sci-fi
DVD/Blu-ray: The Burning/Hell Comes to FrogtownTuesday, 20 December 2016
The reasons for enduring cult status can sometimes be hard to fathom for those not embedded in the minutiae of genre cinema. Take The Burning and Hell Comes to Frogtown, both of which are being given top-notch home cinema releases. The Burning is a... Read more... |
Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryThursday, 15 December 2016
Whether you use its optional subtitle A Star Wars Story or not, Rogue One arrives with a diminutive air. Filling in some infamous but minor dopiness in the original Star Wars – why build the Death Star with such a fatal design flaw? – it’s... Read more... |
Westworld, Series 1 Finale, Sky AtlanticMonday, 12 December 2016
Anyone who expected a simple robots-versus-humans confrontation, like in Michael Crichton's original Westworld movie from 1973, had another think, or bunch of thinks, coming. The final episode of the Jonathan Nolan/JJ Abrams Westworld was more like... Read more... |
Lazarus, King's Cross TheatreThursday, 10 November 2016
When David Bowie first met with the producer Robert Fox to discuss Lazarus back in 2013, you now have to wonder if he was seriously contemplating his own mortality. The clue, of course, lies in the title, and that of Bowie's extraordinary last album... Read more... |
ArrivalThursday, 10 November 2016
While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, it’s faintly reassuring to imagine that there might be some intelligent life form out there beyond the stars that’s just waiting to land on our planet and make us all love one another – or swiftly... Read more... |
Humans, Series 2, Channel 4Monday, 31 October 2016
Humans is of course not about humans. Or not mainly. But if Channel 4 had called it Synths, which is what/who it is mainly about, maybe fewer would have signed up to watch, presuming it to be an eight-part series about Eighties pop. Synths, if you... Read more... |
LFF 2016: Snowden / The Birth of a Nation / ArrivalThursday, 13 October 2016
As an old Sixties lefty brought up on thrillers like The Parallax View, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American political conspiracies, and inevitably he portrays CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a noble crusader for free speech and... Read more... |
Detroit: Techno City, Institute of Contemporary ArtsWednesday, 27 July 2016
Detroit techno music is important. Any student of the club music of the modern age knows this. The sound that fermented among the majority black population of the decaying industrial city in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as disco's last remnants... Read more... |
WarcraftFriday, 03 June 2016
The Warcraft series of "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" (or MMORPG if you must) has apparently amassed over 100 million users since it all began with Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. Ergo, turning it into a 3D multiplex-buster... Read more... |
Frankenstein, Royal BalletThursday, 05 May 2016
Another year, another new full-length story ballet from one of the Royal Ballet's in-house choreographers. Time was – a long time, in fact, up to 2011 – when that would have sounded like science fiction, but no longer: Liam Scarlett, whose... Read more... |
DVD: Doomwatch Series 1-3, The Remaining EpisodesTuesday, 12 April 2016
When it aired on BBC One at the dawn of the Seventies, Doomwatch became one of the marvels of the broadcasting age, sometimes pulling audiences of over 13 million. Thanks to the keen imagination of its creator, Dr Kit Pedler – a gifted... Read more... |
X, Royal Court TheatreWednesday, 06 April 2016
In 2014, Pomona stormed the Orange Tree, turning the previously staid venue into a place of both lauded theatre revolution and disgruntled walkouts. Could Alistair McDowall repeat the feat at the more progressive Royal Court?X should certainly prove... Read more... |
