The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Another Thursday already and as we all start to panic about what presents to buy for Christmas here’s Alex Fitch to offer us a chance to de-stress and listen to some interesting audio; as ever check the Panel Borders site for more details and links to podcasts of previous shows:

Strip! – Depicting the darkness in Johnny Cash, tonight at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast afterwards on Panel Borders

Continuing ‘Education and comics’ month on the show, Alex Fitch talks to graphic novelist Reinhard Kleist about his book Johnny Cash: I see a darkness, an epic 224 page graphic novel that tells the life and times of the hell-raising American Country singer from early success to his iconic show at Folsom Prison and beyond. Alex and Reinhard chat about the artist’s varying style from project to project, his love of Americana and the travails of doing such a project in the nascent German comics scene.

I’m ready for my close-up Christmas special: Ghosts, skeletons and dinosaurs with Ray Harryhausen and Michael Punter, Friday 11th at 4pm on Resonance FM, podcast on the 23rd on SciFi London

In an additional one off special before this week’s regular I’m ready for my close-up, Alex Fitch talks to two creators of excellent Christmas entertainment. Oscar winning animator Ray Harryhausen has long been associated with Bank Holiday TV programming and Christmas wouldn’t be the same without an appearance of Jason and the Argonauts or Sinbad facing off mythological creatures. Elsewhere, the Hampstead Theatre in Swiss Cottage is the home of Michael Punter’s ‘Darker Shores’, a new play in the style of M.R. James’ Ghost stories for Christmas, which stars Julian Rhind-Tutt as a spiritualist escaping the traumas of the American Civil War. Alex talks to Ray about his career and meeting a new generation of fans at the launch of his coffee-table book “Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life” and to Michael about using stage magic and cathartic laughter to haunt theatre-goers in the gentility of West London.

On screen:

Electric Sheep Subterranea: Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Sunday 13th at 7pm, Cinéphilia West, 171 Westbourne Grove, London

On Sunday 13th December, as part of our season of underground-related films, we are very pleased to present Guillermo del Toro’s much-loved Pan’s Labyrinth. In this wonderful Gothic fairy tale set during the Spanish Civil War, a young girl named Ofelia has to confront both the monsters of fascism and the terrifying creatures of her imagination. Smoothly moving between real and magic world, Pan’s Labyrinth tells the moving tale of a child’s initiation to life and death.

This will be preceded by the third episode of our popular Sunday serial, the sci-fi Western musical The Phantom Empire (1935), in which a cowboy, who is also a radio show host, stumbles upon an ancient but highly advanced civilisation living under his ranch… see what happens next!

Recent podcasts:

Panel Borders: Apostolos Doxiadis’ Logicomix

The first of this month’s series of shows looking at links between “education and comic books”. Alex Fitch talks to to author Apostolos Doxiadis about the graphic novel Logicomix- An epic search for truth which he co-wrote with computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou. The graphic novel centres around the life of Bertrand Russell and explores the history of mathematics in the 20th century, intertwined with the story of the authors grappling with the project’s creation. Alex and Apostolos are looking at the interesting structure of the graphic novel and how this relates to its subject matter as well as the nature of modern biographical comic books.

Reality Check: Sci-Fi comics part one

In first half of a two part podcast recorded in front of a live audience at this year’s London International Science-Fiction and Fantasy Film Festival, Alex Fitch talks to four practitioners of Science-Fiction comic books about their work; these include Paul Cornell (Captain Britain and MI-13 / Doctor Who), Bryan Talbot (Grandville / The Adventures of Luther Arkwright), Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (Iron Man 2020 / All Knowledge is Strange) and Paul Duffield (Freakangels / The Tempest). Alex discusses with the panel the use of comics as an underated way of telling SF stories and the probable future of the medium via the internet. (Part two will be online shortly)