Some news from the Studio Ghibli front here courtesy of our good friends at Ghibli World. 

First, and of most interest, is that the full theatrical trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo On A Cliff has apparently just aired in Japan.  According to Ghibli’s no-online marketing policy for this film it has not been formally released online but things being what they are I’m sure it can be found with a bit of look.  What can definitely be found are a quartet of new images from the film. 

And if news from Miyazaki the elder isn’t enough for you, how about word on the new features from his son, Goro, and studio co-founder Isao Takahata?  All Ghibli is good Ghibli which makes all of this news fantastic.

While it makes the unfortunate mis-step of ending weaker than it begins it is hard to fault French animated omnibus Fear[s] of the Dark too much for that.  When you have a project as unique and compelling as this one, one driven by the distinct personalities of a diverse collection of artists, there are sure to be certain segments that connect with certain members of the audience more than others, that’s just the way of things.  And when your project hits the audience with something as flat out stunning as the Charles Burns entry to the anthology in the early going it is simply well nigh impossible not to slip back a little bit over time. 

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Salivate and prepare to be completely blown away by the first half of the Sitges 2008 program!

With a furious drum beat and TNT Jackson kick to the face and Braveheart battle roar, Sitges 2008, announced one amazing lineup today and even better… it’s only half the titles and events! Between their highlights and focus of key science fiction films of the past and new titles playing, this could be a fantastic film festival for the ages. The kind where you have a grandson that has a grandson that has a grandson that tells people as bragging rights that their distant relative Frank was at Sitges 2008. Sitges this year seems to be rolling out all the stops to outdo everything they have ever done before and It only makes me wonder if festival director Angel Sala morphed into James Cagney screaming ”Top of the World” as he drew down the curtains with a furious display of festival fireworks to announce the Sitges 2008 films and events earlier today in Barcelona. As Mr. Sala drove off into the streets of Barcelona immediately after the conference on perhaps his BATPOD, we are left to only wonder how amazing the unannounced second half will be.

Sitges now in its 41st edition kicks off on October 2nd and runs through the 12th. This year they will have an expansive highlighted focus with special guests and planned events for the 40th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey, 40th anniversary of George A. Romero’s, Night of the Living Dead and also on the 75th anniversary of King Kong (highly appropriate with the Kong icon being so well connected with the festival). If your a fan of these films, then your in for a real treat with what they have in store! The Nosferatu Award this year will be going to Italian maestro Umberto Lenzi. Of special note this year is the fact that the Méliès d’Or award by the EFFFF (European Federation of Fantastic Film Festivals) will be handed out at Sitges via special guests and members of Monty Python.

Let us now quickly mention just some of the titles announced today: Vinyan, Martyrs, Surveillance, Let the Right One in, Tokyo!, Crows-Episode 0, The Good The Bad and the Weird, The Chaser, Blindness, JCVD, The Monster X strikes Back: Attack on the G8 Summit, Transsiberian, Synecdoche, New York and retrospective screenings of Barbarella, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, Logan’s Run and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Whew, just saying that lineup in one breath feels like an incredible cinematic rush.

If your a fan of cinema this year certainly delivers. The Sitges film festival sits about 30 minutes southwest from Barcelona and is right along the Mediterranean coast. The main movie theater the Melia is something of cinema goer legend, as it boasts a giant screen and sound system that will forever leave you spoiled and wishing you had a local theater that was just half as good. It’s a movie theater where you fully experience a movie, when bullets fly in a Johnnie To movie, you feel like bullets are flying past your head! Despite being a smaller coastal town there is plenty of affordable hotel and apartment sublets available from anywhere from 50-80 Euro a night. The overall atmosphere of the festival is very communal and very laid back. Festival goers can easily mingle with each other and stars without all the fuss.

FULL PRESS RELEASE AFTER THE LINK BUMP.

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If there is one thing that Fantasia 2008 has taught me, it is that there are so many, many compelling nooks and crannies for the post-apocalyptic film yet to mine despite the slew of them over the past few years.  If anything, these films are getting better and better as we go along! 

From Inside is a bleak tale of Cee’s journey (heavy with child and the anxieties that that entails) through a post-apocalyptic nightmare-landscape which cannot help but blend in with her own memories of the past and fears of the future.  A surreal steam-engine train barrels through the post-nuclear desert away from a non-existent civilization and towards nothing in particular either.  The important thing, perhaps, is that the train still running; even if the inhabitants are estranged from the mysterious engineers who run the metal dragon and are possibly future fuel for the fires that maintain forward inertia.  The film is not shy about putting imagery of babies being tossed into the fire, a holocaust-edged train-car full of naked and rotting corpses or a still-borne calf being birthed as the mother is being chopped up for beef cutlets in the abattoir-car.  The rivers and lakes outside are rendered a silky-red and occasionally the inhabitants of this world will paddle across its bloody surface to mine half-submerged homes for survival sustenance.  It is a testament to director (and visual artist) John Bergin‘s skill and restraint (yes, I’m serious) that these images are not particularly exploitative and always serve his vision for Cee’s story. 

Continue Reading "Fantasia Dispatch 4 - From Inside Review"...

It’s been hard to keep quiet about the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which kicked off at the Castro Theatre last Friday evening with The Kid Brother (1927), featuring Harold Lloyd and introduced by Leonard Maltin, and wrapped Sunday evening with King Vidor’s The Patsy (1928).

Here at Twitch, Michael Hawley provided an excellent overview and I spoke with Artistic Director Stephen Salmons.

Continue Reading "2008 SFSFF13—SSSSSSSSH!!!"...

It’s easy to understand why a year or so back the San Francisco Film Critics Circle unanimously acknowledged Stephen Salmons—Artistic Director for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival ("SFSFF")—and his remarkable contribution to the Bay Area film community. Not only is he one of the nicest people in the world, but his enthusiasm is contagious, and—having helmed SFSFF for over a decade—he’s become as savvy as they get when it comes to silent cinema. It was a complete pleasure to sit down and talk with him about this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

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When last I wrote about Rodrigo Gudino’s The Facts In The Case of Mister Hollow back in March I commented ont he fact that I’d just had the chance to see the film and called it “easily the most striking and distinctive work Gudino has put out to date.” And considering how strong his previous two short films are that’s saying something.  Well time has passed, I still feel the same and an official trailer has arrived so you can get a peek for yourself.  Here’s the synopsis:

A single image that tells an entire story, THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MISTER HOLLOW is the groundbreaking new film by Rue Morgue founding editor Rodrigo Gudiño (The Demonology of Desire, The Eyes of Edward James) and award-winning visual artist Vincent Marcone (MyPetSkeleton.com, Johnny Hollow). The visually stunning film centers on an unusual photograph dating back to the 1930s. An investigation of its particulars reveals a tapestry of secrets hidden in the details, and a tale of kidnapping and murder captured in a haunting moment.

If you tend to think of Danish film as staid, arty, and oh-so-serious then you clearly have never seen animated comedy Terkel In Trouble, a rude and crude and hysterically funny animated comedy from the Nordic country.  Readers of Twitch should be well familiar with Terkel by now and also aware that the team behind that film is currently hard at work preparing their scifi opus Journey To Saturn for a September release.  Well, the full trailer for the new one has now arrived and it’s full of all the good things you’d expect from these guys:  violence, binge drinking, vomit, urine, anal probing and a full on alien invasion.  Very, very silly and very, very fun.  Yes, please.

You can find the original teaser for the film along with the new trailer in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "Aliens!  Binge Drinking!  Anal Probes!  It’s The Full Trailer For JOURNEY TO SATURN!"...

In his communiqué to Cineaste magazine from last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Richard Porton noted that André Bazin had already observed in an essay for Cahiers du Cinema “that the contemporary film festival resembles nothing so much as a religious order”, especially as most “cinephilic members of the press and the public are tied to a relatively monastic regime—seeing four to six films a day and grabbing what are inevitably inadequate amounts of nourishment and sleep.” This apt prediction for next week’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival ("SFSFF") is underscored by Michael Hawley’s own admitted anticipation.

Until I began attending the SFSFF, I perceived watching silents as somewhat akin to a duty or chore. Perhaps it stemmed from being forced to view Battleship Potemkin‘s Odessa steps sequence over and over again in a university film theory class? Over the years I’d occasionally catch a new print of some indisputable classic of the era, such as the mega-event of Abel Gance’s Napoleon at Oakland’s Paramount Theater in the early ‘80s. These experiences were rarely unpleasant or unrewarding, but watching silent films never became the kind of thing I’d seek out.

That all changed in 2006 when, after having ignored the festival for the first decade of its existence, I attended four programs at the 11th edition, followed by six programs last year. With their impeccable prints, sublime and eclectic musical accompaniments and scholarly program notes (not to mention taking place in one of our nation’s few remaining silent movie palaces), the festival has definitively proved the validity of its motto that “True art transcends time.” With the 13th edition looking to be its most wildly varied yet, I’m happily resigned to spending the entire weekend of July 11 to 13 holed up in the Castro Theater. So whenever you’re ready, Mr. Peabody, please set the Wayback Machine to 1920’s San Francisco, as we prepare to indulge ourselves in 30-plus hours worth of these glorious images from the past.

Continue Reading "2008 SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL—Michael Hawley’s Preview"...

By all means, I’m no expert on Bollywood in any stretch of the imagination so I usually leave it to my fellow Twitch writers who are far more qualified in this area to do the reporting but this particular news is just too good to pass up.  Walt Disney Studios has partner-up with Yash Raj Films to co-produce a Hindi-language CG animated film Roadside Romeo, featuring romance, song and dance in the typical Bollywood fashion.  The main voice cast include Saif Ali Khan as the lead character Romeo and Kareena Kapoor as the love interest Laila.  Over at youtube, there is two teaser trailer that shows Romeo and Laila auditioning for the film, each with some sort of wacky personality or characteristic.  Here’s the synopsis: 

A rich, cool, spoil brat of a dog is abandoned on the wicked streets of Mumbai. He faces situations he has never faced before. He is confronted by dangerous, loony characters, the likes of which he has never met before. From mansions to streets… From five course meals to five courses of scraps…From soft beds to piles of garbage…From champagne to tap water… Hop on to the adventure as Romeo turns into “Roadside Romeo.”

Roadside Romeo is scheduled for release on October 24th in India and US (limited).  You’ll find the two teasers below after the break.

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Did you have any misgivings about how Chinese people would perceive the portrayal of their culture in Dreamworks’ Kung Fu Panda? Cause clearly they don’t have any. In just ten short days Kung Fu Panda became the highest grossing animated film EVER in mainland China. Killed it! It has done so well on the mainland that the film is also the first animated feature film that has grossed over RMB100m, which is generally seen as a benchmark for blockbuster films in China. Clearly the mainland population has embraced Kung Fu Panda‘s ‘awesomeness’. I personally thank them for bumping Garfield 2 out of the top spot.

1. Kung Fu Panda – $15.01m
2. Garfield 2 – $7.25m
3. The Lion King – $5.13m
4. TMNT – $5.02m
5. Ice Age 2 – $ 4.44m
6. Finding Nemo – $4.35m
7. Toy Story – 3.92m
8. Cars – $2.86m
9. Ratatouille – $2.85m
10. Secret Of The Magic Gourd – $2.75m

Sky Crawlers is the latest animated feature from the hugely acclaimed director of Ghost in the Shell Mamoru Oshii and we’ve got a 5 minute clip for your viewing pleasure.

You know what to do!

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I don’t know if a science-fiction movie should be judged by the casting of its fictional president, because well that would make Deep Impact (Morgan Freeman) or Independence Day (Bill Pullman) seem like half-way decent entertainment. But I have to admire the chutzpah of placing Fred Willard as the President/CEO of Earth in Pixar’s WallE. Rare that an actors face shows up in one of Pixar’s CGI films, even if it is ‘archival footage.’ Nevertheless, Willard’s all-smiles, no brains (but really there is a brain) vintage comedy fits perfectly into the science fiction tale where big box stores, privatization and consumer detritus have made life on earth forfeit. That all is left is a single garbage handling unit (well and his cockroach companion, natch) who is all the lonelier for having as his only emotional anchor the innocent and saccharine Hello Dolly! If holding hands while staring into your partners eyes is the ultimate physical expression of true love, then WallE, with his large grips and larger puppy-dog eyes seems born to do so.

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It’s the latest film from legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki and despite Studio Ghibli’s ‘nothing online’ approach to marketing the film the trailer for Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea has arrived on the web.  It’s quite a different film from his recent work and looks to be much simpler than Howl’s Moving Castle or Spirited Away but it’s pure Miyazaki.  Check it out below the break and do so quickly ... I can’t imagine Ghibli is happy this is out there.

Continue Reading "Trailer For Miyazaki’s PONYO ON THE CLIFF Arrives Online!"...

Last night in California, the 34th annual Saturn Awards that honored works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video has announced the winners.  I was confident The Mist would take home the award in the best horror film category but to my surprise, the dark musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was the winner.  In the best sci-fi film category, the kaiju-inspired/documentary Cloverfield came out on top while the charming Enchanted score an impressive three awards for best fantasy film, best actress (awarded to Amy Adams), and best music.  Director Guillermo del Toro who flew from London was present to pick up the George Pal Memorial Award from the organization in recognition of his visionary genius within the genre.

You’ll find the complete list of the winners below after the break.  What do you think of the picks?

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