September 2020

Total Film

The Modern Guide to Movies

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Total Film
JANE CROWTHER (JC) [email protected] @totalfilm_jane The chest munch then spider head in The Thing DEPUTY EDITOR MATT MAYTUM (MM) [email protected] @mattmaytum The final shot in The Blair Witch Project REVIEWS EDITOR MATTHEW LEYLAND
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Welcome To Total Film The Smarter Movie Magazine
Feels like we’ve been living in a horror movie for the past few months, but this issue we decided to celebrate the shuddering chills coming our way on the big screen – an escape from real life we can’t wait to be terrified by. Slithering in first is
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Call Sheet
NEWS EDITOR Always enjoy an interview that starts with the actor telling you the film they’re in is awful (I had to agree). EDITOR-AT-LARGE Was a pleasure talking to the Candyman team this month – didn’t tell them I was scared of saying the title int
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Total Film Wingman
I want to pursue a career as a Disney screenwriter, but I’m not sure which courses to opt for. A scriptwriting or creative writing degree? Or should I look at an Engineering BA in theme-park-ride design? It just seems like a natural Disney entry poin
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Dialogue
EMAIL [email protected] WRITE Total Film, 1-10 Praed Mews, London W2 1QY (postal addresses will be used for the sole purpose of sending out prizes) gamesradar.com/totalfilm twitter.com/totalfilm facebook.com/totalfilm Drop us a line totalfilm@f
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Sins Of The Father
From Simon Killer to Christine, director Antonio Campos is no stranger to depicting the dark heart of humanity on screen. But his new film, The Devil All The Time, may just be his bleakest yet. “As a filmmaker, you don’t try and overanalyse why you’r
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Zendaya
I don’t have a roadmap for this shit – I grew up really, really fast. I learned to trust myself a lot more.” At 23 years old, Zendaya isn’t kidding. A singer-songwriter turned Disney Kid turned in-demand actress, Zendaya’s career has skyrocketed sinc
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Getting Hitched
It’s a kind of film that’s in the consciousness, but people don’t really know it, the ins and outs of it. And I thought that was really interesting,” muses Ben Wheatley, over coffee during a break in filming at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire on a gl
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Break-up Artist
It’s been four years since idiosyncratic writer/director Charlie Kaufman melted brains with Anomalisa, or a dozen if you don’t count films populated entirely by sex-starved puppets. After far too long away from screens Kaufman is back with I’m Thinki
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You Talkin’ To Me?
IN THE CROSSHAIRS THIS MONTH JASON SUDEIKIS You talkin’ to me? I am talking to you. We’re talking through Zoom and you’re talking to me. We’re having a conversation. A dialogue. I’ve been talking to a lot of people today – more than any of us have be
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Wedding Crasher
Time-loop comedy Palm Springs caused a stir at Sundance in January when it sold for a reported $17.5million (and 69 cents, nice), making it the most expensive movie deal in the history of the festival. Since its US release, the charming romcom has ra
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Lunar ’toon
During his storied career at Disney, Glen Keane was a supervising animator on characters like Ariel, Beast and Aladdin, and he won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for his work on Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball. Now, he makes his feature director
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Rider On The Storm
I have always had the idea to write about Vietnam and the war in a way that was different,” says writer/director Hong Khaou, explaining the origins of his second film Monsoon, shot on location in Vietnam. In Western cinema, Vietnam has become synonym
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Q&A HENRY GOLDING
How did you find Monsoon’s smaller shoot compared to big productions like Crazy Rich Asians? Being in Vietnam reminded me of when I was doing travel shows. Instead of a green room or a trailer, I had a plastic stool on the street with my chopped-up f
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LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
It hasn’t escaped my notice that my entire twenties, people criticised me for being too much in my films: too loud, too flamboyant,” sighs Canadian writer-director Xavier Dolan, the former wunderkind (he’s now 31!) behind such loud, flamboyant films
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Thomas Jane
What’s the first thing you do when you arrive on set? The first thing that I’ll want is a cup of coffee. And then I head off to the makeup trailer, where they will try to make me look better than I really do. Any on-set superstitions? Laurence Olivie
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It Shouldn’t Happen To A Film Journalist
THIS MONTH GOING TO A DRIVE-IN CINEMA. On Saturday 11 July, I was thrilled to pull into an industrial estate in North London to watch The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert. Partly, I was excited because I, like everyone else, had not been
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Separate Lives
When acclaimed screenwriter William Nicholson finally decided to direct again, 22 years after his 1997 debut Firelight, there was only one subject he wanted to tackle: his family. Hope Gap is “basically the story of my parents – two very good people,
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Q&A JOSH O’CONNOR
How much did you draw from William Nicholson’s own experiences? I feel like it’s never good to replicate. It’s never going to be what Bill’s experienced, because it’s impossible. And it can hold you back. But it’s nice to have Bill go, “It’s believab
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Onscreen Encore
When I watch the original, which I think holds up brilliantly, I feel the inherent shame that was still prevalent,” theatre-director-turned-filmmaker Joe Mantello says of William Friedkin’s The Boys In The Band, which came out in 1970. “It feels spik
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Roberto Benigni
From famously clambering over seats and stars when he won his Best Actor Oscar for 1997’s Life Is Beautiful to thesping for Allen (To Rome With Love), Jarmusch (Down By Law) and Fellini (The Voice Of The Moon), Roberto Benigni is Italy’s clown prince
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Man In The Mirror
I was in Harlem,” starts Nia DaCosta, the director of the new imagining of Candyman. She’s trying to recall the first time she watched Bernard Rose’s 1992 original, a horror movie so terrifying it’s still whispered of to this day. And here’s the thin
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Out Of The Past
Did you ever dream that Candyman would become an icon? When Bernard Rose and I were first hanging out in Chicago and he was bringing out his design for the character, he was more excited than I was. I was a working actor, I was glad for the job. He s
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Horror Movie
With Saint Maud, writer/director Rose Glass has made one of the most extraordinary horror debuts – or debuts, period – in years. Set in an English seaside town that oozes sadness and faded glamour, it sees a young carer, Maud (Morfydd Clark), begin a
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Taking a Stand
DIRECTOR Josh Boone STARRING Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Blu Hunt, Alice Braga ETA 4 September, previewing 29-31 August (Cinemas) A lot of shadows loom large over The New Mutants (Demon Bears, multiverse questions and one of the
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Unhappy Family
DIRECTOR Natalie Erika James STARRING Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin, Bella Heathcote ETA 30 October (Cinemas and digital) Since making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Relic has been buzzed about as being this year’s Heredit
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Genre Thriffs
DIRECTOR Scott Cooper STARRING Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas ETA 19 February 2021 (Cinemas) When Scott Cooper was a teenager, he gorged himself on 1970s horror classics: Don’t Look Now, The Exorcist and Halloween. “I always thought th
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Pet Project
DIRECTOR Amy Seimetz STARRING Kate Lyn Sheil, Chris Messina, Michelle Rodriguez ETA 28 August (Curzon Home Cinema), 14 September (Digital) “It’s 100 per cent Pet Sematary money,” laughs Amy Seimetz of how she used her fee for playing Rachel Creed to
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Road Rage
SHOWRUNNER Misha Green STARRING Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors, Michael Kenneth Williams ETA Currently airing on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV Racist humans and alien creatures are two of the many monsters encountered in HBO’s slick new horror series, Lo
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Guts And Glory
It’s like Art Attack, but with bodily fluids,” chuckles Daniel Martin when describing his job, which often entails “looking at horrible websites and reference books and getting a feel for how a body comes apart”. Martin is not a psycho, but a special
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Royal Rumble
Matthew Vaughn was revisiting John Huston’s classic adventure The Man Who Would Be King, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, when the idea for the next instalment in the Kingsman franchise crystallised in his mind. “I [previously] watched it as
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Once And Future Kingsman
Matthew Vaughn is someone who likes to keep busy. As well as this prequel origin story, he’s still got plenty more to explore within the franchise. “I want to be in a position that we can explore so many different things, but with the name ‘Kingsman’
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Sister Act
It’s a sunny summer’s day in August 2019, and Total Film’s exploring the beautifully kept grounds at West Horsley Place, a Grade I-listed medieval manor house in Surrey. This isn’t just an extremely wholesome day out. On the gravel driveway in front
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The Worst Movies Ever Made
BUDGET $170m BOX OFFICE $222m QUOTE “Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, you put out a trailer with a lot of explosions and it was Wednesday before people knew your movie was shit.” Will Smith After Men In Black’s out-of-this-world success, many will have wis
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Best Of The Worst!
So what if it sank a studio and a filmmaking ethos? One of the great westerns. As Marvel movies go, we’d take this over Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World. Disney goes dark. The best train chase since Buster Keaton’s The General. Faye Dunaway goes a
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Charlie Kaufman
A puppeteer discovers a portal into an A-list actor’s brain. A pair of exes who have each other wiped from their memories. A theatre director whose magnum opus is restaging his life in a full-scale replica of New York City. If a film concept has perf
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Five Star Turns
Kaufman's first credited screenplay sees Craig (John Cusack) enter a portal in John Malkovich’s mind, then selling the experience to others. “I wrote it while I was waiting for [the next sitcom] hiring season,” says Kaufman. How to adapt an unfilmabl
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Charlie Kaufman In Numbers
4 Oscar nominations, including a win for Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. $74m Box-office gross of Kaufman’s highest-grossing screenplay, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. 18 Michael puppets created for Anomali
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Small Screen
INDESTRUCTIBLE UNNATURALLY STRONG DIPS AND SOARS MIND-MELTING IS IT A BIRD? NO, IT’S A TURD MOVIE OF THE MONTH
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Chemical Imbalance
FILM OUT NOW NETFLIX At one point in Netflix’s action-fantasy hybrid, Jamie Foxx keenly extols the pistol shrimp’s unexpected battle powers. Sadly, this promising but piecemeal genre twist from directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Nerve
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Making Headway
FILM OUT 18 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS Ten years ago, actor Craig Roberts made a memorable impression in Richard Ayoade’s Submarine. Here, in his second feature as director, Roberts gifts a powerhouse role to his co-star in that film, Sally Hawkins, who excel
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Freak The Parents
FILM OUT NOW CINEMAS Famously sweet in Little Women and scary in TV’s Sharp Objects, Eliza Scanlen is eye-grabbingly good in this delicately dark and slyly funny coming-of-age story. She brings a dazzling range of feeling to shy, seriously ill Sydney
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Most Triumphant
FILM EXTRAS 1989 OUT NOW DVD, BD, 4K, Steelbook, Digital HD EXTRAS Commentaries, Documentary, Featurettes, TV episode Ranking among those ’80s underdog classics fans still want more of, Bill and Ted’s debut (making its 4K debut, awash with extras) ma
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Taking The Plunge
FILM EXTRAS 1941 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Intro, Featurettes, Radio adap,Booklet You just can’t get a better picture in terms of comedy than The Lady Eve,” says Peter Bogdanovich. Some might contest that claim - after all, there’s stiff competit
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Blood And Poses
Faithfully based on the Garth Ennis/Darick Robertson comic book, The Boys scored big with its first season, becoming one of the most successful Amazon Originals. S2 sees Billy Butcher and his band of on-the-run misfits continuing to hunt – and be hun
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Spirited Comeback
FILM EXTRAS 1989 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentary, Stills, Booklet Mention The Woman In Black and most people think of Daniel Radcliffe with sideburns. Some will know that it began life as a Susan Hill novel in 1983, and that the stage play had been runn
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Far From Home
There were never going to be aliens,” says Jessica Goldberg, showrunner for Netflix’s deep-space drama Away, in which a five-person crew blast off from the moon to Mars. “For us,” she continues, “it was very important that everything was based on wha
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Serial Drama
In 1983, Dennis Nilsen was arrested and subsequently charged with the murder and dismemberment of several vulnerable boys and young men in north London over the previous five years. Des tells the story, over three parts, of the investigation, trial a
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Kane And Able
SHOW EXTRAS 2019-20 OUT NOW DVD, BD, Digital HD EXTRAS Featurettes,Deleted scenes,Bonus episodes Marvel may lead the way when it comes to shared universes on the big screen - but on TV, the model for interlinked superhero success is DC’s Arrowverse.
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Extras
GAMES OUT NOW After giving card-gamers a chance to play Disney baddies, Ravensburger’s Villainous franchise expands into the Marvel Universe. It’s Thanos who’s muscled his way onto the box art for Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power, but you can also p
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Fresh Spin
Sometime art-rocker and rising scoring star Tamar-kali builds on previous high Mudbound (2017) with another show of tense innovation. Keeping her reins tight, she uses chamber settings to generate a contained fever-pitch intensity for Josephine Decke
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Tron: Legacy
In 2010, Tron: Legacy’s score raised a question: if yesterday’s futurism is often today’s false retro prophecy, would Daft Punk’s music date the movie faster than US soft-rockers Journey dated the 1982 original? A decade on, the answer is laser-clear
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Fighting Spirit
GAME OUT NOW | PS4 Sony bids sayonara to the current console generation with a handsome samurai adventure that owes considerably less to the films of Akira Kurosawa than it does to the many open-world games that have gone before it on PS4. While ther
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Two More
OUT NOW/PC, PS4, XBOX ONE, Switch, iOS Amanita Design’s delightfully creepy puzzle-platformer invites you to explore a labyrinthine mansion filled with paranormal enemies that transform into harmless furniture when lured into the light. Between its l
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Books
BOOK JONATHAN MELVILLE | POLARIS Having first discovered 1986’s Highlander (much like this reviewer) as part of a late-night double bill at Edinburgh’s Cameo cinema, sci-fi journo Jonathan Melville developed an abiding love for a cult classic he says
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Two More
A companion/sequel to 2017’s The Art And Soul Of… this reveals more about unused ideas, from Luv’s original fate to a canopy covering all of Vegas. Aside from a section on dystopian couture (this season’s theme is ‘urban snow trash’), the focus is lo
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Is It Bollocks?
Q In Live And Let Die, 007 jumps a speedboat over a road when the water runs out. Watertight reality or all at sea? A HUGO ANDREAE, EDITOR, MOTORBOAT & YACHTING This classic Bond sequence remains one of the greatest boat-chase scenes ever made, not l
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Alternative Box Office
01 THE SIXTH SENSE 1999 ………………………………………….$673M 02 XXX: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE 2017 …………$346M 03 KNIVES OUT 2019 …………………………………………………. $309M 04 ABOUT A BOY 2002 ……………………………………………….$131M 05 THE HOURS 2002 …………………………………………………..$109M 06 THE BOXTROLLS 2014
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On Location
WHAT? The titular lady from The French Lieutenant’s Woman is spied by Jeremy Irons’ Victorian paleontologist as she stands on the harbour at Lyme Regis, romantically viewing the churning seas. WHERE? The Cobb, Lyme Regis, Dorset GO? The crew filmed o
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Top 10 Hooks
You never want a knock at your door between midnight and 1am in Antonio Bay, especially if it’s accompanied by the scraping of a large, gougey you-could-take-an-eye-out hook down the woodwork by a pissed-off ghost leper. A pointy reckoning indeed. Bo
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The Thing
In the early ’80s, John Carpenter was on fire. If he could hybridise Halloween’s dread, The Fog’s atmosphere, Assault On Precinct 13’s claustrophobia and Escape From New York’s macho lead (Kurt Russell) in alien-horror drag, surely a hit would be gua
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Background Artistry
MIDNIGHT COWBOY 1969 WHO NYC taxi cab SPECIAL SKILLS When Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman were filming in Manhattan. their walk ‘n’ talk was rudely interrupted by a yellow cab jumping the lights. Staying in character, Hoffman ad-libbed his famous line,
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Hindsight Corner!
“It’s good… it’s a fitting tribute to this trilogy. The movie’s got a lot of heart.” “It’s not really what I set out to do. What I set out to do was to make handmade movies, and to work with people that inspire me…[I’d do another Star Wars film] if I
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Last Time Is Indiana Jones A Jerk?
Wasn’t the point that he could be a bit of a dick sometimes? I mean, that’s kinda the point of the character. He’s selfish, he doesn’t give much of a shit about anything but archeology. He hardly “brought the plane to the fistfight!” He’s a flawed ch
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Or Is Inherent Vice The Most Underrated Film Of The Past 10 Years?
Inherent Vice doesn’t fare too well on most Paul Thomas Anderson lists. Whenever a mag or site takes a stab at ordering his oeuvre, PTA’s 2014 stoner puzzle about the dying days of the counterculture typically lands just ahead of his 1996 debut Hard
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Blades Of Glory
Rivals turned ice-skating pair Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) are competing in the World Wintersport Games in Montreal, but they must first reach the Olympic Stadium after they’re sabotaged by sibling team Stranz
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Steampunk
Brass goggles on: coined by K.W. Jeter in 1987, ‘steampunk’ refers to retro-fitted future visions rooted in 19th and early-20th Century ideas, tech and steam-powered gizmos. Precedents include H.G. Wells/Jules Verne’s fiction (see film adaps 20,000 L
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Key Movies
1986 Dubbed “one of the first modern steampunk classics” by The Steampunk Bible, this has dirigibles, robots, and social subtexts, inspired by striking Welsh miners. 2004 Abe Sapien’s goggles, Victorianesque villain Rasputin and retro-romanticism hel
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Olivia De Havilland
A regular co-star of Errol Flynn, friends with Bette Davis and the last surviving star of Gone With The Wind, Dame De Havilland was truly the last of a golden era when she died in her sleep in Paris last month, at the grand old age of 104. The daught
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School Movies
1. In Grease, what are Danny and Sandy’s respective surnames? 2. The Perfect Score marked the first team-up between which future Avengers? 3. Which is the odd one out? a) Remus Lupin b) Severus Snape c) Dolores Umbridge d) Sybill Trelawney. 4. What’s
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Spot The Difference
SEE THE NEXT PAGE FOR THE ANSWERS… ■
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60 Second Screenplay
FADE IN: INT: SECRET MILITIA BASE, SOUTH SUDAN CHARLIZE THERON and her other immortal pals lie face-down, showered in blood and bullets, as if they are playing a game of Dead Lions organised by John Woo. CHARLIZE THERON [Voiceover] Sorry for any conf

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