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It’s Hammer Time again, folks! I’ve covered witches and vampires and demons (insert your Oz joke here), but now we’re going to look within the inner recesses of the soul, where the wicked resides in each of us. Some need a little pick-me-up to bring out that worst however, and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) finds evil not only in the lab but around every shadowed corner.

Released by Columbia Pictures in the U.K. in late October, with an A.I.P. rollout stateside the following spring, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll was not a moneymaker for Hammer and the reviews were mixed at best; no doubt in response (at least on the part of audiences) to the more muted approach to the material, and quite removed from the ribald textures that usually came from the Hammer stable at the time. Regardless, it remains...

Yayoi Kusama David Zwirner Gallery, NYC Thru December 16th, 2017

Spots are a disease -- a "Pop Art" pox; a sign of madness, an hallucination. As Tony Hancock says in his brilliant comic movie The Rebel (1961) where he plays a modern artist: "I get the spots before my eyes, the red mist, and I'm off."

Yayoi Kusama is off again at David Zwirner Gallery on 533 West 19th Street in Chelsea. You will have to queue around the block to see her new installations. But you can just walk into a room on 19th street and see 66 of her new paintings. This is a review of the work in that room.

Paranoia is lonely, ironically the sense you have of being watched belies the fact that no one's taking any notice at all. The putting on of spots was an act, for Kusama, of "field" being used to cover neurosis. Kusama's paintings...

Assessing the Legacy of Ken Russell’s Masterpiece 45 Years Later.

Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) holds the distinct honor of simultaneously being the most controversial and the most banned film of all time. It is a film lauded by film critics as a masterpiece, one that routinely tops Must See and Best Film lists, and yet it is still largely unavailable on DVD and has never been released without the interference of heavy handed studio censorship and edits. It is a film that critics encourage viewers to watch via an illegal stream, simply because it must be seen. So what is it about The Devils that makes it so beloved by everyone but the studio holding the key to its release?

The History

The Devils is based on The Devils of Loudun, a 1952 book by Aldous Huxley, as well as The Devils, a 1960 play by John Whiting. All three tell the story of the 1632 possession of 27 nuns...

The Star Wars franchise is going strong 38 years later. But what about the artists and filmmakers who helped make the 1977 original a hit?

In theatres all over the world in 1977, audiences thrilled at the sights and sounds of Star Wars. Harking back to a bygone age of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, it also pointed forward to the coming age of ubiquitous computers and special effects-led blockbusters.

But while the triumphant fanfare of John Williams' score gave Star Wars a confident swagger, its success was far from preordained. George Lucas reworked his script time and again; studios turned his concept down; even the production was rushed and torturous.

By now, the contribution George Lucas, John Williams and Star Wars' cast made to cinema is well documented. But what about some of the other artists, technicians and fellow filmmakers who helped to make the movie such a success? Here's...

The Greatest Space Adventure Of All Time Continues! • The Rebel assault on Cymoon 1 continues! • Luke Skywalker – cornered by Darth Vader! • Han, Leia, and the others – trapped! Story By Jason Aaron Art By John Cassaday Colors By Laura Martin Letters By Chris Eliopoulos Cover By John Cassaday, Laura Martin, Leinil Yu, [more...] Publisher Marvel Comics Cover Price: $3.99 Release Date Wed, February 4th, 2015...

Composer: Murray Gold

Performed by: The BBC National Orchestra of Wales Conducted by Ben Foster

Release Date: 2012

Format: Audio CD

Number of Discs: 2 (1.1 hours, 1.2 hours)

Label: Silva Screen Records

The seventh Doctor Who release of Murray Gold’s thrilling music, a 66 track double album featuring lush performances from The BBC National Orchestra of Wales arrived on February 28th. Six years of composing riveting music for Doctor Who has led to Murray’s work being performed at a special Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall, a celebration of the music at the Millennium Centre Cardiff and a place in the Classic FM Hall Of Fame.

Murray Gold’s musical career spans cinema, TV, stage and radio and his extensive list of achievements includes Queer As Folk, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), Casanova, Alien Autopsy, The Devil’s Whore, Shameless and Torchwood.

Get this CD set. And if you’re a fan of the rebooted Doctor Who,...

To mark the release of Go to Blazes on DVD this Monday, 6th February, Studio Canal have given us three copies of the class movie to give away. The movie was originally released in 1962, is directed by Michael Truman and stars Maggie Smith, Dave King, Robert Morley and Daniel Massey.

For anyone who loves British comedy, Go To Blazes features an all-star cast that includes Robert Morley (The African Queen, Topkapi), Daniel Massey (In Which We Serve, The Entertainer), Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Rebel) and Coral Browne (Auntie Mame, Theatre of Blood).  Go To Blazes also features classic British character actors Norman Rossington (The Wrong Box, The Charge of the Light Brigade), Finlay Currie (Around The World in Eighty Days, Ben Hur) and Miles Malleson (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Man In The White Suit). And last but not least, Go To Blazes stars Dame Maggie Smith...

The Day Off revisited

Its not often that an unmade film can get revived and given a world premiere, least of all when its script was abandoned 50 years ago. But that is in a sense what has happened this year with The Day Off - a unfilmed script written by Steptoe And Son creator team Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and premiered at this years London Comedy Film Festival via a live cast reading to an audience. Written with the intention of starring comedy legend Tony Hancock in 1961 (Galton and Simpson having worked with him before on the film The Rebel in 1961, and earlier in radio...

They made TV history together and were planning their next film – until Tony Hancock rejected their script. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson reveal why The Day Off is now back on

The best review we ever had wasn't from a critic. It was from an artist, Lucian Freud. He said that The Rebel was the greatest film ever made about modern art. The 1961 movie was the first, and sadly the only, film we made with Tony Hancock. It's the story of an office clerk, played by Hancock, who believes himself to be a great but undiscovered artist. When he's fired from his job he moves to Paris, in the hope that the art world will recognise him for the genius he is. Of course, being Hancock, he's a terrible painter, but his ability to act like a genius persuades a group of fashionable young artists that he might be the real deal.

It's all about the Venice film festival this week, and Xan Brooks is our man on the Lido, comparing notes with George Clooney and explaining one or two things to Madonna

The big story

Men want to be him, women want to be with him. That's how we like to think of dashing, debonair Xan Brooks who, like Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, has swanned off down to Venice for a spot of international jet-set action. In other words, the Venice film festival has got underway, and his opening video missive sees Xan lounging in typically suave manner on the steps of the Palazzo del Cinema. Later on, the Xanster got to run the rule over George Clooney, the man who has learned everything he knows about charm from our Mr Brooks. Clooney's latest directorial effort, The Ides of March, launched the festival, and you can read...

The Day Off, by writing team Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, was unearthed during research for a new biography of the duo

They wrote some of the funniest, most memorable British comedy of the 20th century. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson's scripts for Tony Hancock had lines so brilliant, characters so absurd and jokes so sublime that they embedded themselves in the national consciousness.

Fans should prepare themselves for a treat, though, because the best may be yet to come. The Observer can reveal that Galton and Simpson completed a feature-length film script for Hancock that has never been made public. The Day Off, the gut-wrenching tale of a hapless bus conductor who just can't get anything right, has been hailed as a lost masterpiece and "the holy grail of comedy".

"It's probably the best thing they ever wrote," said Christopher Stevens, the author and journalist who stumbled on...

Actor turned teacher, he quit the screen at the height of his fame

There are some actors who, having disappeared from the public gaze early in their careers, always prompt the question, "Whatever happened to ... ?" The answer, in the case of Paul Massie, who has died of lung cancer aged 78, is that, at the height of his fame on films and television, he gave it up at the age of 40 to teach drama at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The son of a Baptist minister, Massie was born Arthur Massé in the city of St Catharines, in the Niagara region of Ontario. Although he was brought up in Canada, almost his entire 16-year acting career was in Britain. In fact, the only film he made in Canada was his first, Philip Leacock's High Tide at Noon (1957), a Rank Organisation melodrama shot in Nova Scotia. Although it was a bit part,...

If British comedians insist on crossing over to the big screen, they need to pay more attention to narrative and character development

Is there anything British comedians can't do? Not content with dominating the airwaves with their comedy shows, chat and quiz shows, they've been branching out into journalism, novels and, increasingly, the movies. And I'm not just talking about performing, though nowadays it's hard to escape Russell Brand, who popped up in The Tempest, will shortly be heard as voice of the Easter Bunny in Hop, and seen as Arthur in the remake of a film that starred Dudley Moore, another British TV comedian who was (briefly) clutched to the bosom of Hollywood.

No, because here comes Richard Ayoade, best known for roles in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Nathan Barley and The It Crowd, making his feature writing and directing debut with Submarine. Also coming soon to a multiplex near you is Attack the Block,...

Several press releases went out today featuring some huge news coming out of Canada's Fantasia Film Festival including the first batch of films that will be populating this massive three-week long event. Pull up your chair, kids! You're gonna be here for a while!

Dig on the wealth of information below from today's releases and look for more announcements and of course full coverage soon!

Spotlight: Between Death And The Devil

Recent times and crimes have seen extraordinary levels of disillusionment with organized religion, particularly with the Catholic Church, and genre cinema has mirrored this anger with startling impact. In the face of this, we’ve put together this troubling spotlight focused on the abuse of faith, the horrors of ideology and the corruption of Godliness. Several of these films will absolutely stagger you.

Black Death (UK) Dir: Christopher Smith – North American premiere. Hosted by Director Christopher Smith

With the Black Death sweeping across England,...

After last year's The Boat That Rocked, critics feared he'd lost his mojo. But the director has made a triumphant return – to the small screen, at least

It's been a year or so since Richard Curtis showed us his film The Boat That Rocked, about a 60s pirate radio station, a very eccentric and not terribly funny comedy — one which moreover bore worrying signs of meaning an enormous amount to him personally — and nobody quite knew where to look. Could it be that Richard Curtis was on the way out? Could it be the self-imposed burden of being a feature film director and globally important charitable dynamo had crushed the funny in Richard Curtis?

This was the romcom supremo who wrote such terrific and massively influential films as Four Weddings And A Funeral and the still underrated Notting Hill, films which hundreds of other films have tried unsuccessfully to rip off,...