Earlier this week, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, the people behind the upcoming blu-ray and DVD release of The Darkest Hour, gave FPI blog readers the opportunity to destroy their friends on Facebook. And now they’ve teamed up with us for a special prize draw in which 5 lucky entrants will win a blu-ray copy of the film!

THE DARKEST HOUR follows software designers Sean (Emile Hirsch, Milk, Speed Racer) and Ben (Max Minghella, The Social Network) on a journey to Moscow where they hope to sell a new social networking concept to the Russian market.  When their business plans turn sour they commiserate in the company of the beautiful Anne (Rachel Taylor) and Natalie (Olivia Thirlby), before noticing strange apparitions in the sky. Wonder turns to horror, however, when the city is suddenly overrun by invisible forces that disintegrate any life form on approach!

Fighting to survive, the group soon learns that electrical devices activate when an alien is near. Can they outsmart their extraterrestrial attackers and become the first of the human kind to survive the darkest hour?

Featuring mind-blowing special effects brought to you by legendary film-maker Timur Bekmanbetov (Wanted, Night Watch, Day Watch), THE DARKEST HOUR will take the viewer on an electrifying roller-coaster ride and exhilarating home entertainment experience. The 3D Blu-ray release of The Darkest Hour includes a copy of the film on traditional Blu-ray and on DVD with digital copy. Special features include a selection of deleted and extended scenes.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is send the answer to the following question to martin(dot)steenton(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk.

In the trailer to The Darkest Hour, what item is used to detect when an alien presence is near?

Competition closes on May 25th 2012 and winners will be selected at random from entrants. Good luck!

O’Bannon introduces a fun cast, including a pair of hapless heroes who are slowly becoming zombified after inhaling the toxic chemicals from a spilled canister (from the traditional secret military experiment), the doctor unable to find a pulse or respiration and declaring them medically dead even though they are still walking and talking, which, it has to be said, they find a little, er, upsetting. O’Bannon even has his besieged crew attempt to interrogate one captured zombie, trying to find out why the undead want to eat their brains.

It’s colossal fun and rightly become a cult hit with horror fans. Now with the shiny new release on disc coming on June 4th from Second Sight we’ve got three copies of the movie looking for some viewers who delight in their exquisite bad taste for 80s gross out horror-comedy. Just email joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk with your name and details and the answer to the question what delicacy do our hungry zombies most crave to be in with a chance of winning. Closing date June 4th.

Directed by James Huth

Starring Jean Dujardin, Michael Youn, Sylvie Testud, Daniel Prevost, Alexandra Lamy

Lucky Luke, the lonesome cowboy who can drawn and shoot faster than his shadow has been around for a long time – 1946, in fact, since the great Morris first drew his Wild West hero. Over the decades he’s remained popular, being translated into many languages (including, now, a good array of BD albums from Cinebook in the UK) and into other media. Previous filmic outings have never proven as good as the long-running comic though – until now. I actually first saw this live action take on Lucky Luke a couple of years ago at my annual pilgrimage to the Edinburgh International Film Festival. I’d decided to go but didn’t have high expectations – to be honest I was thinking it was likely to be around the level of the live action Asterix films from France, that is to say passable but not especially good. I was pleasantly surprised – my friends and I at that Film Festival screening laughed continually throughout the film and spent a good while in the pub discussing it afterwards. All of us agreed it was so choc-full of details it demanded another viewing on DVD at home.

And then a couple of years passed and for some reason it simply never got a UK release, which infuriated me – terrible to see a great film at a festival, tell everyone about it but they can’t see it… I’m delighted to say that now that is being rectified with a DVD release at the end of this month. I was lucky enough to get an advance disc and re-watching the film I found it even funnier than the first time around. In fact it’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen in years (puns and jokes abound even in the closing credits although it might stretch your French a little to get them!). The film is loaded with humour, from jokey dialogue and characters through to more subtle jokes in the background or in the wonderfully detailed sets, which are as close as a live-action can get to re-creating the look of a comic, all the buildings looking like they have been sketched freehand without a ruler, giving Luke’s world an appropriately cartoony appearance while still remaining very Western. Visually it draws on the comics but also from a rich tradition of American Westerns, from the iconic landscapes of a John Ford flick to the Spaghetti Westerns of the great Sergio Leone (with, I think a tip of the hat to Mel Brook’s magnificent Blazing Saddles).

In fact the opening flashback of young Luke witnessing the murder of his parents by desperadoes is heavily indebted stylistically to Sergio Leone (no bad thing in my book). Flash forward again and we have our cowboy hero meeting the President in a special railroad car (comically wreathed in cigar smoke, a jokey nod to the fact our once smoking cowboy now just has a blade of grass in his lips instead of ciggies – better example for the kids!), in a scene that borrows from Leone’s operatic Once Upon a Time in the West. The railroad is coming to unite both side of the United States and make it into a full nation. But before he can drive in the golden rail spike to unite the lines to the coasts Luke’s old stomping ground of Daisy Town has to be sorted out. Once a peaceful haven it is now a riot of outlaws under the leadership of gambler and conjurer Poker; the President asks Luke to clean up the town and so our hero rides in alone to the viper’s nest. He may be outnumbered and out-gunned but Luke, with his trusty steed Jolly Jumper, is in a class of his own and the jail is soon full of villains. All seems well until Poker forces a proper, old school Western showdown in the street. Needless to say he can’t outdraw Luke, and as the shot rings out he falls dead… Luke is mortified, he uses his guns but never kills, and thinking he’s taken a life could destroy him faster than any gang of bandidos…

And I won’t tell you anymore of the plot because I don’t want to spoil it for you. But the story is only one half of the tremendous fun on offer here. The film is quickfire gags and some brilliant characters (Calamity Jane, toughest gal gun in the West, but with a girly crush on Luke under that hard as nails exterior, Jesse James constantly quoting Shakespeare like a true ham, James and Billy the Kid trying to light one of Luke’s blades of grass to smoke it and getting wasted), the cowering locals in Daisy Town will only venture outdoors in barrels for protection, the details in sets and even clothes are just perfect. It’s full of enough humour so that the younger readers the the comics are aimed at will be kept laughing, but it also has plenty of little asides aimed at the adult audiences, not to mention the plethora of references to other classic Western film that will reward the adult viewer. It’s pure, wonderfully played, wonderfully detailed fun throughout and Dujardin, here in a pre The Artist role, is perfect as a live action Luke, although of course when the French cast talk to him he sounds more like Looky Luke! But the French language in such an American genre as a Western actually adds to the good natured humour of the whole film. Unmissable fun and one of the funniest flicks I have seen in years.

Win Lucky Luke!!!

Lucky Luke (in French with English subtitles) is released on DVD on May 28th – and in more good new we have three copies up for grabs. To be in with a chance of bagging one, just drop us a line at joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk with your name and contact details and the answer to the question: Lucky Luke is so fast he can out-draw even his own what?

Okay, peeps and fellow geeks, listen up, because we have a remarkable “money can’t buy it” type of prize up for grabs thanks to our friends arranging the screenings of Sir Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated ‘Alien sort-of prequel’ (Sir Ridley notes it started that way but ‘evolved into another universe’)  Prometheus, starring Girl With a Dragon Tattoo’s superb Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba (anything with Idris is good in our books!), Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Michael Fassbender.The film marks the triumphant return to the science fiction genre of one of our best directors who made such a huge impact on the film incarnation of SF with his early masterpieces Blade Runner and Alien, yet hasn’t returned to the genre for decades:

“Over the past few decades, we’ve been ‘action filmed-out’ and ‘monster filmed-out’ and almost ‘science fiction filmed-out,. So the baseline question is: how original are you going to be? The reason I haven’t made another sci-fi film in so many years, apart from the fact I’ve been busy making other films and exploring different genres, is because frankly I haven’t come across anything worthwhile for me to do with enough truth, originality and strength.  Prometheus has all three,” Sir Ridley Scott on why he was away from the genre he has a fondness for and what drew him back to it after so long. He went on to explain the iconic ‘Space Jockey’ – the gigantic alien skeleton in the pilot’s seat of the derelict in Alien – has remained in his mind since he made that film: “Something that had stayed with me ever since Alien, was the mystery behind it  Who was he?  Where was he from?   What was his mission? What kind of technology would his kind possess?  I thought those questions could provide a springboard for even larger ideas… Out of the creative process in developing the picture energed a new, grand mythology, in which this original story takes place.  The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien’s DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, far-reaching and provocative.  Prometheus is the singular genre tale I’d been searching for.”

Prometheus opens in the UK on the 1st of June, but thanks to our film chums we have an exceptional prize for one lucky fan – two tickets to the premiere of Prometheus at London’s Leicester Square on Thursday May 31st. The package includes return rail travel to London from anywhere in the country and a night’s bed and breakfast in a top London hotel. Of course the winner has to be able to travel to London on the 31st of May and return on June 1st; the film has not had its final rating yet so the winner must be over 15 and at least one of the two people using the ticket must be over 18. In order to be in with a chance to bag this fabulous prize answer this simple question: who is the director of Prometheus? Email your answers to joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk, please mark emails Prometheus Competition and include your full contact details including a phone number, please, as arrangements for travel will have to be made very quickly for the lucky winners! Closing date for entries is Sunday 27th of May – best of luck! And if you do win, make sure you take a photo at the premiere and send it to us to post up!

I’m eagerly looking forward to the film myself and quite jealous of whoever gets to the premiere! You can learn more about the film on the official website here and naturally there are Facebook, YouTube and Twitter streams to follow for more information too.

That’s Adrian Tomine’s cover to Pynchon’s Inherent Vice.

Here’s the Independent article decrying modern illustration.

And here’s what Dan Franklin of Cape had to say…. (emphasis mine)

“I think a) it’s fashion”, he says trenchantly. “And b) there aren’t that many great illustrators. It’s rare you can come across someone who can draw. Even when you’re looking for someone to do book jackets, it’s hard to find someone who can draw the human figure – it seems to be unfashionable now.”

So we set you a competition – here’s Kenny’s original post with more details but essentially we want you to design a book cover for one of two books: Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye or  The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.

Now, try to remember that innovative design and thinking outside the box is to be encouraged, but also keep in mind what Franklin said about illustration. We’re trying to prove him wrong remember?

Entries need to be in by the deadline of 31st May, when Kenny, Joe, and myself will sit down and decide who gets on the shortlist. Then we open the judging out to those that took part who determine the winner.

The winner gets £150, but will also be proving (hopefully) a point. Send the entries to joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk with links to your site/blog/online thing.

Deadline for entries is 31st May 2012.

What made the article controversial with many in the UK was the comments of one of the country’s leading literary editors and publishers, Dan Franklin of Cape, long a home to graphic novel publications and still using some illustration in prose works, who said that there seems to be few, if any good, illustrators around anymore. His argument seemed to centre on people having poorer drawing skills, especially when it comes to depicting the human figure, a contention that was backed up by several others. The article resurfaced this week through the magic of online discussion (as Richard noted here on the blog over the holiday weekend) and lead to comics creator and illustrator Sarah McIntyre posting a robust defence on her LiveJournal, noting that not only are there many fine illustrators working in the UK, even the barb about being able to draw the human figure didn’t always hold water as often an illustrator doesn’t feel that a naturalistic life drawing approach suits a particular scene.

Naturally, as readers who are exposed to a wide variety of illustration every day, we tend to Sarah’s side of the argument, that we do have excellent illustration talent here. And so we are putting our money where our mouth is – we thought we would run a little contest and let you put your best foot forward. If you are an illustrator or cartoonist, we want you to have a go at producing a cover for one of a couple of books. The books are Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. The first is a book most everyone knows, that will tackle your skills in thinking outside of the many covers and images used for this book in the past – this is your chance to bring something new to it. The second book is one some may be less familiar with, but is a tremendous book dealing with a changing world in a sympathetic and intriguing way. There is very little imagery associated with that book, so it gives you free reign to work out some sort of design with few influences – think on your own, outside the box. We’ve excluded kids books not because we have any problem with them – regular readers will be aware we’ve reviewed comics and illustrated books aimed at kids numerous times on here – but because there seems to be much less argument about the existence of a lot of talented children’s illustrators.

So how will this work? We need you to send in your cover art for one of the two books (email them to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk. We will then post all the entries on the blog (subject to them appearing to us to be of a pro standard – myself, Richard and Joe will be looking through them). We know that a lot of people in the world of illustration and publishing read this blog. Your efforts will be seen and hopefully a clear answer given to where all the great illustrators have gone. As a small incentive we will give £150 to the winning entry. Once all the entries are up on the blog we will narrow them down to a shortlist of six – at this stage we have decided to go for the jury of your peers approach, so those artists who contributed work to the competition will also be eligible to vote for their favoured cover (naturally you can’t vote for your own, it is other people you need to impress with your design after all!) to select the final outright winning cover artwork. The only other rule is that you shouldn’t post the image you make online until we have done so first, so others will not be influenced by your entry. This contest has no commercial aspect and FPI will be doing nothing more with the entries than posting them to be seen by readers and publishers (as always we will include links to your own sites with the art), in the attempt to, we hope, prove a point. The work, of course, remains owned by those producing it. The contest entry date runs until the 31st of May; let’s show them that our illustrators are just as good as we all believe, send us those entries and then let’s show them off around the blogosphere and Twitterverse.

Greg Farrell drops us a line with some disquieting news – New York’s world-famous The Strand bookstore, a much loved mecca for readers well known for events, friendly, knowledgeable expert staff recommending good books – is in the midst of a dispute with its staff. The union representing the booksellers there is protesting increasing use of non unionised management and the expiry of their contracts and the proposed replacement contracts offering unacceptable terms, including a two-tier wage proposal, while the bookstore explains that the slow economy, falling sales, online competitors and digital books are all forcing them to cut costs where they can (see here for links to various news media coverage of the dispute).

The booksellers have now taken their protest action into the medium of comics – unusual use of the medium to outline an employment grievance, especially while it is still ongoing, but pretty interesting. Go and have a read and let’s hope that the dispute gets settled as best it can in the current climate.

Award-winning horror-action flick with a sense of humour (okay, a sick sense of humour, but that’s how we like it!) writer-director Kerry Prior’s The Revenant is out on DVD and Blu Ray on April 2nd. When soldier Bart is killed in Iraq only to wake up and find himself a Revenant, returned from the dead but needing sustenance from the living to stop his body decomposing, he figures he can still turn to his slacker best friend Joey. Undead or not Joey is happy to see his friend back again and the two hatch a cracked plan to use Bart’s undead status to become heroic crimefighters cleaning up the city streets – and you just know that’s never going to go quite according to plan!

Our chums who are launching the DVD have generously given us three DVDs to give away to three lucky readers. Just email in and tell us who the director of The Revenant is along with your contact details, and please mark the subject line “Revenant Competition” to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk by the end of April 2nd to be in with a chance of winning a copy of the movie.

The BD Passion festivalx returns this year from the 24th to the 27th of May (see here for James’ report on last year’s event) and as part of it there is a competition for up and coming comics talent. There is a competition for students to enter a two page comic, which will be judged by SelfMadeHero’s Doug Wallace, Karrie Fransman and Kevin O’Neill. The closing date is May 10th, check here for more details and to download the submission form. This year’s BD Passion includes contributions from Karrie Fransman, Kevin O’Neill, Luke Pearson, Tom Gauld, Guy Delisle, Christophe Arleston, David B and more. The full programme is announced on April 15th.

News from the New British Comics camp (review of issue 3 here) and another of their competitions, all connected with that rather good cover by Lawrence Elwick. There are 2 free copies to win, and winners will get a special drawn dedication from Lawrence, who’ll either draw the winner or one of the characters from the book.

All you need to do is take a look at the cover and answer one or both of these questions:

Contest #1: Name all the characters (animals too!) which appear on the cover of NBC #3. (The winner will be drawn from those who name all the characters, or the highest number if no one gets the lot.)

Contest #2: Take a look on the NBC #3 cover again. All of the characters there have British roots. All but one. Can you tell which? (Again, the winner will be drawn from all correct answers.)

All entries should be sent to Karol at NBC (karolwisnia@gmail.com) with “NBC #3 contest” as a subject. But you’ll have to be quick – the closing date is the 7th of February 2012.

Full details at the NBC Blog.