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

Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 - Perfume of the Lady in Black Interview Part 1"...

It’s gutter tourism for famed author Dries in Koen Mortier’s adaptation of the cult novel by Herman Brusselmans.  Transgressive, vulgar, violent, and sexually sexually explicit, Mortier’s debut also showcases a supremely raw sense of style while preserving and oddly tragic and poetic heart.  Trainspotting comparisons are inevitable - and apt enough, as far as that goes - but Mortier’s film functions on an entirely different level than Boyle’s.  Yes, boys and girls, we have just been introduced to a fierce and uncompromising new talent.

Continue Reading "FANTASIA:  EX DRUMMER Review"...

Oh, this bit of news makes Todd a happy boy ... Miki Satoshi’s Adrift in Tokyo is a big favorite of mine and the Joe Odagiri - starring, gently absurd comedy will be getting a prompt R1 DVD release thanks to new Montreal-based start up Evokative Films.  The deal is for Canada only - no idea at all if a US distrib has picked it up as well - but this means that it will at the very least be available for easy import on R1 DVD for our American neighbors.  This is just the second pick up for Evokative but they’re looking to be an intriguing little imprint.  Their first title is Cedric Anger’s Le Teuer and they’re negotiating now on some other interesting titles to round out the lineup ...

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity. (Isaiah 53:2-3).

“Now I was assigned to The Unknown, to a star known as the horror man of films, a man who literally made the lights tremble on the marquee—Mr. Lon Chaney.  Here was the most tense, exciting individual I’d ever met, a man mesmerized into this part.  Between pictures when you met him on the lot you saw a grave, mild-mannered man with laughing black eyes who seldom laughed, but when he did, his laughter was irresistible.  When he worked, it was as if God were working, he had such profound concentration.  It was then I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera, and acting.  Lon Chaney’s concentration, the complete absorption he gave to his character, filled all of us with such awe we never even considered addressing him with the usual pleasantries until he became aware of and addressed us.  He was armless in this picture—his arms strapped to his sides—and he learned to eat, even to hold a cigarette using his feet and toes.  He was in a world of his own, a world in which he’d had those arms amputated for love of a gypsy girl who abhors men’s arms.  And when he returns to the circus, he finds her—me—in the arms of the strong man!  Mr. Chaney could have unstrapped his arms between scenes.  He did not.  He kept them strapped one day for five hours, enduring such numbness, such torture, that when we got to the scene, he was able to convey not just realism but such emotional agony that it was shocking … it was fascinating."—Joan Crawford, from her autobiography A Portrait Of Joan (Doubleday & Company, Inc.  Garden City, New York.  1962, p. 30.)

Continue Reading "2008 SFSFF13—REVIEW of The Unknown"...

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.

Continue Reading "Sitges 2008 - This Could Be One for the Ages!"...

Collin talked about sequels (read here) and now let us talk about all these remakes! At the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) in Switzerland, I talked with filmmakers - Hideo Nakata, Xavier Gens and Jesus Franco on what they thought on all these remakes that seem to be coming out these days. Hideo Nakata alone seemed prime to talk on the subject after having his original Ringu reworked so many times I’ve lost count on its mutations.

The Jesus Franco piece may not be immediately accessible, but after repeat listens I think you can get at the very real beating heart of cinema that he is speaking about.

Interview after the link bump.

Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 - Remakes, Remakes… Remakes!?!"...

Admitting to being “strangely jittery” because Browning’s “masterpiece” The Unknown is not his own movie, Guy Maddin rationalized that maybe it was because he would be translating the print’s French intertitles “on the fly.”

“Actually, I have to confess,” he qualified, “What you’re getting tonight isn’t even a translation of the French intertitles.  It’s an untranslation.  I want to mention this because it’s just the original English intertitles being read by me while you’re translating the French ones.  Every now and then—if you have a little French, or even if you don’t—you’ll notice that there’s way more words on the intertitles than I’m saying.  I just want you to be confident that I’m not doing my own editing.  Anyway, that’s another matter.

“While I have a huge and friendly audience, I’m really tempted to preach to the converted because, well, there’s no risk in it.  Please allow me to say a few kind words on behalf of melodrama.  Melodrama—outside of the enchanted walls of the Castro Theatre these past three days, as it has been for a long time—is often greeted with cringes or derision; but, really good melodrama, I think, is as fine an art form as there is.  Let me say why.

Continue Reading "2008 SFSFF13—Guy Maddin In Defense of Melodrama"...

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.

Continue Reading "2008 SFSFF13—Interview With Artistic Director Stephen Salmons"...

The Twitch website (yes, this one) got its highest spike in traffic last year when word got out that we were hosting the trailer for Noboru Iguchi’s “Kataude Mashin Gâru” (The Machine Girl). And very much rightly so because it was one of the most outrageous trailers in ages.

And as a good trailer should, it sure whetted the appetite for the main course…

I finally caught up with the movie itself at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, and it was a definite audience-pleaser. While it didn’t dislodge “[°Rec]” from first place it scored a very respectable 8.1 out of ten.
That should answer the question whether or not this movie delivers on the promises made in that yucky trailer: it does.

So what is it about?
Well, it’s an exploitation revenge flick of the highest (or rather lowest) order, with gore flying around by the bucket loads.

There Will Be Blood!


Read on after the break…

Continue Reading "FANTASIA: THE MACHINE GIRL Review"...

Thank God for English subtitles.  Yes, the latest from Japanese cult icon Takashi Miike, his spin on the spaghetti western, is technically already in English but thanks to the vast majority of his performers speaking no English at all and having to deliver their lines phonetically trying to watch this film without subtitles would have been an exercise in pain.  With them, however, the film is a loopy explosion of energy, the most overtly crowd pleasing effort from the prolific cinematic freak show since Zebraman.  Bright, brash, violent, and intentionally camp Sukiyaki Western Django is that rarest of things:  an intentional cult film that succeeds on all fronts.

Continue Reading "FANTASIA Report:  SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO Review"...

I finally got my copy of Takashi Miike’s Crows Zero the other week and I haven’t put it down much since then. Absolutely love it. In fact, writing this post is so inspiring I think I’ll pop it into the player again tonight! So here I am, chomping at the bit, waiting for any information about the next film in the series and lo and behold those fine lads over at Nippon Cinema have given me my Miike hit for the day. They have found a casting call for the next Crows Zero film. And what is the production looking for?

The production is looking for a large number of 18-35 year-old skinhead extras to play students of Housen Gakuen; one of the rival schools featured in Hiroshi Takahashi‘s Crows manga spinoff, “Worst”. They’re also looking for “big-boned” tough-looking dudes to play Serizawa’s army, GPS (Genji’s Perfect Succession), and spectators during the fight scenes.

A bit about ‘Worst’ from DMP to familiarize you with it… though they’ve only released 3 English volumes of a 20 volume manga from Japan.

Worst is a high impact gang-related title that deals with teenage boys fighting their way through high school on order to gain respect. There is no room for deceit and underhanded tricks at the notorious High School “Suzuran.” These young men follow a strict honor code when it comes to brawling, very reminiscent of the mafia in the early days. Traditionally called a “Yankee Manga” ("Yankee" having a different meaning and pronunciation than in English) typically involves delinquent young men and thugs like “Hana Tsukishima” who is making his way through the ranks to rule over the rest at school.

So it ain’t much but at least gives us a bit of information about characters in the next film. Filming starts next month, is expected to wrap up in October, and who knows what will happen after that. Bring it!

We’ve written rather a lot about upcoming Indian action-comedy Quick Gun Murugan in these pages, drawn in by the loopy premise - he’s a ‘karmic cowboy’ sworn to protect cattle - technicolored promotional stills and a lengthy sales promo the producers had on display in Cannes.  It’s been a bit of a wait since we first came across it but we’ve just been passed the first trailer for the film and it totally makes good on the promise of the earlier materials.  This is an international trailer, prepared as much for the buying market as for the public so there are some quirks in the voice over and the like but it is also loaded up with loopy goodness. Check it out after the break.

Quick Gun Murugan is a western spoof with attitude, featuring outlandish songs, outrageous melodrama and crazy action sequences including a classic duel in a traffic jam.  The film tells the story of Quick Gun Murugan - a South Indian karmic cowboy whose duty is to protect vegetarianism and cows.  When faced with a world-conquering arch-villain restaurant owner who wants to create the ultimate McDosa chain using beef, Quick Gun enters into an epic battle of vegetarianism vs. non-vegetarianism that spans time and space, from a small South Indian village to an Indian heaven and then finally to a cosmopolitan Mumbai across 15 years.

Continue Reading "Here Comes The Karmic Cowboy!  It’s The First Trailer For QUICK GUN MURUGAN!"...

The near future.  Tokyo’s police force has been privatized, the new private force authorized to execute justice on the spot.  The officers are both hated and feared but are a necessity in a world plagued by ‘engineers’, mutant creatures that generate powerful weapons from any significant wound on their body meaning that they become more dangerous the more that you fight against them.  The only way to stop an engineer is to cut out a strange key-shaped tumor that exists somewhere within each one of them, a task that falls to specialized sword wielding hunters within the police force.  And the leading hunter on the force is Ruka - played by Audition‘s Eihi Shiina - a beautiful, self destructive woman plagued by memories of her suicidal mother and slain father who has brought down fifty engineers to date.

Continue Reading "FANTASIA Report:  TOKYO GORE POLICE Review"...

This month, Taewon Entertainment, under the auspices of the Korean Film Archive, has released a boxset of four films by legendary director Kim Ki-young. It has been over a decade since the 2nd Pusan International Film Festival hosted the first major retrospective of the director’s work, leading to requests from festivals the world over to do the same. In 1998, a retrospective was held at the Berlin International Film Festival, and more recently, there have been screenings at the Cinémathèque Française, in San Fransisco and New York, as well as last month at the Korean Film Council in Seoul. These events created expectations that a release on DVD would be forthcoming. Which prompts the question: was it worth the wait?

To begin with, we are treated to only four of the 23 surviving films, and those four prints have more than their fair share of fading, scratches and dust specks. One film is even missing a couple of reels. Most of the films and supplements are plagued with faulty English subtitles. Furthermore, The Housemaid (하녀, 1960), the most eagerly anticipated title, is not included in this set (it will be released separately). So just why must you own this set? (brief answer below the break)

Continue Reading "[Korean DVD Review] Kim Ki-young (김기영) Collection"...

Yes, this does look like rather a lot of fun.  The full theatrical trailer for Australian cult film documentary Not Quite Hollywood, which tracks the Oz-sploitation films of the late seventies and early eighties, has just arrived and it is an absolute blast.  Sure, they’ve got a who’s who of talking heads explaining why these films matter but the film makers are also smart enough to know that it’s the films themselves that are the real attraction and there’s loads of the good stuff in there.  And by good stuff I mean car chases, explosions, kung fu, cheap monster effects and more!

You can find the new trailer plus the original effort below the break in the Twitch Player.

Continue Reading "More Australian Cult Goodness!  A Second Trailer For NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD!"...