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!"...

Argentine director Esteban Sapir’s sophomore feature La Antena (The Aerial, 2007) is densely marbled with cinematic citation, juggling freely the silent film conventions gleefully mined by Guy Maddin, with clear tips of the hat to Georges Méliès’ La Lune à un mètre (Man in the Moon, 1898) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), and more veiled references to Alex Proyas’s Dark City (1998), Higuchinsky’s spiraling nightmare Uzumaki (2000), and the numerically confused plot contrivances of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s 6ixtynin9 (1999).  Its kinetic and innovative use of intertitles reminds of Timur Bekmambetov’s Nochnoy dozor (Nightwatch, 2004) and its criticism of consumerist society and television brainwashing harbors a cautionary touch of John Carpenter’s They Live (1988).

Which is not to say La Antena is derivative.  It achieves a singularly unique and vibrant synergy through its rampant citations in what Hollywood Reporter’s Gregory Valens describes as “a poetic attempt to recreate a world through the sole power of images” and what Gary Miraz at Cinema Without Borders calls “an amazing spectacle of sight and sound.” I had as much fun recognizing and identifying these images as enjoying how Sapir has layered them together.  Further fueled by an exhilarating tango score by Juan Aguirre and Federico Rotstein, La Antena should be one of the top ticket rides at the Cinequest carnival.  It would certainly be a wonder to see on the big screen.  Admittedly, I’ve only seen it on screener.

As Twitch teammate Royalstin synopsized earlier, La Antena shapes its narrative as a fairy tale, placing us in an indeterminate future in a wintry city whose inhabitants have all lost their voice due to the evil machinations of Mr. TV and his mobster henchmen.  Having eliminated all competition, Mr. TV has enthralled the populace with his spiraling transmissions, which lull them into buying his TV products, manufactured from their stolen voices.  Not content with that, Mr. TV seeks to expand his production line by likewise stealing what is left to them: their words.

Continue Reading "FANTASIA REVIEW of La Antena / The Aerial (2007)"...

Back on June 19th we brought you the Lars introduction to Jesus Franco’s 1969 women in prison film, 99 Women (view here), and today we have Jesus Franco himself talking about the film. This interview took place at the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) in Switzerland. As you will see Mr. Franco is quite a character and still full of a tremendous passion for cinema. 99 Women is a pivotal women in prison film from the late late 1960’s as it created a tidal wave industry for this type of film that proved to be commercially profitable and with an updated template to exploit and entertain audiences with.

In this interview we talk about:
* Thoughts on 99 Women
* Mercedes McCambridge as Thelma
* Rosalba Neri as Zoe
* Last Shot of Neri & Censorship
- He doesn’t have much to say on the last shot, but agrees at how great it is.

Interview after the link bump.

Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 - Jesus Franco Talks 99 Women (1969)"...

Coming off of its win at the Berlinale in February, hit Brazilian action-drama Tropa De Elite (Elite Squad) is gearing up for its release around the globe and new materials are starting to turn up.  A hugely controversial film in its native country, Tropa tells the story of corrupt police squads in Brazil’s poor slums and a new extended clip has turned up online.  IT’s raw, powerful stuff and you’ll find it in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "An Extended Clip From Berlin Winner TROPA DE ELITE"...

We’ve been tracking the development of the Argentinian horror scene for a good while now and have just come across a project that joins the talents of the some of the biggest talents in the Argentinian scene.  Upcoming horror feature Necrophobia will boast the talents of Daniel De La Vega behind the camera with German Val and Nicanor Loreti serving as co-producers and co-screenwriters.  Seperately these guys have been involved in a good handful of the key Argentinian titles and together it looks as though they’re preparing something truly unsettling.  At least it will be if it lives up to the just released teaser.  Check it out in the Twitch Player below the break!

Continue Reading "Argentina’s Afraid of Death.  It’s the First Teaser For NECROPHOBIA"...

Wicked. Had the chance to sit down with Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, directors and writers of Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and the newest installment of their Metal franchise Global Metal which opens today in Toronto and Vancouver, then next Friday in Montreal and Calgary. We almost didn’t make it. A slight error in miscommunication almost cost us the time but the guys were very gracious and accommodating.

Special thanks goes to Catherine Kustanczy and the gang at CIUT for letting me hang around the studio during her interview with them. Also thanks for Nancy for setting me up with the guys.

Continue Reading "Talking ‘Global Metal’ with Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn"...

Whew.  Things are hopping in Chile right now and it seems like nobody is busier than the team behind hit action flicks Kiltro and Mirage Man.  What are they working on?  Oh, you know ... just three films and two television shows.  Here’s what’s coming:

Santiago Violenta.  The new buddy oriented action-heist film from writer-director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza will be his first feature project apart from star Marko Zaror and takes an obvious cue from the Italian action films of the seventies.  Espinoza has also said he wants to mess around with some Seijun Suzuki style visuals on this one.  Filming is scheduled to begin in September.

Mandrill.  The new feature re-teaming Diaz Espinoza with Zaror will cast the martial arts expert as Mandrill, a high end hit man with a weakness for the ladies.  I’ve actually read an early script of this and it’s good but the story has changed a lot from the version I’ve seen so all I can really share is the tag line from the pitch book:  ”Name: unknown.  Age: unknown.  Nationality: unknown. Hotter than BOND, faster than LEE, cooler than SHAFT, people know him as ... MANDRILL” If all goes as planned this will shoot shortly after Santiago Violenta.

Untitled.  A feature designed to be a showcase for the stunt team Zaror has assembled for his films, this one will likely be passed to another local director to shoot.  Think a South American spin on The A Team and you’re in the right neighborhood.

Mirage Man.  Wait a second!  They already made this!  Yes, but that was the feature, this is the TV series.  Details are still being hashed out but it’s definitely going to happen.

Stunt Team Ninja Wrestlers.  Quite possibly the best title ever, this one is another TV project and also designed for Zaror’s stunt team.  A luchador spin on the Power Rangers thing with stunt men roaming the country and putting on public performances while also pursuing a secret life fighting crime.  Bring it!

In 2005 Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen made a little documentary called Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Lovingly dubbed Metal 101 by some, their movie told the story of Metal music’s roots; it’s emergence from working class cities in America and Europe. From Metal’s roots they traced all of the sub-genres and off shoots, interviewing many bands and musicians in the process. It was bliss for the metalheads and eye-opening for anyone else. It made its international debut at the Toronto International Film Festival and things blew up from there. The film was picked up in 30 countries and the letters and e-mails came flooding in from fans all over the world. Soon Sam and Scot realized that Metal was bigger than just American and Europe. Metal had gone Global!

The history lesson is over; it is time for a Metal field trip! It is time to see how big Metal’s ‘boot’ print on the world really is. 

Continue Reading "Global Metal review"...

Thrills, action, dragons, space aliens, frights, zombies, laughing windows, martial arts delights, time travel, vampires, killer rednecks and nuns, comedy and more, awaits you at the 8th edition of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF). The festival northwest of the swiss alps, kicks off on July 1st with the opening night film, The Substitute from Ole Bornedal. The festival runs through the 6th, with the latest from Hideo Nakata closing it out, L Change The World. The lineup this year boasts a strong and diverse selection of fantastic and genre feature and short films from around the world and an impressive retrospective section that features a look back at Italian horror/gialli, films of Nobuo Nakagawa and the works of Jess Franco & Erwin C. Dietrich. With this type of exciting lineup with several world and regional premieres, the most hard pressed question will be how to see them all with each time slot packed to the brim with exciting choices of what to see (a PDF program guide is available here). Perhaps Nacho Vigalondo, whose film Timecrimes plays, can provide festival guests a time machine to go back and see what they missed.

Highlights include: The Substitute by Ole Bornedal, Ashes of Time Redux by Wong Kar Wai, Chasseurs de Dragons by Guillaume Ivernel & Arthur Qwarck, Tokyo! by Bong Joon Ho & Léos Carax & Michel Gondry, Adrift in Tokyo by Miki Satoshi, Doomsday by Neil Marshall, Sparrow by Johnnie To, Timecrimes by Nacho Vigalondo, and many more…

International Competition
* Astropia by Gunnar B. Gudmundsson
* Dance of the Dead by Gregg Bishop
* Diary of the Dead by George A. Romero
* Eskalofrio by Isidro Ortiz
* Let the Right One in by Tomas Alfredson
* Manhunt (Rovdyr) by Patrik Syversen
* Shadows by Milcho Manchevski
* Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera
* Sukiyaki Western Django by Takashi Miike
* The Cottage by Paul Andrew Williams
* The Devil’s Game by In-Ho Yun
* Tokyo! by Bong Joon Ho & Léos Carax & Michel Gondry France

Continue reading for full festival lineup.

Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 Program Announced - Substitute, Ashes of Time Redux, Tokyo!, Sparrow and More!"...

It was only a matter of time when I was going to preview one of the programs created by Twitch’s lord and master, that lovable rapscallion Todd. Now, I cannot say for sure but I will assume that in each program at any festival you’re given a glimpse into the psyche of the programmer. After all what appeals to them or what is deemed suitable for viewing enjoyment by them is in itself also a sign of their tastes and mental fortitude. So when you sit down in a couple weeks to watch the Freaky program as part of the Midnight Mania evenings you will understand what I have known for the past 15 years. Todd is a bit of a freak!

You ever fall in love with a girl and you just cannot stop thinking about her? Did it seem like nothing could get in the way of that crush, that you could not stop staring at her when she was in the room? Would your crush even survive, say, a zombie apocalypse? Aussie director Spencer Susser sure thinks so. I Love Sarah Jane and nothing, not even zombies, is going to stop my love for her.

A trio of animated shorts made it into the roster this year. The Flower is the story of an eternally optimistic daisy and is disturbing at best. I would like to think that Carla Coma took a cue from a Hitchhiker’s reference to Mice and Spiders when she created The Squirrel Next Door but I am very likely reaching here. And I for one am a cat person, I know that Todd has three living in his house, so that makes Melty Kitty the feel-good short of the festival for us.

In what I can only describe as experimental cinema meets puke fetish meets cowboy/horror hybrid the most colorful film of the program is most certainly The Rambler. Boasting a vibrant color palette on grainy film stock it is definitely one of the more cryptic of the bunch. But, it does ring patriotic with a lo-fi synth version of ‘Oh Canada’ in it. Yay! Speaking of Canada, a familiar face from Canadian television Colin Cunningham has his own short Centigrade in this program. To say his short is chilling is rather antonymous but serves as a stark reminder why you shouldn’t beat your children. And while on the theme of keeping clear of picking on minors our trip down into Mexico in Fernando Fidel Urdapilleta Jimenez’ Pretty Little Thing will have you second guessing your thoughts the next time you drive by a pretty girl in a school uniform. His short really has… bite.

We’ll end our tour tonight with a couple shorts busting more of a industrial vibe. Samuel Jørgensen’s film Katie’s Journey visits the inner world of a child in mourning. A child’s own imagination can create events that are more terrible than that which she is mourning. Beware the Tall Man and the Breathing Man. Then proving that you can mash together Horror, Sci-fi and Martial Arts the duo Benni Diez and Marinko Spahic will end your night with Kingz. We’ve spoken a bit about Kingz here on Twitch already and you will be pleased to know that it rewards all anticipation. Kampfansage‘s Mathis Landwehr gets to show off his martial arts skills. I have four words for you. Two. Big. Ass. Knives. At the end of the night remind yourselves this, Kingz was shot as a student thesis film.

My thanks to Aaron Soto for pointing this one out ...

With El Orfanato (The Orphanage on these shores) proving to be a major international hit it comes as no surprise that the talent behind that film is starting to pop up with other projecs of their own and the first out of the gate is Las Manos Del Pianista, the directorial debut by El Orfanato screen writer Sergio G. Sánchez.  Based on a novel by Eugenio Fuentes, the project was developed as a television movie and tells the story of a failed pianist who now makes his living euthanizing cats and dogs and who is hired to kill a man.  We haven’t found any images or trailers from the project yet but we’re looking ...

[Post freshly updated with a much higher quality version of the trailer. Rock. Our review of Global will be up on June 9th!]

I lost track of this project a while back. The last thing I remember was bumping into one of the directors, Sam Dunn, on a flight out to Calgary a couple Christmas’ ago. Then they were half way through filming their second documentary about Metal music. Global Metal has since been completed and played in a couple festivals since October of last year.

Today, Seville International has announced that Warner Home Video has acquired US, UK and Mexican distribution rights to the feature documentary GLOBAL METAL directed by Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn. The two companies had previously collaborated on the filmmakers’ previous film: Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.

Here in Canada in the center of our universe, Toronto, and on the Left Coast in Vancouver we’ll get to see it on June 20th. In Montreal they will have to wait a week later on June 27th. The documentary will also open the 14th Annual North By Northeast Film Festival here in Toronto on Thursday, June 12. It’s time to polish off my devil horns and get me to that screening.

In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West’s most maligned musical genre – heavy metal – has impacted the world’s cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world’s emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren’t just absorbing metal from the West – they’re transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.

Nice. Appearances by Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden. Starring Orphaned Land, X Japan, Tang Dynasty and Max Cavalera. Music featuring KISS, Deep Purple, Sepultura, Lamb of God and In Flames. Yes please.

Photo Gallery and trailer after the break!

Continue Reading "‘Global Metal’ release dates, images, trailer and a kick to the face!"...

The challenges of independent film distribution are tackled head-on in Jonathan Marlow’s incisive Greencine Daily editorial: “Studios didn’t build their sales model for you.” It’s a fiercely opined, sobering, read and I thought I would supplement Jonathan’s survey of the woeful state of distribution with a piece I’ve written for the current issue of movieScope—"Reinventing the Reel: How the Global Film Initiative is changing the business of independent film"—on the multi-platform distribution model adopted by the Global Film Initiative (on whose board I serve). My thanks to Susan Weeks-Coulter, Santhosh Daniel and Simone Nelson of the Global Film Initiative for their editorial assistance.

Continue Reading "MOVIESCOPE—Vol. 2, Issue 2"...

A piece of unsolicited advice to any call girls who may be reading this:  if a client asks you to dress up and answer to his ex-girlfriend’s name that may very well be your cue to politely excuse yourself and walk away.  Because, you know, there are only two reasons someone may do this:  either they are sad and pathetic and hoping to get lost in their memories or else they are bitter and angry and looking to vent.  And you really don’t want to be caught in option number two, which is - of course - exactly what happens in Breaking Nikki, the latest from Argentinian director Hernan Findling.  You’ll find a fairly intense trailer below the break.

Continue Reading "A Trailer For Hernan Findling’s Argentinian Horror BREAKING NIKKI"...

Okay, that second bit isn’t true, but Argentina is stepping up the plate and pitching their take on the end of the world genre. EL ETERNAUTA, a horror/sci-fi epic to be written and directed by Lucrecia Martel, was a comic book series from 1957 to 1959.

A description of the original comic series As an extraterrestrial invasion of Earth takes place, a few people in Buenos Aires figure out how to survive using specially made suits, protecting them from a deadly alien snowfall. A resistance army forms & battles are fought, but it becomes obvious that the true invaders aren’t around… they control everything from a distance. Juan Salvo, the protagonist, attempts to escape with his wife & daughter but accidentally triggers a time-travel device. The remainder of the series is about him trying to find them in the time continuum.

Because this was a long running series we don’t know how far into that story arc Martel wishes to go. Given that it is just a film she probably won’t take it too far into the time travel incidents from the comic. We don’t know. We’re going to dig into this a bit more and see what we can find out for you. Perhaps though she may decide to use imagery such as the one found on the cover of L’Eternauta magazine posted after the break [NSFW]. Tee hee. 

Continue Reading "Aliens invade Argentina. England given back the World Cup!"...