Yet another entry in our stream of coverage from the San Diego Comic Con, this time in the form of a complete transcript of a group interview conducted with Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes on the US DVD release of their classic show Spaced. I could say more, but in the spirit of the thing I’ll skip to the end. The interview is below the break.
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Yes, yes. Comic Con may be gone but our coverage continues rolling in as erstwhile camera man Joseph Perez continues digitizing and uploading the panels he attended at the orgy of geekery. And today? Possibly the biggest geek of them all. Below the break I present to you the Joss Whedon panel.
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Jesus Franco is one of the most prolific filmmakers alive and one of the few that makes Miike look lazy by comparison, which is really saying something! At the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) in Switzerland I sat down with him and went over a wide variety of topics.
In this interview we talk about:
* On Projects Like Far Out That Pay Homage to Him
* Making Films Then Versus Now
* Favorites of the Films That He Made
- Venus in Furs from 1969 aka Black Angel
* He Really Likes Jerry Bruckheimer
* On Daniel White
Interview after the link bump.
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“It’s surprising that pulp writer David Goodis never named a novel Cul-de-Sac,” ponders Pacific Film Archives curator Steve Seid, “His stories conjure a dead end, littered with the wreckage of lonely losers and lowlifes. An ill fate befalls the typical Goodis fall guy, who often glimpses the high life, however fleetingly, but then through some irascible compulsion or sinister defect must stumble back to the seamy streets. Goodis’s own life follows the same pattern: at age thirty, he saw his novel Dark Passage adapted for the screen and parlayed that into a contract at Warner Bros., but his questionable proclivities made him an outcast even in Hollywood. Back in his hometown of Philadelphia, he churned out paperback originals while prowling the seedy saloons with unguarded desire. At age forty-nine, he was dead of cirrhosis. Though Goodis persisted in relative obscurity, his works falling in and out of print, filmmakers mined his shady novels for their criminal content. Jacques Tourneur’s Nightfall and Paul Wendkos’s The Burglar were grim highlights of the American mid-fifties, while across the pond, cinema’s continental ops found his soiled vision most suitable for their noir knockoffs. Truffaut’s fanciful but faithful Shoot the Piano Player was the first in a lineup of a half-dozen suspects, all with a French accent. Goodis’s pulp is not about plot; it’s about the struggles of his beautiful losers to free themselves from sordid obsession and inbred failure. It’s also about Goodis’s smothering fixation with the fall—from grace, perhaps, or just from the curb to the gutter.”
Whereas Steve Seid’s curatorial involvement with the Gabriel Figueroa series might have been more administrative than creative, there’s no question that the PFA program “Streets of No Return: The Dark Cinema of David Goodis” is Seid’s bawling baby, as he revealed when he spoke briefly with me about the upcoming series. For general information on Goodis, check out his IMdb and Wikpedia profiles. Kelly Vance gets on the horn with Elliot Lavine who helps her assess the PFA series for The East Bay Express.
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“Figueroa skies.” The image conjures the big sky country of the Mexican desert, embraced in high contrast by billowing cumulus clouds enhanced by infrared filters, and limned by the persevering thorn of the impoverished agave and the heartfelt offerings of ubiquitous cala lilies. Beneath these immense skies, Mexicanidad toils the soil, tolls cathedral bells to call the common soul to mass, and tells fiery stories of evolving revolutions.
In his introduction to the PFA series celebrating the artistry of Gabriel Figueroa—Hecho Por México—curator Steve Seid writes: “Gabriel Figueroa was more than a cinematographer. A consummate artist, he captured with grandeur a sense of Mexico that would—as the poet Carlos Fuentes affectionately observed—bring us to ‘see Figueroa’s Mexico and not the one that really existed.’ Beginning in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Figueroa’s rich chiaroscuro embodied Mexico’s entrenched contrasts—the monumental faces weathered like the arid land, the expressively lit cathedrals dark against turbulent skies, the timeless agave, stark and prickly. The painters Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco were Figueroa’s intimates, and their influence can be detected in what Siqueiros called ‘murals that travel.’ Figueroa was the man who made manifest Luis Buñuel’s sardonic surrealism by underscoring mundane but unexpected details. And he will forever be associated with director Emilio ‘El Indio’ Fernández, who said with remarkable swagger, ‘There only exists one Mexico: the one I invented’—but it was Figueroa’s highly dramatic feel for the land that engendered this invention. In the mid-thirties, Figueroa apprenticed to Hollywood cinematographer Gregg Toland, and was much admired by American directors such as John Ford and John Huston, who used his signature style to great effect. He cut a dashing figure across the film industry, but his social conscience always preceded him: Gabriel Figueroa’s aim was to give back to Mexican culture a dignified image of itself, and this he did, al lo grande.”
Though hosting duties during the San Francisco Silent Film Festival precluded my attending the opening doublebill of PFA’s Figueroa series—Let’s Go With Pancho Villa! (1935) and The Pearl (1943)—I’ve committed myself to the remainder of the selection. To prepare for the experience, I met up with Steve Seid for a few words on the series.
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Want to know what was said at the San Diego Comic Con panels for Red Sonja, The Watchmen and Repo: The Genetic Opera? Well, luckily for you we had Joseph Perez there with his camera crew and you can find all three panel discussion below the break!
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The San Diego Comic Con has wrapped up and Joseph Perez, our man on the scene, is now hard at work editing and uploading his mountain of video footage. Today? It’s five minutes of the panel discussion for Heroes. Now, admittedly, Season Two felt the pinch of the writers strike but they showed the complete first episode of Season Three at the Con and response to it was incredible. Want to knwo what’s up? Check it out below the break.
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It’s shaping up to be an impressive new season at HBO - the first time I’ve been able to say that for a few years - and the show I’m most looking forward to is Alan Ball’s True Blood. Ball, of course, is the creator of Six Feet Under and writer of American Beauty, and with this one he posits a world where vampires have existed in secret beside humans for hundreds of years. Until one day a new synthetic blood allows them to come out of hiding. For the first time humans become aware of their presence and a new social balance must be struck. It’s a fantastic premise, Ball is a great writer and I’m very curious to see how this plays out.
Want to know more? We’ve got Joseph Perez running around the San Diego Comic Con like mad with his video camera and we’ve got a good chunk of the True Blood panel below the break in the Twitch Player.
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Tomas Alfredson has crafted one of the most memorable films I’ve ever seen with his latest effort, Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in). I recently had the chance to talk with him about his film. Magnet will be releasing the film to US theaters in late October and festival audiences can catch it at the upcoming Fantastic Fest in Austin and the Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia in Spain. The interview follows after the link bump.
In times with endless remakes and a general malaise in cinematic storytelling, it’s refreshing for a film like Let the Right One In to come along that weaves classical stories we are already familiar with, that offers up something new and fresh that we have never experienced before on the big screen. We have seen coming of age films dealing with isolation and bullying before. We have seen films that deal with vampires before. Alfredson and crew go beyond where previous films have gone to offer up this universal tale that take us the audience to new terrain and unimagined heights of classical cinematic storytelling. Like the best films it lets our imagination soar, our hearts connect to what is happening on screen, a relief from our daily grind and that rare moment of redemption and euphoria where we feel our lense of life is forever altered. The films redemptive powers not only work for the characters in the film, but for the audience that experiences it as well. There is no bigger joy in cinema for 2008 than Let the Right One In. With it paving the way and becoming a festival darling from Tribeca to NIFFF to Fantasia and more, the future of new cinema has never looked brighter.
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In his Sundance dispatch to The Greencine Daily, Brian Darr queried whether the “nerve-wrackingly fun” Baghead would remain in audience memory 16 years from now? And if, indeed, it had the potential to end up being “the mumblecore film to outlast its moment?”
Baghead‘s fresh genre mash-up—part comedy, part horror, part relationship flick—completely worked for me, as I imagine it will for others; but, it is in a very real way undeniably tied into this particular moment in the history of independent film, let alone the burgeoning careers of Mark and Jay Duplass, which justifies Brian Darr’s prescient query.
Offered the chance to talk to the brothers, I did a little research first and found myself totally smitten with The Washington Post video of their arrival at Sundance where they immediately launched into a hunt for free food. Now aware that the way to a mumblecore director’s heart is through his stomach, I arrived at our interview at the Prescott Hotel armed with a baggie of homemade empanadas de calabasa (pumpkin turnovers). Their eyes lit up as they gobbled them down right in front of my eyes. We hold these truths to be self-evident….
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Fairly across the board (other than for the occasional sour grape), Tina Mascara and Guido Santi’s affectionate documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story has been favorably received by critics and public alike. Following my first write-up on the film during Frameline 32, Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily has—of course—compiled an aggregate of the film’s critical response, which continues through its ongoing theatrical distribution.
I took ill during Frameline 32 when Don Bachardy was in town granting press interviews, so I especially appreciated his taking time to talk with me recently by phone. My thanks to Karen Larsen for arranging same. Photographic portrait of Don Bachardy courtesy of Kevin Scanlon, L.A. Times.
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In previous editions of the Hideo Nakata interview at the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) we have covered upcoming projects, horror remakes and more. In this last part of the interview we go over Amityville Horror and filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa. I had read slight pieces here and there with Nakata referencing or slightly mentioning Amityville Horror, but never much where it was specifically asked or gone into any detail. So in this clip we get much more to flesh out how this series influenced him. In addition we cover his thoughts on legendary filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa, which includes him mentioning a conversation he had with him in a dream.
In this interview we talk about:
* The Amityville Horror Influence
* The Nobuo Nakagawa Influence
* On Jigoku aka Hell (1960)
Interview after the link bump.
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In part one, I neglected to mention the Raro DVD for Il Profumo della signora in nero (The Perfume of the Lady in Black). According to Manlio Gomarasca, this video release was possible with the personal uncut pristine film print that its director Francesco Barilli had. All other home release versions out there have too much cut out. The Raro release is the real deal and it also features a great interview with Manlio and Francesco Barilli. Chances are if you have watched an interview on a Raro DVD, it was Manlio doing the interview.
Additionally, I should note in the current Italian monthly (print only), Il Caffe Del Teatro, there is a good article on Barilli on pages 48-49. This profile seems to highlight how though he hasn’t been able to make a film, he has channeled his passion for making movies over the years into paintings.
Now for part two of this interview we talk Mimsy Farmer and the painstaking detail Barilli went into getting his singular vision onto the screen.
In part two of this interview we talk about:
* Working with Mimsy Farmer
* Creating a Single Cinematic Vision & Voice
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I’ve already spoken here on my love for the 1974 giallo, Il Profumo della signora in nero (The Perfume of the Lady in Black),
After the link bump we have part one of my interview with Italian filmmaker and noted painter, Francesco Barilli. Il Profumo della signora in nero to this day maintains a cult-like status among connoisseurs of gialli for its uniqueness to the genre and surpassing it as one of the better films in cinema to blur the line in a narrative between reality and fantasy, without ever fully tipping its hat.
In part one of this interview we talk about:
* Setting up the Story
* The Opening Sequence
* Camera for the Opening Shot
* The Main Building
* Blurring the Line Between Reality & Fantasy in the Film
* SPOILER - Ending Discussion
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My interview with Satoshi Kon was not under ideal circumstances. The translator Lincoln Center provided had a bad case of nerves that day, I was also understandably a bit nervous, my tape recorder conked out on me a few minutes into the interview and I of course did not get to ask all the questions I had prepared for Mr. Kon.
However, the folks at the Manhattan Bureau were kind enough to provide me with a DVD of my interview with Mr. Kon. After watching it, I really don’t that the world is ready for me to upload it into the Twitch Video Player. Trust me on this one; no way is this video seeing the light of day on my watch.
All in all though, when Kon did get to my questions, his answers were what I expected and in a very good way. He was very practical and intelligent in trying to describe his influences, his creative process and his fascination with dreams and that’s really all I could’ve hoped for. Below is a transcription of my interview with Kon, conducted on June 27th.
Simon Abrams: Your earliest successes were in manga with titles like Opus and Kaikisen. What experiences or lessons do you think you’ve retained from those projects or your work in manga in general?
Satoshi Kon: I learned some basic ideas that were critical for later on when I became an animator, like how to create story lines, developing characters and designing backgrounds. In manga, there’s no movement, no color, no sound. Everything from those projects were very helpful to my work as an animator later.
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