Feature Category: Interviews

The highly prolific Jonathan Green is responsible for projects as diverse as the shark-themed anthology Sharkpunk to the Fighting Fantasy retrospective, You Are The Hero. With books from Moshi Monsters tie-ins to steampunk super heroes, Jonathan’s work is always worth a look. We caught up with him to find out more about his latest project, Alice’s Nightmare In Wonderland.

STARBURST: What is Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland?
Jonathan Green: Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland is a sequel to Lewis Carroll’s original Alice stories but told in the form of a gamebook, and with a dark steampunk twist.

A gamebook? A bit eighties, isn’t it?
Yes it is, but despite the hey-day of the gamebook being the 1980s, it is a form of literature that has never gone away. And those original gamebook fans from the ’80s are now adults with a passion to indulge the hobbies that they once enjoyed back when life wasn’t so complicated.

Why do you think we keep playing games?
Playing games is how we test ourselves, how we discover we might react or cope in certain situations. Playing games is how children learn about risk as well as how the fit with others in a social context. It’s no different from adults, and playing games with someone tells you a lot about their attitudes towards life in general and their own social values.

Why do are we still fascinated with Alice?
Because despite being 150 years old, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is like any dream we have all had at one stage or another. That essential human experience hasn’t changed, even if the means through which we share it has. Alice, like so many classics of literature, is essentially timeless.

How is this version different from other Alice inspired works?
It’s a gamebook for a start, and it riffs off Carroll’s other published works, not just the Alice stories. And it’s my own dark steampunk take on the classic, which readers of my Pax Britannia novels know and love.

Why have you gone to Kickstarter?
For books, Kickstarter is a great way of finding a niche market and then targeting that market directly to effectively place pre-orders for a work. If the Kickstarter goes well the book can then have a life beyond the initial Kickstarter, as happened with my previous Kickstarted book, You Are The Hero – A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.

To find out more about Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland, go to the Kickstarter here.

Genre on UK TV has had a boost over the past few years, thanks to satellite and cable stations, so STARBURST spoke to HORROR CHANNEL manager STEWART BRIDLE about life on the blood-drenched front line of the second most-watched movie channel and the fastest-growing channel in the UK…

The Horror Channel, formed in 2004, was rebranded as Zone Horror in 2006 before finally becoming simply Horror Channel in 2010 as part of the CBS partnership portfolio in the UK. Available on Freeview since March 2015, it now has a monthly reach of 5.3 million viewers; its profile has been raised enormously in recently by its acquisition of a run of classic Doctor Who episodes (backed by an award-winning promotional campaign), and themed film seasons of the works of visionaries such as David Lynch and Lucio Fulci.

STARBURST: Presumably it’s pretty much a given that the manager of Horror Channel is going to be a self-confessed geek?

Stewart Bridle: Well, it wasn’t quite so cool to be a geek when I was younger, but it’s nice to be able to ‘come out of the closet’ these days! All the stuff I watched and enjoyed as a kid was a great grounding for what I do now. I was a big superhero comic book reader, so I’m loving these days when you get to see it all up on the big screen; just going to see something like Avengers is my eight-year-old brain up on the screen. These are great times to live in; technology and culture have finally caught up with stuff that we were enjoying in secret. Good times.

Is it essential that you know your way around the genre in your job?

Definitely, you’ve got to know what’s out there; the new stuff that’s coming along, and the history of the genre as well. There’s such a wide range of horror material in various subgenres because when you’re choosing movies from lists sent by distributors some of them are not so obvious – not many films have ‘terror’ or ‘horror’ in the title so anyone who’s not well-versed might miss some great titles. So it helps when you can see a title on the list and think, ‘Yeah, that’s definitely going to work, that’s one I want.’ Then you need to know how to piece those movies together if you’re planning seasons and stunts, and it helps if you’ve seen them and enjoyed them.

So what would be a fairly typical ‘day in the life’ of the Channel Manager of Horror Channel?

On an average day, I could be screening new material which has been sent in to us or maybe there’s some new stuff I haven’t seen which I’m checking out – basically it’s great fun getting paid to watch a lot of movies! I can be working on the strategy for the channel for the next few months, designing how we’re going to use those movies and how we’re going to use our series, planning the night’s movies across a month or so, having meetings with other departments such as promotions and on-air, and just overseeing and making sure they’re all on board with what we’re doing, and creating the promos and other on-air elements. We’ve got a fair-sized team. The company looks after a number of other channels as well, but Horror’s always the fun one that everyone wants to work on because they really get to let loose some of their creative juices in the on-air promo department. We’ve got some very talented people here, everyone’s on board with what we’re doing and wants to create the best channel we can and make it look great. There’s a lot of love for Horror Channel here.

Can you tell us more about the actual process of acquiring titles – and if you’ve got your own personal ‘wish list’?

Basically, whenever you’re searching for product there’s a number of distributors, independent distributors and studios who have horror material and other films on their books. I get a list from them of what’s available, I go through and pick the titles – some of them I’ve seen and know, some I haven’t seen, so I get DVDs and online screeners to have a look at and I make my selection and then the acquisitions department will negotiate to acquire those titles. There’s always a number of titles I really want to see on the channel, but we’re one movie channel amongst many and obviously everyone’s always trying to get material for their channel so you’re always up against other channels and bigger channels. The bigger titles are often taken, which is unfortunate, but sometimes we win and get some great titles. I’m a John Carpenter fan, so for me the Holy Grail would be to get The Thing on the channel; it’s one of my all-time favourites and I’d love to get it! I watch out for it and hope it’ll become available for us eventually, but I’d love to get other Carpenter stuff like Prince of Darkness, They Live and The Fog so we could run a Carpenter season and maybe that’ll happen. They’re popular titles so if another channel picks them up before us they’re out of bounds, but sometimes these things appear and we make a play for them. The original Dawn of the Dead is another one I’d love to be able to get. But what we like to do which a lot of the other channels don’t is to pick up some of the smaller independent stuff because there are some great titles out there which you won’t see anywhere else. We can get some really great UK TV premieres; we’ve just had the zombie movies The Dead and Savaged, which did well for us recently, and The Day which is an apocalyptic thriller. It’s about giving movies like that the opportunity to reach a larger audience because some of them are fantastic and they really need to be seen and you’re not going to see them on any other channel. We put them out there in prime time and give them as much exposure as we can and that’s great for us.

So are you keen to support up-and-coming talent as well as promoting and screening lesser-known titles?

Absolutely, it’s about trying to be slightly different from the other channels out there, bringing something new and supporting up-and-coming film-makers. We’ve been involved for the last two years in the Short Cuts to Hell competition, finding brand new filmmakers and giving them their start. Hubert’s Ghost, a movie which won last year, is about to go into production, co-funded by us and it’s got a great new team behind it. One of the priorities for the channel is to find and support new horror talent. Hopefully, that’s the sort of thing we can move into more in the future. But it’s really making sure that the genre in the UK thrives and survives, and it’s fantastic if we’re in a position to be a part of that.

Do you suspect that perhaps the channel still isn’t taken seriously because of the reputation of its prior incarnations?

Well the channel’s been around for ten years and it started as a very niche channel showing some low-end straight-to-DVD stuff, and it’s taken a while for us to turn the channel around because we were probably seen as a very niche, down-the-bottom-end of the cable/satellite EPG kind of thing. But over the last five or six years, we’ve begun to change that perception with our seasons devoted to the likes of Dario Argento and David Cronenberg; we’ve shown that we know our stuff and we take it very seriously. But doing that kind of activity and showing those kinds of movies has recently turned things around. That was already underway when I came on board, so we were just continuing to hold that torch and make sure the channel continues to be entertaining above all, but also to have a wide breadth of material, to continue with seasoned programming, having some fun seasons and some seasons to show what we’re really capable of, what we can really do and to hopefully be the authoritative voice.

Nabbing the rights to classic Doctor Who was a real coup last year, although in some ways the show seemed like a bit of an odd fit for Horror Channel…

We’d been looking at Doctor Who for some time just because we felt it connected with our core demographic audience. People say it’s a strange fit, but people had a lot of their earliest taste of horror with Doctor Who and that was the angle we were going for because some of those stories were quite terrifying when you’re eight years old, and even today you can sit and watch them and some of the storylines can give you goosebumps. I’m a huge fan myself so getting the opportunity to be around on the channel when we managed to reach an agreement with the BBC, and to be involved with choosing the stories and putting together the award-winning promotional campaign was so exciting. Just that series alone brought us to a whole new audience who probably wouldn’t have checked us out before and now we’re available on Freeview we’re attracting viewers who are able to watch those old stories so it’s been a great product for us.

How conscious are you of the British 9pm watershed in relation to the strength of the material you can show and is there anything you’ve felt was too strong even for Horror?

We’re not allowed to show ‘pure’ horror before 9pm, otherwise Ofcom would be very unhappy. The schedule is almost split in half with the daytime section – which is mainly series and daytime movies, and we use that for cult fantasy/sci-fi series, keeping it within the same genre areas – and post-9pm is where we can let rip with the true horror movies and give fans what they want. We make a point of not censoring our movies. We’ve shown things in the past such as Martyrs, which probably no other channel would touch; it’s  fantastic, and very gruelling to watch so we’re not afraid of going to those dark places!  There’s never really been a conversation where we’ve said ‘I don’t think we should show that’ because we have to be brave as a channel as long as we don’t come to blows with Ofcom over it and as long as we show it at an appropriate time of the evening. We’ve had some sexploitation stuff like Bare Behind Bars and Nude Nuns with Big Guns, and they’ve gone on to be some of the best-received product we’ve put out. I think the viewers understand that we’re prepared to be as brave as we can.

Do you ever worry about crossing that sometimes blurred line between horror and science fiction?

That’s a good point. We’ve had movies like Dune, which is very much a sci-fi movie but I think it’s also a cult piece, which an audience into horror would generally enjoy. It comes down to a gut feeling if we look at a movie and think, ‘Well, actually that’s pure science fiction’ – something like 2001 for example – because obviously we prefer anything we show to have a horror element. But I think the darkness in Dune’s production design qualifies it, and recently we’ve had The Arrival, which is another sci-fi action piece but we felt it was a good fit and it worked for us. Also Outlander, which is as much a monster movie as anything else. Our daytime schedule has a lot of sci-fi in it because it’s hard to find any horror material you can make work in daytime without cutting it to ribbons, which we don’t want to do. So our daytime schedule is made up of sci-fi and fantasy, but we’ve got a few horror movies in there, things like The Stepford Children, and a few Hammers which we can play during the day, but shows like Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk have been great successes for us because they’re the kind of series that really connect with our core audience; they remember them and want to watch them again and of course, all the old Star Treks have been great for us to have around.

As a predominantly-archive channel, how concerned are you by the rise of on-demand and streaming services where people can pick and choose what they watch and when without recourse to the traditional TV schedule?

Obviously the rise of streaming and VOD services is a concern for all broadcasters, but linear TV still very much has a place in people’s media consumption. There’s still a lot to be said for providing people with a curated schedule for entertainment, something that someone has chosen and presented to them specifically and a shared experience of watching the same as other people at the same time. The convenience of services like Netflix is great, but sometimes there’s just so much choice to wade through that it can be daunting and I like to feel that we take that away and give the viewer what we feel is something they could enjoy, whether that’s an old favourite or something new.

What can viewers look forward to in the next few months?

We’re still locking down our movies for the rest of the year but we’ve got some great UK TV premieres coming up including From The Dark . So there’s a mixture of everything there from new to mainstream to the back-end of the video nasty/VHS collection! A bit of everything for everyone!

Which seems to sum up the ethos of Horror Channel…

Exactly! We want to represent contemporary and classic subgenres after dark, and in the daytime to get as many of the great cult classic sci-fi fantasy shows as we can, but generally just to keep entertaining people whilst also flying the horror flag in the UK as best we can.

HORROR CHANNEL is available on SKY 319, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138 and TalkTalk 487.

Tony Giles and Scott Johannsson started The Damn Fine Podcast back in April of this year, and in the intervening months, the show’s gone from being two rather-knowledgeable friends chatting about film scores and vinyl to being that and so much more. Recent episodes have seen interviews with the likes of composers such as Craig Safan and Ben Salisbury, as well as a very excellent half-episode that focused on the Dies Irae and how it pops up repeatedly. We spoke with the hosts about the podcast for STARBURST’s OST column in issue 415.

STARBURST: How did you come to be enmeshed in the world of soundtracks?

Scott Johannsson: I’m a life-long soundtrack listener and fan, have been since I was an awkward teen. The first time my ears pricked up was the theme tune for Street Hawk, and especially Miami Vice – I recorded them both from the TV speaker. That led to me discovering who Tangerine Dream were, and the doors opened wide after that.

Tony Giles: I started through watching musicals with my grandmother – I’ve mentioned before on the podcast that it was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers where I first noticed the use of music in film. It was after seeing Tim Burton’s Batman that I became a dedicated soundtrack fan.

Why did you start the Damn Fine Podcast?

TG: I guess it was because I was intrigued at the idea of having a radio show, and I hadn’t yet heard a soundtrack-centric podcast like the one I had in mind. It was a case of following through with the idea and finding someone who could help realise it. That’s where Scott came in.

SJ: Yeah, Tony approached me after we became friendly through the Spin the Blackest Circles forum, which had quickly became a bit of an obsession with me. We seemed to have a lot of the same scores and composers in common.

One would think that there’d be way more soundtrack podcasts, but aside from El Diabolik and the Films on Wax cast, you seem to be it. What do you think the reason is?

TG: I still think that, as big as the soundtrack market is, it’s a niche within a niche. I feel like we’ve been very lucky to have gained the following we have in such a short amount of time.

SJ: Which, I think, speaks to the fact that the community is quite a tight-knit one, and is constantly looking for a place to share its passions and interests. 

Your focus on new releases and re-releases allows for a good mix of music new and old. Was that the intention from the start?

TG: 100%

SJ: I think we both agreed that what we’d like as a consumer is someone who does a bit of the filtering for you, since the market is pretty crowded. Even keeping up with new releases is daunting. 

I’m aware that Shipping Records is involved somehow in the Damn Fine Podcast, but what are the particulars?

TG: Well, I own Shipping Records! So in as much as I’m the host of the podcast, it was a no-brainer for SR to be the sponsor as I carry many of the releases that we discuss. 

While the show’s only just begun its third month, it’s seen some changes already. What made you decided to do these half episodes?

SJ: When Tony lined up our first in-studio guest, a fellow soundtrack freak, we realised that we also wanted to continue that by having a mix of full episodes with labels and music guests, but also mini episodes where we could simply chat with like-minded guys.

TG: That also led to us thinking of the half episodes as a space for delving into specific topics in more depth. The first of these, on Dies Irae in film music, seemed to go over really well and has definitely encouraged us to do more.

Given that you’ve already had a guest, and added special episodes, do you see branching out in other ways? 

SJ: For sure, there’s no stopping TG! I strongly suspect he has things up his sleeve that even I don’t know about. 

TG: The show has definitely exceeded my expectations already, and I’d really like to continue evolving the format in a way that would interest me as a soundtrack fan.

Will the focus of the Damn Fine Podcast always be vinyl related, or do you foresee more digital releases, as those become more and more prevalent?

TG: The focus of the show will always be primarily vinyl, but that’s not to say we won’t spotlight digital or tape releases which really excite us. For instance, Pentagram Home Video is a fantastic project that’s currently a series of tape releases, but we know that Death Waltz has plans to release material by them at some point.

SJ: I’m personally very keen for us to stay vinyl focused, because this isn’t a passing fad for me – I’ve collected and listened to records since I was a teen, nearly 30 years now, and it’s firmly my medium of choice. But I agree with Tony, it’s cool that we can use the podcast to also tell listeners about upcoming music which isn’t yet on vinyl.

The Damn Fine Podcast can be found via iTunes and on Soundcloud – Follow the podcast on Twitter.

Already a smash on the comedy circuit, we caught up with John Robertson to talk about his latest show, The Dark Room, which will appeal especially to gamers and fans of ‘choose your own adventure’ stories…

STARBURST:  How did you get started in comedy?

John Robertson: My best friend said it’d be a good career choice. She was right, there’s very little discipline and your mind’s free to go wherever it wants.

How would you describe your type of comedy to those unfamiliar with your work?

Loudly!

Your latest show, The Dark Room, is video game based, what can you tell us about that?

Well, first it was a YouTube game (four million hits, some death threats), now it’s a live-action 1980s text adventure. It’s been up to the Ed Fringe a few times, been staged at UK Gaming Expo, MCM Comic Con London, Dysprosium, EB Games Expo Sydney, Udderbelly… we’re going to Tokyo in November, that oughta be fun…

The way it works is the world’s been destroyed, so to survive, my crowd has to pass a simple test: escape… a dark room. The one thing stopping them is me… dressed as a floating head, screaming, “YOU AWAKE TO FIND YOURSELF IN A DARK ROOM!”

There’s a lot of the crowd chanting and picking options off a screen and winning appalling prizes. Kinda like a panto and a really good nightmare. Keeps growing and changing, too…

It’s pretty true to the spirit of text adventures, – especially since they were really just you in a room with a psychopathic dungeon master who loved grammar… and hated you. There’s also £1000 to be won if anyone makes it out alive. (Only two people have so far, thank God.)

Were you a fan of the Fighting Fantasy books growing up?

Yep. When I started doing Dark Room in Edinburgh back in 2012, Ian Livingstone actually showed up! I think he said something like, “Hello, I’m Ian Livingstone, I invented the thing you’re parodying.” Then he played and was excellent. Took me out for a cider afterwards… a tremendously kind man.

What were/are your top 5 favourite games?

5. Sonic 2 – best 2D platformer ever made
4. Dead Space – finally, an off-brand Aliens!
3. Star Trek 25th Anniversary Edition – Shatner’s abs look so good in pixel form
2. Metal Slug – don’t reveal your weird fetish for pixel art, idiot
1. Street Fighter III: Third Strike – oh, for Christ’s sake!


The Dark Room is at Gorilla, Manchester Friday July 24th, tickets:
http://www.thisisgorilla.com/event.php?id=778&d=2015-07-24
and at the Edinburgh Fringe: August 6th – 30th, tickets:  
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/john-robertson-the-dark-room-symphony-of-a-floating-head
Photo by Bruce Moyle

 

 

Arnie’s back! The summer of Schwarzenegger continues with the release of what might best be described as a low-key ‘art house’ zombie movie worlds away from the bang and bluster of the recent Terminator: Genisys. Maggie, directed by British-born Henry Hobson, is an intense and personal drama about the aftermath of a lethal zombie virus outbreak and the heart-breaking struggle of one determined father to protect his teenage daughter who has been bitten and has begun the slow and irreversible transformation process which will, in time, take her from him forever. STARBURST spoke to the director about his remarkable and haunting movie…

STARBURST: Your background is predominantly in the world of graphic design – title sequences, typography, etc. Were you keen to find a distinctive project for your first turn in the director’s chair?

Henry Hobson: I’ve worked quite a lot as a commercial director, so I’m not new to that world but I’m certainly new to the long-form. With Maggie, I wanted to find a script that really tried something different, a strong script which worked with a new concept and it felt like a perfect balance of something which could be small and contained and yet still have the intrigue of a larger-scale project despite its nominal budget. The script actually came to me. I’d made a few commercials with dealt with genre aspects and so I got sent scripts for every kind of zombie project you could think of, every kind of trope which had been explored. But Maggie stood out as something which felt more human and more real; and ultimately in a purely dramatic sense, more engaging. This was five years ago, so it was before The Walking Dead, before Warm Bodies and Life After Beth, so it really stood out in its own right as a script which spoke a powerful message of something quite original so I was taken by that aspect.

Maggie is nominally a zombie film, but it’s also got a very human story at its heart. How would you categorise the movie?

I think it’s a human drama framed in a genre kind of lens. The zombie genre is a lens through which we’re looking at the real study of what people would do in these terrifying moments. If you think of a film like Fault in our Stars, which deals with tragic teenage disease and terminal cancer, you’re dealing with a story which is very relatable and heart-breaking in the same breath and Maggie deals with the same kind of story, but framed in the lens of something more terrifying which is ‘what if that person becomes deadly themselves at the end of their life?’

It’s an unusual and surprising project for Arnold Schwarzenegger and his role as Wade is worlds away from his signature ‘action movie’ persona. How did he come to be involved in the movie?

Arnold’s agent was very forward-thinking and he came to me and said ‘Have you thought about Arnold?’ and to be honest I hadn’t, but it quickly occurred to me that the role of Wade needs an actor who exudes the power of someone who is the pillar of their community and I wanted the audience to read into Wade that he’s respected throughout that community, despite not being the sheriff or the mayor or whatever and that he’s someone that people wouldn’t say no to. He maintains his dignity in his kind of small humble life and he maintains that in the sense that the local Police would turn to him to ask him questions, the doctor would bend the rules for him. I wanted to have someone who would exude that sense without having to show scenes where he’s strong-arming people, or threatening them or walking into a bar and everyone tips their hat, or he walks into a bar and beats people up. I wanted to get rid of that and do something where the actor would embody that strength without having to show those extra scenes. When you think about Arnold, he is all of those things; he exudes that control or power and success in everything he’s done and his character Wade is also a man who has successfully protected his family and raised them in the best way possible. They’re great kids and even though his first wife died, he brought them up and they still have this strength of character which shows he’s been successful, but then he fails at the last hurdle. He got through the zombie apocalypse, but after it happened and everyone was getting back to life Maggie’s bitten and there’s something so ironic about that – he managed to protect them but ultimately failed. So for me, Arnold was a perfect choice once it was put to me in embodying that success but also being able to twist people’s perception of him and play with that perception and make people when they watch Arnold even more terrified at him failing because if you see someone who you think of as a success, as a protector, failing that makes that journey that much more terrifying. So for me, the minute Arnold was put forward it was clear that there was the potential for someone who could project that sense of ‘Oh shit if he can’t protect his family, what hope is there for me?’ which I found quite exciting.

Did Arnold have any particular creative input during the filming?

He was very receptive to ideas. Initially, I created a book for him detailing what my intentions were for him in every scene and that enabled him to feel confident in me and to look through the book and go ‘Ok, this is what he means, we’ve only got a short time working on the film but I’m able to dip my toe into what he’s thinking’ and he could see something which played into his mantra which is ‘Preparation Prevents Piss-poor Performance’ which he repeats on set. He could see I was preparing for him in the role in a very intense way and therefore the minute he got that confidence he put his whole trust and faith into me and we were able to work together in a really great way and he was very receptive and open with his thoughts and ideas.

The role of Maggie herself is obviously pivotal to the movie and presumably was quite a challenge for Abigail Breslin, who’s really quite extraordinary.

I think it would be a challenge for any normal young actress, but Abigail is quite amazing in the fact that she kind of made it feel totally effortless. She’d just walk in, she would have prepared the scenes, the way she wanted to bring out that fragile and yet ultimately intensely strong persona. In many ways, she’s stronger than her father, she’s got it all planned out, she’s worked out that if she runs away from home she can protect her family whereas he hasn’t worked out anything, he’s just driving to go and find her, he’s hunting her down to kind of protect her, but he has no idea what’s going to happen next. She’s thinking many chess moves ahead of him and ultimately, he’s stumbling through a set of decisions he’s forced to make without being able to kind of clearly make them and it shows the difficulties he’s going through and I think there’s something beautiful in that vulnerability in both Wade and Arnold’s performance as Wade.

Two of the most striking aspects of the movie are the dusty, washed-out colour palette and the eerie soundscape dominated by an almost-unnatural ambient silence and a constant background of rumbling distant thunder. How important to you were these aspects of the movie?

You’ve hit upon two things which were incredibly important to me. When you’re telling a story which is essentially set in four or five spaces – we’re not talking about huge journeys across towns and cities and lots of new explored environments – I wanted to have a reminder that we’re dealing with a disease that affects not just the humans, but the plant life and animal life and it’s killed the ability for electricity to come through, it’s killed a lot of modern electronics. One of the biggest challenges from a visual effects point of view was ‘killing’ the plant life because New Orleans, where we filmed, is intensely green and verdant and so a lot of that plant life is digitally altered to kind of give it that de-saturated look whilst not taking away from the colour of the people in the story. I wanted to reinforce the oncoming death with both the sound design with the rumbles of thunder and the visual palette, so you might look out of a window in a scene between two people and you’ll notice that in the background although it’s sunny outside the plants aren’t growing. I wanted to have that constant reminder with the soundscape stripped of all wildlife apart from these eerie insects which appear at night.

You mentioned filming in New Orleans. Was that a logistical or creative choice?

It was, as with a lot of small budget films and actually with a lot of big budget films – Terminator: Genisys, Planet of the Apes, Jump Street, Focus – down to the fact that New Orleans offers this huge tax rebate and although not perfect as a location, if you can get the film made it’s a useful tool when you’re dealing with the film being given 30% of its budget back. It made for a bit of a logistical nightmare on my part because I wanted to deal with a part of the world that was barren and stripped of its foliage and I wanted to deal with a farmhouse and around New Orleans there are no farmhouses. There are some beautiful plantation houses and rundown shacks but there’s nothing in-between, there’s no farmhouses and once you go further out of New Orleans into the zone where it becomes difficult to film in you can find them, so Maggie’s house is actually four or five different houses being used together and made to feel like one house when in actual fact it’s several and that was because we couldn’t find one house that fitted our every need. I would love to have shot in autumn somewhere further north and play with the very real palette that was on the page but we kind of had to work around that  but I suspect that the budget we saved we spent on visual effects!

But it’s quite noticeable that the visual effects are subtle and understated rather than showy. You establish your ‘world’ without needing shots of devastation and destruction and hordes of rampaging zombies.

Exactly. We’ve seen all those things, and so I wanted in this one is to have this kind of subtle reminder which flows through the film in the corner of your eye or in your ears, I felt that was an important constant. I think there’s a realness to it; if you look at countries which are at war, the market sellers still come out to sell their wares. I’ve just come back from the Ukraine, a country at war, and I saw clear examples of it, but life was continuing. I’m shooting a huge project out there, but everyone’s perfectly normal. There are signs on the periphery of the war-torn landscape but the world continues and I think one of the hopeful messages in Maggie is that although these small stories are painful and terrifying, the human spirit continues throughout and I think the message of hope is still there in the fact that the family is still together by and large, and Maggie’s story is one about strength of character.

Are you pleased with the generally positive reviews the film has received from audiences who have really understood what you were trying to achieve?

I’m incredibly pleased. I think the difficulty when you’re telling a story which is so different to a) the story that Arnold usually tells and b) the story that cinemagoers usually want to go and see – which is the bombastic Avengers/Marvel/festival of explosions – is that what Maggie does is showcase a very different human story. I think people are open to asking themselves questions about what would they do in this situation and seeing Arnold in a fresh light and seeing a visual landscape which is very new and I’m really pleased that people have responded well to that.

Presumably, then, you’d prefer to keep things intimate rather than working in the world of brash, loud, big budget action blockbusters?

I think there’s a degree to which you can still apply the intimacy to those larger films, and I’d love to be able to bridge that gap. If you think of directors like Christopher Nolan who have managed to straddle both sides with something like Memento right up to the Batman franchise and beyond, there’s a degree to which, when you ask some of those questions about humanity, it can still work in some of the larger films and when it works it works really well so I’d happily engage with some of those larger projects.

Maggie hits cinemas in the UK on July 24th.

 

HELSINKI IN 2017 is a campaign to bring the annual World Science Fiction Convention, Worldcon to Helsinki, Finland in 2017. Worldcon is the longest running science fiction event in the world and is the home to Hugo Awards. If successful, it would be the 15th Worldcon to be held outside the United States and the 75th Worldcon in total.  We caught up with one of the spokespersons from the campaign, Crystal Huff, to find out more.


STARBURST: Why Helsinki?
Crystal Huff: Helsinki is an amazing adventure, and I think we should boldly go where no Worldcon has gone before. Helsinki is a location where Worldcon has never been. It has a lot of amazing fans and convention runners who are experienced at running Finncon, which moves around every year (like Worldcon does) and has a variable number of attendees (like Worldcon does). They have a useful skillset. The Finnish government gives grants to science fiction events to help them happen, and Worldcon will be eligible for that should we win. The program would be in English and other languages. The city of Helisinki has said that if we win the bid, all Worldcon members will receive free public transport to and from the convention. Not only will they be able to run around the city, they’ll be able to see all the tourist attractions in Helsinki very easily.

Most people probably only know Finland for The Moomins. Is there much science fiction in Helsinki?
Yes. Recently, there’s Emmi Itäranta who wrote the Clarke nominated Memory of Water; such an amazing book. It’s haunting and lyrical, and Emmi wrote it in English and Finnish simultaneously. There’s also Hannu Rajaniemi, who missed the Hugo nomination for The Quantum Thief by two votes. There’s World Fantasy Award-nominated author Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen with The Rabbit Back Literature Society which came out in 2013. Also check out JP Ahonen’s Sing No Evil, an excellent graphic novel.

What is the venue like?
The venue is Messukeskus, the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre. It is the best convention centre in Finland. It hosts a number of events, almost one every weekend. They are spread out over two floors within the conference centre and the attached Holiday Inn as a number of rooms as well. There is no commute through the dreadful 24 degrees Celsius weather. Messukeskus has an amazing amphitheatre; I really want to see the costume masquerade and other events there. Certainly you can fit an orchestra in there. It’s also very accessible, which is very exciting because it means everyone can enjoy the venue. Messukeskus can host events of up to 20,000 people and we will have all of the hotel rooms of the attached Holiday Inn. 

I don’t speak Finnish; is that going to be a problem?
I speak a few words of Finnish and I didn’t have to speak a single one. As an example, when I was over there looking at the Messukeskus centre, I went to a coffee shop nearby and bought some pastries. As I left the shop, I realised it had nuts in it, and as my partner is allergic to hazelnuts, I thought maybe I should ask someone. I stopped two old ladies on the street, both of whom must have been over 70 and asked. One replied, in perfect English, “Pardon me, for my English is not very good. I believe that is a hazelnut. I will not try it for you, for I am also allergic.”

If I want to see Worldcon in Europe in 2017, how do I make that happen?
First thing you need is a membership for Sasquan in 2015. This is required in order for you to vote.  Get a membership and vote for Helsinki. Only 20% of Sasquan memberships are outside America.
Helsinki in 2017 is on the ballot for site selection. The ballot has been published by Sasquan and is available online.

The process has been changed a little for this year. You can pay online, print out your site selection ballot, fill it in, sign it, scan it, and email it to Sasquan. It goes to [email protected] if emailed. People can also send it by post. Either way, they need to be received by August 10th, so folks need to get a hurry on. And if they get their membership by the end of July, they can also download the ebook packet and vote on the Hugo Awards.

Does it cost to vote?
The way that this works is that when you vote on site selection you pay a fee – $40. Then you fill out the ballot, in order of preference; Helsinki at the top, for example. Your vote, once processed, will automatically become a non-attending membership for Worldcon in 2017, no matter where it is. It’s the least expensive way to get a supporting membership for Worldcon, and it’s the least expensive way to convert that membership so you can attend the full event. If you participate in site selection, you are always buying the least expensive route to membership; it’s in Worldcon’s constitution. It always surprises me that more people don’t do it that way. Less than 10% of Loncon’s members voted for site selection.

Is a supporting membership of Worldcon really worth?
It totally is! With a supporting membership, you can nominate for the Hugos the year before, the year during and year after your membership. With a current membership, you can vote on those nominees. You also get a Hugo packet, which includes the works of the nominees. It’s not guaranteed to include everything, but usually barring rare circumstance you will get an e-book/pdf version of the works. In 2014, that included the entire Wheel of Time series.

You can find out more about the Helsinki Worldcon bid on the website http://www.helsinkiin2017.org/voting

Supervisor of Film Restoration at Arrow Films, James White is the man primarily responsible for the label’s focus on presenting classics from cult and genre cinema. The first significant release of this new policy was Zombie Flesh Eaters in 2012 and this year sees Umberto Lenzi’s underrated ‘zombie’ horror Nightmare City receive the Arrow treatment. We spoke to him to find out what about the trials and tribulations of restoring old films.

STARBURST: Nightmare City is soon to be released on Blu-ray; how has the restoration process been for the film?

James White: Nightmare City is a special case really. Essentially,the film was challenging because the state of the materials was so compromised and it has to do with how they’ve been stored for years or badly treated in the lab environment or by the distributor. You never really know how the damage occurred to the element, but digital restoration can only achieve so much despite how far it has come and there is a point where you have to stop or the film becomes something completely different. Anything we restore we want to still look like photochemical film and not some rewritten history.

Is the reason to restore Nightmare City then related to the fact that the source was so damaged as it is a lesser known film?

It’s from Umberto Lenzi, who was an important director of the time, and Nightmare City is definitely one of his lesser known films. It’s the kind of film that fans of it adore, and while perhaps not a favourite of the genre, it is a lot of fun. It’s rude, crude, graphic and gory and some of the effects are easy to see, but is fun – if not for everyone. We wanted to do the best we could for the film then for the people who love it.

In general terms, how do you select the films for restoration?

I play a role and cast a vote on the films we select but the final decision is made by my colleague Francesca Simeoni, who runs the Blu-ray side of the label. We also listen to fans through our presence on social media and there are some films that are in high demand, but in many cases it depends on the availability of the rights. It’s unfortunate that many of the rights for films we would love to do are with other labels, but sometimes that can change or a film’s licence may be available in the U.K. but not in the U.S. and so on. We’re all fans ourselves though, especially of many of the Italian films, and those have never been represented very well on DVD before. A lot were done cheaply and with little care.

There is also an audience that have never seen some of these films.

Speaking from my generation, I remember the video nasty era and some of these films just weren’t available so now that they are many are in such poor condition. It’s essential to go back through and check the condition of the elements and if possible give them the presentation they really deserve. That also clears the way for many interesting and rare films that haven’t been seen enough as well as some of the keystones such as Bird with the Crystal Plumage or Deep Red. We’re working on a series of Italian films now, one of which is Requiescent, which is a terrific spaghetti western but is much lesser known than the Sergio Leone ones. It’s exciting digging into the archives and making new discoveries.

In the simplest of terms, what is involved in the restoration process?

With most films, we start with trying to find the element that’s in the best condition and in a lot of cases that involves going back to the original negative. Down from that you go through what was the original photochemical lab change; that’s going from original negative to IP or fine grain positive onto interneg, onto duplicate negative; whatever history the film had in order to distribute the 35mm prints. The prints are usually the last place you would go to as it’s the furthest generation down from the original and with every step you can lose something, a nuance perhaps. Sometimes the source is lost or in terrible shape, so you have to move down that list. With Nightmare City, we had the original 2-perf Techniscope negative which is like a budgetary version of Techniscope that a lot of European productions used in the 60’s and 70’s to cut costs. Essentially, you used 2-perf on Techniscope for the widescreen frame, whereas in traditional 35mm cinemascope you use 4-perf; basically you’re using half the amount of film. Once you go to produce your prints, though, you’re blowing that up to 4-perf. Simply put, that means there’s a huge drop in quality when you blow it up so whenever you want to restore a 2-perf Techniscope film you really want to use the original negative as everything else will really suffer. Nightmare City was a difficult one because that negative was in pretty rough shape. It had experienced a form of rotting from within through being poorly stored and chemically treated, which allowed a kind of gassy atmosphere to develop within the can which then causes flicker. That flicker is very heavy and distracting, and has an effect on colour and density and everything really! There’s only so much we can do with flicker, so in some sections of the film it’s still noticeable.

Is there the temptation to change things in the process then, to perhaps improve it?

We’re pretty religious about keeping the film as it was. In our minds, our job is to essentially present the film in the best possible light and how it would have looked on its original showing. So no, we avoid any type of George Lucas jiggery-pokery either with the content or with the overall look of the film. We strive to make the film look as it was intended historically. A film shot 50 years ago won’t look like a film shot 30 years ago and so on, so a film from 1980 should look like a film shot in 1980.

What about grain?

This is a sensitive issue for some people but at Arrow we don’t like images that have been tempered down. We want to present a film as intended – with the grain. To be blunt, if you have a problem with film grain then you have no love for film! That’s what it is. It’s like wanting an oil painting to be less oily; film is just grainy. Anything that falls into the de-graining category is something we violently resist.

Given that, do you think that there are films that shouldn’t be given this type of treatment?

I’d probably say the opposite to be honest. Going back to a film like Nightmare City, it’s not for everyone; but with its audience in mind, we have to temper our budgets a little. For example no matter how good the audience, it’s never going to be as popular as The Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain or Star Wars or anything like that! Therefore you have to have realistic expectations for the budget you have. That doesn’t prevent the film being restored in the best possible way though. For too long people have thought that films in the so-called canon are worthy of the treatment, but we all know how good The Godfather is so let’s move on to something else. If we don’t give some of the smaller and lesser known films some attention then they could disappear. With Nightmare City, if we’d waited another 5 or 10 years then the materials might have been in such a poor state that the finished film would look less impressive. Whatever we do digitally, though, it will never make up for the elements being stored correctly so if there’s a decision to be taken on which films are worthy of restoration and which aren’t I want nothing to do with it. Such an ideology would be tainted with whatever opinion is fashionable.

Do you a wish list of films you would like to work on?

Oh absolutely, we all do, but many of them have their rights with other labels, Warner Bros, for example, which includes much of the RKO catalogue. They have a lot of the films I would love to be restored, but Warners are a closed shop so if those films are going to be restored then they will do it internally. They have so many films that it may take some time before they get to the ones I want!

NIGHTMARE CITY is released on Blu-ray in the UK on August 3rd.

The HUMAN CENTIPEDE series comes to a close with the shocking (for all the right reasons) FINAL SEQUENCE. We got the chance to quiz star DIETER LASER about his role in the controversial films…

STARBURST:  What was it that drew you to the first Human Centipede film?

Dieter Laser: I got an e-mail from Six Entertainment by the producer Ilona Six who invited me to a meeting with writer/director Mr Tom Six in the lobby of the Berlin Hilton. Tom had seen me in the German movie Fuehrer Ex and wanted to offer me the leading part in his film The Human Centipede. He told me the whole story in the real time the film would take; very vividly, very detailed, even with some precise camera angles, full of visionary passion and at the end of the story I said “I love your passion, I’m very impressed by your competence, we have to do this!” Five minutes later, Ilona and I had a deal by handshake. But when the script arrived at home I got shocked! Sewing people together by a retired surgeon had been no problem for me in Tom’s storytelling. Dr Heiter might have become very revengeful and mad due to the German law which forces even the most famous scientists to retire at the age of 65 and to migrate to other countries. But only now while reading the script, I realised the consequences for the digestive tract of The Human Centipede! Only now I saw what the audience would see in their mind’s eye: human shit floating from ass to mouth. “Embarrassing! I have to lose a reputation in German film and television, not to speak about the theatre!” After some lament, I sat down on my ass and started to work on the character. That happens mostly in my kitchen during the silence of the early morning hours. Then I discovered the deeper layers of Tom’s script: before his retirement, Dr Heiter’s speciality had been separating Siamese twins. Wasn’t it “The Angel of Death” the German mass-murderer, Dr. Josef Mengele, who experimented with twins? What about kicking these criminal clowns into their balls? To expose these ‘anal retentive’ Nazi doctors to ridicule! I had found my narrative key for the character. Phone call to Tom: “may I call him Joseph?” And the fun started!

How did Tom pitch the third film to you, particularly since you’re playing a new character?

After the postproduction of Human Centipede II, Tom and Ilona gave me and my wife (who is also my manager) the privilege and the honour of a private screening in a London cinema (only the four of us), and afterwards they offered me the leading part Bill Boss in Part III. Same procedure as with Part One: Tom told us the whole story in real time, full of visionary passion and at the end of the story, I was so impressed and excited that again it took only a couple of minutes to have a deal with Ilona by handshake. Tom always involves me in fleshing out the character and we started the very same night celebrating and brainstorming.

The character of Bill Boss is completely over the top and very sadistic, did you have fun with that role?

Same pattern as with Dr Joseph Heiter. After I had found my guidance – my narrative keys for Bill Boss: ‘the cartoonish alien’ – ‘the desert-snake’ – ‘the ageless evil’ – a ‘creature from beyond’ in the disguise of a ‘comic-strip warden’ – then, with these narrative tools, it became pure fun to realise Tom’s vision. To play as much over the top as possible, the yelling monster, the stupid badass, the mean coward, the sadistic butcher, the heartless idiot, the liar and cheater, the criminal imposter etc.

What was your response when you saw the finished film?

I saw the film the very first time at the premiere in Los Angeles because I never ever give it even only a glimpse during the shooting period just to keep my vision as unlimited as possible. I loved to watch the final result on the big screen – Tom and I have precisely achieved what we have had in mind.

Was it true that you walked out just before filming was due to begin? What was the story behind that?

Sir Tom, Lady Ilona and me, we are a dream-team and never ever had any differences on location – work just flows fearlessly and smoothly in a very polite, even tender atmosphere – Tom is genius! But as it happens, even in a dream-team creative differences can appear during the long, long process of pre-production and the long, long waiting time for the script. When the script finally arrived, I took the ‘100% Politically Incorrect’ one hundred percent too seriously. I was blindfolded, only saw the extreme horror, didn’t realise the comedy in it, was shocked to the bones, afraid and stubborn and it escalated into my refusal to play the part. Thank God, Tom did not give in, he didn’t change the script; but he also didn’t give up to try to convince me and finally he managed, in a four-hour meeting in the Sheraton Restaurant at the Airport of Amsterdam, to open my eyes for the hilarious, vitriolic comedy in his THC3 script and this meeting triggered the beginning of a wonderful creative time by developing together the character Bill Boss. Sheraton Restaurant Airport Amsterdam became our historical and ritual meeting point: same time of day, same table and a ‘crazy actor’ who isn’t ashamed to play at this table different versions of all his scenes in the script; offering his director several choices – under the astonished, slightly amused and slightly worried eyes of other guests who sometimes came to our table and asked Tom if they could be of some help. Those meetings even intensified our friendship and our artistic understanding and led in the end to a virtually ‘wordless’ communication during the shooting because our common goals were already precisely defined and even practiced, by Sheraton ‘table-dancing’ up to the tiniest details. Thank you Tom Six!!!

The film deliberately goes all-out to be offensive, what was the most outrageous part or line for you to perform?

After Tom had opened my eyes for the comic-strip and after I had found my narrative keys, even the chewing of clitorises or the raping of a woman in her coma wasn’t a problem anymore.

If you had to be stitched into a Human Centipede, who would be the worst person you could think of to be behind, and who would you want to be behind you?

If somebody would force me with a gun to answer this question I would say, “let me be between two women”.

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III (FINAL SEQUENCE) is screened at selected UK cinemas from July 10th, and released on DVD/Blu-ray and VOD on July 20th.

Daniel de Sosa is an American cartoonist who lives in London, England. He is a well-regarded member of the UK’s rapidly growing indie comics scene, with books such as Orc Quest Quarterly, and Oi! Tales of Bardic Fury under his belt. His latest project, Purrvana, features a mystical cat who isn’t very good at being mystical, and is being funded via crowdfunding. We caught up with him to find out more.

STARBURST: Tell us about Purrvana and its lead character Kitty Jenkins?

Daniel de Sosa: Kitty Jenkins is a three-eyed shape shifting cosmic spirit cat. He pops in to people’s lives uninvited and sends them on spirit journeys that they don’t want to go on. In the end, they learn nothing. Kitty Jenkins was co-created by fellow cartoonist Sajan Rai and myself.  Last year we, along with Siobhan Alcaide and Shane Melisse, put out an anthology comic that was funded via Kickstarter. Now I am trying to raise money on Kickstarter to pay for the printing of a new KJ book featuring only my own work. The book is called Purrvana. The book follows Jenkins on his various adventures through time and meowter space. Sajan, Shane and Shib also are planning to put out their own solo KJ books later in the year.

Why is Kitty Jenkins so terrible at enlightening people?

The thing is, a lot of KJ’s words and lessons he attempts to teach are based on the words of some of the greatest philosophers in the world – from Buddha, to Socrates, to Zhuangzi – he just relays their message in an obnoxious, irrelevant and sometimes idiotic way. Kitty Jenkins is so used to dimension-hopping and travelling through space that he’s forgotten regular people can’t handle that sort of thing. Or maybe he does realize it, and just likes messing with people? He’s a mysterious cosmic force. No one knows for sure. Kitty Jenkins behaves how a cat actually would if it had cosmic powers. Some of the things he does are nonsensical. Many of his antics are disgusting, full of psychedelic hairballs and stupid cat puns. I try to write Kitty Jenkins as the most obnoxious character possible, but for some reason the reader’s response to him has been really positive! I think it’s just because he’s a cute cat.

Where did the idea for mystic cats come from? Why cats?

Why cats? That’s what I ask myself! Anyone who has been in a large office environment knows how insanely popular pictures of cats are in this day and age. It’s like they have some sort of mystical power over people. Just look at Grumpy Cat. He has hundreds of thousands of followers simply because he’s a cat that looks angry! He doesn’t have to do anything but be himself and he inspires this crazy fervent devotion! And then look at ancient Egypt – even thousands of years ago people worshipped cats and built giant sculptures and temples to celebrate them. A cat is the perfect form for a cosmic prophet guru to take.

How many cat puns can you squeeze into one comic book?

Too many cat puns. I love stupid puns. One of the stories I’m really excited to draw for this book is called A Song of Mice and Fire. The stupider a cat pun is, the more I will squeeze it in to the comic.

What are the influences on this project?

David Lynch’s film version of Dune was a big inspiration for this book. I did not think it was a great film, or an accurate rendition of the book, but I loved a lot of the visuals and odd off-beat editing choices. Purrvana was also inspired by artists in the old Metal Hurlant comics, dudes like Moebius and Enki Bilal. Along with ancient philosophy, the hypnotic power of lolcats humour and cat memes were also a massive influence on this book.

How different is this from previous works?

The first Kitty Jenkins book was a series of short stories and gag strips with no real plot. This book is still going to have some typical Jenkins gag strips, but they will be intercut between a longer over-arching story. I’m going to experiment with both story telling as well as structure. I’m going to introduce the Catriarchy, an intergalactic organization that follows the religion of Jenkism, which began after people witnessed Kitty Jenkins pooing out a crystal pyramid, and then disappearing. The main story will follow Jenkins and a disenfranchised former believer of Jenkism as they journey through stars and dimensions. I also have a basset hound foil to KJ that I want to introduce, named Major Slops, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to squeeze him in to this book or not. The first KJ book was printed in black and white. This will be printed full-colour with water-coloured page art.

How can we help?

I’m raising money to pay for the print costs of the book via Kickstarter. I want to create a beautiful book that cat lovers will be happy to have on their coffee tables and share with their friends. I love making comics for people, and am grateful that Kickstarter has provided a platform that gives me the opportunity to make books that are true to my vision, and connect with new fans. If you want to help this project come to life, please check out my Kickstarter page and consider pledging, and share the link on your social media platforms. With your help, we can create the Cattitude Era a reality.

You can find out more about Purrvana, a new comic starring Kitty Jenkins, here.

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Steven Ingram is a UK based cartoonist and illustrator who is best known for his website, Blurred Lines, as well as comic books such as The Street Circus and The Saddest Whale and Other Stories. His latest project is a supernatural mystery called The Standing Stones, and is launching via Kickstarter. We caught up with him to find out more.

STARBURST: What is The Standing Stones?
Steven Ingram: The Standing Stones is a supernatural mystery story that takes place in the North East of Scotland. Set in the late 1960s, a folk musician called Taylor Kite is in a creative rut and he heads off into the wilderness in search of inspiration. He comes across the village of Forven by chance and decides to stay for a few days. Soon though, he becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding a local myth about a black dog and the set of standing stones outside the village.

Why are the British so obsessed with Paganism?
That is an interesting question! At a guess I’d say that we are fascinated by, and maybe admire or fear, people who hold on to the Old Ways on the fringes of society, even in the face of the ‘normalising’ effects of civilization. I’m no expert on this kind of thing though!

Is it closer to The Wicker Man or Welcome to Nightvale?
I’m not too familiar with Welcome to Nightvale, but I definitely took a lot of inspiration from The Wicker Man as well as old legends of mythical creatures.

Why Underbelly Comics?

When we talked about it before I signed up they said they were going for content like Top Shelf with the creator-owned ethos of Image and that sounded like a good fit for me.

How different is this from your other work?
I’ve written in a number of different genres and explored various themes, but something that my longer comics tend to have in common is a central mystery that gradually builds over the course of the story until everything is revealed.

What’s next?
I’m currently self-publishing an eight-issue miniseries called Left about a girl who is trying to stay away from a cult she was a member of in the past. Four issues are out so far so that plan is to continue with that.

How can we help?
Any donations to The Standing Stones Kickstarter would be much appreciated! I’m really proud of the story and it would be great to see it in print. Also, spreading the word on the social media of your choice would be a big help too.

You can find out more about The Standing Stones by checking out the crowd funding campaign here. 

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW OR ON TWITTER @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local STARBURST stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. For our digital edition (available to read on your iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows 8, Samsung and/or Huawei device – all for just £1.99), visit MAGZTER DIGITAL NEWSSTAND.

CLICK TO BUY!

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