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So, Todd is away and it doesn't look like we will all get to put down a top 10 of favourites for the year, and it may be a little odd to say in publice what i've been watching, but this could be the last post of the year and i want to find out in the comments what you've been buying and seeing : in any way or format. Personally, i did little 'cinema' or 'tv' and more 'videogames' and 'dvd' this year... so just look at this as a little reminder or inspiration for you to point out good stuff we might have overlooked.

Continue reading "That was 2004, Soon will be 2005. Logboy : I Enjoyed These This year..."

Keeping with the Chan-Wook Park theme, the director, along with 38 other filmmakers and actors, including Old Boy's Choi Min-sik, announced that if the organization committee of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) finally agrees to drive the Executive Director Kim Hong-joon out of his post, they would no longer participate in the film festival.

The organizing committee of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan), under pressure from the new mayor of Bucheon, has voted to remove popular festival director Kim Hong-joon from his position. The mayor's office maintained that Kim's other job as head of the School of Film, TV and Multimedia at the Korea National University of Arts would distract him from the demands of the festival post. Festival staff and the Korean film community in general have reacted with outrage, organizing protests and threatening to boycott next year's festival. Many maintain that the mayor's actions were motivated by personal grievances against Kim. In the meantime Jung Hong-taek, former president of the Korean Film Archive, was named to be Kim's successor - KoreanFilm.org

PiFan is one of those festivals that you dream about going to. It would be a shame if thing progresses as planned by the organization committee and all this talent didn't offer their works for the festival next year.

We linked to KoreanFilm.org's 2004 PiFan retrspective back in the Fall. Read it here to get an idea why this festival is so cool.

Despite reportedly getting numerous offers [or love calls?] from Japan and European coutries for distribution deals Sympathy for Lady Vengeance director, Chan-wook Park, stands by his intentions to debut the final picture in his Vengeance Trilogy at the Berlin International Film Festival to be held in Germany in February, next year. The film is set to open in theatres in Korea in June.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is the third film following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Old Boy. We'll keep a close eye on reaction to this wildly anticipated finale when it screens at the festival.

via Han Cinema.

Nobbled from yahoo auctions japan, where (if you have the appropriate characters and knowledge) you can find pics of just about anything however obscure. So, i pop over there occasionally to see what turns up, cos they're often a better illustration of anything than i can find elsewhere.

This time, i turn up a nice couple of pics for the Izo DVD that's just out : they do unfortunately have the sellers name plastered across them (ala eBay) but thats not too distracting.

The standard cover is popping up here. The special edition pops up here. Anyone buy this unsubbed edition (other than bootleggers)?...

I should really stop reading up on things about Kung Fu Hustle. Ever since the 'Third Reel Fiasco' at TIFF this past September my anger and rage has been growing the more good stuff I hear about this movie. Knowing that I was but hours away from experiencing the bliss and glee that can only come from viewing a Stephen Chow movie only to have it snatched away from me like a small child is by a dingo? Well that just hurts real deep.

Kung Fu Hustle opened around Asia this past weekend and it broke records everywhere it played. In mainland China it broke the single and three day records set by HERO two years ago. In Hong Kong it almost broke the three day record in just two days. In Taiwan it broke the opening day record set by The Day After Tomorrow. Then it broke the two day record set by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And finally, in Singapore, it set a new record for the island nation for opening weekends. It holds the No.7 spot at the All-Time Opening ranking, blowing past big Hollywood titles like The Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter and The Mummy franchises.

If any of our readership from these areas has seen it and would like to pass along their thoughts and feelings about this movie please e-mail me and we'll post your review.

via MonkeyPeaches

::: EXTRA ::: If you go to MonkeyPeaches and scroll down you can also find a link to a 40 minute making of featurette. I'm trying to d/l it now as I type this. No telling how many seeders and leechers there are. If you don't have a bit-torrent program you will need it to d/l this special. MonkeyPeaches has made a link available for that.

So there you go, KFCcinema just posted it : so i am making it a little obvious here also, as lots of people will be looking forward to this (with fingers crossed for English Subs, which we should get). Oh, and i am assuming this is a HK disc, so it will be cheap too... cool.

Originally slated for the end of March 2005, its now shifted to April 5th. Why do i say this? Well, it's mostly an opportunity to point out that we only unfortunately (initially at least) get the theatrical cut of the film in a single-disc edition, and not a simultaneously released unrated or extended version.

I suppose there will be another edition announced soon, so i for one will probably hold off a little longer. Still haven't seen it : it's apparently out in the UK during January, but no TV adverts have so far been shown.

My obnoxious holiday season run of shifts at work has finally come to a close so I'm heading out of town for a few days and won't likely be posting here until the New Year ... I leave you in the capable hands of the other Twitch folk until my return ...

I'm not sure if anyone here at Twitch is actually looking forward to the Dukes of Hazzard movie. Perhaps Nick. But I'm from that school of thought that any eye candy is good eye candy even if it is the reigning doofus queen, Jessica Simpson.

So here she is with her co-stars Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott.

Thank you FilmRot.

Monsters & Critics posted a press release yesterday from Dreamworks announcing that Steven Speilberg is set to be the executive producer of a live action Transformers movie slated for release in the summer of 2006. This more or less confirms what we have been speculating for a couple months now.

Legendary Transformers franchise. Steven Spielberg will executive produce. The film is slated for release in the summer of 2006. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Constantine), Don Murphy (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Tom DeSanto (X-Men and X2: X-Men United) are attached to produce.

DreamWorks Head of Production Adam Goodman stated, Steven and everyone at DreamWorks are very excited about the prospect of expanding the world of 'Transformers' into the live-action feature film arena. The possibilities for a thrilling action adventure are virtually endless, and a film holds the definite promise of expanding an already worldwide fan base to new audiences.

It wasn't that long ago that we were talking about a writer for the film and the possibility that Tom Hanks may somehow be involved in this production. Now that Steven has been confirmed it would seem that all Tom has to do is ask.

via FilmRot.

Don't know much about them personally, so feel free to educate me in the comments below. But, having said that, they are AnimEigo and they released all the wonderful "Lone Wolf and Cub" movies in such superbly mastered editions.

Incident at Blood Pass : is out March 8th 2005. Samurai Assasin is out a month earlier, on February 8th 2005. I expect to find nothing less than two superb samurai films with copious amounts of excessive violence and blood, but a heavily dramatic and deep storyline.

Here's a little something for fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa ... though he's not nearly as well known internationally as his acclaimed mentor Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama has built a solid name for himself with films like Eureka generating major critical acclaim around the world. Before launching out on his own Aoyama tutored as one of Kurosawa's ADs and the man's influence is unmistakable in Aoyama's approach to storytelling and the way he shoots his films. Plus he tends to use a lot of the same actors.

Case in point: The Lakeside Murder Case. Logboy just pointed this one out to me and I know very little about it other than that it came from Aoyama, it's a thoughtful crime thriller, the trailer looks beautiful, and it stars Kurosawa fave Koji Yakusho. Check the trailer out here.

Those disappointed with the video quality of the Chinese and Hong Kong DVD releases of House ofFlying Daggers will have another option a little closer to home pretty soon ... I haven't seen much in the way of specs yet but Sony's North American DVD of the film is slated to release May 15th and it's a fairly safe bet that Sony's releases will offer pretty much the best transfer world wide ...

God bless those Koreans. They know a marketing opportunity when they see one and they go for it with gusto.

Case in point: Steven Chow's Kung Fu Hustle releases and sets all sorts of box office records throughout Asia and, voila! A three disc release of Chow's brilliant Shaolin Soccer. And what have they put on those three discs? Why, three different versions of the film, of course, all apparently English subtitled, including DTS tracks and region free. Plus a stack of other bonus features. You get the original cut, the extended version and the Miramax cut-to-pieces version. Now that is a release worth calling an 'Ultimate Edition'.

I've already got a Hong Kong issue of this but I'll be making the switch for three reasons - I'd love to have all three versions of the film, the video quality should be higher and the subtitle quality pretty much has to be higher. Miramax was going after US based importers of Shaolin Soccer pretty hard a while back, so you'll probably need to go through a Korean based seller for this, though these guys are in the US and are currently taking pre-orders.

Check out DVD Debate for a larger cover image and more specific specs.

Ah, it's funny because it's dirty ... or at least it sounds dirty.

X Men's Nightcrawler will be releasing a frangrance line in early 2005 labelled, appropriately enough since it is his name after all, Cumming.

This has got to be a publicity stunt on Alan's part - can you imagine the conversation? "What's tht perfume you're wearing?" - but it's a mighty good one ...

via the news page at Zooma Zooma.

Aiight. The trailer for Unleashed has been out a couple days. Sue me, I've been in Vancouver for the weekend.

Yes, it has a different title for its North American release. Yes, we're not particularily thrilled about that either. Nothing wrong with Danny the Dog. But then again some ignorant parent may take their child into the theatre mistaking it for a Clifford the Big Red Dog spin-off or something.

But if there is one Jet Li movie outside China/Hong Kong that I will enjoy I bet it's gonna be this one. Why? Because none of this movie is tainted by Hollywood. Action powerhouse Luc Besson has written and produced it [this guy is really close to achieving god-like status in my books]. Louis Leterrier learned some things under Besson's tutelage and we hope to god he learned from his mistakes in Transporter.

So let's pray for well framed action sequences, the absence of MTV editing practices and the sheer utter delight of listening to a movie soundtrack without a smidgen of hip-hop. Pray hard.

Release date set for April 8th, 2005.

OK, so I like to see what artwork Homevision come up with: they're pretty much as good as any of their Criterion releases. Over at the site now, you can see large versions of All About Lilly Chou Chou, as well as the specs (anamorphic 16:9 digital transfer in 1.85:1, Shunji Iwai essay, making of documentary, pop video) and then Fukusaku's "Sympathy for The Underdog" (starring LW&C main main Tomisabaru Wakayama) which has another short interview with Fukusaku biographer Yamane Sadao, then finally (from my point of view) there's Fukusaku's "Fall Guy".

Click on the small artwork at each page i have linked into to get a larger version of each cover. The "Lilly Chou Chou" shown here to the left is lovely...

In his brief career Wes Anderson has proven himself to be very much a love-him or hate-him director. There are those who find his highly stylized work off-putting but those who get him tend to get him pretty hard and amongst that crowd he’s had something of a charmed life with fans generally agreeing that he’s gotten better every time out. Thus, there was a huge amount of anticipation for his fourth film – The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou – as fans tried to figure out how he’d top his past efforts. The cast was in place with Anderson stalwarts Bill Murray and Owen Wilson in the leads and the trailers were enough to show that his unique visual sense was in full effect. But would that be enough? Sadly, no. There’s an awful lot to like about The Life Aquatic but not enough to love and it certainly goes down as the weakest Anderson film thus far.

Continue reading "The Life Aquatic Review"

So, while purchasing my copy of Born To Fight yesterday I stumbled across this listing at EthaiCD. Check it out. C'mon. Go. Yes folks, The Adventure of Iron Pussy: an all singing, all dancing musical extravaganza following the adventures of The Iron Pussy who is, of course, a balding middle aged transvestite who works at a 7-11 by day and fights crime on behalf of the Thai government by night. As if that's not strange enough the film is directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a major critical favorite whose films Tropical Malady and Blissfully Yours have both won major awards at Cannes. I haven't been able to turn up a trailer on this one yet but the good people at Ethai tell me the DVD should be out in a week or so and that it is supposed to include English subtitles ... Thai stuff is so cheap that I'll be buying this based on the synopsis alone.

But here's one that DOES include a trailer. Yes, folks, it's everybody's favorite respiratory disease. It's SARS Wars, a fairly big budget action comedy. Funny thing: I was in Toronto for the entire SARS outbreak and I don't remember it turning anybody into zombies. And I really don't remember hot chicks running around with swords, axes and guns. I wish I did, though. The trailer is painfully small and grainy, but there's some great stuff in the gallery page ...

Not sure how I missed this but I did ... thanks to a reader for calling it to my attention.

Documentary film maker Roy Frumkes - director of Document of the Dead - has been hired to do a new behind the scenes doc on the filming of Romero's Land of the Dead and has posted a detailed blog about his first day on set here. It's a good read ...

The same reader included this tantalizing little bit of news:

"Tom Savini plays the same character he played in DAWN OF THE DEAD. He is a zombie version of the biker. Photos verifying this will be coming out soon."

Photos? Yes, please.

The official website for Hideo Nakata's The Ring 2 has gotten a full overhaul with some very cool interactive image galleries added ... it's not gonna tell you anything about the film you don't already know but it's a very cool, very moody piece of work ...

Michael Keaton wants to make a sequel to Beetlejuice. I count nine films in Keaton's filmography since his very brief, and uncredited, cameo in Out of Sight - the last good film he appeared in. Six years ago. His last decent starring role was in Burton's Batman Returns, all the way back in 1992. Anyone surprised he's floating rumors of a return to his most successful role? Nope, me either.

via Dark Horizons.

Tony Jaa. Jackie Chan. Drunken Master 3. Whee!

Can you say "Passing the torch"? Word is that Jaa is already at work learning English in preperation for this film in which he'll play Chan's pupil in the art of Drunken Boxing. I have no idea how the writers will get around Jackie's alcohol induced brain damage from the end of part two, but frankly I really don't care. I'll accept just about anything that gets this made.

By my count this makes three new projects currently in the works for Jaa, not including Tom Yum Goong. There's a rumored weapons-based historical epic, the sequel to Ong Bak and now Drunken Master 3. Nice.

via Rotten Tomatoes.

Jet Li has officially been added to the missing persons list following this weekends massive 8.9 earthquake in south-east asia. Li was vacationing with his family in the Maldives - a small string of islands - when the quake hit and the region took significant damage. His manager has been unable to contact him since, which could be due simply to widespread damage to the country's communications infrastructure. The confirmed death count for the Maldives is relatively small thus far but the most recent figures I've seen put the total human cost for this quake over twenty three thousand and that number is sure to leap as clean up and rescue efforts continue and bodies are unearthed.

via Aint It Cool

No real reason ... I just really like this film and pretty much nobody's heard about it. Take a minute and check it out here. And, yeah, it's as much fun as it looks ...

Does it have subtitles? Nope. Do I care? Not a bit. Why not? Enjoy.

The Thai VCD is available now here which means the DVD - which is also reported to not include subtitles - will turn up in the next little while.

You're probably bored out of your mind right now with whatever crazy holiday spectacles you were involved in (random Toronto cold, the only open hotel bar in the area and Life Aquatic) and need some mind melting time. Well, good for you - Twitch is here!!

Here's a list of the trailers that have recently slipped between the cracks either because they're going to be nausea inducing - look, Martin Lawerence! - or just a plain oversight a la the new Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson comedy. So now put down the turkey, ham or canned beef; the brand new gadget that makes you feel better about your life, and view away.

Continue reading "Trailers, Trailers, Trailers!"

There's a post at the dvdtalk.com forum which talks about the subtitles for the newly released USA disc. Apparently, according to the specs on the packaging there was supposed to be a "for the hearing impared" captions / subtitles mixed track, as well as a "for the japanese impared" plain old English Subtitles track. What have they done? Well, they put the captions track on, but missed off the subtitles track : it seems.

I have the disc, but haven't looked at it myself : i would normally trust things like this not to happen, and would prefer to avoid having to check everything i buy for mistakes before i sit down to watch it. I am trusting the poster at the forum on this one, and saying expect a recall / reissue (hopefully). It's not been a good time for "ghost in the shell" disc errors this year, with SAC discs also being bodged.

This error apprently puts oversized subtitles with audio guides practically in the middle of the picture, making it "unwatchable"... oh well.

There's nothing listed over at Pathfinder's site yet but according to a post on the Asian DVD Guide Forum Takashi Miike's Agitator will soon be hitting DVD in North America via Pathfinder. I've not yet seen their edition of Gozu but word is they've done a good job and - in a move sure to make Miike fans happy - Pathfinder will be releasing this as the full 200 minute version rather than the 150 minute version released in other areas. As far as I know this will be the first time the full length cut of Miike's yakuza epic will be available on DVD anywhere in the world ... according to that same post Pathfinder is also looking into rights for Miike's Man In White, another acclaimed but nearly impossible to find film ...

If you're at all a fan of Peter Jackson or King Kong you really should be checking out Kong is King on a regular basis. Beyond simply having a stack of information on the history of Kong and news from the current production they've been regularly posting behind the scenes 'Production Diaries' courtesy of Peter Jackson himself ... Check the latest edition out here for some behind the scenes set shots and looks at the cast and crew as well as some more candid, down time footage and Christmas wishes from all.

So, here I am confirming that I have no life, posting new things to the website on Christmas Eve. Actually, thanks to the fact that I have to be up at five in the morning to go to work on Christmas Day and that my family lives out of town I've been stranded at my house watching Wong Kar Wai movies all day while more sensible people are off enjoying the holiday. I'm stuck working until the night of the 28th so no holidays for me for a while, yet ...

Anyway ... while poking around looking for some other stuff I noticed that Palm has posted a quality trailer for Last Life in the Universe on their site. You can check it out here.

Here's some good news for Tsukamoto fans ... A Snake of June will finally be getting a North American DVD release on February 22nd thanks to Tartan Video. For my money this is Tsukamoto's finest work, the one that best balances his trademark technological paranoia with strong characters. I've got the Tartan UK release of this and, though it's a little sparse on extras, they've done a dead solid job with the film itself. The only trailer I was able to turn up online is at the Korean website here ...

Also releasing February 22nd will be the landmark Korean horror flick Whispering Corridors ...

The first trailer for Ridley Scott's Kindgom of Heaven in now online. It's beautiful. Majestic. Large in scale and scope. Everything you could want in a Ridley Scott movie. Then why am I so troubled by it?

Since the subject of this film is no doubt going to be an incredibly touchy, controversial - insert appropriate adjective here - issue in our current geo-political times I personally don't feel up to the task to comment on it at this time. But. I do agree with what Todd wrote when he first heard word of Kingdom of Heaven while he was still over at The Movie Blog. He wrote this under his former monikor Bubba.

Then maybe I am saying something then...?

via AICN.

AICN came through again for me this morning as I was fumbling about and they have images from the upcoming The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. I've always loved The Muppets. Anyone within earshot of me at our webmonkey's Christmas shin-dig would have heard my bang-on Swedish Chef impersonation.

Doing a little more digging, I went over to IMDB to check out the human cast. Ashanti will play Dorothy Gale and Queen Latifah and David Alan Grier will play Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. It could be worse. We could have gotten more Woopie. Jeffrey Tambor of Arrested Development fame will play the wizard and Quentin Tarantino, playing himself, will, fingers crossed, set in motion a momentous - but cinematic - bloodbath in which the end result would leave mankind enslaved to our hand-stuffed overlords.

And is it me or does Fozzy look like Jeff Bridges' 'The Dude'?

If your computer is like mine and it only gets by on it's stunning good looks then this week's revelation of the Sin City trailer left you a bit wanting. Especially since it was streaming video. But now, glory be, Apple has come through for us and we now have a link to the trailer in gorgeous Quicktime. Thank the maker. No more jittery images. Just the fluid motion of Jessica Alba's hips... erm... I mean... uh. crap.

Click here to watch the Sin City trailer in glorious Quicktime.

Thank you AICN for the heads up.

So, the end of the year is coming and this is when all the film geeks gather around and look at box office numbers to see who all the big winners and losers were. Rather than re-hash what everybody already knows I decided to take a look at Box Office Mojo's International chart to see what was going on in the rest of the world and I turned up some fun stuff ... I've got to qualify this by saying that to appear of Box Office Mojo's charts at all - even the International chart - the film has to appear in the US at some point during the year. It keeps things from being anywhere near as inclusive as I'd like but if there's a truly international chart out there I couldn't find it ...

I would like to begin by pointing out that Garfield was the number 14 film in international box office take this year, thus proving that bad taste knows no bounds. And before moving into the lesser known stuff it's worth noting that Howl's Moving Castle is already resting in the number 24 spot with a take of eighty one million despite the fact that it still months away from rolling out in most of the major territories. Miyazaki's latest is going to be just huge ... From here on I'm going to be omitting films like Bad Education and The Sea Inside that we've talked about extensively in the past ...

Onwards! At number 26 is the German sci-fi spoof Raumschiff Surprise a very, shall we say, happy mocking of the whole Star Trek phenomenon. The production values don't seem to be as high as Turkey's GORA but the trailer made me laugh a good bit and this thing just dominated central Europe for a good chunk of the year against some tough competition ...

Sitting at 27 was another German film - Germany had a very good year - in Good Bye Lenin, a comedy about a young East German man whose mother falls into a coma and sleeps through the fall of the Berlin wall. When she awakes the son is told that any shock could kill her so he sets out to re-create pre-fall Germany on her behalf. Sony Classics gave this a limited release - and a very cool website - and I remember hearing nothing but good stuff about it ...

Number 30 is a French film titled Les Choristes that looks to these eyes to be basically a French take on Mr. Holland's Opus. If there's anything less appealing than a French Richard Dreyfuss I don't know what it is.

At number 34 was Seven Dwarfs, which I was unable to turn up any info on. It's not listed on the IMDB and searching google just turns up stacks of Disney propoganda. A little help?

Back to Germany for 38 with the gorgeous and controversial World War Two film Der Untergang ... I'm not a big war buff but from what I've read of this, what I've just seen in the trailer, and just from the fact that I'm half German I think I need to look this one up ...

And, finally, at number 89, from the career killing Renny Harlin, it's Mindhunters. A film that is apparently very bad but stars quite a few big names so Dimension can't seem to make up their minds whether they're actually going to release it here or not ... Yeah, you could look up the North American trailer, but it's much more entertaining to listen to Val Kilmer, LL Cool J, Christian Slater and the chick from Cold Case dubbed in German.

The ever watchful Logboy, clever British man that he is, just dropped me a note telling me ... well, telling me exactly what I just said in the headline. Kind of stole my own thunder, there.

It seems that Gervais, the writer / star of the hugely acclaimed series The Office, met up with Simpsons creator Matt Groening at yesterday's British Comedy Awards. The two men proclaimed their enduring love for one another and lacking the required equipment to procreate they decided to instead have Gervais write an episode of The Simpsons, in which he will also have a role. No word yet on when it would air, but it'll probably be at least a season away.

Here's a happy little bit of news Logboy just passed along ...

The good people at Homevision Entertainment are starting to firm up their spring release slate and the coming titles include Seance and Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and the cult-classic Hanzo the Razor series. Seance is an excellent made for TV film from Kurosawa currently legitimately available only from Korea while the only legit subtitled version of Charisma in the world is the out of print Japanese release. I don't believe the Razor films have ever been available on DVD in the western world, but they came from the same production team that produced the classic Lone Wolf and Cub films and starred Katsu Shintaro, best known for his work playing Zatoichi. Animeigo once produced VHS copies of these and their summary page is still available here.

Via the DVD Maniacs forum

I sent an email to YesAsia yesterday asking about the availability of Survive Style 5 and Abnormal Beauty and received a good news / bad news response.

First, the good. Survive Style 5 is available for pre-order now. The two disc version is here and the limited edition collector box is here. As is usually the case with YesAsia the list price is slightly higher here than you'll see on other sites but when you factor in the free shipping and dodging of customs fees thanks to their local shipping centers you stand to save at least a few bucks.

The bad news? "We are sorry to tell you that due to the problem of licensing, we are not allowed to sell "Abnormal Beauty" DVD/VCD to the US and Canada. We apologize for any inconvenience caused." This would mean the local rights holder - Tartan in this case - have pulled rank and asked them not to import any copies into the regions they hold rights to. This is totally within their rights and not something I'm worked up over but I do find it a little odd that other Tartan properties - including Old Boy, which you would think has much higher potential revenues - are still widely available while they're blocking this one. At the end of the day it just means you'll have to hit a Hong Kong site - like this one - if you want to see the film now.

I'm really not sure what to make of this. KungFuCinema posted a link to a very short blip of info about a 3-D Cartoon [ed: computer generated] movie that is being released in China by the title Dragon Blade on January 6th. Tha article claims it to be "the worlds first three-dimension cartoon movie".

While that doesn't necessarily grab me by the collar the voice talent does... somewhat. Karen Mok, Daniel Wu and Stephen Fung are among those who lent their voices to this project [though you can be sure that any domestic release will come dubbed with a hip hop soundtrack]. And Stanley Tong, a long time collaborator with Jackie Chan [SuperCop, Rumble in the Bronx and First Strike] designed the action sequences for the movie.

I'm still not fully convinced yet. Honestly it looks like someone taped their buddy playing Final Fantasy for 90 minutes and tinkered with it enough to make it look 3D-ish. I'm teetering on whether I like it nor not. You can watch the trailer on the official site and make up your own mind. I am sure that thing that looks like a mutated Tweety Bird will annoy the crap out of me. Then there is the official site calling it a 'CG extravaganza that can best be described as Shrek meets Crouching Tiger". I kid you not.

The official movie site is here.

Pictures via Sina.

IGN has managed to score themselves the first images from the upcoming Tim Burton / Henry Selick collaboration The Corpse Bride as well as a full cast shot from Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and they're both mighty sweet. Click here for the high-res Corpse Bride shot and here for Charlie.

It's a Tsukamoto kind of day around here ... the Japan Times has just published a review of Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital here, as well as an interview with the man himself here.

We're big fans of both the man and this particular film around here ... check out my review of it here and the film's official site (including a pair of trailers) here.

I just stumbled across a fantastic Japanese film news site here and I've got to recommend that everybody go take a look right now. There's too much good stuff there to cover it all, but there are two things in particular that I need to mention ...

First, Italian DVD company Raro Video has just released a new, remastered box set of three films by Shinya Tsukamoto. You get Tetsuo, Tetsuo 2 and The Adventures of Rod Boy - an incredibly rare early effort that I've only ever seen available on obviously bootlegged VCD. All films are English subtitled and the set includes subtitled interviews with Shinya Tsukamoto. The site also includes a trailer for the release - largely made up of Rod Boy footage - here. The set's region free and PAL formatted. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Major find number two was a link to this set of four short films currently in production starring Tadanobu Asano and Ryuhei Matsuda. There's no trailer yet but that's a meeting of some major talents and I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure.

Okay ... I lied ... there are threee things. While poking around that Asano site I stumbled across this: the Japanese website for The Naked Man. Written by Ethan Coen and directed by longtime Coen collaborator J. Todd Anderson, The Naked Man stars brilliant character actor Michael Rappaport - chiropractor by day, wrestler by night. His wrestling gimmick involves dressing in a Naked Man - as in the anatomy diagram, not as in, well, a naked man - body suit. This thing looks completely and utterly bizarre and I can't believe I've never heard of it before ...

I confess. I am a Woody Allen fan. Yes, his personal life is more than a little bit creepy. And, yes, it has been a very long time since he made a good film. But, that being said, when he's on his game nobody does neurosis better and the word from the European festival circuit is that Melinda and Melinda marks a major come back for the man.

Well, the US trailer has just hit online and I've got to say that the hype looks correct. It's smart, it's funny, the cast is fantastic and putting Will Ferrell into the requisite Woody Allen role looks to be a stroke of absolute genius. Check it out here.

Poor Wong Kar Wai. Imagine for a moment that you’re a notorious perfectionist who has just created a film acknowledged as a masterpiece around the world, a film that you are unlikely ever to top but that you are under an immense amount of pressure to best nonetheless. Do you run from the pressure? Crack under it?

This was the exact situation that WKW was in following the release of In The Mood For Love, a film that was hugely, and deservedly, acclaimed world wide and one that I am convinced will go into the books as the man’s defining moment. That film is one that comes as close to perfection as any film ever will and yet he was called upon to up the stakes. To his credit the man faced the challenge head on, creating a pseudo-sequel that openly invites comparison to his masterpiece. Yes, the shoot was fraught with difficulties and seemed to stretch on forever and, yes, the film has some significant flaws but although 2046 will likely end up in the books as one of the lesser works of a master, the work of a master it clearly is.

Continue reading "2046 Review"

If you happen to be one of the early converts to Twitch and were around when we were covering the Toronto Film Festival en masse then you're already aware that my favorite film from that festival was Kim Ki-Duk's brilliant 3-Iron. It's just a beautiful, subtle little film that blurs the line between fantasy and reality and could serve as a film-school text book in economical story telling. My full review is at the bottom of this page.

Anyway ... enough of the raving ... I noticed at the screening that the film had been picked up by Sony Classics - the same people currently doing a fantastic job with the equally fantastic House of Flying Daggers, nudge nudge - and so every time I've been in contact with them I've been sure to ask about the status of this little gem. Well, the persistence has paid off ... The Sony Classics website hasn't been updated yet but I've just received a note that the film will begin its run with a limited release in New York and LA on April 29th. Assuming Sony Classics follows their normal release pattern that should mean it'll hit most other major centers within the next couple weeks after that.

There's no official North American website for the film yet, but the fantastic Korean site is here. Be prepared to spend a fair bit of time poking around when you check it out ... it's a good one ...

The American website for Appleseed has been updated with a new trailer for the film and theater details for its coming January release. Click here to see if it'll be hitting your town ...

Whee! There are two films from Japan that I've been following closely for months now, just itching for the chance to finally take a good look at them. One is The Taste of Tea. The other, the wickedly absurd Tadanobu Asano / Sonny Chiba / Vinny Jones star vehicle Survive Style 5+. Both have received hugely positive press around the world while hitting the festival circuit, though both mysteriously skipped the Toronto festival, thus killing my shot at a theatrical screening.

Well, the news improved a couple weeks back when the Japanese DVD for Taste of Tea was announced and it turned out the film would include English subtitles. And now Geneon has announced the full specs for their coming March releases for Survive Style 5+ and it will also be getting the full, subbed treatment. And yeah, I did say releases in the plural. March 4th sees the release of the 'premium' two disc edition of the film, while the big ol' collector's box set comes March 25th. Both releases will include DTS sound, English subs on the feature, a making of feature, interviews with the actors (Tadanobu Asano, Reika Hashimoto, Hiroshi Abe, and Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), opening day stage greeting, deleted scenes, a talk between the director (Gen Sekiguchi) and screenwriter (Taku Tada), and footage of overseas film festivals (Locarno International Film Festival and Pusan International Film Festival). On top of all that the big box will include a mouse pad, sticker, postcard, bandana, and 200 page storyboard book.

You can find the trailers here and the Japan Times review here. The only retailers listing it so far are CD Japan and HMV Japan, so as soon as something turns up locally I'll post a link. Still looking for artwork, too ...

via the Asian DVD Guide Forum.

All that talk about Spider-Man being the best comic-book adaptation ever can stop right now. Seriously. As if the early Comic-Con footage that leaked from the upcoming Robert Rodriguez / Frank Miller adaptation of Sin City wasn't impressive enough the full, official trailer has just appeared online and now that it's got all of the post-production effects in place this stuff is simply staggering. Incredible visuals, amazing cast and the graphic novel's creator on board as a co-director ... it's just not going to get a whole lot better than this.

How good to I think this is going to be? Good enough that it'll vault Rodriguez - who has had an interesting but workmanlike career thus far - straight to the top of the geek-director list. This is going to make him a genre film icon.

The Quicktime version is available here, the AOL Moviefone version available here. In a rather irritating move the AOL people have deliberately lowered the frame rate on the Quicktime version to make sure that their own format is the highest quality version out there ... And who says convergence isn't a good thing?

Links via The Movie Box. If you were a member of our forum you'd already know this. Huge thanks to the keen-eyed Father Godiva for pointing it out.

There can't be that many of you (surely) who haven't seen at least one Ghibli film, or many of you who haven't seen at least some footage from one of them? There is? Blimey...

Anyway, there's a trailer online now which features footage from each of the initial wave of USA Ghibli DVD release due in the new year. It's a couple of minutes long and shows you glimpses of the dubbing work done on them. See them here.

When the first still shots for Crying Fist began to circulate a month or so back it immediately jumped on to my 'films to look out for' list for 2005. Why? It's the latest film from the director of Arahan (my review here) starring Old Boy's Choi Min-Sik as an aging boxer along with Arahan's Ryu Seung-Beom. Well, no official site or trailer yet, but with some help from the folks at Koreanfilm.org I just managed to turn up a bunch more film stills and some behind the scenes footage.

Check out the image gallery here for a slightly battered Choi Min-Sik and to develop a man-crush on Ryu's dreads. Or you can click here to check out the behind the scenes footage of Min-Sik going all Kaufman and boxing women in the streets. Nice.

Well, my copies of 2046 have braved the Christmas mail rush and what will most likely be the coldest day we experience here in Toronto all year and have arrived safe and sound. I've just given the two discs a quick scan so I can't comment too much but I can confirm the early rumor that the 'Making of 2046' feature on the second disc does include English subtitles. That appears to be the only one of the features on the second disc to include subtitles of any kind - the disc one 'Databank' is also available in English - but it's also the only thing on disc two that really requires them.

So ... if you've been wavering on which version of this to pick up, go for the two disc set.

Well, our final pre-Christmas contest has come to a close. An awful lot of you knew that the big award-winning Korean film that Tartan was putting in theaters in February was Chan Wook Park's Old Boy - though I kept having people say Phone, even after I posted saying that wasn't the answer - and these five correct-answer-giving type people are now the proud owners of a Tale of Two Sisters poster. Congratulations to:

Eugene Lee
Greg Mann
Peter Galvin
Ben Wilson
Daw Ho

The giveaways will start again in January with a couple DVD copies of 6ixtynin9 courtesy of the good folk at Palm Pictures.

And why should we look at the artwork? Well, most sites, including the official film site and all the major retailers, have nothing more than a really tiny preview of the standard dvd cover. Not even cdjapan.co.jp or amazon.co.jp have it.

Why be bothered? Can't answer that one, though it's always nice to take a look at how a film is being presented, particularly in japan, incase it's something really special.

It is nice. The standard dvd artwork is the one to the left (larger picture here), and the special edition dvd is this nice white one here. If anyone finds other pics of the contents of the special edition one, let us know. Incase you didn't know : the discs are both out about now, but without English Subtitles.

I love the Oscars. Love them. Love the corporate butt slapping feel good fest that it is. But what I love even more is sitting down with friends and seeing who can predict the most winners that night.

With only a couple more months to go nomination lists are wrappinng up and the competition for the Visual Effects Oscar just got really good. Last Friday the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the seven films being considered for Achievement in Visual Effects for the Academy Awards.

The Aviator
The Day After Tomorrow
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I, Robot
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Spider-Man 2

The Visual Effects Award Nominating Committee will screen Fifteen-minute clip reels from each of the seven films. Three of these seven films will then be voted for Oscar consideration. The nominees will be announced on January 25th.

I'm at a slight disadvantage here. Only a select few of course have see The Aviator. I haven't trusted Emmerich since Godzilla so The Day After Tomorrow may never come. I won't pay to see a Harry Potter film and I haven't invited myself over to the Wonder Twins' house to see it on DVD. And Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events just opened and I am still working around to seeing it. I have seen the other three though (Robot, Captain and Sider-Man) and all three were very impressive visually and in some cases quite ground breaking in their efforts. It will be a tight race and boiling it down to just three only makes it more difficult to choose the winner.

And speaking of choosing, here's my conundrum. For the past few years now I have gone over to the Wonder Twins house to watch the Oscars and we have a friendly competition to see who can predict the most winners. For the first time in a couple years one of the Wonder Twins isn't going to be in the country - blast his servants heart. Understandedbly it wouldn't be the same without him and I know I will also get an invite from Todd, as I did last year, to go to his humble abode and do the same. What do I do? Todds? One half of the Wonder Twins? Where or where do I take my shrimp dip this year? Either way there is a predicting party at each house. Where do I have the greater hope of predicting glory? Careful negotiation will have to be done.

Okay ... I have to get up at five to go to work tomorrow, so I really should be in bed right now but I just got sucked into the American Film Market website. The AFM would be the big annual confab where independent film makers try to sell their films to different distributors. Now, as much as we love independent film around here the simple fact is that a great many independent films are independent for a reason. They're really, really bad. A lot of films at AFM fall into this category. A quick perusal of the official film list answers the ol' 'where are they now question' quite simply: they're still here making films that nobody is ever likely to see.

Example? It seems like just yesterday that we were talking about Nightcourt and the original cinematic Beastamster round these parts. That's because it was just yesterday. And look! Marc Singer and Richard Moll in a horrific 'erotic thriller' with post-breakdown Margot Kidder! You can watch the trailer here, but I honestly recommend against it, especially if you happen to be at work ...

And, Dave! Look! Dave! It's COREY FELDMAN! IN A LEAD ROLE! I'm not making this up! Here he is!

What do you do if you're a washed up Belgian action star with a North American career locked in straight to video hell? If you're Jean Claude Van Damme you take a minor part in a French film about a narcoleptic who dreams of being a super-hero! I'm not making this up, either, and it shockingly looks as though it could be a half decent film ...

The French are also giving former Guy Ritchie star Jason Flemyng another shot following his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen debacle, co-starring with Mrs. Johnny Depp in this alien-invasion comedy ...

And what do you do if you're a giant ant? You just keep right on going ...

There are actually quite a few good films tucked away in there, but the only one I'm going to point out is the big-budget live action adaptation of Arsene Lupin AKA The Castle of Cagliostrato AKA Lupin The Third. This same source material drove a very long running anime show much loved around the world and the live action footage looks killer ...

You can find the complete AFM list - with a ton of other trailer links - here.

Just a reminder that Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers has now opened across the continent. Go, see, now. It's an amazing film that really needs to be seen on the big screen ... check my review from the Toronto Film Festival here.

In follow up to Todd's article about Stephen Fung's second project, House of Fury, I stumbled upon something over at the Wu-Jing web-site. They are images of what some claim to be the teaser poster and a promotional flyer image. This information was to have come from the now defunct forums page over at KungFuCultCinema which according to the site got hit by hackers recently. Poor souls.

Click here to see an image from promotional material.

Click here to see the teaser poster.

Going on the assumption that these are the real deal we can see from the movie poster that they're going to use Wo Ping's name to sell the movie. Don't know why Chan's name isn't on it. After all he did produce it. And we still haven't heard anything about Fung's first picture Enter the Phoenix to get a sense if this is just clever marketing or an attempt to recover a fan base, that wasn't convinced with the first film, in an already struggling market.

But I am tired and still fuddled on Christmas cheer from a small gathering of old college friends over at our web monkey's house tonight. I'm off to bed.

Tah.

Hey kids ... when we switched servers our new host included some handy-dandy forum software which I've just gone and installed. The color scheme aint so pretty at the moment, but it works. Go ahead, talk amongst yourselves ... the forum can be found at www.twitchfilm.net/forum ...

I was just digging around looking for trailers for Sha Po Lang and Seven Swords and though neither of those appear to exist just yet I did stumble across some information on Stephen Fung's next film.

Fung is a young Hong Kong actor who has recently made the switch to directing and, from the looks of things, is systematically working his way through the old classic Hong Kong film genres and giving his own revisionist take. His first film, Enter the Phoenix, took a run at the classic triad film. His just wrapped second film, House of Fury, is Fung's take on the 70's era martial arts spy thriller a la Bruce Lee. Is Fung angling to become a younger version of Stephen Chow? Could be, and he's getting some serious help getting there. House of Fury features Jackie Chan as executive producer - and apparently appearing in a cameo - Yuen Woo Ping serves as martial arts director, and Fung is joined in front of the camera by Anthony Wong, Daniel Wu - also featured in Chan's New Police Story - and Gillian Chung. In a study of contrasts legendary old-school martial artist Wu Ma is also slated to appear along with 14-year old American Jake Strickland. Mack posted a good article on Strickland a while back here.

The film's official site hasn't launched yet, but when it does it'll be here. In the meantime you can check the production company's official synopsis here. Check the Enter the Phoenix site at the link above while you're at it ... there's something inherently funny about Chinese people swearing in English. I just ordered myself a copy of that one ... I'll let you know if this guy's the real deal when it arrives ...

The web-monkey just instant messaged me to point out that the North American trailer for Steamboy has just hit the web and it's a dandy ... Movie-List is the trailer's exclusive home for the time being and you can find it here. Not sure what's up with that '2 Days in the Valley' tag in the title bar for the Steamboy page, but there you have it.

Can I also take this opportunity to suggest that nobody not named Jerry Seinfeld be allowed to employ Mr. Movie Voice ever again? Do people really think putting that over top of their visuals really helps to sell a movie? It's like William Shatner without a sense of humor ... give it a rest already ...

My review of Steamboy from the Toronto Film Festival screening is here ...

There is only one more week until the jolly fat man makes his rounds and reminds us that commercial consumption is the only way to bring families closer during the holiday season.

The Canadian contingent of Twitch Film has banded together and created for you, our faithful readership, what we deem to be essential viewing this holiday season. So as you prepare for the holidays, take a moment to sit back and relax, ignore your family and friends, and watch these seasonal gems.

We present to you Twitch’s Essential Christmas Movie Guide.

First, is what our webmaster Dave calls the “Best Christmas Movie That Never Appears On Any Christmas List" Movie...

Continue reading "Twitch's Essential Christmas viewing guide!"

The official website for Terry Gilliam's Tideland has launched here and it includes a video introduction from the man himself - an introduction replete with donkey references, for some reason - and a promise of behind the scenes footage to follow.

When posting about the Wonderful Days / Sky Blue release dates a few days back I mentioned that I found it strange there was no English language trailer for the film ... well, there is now. It loads painfully slowly - I'm downloading as I type - but you can get the Quicktime versions here (lo res) and here (high res) or a Windows Media version here.

My download finally finished ... looks nice, but if the trailer is any indicator they're releasing this in a dubbed version. Oh well, at least the voice actors seem to be decent ...

Via IGN

I reviewed three of these back at the start of November this year, but haven't put them up yet : the set isn't out til the end of March 2005 if i remember correctly. I will put them up early in the new year, after everyone has had the chance to see these trailers, and then repost them towards the release date. At the time, two of the films hadn't had their subtitles completed : I look forward to seeing those soon.

They're not easy things to write about as info is short on the ground, but it's safe to say if (like me) you like odd Japanese films then there should be a whole heap of stuff in these five films for you to enjoy.

The trailers page is here. Or visit individual films here : Red Vertigo, Red Porno, Nami, Red Classroom, or High School Co-Ed.

According to The Korea Times, the uber-hot Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi has signed to play a major role in the third installment of the 'My Wife is a Gangster' series. Zhang had a cameo role at the end of the second installment.

Negotiations are underway with actress Shin Eun-kyoung to reprise her role as the gangster boss Eun-jin. The third film of the series will tell the story of Eun-jin going to China on a mission of revenge.

I am presently writing a film treatment myself. I've got a pretty good feeling that Zhang Ziyi will sign on for it too. It's called 'My wife is Zhang Ziyi'!

Oh the impossibilities.

via HanCinema.

I've mentioned on a couple of threads how I wanted to gussy the ol' website up a little bit ... well, in rides our good friend and sometime contributor Opus to the rescue. Not sure when it will be live on the front page yet - it won't be long - but the design mock-up is now live here. Take a good look at it - make sure to hit refresh a few times - and then come back and tell Opus that he's a web-design god. Because he is. And he also does this for a living, so if you know anybody that needs a website you can get him via his own site here.

Palm Pictures has just posted trailers for their current theatrical releases - Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future, Takeshi Kitano's Dolls, and the Zhang Ziyi star vehicle Purple Butterfly. I've been pretty vocal about my opinions on all of these films and the trailers go a long way towards reinforcing those happy feelings. Kurosawa and Kitano are huge favorites of mine and these are very strong entries in both of their respective canons - Bright Future tops my list of favorite Kurosawa films most days and Dolls is simply compellingly atypical Kitano - and though it's not without its flaws Purple Butterfly does an awful lot right.

They exist in multiple formats but I'm going to give you the larger Quicktime files ... check 'em out ...

Bright Future
Dolls
Purple Butterfly

Nothing is definite as of yet but according to CHUD Nicholas Cage is actively campaigning for the lead role in the US remake of Old Boy ... if this was the Leaving Las Vegas / Raising Arizona era Cage we were talking about I'd be pretty excited about this but given his wildly inconsistent output of late it leaves me feeling pretty ... meh.

You could do worse, but you could also do a lot better. Personally I'm still holding out for Johnny Depp and Ed Norton in the lead roles. If they go with Cage you also have to think of who would play opposite him because the two leads need to be the same age ... one Cage-inclusive option that would have me feeling pretty good would be to flip Cage into the jailer role and put Sean Penn in the lead. I'd find Penn a LOT more believable in that sort of character than I would Cage, plus we'd have the added bonus of letting the two men vent their public dislike for each other on screen ...

I wasn't expecting miracles when I started the thread to ask for opinions on the artwork (shown to the left) for the American DVD for "Innocence". I did send the comments, at the time I said I would, to a Dreamworks employee directly associated with the release, but heard nothing back. People have occasionally continued to post in that thread too, so the feelings still run deep.

Bad news: no, it's not the Harry Knowles comment now on the box... the disc has shipped, and there has not been any change of heart from Dreamworks in the time between the announcement and now. Good thing is, in about a weeks time i will be able to watch it (it's officially out December 28th, but these things always seem to ship early).

Thanks to all those who posted, it was the most comments for a post ever in out short history! You can still view it here.

Our Palm Pictures DVD Giveaway contest has come to a close and we've got four, count 'em four, lucky winners.

Congratulations to Curtis Pullen and Scott Cunningham who both take home a copy of Time of the Wolf while Robert Meeker and KT have both landed a free copy of Springtime in a Small Town.

We'll have copies of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's 6ixtynin9 to give away in January, so keep your eyes open for that, and remember there are just a couple days left to enter our Tale of Two Sisters poster giveaway.

It's all rumor and innuendo at this point, but that's the word over on the News Askew website ... word is that Smith has been hired to shoot the pilot of the upcoming Star Wars television series and that Hamill is reprising his role as Luke Skywalker and will appear in the show on an occassional basis. If this pans out it at least lets us know where the show will occur in the Star Wars timeline ... could this be Lucas' way of getting the material planned for episodes seven, eight and nine out there without going through the feature film grind?

The News Askew story is here.

A sad day for those of us in the TiVo-less world who use BitTorrent to catch up on our favorite shows when we miss the broadcast ... the MPAA is going after the file-sharers again, this time specifically targetting eDonkey and BitTorrent. The BitTorrent software itself is pretty innocuous and should remain untouched, but they are specifically taking a run at sites that post and archive links to bootleg materials that use the Torrent format ... apparently a hundred or so sites have been targetted for prosecution. Full article is here.

The BBC recently aired some behind the scenes footage from the upcoming Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and some kind soul was good enough to digitize it and make it available here. It doesn't show a whole lot, but you do get a good look at all of the principal characters in costume ...

Via H2G2themovie.com

Hey! Chow Yun Fat might just end up in a North American film that doesn't suck! According to Yahoo News Fat has been approached by Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski about appearing in the two sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean playing actual 15th century pirate Cheung Po Tsai.

They can't confirm or deny anything until the contracts are signed, sealed and delivered, but this looks to be a pretty done deal. Read the whole article here.

Via FilmRot

As information slowly trickles out about the upcoming live action adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe the good feelings I have towards the project just keep on growing ... well, there's a little more than a trickle now as the PR folk have just sent out this link to behind the scenes footage from the film. Whee! Creature and prop shots o'plenty and WETA is definitely living up to the high standards they set themselves with the Lord of the Rings films. This stuff looks sweeeeeet!

That's in Quicktime format, by the way ...

I gotta make the trip out for the Sitges Film Festival one day ... Logboy just sent me the list of prize winners from this year's edition and it reads like a who's who of Asian film ... check it out:

Best Make-Up: Three... Extremes, directed by Takeshi Miike, Fruit Chan, Chan-Wook Park

Best Special Effects: Izo, directed by Takashi Miike

Best Film & Jose Luis Guarner Critic Award: Old Boy, directed by Chan-Wook Park

Best Animated Film: Steamboy, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

New Visions Award: Vital, directed by Shinya Tsukamoto

Audience Award (Favorite Film): Howl's Moving Castle, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki was also presented a career acheivement award.

Orient Express Casa Asia Award: Innocence, directed by Mamoru Oshii

The festival's official site - which appears to be down at the moment - is here.

0605 - the final film from murdered film maker Theo Van Gogh - has just been made available for download here. It's in Dutch, and thus of little use to me, but it's nice to see his legacy being spread, rather than capitalized upon, by the film's producers in the wake of his shocking death.

For those who weren't already aware Van Gogh - yes, he was related - was stabbed to death in an Amsterdam park following the release of a film criticizing the treatment of women in some Muslim cultures. The killing was religiously motivated and word is a letter threatening the life of Van Gogh's collaborators on that film was left impaled into on his chest with the killer's knife.