Film

Judge Minty


Judge Minty is a micro budget fan film that’s been in production for years now, well before the recent Dredd movie by Alex Garland anyway. It’s finally finished and, after doing the convention circuit, has now been put up for free on YouTube. For a such a project they’ve got a lot out of the little money they had to make it too with some impressive CGI work, excellent colour grading and music. Their Mega City 1 is far superior than the aforementioned Dredd film and the Judge outfits are nearer to the comic versions, being supplied by the Termight Replicas and Planet Replicas companies who do the official spin off costumes and props associated with the comic.

The story is an extension of an original strip in 2000ad featuring a Judge called Minty who is getting old and slow, his judgement impaired. Such cases in Dredd’s world take ‘The Long Walk’, sent out beyond the city walls to The Cursed Earth, a radioactive wasteland inhabited by mutants and the lawless. The Judges have to fend for themselves and try to bring some justice to the place, an impossible task being that they are a drop in the ocean compared to its size. Some of the acting let’s it down but Edmund Dehn, in the lead role is perfectly cast and there are all sorts of nice touches and hidden references for the eagle eyed fan, my favourite being the not so subtle crashed Land Raider in one scene.

At only 27 minutes long it’s well worth a watch if you have a passing interest in the character. You can tell it’s a labour of love and I recognised several known fan’s names in the credits at the end including John Burdis – Dredd uber-fan and constant presence in costume at conventions these last few years. Also in the thanks was one ‘Ollie Teeba‘, who many will know from The Herbaliser on Ninja Tune and beyond, who put in some money to aid the production of the film.

Posted in 2000ad, Film. | No Comments |

Iron Man 3 – YES!

Saw this last night – VERY good indeed. If you’ve seen the trailers, they are pretty misleading is all I will say. Some absolutely incredible special FX plus Downey Jr at his best, Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley stealing the show and the gorgeous Rebecca Hall. Go see it.

Posted in Film. | No Comments |

The Search Engine at Dome Club, Birmingham

Starting next week at Dome Club, the UK’s first weekly place to see full dome content, is the first of four performances of ‘The Search Engine’. This is a 360 degree film for the full dome (or planetarium) environment.

It’s been seen before in London, Leicester and Montreal but this is a newer, revised version that lasts 50 minutes and presents an alternative version of the album with film, animation, photography and graphics.

The first show is April 4th, starting at 7pm at the Think Tank planetarium at Millennium Point, Birmingham. It will then be shown on the 25th, then May 16th and June 6th. Admission is £4 or £3 depending where you sit – the middle back half is usually the sweet spot for dome showings.

The club has weekly showings of all sorts of interesting, art-based full dome films and it’s really the sort of experience it’s hard to convey without actually going yourself. Here’s the little short about the Montreal version of this show that I did last summer.

Ticket available both online or at the door, go to: domeclub.co.uk > TICKETS > Dome Club -> 4th April (or whichever date you’re after).

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Film, Poster / flyer. | 1 Comment |

Dragon’s Heaven by Makoto Kobayashi

I hadn’t seen this before: Japanese Manga artist Makoto Kobayashi‘s ‘Dragon’s Heaven’ was an animated short made in 1988 featuring a lot of his weirder mech designs and drawn in a style more reminiscent of Moebius than the more polished styles you’d see in the Gundam cartoons.

Kobayashi’s mecha are unique, spindly, organic, curvacious and look like they could fall over any minute. It’s sometimes hard to tell where the eyes are or even which way round the body should face as his angular designs defy all regular robotic logic. This is the only time I’ve seen an animated short with this kind of look. The film starts with a face off between two actual models before moving into animation but the credits turn into a mini making-of feature involving the models from the intro.

You can see the whole thing on YouTube but it’s split into several parts.

Posted in Film, Robots. | 1 Comment |

The Light Surgeons – SuperEverything* tour

The Light Surgeons go out on tour this March for a brief stint around the UK before a London show on April 19th – they’ll be performing ‘SuperEverything*’ for the first time in the UK here:

09/03/2013 – WARWICK ARTS CENTRE – COVENTRY
10/03/2013 – COLSTON HALL – BRISTOL
11/03/2013 – STUDIO THEATRE – BRIGHTON DOME
12/03/2013 – THE SAGE – GATESHEAD
19/04/2013 – HACKNEY EMPIRE – LONDON

The ‘SuperEverything*’ performance is a mix of live music, visuals and performance, commissioned by the British Council and created by The Light Surgeons in collaboration with Malaysian artists. Filmed on location across Malaysia, it explores identity, ritual and place using documentary narratives to create an audio-visual portrait of the diverse cultural landscape of Malaysia and how our complex identities are connected.

This is live cinema performance exploded across multiple projections with an electronic score combining traditional South East Asian instruments, western classical compositions and field recordings. I’ve heard so much about this over the last year and finally it’s coming to London. Few do AV as beautifully and intelligently as The Light Surgeons, this will be something to experience and discuss later rather than the usual ‘ooh!, ahh!’ spectacles so many audio-visual shows seem to fall into these days.

Posted in Event, Film. | 2 Comments |

Kraftweek 4 – Ralf & Florian, human after all

My favourite member of the group used to be Karl with his impish good looks and funky drumbeats, but over time I’ve come to appreciate Florian Schneider because of his mysteriousness and obvious sense of humour. Both he and Ralf Hutter have come across as cold and humourless in recent years because of the minimal interviews and stilted language used, all this stuff about ‘musical workers’ and the machines operating themselves. It wasn’t always so…
Check out this performance of ‘Pocket Calculator’ from Italian show Discoring in 1981. Aside from the Italian language version of the song (I think) check the little humorous interactions between Ralf and Karl on the left at 2.24 and 4.40. Best of all are the closing seconds as the presenter says goodbye, watch Florian on the right.

Did you see that? He made the rabbit ears sign behind the presenter’s head! You can see him getting ready too, he knows he going to do it and lines himself up for the moment.

Another performance of the same song in New York yields more playful antics from Schneider too. Along with letting members of the audience press buttons on the calculator he mugs to camera, miming electronic letters ‘a’ and ‘o’ and pretends to be electrified when pressing the calculator.


In Rio de Janeiro back in 1998 Florian endured this quick non-interview in which he’s clearly enjoying giving away as little as possible in order for it to be over with.

And who could forget the closing shot of their Tomorrows World performance of ‘Autobahn’?

But the prize goes to Ralf Hutter for his casual lyrical amendment to the last verse of ‘The Model’ at an Edinburgh soundcheck in 1991.

Click >>>The Model – Edinburgh soundcheck ’91

Posted in Film, Kraftwerk. | 5 Comments |