SFX的Holiday Special 2024目录

IN TODAY’S MEDIA LANDSCAPE, post-apocalyptic series and movies are so abundant that they’ve slotted into niche subgenres depicting how humanity gets its cumulative ass handed to it. Pick your visual poison and you can watch it unfold: alien invasions, technology run amuck, environmental desolation… and our current “too close for comfort” scenario, pandemics. Of course, viral doom storytelling is nothing new. Mary Shelley posited our demise via pandemic in her 1826 novel The Last Man. And over 100 years later in 1949, author George R Stewart further explored the repercussions of a pandemic virus in his novel Earth Abides, in which he reveals a post-viral mass extinction through the eyes of survivor Isherwood “Ish” Williams. A graduate student left orphaned, Ish learns how to live off the land, then builds…

“HE’S A MONSTER, BUT THIS IS LIKE A BILLY Crystal version of a monster, you know?” director Caroline Lindy tells Red Alert. Her debut, horror-musical-romcom Your Monster, may feature a hairy, snarling beast as its male lead, but he’s pretty cute when you get to know him. As played by Tommy Dewey (under a layer of prosthetics), Monster is gently encouraging, with a Chardonnay-dry sense of humour. If he hadn’t taken up permanent residency under the bed, and inside the closet, of human Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera), you’d find him browsing the albums at a local record shop, probably in a cardigan. He’s the combined creation of Lindy, Dewey, and David LeRoy Anderson, a special effects make-up designer whose past credits include Death Becomes Her, Men In Black, and American…

THERE’S THE ORIENT EXPRESS AND A DINOSAUR,” laughs Steven Moffat. “What more do you want at Christmas?” If both those items feature on your festive wishlist then Santa has clearly been listening – albeit a Santa cunningly disguised as a BAFTA-winning Scotsman. “Joy To The World” marks the ninth Doctor Who Christmas special written by Moffat, the former showrunner whose fiendish, puzzle-box brain not only uncaged the Weeping Angels but minted the ever-useful phrase “timeywimey”. And this era-hopping seasonal blow-out promises to be truly, deeply timey-wimey. “It’s quite big in scope,” Moffat tells SFX. “We go to a lot of places in a short amount of time!” Along for the ride is Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan as Joy, a woman whose life is upended forever when she meets Ncuti…

With his big ears, trunk and blue skin, Skeleton Crew’s Neel looks a lot like Max Rebo, the famous keyboard player from Jabba the Hutt’s house band. Despite those similarities, however, it looks like Neel is not a member of the same Ortolan species as Rebo. “We were super-inspired by Max Rebo and wanted an awesome alien buddy for our human boy,” admits Christopher Ford. “But there were just things about his design [we wanted to change], like his eyes being a little bit too beady and lifeless. We wanted these big puppy dog eyes for Neel, to give him a little tuft of hair and, well, he does have arms.” Yes, the big giveaway is the fact that Neel has arms. And before you yell “So does Max!”, it’s…

What made you fall in love with Héra? Everything about her! Her tenacity. Her character arc is so wonderful, and it’s unlike the other female characters in the original films, who already feel like fully fledged women. Helm calls her a tearaway child, and she’s just wild and free, loves being outdoors. Then she’s greeted with the most horrific thing that could ever happen to a person and she chooses to find the love and care within her to not go on the attack. She chooses to defend her people in an incredibly wholesome way. She’s fallible and she’s scared, but she’s tenacious. What’s your history with The Lord Of The Rings? I read The Hobbit as a child, and loved it, and then tried The Silmarillion and I went,…

“I love it. I love it. Give me a wig any day. Give me a prosthetic any day. I’ll happily have an earlier call time and sit in that make-up chair. I just think there’s something so special about a transformation. I think a big part of me got into this line of work because that’s what my seven-year-old wanted. My inner child just wants to play dress-up and can step into another dimension. “I always think that period is the closest we’ll get to a time machine. So I’ve always wanted to do it, and I’m really glad I got to do it in this way. “I love the way the Ghost Stories sort of unfold, like a play. Also, any crossover between horror and creepy and Christmas, I…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 104 minutes ▶ Director Caroline Lindy ▶ Cast Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Edmund Donovan, Meghann Fahy Turns out Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t the only horror-adjacent movie to dust off the Broadway standard “Put On A Happy Face” this year. Caroline Lindy’s monster romance drops the needle on the original Dick Van Dyke version right at the beginning: would-be actress Laura is leaving hospital after surgery, having just found out that her theatre director boyfriend has dumped her. Apparently her cancer treatment was distracting him from his career – and in case that act of romantic terrorism wasn’t cruel enough, he’s also recast her role in his new production. Wallowing in heartbreak and jealousy (plus, you know, recovering from cancer), Laura moves back into…

▶ RELEASED 13 DECEMBER  2024 | TBC | SVOD ▶ Director Peter Baynton ▶ Cast Gerard Butler, Emilia Clarke, Simone Ashley, Mae Muller SKY CINEMA Mash together Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Clement Clarke Moore’s festive poem “A Visit From St Nicholas” and a bunch of cheery songs by Guy Chambers (best known for his work with Robbie Williams) and what do you get? A lovely time, that’s what! Adapted from Carys Bexington’s illustrated book, The Night Before Christmas In Wonderland follows St Nick (Gerard Butler) as he visits Wonderland and falls foul of the wicked, Christmas-hating Queen Of Hearts (Emilia Clarke, loving the chance to yell “Off with his head!”). All the seasonal staples are present and correct – reindeer, elves and sleighs – but with an added wacky Lewis Carroll…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | PG | SVOD ▶ Director Vicky Jenson ▶ Cast Rachel Zegler, John Lithgow, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem NETFLIX Parents are always embarrassing to teenagers, but Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler) has every other 15-year-old beaten. Her mum and dad have been turned into huge, lumbering monsters by a spell, which means that the distinguished king and queen, confined to their palace, now spend their days chewing everything in sight and pooping a lot. Eventually Ellian is told that her parents are effectively gone and she must take their place as Queen. Distraught, she sets out on a quest to reverse the spell, alongside her pet hamster, who has just body-swapped with John Lithgow’s fussy court attendant. (Keep up.) Along the way she partakes in a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1982 | 15 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT A svelte young Bill Paxton and embalming tool kills are the main draws of this clumsily scripted slasher. Despite a poster suggesting a “buried alive” theme, it centres on a woman who suspects her dad’s drowning was murder, stalked by a hooded figure. Freighted with red herrings sure to make you feel cheated, it’s a nonsensical affair, whose writer doesn’t seem to grasp what a séance is (not a bunch of folk prancing about in robes). + Extras Commentary; composer interview; trailer; booklet.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 450 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Haruki Murakami ▶ Publisher Harvill Secker It’s an annual event, at this point. Nobel Prize season rolls round, and with it come the articles pondering whether this will finally be Haruki Murakami’s year. He’s been there or thereabouts on the bookies’ list of favourites for well over a decade. But while 2024 has left him un-crowned yet again, it’s arguably gone one better, by bringing us his fifteenth novel published in English translation. The City And Its Uncertain Walls sees Murakami revisiting an idea from much earlier in his career. Unsatisfied with the original version – a novella published in a magazine in 1980 – he reworked it five years later as the brilliant Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of…

▶ RELEASED 12 DECEMBER 384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Makana Yamamoto ▶ Publisher Gollancz According to the author’s acknowledgements, Hammajang Luck’s provisional title was Heist Lesbians, which, if you add in “sci-fi”, pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this book. It’s a tongue-in-cheek, fast-paced crime caper of the future starring an all-female team of felons from various points on the LGBTQ spectrum. It’s also a whole heap of fun. When Edie is unexpectedly given parole after eight years in prison, she returns to her home space station Keplar determined to go straight. But a former partner in crime – the same one who betrayed her and got her sent to jail – is putting together a new crew for an audacious new heist, and since…

Reviews ▶ RELEASED 2 JANUARY 480 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author SF Williamson ▶ Publisher Harper Fire One can’t help but wonder what master codebreaker Alan Turing would make of this book’s tagline: “Welcome to Bletchley Park… with dragons.” While he saved wartime Britain by helping to crack the Enigma code, this team are trying to decipher the echolocation calls used by dragons. It’s 1923 and we’re in Britannia, a country straining under an unfair class system and a shaky peace agreement between humans and dragons. After her parents are arrested, Vivien Featherswallow is blackmailed into working for the Prime Minister to crack dragons’ calls – this will, apparently, help to quash an uprising, but the truth is rather more sinister. It’s a cracking idea (pardon the pun) and SF…

▶ RELEASED 12 DECEMBER 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Alina Bellchambers ▶ Publisher Hodderscape It’s never a good sign when you’re halfway through a novel and realise that you’ve forgotten which character POV you’re reading. It’s definitely not a good sign when it’s the hundredth time it’s happened… The Order Of Masks centres on two women who really shouldn’t be interchangeable. Mira is a circus performer so determined to make something of herself that she volunteers for a series of athletic and magical trials. Then there’s Scarlett, a princess trying to survive amid a deadly, scheming court. While each chapter begins with their names, their voices sound so similar that sometimes you need to check who the character is talking to, in order to figure out who they are.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW!  224 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author You Yeong-Gwang ▶ Publisher Penguin The spirit of Studio Ghibli is strong with this one. On every page is a moment that could have leapt from a Hayao Miyazaki movie – from its heroine’s determination (think Chihiro and her furrowed brow from Spirited Away) to the cat who accompanies her, a feline who’s half Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service and half Totoro Catbus. Translated from Korean, the book tells the story of Serin: a schoolgirl navigating a tough, poverty-stricken life (yes, there are shades of Parasite, although younger readers will miss that reference). But then Serin is given a golden ticket to visit the elusive Rainfall Market, inhabited by magical creatures who steal human emotions. In return, selected visitors get…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Jonathan Hickman ▶ Artist Greg Capullo ISSUES 1-3 It sometimes feels like superhero comics just can’t stop celebrating anniversaries. The latest example marks the fact that it’s five decades since everyone’s favourite grumpy Canadian killing machine arrived. This five-issue miniseries brings a heavyweight creative team together for a tale of adamantiumenhanced vengeance, but with Jonathan Hickman on script duties the set-up inevitably isn’t as simplistic as the no-nonsense title would suggest. Revenge is an out-of-continuity story, in which Magneto’s death unleashes an electromagnetic pulse that brings the world’s technology to a standstill. Wolverine joins a mission to solve this problem, but a group of enemy mutants turn it into a massacre, and he’s the only survivor. The rest of the…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on Xbox Series X ▶ Also on PS5, PS4, PC ▶ Publisher Bokeh Game Studio VIDEOGAME Set in an overcrowded city besieged by brain-sucking monstrosities, Slitterhead is a grisly body horror romp with lashings of ’90s noir kitsch, dynamic third-person action and thoughtful philosophical musings – all topped with a sprinkle of old-school jank. Bokeh Game Studio’s debut introduces us to a wandering spirit known as a Hyoki. Piecing together fragments of its broken memory amid the neon-lit bustle of Kowlong, a singular purpose guides it to destroy all Slitterheads: monsters hiding in plain sight, capable of shedding their human bodies to reveal a grotesque insectoid form. However, the Hyoki soon learns that its greatest weapon – the people of Kowlong – comes at…

Stan Lee reputedly hated Night Raven, but for me it was love at first sight. Marvel’s most unknowable hero debuted in the UK’s Hulk Comic in March 1979, part of editor Dez Skinn’s bid to shift from American reprints to homegrown talent. Written by Steve Parkhouse and drawn by David Lloyd, the strip took its cue from a time before superheroes, the age of such vigilantes as the Spider and the Shadow, whose lurid, bullet-studded exploits thundered through the pages of pulp magazines in the 1930s. Mystery men, they were called, and this guy’s the most mysterious of all. Night Raven is a riddle wrapped in a raincoat beneath a fedora. His mask is impenetrable; bird-like but also just a little alien. Crucially, we never see the face behind its…

WHEN JAMES GUNN and Peter Safran announced they were relaunching DC’s cinematic universe, everyone had questions, and in the two years since then, Gunn – director of The Suicide Squad and the Peacemaker spin-off – has spent a great deal of time offering answers. Yet one thing still baffles many people: why launch this brand new take on the DC universe with Creature Commandos, an animated series about a group of literal monsters brought together to save the day? The answer, it turns out, is simple happenstance. “James wrote the whole season before he was the president of DC,” Dean Lorey, who serves as executive producer, tells Red Alert. “He didn’t go into it saying, ‘This is going to be the premiere show for my DC Universe’. He was writing…

IF THE PLANET WAS IN PERIL, there are heroic teams you could rely on to save the day: the Fantastic Four, for example, or maybe the Secret Six. The G7, however… well, they’d be about as much use as the Famous Five. Set during the latest gathering for leaders of the major industrialised democracies at a country estate, Rumours centres on the heads of state of ​Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the USA. Fruitlessly striving, throughout a working lunch, to formulate a generic statement on a global crisis, it slowly dawns on them that they’re in the midst of a more localised one. Their entourages have mysteriously vanished. Encountering reanimated bog bodies, they set out through the woods to find help – in the process stumbling upon…

BY ALL ACCOUNTS there was much of Jeri Taylor in a certain starship captain. “She wanted Kathryn Janeway to be a significant part of her legacy,” said Kate Mulgrew, who brought the character to the screen in Star Trek: Voyager, “and I think there is no doubt that in that endeavour she succeeded.” The writer and showrunner even gave Janeway her own birthplace: Bloomington, Indiana. Graduating in English from Indiana University, Taylor ran an acting workshop in Los Angeles and directed local theatre before launching a career as a TV scriptwriter in the late 1970s. With genre credits on The Incredible Hulk, SF comedy Salvage One and The Secret Empire, she also served as producer on Quincy, ME and Jake And The Fatman. Taylor entered the 24th century on the…

“Orlok’s dialogue is almost funny to me sometimes, because it’s so idiosyncratic” How did you find the right voice for Orlok? Robert [Eggers] wanted it as deep as possible. We were looking at chain-smoking Bulgarian actors, stuff like that – or Ralph Ineson, who’s in the movie, which is pretty much as low as the voice can humanly go! I didn’t want it to feel contrived. I wanted it to feel otherworldly and fucked up and unsettling. Robert writes beautiful descriptions. As an actor, you feel very fortunate working with such a script, because it’s almost like working off a novel. You have these descriptions that are so visceral: the pained, laboured breath of Orlok. Even with speaking, there’s an element of pain in it – it almost hurts him…

One of Stanfield’s stand-out memories is filming Kay’s first encounter with Patrick Troughton’s peculiar Punch and Judy man Cole Hawlings at Bewdley Station, Worcestershire. “I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve been face-to-face, on camera, in a scene with someone truly good,” he says. “You can tell that my reactions are – well you can’t, but if you think I’m acting, I’m not. Those are my natural reactions because he was mesmeric and powerful, and being that close to him, being able to smell his breath and see his eyes – there was almost like a heat coming off him. “When he switched on, the intensity of his voice, you were like, ‘Oh shit! This is real acting; this is somebody actually embodying a character and I’m…

TWO SUITABLY HAUNTING occasions mark the arrival of SFX on the set for A Ghost Story For Christmas 2024. One, it’s the week of Halloween and two, it’s writer/director, and to all intents and purposes showrunner, Mark Gatiss’s birthday. “It’s great, because I generally tend to do it around my birthday, and so I actually remember them vaguely, as opposed to them just drifting into nothingness,” Gatiss grins. We’re a short train journey from London, in sprawling country grounds that contain a perfectly spooky church and a cottage that wouldn’t look out of place in Hocus Pocus. Standing outside the cottage – it only being large enough for the smallest of crews inside – we watch on monitors as Éanna Hardwicke (Jack) and Phoebe Horn (Laura), both in Victorian attire,…

“That was, I think, the first day of filming. Fabricating this image that is meant to be completely horrific, and this person’s worst nightmare, but you’ve got to find it in, well, like 30 seconds. I didn’t know it was happening and then all of a sudden, Mark’s like, ‘Okay, are you ready to go? Action!’ “I’m sat in this rocking chair still giddy at the fact that I’m even on the set. Because I’m just like, ‘Wow, this is amazing!’ So I’m so happy. I’m so gleeful. Then, like, 10 seconds, it’s got to all go. “It was much easier at the end, on Friday, because the guys who played the knights – amazing, amazing guys, one of which was in [stage play] The Motive And The Cue as…

▶ RELEASED 6 DECEMBER 12 | 98 minutes ▶ Director Marielle Heller ▶ Cast Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Zoë Chao, Mary Holland Having a baby is hard. There are late nights, nappies, messes to be cleaned up, repetitive domestic tasks to be endured… and also films about the experience that seem to believe they are the first piece of art to have noticed how hard it is. Nightbitch is one of these films, filled with tired clichés and montages of women struggling with weaning and missing their once high-flying careers while their husbands are oblivious to their hardships. Marielle Heller’s movie does have one ace card up its sleeve: her protagonist, played by Amy Adams, is also convinced that she’s turning into a dog, and is growing fur and extra…

▶ RELEASED 13 DECEMBER 15 | 118 minutes ▶ Director Timm Kröger ▶ Cast Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross, Hanns Zischler, Gottfried Breitfuss This enigmatic Germanlanguage thriller is unlike anything you’re likely to have seen in a cinema over the last few decades. It’s 1962 and Johannes Leinert (Jan Bülow) is a promising young physicist who attends a conference in the Swiss Alps. He has some intriguing theories about the nature of the universe – or perhaps multiverse. Soon, however, he finds himself tangled up in a mystery involving a beautiful woman, a series of strange deaths, and something dangerous within the heart of the mountains. Timm Kröger’s film has a striking aesthetic, somewhere between a classic Hollywood romance and a Hitchcockian nightmare. Barring a colourful prologue, it’s shot entirely in…

UK/US: Disney+, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Jac Schaeffer ▶ Cast Kathryn Hahn, Joe Locke, Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn EPISODES 1.01-1.09 As any keyboard warrior will tell you, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been rubbish since Endgame, it’s running scared of all that diversity nonsense since Marvels nosedived, and now it just pumps out formula guff. Ahem: Agatha All Along would like a word. The MCU’s latest TV series stars a bunch of middle- to old-age women and a gay teen, in a story that starts as a Mare Of Easttown pastiche before becoming a blend of Hellraiser, The Wizard Of Oz and Witches Got Talent. The result is all kinds of fantastic – definitely the most gloriously insane MCU series since the one that spawned it, courtesy of…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1995 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Rachel Talalay ▶ Cast Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Malcolm McDowell, Ice-T BLU-RAY DEBUT Supplying the cover star of SFX issue one way back in 1995, Doctor Who director Rachel Talalay’s adaptation of the Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett comic was tinkered with by the studio and bombed at the time, but has picked up a robust cult following in the decades since. Lori Petty’s take on the character is an explosion of anarchic fun – it’s hard to imagine Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn without Petty’s Rebecca Buck first. The plot (Tank Girl sets out to take down Malcolm McDowell’s water-hoarding despot Kesslee) is a load of kangaroo balls, but that’s okay, as the comics rarely had plots anyway. It’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1975 | 15 | 4K/Blu-ray/DVD A busload of American tourists in Barcelona are stalked by a maniac who extracts eyeballs in this giallo/slasher hybrid from Umberto Lenzi. Why they don’t all simply fly home after the second murder is the biggest mystery. Expect soapy character dynamics, dramatic zooms, and plenty of gratuitous boobs. You have zero chance of guessing the killer, but the reveal is so shamelessly ludicrous that it guarantees a guffaw. + Extras Three commentaries; two interviews; visual essay; locations visit; more.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ 1998 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Ataru Oikawa ▶ Cast Mami Nakamura, Miho Kanno, Yoriko Douguchi, Tomorowo Taguchi BLU-RAY DEBUT Inspired by Junji Ito’s debut manga from 1987, this film adaptation is probably not what you’d expect given Ito’s propensity for eye-popping Lovecraftian body horror. It may make better sense to call it a sequel, as it’s all about the aftermath. Mami Nakamura is 20-year-old Tsukiko, who’s struggling to recover memories of what turns out to be the bloody chaos unleashed by classmate Tomie (Miho Kanno). This young beauty has seductive powers which drive all the men around her to acts of brutal violence – including her own destruction. No biggie, as she can regrow herself from a decapitated head… Very low-key compared to…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ 1954 | 12 | 4K/Blu-ray ▶ Director Ishirō Honda ▶ Cast Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura As Godzilla’s 70th anniversary celebrations continue, here’s another chance to toast the health of the grouchy septuagenarian whose debut spawned a genre. You surely know the set-up: H-bomb tests release a towering Cretaceous-era creature, which proceeds to sink shipping and stomp a path through Tokyo. Godzilla’s chubby-thighed sumo waddle is oddly endearing, and his appeal to kiddywinks led to him being softened for later entries. But here’s he’s an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction – an orphan-maker. And the series’ subtext – the threat of atomic annihilation – is very to the fore. Not only did nukes unleash Godzilla, but the only means of defeating him…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 326 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Steve Aylett ▶ Publisher Snowbooks Summing up The Book Lovers is like trying to describe a spaceship to a badger via the medium of mime. You can communicate broad strokes, but key elements will inevitably be lost in translation. That’s because some books are meant to be read. On paper, the story seems relatively simple. A princess with a penchant for rare and strange books is kidnapped, and a policewoman strays into a steampunk underworld to save her. But this is the work of Steve Aylett, not Neil Gaiman, and what sounds like a mythic exploration of storytelling is actually an unbroken string of one-liners so baffling that even Alan Moore (whose quote features on the front) sounds like he was…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Ruth Frances Long ▶ Publisher Hodderscape Political and religious power struggles provide the backdrop to the first volume in Ruth Frances Long’s Feral Gods trilogy. The setting, a city called Amberes, is modelled on sixteenth century Antwerp. When Lyta’s brother, a printer called Kit, is charged with sedition, she offers to earn his pardon by stealing a rare tome for King Francisco. Unfortunately, the desired book is in the possession of the powerful Duchess Of Montalbeau, whose castle is rife with deadly enchanted traps, even as Lyta’s quest forces her to confront her old lover, now royal bodyguard, Sylvian. Long builds her world with care and detail while celebrating the power of the printed word through the idea of a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 188 pages | Hardback/ebook/ ▶ Author Abi Falase ▶ Publisher Gollancz Forgive the spoiler, but the latest Fifteenth Doctor novel involves a malignant force which feeds off negativity, while causing some people to bury the pain of past events, and others to simply not care about them. Its name? Empire. Talk about on the nose… Don’t worry, we’re not about to launch into a Laurence Fox-style rant. Colonialism has been an appropriate subject for Doctor Who for decades – as Jon Pertwee adventure “The Mutants” proved. The real problem with Eden Rebellion is not its theme, but that reading it is such a tiresome trudge. It’s set on the planet Yewa, where the Gardens of Kubuntu are home to a luxury resort. Abi Falase’s descriptions of…

Reviews ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 176 pages | Hardback ▶ Author Matt Groening ▶ Publisher Abrams ComicArts Matt Groening clearly learnt his lesson from The Simpsons. Whereas his rough, last-minute sketches of the Springfield family were directly translated to the screen by animators for their debut on The Tracey Ullman Show, his next series Futurama benefited from years of preparation. Coinciding with the show’s 25th anniversary, The Art Of Futurama draws on the vast archive of sketches, concept art and developmental work that defined the look of the year 3000. With the help of showrunner David X Cohen and producer Claudia Katz, Groening reveals how they brought to life everything from New New York to gadgets, vehicles and, of course, gyrating robot strippers. There are dozens of drafts of the…

▶ RELEASED 3 DECEMBER ▶ Publisher Titan Comics ▶ Writers Jamie Hewlett, Mat Wakeham ▶ Artist Jamie Hewlett COLLECTION This is a strange book, and one that perhaps requires a bit of a history lesson. Jamie Hewlett is best known as the artist behind anarchic ’90s hero Tank Girl and cartoon pop band Gorillaz. In between those two projects he cocreated (with Mat Wakeham) Get The Freebies – a peculiar, hilarious comic that ran for 12 episodes in style magazine The Face. The strip, about the adventures of acerbic Whitey Action and kung-fu hero Terry Phoo, was a deranged mix of superspy antics and of-the-time pop culture references (one notable story arc is titled “Fantastic Voyage To The Centre Of Steve Lamacq”). Afterwards, Hewlett and Wakeham started work on a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Rebellion ▶ Writers Chris Lowder, Frank S Pepper ▶ Artists José Muñoz, Eric Bradbury COLLECTION Another delve into the backpages of British boys’ comic Lion, this latest volume collects three obscure ’70s strips by Argentine artist José Muñoz. “I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him,” says writer Chris Lowder in his introduction; judging by the wildly inventive work on display, Muñoz – an inspiration to Frank Miller, no less – could have caught that sink and juggled it. Opener “Stitch In Time” finds local yob Stitch Cotton – “the toughest kid in Highhill New Town” – stealing the time machine of an interplanetary despot. With junior Spock-alike Varl at his side, Stitch takes on robots, dinosaurs and space pirates, even using his…

JEFF FOWLER WAS A BUDDING animator working for Blur Studio when he was tasked with developing the promotional cinematics for Shadow The Hedgehog, a game about Sonic’s black-haired foe. Little did Fowler know that some 20 years later he would be bringing Shadow to cinemas in Sonic The Hedgehog 3. “To think that I’m getting to do the big screen cinematic version,” Fowler tells Red Alert, “it’s crazy!” Fowler’s been responsible for Sonic’s cinematic escapades, having directed the first and second movies, as well as an episode of the spin-off series Knuckles. Each outing has been an improvement on the last, with Sonic going from a whip-smart outsider (voiced by Ben Schwartz) to a bona fide hero, defeating Doctor Robotnik (Jim Carrey) with the help of fox sidekick Tails and…

◆Big Finish has revealed cover art for a number of new releases. Gallifrey: Echoes Through Eternity is a collection of short stories released this month to celebrate 20 years of the Gallifrey series. ◆Out in December is The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Deadly Strangers, three new adventures starring Paul McGann. ◆Also starring Paul McGann, The Stuff of Legend – The Live Show is released in December across a number of limited edition packages including T-shirts and tote bags. ◆The Second Doctor faces a (sometimes) familiar enemy in Zygon Century: Infiltration, out in January. ◆Finally, The Companion Chronicles: Families sees further adventures for Susan, Vicki, Steven and Dodo in four new adventures due for release in April. ◆Ncuti Gatwa appeared on BBC’s Children In Need on Friday 15 November to introduce an…

KIDS IN FAR, FAR AWAY GALAXIES often have to grow up fast. Whether it’s Qui-Gon Jinn anointing Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One, or Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Luke he’s the galaxy’s last hope (no pressure), Star Wars tends to expect big things from its younglings. In Skeleton Crew – Lucasfilm’s latest Disney+ offering, and the first since The Acolyte’s cancellation – it’s the turn of four 10-year-olds from a backwater planet to take on the whole universe by themselves. And in this case they’re not so much taking their first steps into a larger world as making a full-on hyperspace jump into the unknown. “The pitch was always that it’s the story of four kids who get lost in the Star Wars galaxy and have to find their way back…

THE ROHIRRIM HAVE BEEN beaten back into Helm’s Deep’s keep by Saruman’s Uruk-hai. Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are trapped and Gandalf the White has yet to appear. All seems lost. But then, as day breaks, King Théodon readies his men for another charge. “The Horn of Helm Hammerhand will sound in the deep, one last time,” he tells them. Wait. Hold on a second. The Horn of Helm Who? For those who haven’t read The Lord Of The Rings’ lengthy appendices, Hammerhand is one of JRR Tolkien’s most famous (nontrilogy) Middle-earth characters. He was the ninth King of Rohan, having lived over 180 years before Frodo threw a ring into Mount Doom, and is best known for fighting off the wild Dunlendings with his bare hands. Now, Helm’s at the…

Nosferatu features several sequences involving the rats who accompany Orlok – sometimes in great swarms. And you know what they say about working with animals… “The animal trainers in Prague are amazing,” Eggers says. “We were working with Ota Bareš and his people. He’s the guy who trained the fox to say ‘Chaos reigns’ [in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist].” “Where there’s a more limited number of rats, the rats were trained – they did some stuff on cue, which was pretty spectacular. And when you have thousands of rats we had Plexiglas barricades set up. “But the biggest challenge is that the smell is horrific. I was ignorant of the fact that rats are incontinent, so they’re constantly pissing and shitting, like, all the time. And that goes for the…

NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979) A great admirer of Murnau (he’s described Nosferatu as “the greatest German film”), Werner Herzog cast Klaus Kinski as the Count (here called Dracula) for his haunting, bleakly beautiful homage – the first of five tempestuous collaborations between the pair. The director found the demands of the make-up acted as a “harness” on his splenetic star: “You see, if he threw a tantrum and beat the ground with his fists, the make-up would be ruined and he would be another four hours,” he later explained. Stream it: BFI Player VAMPIRE IN VENICE (1988) Six years after the Herzog movie’s release, Kinski was cast as the lead in a sequel (also known as Nosferatu In Venice), in which a séance causes the vampire to be awakened in…

“It was brilliant. That’s almost the 101 of acting, imagining a monster or dragon or a ghost or something, it’s sort of the furthest you can go with it. So it was really fun. It’s a really good challenge actually, just to go, ‘I’ve got to believe in ghosts for this one’. “But that’s what I love about Mark’s writing and these ghost stories, is when you’re in those situations, that question of, ‘Is it real? Can I trust my eyes?’ That’s just such an instinctively human question or predicament. It doesn’t really matter what the answer is. “It doesn’t matter if the ghosts are real or they’re in our head, or we create them, or there’s just something we don’t understand… it doesn’t really matter what the answer is.…

▶ RELEASED 6 DECEMBER 15 | 104 minutes ▶ Directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson ▶ Cast Cate Blanchett, Roy Dupuis, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Charles Dance Set against Guy Maddin’s previous work, much of it inspired by silent cinema, shot on Super 8, or best suited to galleries, Rumours looks rather straight. It stars people you’ve heard of, and has a more Odeon-friendly sheen. Yet it remains one of 2024’s most downright peculiar movies. After summit staff disappear, the G7 leaders are left alone in the grounds of a chateau, stumbling upon reanimated bog bodies and, inexplicably, a gigantic brain. You could call it a satirical apocalypse, but we’re not in Don’t Look Up territory here. While sport is had with the hollow banality of political language, Rumours is more…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW!  12A | 123 minutes ▶ Director Jake Kasdan ▶ Cast Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, JK Simmons Given that the shelves of stores have been groaning with festive wares for months, it’s perhaps not surprising that this Christmas fantasy made its debut in early November. If Jumanji’s Jake Kasdan had hoped to get a jump on Yuletide bonhomie, though, he should have assembled something sturdier than this jarring kedgeree of action, sentiment and ugly CG. When Santa Claus (a buff JK Simmons) is abducted two days before Christmas Eve, it’s left to his head of security Callum (Dwayne Johnson) to track him down with the help of snarky computer hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans). The culprit is soon identified as an evil witch (Kiernan Shipka)…

▶ UK Netflix, streaming now ▶ US Prime Video, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Craig Silverstein ▶ Cast Katie Chang, Paul Dano, Aaron Eckhart, Daniel Dae Kim EPISODES 1.01-1.08 Makingavery belated arrival here after its 2022 premiere Stateside, this AMC Studios animation is a tale of transhumanism and the quest for immortality. The story begins with teenager Maddie receiving anonymous online messages which appear to be from her father, whom she believed dead. Simultaneously, rival tech companies are in a race to perfect Uploaded Intelligence, whereby memories and personalities are stripped from a living brain and transformed into a disembodied digital presence preserved online. Like a ghost in the shell, if you will. Though Pantheon was based on a series of short stories by Ken Liu, it’s impossible not to compare…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW!  1984 | PG | Blu-ray ▶ Director Renny Rye ▶ Cast Devin Stanfield, Patrick Troughton, Robert Stephens BLU-RAY DEBUT The televisual equivalent of mince pies and mulled wine, this six-part take on John Masefield’s children’s novel is still, for many, a regular fixture of the advent countdown. Set at Christmas 1934, it follows young Kay (Devin Stanfield), who after meeting a mysterious Punch and Judy man (Patrick Troughton) is entrusted with a magical box that can shrink you Borrowersstyle, or send you flying at high speed – a device coveted by the sinister Abner Brown (Robert Stephens). Plot-wise, it’s a run-around: a series of “scrobblings”, as Abner’s henchmen snatch locals via their flying car, interspersed with dreamlike flights of fancy. And the serial’s blend of video…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | N/A | SVOD SHUDDER Set largely in the titular vehicle, after a cabbie kidnaps a dysfunctional couple, this economical horror puts a dark twist on the “cuddly bear” persona of Nick Frost, whose slippages from jovial bantz into psychopathic menace impress. This bear could rip you apart. Presenting initially as a taut serial killer thriller, it stumbles when integrating a supernatural dimension involving a ghostly hitcher. The cabbie’s motivation, once revealed, makes little sense, and the full circle ending is a head-scratcher.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 12 | Download There’s a distinct whiff of wannabe Amblin in this lightweight horror, in which a group of BMX-riding kids investigate a witchy presence in the woods of Martha’s Harbour. For once it’s the ’90s rather than the ’80s, but the Stranger Things vibe is clear. It’s an amiable, undemanding watch, big on overfamiliar tropes and short on genuinely memorable thrills, not to mention monsters. Mel Gibson provides some weathered star power as a reclusive former cop with secrets of his own.…

There’s a deluge of recent movies hitting shiny disc. Set in between the first two films, Fede Alvarez’s ALIEN: ROMULUS (out now, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD) sees young colonists scavenging a drifting space station to escape their dreary existence. Bad move. We said: “As Alien movies go, Romulus has an aboveaverage intelligence, and a surprisingly big heart.” Extras comprise a 25-minute Making Of, deleted scenes, a scene breakdown, and a chat between Alvarez and Ridley Scott. Michael Keaton’s “bio-exorcist” makes an extremely belated return in BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (out now, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD) – and he’s still obsessed with Winona Ryder’s Lydia, who’s called back to her hometown for her father’s funeral. We said: “A riot of outlandish jokes, grisly effects and wildly competing plot threads.” Extras: commentary by Tim Burton, a Making Of (27 minutes),…

Reviews ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 541 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Mary E Pearson ▶ Publisher Bramble This romantic fantasy is the first in a new series, and the first adult book by Mary E Pearson, who has won awards for her YA novels. The “Courting” of the title is of course a word with several different meanings. The first, referenced early on in this book, is an attempt to win the support or help of another, as the people of Elphame try to persuade the 21-year-old Bristol to train with them and see if she’s inherited a “bloodmark” that will allow her to close magical portals. Bristol is quite sure she doesn’t have any powers, but is determined to try to improve her family’s fortunes and support her sisters…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 382 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Yaroslav Barsukov ▶ b Publisher Caezik SF & Fantasy There’s no lack of ambition in Yaroslav Barsukov’s debut novel, which explores ideas about perception and the nature of reality. After refusing to order his troops to gas protestors during a riot, Lord Shea Ashcroft is dispatched to a remote border town to oversee the construction of a colossal defensive tower, designed to shoot down aircraft from the neighbouring nation of Dumia. But Ashcroft discovers that the technology behind the project is dangerously unstable, and that the refugees known as the Drakiri believe the tower’s completion will precipitate the apocalypse. There’s a great deal to digest in Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory. At the outset, the story deals with espionage and…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 288 pages | Paperback ▶ Author Johanna Sinisalo ▶ Publisher Pushkin Press We’re not talking internet trolls here. Nope, they’re very much the trolls of legend: lurking in the dark forests of Finland, living alongside but out of the reach of humans, and only rarely caught on camera. Rarely, that is, until graphic designer Mikael comes along. Returning home to his apartment after a disastrous date, he disturbs a group of teenagers abusing a strangelooking animal. Taking pity on the cub, he brings it inside and nurses him back to health. The more time he spends with “Pessi”, the more attached he becomes, even photographing him for a new ad campaign he’s working on – though he has to lie to hot ad director Martes about…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Melissa Caruso ▶ Publisher Orbit Have you ever felt like a party was just going on forever? That’s a real issue for “Hound” Kembral Thorne in this fantasy novel set over a single evening – but one that keeps resetting, again and again. Kembral is still on leave with her two-month-old baby when she accepts a single night out at a party filled with the great and the good of Acantis. Suddenly there is chaos and death all around her, but then the clock chimes, the room changes and everyone is alive again. Kembral is the only one who seems to remember what happened. As the evening goes on, resetting again and again, she realises they’re descending through layers of…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writers Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing ▶ Artist Francesco Mortarino ISSUES 1-4 The From The Ashes era of the X-Men is in full swing, with Marvel’s mutant comics exploring the aftermath of the fall of island nation Krakoa. NYX (think “New York X”) isn’t a traditional X-Men book as such, but it does centre on a group of mutants as they struggle with rebuilding their lives in a world that has proved even more hostile to their existence than they could have previously suspected. The big name here is Ms Marvel, now officially a mutant following her resurrection, and studying at Empire State University. The Laura Kinney Wolverine is lurking in the shadows, while also along for the ride are mutant Prodigy (now…