Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2017 i Empire Australasia

THE ALIEN FILMS have a long history of synthetic characters villainous and heroic, but Alien: Covenant offers the first visual evidence that Weyland-Yutani manufactures identical models on an industrial scale. That’s how we get Michael Fassbender’s second synthetic, Walter, joining his doppelgänger David in Ridley Scott’s prequel-sequel. So how does Walter differ from the previously beheaded David? “Walter is the next evolution of David, or several evolutions down the line,” explains Fassbender. “[He was] made in a way that doesn’t incorporate emotions, because, as we found out, that started to make people uncomfortable.” Alien: Covenant sees the crew of the Covenant colony ship emerge onto the surface of a new world. It’s not their original destination: they have detoured to answer a distress call. And given this franchise, it’s a…

New fantasy epic American Gods follows Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), an ex-con who encounters the mysterious Mr Wednesday (Ian McShane) and learns that ancient and modern gods are fighting a covert war in our midst. We spoke with writer Neil Gaiman to learn more. 1 it’s hugely topical “If there was ever a completely right time or a completely wrong time to be making American Gods, it’s now,” says Gaiman of a show that pulls no punches in its diverse casting or its story. “It’s about America as an immigrant country, which I think the people currently running America would like to be forgotten. Either people will love us or, at this point in time, they will lynch us.” 2 It’s bigger than the book This first season will cover…

OUT 13 APRIL RATED TBC / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Olivier Assayas CAST Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz PLOT Maureen (Stewart) lives in Paris, working as a personal shopper. She is also a medium, an ability also possessed by her twin brother. Following his death, from a condition she shares, Maureen cannot move on with her life until she’s had a sign from her brother that he’s now at peace. THERE’S NO ONE aspect of Olivier Assayas’ latest film that entirely works. As a ghost story it swoops between being genuinely creepy and almost laughably silly, with some theme park-level scares. As a mystery-thriller it takes you down frightening roads but to a glaringly obvious destination. And by its end, it’s left an unruly pile of loose ends. Yet as…

When Life entered his life, Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa was in a strange place. Personally, he had just gone through a divorce and was expecting a baby with a new partner. Professionally, he was still licking his wounds from Tom Hardy flop Child 44, having passed on a run of terrific scripts — including The Martian, Prisoners and Sicario — that went on to garner critical acclaim and box-office success. It was a time of self-examination. “I was curious as to why I would say no to things that were obviously good for me,” he says, smoking furiously outside a Belsize Park coffee shop during a break from scoring. “I came to the conclusion that I just read them as finished movies. There was nothing for me to add. That’s…

Some superhero origin stories require more suspension of disbelief than others. Take Iron Fist. Danny Rand is the gilded heir to Manhattan’s billion-dollar Rand Corporation until, at the age of ten, he loses both his parents during a trip to Asia and is adopted by the warrior monks of K’un Lun, a mystical city that rarely intersects with the Earthly plane. Under their guidance, he becomes a formidable fighter and earns the title of the Iron Fist by slaying the ancient dragon Shou-Lao. When the portal finally reopens 15 years later, Danny decides to return to New York to reclaim his identity and discover who’s to blame for his parents’ untimely end. Got it so far? Now, in the context of Marvel comics, Danny’s story is par for the course,…

FROM NOW / DIRECTORS Justin Anderson, Ed Charles, Fredi Devas, Chadden Hunter, Emma Napper, Elizabeth White / CAST David Attenborough SHOT OVER THREE years across 40 countries, this is perhaps the most jaw-dropping nature documentary ever created. That’s thanks in part to technological advances — camera drones and miniature low-light cameras mean you’re brought closer to the animals than you would ever have imagined. In some cases, it’s a world first — the footage of the rare snow leopards in the Himalayas is the first time several have been caught on camera at once, and the feather-popping dance of the Wilson’s bird of paradise in West Papua is captured for the first time. You may have seen some of it already: the footage of baby marine iguanas hatching from eggs…

FROM NOW / DIRECTOR DAVID YATES / CAST EDDIE REDMAYNE, DAN FOGLER, KATHERINE WATERSTON, ALISON SUDOL, COLIN FARRELL, EZRA MILLER BRITISH WIZARD NEWT Scamander arrives in 1920s New York by ship (apparently floo powder hasn’t been invented yet), with a magical suitcase filled with magical beasties. But a mix-up with a baker carrying a similar suitcase sees the creatures let loose in the city, precisely at the moment when the Magical Congress of the USA is struggling with keeping the existence of the magical world a secret. Meanwhile, some other people are, uh, trying to find something that, uh, they’re not sure what it is and, uh, well… in a nutshell that’s what’s wrong with Fantastic Beasts. Where the Harry Potter films had a likeable central character facing well-defined challenges…

LEADER BOARD Ben Kingsley 9.5 Christopher Lee 9.5 David O. Russell 9.5 Quentin Tarantino 9.5 Robert Rodriguez 9 Guillermo del Toro 9 Werner Herzog 9 Christian Slater 8.5 Bryan Singer 8.5 John Waters 8 1 Who shouts, “Give ’em hell, 54!” in Glory? That was Kevin Jarre. He wrote the first draft of the script before I rewrote it and I wanted to honour him in that moment. He died soon after. Correct. 2 In The Last Samurai, Katsumoto gives Nathan Algren a sword. On it is an inscription. What is the inscription? Ooh. Ooh. “To the man who dadadada dadadada.” [Hears the answer] That sword, I would have loved to have kept. I think Warner Bros. has that in a vault somewhere. The correct answer is: “I belong to…

WIN! Write a caption to the image above from Santa Clarita Diet, showing on Netflix, that makes us cackle like hyenas, and you could be a winner! To enter, email empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au SANTA CLARITA DIET IS CONSUMING VIEWERS ON NETFLIX NOW. WE HAVE 10 COPIES OF FENCES TO GIVEAWAY FOR CLEVER CAPTIONEERS! CHECK OUT THE FIVE-STAR REVIEW ON PAGE 96. FEBRUARY WINNER “No, I’m dressing as the cop. You can be the cowboy, or the construction worker, or the American Indian…”…

OUT NOW FORMAT SWITCH, Wii U DIRECTOR Hidemaro Fujibayashi CAST Patricia Summersett, Bill Rogers PLOT On waking from a century-long slumber, Link finds Hyrule in ruins, Princess Zelda trapped in a castle and monsters terrorising the land. He must destroy the evil Calamity Ganon to save the day. THE PRECISE MOMENT it becomes clear that Breath Of The Wild is not a traditional Zelda game comes about two hours in. Having just acquired a rudimentary hang glider, you float down from the game’s tutorial plateau and set foot upon the plains of Hyrule proper. Hills and valleys reach out to the horizon, horses crop lazily at the grass and you, sword in hand, are left with no earthly idea what to do next. Open-world games are hardly unusual, but the…

ARTHUR, TRUE KING of the Britons, is addressing the land’s barons, calling them to war. He stands on a hillock in the Forest Of Dean, in a brown leather jacket, his blond hair cropped short: a modern-looking figure in a dark-age setting. And he’s not happy. “You lot,” he announces, “haven’t got a bollock among you.” This is what happens when you let Guy Ritchie loose on a legend. “The fundamental challenge with King Arthur is to make him likeable,” the director tells Empire. “If you’re not careful, he’s worthy. And once someone’s worthy they’re not likeable. So we had to create a character naughty enough for us to like him and simultaneously have him go on a journey that makes him respectable.” That journey will involve a magic sword,…

SEX, STRONG LANGUAGE and violence: we’ve entered a new age of Agatha Christie adaptations, a far cry from the polite tea parties of earlier versions. Empire is on set in an almost bare cell, just a desk and two chairs, beneath Manchester’s London Road Fire Station — derelict since the 1980s — where an interrogation is going on. “You sound like the police,” huffs Leonard Vole (Billy Howle) of his defence barrister’s questions. “I sound like the prosecution — because that’s what they’ll ask,” says John Mayhew (Toby Jones). The details he’s dragging out of his client concern a relationship with wealthy older woman Emily French, played in flashbacks by Kim Cattrall. Vole inherited French’s fortune, and has been accused of her murder. Andrea Riseborough plays Vole’s wife Romaine, who…

OUT NOW RATED PG / 129 MINS EXCELLENT GOOD OKAY POOR AWFUL DIRECTOR Bill Condon CAST Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor PLOT Book-loving Belle (Watson) enjoys a peaceful life with her father (Kline), until a chain of events leads her to a mysterious and decrepit castle occupied by a furry brute with anger issues (Stevens). “LIVE-ACTIONIFICATION” IS not an actual word. It may be soon, though, given the frenetic pace at which Disney is turning its animated classics into films with human actors. The Jungle Book, Dumbo, The Lion King… it’s only a matter of time before a photoreal The Rescuers Down Under. So far they have made major bank, yet those charged with rebooting Beauty And The Beast…

OUT NOW RATED TBC / 116 MINS DIRECTOR Hannes Holm CAST Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, Filip Berg, Ida Engvoll, Tobias Almborg, Stefan Gödicke PLOT Pedantic and irascible retiree Ove spends his days patrolling his neighbourhood for minor infractions, talking to his late wife’s grave, and hating life. But when new neighbours with young kids move in next door, he is forced to deal with the modern world again. BASED ON THE bestselling novel by Fredrik Backman, this Swedish dramedy was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars (but lost to Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman.) Ove (it’s pronounced “OOH-veh”, for the record) is a cantankerous and nitpicking old pensioner who polices his neighbours for any minor transgressions, enforcing arbitrary rules that he and an estranged friend instituted. The elderly Ove…

OUT 27 APRIL RATED MA15+ / 91 MINS DIRECTOR Ben Wheatley CAST Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Michael Smiley PLOT 1970s Boston, and Irishmen Chris (Murphy) and Frank (Smiley) arrange to buy guns from Vernon (Copley) in a deal set up by Justine (Larson) and Ord (Hammer). But an old grudge between two participants leads to a gun battle. THE MOST PROLIFIC and one of the most proficient filmmakers to come out of the UK in the last decade, Ben Wheatley has already proved himself across horror, thriller and whatever genre High-Rise was (period sci-fi psycho-drama?). Now he moves to America — not literally; he’s still shooting in Brighton — and establishes himself as an action director too. Surely a nihilistic romcom is next. Wheatley’s economy of…

AMES GUNN REMEMBERS the exact day he started writing Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. It’s not really too hard. Because that day was 1 August 2014: the day Guardians Of The Galaxy (or ‘Vol. 1’, as it’s now also known) was released in the United States. That he wasn’t just kicking back and sipping piña coladas after months of hard graft might suggest an impressive level of diligence on Gunn’s part. And eagerness, too — after all, Vol. 1 was the St. Louis-born filmmaker’s first studio directing gig, and its reckless gang of space-rogues couldn’t be closer to his heart. It may even smack of workaholism; Sean Gunn (aka number-two Ravager Kraglin and the physical actor for Rocket Raccoon) says his brother dived back in so early “’cause he’s…

1 Now shooting in New York, the superhero series will run shorter than the solo shows, coming in at a nice, tight eight episodes. 2 The comic which inspired it was created by Roy Thomas in 1971 to unite a group of heroes typically seen as outsiders. The original line-up was: Doctor Strange, the Hulk and Namor the Sub-Mariner (with Silver Surfer joining later). 3 Details of the villain, Alexandra, remain under wraps, but we know she’ll be played by Sigourney Weaver. Showrunner Marco Ramirez describes her as “a very powerful force in New York City: sophisticated, intellectual, dangerous”. 4 Though the comic-book Defenders usually faced otherworldly foes, Ramirez says that while Alexandra represents a huge threat, she’ll also be behind “a very street-level crisis”, keeping the same gritty tone…

Welcome to your childhood,” says Josh Gad, greeting Empire on the beautifully realised village set of Beauty And The Beast at Shepperton Studios. Following on from Maleficent, Cinderella and The Jungle Book, this is Disney’s latest flesh-and-blood reimagining of a legendary title from its animated back catalogue. The watchword here is realism, both aesthetically and psychologically. Set in 18th century France, rather than an airy-fairy once upon a time, the period has informed all the artistic choices. “We wanted to give it as much depth and detail as possible,” says Emma Watson, who plays Belle. “It’s our job to fill in the gaps, to give it more layers and detail than you could ever get in an animation.” This project is a challenge, even by Disney-reboot standards. In 1991, Beauty…

0:03:37 MAGIC HOUR __ The movie starts with a magical fight between Tilda Swinton’s The Ancient One and her student Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen). “There isn’t any magic for so long in the movie that I felt it necessary to start with something big,” says director Scott Derrickson. The style here, as buildings churn and warp, is called Mandelbrotting, after mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. “It’s a fractal manipulation. It looks like magic.” 0:30:57 MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR __ Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) intro to magic takes him, and us, on a trippy ride that showcases several worlds inspired by the art of Strange co-creator Steve Ditko. It lasts around two minutes but, “I thought this could go a good six minutes,” says Derrickson. “I wanted this to be a rollercoaster ride we’re on with…

THOSE WHO THOUGHT director Ken Loach may, at the age of 80, have lost the fire or ability to make a searing social polemic were firmly silenced by last year’s I, Daniel Blake. Not only did it win the Palme d’Or in Cannes and two British Independent Film Awards, it racked up the biggest box office opening of Loach’s career, sparked furious rows in the British Parliament and attracted the derision of certain newspaper columnists. Few films, and certainly no British film, last year caused rucks and recriminations like I, Daniel Blake. It was precisely the deafening silence and lack of controversy around the welfare system that caused Ken Loach to waver from his previous resolve, made after a difficult production on previous film Jimmy’s Hall, to not make another…

ROBOCOP 1987 / RATED R18+ PAUL VERHOEVEN MIGHT be one of the most misunderstood directors working today. Derided in some circles for being “more Hollywood than Hollywood”, Verhoeven has built a career out of graphic violence and outrageous sex – Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers – but critics often miss the tongue firmly planted in cheek in the Dutch helmer’s work: satire and excess, hand in hand. Because from a certain point of view, self-satirising excess is what Hollywood is. One of the most perfect examples of Verhoeven skewering American sensibilities by delivering an overdose of them, is his first Hollywood film, back in 1987: RoboCop. Decried by some at the time as “fascist”, it’s in fact a one-finger salute against fascism — against government selling out to big business,…

THE NOTION BEHIND the First-Take Club is simple. Each month, we ask someone to have a butcher’s at our list of the Greatest Movies Of All Time (as voted for by the Empire readers in 2014), choose one they haven’t seen, watch it and tell us all about it. This month’s selection is chosen by Andy Diggle — acclaimed writer of comic books such as The Losers , Green Arrow: Year One and James Bond: Hammerhead — and his pick is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedies of all time. Featuring wonderful performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, it’s a hugely quotable satire that scooped five Oscars. It is, of course, Billy Wilder’s The…

ROCK DOCUMENTARIES — or, if you will, rockumentaries — are cinema’s backstage pass, turning fans into voyeurs and pop idols into humans. They’re also weirdly contradictory. Whereas pop videos construct an image, rockumentaries deconstruct them. Some in this month’s marathon are revealing, others unwise and one utterly devastating. There’s only one place to start: Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back, the rockumentary’s big bang. Shot 52 years ago, D.A. Pennebaker’s pioneering chronicle of Dylan’s UK tour captures the troubadour awkwardly adjusting to rock-star status. Groupies attack. The press lay siege. No wonder he’s dying to get on stage. The genius of the movie is that its fly-on-the-wall style separates Dylan’s folk-hero public persona from the private man, revealed as an itch of contradictions: mean, benign, crabby, calm, deadpan, wired and effortlessly…

FROM MAY / DIRECTOR D.J. Caruso / CAST Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Toni Collette, Samuel L. Jackson THE THIRD INSTALMENT in the Triple-X franchise forces you to suspend disbelief more thoroughly than if you caught disbelief planting cherry bombs in the teacher’s lounge bathroom. Vin Diesel is back as aging hellraiser Xander Cage (it’s been 15 years since the first XXX, and 12 years since the second, which starred Ice Cube in place of Diesel; at 49, Diesel is testing credibility as a radical cowabunga dude). Toni Collette (sleepwalking through most of her scenes, acting mostly via deadpan and eyerolls) takes over most of the government handler duties from Samuel L Jackson. CIA hardcase Marke (Collette) turns to Cage to track down…

FROM NOW / SHOWRUNNER SCOTT BUCK / CAST FINN JONES, JESSICA HENWICK, JESSICA STROUP, TOM PELPHREY, DAVID WENHAM, ROSARIO DAWSON IRON FIST IS later to the Marvel Netflix party than originally intended. He was supposed to arrive last year, kicking and streaming, on the gumshoe-heels of Jessica Jones. But his future bromancer Luke Cage so impressed everyone, the kung-fu master got shunted to the back of the queue. Which, in retrospect, feels just right. Though the Defenders strand of the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t really permitted to cross over with its big-screen equivalent, it does help to have ushered Doctor Strange through the door, along with all his Eastern-mystical baggage, before Danny Rand. Especially as Rand arrives in the most grounded and gritty corner of the MCU, talking about a…

FROM APRIL / SHOWRUNNER Raphael Bob-Waksberg / CAST Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Aaron Paul, Paul F. Tompkins, Kristen Schaal AUSTRALIA IS THE only country in the world where BoJack Horseman is being released on actual discs. Suck it, rest of the world! Season one releases April, with season two due later this year. BoJack Horseman is a horse… man, in an alternate reality where humans and humanoid animals live side by side. (It’s not a thing. It just is that way.) BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) is a fifty-something former TV star, once the star of hit 90s sitcom Horsin’ Around (think the least famous dad from Full House), who now mopes through life getting drunk, mistreating his on-off girlfriend/agent, and failing to make headway on his memoirs…

Derek Cianfrance (director of The Light Between Oceans ): “When I was 23, I went to see The Gospel According To St. Matthew by Pier Paolo Pasolini, at the international film series at my film school [the University of Colorado]. I had loved Accattone and was curious to see what an atheist, homosexual neo-realist would do with a religious epic. My friend and I arrived at the theatre about six minutes late, and had to park about a mile away, so we sprinted there. When we finally made it, I sat down in the darkened theatre, covered with sweat and out of breath. I grew up Catholic, but I never really paid attention in church. I was always daydreaming.…

THANKS FOR THE great cover of Wonder Woman on the March issue. There is much expectation around this movie as WW is one of very few female supes to get her own movie. Given this, I was extremely disappointed with the accompanying poster, a beautifully posed image of WW, her torso artfully highlighted… with no head. Would this happen to Superman or Batman? At a time when women are struggling to get their voices heard and stories told, especially in the movie industry, here we have a movie with a strong female lead but really, it’s still about the boobs. If this was the only image supplied to you, shame on you for not pushing back and refusing to publish it. If you chose it? Go and have a bit…

YES CHRIS HEWITT CONTRIBUTOR THE OTHER DAY I wanted to take my wife to the cinema (paid for with actual money; not one of these fancy-dan screenings where you are given sandwiches and can’t laugh too loudly in case you offend the bloke from the Daily Mail), so I called up a popular movie times app on my phone. And realised that Hollywood has a major problem. The app, you see, not only lists start times for films, but their running time. Choices included Scorsese’s Silence (two hours, 41 minutes), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (two hours, 14 minutes), and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (two hours, 13 minutes). Even the knockabout comedy option Why Him? clocked in at almost two hours. This is a John Holmes…

“WE’RE NOT WAVING tennis racquets around for the sake of it,” says Borg/McEnroe director Janus Metz. “Tennis is such a psychologically driven sport. It all comes down to what it means for Borg or McEnroe at a particular moment.” The match at the heart of Metz’s film is the legendary 1980 Wimbledon final billed as a battle of opposites: Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) was the ice-cool hero, McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf) the hotheaded bad boy. With contemporary Wimbledon looking far too modern, the stadium was recreated in Prague with Gudnason and LaBeouf replicating every shot of the four-hour final (“like a ballet” says LaBeouf), the fluffy balls added in digitally later. “Even their playing style becomes part of telling the story,” says Metz. “Borg was a baseline player. He put a lid…

OUT NOW RATED M / 118 MINS DIRECTOR Jordan Vogt-Roberts CAST Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman PLOT In the final days of the Vietnam War, secretive organisation Monarch secures government funding to lead an expedition to a recently discovered island in search of new species. And they find them. Boy, do they find them. THERE’S A TALE from the set of Kong: Skull Island: faced with imagining the giant ape the audience would see standing in front of him, Samuel L. Jackson asked three questions. “How big is it? How fast is it? What it do?” What it does and how fast it is will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the beast on screen before. It wrestles similarly huge creatures, has a…

OUT 13 APRIL RATED TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Nacho Vigalondo CAST Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Tim Blake Nelson, Dan Stevens PLOT A hapless drunk (Hathaway) moves back to her small hometown, where she reconnects with an old friend. But their boozy routine is interrupted when a giant lizard creature attacks Seoul — an attack which has a mysterious connection with their small town… YOU’VE NEVER SEEN a kaiju film like this before. Gloria (Hathaway) is a hapless boozer, kicked out of her boyfriend’s New York apartment until she gets her life in order; so she retreats to her family’s empty small-town home, and re-connects with an old childhood friend (Jason Sudeikis). Any by “re-connects”, we mean “gets drunk every day”. And then, one day, a giant creature (not Godzilla,…

OUT 20 APRIL RATED TBC / 99 MINS DIRECTOR Julia Ducournau CAST Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella PLOT Timid Justine (Marillier), raised a strict vegetarian, undergoes severe hazing when she becomes a student vet. Forced by her sister Alexia (Rumpf) to eat raw rabbit’s kidney, she discovers strange new carnivorous cravings. IF IT WERE just about veterinary school initiation rites, writer-director Julia Ducournau’s Raw — the English-language release title offers as many meanings as the original French Grave — would be unsettling and shocking enough. On her first night in a hall of residence, repressed rookie Justine (Marillier) and her new roommate, gregarious gay guy Adrien (Nait Oufella), are both hauled out of bed by veteran students who act like masked terrorists. All the freshers are made to…

CILLIAN MURPHY POINTS TO A SMALL , BLOODY HOLE IN HIS LEFT ARM . “That’s a ricochet,” he says. “That’s from the first time I’m shot. Then he gestures to a makeshift tourniquet wrapped tightly around his right thigh. “And I got one in the leg. We’re all fucking wounded.” That’s an understatement. “I get clipped on top of the shoulder,” sighs Sharlto Copley. “I got shot in the arm,” says Armie Hammer, pointing out a flesh wound. “And the calf.” Brie Larson, with a certain glee, admits to an arm wound and “my leg, the back upper thigh. I’m running away and get shot there.” Welcome to Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, a blackly comedic thriller that is built around one of the most extraordinary and elaborate shoot-outs in cinema…

As eerie music swells, a figure takes shape on the giant screen. Identifiably female, it rises from a pool of fluid, its ivory-white outer layer detaching and flying from it in paper-like shreds. LED lights twinkle on either side of the screen; the monitor glitches. And as the soundtrack builds to a crescendo, the figure completes its metamorphosis. It’s Scarlett Johansson. Hollywood has for some time been on a quest to crack anime. With intricate mythologies and devoted armies of fans, the medium has obvious appeal for movie producers. But adapting it is no easy task. James Wong’s Dragonball: Evolution (2009) is a cautionary tale, grossing $57 million from a $30 million budget but drawing scorn from critics. Even the biggest names in moviemaking have struggled. An adaptation of 1988’s…

FROM APRIL 12 / DIRECTOR Antonio Campos / CAST Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts CHRISTINE CHUBBUCK is known for one thing. It’s hardly a spoiler, therefore, to reveal the Florida field reporter shot herself in the head live on Sarasota’s WXLT channel on 15 July 1974. After all, the incident inspired Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay for Sidney Lumet’s Network, and was recently explored in Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine, which saw actress Kate Lyn Sheil explore the 29-year-old’s mental state. Yet it’s still a shock when Christine pulls the revolver from a bag filled with glove puppets and, placing it behind her right ear, delivers the chilling line: “In keeping with the WZRB policy of presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local blood and guts, TV…

FROM MAY 8 / DIRECTOR Denzel Washington / CAST Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jovan Adepo TROY MAXSON (DENZEL Washington) is a 50-something garbage collector whose dreams of playing pro baseball were stymied by racism and his own misadventures; his wife Rose loves him steadfastly even as bitterness and an excess of masculine pride have turned him into a strutting rooster in a very small henhouse. Troy won’t support his son’s sporting ambitions, since his own never panned out; he can’t abide his other son shirking responsibility, despite grievously shirking his own; but he’s not easily reduced to a petty caricature — he’s also funny and loving and community minded, a raconteur and natural alpha. But his willingness to bend rules for himself that he won’t tolerate in…

URSULA ANDRESS HAS never understood the love for her iconic entrance in Dr. No. “I was just standing there doing my thing with shells by the sea and I couldn’t believe it appealed so much. That’s the fantastic opening? That was luck.” Honey Ryder (Andress) emerging from the water, watched by Bond (Sean Connery), is significant on more than one count: in the first 007 film, it cemented not only the notion of the ‘Bond girl’ but the feel of the series itself: impossibly glamorous, slightly cheeky and sexy in a PG way. Producer Cubby Broccoli was looking for “an unknown with a new face who wouldn’t demand an outrageous salary”, effectively the criteria applied to his Bond. He cast the 25-year-old Andress after seeing a picture of her in…

FROM APRIL 12 / DIRECTOR Chris Wedge / CAST Lucas Till, Jane Levy, Barry Pepper, Rob Lowe, Danny Glover, Amy Ryan TRIPP (LUCAS TILL, TV’s new MacGyver) is a self-imposed outsider who can’t wait to move away from his small town. But when a fracking company punches into an aquifer, releasing previously unknown creatures, Tripp must team up with other school misfits to save the underground ecosystem. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to make a modern version of a 1980s Amblin movie, but this is off-target. Monster Trucks is basically ET The Extra Terrestrial if ET was a giant squid, and Elliott was an asshole. Tripp is about 50 per cent too douchebaggy — sure, you want your main character to have an arc, but he’s simply awful to everyone,…

PART-DUSTBIN, PART-pepperpot, all-arsehole, the Daleks been Doctor Who’s arch-enemies for decades. The Daleks are set to return in season 10 of Doctor Who — here are their most notable appearances to date. 1 __ The debut (1963) From their introduction on Doctor Who in December 1963, the Daleks — horribly mutated aliens housed in a tank-like shell — captured the public’s imagination. Their catchphrase “Exterminate!” didn’t actually appear until 1964 and the fourth episode of this arc (and even then it was “Exterminated!”). School playgrounds would never be the same again. 2 __ the big screen breakouts (1965-’66) ‘Dalekmania’ hit in the mid-’60s, and it saw the robobaddies make the leap to the silver screen, alongside Peter Cushing’s ‘Dr. Who’. 1966’s Daleks — Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. even saw them…

LOCATION My first job out of drama school was [post-World War I TV drama series] The Orchid House . We shot on the Caribbean island of Dominica for two-and-a-half months. We were there so long that it felt like where I lived. For [’90s BBC police drama] Out Of The Blue we needed a run-down neighbourhood and we went to a part of Rotherham so run-down that there were only a few people living there. Most had moved out. It was heartbreaking, seeing a dead community. AUDITION Snatch. There were two actors cast in the roles Robbie Gee and I played, but Guy Ritchie wanted more experienced actors. Robbie and I were paired for the audition, and we left it all in the…