The cinema ticket price that fell to Earth (it was the best title I could come up with, honest!)

If the burgeoning prices of cinema tickets is putting you off recently, and you’re in my vacinity (that’d be North-West England), then there are a couple of great examples of independent screenings of some old classics.

Nicolas Roeg’s beautiful but slightly bizarre 1975 sci-fi classic The Man who fell to Earth receives a screening in Manchester’s Northern Quarter next Friday, at the Methodist Hall, and tickets are (gasp) only three pounds! Particularly unmissable for any Bowie-philes such as myself.

http://manchesterwire.co.uk/#!/drift-pop-up-cinema-at-central-methodist-hall

Also, in Bolton, of all places, my old friends Francesca Platt and Tracy Hindley have set up the local Box-Office events; roughly monthly screenings of requested films. Bonnie and Clyde was their first screening two weeks ago, with the next film due to be shown next month (April 15th). Their details can be found on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/341731782607726/?ref=ts&fref=ts

The generation who had a new explanation. Remembering the decade I never knew…Destination Sixties.

I didn’t live through the 1960s; I wasn’t even born during that decade and yet that era has had such a big impact on me that I feel I should share some thoughts on the subject. Of course this is where I should define exactly what the subject is. One decade is a fairly big subject; and just what aspect of a ten year period am I considering and is it really ten years. Is it really so clear cut?

To be precise, I’m talking about the Sixties as a creative influence, a constant reference for what has come afterwards in the Arts. It’s an odd thing, since nobody ever taught me that there was something ‘special’ about the 1960s in the context of the 20^th century, although that would appear to be the latter day suggestion- I kind of taught myself that truth. If indeed it is one. Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s involved lots of good cultural reference points for one to reminisce about in later yeas, but the ‘70s seemed grimmer and more about ‘making do’. Like the morning after a great party. Or is that just the way I chose to see it?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Ok, major comic strip geek-out entry here! Deep breaths all round!

Just finished reading the second volume of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume Century: 1969 (the middle part of the Century serial following 1910 and pre-empting 2009). For those not in the know (or only familiar with the 2003 film starring Sean Connery, which adds up to the same thing) let me explain. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a graphic novel series charting the exploits of a secret service group of adventurers, or in Moore’s words, a kind of “Justice League of the Victorian age”.  Moore has been a bit of a legend on the comic writing circuit for many years now, being the man behind the likes of Watchmen, The Dark Knight returns and V for Vendetta to name but three titles. Neill I knew from way back from his impressive work on 2000AD (I think Nemesis the Warlock was one of his strips).

The Dracula Movies #10: ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ (Francis Ford Copolla, 1992)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Copolla, 1992)

For those that don’t know, I’m currently nearing the end of my Masters in Film and Literature, and my final thesis is concerned with the sanitization (‘defanging’ if you will) of the vampire in modern media; how and why the vampire has become a romantic icon rather than a symbol of the uncanny; what Freud described as unhiemlich. One of my core ‘texts’ for the project is Francis Ford Copolla’s 1992 film version of Dracula, which I’m presenting here as the latest of the on-going Dracula film reviews. However, as I’m so immersed in critically embracing it, it’s actually quite difficult to offer as generalised a review as I might have done with the others. With that in mind, I’ll probably have even more to say about this film at some point in the near future. In the meantime, however, I’ve already decided that its one of my favourite versions.