Reality Check: ‘Other’ Cinema on DVD – Originally podcast at Sci-Fi London
Alex Fitch talks to Noel Lawrence, founder of the Other Cinema DVD label about their range of esoteric / underground movies and collections of short films such as The Net – The Unabomber, LSD and the internet, Experiments in Terror, Decasia and Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y…
Jack Thurston is away and in his place Amy Cooper presents a show devoted to the swashbuckling Trixie Chix, London’s female fixed wheel freestylers. Will Amy and her sit-up-and-beg town bike cut the mustard with the trackstanding, bike polo playing, long skidding, backwards circling Trixies? Find out…
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Clever boy Lekonik (Amir Heshmati) has his finger in several musical pies. He can make beats as well as the next man but uses his film background to create truly singular tracks that make your ears prick up as soon as you hear them.
One of those tracks is played here: “Kitchen†where each screen shot corresponds to the sound it produced until the sounds layer up to make an intriguing and singular piece.
Amir discusses his current project based on his home town Shiraz in Iran, his family, Iranian culture and film and we are treated to four of tracks.
Originally broadcast 14/02/08 as part of Strip! on Resonance 104.4 FM
The first half of Alex Fitch’s 2008 interview with Alan Moore – originally broadcast on Valentine’s day. Alex and Alan discuss Alan’s epic graphic novel Lost Girls, from its beginnings – serialised in the horror anthology Taboo – to its final printing 16 years later as a beautiful three volume slipcased hardback published by Top Shelf.
Excerpt from Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
Visit the home of this episode at archive.org
Links: Invisible Girls and Phantom Ladies – an article on the portrayal of women in comics by Alan Moore (circa 1983) …
Paul Gravett interviews Alan Moore …
Alex’s previous interview with Alan part one, part two, part three …
Extracts (and a very cool photo) from Alan’s recent interview with Word magazine …
Index of Alan Moore interviews available on the web … Wikipedia page on Lost Girls …
Top Shelf productions (publishers of Lost Girls) website …
Gosh! Comics website
Comics news…
The nominations for this year’s Eagle Awards have started – www.eagleawards.co.uk…
If I might use this blog to make some suggestions… You can get a full list of all the comic book creators I’ve interviewed over the last year and a half at podcasts.resonancefm.com and I’d like to show my appreciation for their contibutions to this show – so if you’d like to vote for say Simon Spurrier or any of the Manga Jiman creators for favourite newcomer writer or artist respectively, that might be cool, or the likes of Alan Moore, Leah Moore, John Reppion, Ian Edgington, Rich Johnston, Paul Cornell etc. for favourite comics writer, they deserve it. Favourite combined writer / artist – I think Bryan Talbot is without peers in this category* – , favourite artist (spreadable between inkers, pencillers, colourists etc.) – John McCrea, Mark Buckingham, Charlie Adlard, Sean Phillips, Duncan Fegredo, D’Israeli, Frazer Irving, Melinda Gebbie**,(Resonance’s very own) Mark Stafford all seem like good candidates to me…
I’ve not interviewed any letterers as yet – I’m happy to recommend Todd Klein** on Alan Moore’s behalf – but will try and do so in the next few months. The only editor I’ve interviewed is Matt Smith, a year ago, but he continues to do good work on 2000AD…
Publisher: Self Made Hero (Nevermore) and Rebellion (200AD) are up there already, but Modern Monstrosity (Tales from the flat) deserve a nomination…
Nominating comics and graphic novels (particularly American) is very much down to personal taste – all the above creators and everyone else I’ve interviewed has done very good work over the last year – though it would be remiss of me not to suggest Tales from the Flat for best British Black and White comic, The Mark of Aeacus for favourite new comic book, Alice in Sunderland for favourite new Graphic Novel and Pat Mills’ Nemesis the Warlock book 3 for favourite reprint.
In terms of related media – the Forbidden Planet International blog has supported this show throughout the last year, so gets my recommendation for best favourite website, though Bugpowder, London Underground Comics and Journalista!*** are all very deserving too. If we can get Oli Smith’s London Underground Comics video podcasts listed under favourite TV / film (going for the loosest definition of the words), that would be great too.
Finally the roll of honour – at the risk of being terribly egotistical, may I suggest me, Alex Fitch in the category of “entrepreneur whose achievements have… increased public awareness (of comics)”? (I know it says “in print”, but then I do publicise the show in [electronic] print)
That said, I noticed Paul Gravett and Ed Hillyer haven’t won in the past and are far more deserving than me! (Shameless self-publicist Oli Smith is after nomination as well and as I guess he’s the Barack to my Clinton, he doesn’t need any extra help from me!)
*as the Eagle awards are the comics equivilent of the BAFTAs, I’m going to only recommend British creators except for those with **two asterixes as Melinda and Todd get honorary British status for working on Lost Girls…
Also *** Journalista! regularly promotes Panel Borders (though weirdly, not Strip!) as well, so we like them!
I was waiting to pay for some petrol at the local service station when for no reason became tense with the anticipation that something exciting and unexpected was going to happen.
Nothing exciting or unexpected happened but it was the highlight of my week. So the moment wasn’t completely wasted.
Growing Communities is a pioneering social enterprise based in Hackney, North London that provides sustainable food for local people. It also serves a best-practice model for our future, low-carbon food production. In partnership with farmers on the outskirts of London their organic box scheme supplies 300 households with fruit and veg for as little as £6 a week. Most of the salad leaves in the boxes are grown on Growing Communities’ urban market gardens which is the only organically certified growing land in London. Their farmers market in Stoke Newington is the only weekly, fully-organic market in the UK. The Low Carbon Show met up with co-founder and director, Julie Brown to talk about food swaps, seasonal feasts and community orchards.
In a special Valentine’s Day edition, sultry Southwark Cyclist Miss Alex Crawford explains why cycling is so good for flirting while love goddess Venus Kamura tells of the fifth annual Reclaim Love ‘happening’ on Saturday 16 February at the Eros Statue on Piccadilly Circus. Over the past few days, all across the bicycling world, there has been an outpouring of love for the inspirational Sheldon Brown who sadly died last weekend. We play a song by Oysterband, Sheldon’s all time favourite band. Plus a heads up for Wheels and Heels, a lovely bicycle fashion show on the evening of the 14th, at Columbia Road from 6pm and a chance to party ’til the break of dawn with the swashbuckling Trixie Chix, on Friday 15th February way up there in Dalston, northeast London. No excuse not to get loved up one way or another this week. Whew!
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Hi, I’m Graham Borskow. Do you want to save money? Do you want to help save our planet? Of course you do, so I’m pleased to be able to tell you about a revolutionary insulation for your house which was originally developed by NASA for use in outer space…
…and that’s why our product will not only pay for itself in just 10 years but you will also be able to fly to the moon, have a picnic on Mars and save the Earth.
Propelled by the story of Deeyah (aka the Muslim Madonna) and her encouragement of other Muslim girls to make music, Jus1Jam came all the way from Bradford for a discussion on being a Muslim and a musician at the same time, and to read her lyrics as poetry.
Deeyah’s career caused a lot of trouble and is subsequently conferred to the fringes of media attention. People working with Deeyah have been known to abandon their projects for unexplained reasons, and she herself has received death threats and been forced underground. This begs the question: how do Muslim girls with a leaning towards the arts balance their beliefs and their talents, in a western setting where other girls are ‘free’ to express themselves and perform without fear?
Jus1Jam recites her poetry for us in the studio, discusses being a muslim liberal and growing up in Muslim-heavy Bradford.
Reality Check: Producing genre shows on the radio
Originally podcast at www.sci-fi-london.com
Alex Fitch talks to Dirk Maggs about his various genre and science fiction programmes on BBC radio from the recent revival of Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy to Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective agency, An American Werewolf in London & Independence Day UK…
