from the United States. It renames itself America, and quickly grows into a more-or-less progressive paradise – until a ragtag militia from the States arrives to forcibly retake the town. Why Visit America is emblematic of all of the stories here: 13 funny and moving tales that take place in USAs a step away from – but clearly connected to – the real one. In “The Transition”, a young man shocks his family when he declares that he wants to leave his corporeal body behind to live a fully digital existence. In “Rites”, the elderly are expected to commit…

RELEASED 13 AUGUST 304 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Matt Haig Publisher Canongate Books The idea that we could be richer, more successful, more loved, happier, better is a powerful one. Somewhere, for example, there’s perhaps a version of this reviewer that gets his copy in on time, and where asking him to restrict himself to 300 words for a book review would be impertinent (Dream on – Ed). Yet the seductiveness of such visions is potentially destructive, suggests Matt Haig, in his latest slipstream offering. It centres on Nora Seed, a young woman consumed by regret who, at a particularly bleak point, decides to take her own life. Except she doesn’t die, but wakes up in the Midnight Library, a limbo where – in a novel that riffs on the…

RELEASED 25 AUGUST 292 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author David Quantick Publisher Titan Books It seems safe to assume that Veep/The Thick Of It writer David Quantick watched and enjoyed Bong Joon-ho’s film of Snowpiercer. The narrative drive of this SF/horror hybrid is essentially the same: set in a post-apocalyptic future, it sees a trio of characters progressing towards the engine of a vast, mysterious train (over 30 carriages long) in search of answers. As in the film, much of the story’s appeal comes from the outlandish design of the carriages – which include a pool full of turtles. The oddball details of this world, whose anything-goes weirdness prompts speculation that it’s all a VR simulation, are enough to keep you intrigued for a good while (though when answers are finally…

RELEASED 20 AUGUST 992 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Rian Hughes Publisher Picador A Novel, Graphic is the somewhat irksome subtitle to designer Rian Hughes’s debut novel. It’s apt, though, because the look of this almost 1,000-page monster is every bit as vital as its plot and prose. A mysterious signal from space has been intercepted by Jodrell Bank. Jack Fenwick, AI expert and the head of startup Intelligencia, is fascinated by it. Moreover, he starts to believe that he is personally receiving messages, including one particularly ominous directive: “Build me a body”. Meanwhile, on the moon, astronaut Dana finds herself in a transformative and mindbending situation. To tell this expansive tale, Hughes employs not only chapters of prose but also transcripts, tweets, snatches of advertising, excerpts from fictional SF magazines,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics Writers Kieron Gillen, Jim Rossignol Artist Jeff Stokely ISSUES 1-3 Chaotic, weird and unashamedly filthy, the latest sci-fi miniseries from Image is an extended exercise in seeing how far non-stop colourful nonsense can go. Hailing from the imaginations of The Wicked + The Divine’s Kieron Gillen and games writer Jim Rossignol, this five-issue saga follows Baron Otto Von Subertan and his sidekick Professor Hades Zero-K as they try to unravel the plans of the Eldritch Hyper-Pope. There’s a plot afoot to make the universe a more boring, less ludicrous place, but this central concept is just an excuse for an escalating series of bonkers set-pieces and off-the-wall gags. Many of these are lively and attention-grabbing – especially an elaborate heist on a massive bug…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher AWA Studios/Upshot Writer J Michael Straczynski Artist Mike Deodato Jr ISSUES 1-3 Set in a world decimated by a deadly plague which kills millions before suddenly burning itself out (sound familiar?), the title of J Michael Straczynski’s new series partly derives from the superpowers that survivors develop as part of their newfound resistance to the bug. It initially takes a panoramic viewpoint, with a combination of reportage and political meetings used in the extra-long first issue to chart the devastating progress of the virus across the globe and its aftermath, and barely a hint of anything fantastical until the final few pages. However, by the third issue we’ve plunged headlong into the colourful world of costumed crimefighters, as an aspiring hero visits the wryly named Swan…

RELEASED OUT NOW! (Early Access) Reviewed on Xbox One Also on PC (Epic Games Store) Publisher Glumberland VIDEOGAME This life sim is oodles of fun, and not just because it’s a clever hybrid of Pokémon, Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. Most of the fun derives from how rooted it is in its playful premise: you’re new in a town full of quirky characters where little monsters called Ooblets grow out of the ground and battle each other in dance-offs. Ooblets is eccentric and odd, with an art style that resembles pastel paper cut-outs layered on top of each other, and a retro ’80s synth pop-style soundtrack that becomes quite the earworm, especially when you’ve spent a few days farming and competing in turn-based dance battles. If you’re worried that Ooblets’…