Twitch

NIFFF 2008 - Xavier Gens Talks La Horde (2009)

2008-07-07T09:54:04Z

The Post Apocalypse is upon us in the upcoming film La Horde, as a zombie wave is spreading across the world devouring humanity while at the top of a skyscraper in France cops and gang members are battling it out. Can you say gun play meets end of the world meets zombies meets Die Hard 1? I think so, but lets have producer of the film Xavier Gens tell us more about La Horde! Video clip after the link bump.

Trailer For Indonesian Horror KARMA

2008-07-07T09:29:25Z

It’s pretty safe to assume that most people reading this site have never seen a current film from Indonesia. Or, if you have, it’s probably a film by Joko Anwar - either Joni’s Promise or Kala. It’s kind of surprising, really, in that Indonesia produces a lot of films every year and a very high number of those are genre titles but most Indonesian productions are crippled by low budgets, formulaic writing and rushed production schedules. There are signs that is changing however ... producer Brian Yuzna is setting up shop there and directors like Anwar proves there are directors willing to buck the trends and do something a bit more interesting.

Enter Karma, the second feature by young production house Credo Pictures. Though a young outfit, Credo is impressing with an emphasis on quality production values and while Karma plays into a lot of typically Asian ghost story motifs it looks to be uncommonly well shot. Here’s a synopsis:

The Guan family is put under an eternal spell: every woman in the family is bound to suffer a tragic death. Still, this does not deter Sandra (Dominique Agisca Diyose) to marry Armand Guan (Joe Taslim), and pull out every possible effort to put the long-lasting bad karma to an end.

The theatrical trailer for the film has just arrived online, check it out below the break.

Cult importer Xploited Cinema slowly fading in to oblivion.

2008-07-07T08:26:52Z

With the news that Tartan Films have ceased to exist, cult movie fans and fans of foreign cinema took a heavy blow when one of the most prolific sources of none Hollywood movies closed it doors recently.
Now one of the best DVD import service in the US, Xploited cinema will be slowly fading out according to it’s owner Tony Simonelli.
In a letter that he posted on the site Tony says that “ it’s time to slow down, rest and shift gears to new endeavors.”
He goes on to say that they will stop ordering new stock in mid July and will not refill on older stock as it sells out but they will of course honor all orders as they did before so those who have pre ordered anything from them don’t have to worry about being left empty handed.
Now this has nothing to do with them losing money on the whole endeavor but rather that Tony and crew simply don’t see themselves doing this for the rest of their life and want to move on to other things. Nothing wrong with that but sucks for us I guess.

This is sad news of course because they have provided customers with elusive titles they might have a harder time finding and ordering. But technically they are just a middle man between the product and the customer. With foreign internet stores getting better and better all the time and prices getting more and more attractive it makes perfect sense to cut out the middle man to keep the price down. It’s just that Xploited was a one trip stop for the strange and the weird with out the hassle of sometimes trying to decipher foreign web stores and sometimes insane pricing on shipping (dvdgo.com anyone?). They will be missed.

So get them while you can cause ones titles are gone they won’t be re-ordered.

First Poster For Albert Pyun’s ROAD TO HELL

2008-07-06T20:48:22Z

Is Albert Pyun the busiest man in show business? Got to be pretty close and he’s just passed along the first poster for his latest film, the multiple serial killer flick Road To Hell. Michael Pare stars as a soldier having, shall we say, a wee bit of trouble reintegrating with society. He’s become a roaming serial killer and his life goes from bad to worse when he ,meets a pair of beautiful young women (Clare KRamer and Courtney Peldon), on a killing spree themselves, in the middle of the desert. You can check a larger version of the poster at the link below.

Hong Kong’s Golden Age, In Poster Form.

2008-07-06T20:36:19Z

A little treat here for any of you lot who may be in Montreal for the Fantasia Festival. Good friend to this site and TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes will be curating an exhibit of fifty posters from Hong Kong’s golden age at Montreal’s Cinémathèque Québécoise starting on July 9th with Shaw Brothers legend Gordon Liu on hand for the opening night. Here’s the official word:

The Cinémathèque québécoise welcomes a major summer exhibition of 50 posters that reflect the tremendous vitality of Hong Kong genre cinema (Ringo Lam, John Woo, Hark Tsui, Wong Kar-Wai). Johnnie To’s work is an important part of this show, with 11 posters from his films. Two documentaries by the French filmmaker Yves Montmayeur will be shown continuously in the exhibition space: Milkyway : la ciné factory de Johnnie To (2005) and Hong Kong film noir (2007). The posters come from the personal collection of Colin Geddes, a Toronto International Film Festival programmer and independent distributor of genre films.

Does The TIMECRIMES Remake Have A Director? UPDATED

2008-07-06T20:21:45Z

Could be. George A Romero is currently attending the Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival and word is he’s been telling people in press interviews that he is currently hard at work preparing the remake of Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes. I’m trying to confirm this now ...

UPDATE:
Getting mixed reports on this. Obviously Romero is saying yes but others who would (or should) know are saying nobody’s attached yet. Info as we get it.

NIFFF 2008 - Winners Announced - Sleep Dealer Takes Top Prize

2008-07-06T20:10:01Z

I imagine Michael Guillen should be smiling with this announcement that Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer has taken the top prize out here at the 8th Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival. The jury headed by Joe Dante also handed out two special mentions to Let the Right One In and Tokyo!. Despite everything I had read, Tokyo!, exceeded all my dour anthology expectations and to me completely raised the bar on what a great one could be. The Méliès top award went to Let the Right One In, which effectively fuses the childhood bully tale within a vampire framework to offer up a new haunting and equally satisfying journey unlike anything you’ve experienced. The top Swiss short award went to Pascal Forney’s Vincent, le Magnifique, which dazzled audiences and me included, with its dark comedy charm and outlandish bloody magician tale. The Méliès short winner went to Scary, which told the tale of a couple who each keep trying to out scare the other, with results that would make the Coen Brothers laugh. The audience award went to Stephen Chow’s CJ7, which more than found a loving home in this lush Swiss lakeside village, with audiences young and old singing its praises.

FULL LIST OF NIFFF 2008 WINNERS:

Prix H.R. Giger « Narcisse » du meilleur film: Sleep Dealer de Alex Rivera (USA/Mexique)
Mention spécial du Jury à Let the Right One in de Tomas Alfredson (Suède) et à Tokyo! de Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax et Michel Gondry (France/Japon/Allemagne/Corée du Sud)
Méliès d’argent du meilleur long-métrage européen: Let the Right One in de Tomas Alfredson (Suède)
Prix H.R. Giger «Narcisse » du meilleur court-métrage suisse: Vincent le Magnifique de Pascal Forney
Nomination au Méliès d’or du meilleur court-métrage européen: Scary de Martijn Hullegie (Pays-Bas)
Prix H.R. Giger « Narcisse » de la meilleure vidéo d’art: The Counterfeiters de Katia Bassanini
Prix TSR du Public: CJ7 de Stephen Chow (Hong-Kong)
Prix Mad Movies: Om Shanti Om de Farha Khan (Inde)
Prix de la jeunesse: Let the Right One in de Tomas Alfredson (Suède)
Prix Titra Film: Tokyo! de Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax et Michel Gondry (France/Japon/Allemagne/Corée du Sud)

HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY—Interview With Doug Jones

2008-07-06T16:52:47Z

My editor at movieScope assigned me Doug Jones to interview for our upcoming issue fanfaring Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which opens theatrically Stateside next Friday. It was a welcome assignment. Doug and I hit it off and spoke for over an hour. Amazingly, movieScope only wanted 1800 words, which left me with quite a bit left over to offer up here! I guess we could call it the Jack Spratt school of journalism? Let no one go hungry. Not for the spoiler-wary!

* * *

Michael Guillén: Doug, masks are associated with the Greek god Dionysos, especially with regard to the fact that—along with all that masks are said to conceal—they likewise reveal. In your career particularly masquerade has been the means by which your talent has been revealed. When you started out as an actor, did you have any idea that you would become a so-called “creature actor”?

Doug Jones: No, not even close. I had no idea. When I began and set out to Hollywood in 1985, I came out to be a sitcom star. I thought being a tall, skinny, white guy that surely I would be able to get on a TV series and be the goofy next-door neighbor who runs in, does armpit farts, says something funny and then runs back out again. That’s where I thought I was destined. I finally got an agent and started to do TV commercials and my third job was a campaign for McDonald’s as the character Mac Tonight and that went on for 27 commercials over a three-year period. I wore a crescent moon head and sang while sitting at a piano, floating on a cloud. Mac Tonight became a wildly popular character that lasted, as I said, for three years and in that time I became known as—not just a tall, skinny, goofy white guy—but, one who wears things without complaining and moves well. My name started getting passed around the creature effects shops because of the various people that would work on my commercial campaign. Over the years it snowballed to where we are now.

Eight More Titles In The TIFF Trailer Park!

2008-07-06T16:00:36Z

Yes, boys and girls, our collection of trailers for the 2008 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival continues to grow. We’ve just added another eight titles from the festival into the player, where you’ll find the most comprehensive collection of TIFF trailers anywhere in the world all nicely sorted by program. We’re still missing a few titles - and are giving away free stuff to those who help us find them and load them in - so click here to find the list of what’s missing and instructions on how to load things in.

NIFFF 2008 - Jaume Balagueró Talks [REC] Continued…

2008-07-06T11:21:53Z

I sat down with [REC] co-director Jaume Balagueró yesterday and in this continuation of part 1 of the multi-part video interview done at the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) we learn more about [REC].

SPOILER ALERT for this clip!

In the clip we discuss on [REC]:
* On casting and working with Manuela Velasco as Angela
* The two fake endings from Spain DVD explained
* Audience reaction trailer shot at Sitges
* Keeping the audience involved
* The seeming new & revitalized wave of genre/fantastic cinema from Spain

Watch part two after the link bump.

NIFFF 2008 - Jaume Balagueró Talks [REC] 2

2008-07-06T08:59:33Z

I sat down with [REC] co-director Jaume Balagueró yesterday to try and get some of the myths on the first film addressed and to see what information he could share on [REC] 2. What follows is part 1 of a multi-part video interview done at the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) in Switzerland.

SPOILER ALERT for this clip!

In the clip we discuss:
* [REC] 2
[REC] discussion includes:
* Just who is that person in the attic and where does the other person come from?
* Behind the Scenes discussion on the final scene and “falling scene”
* How fake scenes were shot to keep the actors never knowing what to expect next
* How throughout the actors were only given the script in small portions and often were given very little to go with during any one scene

Watch part one after the link bump.

2008 SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL—Michael Hawley’s Preview

2008-07-05T21:13:29Z

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.

First Trailer Arrives for John R Hand’s SCARS OF YOUTH!

2008-07-05T18:07:03Z

We are big fans of American indie film maker John R Hand around these parts. His debut feature Frankenstein’s Bloody Nightmare has a sort of raw, lo-fi power to it that plays like a fusion of Shinya Tsukamoto and John Sayles, his short film work is very strong and the early stills for his sophomore feature, the post-apocalyptic Scars of Youth were fascinating. Hand is proving to be a very restless and challenging talent, someone with a broad range of influences who creates compelling, off kilter words for virtually no money on the strength of his own potent imagination. So we are very, very pleased that Hand has given us a first look at the trailer for Scars of Youth, a film he says is largely influenced by Tarkovsky and Zulawski. Here’s how he describes it:

In a post-apocalyptic world 200 years from now, a young man living in a decaying wreck of a cabin in the woods struggles to come to terms with his bleak existence while trying to save his mother from a strange, deathless world.

You can check out the trailer in the Twitch Player below the break.

Help Build The Trailer Park!

2008-07-05T17:11:09Z

Yes, kids, with TIFF around the corner I’m looking for help building up our collection of TIFF film trailers in the Trailer Park. And since we’re all about bribery here I’m willing to throw some free, yet to be determined, swag at the people who help out the most. Below the break you’ll find a complete list of titles playing at TIFF which we do not currently have trailers for in the Trailer Park. Those who find and upload the most trailers will be in line to score some free stuff. We’ll be adding titles to the list below as the festival announces more films and removing them as trailers are discovered and uploaded so check back for the most current list. Bear in mind that while our player can handle virtually any format there is some technical glitch that keeps it from playing standard definition trailers captured from YouTube, though the high quality YouTube ones work fine. So if you’re capturing and uploading, don’t waste your time with those. And, really, they look crappy anyway.

Onwards!

Trailer for Michel Houllebecq’s LA POSSIBILITÉ D’UNE ÎLE Appears

2008-07-05T03:39:30Z

The first trailer for the film adaption of Michel Houllebecq’s 2006 novel La Possibilité d’une île (The Possibility of an Island) has appeared on the Internet. La Possibilité d’une île is an acerbic piece of dystopian science fiction about a famous French comedian who comes into contact with a free love UFO cult called the Elohimites. The group, who are very obviously based on Claude Vorilhon’s Raelian movement, uses its significant resources to develop human cloning technologies in order to propagate a race of cult clones.

The trailer is in the French language but gives speakers of all languages a small taste of the film’s visual style, which looks very interesting. What will be really interesting is how Houllebecq, who chose to direct the film himself, presents the novel’s brusque politically incorrect and pornographic expression on screen. The answer to this question will have to wait until the film is released in France on September 10, 2008. You can check the trailer out in the Twitch Player below the break.