Set in and around a half-built rubble-strewn suburb of nowhere Vienna, pounded by summer sunstroke, and featuring brutal scenes of rape and battery, Dog Days is a bracing blast of arthouse nihilism from Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl. And like a bleak psychotropic Short Cuts, the success of this multi-character piece depends on how the viewer responds to Seidl's remarkable yet savagely pessimistic world view.
Why 511? Because, on June 2, 2002, New Order performed in front of 10,000 rain-lashed revellers at Finsbury Park, and their 16-song set list comprised five Joy Division tracks and 11 by the band they became following the suicide of Ian Curtis.
Atmospheric 1967 Norman Jewison thriller, and its weaker 1970 sequel from Gordon Douglas. The first, which won Oscars for Best Picture and Rod Steiger, is dryly observed, with Steiger's bigoted Southern sheriff warming to Sidney Poitier's detective as they solve a murder—a big anti-racism statement in its time. The second takes Poitier's Tibbs character to San Francisco, for no pressing reason.
Director Peter Watkins' mid-1960s work for the BBC still shines. Culloden recreated the famous battle as if covered by a modern news team—a radical approach for the time. More controversially, The War Game showed that nuclear war was an unwinnable nightmare, and was consequently banned by the Beeb, though it picked up an Oscar when released theatrically in 1966.
