[Our thanks to Dustin Chang for conducting the following interview.]

Actor So So Ji-Sub plays a gangster with movie star aspirations in Rough Cut, a metaphysical contemplation on acting and real life, directed by newcomer Jang Hoon and written by Kim Ki-Duk. It was a surprise hit in Korea last fall. I was quite intimidated by the thought of meeting him, having just seen the movie where he plays a ruthless criminal. He was tall, humble and soft-spoken, not unlike his character Gangpae (“gangster” in Korean) - sans the violence, of course. His thoughtful responses and unassuming nature soon won me over. Introduced by the ever enthusiastic and personable Grady Hendrix, director of Subway Cinema, we shook hands and sat down in a café in Midtown. I indicated to Mr. Woo, the interpreter from Korean Society, that I’d conduct the interview in Korean. I realized that my Korean was a little rusty during the interview, and was glad Mr. Woo stuck around to help for our brief session. Thank you Mr. Woo.

Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Interview: ROUGH CUT’s So Ji-Sub"...

Shortly before the hordes began chanting, “The Daily is dead; long live The Daily”, David Hudson gathered reviews of Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, first from its Cannes debut, and then later mid-June when it opened stateside. Here in San Francisco, Coppola met with his audience at the film’s first screening at the Sundance Kabuki.

Outlining how The Godfather created a “tsunami of success” that irrevocably changed his life and filmmaking, Coppola has gleaned from the passing of years a restoration of creative spirit leaning into what he admits is his “second career.” Tetro is, in fact, the second film of his second career; Youth Without Youth being the first. Lustrously shot in digital and projected in 35mm, the film is a rapture to watch, even as its rich visuals disguise an anemic narrative that doesn’t quite ring true. One is grateful for what one has seen; but, not completely satisfied. I’m not a huge Vincent Gallo fan so I place the blame there—for me, he just couldn’t carry the movie—but, Coppola’s “discovery” Alden Ehrenreich has charisma to spare in his debut role and is a talent to watch in future years.

Michael Guillén: One of the images I’m going to carry away with me from Tetro is that of the staged dance sequence near the edge of the sea. It reminded me of One From the Heart for being thrillingly artificial; the kind of artifice that lends itself in some odd way to emotional authenticity. Can you speak to your use of theatrical artifice to create emotion in your films?

Francis Ford Coppola: Of course. Just as the story implies, when Bennie [Alden Ehrenreich] was a little kid, his older brother Tetro [Vincent Gallo] used to take him to movies that were a little bit advanced for a seven-year-old kid and gave him some books to read and what have you and that’s why the boy idolized his brother so much. It’s true, in my own life I have an older brother who took me to see the Korda films, The Red Shoes—of which there’s an excerpt in Tetro—and also Tales of Hoffmann, which is much stranger for a young kid. Just as the character Bennie says, whenever he thought of his brother he always thought of Tales of Hoffmann.

My idea was that—when Bennie is reading [Tetro’s] cryptic notes and writings—that he imagines the story as though it’s scenes from a Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger dance film. The version of the story that the boy understands is as though it’s told in dance. It’s great that film is one of those mediums that can use different art forms to do different things. It was also fun for me—as someone who has admired The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus and all those beautiful Technicolor films—to get to fool with telling this little story in those images. The image you mentioned of the dancers on the stage with the sea coming in is very much inspired by the dance in The Red Shoes, as you can imagine.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

One of the feature guests at this year’s edition of the New York Asian Film Festival was Korean actress Kong Hyo-Jin, present to support the one-two punch of her festival-screening films Crush and Blush and Dachimawa Lee.  Charles Webb had the chance to sit and talk with her.

Continue Reading "NYAFF 09: Kong Hyo-Jin Interview"...

In the world of animation, China may not exactly be the first place that enters your mind.  Ask a local over there on their favorite animation and they may give the same response too.  Beijing-based animation studio Magic Dumpling is on a mission to change this snub attitude and show the glory of Chinese animation, not just in its own country but to the world as well. On the forefront of this movement is Kevin Geiger, a former CG supervisor of Walt Disney and co-founder of Magic Dumpling & producer of the studios’ debut animated feature film Road to Home.  Kevin was kind enough to send us the developmental teaser our way and also take part in an interview on Twitch.  From reading his blog site, it became immediately apparent to me that he possess a strong understanding on the business side of animation and with this extensive experience, I’m sure it will prove very handy in guiding the studios’ first film on the right track.  His thorough article entries on marketing and on the current state of Chinese animation are a fascinating read so its evident that we’re instore for some lively insightful discussion.  The topics covered as I pick his brain ranges from his animation background, details on Road to Home, the status of the Chinese animation industry and his future plans.

In a world of conflict between humans and wolves, a young girl named Vivi, desperate for the approval of her village chief father, ultimately earns it through a friendship with the “enemy” – a wolf cub named Dumpling.  Vivi’s ill-conceived mission to return the lost cub to its home of Snow Wolf Mountain places her in the midst of stunning landscapes and dangerous opponents.  Together with a band of fellow misfits including Gugu & Lulu - a delusional pair of kung fu fighting sheep, a shy beast of burden named Yaki, and his hedgehog “girlfriend” Cottonball, Vivi finds something much more important than the approval of others.  Vivi finds herself… on the “Road to Home”.

You’ll find the complete interview and developmental teaser below after the break.

Continue Reading "Producer Kevin Geiger Talks ROAD TO HOME"...

James Quandt, senior programmer at Cinematheque Ontario in Toronto, has curated several touring retrospectives, including the recent “In the Realm of Oshima” currently screening at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive. He has edited monographs on Robert Bresson, Shohei Imamura, and Kon Ichikawa and is a regular contributor to Artforum. His recent published essays include ones on Robert Bresson, Pedro Costa, and Jia Zhang-ke. Quandt was awarded the Japan Foundation Special Prize for Arts and Culture in 2007.

My sincere thanks to Susan Oxtoby and Jonathan Knapp at the Pacific Film Archive for arranging time for Quandt and I to sit down for a conversation during his brief appearance in the Bay Area to introduce the Oshima retrospective.

Continue Reading "PFA: IN THE REALM OF OSHIMA—Interview With James Quandt"...

Are you ready for a heaping helping of Smash Cut, Lee Demarbre’s tribute to the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis?  Because we’ve got it for you.  The film will have its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal this July - with stars Sasha Grey and David Hess plus writer-director Lee Demarbre in attendance - and for the next six weeks we will be sharing brand new behind the scenes reels from the film with you here on Twitch.  Episode one comes out today and features a good dose of both Lewis himself and co-star Michael Berryman.  And because we love you, that’s not all!  We’ve also got a brief interview with Grey talking about both this film and her part in Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience.  Check it all out below the break!

  Smash Cut is the dizzying portrayal of ABLE WHITMAN, a trouble filmmaker losing his mind in an extraordinary way.

  After his latest “serious” film is met with gales of laughter, Able decides to drown his sorrows at a local strip club—where he meets dancer GIGI SPOT. Minutes later, he’s convinced the honey dripping sex-pot to star in his next project. Minutes after that, he’s killed her in a drunk driving accident. Needing to dispose of the body, Able stumbles upon the one place nobody would notice a corpse…spread around the set of his new horror film.  When the response to this new footage is praised for its realism, the guilt ridden Able has a complete mental breakdown. Believing he has finally discovered the key to making a great horror film, the director quickly discovers that one human body doesn’t yield a lot of parts, and if he wants to finish, he’s going to have to keep on killing.

  Meanwhile, Gigi’s sister APRIL hires the city’s most celebrated private detective, ISAAC BEAUMONDE, to investigate Gigi’s disappearance. But when the simple missing person investigation turns into a string of stomach turning murders, Isaac realizes he’s found the case of a lifetime.

  With Beaumonde hot on his heels, his sanity unspooling and his collaborators dropping like flies, will Able have the time, focus and resources to complete his magnum opus, or will he simply fade to black?

Continue Reading "It’s A SMASH CUT Frenzy As Sasha Grey Speaks And Lee Demarbre Takes Us Behind The Scenes!"...

Having already spoken with Gadi Harel when he accompanied Deadgirl to San Francisco’s IndieFest earlier this Spring, I welcomed the opportunity to follow through with Noah Segan who was in town filming Peaches Christ’s All About Evil. During down time on the set at San Francisco’s Victoria Theatre, Noah and I sat down to talk.

A reminder that Someone’s Knocking At the Door will be screening twice at San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head Film Festival; on June 8 at 7:15PM and June 13 at 11:45PM.  Chad Ferrin and Noah Segan will be in attendance.

Continue Reading "DEADGIRL / SOMEONE’S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR—Interview With Noah Segan"...

Bruce Fletcher introduced me to David Gregory’s feature directorial debut Plague Town when it had its world premiere at Dead Channels 2008 and encouraged me to interview Gregory, which I accomplished during the festival. I now offer up that transcript in conjunction with Plague Town‘s May 12, 2009 DVD/Blu-Ray release from Dark Sky Films.

David Gregory is one of the international DVD industry’s most in-demand Bonus Features providers. He has produced and directed more than 130 “making of” documentaries on films as diverse as Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Wicker Man, The Deer Hunter, Faster Pussycat, Don’t Look Now, Heathers and Repulsion. As co-founder of the UK/US DVD labels Blue Underground and Severin, he has produced many of the industry’s most widely acclaimed discs and collections, including The Final Countdown, The Alan Clarke Collection and The Mondo Cane Collection, which includes his feature-length documentary The Godfathers of Mondo. Gregory also produced the award-winning 2004 feature film The Manson Family and wrote, produced and directed the IFC original production The Spaghetti West.

Regarding Plague Town, Gregory has stated: “When we originally wrote Plague Town, killer children hadn’t been used nearly enough in modern horror cinema. We wanted to make something that had the edge of a twisted fairy tale, filled with imagery of threatening woods, enchanted cottages, sinister old ladies and eerie foreboding, but with some truly unique and beautiful violence. And we chose to up the ante by making the children hideously deformed and mercilessly homicidal.”

Plague Town is a scary, gory, freaky old-school horror movie about a family that gets lost in Ireland’s rural countryside. In his preview for Fangoria, Michael Gingold stated: “Even as it has become a cliché of the new horror wave for filmmakers to say that their projects aim for the spirit of ‘70s chillers, movies that genuinely evoke that veneer are few and far between. There’s a certain vibe about the decade’s drive-in fare that’s hard to define and harder to capture… One new production that gets it, and gets it right, is Plague Town.” Fangoria has gone on to champion Gregory’s film with a follow-up profile of the girls of Plague Town and Chris Alexander’s interview with Gregory. My own interview with Gregory took place over pozole at Mi Lindo Yucatan.

This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!!

Continue Reading "PLAGUE TOWN—Interview With David Gregory"...

After the cult success of Rian Johnson‘s debut feature, the stylish high-school noir, Brick, A-list stars and a much bigger budget were sure to follow.  The Brothers Bloom was filmed in a variety European and North American locations and things look fabulously bright and breezy on the big screen.  While I didn’t capital “L” love the picture, there is indeed a lot of interesting things going on and the film is certainly building a following.  Furthermore, there are simply too few grifter pictures (see recent Twitch column on the subject) or classic on-the-road romances (think Charade or The African Queen) these days, even doing one is sort of retro in a way.  The Brothers Bloom aims high for both.  Back in April, I had the chance to sit down with Rian and it turned into a very enjoyable and casual chat that spanned a variety of topics from Ricky Jay to moleskin notebooks, from genre expectation to time travel.  An abridged, transcribed version (minus Robert Blake impressions, booze and back injuries) of this conversation can be found after the jump. 

Continue Reading "Coffee and Pie, Oh My!  A chat with Rian Johnson on The Brothers Bloom, Brick and Looper."...

Late last week I had the chance to hop on the phone and chat with director Jake West (Evil Aliens) about his upcoming horror comedy Doghouse.  The film is just wrapping post now and aiming for a June 12th release in UK theaters and we had a lengthy conversation about the inspiration for the film, his cast, and more.  Check it out below the break!

Continue Reading "Jake West Talks DOGHOUSE!"...

The Peter J. Owens Award—named after longtime San Francisco benefactor of arts and charitable organizations Peter J. Owens (1936-1991)—honors an actor whose work exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity. This year’s recipient Robert Redford joins such previous honorees as Angelica Houston, Geena Davis, Danny Glover, Gérard Depardieu, Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, Annette Benning, Nicholas Cage, Sean Penn, Wynona Ryder, Stockard Channing, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, Ed Harris, Robin Williams and Maria Bello.

The onstage tribute to Redford included a clip reel, an onstage conversation with Phil Bronstein, and a spanking new print of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Graham Leggat introduced Phil Bronstein as Vice President and Editor-at-Large of the San Francisco Chronicle. Phil began his career as film reviewer and Leggat mentioned that he once wrote a very long review in which he completely forgot to mention the title of the film. “It was all uphill from there. In his early twenties he was a reporter for KQED on public television’s first nightly news show called Newsreel. After KQED, he specialized in investigative projects and won several awards for his work on environmental and law enforcement abuses. He joined The Examiner as a reporter in 1980 … as a member of the investigative team. Beginning in 1983, he spent 10 years as a war correspondent and in 1986 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work in the Philippines. He went on to cover conflicts in other parts of Southeast Asia, as well as El Salvador, Peru and the Middle East. Phil was named Executive Editor of The Examiner in 1991 and—when The Examiner and The Chronicle merged in 2000—he was made an editor at The Chronicle. In February 2008, he was named to his current position as Executive Vice President and Editor-at-Large and in that capacity he oversees an investigative reporting group that spans several newspapers around the country and is deeply involved in issues of journalism’s digital future. Phil is on the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley. He was a school drop-out, was expelled from several schools, but somehow paradoxically he has an honorary doctorate in public service from Notre Dame de Namur University. Phil also survived a recent appearance on the Stephen Colbert show.” (Frankly, his surviving an attack by a komodo dragon seemed of more import.)

After listing Robert Redford’s filmography, Leggat claimed, “Tonight’s honoree has no equal in post-war American cinema. He stands alone. He’s peerless. Not only as a brilliant, beautiful and talented actor; but, also, he has distinguished himself as an excellent director, as a tireless and selfless environmental and social activist, and as the creator and guiding light of the Sundance Institute, which for the last 28 years has been the most influential film organization in America and has been an inspiration for filmmakers and film culture around the world.”

Propelled by roaring applause and a standing ovation, Robert Redford took to the stage to converse with Phil Bronstein.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: BUTCH CASSIDY & SUNDANCE KID—Onstage Conversation With Robert Redford & Phil Bronstein"...

Paraphrasing Ida Corwin (Eve Arden) in Mildred Pierce (1945): “Personally, Veda’s convinced me that closeted gay Republicans have the right idea. They eat their young.”

Whether alligator, elephant or donkey, elected officials in political office are responsible for and accountable to their constituencies. If the political animal overtakes their behavior, elected officials fall prey to what is most hypocritical in human nature. Kirby Dick‘s brave and hard-hitting Outrage explores not only the now-familiar injustice of internalized homophobia but the noted hazards of becoming a political animal consumed by self-aggrandizement and insulatory power. Contrary to dismissive simplifications, Outrage is not a documentary about outing gay politicians; it is a documentary about outing gay politicians who practice hypocrisy in their dealings with the GLBT community. The distinction is important. At The Daily @ IFC, Dave Hudson has gathered the critical response to the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, to which I might add Erika Milvy’s substantial Advocate interview with Kirby Dick. My own interview with Kirby was cut short when we elected to go off-record to discuss a prospective project of mutual interest. Until then, I managed to ask him a few questions about his latest project.

Continue Reading "OUTRAGE—Interview with Kirby Dick"...

Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s latest feature Kûki ningyô (Air Doll, 2009)—based on a manga by Yoshiie Gōda about a life-size blow-up doll who develops a soul and falls in love with a video store clerk—has been selected for screening in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. In San Francisco to promote the appearance of Still Walking in SFIFF52’s World Cinema sidebar—in tandem with the film’s upcoming theatrical release—I took a moment during our conversation to enquire after his latest.

Michael Guillén: Congratulations on being selected for this year’s Un Certain Regard with your new film Air Doll. I’m interested in what you were seeking to explore thematically in your latest film?

Hirokazu Kore-eda: The doll is inflated with air, so it’s basically empty or blank inside. She is living in Tokyo and around her are us urbanites who are also empty. We have nothing inside of us either and we are isolated. I wanted to explore the emptiness, the loneliness that is felt by the inflated doll and the isolated urbanites.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Atom Egoyan‘s Adoration won the Ecumenical Jury Prize: the award given for movies that celebrate spiritual values.  Steering The Greencine Daily at that time, David Hudson gathered the conflicted critical response from Cannes08, which bore considerable breadth.  At The Hollywood Reporter, Ray Bennett praised the film’s intelligence and musicality and proclaimed it “a haunting meditation on the nature of received wisdom and how it can warp individuals, damage families and even threaten society.”  At First Showing.Net, Marco Cerritos countered that Adoration was “full of great ideas that crash together resulting in a mediocre execution.”  Adoration then had its North American premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and—upon its screening at the London International Film Festival a month later—Catherine Grant presented an extensive roundup of text, audio, and video on the film at Film Studies For Free.  Adoration now sees its U.S. premiere in the World Cinema sidebar at SFIFF52.

Continue Reading "SFIFF52: ADORATION—A Critical Overview and A Question For Atom Egoyan"...

With Chris Denham’s first-person horror film Home Movie freshly arrived on DVD here in Canada we had the chance to fire a few questions his way.  Read on for his thoughts on first person perspective, keeping horror in the home and more!

Continue Reading "Director Christopher Denham Talks HOME MOVIE"...