• Halloween

    October 24, 2018 - By 

    For the Final Girl, nothing’s really final. Laurie Strode might have thought it was game over when a doctor in a raincoat put six holes in the chest of her masked attacker, but Halloween wasn’t even close to done with her. Strapped to the wheel of fate, she was brought back, again and again, for twenty years, enduring more nastiness, more reboots, more bloodline backstory. For survivors, surviving is a full-time job. For the eleventh film in the franchise, writers Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green (who also directs) plunged a butcher’s knife into the heart of the…

  • John Carpenter @ Vicar Street, Dublin

    October 25, 2016 - By 

    Not entirely unlike that scene in Wayne’s World where Wayne and Garth declare themselves all but contemptible in the presence of Alice Cooper, the sense of collective unworthiness when John Carpenter quite literally struts out on stage with his band in Vicar Street tonight is tangible. Hands down one of cinema’s greatest auteurs – a fiercely single-minded master of both sound and vision – the 68-year-old has accumulated very few naysayers over his genre-spanning, critic-slaying, five-decade career to date, a fact that is comfortably underlined by the idolatrous energy in the much-loved Dublin venue tonight. But from those first ominous ripples of the main title to his 1981 dystopian classic Escape…

  • John Carpenter – Lost Themes II

    April 20, 2016 - By 

    Lost Themes 2 is legendary filmmaker and composer John Carpenter’s follow-up to his 2015 effort, Lost Themes. The central concept behind the record is simple: themes for films that Carpenter never made. To anyone who has seen the likes of Assault on Precinct 13, Escape From New York or Halloween, this is a salivating promise as it distills one of the man’s greatest strengths into a single cohesive package. Lost Themes 2 is an expansion on that same idea, and not unlike a sequel, it builds upon the groundwork laid in the first outing in bigger, more polished way. The…

  • John Carpenter – Lost Themes

    February 2, 2015 - By 

    Within seconds of hitting play on director John Carpenter’s first ‘real’ album, pictures start to form in your head. Kurt Russell, chewing on a cigarette, sullenly peeking out with his one eye, stubble so rugged you could grate cheese on it, and a fashion sense that is questionable, at best. There might never be another Snake Plissken movie, but when John Carpenter is behind the synth, suddenly there doesn’t need to be.In some part due to necessity, Carpenter composed the soundtracks to the vast majority of his films, working quickly and cheaply, utilising basic rock band instrumentation and heavy, primitive…

  • Interview: John Carpenter

    October 25, 2013 - By 

    As movie directors go they don’t get more legendary than the pioneering, inimitable and boundlessly influential John Carpenter. From his 1978 landmark horror debut Halloween to innumerable other cult classics including Escape from New York, Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13, The Fog, The Thing, Starman, Big Trouble In Little China and They Live, his ever-increasingly legacy as one of the most important directors in the history of cinema is beyond refute. With Samhain lingering just around the corner, Will Murphy grab a few words with the man himself, touching on comics, composition and Kickstarter campaigns. Firstly, I’d like to ask about new…