"The great British director Lindsay Anderson died 20 years ago and he only made five or six films, but they’re all very interesting, and I think his most famous is called If… It’s the film Malcolm McDowell did before A Clockwork Orange, and it’s kind of the ultimate teenage movie. It’s beautiful and very radical. It won Cannes that year, and it’s very much of its time, the ’60s, and Malcolm McDowell is brilliant in it. It’s the ultimate teen rebellion movie — and I like that genre — but it’s also very poetic, almost Brechtian, and there’s almost fantasy elements to it. Like, there’s this woman in the movie who might not even be real. It’s filmed in color and there are sections that are black-and-white and it’s kind of amazing. It’s the first film of a trilogy too. Malcolm McDowell’s character’s name is Mick Travis, and so a few years later, they did a film called O Lucky Man! and then ten years later they did Britannia Hospital together, Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm McDowell. So it’s one of the greater film trilogies in my opinion… It’s definitely worth watching. It used to be a bigger cult film in the ’70s and the ’80s, but I see it’s falling off. I don’t know if young people are watching it the way they used to."

"One of my favorite filmmakers is an Italian director named Mario Bava. His most famous movies have titles like Black Sunday and Black Sabbath and all that, but the one that really was astonishing at the time was a picture called Blood and Black Lace, which is one of the most gorgeously lit Technicolor movies I’ve ever seen. And it’s a whodunit kind of thing — a murderer in a fashion house and models are being killed in various gruesome ways. This is the early ’60s when you could get away with a lot more in the way of explicitness than you had been able to before, and these movies still basically played grindhouses. But it’s such a beautiful movie to look at, and the juxtaposition of beauty and death is really perverse in it. It runs through all his works, but in this particular movie, which I think is one of Tarantino’s favorites, it really comes to the fore. It’s a very entertaining picture, and very violent. Bava was completely unknown when he was actually alive. Almost nobody except, you know, the most extreme film buffs ever saw those movies. But now, as often happens to people when it’s too late for them to enjoy it, he’s now revered, and people see his movies who didn’t even know they existed before."

"They’re a vocal group and started back in the heyday of very early reggae records. It’s the Jamaican parallel universe of rock & roll. It echoes rock & roll, R&B, Motown, soul. It has all the vocabulary of great 50s rock & roll. It’s pop music. It has this work ethic and immediacy: “We’re just making records, and making records, and making records.” It’s like surf music. It’s guys around the world in cheapo studios just digging deep. I love the vocalising of The Heptones. Even later records. I always loved them. I’m a sucker for the 60s records. All of their early records are singles. The first time they got compiled was probably the 70s. There’s one song called 'School Girls' that I almost covered a few years ago [Black essentially covers it for the Quietus there and then]. It’s so heartfelt and heartbroken. It’s like, it’s like, it’s like when I listen to 'The Great Pretender' [sings] “Oh yes! I’m the great pretender…” The Platters were a lot smoother than The Heptones. But The Heptones have that beautiful harmonising and soulfulness. Whenever I hear The Heptones I think, I wish I could sing that good. They do an amazing version of 'Knock On Wood'. They fuckin’ own it, man! It’s already a big hit for whoever the fuck recorded it. They sell it, they own it, they wear the hat."

"One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I’ve seen it three times, is Bondarchuk’s War and Peace. Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era. I’d be happy to see it again — it is, however, 12 hours long. It took 10 years to make, and some actors lived and died during the period of making the movie. It’s a little bit influenced by being a ’60s film, so it’s got a bit of a trippy edge to it; it’s a little bit abstract. But it has some of the finest examples of Russian acting of that era. I was profoundly affected by the Russian theater and the style of Russian acting. It was shot on cameras and film stock that we simply never have access to. If I’m not mistaken, during the opening credits the camera is in a cosmonaut’s space capsule being shot into Earth. It’s probably the biggest crane shot of all time. At first you think, “Well this is going to be tedious,” but stay with it and I think you’ll find yourself drawn in. And the girl who played Natasha [Lyudmila Savelyeva] is a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn and she’s one of the most luminous stars that ever found herself on the screen."