Science fiction is regarded as the medium of ideas, but so rarely does that intention cross the fraught border into film, where collaboration and the need for broad appeal too often forces the compromise of dumbing down and easy explanations and linear storytelling to dilute any ingenuity or originality of a filmmaker. Fortunately, for his third feature, writer/director Rhian Johnson has managed to survive the challenge and construct a thoughtful and coherent film that satisfies both the intellectual and more primal members of a multiplex audience.
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In a series that has now become one of an elite few to repeatedly perform better with every sequel at the box office, despite the critic and fanboy detractors looking for continuity from the video game source it came from, it appears a forgone conclusion that the latest Resident Evil movie will strike gold for Constantin Film, the celluloid equivalent of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story, you could suppose. But what of the latest instalment? Are we likely to see any changes from what we have become accustomed to in the world bio-engineered by Umbrella Corporation, or another stunt-driven “thrill ride” aimed at teenagers with short attention spans?
Having worked on The X Files for eight years where he wrote or co-wrote forty episodes, Frank Spotnitz has amassed a colossal body of high profile work, also working on the associated shows Millennium and The Lone Gunmen alongside Harsh Realm and Night Stalker. His new show is Hunted, the explosive new drama from Kudos, the production company behind Spooks, Life on Mars, Hustle and 
Carrying a title that jumps off the page and dares people to make assumptions about it, Punk Rock Jesus is a comic that both takes risk and confounds expectations. With issue one’s cover image of a Mohawk-sporting, tattooed signer snarling in a microphone and its premise of a television reality show centred around a modern day clone of Jesus Christ, writer and artist Sean Murphy’s series from Vertigo clearly holds the potential to be one of 2012’s most controversial books. But those unable to get past these initially confrontational elements would be missing out on an exciting, lushly drawn and ambitious book that, on the evidence of its first three issues, could very well be one of the defining pieces of work seen this year. 
On September 3rd 2010, three walkers disappeared on Dartmoor, and now the footage from their abundance of cameras and recording devices has been edited together, though as any footage that would resemble an interesting plot is absent, perhaps it would have been preferable had the whole thing remained lost. As it stands, this “found footage” horror film written and directed by Richard Parry is utterly devoid of a single original idea.
Luxurious living in the heart of East London is the promise on the advertising boards, but for the residents of the Bow Bells Care Home, the future is less rosy, as theirs is one of the buildings due for demolition to make way for the new construction work. Plans change, however, when the excavation reveals a crypt sealed by the order of King Charles II in the year 1666. Two eager workers venture in, hoping for treasure; what they find is piles of skulls, rats, cobwebs, overgrown roots, and scrabbling in the darkness, hungry zombies.
It was in 1960 that The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was first published, with its sequel The Moon of Gomrath following in 1963. The first told the tale of siblings Colin and Susan’s encountered with the wizard Cadellin Silverbrow as he sought the titular stone without which he would not be able to safeguard the sleeping warriors and their white horses who lay within the caves of Fundindelve until the time foretold when they would awaken and defend the realm against the coming evil. In Gomrath, older magic still came to prominence, the ancient evil of the Brollachan and the uncontrollable Wild Hunt, who in the final scenes rode off into the sky, taking Susan with them.
spans genres, spinning together computer science, mathematics, language and history in his epic tales. Coming to prominence with his cyberpunk novel Snow Crash in 1992, this was followed by The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon before the release of The Baroque Cycle. Set across centuries, nations and disciplines, Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World featured a cast including Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, King Charles II, George Handel, Louis XIV and Samuel Pepys among others, each of the three volumes were nominated for the Locus Award, with two wins, and an Arthur C Clarke award. On Saturday 18th August, while attending an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, he was good enough to take time to talk with Geek Chocolate.
"Somewhere in the Valley there is a woman living in a basement who claims she's from the future and she's amassing followers." This sums up the situation of Peter and Lorna, having infiltrated the cult of the woman known only as Maggie, never seen in public, her precise location unknown as they are blindfolded prior to being chauffeured to every meeting.
It’s a privilege to be in the company of those smarter than you, especially when your host turns out to be so personable, and in this new collection of his shorter work, writer Neal Stephenson, better known for his epic novels, invites us to join him as he discusses his diverse interests and, in a reprinted online interview, what his readers have asked of him, a means of communication he finds more efficient than individual responses as he explains in the concluding Why I Am a Bad Correspondent.
The second feature from writer/director Peter Strickland is a long term project, having started life as a short feature in 2005, seven long years before the completed feature opened at the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival, but in that time the concept has not diluted or lost any of its unsettling power, as a British sound engineer finds himself engaged in a nightmarish project in a hostile environment, the sounds he is creating becoming the soundtrack to the film we are watching.
