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Film

Cult Column: Dr Strangelove

As the Russian doomsday machine detonates, and as the War Room of the U.S. government animatedly discusses the need to bring 10 beautiful women each into subterranean mineshafts in order to regrow the population, their top former-Nazi scientist, Dr Strangelove (in Peter Sellers’s best performance), stands bolt upright from his wheelchair, and cries: “Mein Führer! […]

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Cult Column Film

The Shining

Halloween is upon us, and there’s no better way to celebrate the spookiest time of the year than watching an appropriately spooky film. From classics like The Omen to new releases like Us, there’s no shortage of great horror films to watch this Halloween. But one horror film stands above them all. It has creepy […]

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Cult Column Film

Cult Column: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Content warning: sexual assault and rape This month, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the director’s death, Stanley Kubrick’s scintillating, surreal masterpiece A Clockwork Orange is being re-released in cinemas across the UK. Adapted in 1971 from Anthony Burgess’ novel, it tells the story of Alex, a teenage criminal who leads his gang of droogs […]

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Cult Column Film

Cult Column: The Shining

Right in time for Halloween, Stanley Kubrick’s formidable The Shining returns to cinemas. The film begins with Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) driving up to the Overlook Hotel in a yellow Volkswagen. He is (or at least he professes to be) a writer, and he is to become Caretaker of the hotel while it is snowed-in […]

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Fringe Theatre

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange was controversial to say the least when it was published in 1962, with an equally controversial film adaptation from Stanley Kubrick following nine years later. Both were an expression of the ultra-violence associated with the character of the psychopathic young male, set in an almost unrecognisable 1970s dystopia. Burgess […]

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Film

2001: A Personal Odyssey

It is staring at me. Constant. Relentless. Unblinking. The red light is burning into my retinas. I cannot escape even when I close my eyes. There is a shrill intermittent tone. I lie alone in the darkness, staring into this red eye, pleading. Stop it, I cry silently, please stop it. And in my head […]