Ten Years, and Hong Kong's future tensions

Last night the independent feature film Ten Years was awarded Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards, continuing that film's remarkable and unexpected success. By winning it managed to beat several big-budget studio features including The Taking of Tiger Mountain, Ip Man 3 and Port of Call. Ten Years is a portmanteau film, comprising five separate short films depicting hypothetical lives in Hong Kong in the year 2025, and is directed by Ng Ka-leung, Jevons Au, Chow Kwun-Wai, Fei-Pang Wong, and Kwok Zune.

Ten Years presents a dystopian future for the Chinese city, in which Mandarin has become the sole official language, gangs of teenage agitators bully shop-owners who dare to sell banned goods, and a political activist sees no means of effectively protesting mainland Chinese control other than self-immolation. The film was produced on a shoestring budget of about HK$500,000 (approximately US$65,000) and has to date grossed more than HK$6 million in local cinemas.

As a science fiction enthusiast, it pleases me to see a science fiction film win Best Film at any country's national film awards. As a fan of Hong Kong - the city, its people, and its culture - the film's enormous success and acclaim points to a rapidly-building discontent with Beijing's steady growing interference in Hong Kong's affairs.

10 Doctor Who enemies that deserve a rematch

One of the advantages of a series like Doctor Who is that it has such a long, rich history of aliens, villains and rubber-suit monsters just itching for a rematch with the Doctor. Since returning in 2005 the series has brought back all manner of original series foes, some obvious (Daleks, Cybermen, the Master) and some a little more surprising (the Macra).

You would think that after nine seasons and a pile of specials that this particular well might have run dry, but I think there are plenty of monsters and baddies from the series' first 26 years that could make a real impact with contemporary viewers. Here are my picks.

Picking the next Doctor Who companion

Season 10 of Doctor Who is going into production at some point in 2016 - we really don't know any more details at the moment - and that means someone is going to need to replace the recently departed Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) as the Doctor's trusty companion. Obviously there's no way of knowing who the character may be, or what actor will play them. It's also most likely going to be an entirely new character created specifically to fill the vacancy.

But what if it isn't? After all, Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) made her debut in the 2006 Christmas special before unexpectedly returning to become a permanent companion in 2008. There are plenty of former guest stars who could be brought back to the series and transformed into the new companion. Here are a few potential choices.

Judging the DCU: June 2015

To paper over the relocation of the DC Comics offices from New York to Los Angeles readers had to sit through Convergence, a weirdly ill-advised mega-crossover of 40 two-part miniseries between April and May. With that out of the way, it's back to business as usual with a mini-relaunch: new status quos in most of the ongoing titles, plus a whopping 21 new ongoing monthlies and miniseries.

Generally speaking June was a great month for DC, with most ongoing titles enjoying small jumps in the number of units sold, as readers took the opportunity to sample some of these new creative directions. Superman has had his secret identity revealed to the world and lost his powers. Jim Gordon has become Batman. The Green Lantern Corps has gone missing. Robin now rides around the world on a giant bat monster.

Where I'm most interested, however, is in these 21 new titles. Which ones grabbed the market's attention and which ones failed to make an impact? On average, each new title shifted 45,472 units via Diamond Distribution. Five of the books shifted above average. The other 16? Not so much. So how did all of the new titles go?

Judging the DCU: May 2015

May 2015 saw DC Comics continue with its two-month Convergence event. I think it was always assumed sales for the month would be down from April. The question really is: by how much?

For now let's ignore the holdovers from March that got published in April: new issues of Justice League, Batman and Superman that got released late and helped boost DC's overall sales. Let's also put aside the weekly Convergence series as well - we'll get to that in a moment. That leaves us with the 40 two-issue miniseries published: how much did the sales drop between issues one and two?

Fourteen per cent. That's actually fairly impressive when you consider that the average second issue drop for DC Comics is about 24 per cent. The average units per issue were just shy of 36,000, compared to almost 42,000 in April. Jump back a year, and May 2014 average units per comic were just under 28,000. All up that suggests that Convergence was pretty successful. The next question for DC is how much momentum was lost by suspending the regular books for two months.

Judging the New 52: March 2015

March 2015 marked, for all intents and purposes, the end of DC's New 52 initiative. The line-wide reboot commenced all the way back in September 2011 with the launch of 52 all-new monthly titles, and has continued over the past three-and-a-half years. In April and May DC is going through a massive cross-over storyline titled Convergence, and when regular service resumes in June there will be a whole new raft of new titles launched and the New 52 masthead is being abandoned (although the fictional universe is thankfully not being rebooted again).

Of the 52 monthly titles launched in September 2011, 11 of them have survived to continue in June. An additional 14 books that were launched subsequent to 2011 are continuing as well. In the meantime there are a total of 67 monthly books that started between September 2011 and late 2014 that didn't survive to the end of the initiative. As far as comic book publishing goes, that's not a bad hit rate: 92 books all told, with about 27 per cent making it through to the post-New 52 line-up.

Judging the New 52: February 2015

It's a weird time to be analysing DC's superhero titles, since we're only a few weeks away from DC's big move from New York to Los Angeles. To paper over delays in producing new books over that time the company is presenting a massive two-month event called Convergence. In addition to a weekly miniseries there's a raft of two-issue storylines bringing back and mashing together a lot of old characters and concepts from the 1980s through to the 2000s. I have to be honest it's not grabbing my attention and I'm unlikely to pick up many of these temporary books. I am interested to see how well they all sell.

Then in June we're getting a mini-relaunch for the whole line. New directions on many of the old books, new costumes for some key characters - which is what you do when you don't have a new direction, but want to make it look like you do - and 25 new monthly titles and miniseries. DC will also be dropping the "New 52" moniker, which is fair enough - you can't be new forever. I guess that means this is the second-to-last instalment of this particular column. Come June I'll have to call it something else.

Judging the New 52: January 2015

In January 2015, the American comic book industry was all about Star Wars. The first issue of Marvel's new ongoing Star Wars comic shifted close to a million copies via Diamond Distribution to the USA and Australia alone. Additional sales in the UK (which aren't counted in Diamond's figures) will easily push it over to make it the first million-selling American comic in years. Certainly it's the highest-selling single issue since Diamond started exclusive distribution in 1997.

All of this activity saw Marvel claim a pretty healthy market share of more than 40 per cent, but I think all of the attention on Star Wars is masking some pretty serious downward trends among DC's titles. Put simply, some of the main DC titles are really starting to slip with readers. Justice League dropped below 70,000 readers for the first time the New 52 launched. Similarly Aquaman dropped below the 30,000 unit mark, and Green Lantern below 40,000. Detective Comics dropped by 3,000 copies. That follows a similar drop in December, suggesting that despite the sterling work Manapul and Buccelatto are doing on that book the market simply isn't buying. Sales are still above 50,000 copies, so it's doubtful DC will be taking any drastic measures, but it must be of concern.

DC have a two-month crossover coming up in April and May, and are launching 24 new comics in June and setting up new creative teams on many of the continuing titles. Hopefully that will bring some readers back.

DC Comics: The New 24

In June DC Comics is undergoing a widely expected semi-relaunch of their superhero line. Everyone will likely remember DC's line-wide reboot of September 2011, the "New 52", and while there have been fairly regular launches of new monthly titles since then June represents the biggest change since then. The New 52 moniker is being dropped, and 24 new monthly books are premiering in one month. These will join 25 books that are continuing - some with new creative teams and some with the same writers and artists.

These new titles are following from the successful broadening of the Batman comic book range in recent months. Headlined by a re-imagining of Batgirl, a raft of books have tried out new directions and styles including Harry Potter-inspired boarding school hijinks in Gotham Academy, a crime saga in Catwoman, espionage in Grayson, and horror in Gotham After Midnight. This "Batgirling" of the DC Universe looks set to produce some really interesting books, and - it must be said - a few with "immediate cancellation" written all over them.

So with 24 new books at once, this is probably going to be a fairly long post. Let's take a deep breath and dive right in.

Judging the New 52: November 2014

At the same time that sales figures for November 2014 were announced, DC Comics confirmed a whole raft of cancellations in March 2015. Prepare to say goodbye to Aquaman and the Others, Infinity Man and the Forever People, Klarion, Secret Origins, Star Spangled War Stories, Trinity of Sin, Worlds' Finest, Arkham Manor, Batwoman, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Red Lanterns and Swamp Thing. That's thirteen cancellations in one hit, suggesting that once DC's two-month Convergence event is over we're going to see a hell of a lot of issue ones come June 2015. (I told you DC would cancel the Lantern spin-offs in 2015.)

The cancellation of Arkham Manor is particularly odd, given that its first issue only came out in October. Its second issue, released in November, saw a 33% drop to 30,907 units - that's actually really respectable, and suggests a book that could run for at least 12-18 issues. Instead it's going to close at just six. It makes me wonder if it was intended as a six-part miniseries all along, but was simply promoted as an ongoing in order to boost its sales (miniseries do not sell well in this day and age). Either that or writer Gerry Duggan's exclusive contract with Marvel doesn't include exceptions for Arkham.

Judging the New 52: October 2014

DC Comics launched five new monthly titles in October, as well as soft relaunches of two others - Batgirl and Catwoman. Altogether it marked the biggest push of new titles they've done in a long time, all of them promoted with a lot of in-house print advertisements and Internet hype in all the standard comic book websites. How did they go?

• Arkham Manor: I can't quite get my head around this one, which is all about a repossessed Wayne Manor being adapted to use as the new Arkham Asylum (since the original building just collapsed over in Batman Eternal). It's not a concept I'd have thought had much appeal, but 35,922 readers disagreed with me. Talon launched somewhere similar in September 2012, and ran for 17 issues.
• Gotham Academy: This immensely cute all-ages book is basically Hogwarts School adapted into the Batman universe. It launched at 43,338 units; other books that launched around this number ran for about a year before burning out. Hopefully this one will last longer - it deserves to.
• Klarion: Dead on arrival, with just 20,870 units shipped. Only one other book (Star-Spangled War Stories) launched with less. It was a weirdly unfocused, difficult first issue too, so I'd expect a pretty harsh drop in November to about 15,000 units or less. This one will run the length of a trade paperback and quietly die.
• Lobo: This is the new 'sexy' Lobo, and launched with 39,047 units. That suggests about a one-year run, much like Gotham Academy.
• Trinity of Sin: Another book that's dead on arrival. This combined the two cancelled titles Phantom Stranger and Pandora into one, and sold 22,683 units - roughly what those two books sold together back in August. I give it six months, presumably to tie up their storylines, and then it's done.

1,000 minutes

Let's say you had 1,000 minutes that you wanted to spend watching movies. That's about 16.7 hours in total, so you could in theory wake up tomorrow, start watching at 9:00 am and be finished just before midnight. What would you watch with those 1,000 minutes? Which films would you choose? You could pick a movie franchise and run through it, I guess. In 1,000 minutes you could burn your way through the entire Friday the 13th saga, barring the last 10 minutes of the 2009 remake. On the other hand you could go for a wider variety of films - pick stuff from different directors, genres, countries of origin, and so on.

I was wondering what I would recommend. If I was to give someone 1,000 minutes' worth of feature films to watch, which movies would I choose? Under the cut you'll find what I selected. These are favourite films, but more than that they're favourite films that I really wish more people could see. They're films that have stuck with me for years, and which I'm always telling people they should check out. I don't need to list Blade Runner (my favourite film) or Singin' in the Rain (my standard pick when someone demands I name the best film), because they're famous all by themselves. I want to look at what I'd recommend from all of the other films I love.

Judging the New 52: August 2014

With August we hit the end of the third year of DC's New 52 initiative. One wonders how long they're going to keep referring to it as "new". Or indeed "52", given they haven't been regularly publishing 52 monthlies for a while now. The big launch of the month was Grant Morrison's parallel universe maxi-series Multiversity, which launched with a very solid 90,551 units. At US$4.99 an issue it was far and away DC's highest-earning comic for the month. Last month there were four launches: Grayson, Star-Spangled War Stories, Teen Titans and New Suicide Squad. How did each book fare in its second month?

Star-Spangled War Stories is officially the New 52's least successful monthly book ever. In July its debut issue only sold 18,762 copies. In August it only sold 11,724, down almost 38% and beating previous worst-selling second issue Green Team: Teen Trillionaires by 2,600 copies. Discounting the original September 2011 launch, which arguably had unrealistically inflated first issue sales, the average second issue drop for a New 52 monthly is 28% - so not only did this book launch poorly it then promptly crashed ever harder.

Grayson #2 had a 30% drop with its second issue, down to 56,483 copies. That's actually pretty reasonable for what is essentially a relaunched Nightwing. It's still 29% above the last issue of Nightwing from May. The relaunched Teen Titans only dropped by 22% (40,687 copies), a softer than average fall that suggests this new iteration might have some legs to it. New Suicide Squad dropped by the same proportion, to 38,477 copies. Three reasonable launches, and one absolute disaster: it could be worse.

Who might be the next producer of Doctor Who?

Doctor Who has had many producers over the decades: Verity Lambert, John Nathan-Turner, Barry Letts, Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and a few others. In the modern post-2005 era the series has had two showrunners (a term basically describing an executive producer and creative head): Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat. Davies produced the first four seasons and some specials. By the end of 2014 Moffat will have also produced four seasons and some specials.

Steven Moffat is a broadly popular writer. He just won an Emmy. He can't produce Doctor Who forever, and nor should he: new ideas are what's kept the series running for so long. While nothing has been announced or to my knowledge even believably rumoured, it can't be too much longer before Steven Moffat hangs up his TARDIS key and hands control over to the next showrunner. It's a difficult job, since it's a technically demanding series and the BBC's flagship drama. Who could possibly take charge?

Let's have a look at some potential names. I suspect some of these guys at least will be on the BBC's shortlist. I've listed them in alphabetical order by surname.

Judging the New 52: July 2014

July saw DC Comics debut a couple of new monthlies. The one that leaps out immediately is Star-Spangled War Stories by Palmiotti and Gray, which with just 18,762 copies sold makes it the lowest-selling debut of a DC ongoing since the New 52 started. The question now is whether DC will kill it in the usual eight issues, or if they'll cut their losses and end it at four. To be honest, with sales that disastrous I'd expect the latter.

Much more successful was the relaunch of Nightwing as Grayson #1, which managed to ship 81,433 units - almost doubling the sales of the last issue of Nightwing and reaching #8 on the Diamond charts. Nightwing #1 only reached 63,000 units in September 2011, so this is a really impressive achievement.

Other relaunches didn't go quite as well. Teen Titans #1 sold an estimated 52,358 units; while more than double the sales for Teen Titans #30 back in April it's still well below the sales of the last Teen Titans launch in September 2011 (89,000 units). New Suicide Squad #1 shifted 49,260 units; again more than double the last issue of Suicide Squad but below Suicide Squad #1 in September 2011 (56,817).

A Nightmare on Elm Street: 30 years on

On this day in 1984 Wes Craven's horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street was released into American cinemas. It featured a group of high schoolers getting killed one by one in their sleep by the murderous spirit of Freddy Krueger, a child molester and murderer who used - in life and death - a hand-crafted glove with blades attached to each finger. That was a powerful and frightening visual motif, that glove. The surreal dream imagery resonated with audiences as well, so much so that Freddy managed to return for another six sequels, a short-lived television series, a crossover with the Friday the 13th movie franchise and, in 2010, an abortive remake.

The slasher movie was a hugely popular form of horror in the 1980s, and of the various competing franchises - Halloween, Friday the 13th, et al - it was A Nightmare on Elm Street that was by far my favourite. It had two things that the other franchises lacked. Firstly, it's dream setting allowed for wonderfully imaginative horror sequences. Secondly, its antagonist got to speak, gloat and laugh at his victims' expense. Freddy wasn't just scary, he was funny as well.

Probably not the end of Studio Ghibli

Signals have come out today, widely repeated by the international entertainment press, that Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli is to close its doors as a production house. It's recently released children's fantasy When Marnie Was There would act as the studio's final feature film. Subsequent reporting has already indicated that this is a false alarm: Ghibli might shut down production on future films. They're openly not certain where or how to proceed now that their founders are retiring.

Should a closure happen, it would be a sad day for animation, since over the past 29 years Ghibli has produced some of the world's most enchanting and accomplished animated features. The idea that a company with such a beautiful legacy of filmmaking would close up shop seems incomprehensible. On the other hand, its founder and chief director Hayao Miyazaki has announced his retirement at 73, as has Studio president Toshio Suzuki. The company has also consistently refused to outsource any of its animation process to smaller firms or to move offshore. This has created spiralling production costs that often are not being matched by box office. Miyazaki's own The Wind Rises earned US$134m from a budget of about US$30m. Isao Takahata's The Tale of Princess Kaguya, on the other hand, only earned US$23.5m from a budget of roughly US$49m. It's too early to judge the performance of this year's Ghibli feature, When Marmie Was There, but opening numbers were anemic to say the least.

Judging the New 52: June 2014

Sales figures for Diamond Distribution are out for June 2014, so it seemed an opportune time to see how DC's New 52 superhero books are faring mid-year.

June saw a lot of books come with 'bombshell' alternative covers, depicting various DC superheroines and sidekicks in sexy poses like old-school 1940s and 1950s glamour illustrations. I found the whole exercise more than a little skeezy to be honest, but that didn't stop a lot of books enjoying a massive sales bump for the month. Aquaman jumped 12,000 copies, The Flash more than 13,000, and so on. Batman got a 23,000 unit sales spike. This wasn't pocket change for DC: I suspect the success of this set of covers is going to lead to more and more alternative cover gimmicks every month until the market tires of it.

DC Comics released a brand-new monthly in June: Infinity Man and the Forever People, another adaptation of old Jack Kirby characters by Dan Didio and Keith Giffen. It shipped an estimated 24,907 copies through Diamond Distribution - that's the lowest launch of a DC monthly in the history of the New 52, beating previous record holder Sword of Sorcery by about 2,000 copies. Sword of Sorcery lasted eight issues. I'd expect something similar from this. As I've noted in my Pull List reviews, it's not a bad comic by any stretch but certainly not good enough to sustain itself beyond its first year.

10 awesome contemporary films directed by women

A post on Indiewire this morning reported that screenwriter James Vanderbilt has signed on to make his directorial debut with the forthcoming drama Truth starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford. The post highlighted the uncomfortable fact that this kind of story - where a first-time director gets a huge break on a high profile film - never happens to women.

It's not a controversial statement to claim that film industries around the world are patriarchal spaces (what industry isn't?). It's very difficult for women to get directorial assignments, and certainly all-but-impossible for them to get backing to make larger-scale films within the studio system. Whenever this problem is raised in filmgoer conversations, someone inevitably points out Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker and Point Break, as if the presence of one woman in Hollywood somehow argues for the presence of many others. The same goes for the late Nora Ephron, who found enormous commercial success with her romantic comedies, as well as Nancy Meyers, whose oddly misogynistic comedies (What Women Want, Something's Gotta Give) once made her the most commercial successful female director in the world.

In the interests of furthering the conversation on women in film, I figured it might be worth pointing out 10 great contemporary films directed by women. This isn't some kind of "best films directed by women list"; it's simply 10 films, released since 2000, that were directed by women other than Kathryn Bigelow (because we all seem to have her covered) and that are well worth tracking down and watching. Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Scott Derrickson: director of Doctor Strange

Marvel Studios may be struggling to fill the director's chair on Ant Man, recently vacated by Edgar Wright after irreconcilable creative differences, but they're pushing full steam ahead on Doctor Strange. Scott Derrickson has just been confirmed as that film's director, although I'm not sure a release date has been confirmed as of yet; I'm guessing some time in 2016.

It's a great choice: Derrickson's debut feature The Exorcism of Emily Rose is one of my favourite films from the past decade, seamlessly blending a courtroom drama with a supernatural horror film and drawing great performances from Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson and Jennifer Carpenter. Based on that film's success Derrickson was handed the poisoned chalice of remaking 20th Century Fox's classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still. His effort was critically flawed, but importantly it did demonstrate that he can handle himself with a large budget on a studio picture.