Review – Alita: Battle Angel

Slowly but surely we are seeing those creators who grew up on anime and manga break into the industry and bring some of their favourite pieces to a more receptive audience. Robert Rodriguez has always worn his geeky side with pride, and his directing credits swing wildly between the more mature content and the kid’s action, you’d never believe that Dusk ‘Til Dawn was made by the same guy as Spy Kids. He also brought the Sin City comics to the big screen and made them household names, so to see him turn his action adventure skills to a 1990 manga (and a ’93 OVA) is something to be excited about.

Review – Stranger Things

Netflix just keep proving, not just validity, but dominance in the media market. Is it still appropriate to call it a TV show any more if the best examples are no longer on television?

Further to their expanding catalogue of Marvel properties, part of an already popular collection of original series boxsets like House of Cards, BoJack Horseman and Orange is the New Black, introducing the horror series that follows a group of young boys in 1980’s Indiana as they search for their missing friend, instead discovering a young girl with strange powers, who plunges them into the middle of a supernatural plot.

Top 10 – Alien Invasions

They came from another world with an irrational hatred of the bawling apes crawling on the blue planet in orbit around a yellow sun. It’s almost as if we’ve been bombarding the local area with a wide variety of radio signals that could be decoded to discover angry, hate-filled or generally annoying content. Frankly we don’t feel there’s any need for the death beams and intimate probing, the whole thing has been a whole over-reaction, we’re not the bad guys here, and we have the films to prove that out of everyone else in the galaxy, we’re the heroes.

Hunker down, and arm yourselves, as we play host to the intrusive outsiders from beyond the stars and life from places that defy understanding. Welcome to the Top 10 alien invasions.

Top 10 – Shapeshifters

Now you see me, now you don’t! Well you do, only I look like I’m someone completely different now. Hush, I can be exactly what you’re looking for, or become your worst nightmare. Yes, I’m a whole different type of beast; the kind who would rather walk right up to you and change before your very eye than to stalk you and take you out from the shadows.

I can only be talking about shapeshifters, those tricky little blighters who know how to get in the skin of their opposition: Literally! They manage to change forms, sometimes becoming entirely different creatures in the process, but fear not! This week we’re going to give you a run down of our Top 10 Shapeshifters, so you know what and who to look out for.

John Carpenter’s Apocalypse

It’s funny what you learn when you do research for other things.

In the process of putting together last weeks article Lovecraft, Films and TV I looked a little into John Carpenter’s The Thing, a classic mixture of body-horror, paranoia and cosmic horror. The concept of an immensely powerful creature descending from the stars with the power to devour us all has some rather eldritch horror elements, and while the origins for this story are more strongly tied to John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” there’s no denying the impact of the Lovecraft contemporaries from a few years prior.

Did you know it was part of a trilogy?

I didn’t!