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Oh dear lord. TOKYOPOP has signed actress Melissa Joan Hart [Sabrina the Teenage Witch] and screenwriter Dan Gordon [The Hurricane, Wyatt Earp and don't forget the stellar Surf Ninjas] to take one of their properties Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School to the big screen.

Continue reading "Sabrina the Teenage Wuxia?"

Another review, another opening disclaimer. Lars Von Trier is an enormously divisive film maker. People tend to either love his work or absolutely loathe it, there are very few taking up ground in the middle. Personally, I fall into the love camp. If you've seen his earlier work and thought it was overwrought, pretentious crap you'll think the same of this one and you may as well stop now because there's nothing in this film that'll change your mind and you may as well find a more constructive use of the next few minutes than spending it sitting and reading this. If you think a little more kindly of the man continue right on in ...

Continue reading "The Five Obstructions Review"

Fangoria is reporting that Chan Wook Park's Old Boy will be hitting US theaters in February 2005 while Ji-Woon Kim's Tale of Two Sisters will be hitting in mid-December. You need to see these films. Yes. You do. Trust me. In the mean time check out the Old Boy trailers on this page and the Tale of Two Sisters trailer here.

Media bias? What media bias?

LA Weekly has just run an article detailing how Sony has been refused ad space for the DVD release of Fahrenheit 9/11 by ABC, CBS and NBC. Sony didn't even bother to ask Fox. All three major networks refused to sell them ad space during the news hour - peak time for advertisers wanting to hit an adult audience - citing proximity to the coming US federal election. Damn those media leftists always giving Bush a hard ti ... oh wait ... maybe Fox News is gonna have to find something else to rant about for a while ...

Via Greencine.

Variety reported today that computer animation studio Wild Brain has reached a deal with Miramax / Dimension to bring their animation projects to both the big screen and DVD and project number one will be a film based on Berkeley Breathed's Opus. You know, the penguin from Bloom County, Outland and now his own eponymous strip. I have three complete distinct and wildly opposed reactions to this news.

Reaction One:
Hurray! Opus on the big screen! And Berkeley's already hard at work doing character designs! Whee!

Reaction Two:
Hmmm ... Miramax moving into the CG animation world just as Disney's contract with Pixar is dissolving in a sea of unhappy feelings. Coincidence? A shot at Michael Eisner? I'll take door #2.

Reaction Three:
Sheer, abject terror. Why? Script by Craig Mazin. Craig who? Craig "I wrote Scary Movie 3" Mazin. Yeah. I see why someone would think the author of Scary Movie 3 was up to bringing a Pulitzer winner to the big screen.

More terror comes from these quotes and discriptors of the business arrangement between the two companies: "family fare"; "viable product for a reasonable price"; "family fare" (again); "family films"; "family entertainment is the biggest seller in DVD"

Uh, boys? Bill the Cat? Frequent drug use? Sex and violence? Political satire? Brilliantly surreal social criticism, yes. Cute and fuzzy children's entertainment, no. If you try to make Opus into a cuddly plush toy to sell to my three year old son you will, in the process, destroy everything that makes the character great.

First in an irregular series. I wanted to put some info together about finding posters for old and new Japanese films and western films issued in Japan. I love Japanese design and I have tried desperately to get hold of posters for some of my favourite films. Here's what I know... anyone have any more guidance?

Option 1. Buying full-size posters from Applet-J. He has two sites : otaku-j.co.jp and Applet Co. He is best conctated through emailing via his ebay account as "jjoe-nippon". His english may be broken, but he does special deals according to how many you buy and will find things for people. Posters are always packaged in very, very hard plastic tubes. His pages look unkempt but there's stuff there he still has in stock. Navigation is awkward too.

Option 2. Buying "Chirashi". A4 (8 1/2 x 11) size exact reproductions of poster designs in convenient and cheap versions. Promotional leaflets for films essentially, they're still highly collectable in Japan. I use Citaya Collectables, an English man living in Japan : superb service, everything always packaged and protected well. He will also find OOP DVDs for you on request and sells film programmes, too.

There's also eBay - search for "chirashi" or "japan film poster" but they're nearly always overpriced or caught in auctions with plenty of people competing. Other site-based options for chirashi are : Magazine Queen and JMShop, the latter have extensive illustrations of those in stock, which are updated regularly. The former only lists titles it seems.

I've seen pieces online about shops in Japan but after much searching I can't find one with a site, either in Japanese or English. I would love to know of more sources if anyone else has had more success finding posters online.

*EDIT* adding this great site posted in comments by iamNataku : Twinkleonline. For HK mostly, some Japanese stuff etc.

It's been almost a year since the Japanese DVD for this Studio Ghibli masterpiece, "Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind". I preordered it back then and it's got a cherished place alongside every other Japanese release of Ghiblis' work on my shelf. It's so rich, original, stylish - and the animation is second to none. Really: if you consider yourself a film fan (as the saying goes...) you've simply got to see it.

No longer do i have to endure the cut VHS version, retitled "Warriors of The Wind", which is long out of production. Instead, this 1984 masterpiece is remastered in its extended, complete version, in such glorious quality that it is difficult for me to remember a better disc ever being put out.

You should get the delayed USA disc next year, but this issue was my favourite of last year... do yourself a favour if you haven't seen this, or anything of Miyazaki's beyond the Oscar winning "Spirited Away", and get this disc - now!

There's a late, but great review from one such person here.

I've seen all of the Lord of the Rings films at the cinema. I've bought all the extended DVDs so far. Will be getting the final one, too. I'm not obsessive, but I do love the production values, the story telling, and I think that it's great Peter Jackson finally gets chosen for a project that shows his wonderfully unique style off so well.

So. Would you like me to link you to some pictures of the boxe(s), the menu(s) and some grabs from the added scenes from the extended "Return of The King"?. I know, it comes in at around 250 minutes ... I may have to watch this one over two nights as the film has one major flaw - the ending just seems to keep arriving and then there more and more stuff happening.

Falls dangerously between "cure for insomnia" and "absolute masterpiece" and could seem either at any point in time, even if you're a huge fan I reckon. Check out the full specs too, over here.

Yes, we have Robots, Shark Tale, Shrek, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles... now it's the one i have been waiting for, "Madagascar".

Looks incredible, and it's Dreamworks at the mouse this time. It features some famous voices, too.

It's due to open May 27 next year in the USA. So, that's about the same time as "Revenge of the Sith" then isn't it?... see the trailer in various formats through this page at Yahoo Movies.

The trailer for Robots is now online over at Yahoo! Movies. Go here to watch the trailer. And please write your thoughts down for everyone to read. Especially me. I am in the process of upgrading my internet service and my present one is causing problems with the media player on the Yahoo! site. Curses!!!

But just look at this cast: Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Robin Williams, Mel Brooks, Greg Kinnear, Drew Carey, Amanda Bynes, Dan Hedaya, Jim Broadbent, Dianne Wiest, D.L. Hughley, Jamie Kennedy, Paul Giamatti, Amanda Bynes, Stanley Tucci, Harland Williams, Jennifer Coolidge. This is why I only briefly considered pursuing voice work. I wouldn't have a chance against this talent. But remember when animation was about the movie and not the actors supplying the vocal talent? :::sigh:::

Faced with the stark reality that Asian American youth are the least likely demographic in the United States to vote this November MTV's Choose or Lose campaign is teaming up with Asian celebrities to try and turn the tide. This short but a lot of fun to watch PSA stars Kelly Hu , Maggie Q , Ming-Na , Russell Wong , Tamlyn Tomita , and always funny, but not quite funny in this one, John Cho.

You can watch the PSA here.

Kudos to Rotten Tomatoes for hosting the site.

Story via KungFuCinema.

Honest, I'll stop ranting about this show sometime soon. But not before you go and watch this. A trailer for the brilliant Spaced, put together to promote the coming three disc special edition ... whee!

Not particularly work friendly, by the way ...

Link by Logboy®

I've just come across a quartet of video clips from the upcoming Day Watch, the sequel to Night Watch, which is reviewed in the next post down. My first impressions are that the camera work and lighting looks to be improved somewhat and I'm pleased that the first clips released are devoted to some quieter, character developement moments although that's most likely due simply to the film still be in post production with the 'whizz-bang' not yet inserted. Happy to see that Kostya not only returns but receives second billing.

Anyway, check them out here, here, here and here.

Let me get this out of the way right off the top: if you're thinking, "Oooh! Ewan MacGregor! Nick Nolte!" stop reading right now. I'm not talking about that film. I'm talking about this one, the Russian fantasy blockbuster that out performed the almighty Lord of the Rings films in its homeland and has been picked up for a domestic release by Fox Searchlight, who are also chipping in funding for the sequels. That one, Ewan MacGregor surrounded by corpses. This one, some Russian guy fighting the undead. Not so different, really.

Continue reading "The Night Watch Review"

Neil Gaiman has just posted another stunning still from the upcoming Mirror Mask - his feature film collaboration with Sandman illustrator Dave McKeon - here. Any chance of a trailer sometime soon? Please?

Ah, the world is a very strange place ...

The Storm Theater in New York will be premiering a live musical version of The Last Starfighter from October 15 - 30th. No, I'm not making this up. It even sounds as though they're sticking close to the film's plot - check out the synopsis from Storm's site:

An 18-year-old with an uncertain future, Alex becomes the master of a video game only to discover that it was put on Earth as a testing ground by Centauri, a huckster trying to save his vulnerable galaxy and make a little money in the process. Centauri offers Alex membership in an elite cadre of space pilots charged with protecting the universe.

Alex must find a way to reach his potential, while a great danger looms out in space, waiting for him....

Via Tagliners, where they also have a link to this song from the Silence of the Lambs musical. Really. I'm not making that up either.

Finally! After four years Wong Kar Wai's 2046 hit theatres in China today. No more going back and re-editing. No more reshoots. Just give us the goods! Well... you know... once China's had it's fill. Please?

Even Tony Leung got fed up with the lengthy drawn out process. An excerpt from an article running in ChinaDaily.com...

"I heard Wong was going to shoot more scenes with Gong Li and Faye Wong, so I shaved my moustache immediately," Leung, who starred in 'In the Mood For Love' and 'Happy Together', told Britain's Guardian newspaper. "You just can't go on shooting like that; you have to stop."

Read the full article from ChinaDaily right here.

And things apparently aren't going very well for the uber-hot Zhang Ziyi at home. Read reports of fan unrest here.

Now. If you'll excuse me I have a couple Wong Kar Wai's sitting on my coffee table to get to so I am up to speed on the man's films.

Just a friendly heads up here ... if you, like me, pre-ordered the French edition of Enki Bilal's Immortel you might want to cancel that order. Got a call from fellow Twitch-er Nick today telling me that he'd just rented the film from the local cult video store. This was a bit of a surprise because as far as I knew there was no legal version of this available anywhere in the world yet. I was wrong. The version he rented is an Asian release, I believe either mainland China or Taiwan. I haven't been able to turn up a retailer of it yet, but I will, and I can guarantee it will be a good bit cheaper than the French edition. Yes, it does include English subtitles. I can't read a word of it - a little help? - but I believe that this is the spec sheet from the Asian manufacturer. There's also a Russian edition floating around out there but I have no clue if it's subtitled.

There is always the possibility that this is a high grade bootleg but I won't know more until I hear back from the retailers that I've contacted about it ...

Well, I am not a huge fan of HK films, but I have watched a fair number of Jackie Chan movies over the years. Ever since the Police Story Boxset from IVL was announced earlier in the year I've been looking forward to it. I've been temporarily sidetracked by other DVDs, but at $38USD / £20 or so, i can't avoid it for long.

The films have been totally remastered, but appear not to be the apparently extended versions seen in Japan, apart from Part 2, and the subtitles come from the UK "Hong Kong Legends" range of DVDs, except for those in Part 3.

The picture is obviously sharper, and the aspect / framing seems to be spot-on. I'm not sure about the sound.

Anyone got or seen this set yet? Theres a thread over at the "asiandvdguide" forum containing comparison shots of the remastered version and earlier releases.

Well, I was going to leave this one alone but it's picked up so much steam on so many film sites that I figure I ought to throw my two cents in.

In a recent interview Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg let it be known that he's read the Watchmen script and would love to play Rorschach, which has people hyped up all over the place. As far as I can see this is a simple case of the producer of one of the most anticipated comic adaptations ever passing along the script to a comic obsessed actor friend as a favor and said friend saying - as ANY actor would - that he'd like the plum role for himself. I really wouldn't read any more into this. Don't get me wrong, I've met Simon and I like him a lot. I'm a big, big fan of his work and I think he's enormously talented. But he's not going to get the part. Here's why. Beyond any other considerations Rorschach is a violent sociopath who likes to beat people down with his hands and is very good at doing so. He's also masked a healthy majority of the time. That means that whoever plays him absolutely must be able to carry a sense of physical menace about himself based purely on body type and Simon's just not that large.

Where do I see the casting going? It's all speculation, but read on for my picks ...

Continue reading "Twitch's Take on These Watchmen Casting Rumors"

Now that my Casshern angst has ebbed somewhat thanks to my having the DVD on order it has been replaced by the absolutely delirious Survive Style 5 as my most anticipated film coming out of Japan.

This baby looks absolutely surreal thanks to some way stylized camera work, a garish color scheme and a cast that includes Tadanobu Asano (aka Ichi the Killer's Kakihara), Sonny Chiba (70's film icon most recently seen as Hattori Hanzo in Kill Bill) and Vinny Jones (former pro soccer player turned big screen goon thanks to Lock Stock and Snatch).

The site's just had a major face lift and had a stack of new material added. Fire up your Windows Media Player because you absolutely DO NOT want to miss the trailers (here, here, here and here), a series of what I can only assume are VERY surreal tv spots for the film (here, here, here, and here) and a lengthy behind the scenes clip here.

There's more but I'm so smitten by that tiger headed codpiece that I'm going to stop there. I gotta find out where I can get me one of those ...

Now, I'm not actually that big a Mel Brooks fan, but I have an enormous weak spot for Spaceballs - quite possibly one of the funniest stupid movies ever made. There have been sequel rumors floating around forever but here's one straight from the man's mouth. As quoted in Aint it Cool Brooks is writing the sequel now and sees the best case scenario for release as "a week before the new Star Wars opens." Brooks has confirmed he'll be back as Yoghurt and I can only hope and pray that Rick Moranis returns as Dark Helmet. Moranis has been out of the game for a long time now and I miss him. This would be a prime opportunity for him to make a triumphant return ...

Good Lord, no ... Aint it Cool is reporting that Pitof - the man behind the Catwoman debacle - has been tapped to direct the live action adaptation of Akira for Warner Brothers.

A note to studio heads: a large budget bomb should not be considered a positive when deciding on a director for an enormously complex, certain to be very high budget, film. What are you thinking!?! What!?!

How's this for a mind bender: Russia just may be the new breeding ground for the world's premiere genre cinema. They're certainly taking a good run at it. Strange, but true. Here's proof.

While looking around for information on Evil Dead 4 - supposedly now greenlit, see below - I turned up a listing for a Russian film just entering the early stages of production called Glubina, with a cast list that apparently includes Bruce Campbell, Rutger Hauer and Christopher Lee. The English working title is Depth and the film is based on a novel from the author of the Russian blockbuster The Night Watch - a copy of which I have sitting here waiting to be viewed and reviewed.

Here's a synopsis of the very Gibson-esque novel:

This book immediately became a cult book for the Russian web dwellers. In this book we encounter the world of the nearest future, where the Internet technologies, coupled with a "deep-program", produced the internationally shared virtual world - the Deeptown. Of its population , the most mysterious are the Divers, who can at will resist the deep-program and see not only the display picture as it is (where everyone sees an illusion of a very real world) but also programs with all their "holes" as images, and do things which the best hackers could never dream of.

Night Watch did better business in Russia than the Lord of the Rings films and has generated enough buzz that it, along with a pair of in the works sequels, has been picked up for North America by Fox. Sharing an author, key production people and some actors with Night Watch, along with western cult stars in key roles, Depth should be generating significant buzz among cult film fans any day now.

The IMDB listing is here.

**** UPDATE ****

Hauer has apparently said he doesn't know anything about this and his name has been removed from the listing.

One of the more acclaimed films of the past few years Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Millennium Mambo is a film I've been wanting to see for quite some time and now, thanks to it finally getting a domestic release via Palm Pictures, I've finally had my chance. Solid performances all 'round and brilliant cinematography make this a landmark film.

Continue reading "Millennium Mambo DVD Review"

I've said in an earlier post that I am excited that Jackie Chan has returned to Hong Kong to do more movies. It's good for him and it's good for the movie industry back home. Though for someone who is tired of being typecasted as a police officer in hollywood movies you gotta wonder why he would do it again his first movie back on his native soil. That's neither here nor there. We'll keep an eye on his current project The Myth and see where that leads him.

I will say this though. Having read this review of New Police Story over at MonkeyPeaches.com it looks like his desire to take a more dramatic turn will reach realization sooner than later. New Police Story sounds darker and heavier than anything leading up to it. But you should read about it for yourself.

The New York Times has just posted an excellent, and lengthy, article on Wong Kar Wai and 2046 here. It gets into the man's unorthodox filming style, relationships with his cast and crew and details on the film itself. Fantastic stuff. You need to register with the Times to get access to their articles, but it's free and there's nothing cheaper than free. Well worth the moment or two it'll take to get in ...

Thanks to iamNataku for the heads up.

This is big, big news if it turns out to be true ... Creature Corner has just posted this article from someone who claims to have just wrapped a project with Robert "Freddy" Englund claiming that both Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash and Evil Dead 4 have gotten the go ahead. Apparently the deal for FvJvA was conditional on Evil Dead 4 also getting the go ahead.

I really don't like the idea of putting Ash into anything with Freddy, Jason or pretty much any other slasher icon. Really don't like it. At all. I just think the feel is completely wrong and that you'll end up doing some major damage to what makes the character great by trying to jam them together. That said, if this is what it took to get the money for Evil Dead 4 - which I'm positively giddy about - then I suppose it's a necessary evil that I can live with ...

Via FilmRot

DVD Fanatic has listed a full set of specs for the four disc, extended edition of The Return of the King. Due for release December 14th the four-disc set will follow the pattern of the previous extended Rings sets. The film itself - a 250 minute cut - will be split over two DVDs, which will also include four commentary tracks, with an additional two DVDs crammed with documentaries and behind the scenes features. The two things that leap out to me are the cast commentary including some split personality Gollum / Smeagol chatter, and the "Abandoned Concept: Aragorn Battlers Sauron" feature. Yeah, that was a good concept to abandon. I applaud your abandonment.

Check the full feature list here.

Monsters and Critics has posted a pair of set photos from Peter Jackson's King Kong. Both shots are of Venture - the boat used to transport the big ape - and have a decent amount of detail. If nothing else they give you a good idea of the scale he's aiming for ... Check them out here.

So ... you've got more money than you know what to do with, you're a big fan of Spider-Man and you think tossing a bit of cash towards cancer research would be a good thing. Well, here's a deal for you ...

The original Alex Ross Spider-Man paintings used in the title sequence of Spider-Man 2 have been put up for auction with all proceeds going to the Women's Cancer Research Program at UCLA.

If you want one of these be prepared to pony up some major coin. One painting is already over twenty thousand dollars. The auction site's here.

via FilmRot

So ... you couldn't make it to Toronto for the film festival but you've got this film fixated girl you want to impress. Well, don't you worry. We've got your back. What follows are capsule reviews of every film us Twitch folk got out to see, scored and ranked using our own obscure formula. Thirty nine films. Sixty two screenings. Who's at the top and bottom? Read on ...

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Our Big Festival Wrap Up"

I guess it was about ten years ago when Todd, Canfield and I got together and went to see Rumble in the Bronx. Canfield was visiting us from Chicago and we needed to kill some time between some lectures he was doing about film at our college. Who knew it would help kindle my love affair with Asian cinema.

Continue reading "Jackie Chan interview: New Police Story"

So, I keep an eye out on forums for strange films that suddenly pop-up on DVD. Admitedly they're often in European countries, and so it's often almost impossible to find decent information on them.

One film that caught my eye a while back is "Maladolescenza". Yes, It's potentially a highly-controversial film. Yes, you might have heard some naughty things about it : but it is a completely legal certified film production.

I found a couple of sites which might help some who've also read little bits find out some more. The pages contents though are "not safe for work" as they say. The sites are here and here. For fans of the very strange and unusual.

So, the boy was asking to check out some cartoons on the computer this morning and since we'd caught up on our Homestar Runner yesterday I opted to head over to Weebl and Bob since I'm a bit behind there as well ... Beyond the cartoony goodness I discovered that Weebl's coming to DVD! It looks as though they may have to alter the title to avoid lawsuits from the people who made those old Weeble toys, but the lads are hard at work sprucing up the old cartoons for the DVD and say the disc will have all cartoons in anamorphic widescreen and that it will be narrated by "the greatest Englishman alive today".

For those not in the know Weebl's the man behind the stangely compelling Badger, Badger, Badger and also publishes a regular web toon here. Check out the news here and the latest Weebl and Bob offering - it's a good one - here.

As I am wont to do from time to time I present here a list of notable films out of Asia that are now available to either purchase or pre-order. Consider it a bit of a heads up as far as what's happening on the international scene. New Twins Effect, classic Jackie Chan, killer Korean wire-fu ... we got a bit of everything ...

Continue reading "Let's Go Shopping ... A Stack of New Hong Kong DVDs Up For Pre-Order ..."

The cast list is building for George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. John Leguizamo [Ice Age, Moulin Rouge], Canadian Robert Joy [Joe Somebody, The Shipping News], and Simon Baker [Red Planet, The Ring 2] join Dennis Hopper who just oozes cool. And they do a fine job of setting the bar on the babe factor very high in zombie movies by bringing in Asia Argento [XXX].

Canadians may also recognize Boyd Banks who already looked like death warmed up in Harold & Kumar go to White Castle and starred in the remake of Romero's institution Dawn of the Dead. He's listed as 'Featured Zombie' at imdb.com

The movie marks Romero's return to the Dead series of films. The release date in 2005 is yet to be announced as the film is still in pre-production stages.

via Empire Online.

Here you go. For all those who shelled out hundreds of dollars, or £150 or so (as i seem to remember), for the uncut Japanese Kill Bill V1 deluxe boxset, cos it had a FREE TSHIRT! and a PLASTIC SWORD! - you can get the uncut asian edition of Vol.1 with Vol.2 and the SAME free SWORD! For $58 plus shipping.

Really, this is a massive pet hate of mine. People buying DVDs for any other reason than the film contained on the shining silver disc. There is loads more to buy : food for instance ... There are even more films out there that money could go on. You probably won't use the t-shirt, you can't use the sword: plastic doesn't cut too well. You probably will not make a profit on eBay, and you're going to sit and look at it gathering dust on the shelf.

What kind of DVD buyer do you consider yourself to be? Films? "Free Gifts"? "Collectors Editions"?

Like most people I originally heard of Shinya Tsukamoto thanks to his compelling but very, very strange Tetsuo: The Iron Man - an experimental film about a Japanese salary man slowly transforming into some sort of organic / metallic hybrid organism. It's beautiful to look at but quite disturbing and as a result I wrote Tsukamoto off as basically a talented freak show for quite some time. The film that changed my mind about the man was Bullet Ballet. Shot in gorgeous, high contrast black and white the film tells the story of a man driven to the brink of despair and obsession when his girlfriend commits suicide by shooting herself.

Still the most linear and straight forward film Tsukamoto has shot from one of his own scripts - he's got a couple fairly conventional director for hire jobs under his belt as well - Bullet Ballet has also strangely been the most difficult Tsukamoto film to find. That'll be changing in Januray with the release of Artsmagic's DVD release of what I consider an overlooked classic. I was sent a batch of about fifty still shots from the film, from which I've culled my favorites and posted them here. Check 'em out.

Continue reading "Still Shots From Shinya Tsukamoto's Bullet Ballet"

While there is no confirmation that Governor Schwarzenegger will return for the fourth installment of the Terminator series the screenwriters of Rise of the Machines have gone ahead and written a script and Jonathan Mostow is clearing room on his schedule to film it. And as there is no word that AH-nold is coming back there is no word that Nick Stahl or Claire Daines have agreed to reprise their roles either.

via Empire Online.

So here it is. Thankfully its the largest version of the trailer I've seen. It has the "added bonus" of english text. It's going to be cut differently though isn't it?

I will wait for the U.K DVD then, whenever that may be released.

Here you go. A short while after the first blurred on-set shots and newspaper scans of decent images, we get the real thing.

They can be seen in bigger versions by clickin the previews over at Dark Horizons.

Personally, the moment i saw The Thing as a man in a rubber suit i got worried. Don't expect this to turn out a classic comic book to film adaptation, but it's great to see they're giving it a go. I hope i am proved wrong when it comes out.

I took a quick look at the Rotten Tomatoes rating for Shaun of the Dead yesterday after the early reviews started to come in and was encouraged enough by that that I planned to write a little article labelling the film the genre's best since Army of Darkness. Well, the full slate of reviews are out now and after taking another look at the Tomatoes listing the scope of the article has expanded just a bit. After doing a quick survey of all the major zombie related titles I could think of, and after sending Mack on a quest to dig up anything I may have forgotten about, Shaun of the Dead's rating is bested by only two directors: Sam Raimi and George Romero.

I think that now makes it fair to make this pronouncement: Shaun of the Dead is an instant classic. It is the most acclaimed genre film in roughly twenty years. Go see it. Right now.

The complete list of films, listed in descending order based on Rotten Tomatoe rankings, follows. Feel free to chime in if I've left anybody out.

Continue reading "Shaun of the Dead: One of the Genre's Greats?"

I'm just going to go ahead and say this: Unleashed will prove to be, by far, the best western produced film Jet Li has ever been involved in. That's not saying so much, really, but I'll go one better and say that based on the footage I've seen so far it looks to be a very, very good film. The first bit of footage to release was very underwhelming but the international trailer - which seems to have disappeared sometime recently - changed my mind in a hurry and now IGN Filmforce has gotten their hands on the Rogue Pictures trailer for the film and it's even better than that international one was.

Li stars as Danny, a man who has lived his life imprisoned by a thoroughly creepy Bob Hoskins and forced into the ultra violent life of an illegal pit fighter. He escapes his captor and is taken in by a blind man - Morgan Freeman - and some seemingly random teenage white girl. Random teenage white girl still figures to be quite annoying but this thing scores large on all other fronts. Check out the trailer here.

Not much there yet but Sony has launched a website for the North American release of the stellar House of Flying Daggers here. For some strange reason there's no link to the Sony trailer for the film but here it is in all it's Quicktime glory. The color seemed a bit washed out when I looked at it, but still ...

Via FilmRot and AICN

If you're jonesing for more information on the Toronto Film Festival head over to Kurt's Film Blog. Thirty four capsule reviews, plus a stack of photos, covering similar ground to what we hit here though he hit a few good ones that we missed. Good stuff.

What can I say ... I'm a sucker for Aardman animation in general and the work of Nick Park in particular ...

The BBC Children's network has just inked a contract with Aardman Animation to produce a forty episode tv show based on Shaun the Sheep, a character from the Wallace and Gromit cartoons. I'd spotted some rumblings about animator Nick Park doing a series of silent, black and white shorts featuring Shaun over on the Aardman site a while back but based on the official BBC announcement it looks as though this will be something a little more conventional than that original idea ... I'd still like to see those B&W shorts get made, but in my book any Park is good Park.

It has just been announced that Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement - easily one of my most anticipated films this year as I'm a huge fan of the man's work - is slated to receive its North American premiere at the AFI Festival in Los Angeles in early November. Personally, I'm still a little bitter that this one didn't make it to the Toronto festival, but such is life. Check out the French site for the film here to see some ridiculously gorgeous behind the scenes footage. Seriously, this guy's rough behind the scenes stuff is better than most people's proper work ...

This is purely speculation on my part, but from an outsider's perspective it certainly appears that Harvey Weinstein is having his ass handed to him on a plate by Michael Eisner and Disney in his ongoing struggle with Miramax's corporate overlords.

First came word of budget roll backs, a stalled production slate, Disney putting the kibosh on Fahrenheit 9/11, and then a round of layoffs. About halfway through this year's Toronto Film Festival I realized that, in marked contrast to last year's fest where Miramax was ubiquitous, I had not seen a single Miramax related film nor had I heard of them picking up rights to a single buzz film, and that was a trend that continued through to the very end of the Festival. And not only did I not see a single Miramax related title but I'm pretty sure that NOBODY from Twitch saw anything that Miramax had rights to, unless they've got their hooks in Millions. A major film festival that Miramax wasn't cherry picking the best properties from? Unthinkable even a year ago. And now this. Another fifty five Miramax employees - thirteen percent of their current work force - have been handed their pink slips. This follows a previous layoff of what was a similar percentage of staff a couple months back.

For the better part of the past decade Miramax has been the undisputed lord and master of the art house in North America, holding rights to virtually everything and propelling a stack of now hugely influential directors into the limelight. Nobody worked the Oscar vote better than Weinstein and co. but it appears that their reign is coming to a rapid, whimpering close. Between Disney evidently looking to make an example of Weinstein with slashed budgets forcing stalled production and the firing of over a quarter of their staff and the rise of companies like Newmarket and Focus it looks as though, barring a sudden and dramatic turnaround, Miramax is done as a major tastemaker in the film world.

Today's issue of Screen Daily includes gushingly positive reviews of Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital - a film I also like a little bit - and Steven Chow's Kung Fu Hustle - a film I'm just aching to see. Check out the Hustle review here, and Vital here.

Here's the first review I've found of the lovely UK Hellraiser cube-shaped boxset. It's over at DVDTimes.co.uk which is a great place for daily news and announcements for UK and USA discs.

I would be tempted by it myself but : a) its a bit delicate-looking, don't you think? b) I am not that interested in more than the first two films.

From the grabs in the review the discs look nicely mastered. Enjoy.

Here's little challenge. Todd suggested I throw up my Juon review. Seemed like a good idea with the remake on the way. It was originally published on Imagine 'Dat! and was intended to be part of a larger article I wrote on Asian Horror.

But the other reason I'd like to reprint it here is because I think it raises some worthwhile questions about the nature of horror.

How about a little dialogue?

Continue reading "JUONNA TALK ABOUT ASIAN HORROR?!"

Only one film at VIFF interests me. IZO.

Maybe there's more showing to interest me, but right now any showing of IZO is interesting : no, i can't afford to fly over. No, I am not going to win the National Lottery this Saturday. But it is Takashi Miike.

Visit the VIFF site or the IZO site for more info or encouragement.

Ooh. A short but sweet interview with anime legend Mamoru Oshii popped up yesterday over at Midnight Eye. Plus, there is a smack of other features about other anime and manga related movies on the front page for you to look through as well. Your next couple hours are pretty much set now. Your welcome.

Is it new news?? No, no. But I think it's news until everyone I know that considers themselves a fan of horror cinema sees Uzumaki. This Lovecraftian, hurdy gurdy of a movie does anything but dance around it's central premise of cosmic dread and delivers screams, laughs and stomach churning visuals in about equal portions. The extras aren't much to speak of but the movie is unforgettable.

Continue reading "UZUMAKI HITS REGION ONE DVD!"

Here's some news that's been bubbling away just below the surface for a while but has just now become official ...

Stop motion animator Henry Selick - the director responsible for James and the Giant Peach, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the stop motion bits in the upcoming Life Aquatic - will be scripting and directing a stop motion feature based on Neil Gaiman's Coraline for Vinton Studios. These are good days for fans of Gaiman between this film and the coming Gaiman / McKeon collaboration Mirror Mask due to hit theaters soon and also good days for Vinton with Coraline joing the Tim Burton produced Corpse Bride on the production slate.

Read the Fangoria story here.

Yahoo Movies has just posted links to the trailer for John Waters' A Dirty Shame along with a trio of interviews with the writer / director himself. They stalled out and wouldn't work properly for me - it is Yahoo, after all - but you can check them out here. My review of the film from the Toronto Film Festival is here.

According to Davis DVD Napoleon Dynamite will be hitting DVD on December 21st. So, while it may not be quite as good as a delicious bass, you now have one more quality gift choice. For me. I like it when people give me things.

The disc will include both widescreen (for the clever folk) and fullscreen (for the not-so-clever folk) options as well as a commentary track from the director and star, deleted scenes and a featurette. You can see the cover art here.

Ah. The perfect date movie. A boy, a girl, stymied love and wave upon wave of the undead. Huh? Welcome to Shaun of the Dead, the romantic zombie comedy from the creators of cult classic britcom Spaced. After drawing rave reviews in his native Britain and making vocal converts of the likes of Peter Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro and George Romero, Shaun finally hits local shores on Friday. Is it as good as the advance hype? Put it this way: Shaun of the Dead is to this decade what Sam Raimi's Evil Dead / Army of Darkness films were to theirs. Shaun is an instant classic, the sort of film that will define geek culture for years. Yeah, it's that good.

Continue reading "Shaun of the Dead Review"

One of the better things about the festival experience - whether it be the just completed Toronto Film Festival or one of a few musical festivals that I've hit in the past - is the chance to connect with people who share your own particularly skewed view of the world. I have a few good friends now based purely on the fact that we just ran into each other so often at these sort of events that we bowed to the inevitability of it all and went and started planning ahead. Opus is one of those friends, so I was more than happy to host him at my place through the Toronto Film Fest and even happier to have him blogging about the experience here. If you enjoyed Opus' writing - and there's a LOT there to like - you may want to swing by his own website here where he's just posted even lengthier and more detailed reviews of all the films he caught at TIFF.

Russ Meyer - owner of the most flagrant large breast fetish in the history of the planet - has died at the age of eighty two. Whatever else you may have thought of the man there's no denying that he cast a large - and curvaceous - shadow over Hollywood. Roger Ebert, who penned a script or two for the man back in the day, has posted a lengthy obit here.

Okay ... this one caught me by surprise ... Variety is reporting that Michael Moore has signed on with Miramax as a production house for Sicko, his next film which targets the American health care system. Uh, Mike? You do remember what happened last time you worked with Miramax, don't you? All I can say is that I hope you've got some iron-clad guarantees this time round ...

Sony has just launched the North American website for Steamboy. The site itself is nothing to get all worked up over, but it does include a healthy variety of clips and the film's official trailer. This is just a brilliant film ... check out my review from the Toronto Film Festival here and check the website here.

The first images of the Fantastic Four surfaced yesterday in USA Today and ComingSoon! was kind enough to scan all four images for everyone to look. See the team here.

Pesonally, I hope Jessica's Sue Storm doesn't go invisible that often because that would be a crime against humanity. I'm sort of 'meh' about the Ben Grimm makeup. Not what I was expecting but my attitude may change. First impressions though are... well... meh. And until we see stretching and fire it looks like they've done well with Reed Richards and Johnny.

What do you think? This is open for discussion folks. Here are the first images. Are they what you expected? Let us know.

Good news Los Angeles and New York. You get to see House of Flying Daggers after me but before everyone else. It is set to release in those two cities on December 3rd. Unfortunately it still looks like December 17th for the full release. The agony of waiting continues.

For now you can view the teaser trailer in glorious Quicktime in Hi or if you must, Low.

So, many will have seen the various versions of the trailer at sites across the globe. Now the official site has gone live you can hope to see more info, pictures and so on over there. I wouldnt mind a wallpaper with a picture like the one shown in a small version here.

It's probably the only horror from the USA to really catch my attention this year, if not the only one in the past five years.

But it has one downside : Danny Glover. Great actor, very underrated... just too familiar somehow.

First thing: Read that title closely. Note how it says League of Gentlemen and most definitely NOT League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Big difference.

Second thing: The League of Gentlemen is the creation of four utterly demented and equally brilliant Brits with a major fixation on classic horror films, particularly of the Hammer variety. The show is appallingly hilarious - seriously one of my favorite things ever - and has run for three seasons in the UK, also producing a brilliant Christmas special and a fantastic performance DVD. It was picked up for a season on some specialty channel in the US - Comedy Central, I think - where it mostly confused people by being so unrepentantly dark and absurdly funny simultaneously. Most people don't really get it, but those who do get it hard.

Third thing: You've seen all the ranting and raving about how great Spaced and Shaun of the Dead are, yes? You can't really take a step on any of the major film news sites without running into someone raving about how good it is. Well, these guys and those guys are good friends and for good reason. The two shows are quite different but there's a good chance that if you care for Spaced at all you'll feel the same way about the League.

Fourth thing, and the point of this increasingly long-winded post: The long rumoured League of Gentlemen feature film - tentatively titled Royston Vasey - is a go, and is in production now. Logboy emailed me to say he'd seen a note about it on AICN but I couldn't find anything there either on their main page or via their search engine - meaning that either he's hallucinating, they've removed it for some strange reason, or I'm a stupid git - but I have turned up solid confirmation here. Those kind folk are even offering to help connect people with both the London and Dublin production offices to be considered as extras. You can email them about that here. If I lived anywhere close to the UK I would be so there ...

The Monkey Peaches has posted links to a pair of proper trailers for the much anticipated 2046 - the long, long, long delayed new film from auteur Wong Kar Wai. One is a low grade Real Media file that plays out of synch and is thus not worth the time of day. The other, however, is a full two and a half minute Quicktime job. And it's gorgeous. Check it out here.

The mighty MP has also picked up on the rumors saying that the next Wong Kar Wai film will be set, once again, in Shanghai. Principal cast will revolve around Nicole Kidman and "Beat" Takeshi Kitano. I know I should be more intrigued by Kidman, but ... Kitano in a Wong Kar Wai film? Damn. That's hot.

Sony has given the website for The Grudge - the Sam Raimi produced, Takeshi Shimizu directed remake of Shimizu's brilliant Ju-On - a complete overhaul. The site now includes the ability to roam about the cursed house ... I love the original Japanese Ju-On films and I'm itching to see this ... make sure you check out the trailer while you're there ...

The official website for Oxide Pang's Abnormal Beauty is now online here and it includes a brand new trailer ... even the worst Pang films are gorgeous to look at and I have a feeling that this is going to end up being one of the good ones ... you can check out the previous trailer here ...

via KFC

The superb site Melon Farmers has recieved an email informing them that the BBFC, the U.K censors, have passed Oldboy in an apparently uncut form for cinema projection.

The questionable moment for censorship purposes would be a very disturbing scene involving seafood and narcolepsy - a sequence that would normally fall foul of U.K. censorship rules. The BBFC has strict rules regarding cruelty to animals that you would think applied here - the animal scenes in Cannibal Holocaust, for instance, would be completely out of the question - but apparently not. And that's a good thing.

*** originally posted by Logboy, edited by Todd to make it a bit less spoilerific. blame anything you don't like about it on me ***

Alright, this is where I get my revenge on all the brother's in Toronto (which I was supposed to to be able to go to!!). Starting today I'll be giving you coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival

Tonight is the media party and I'll have to abide by whatever rules govern the info we're given but yours truly will post as much as I can about the event and, if I'm able, the schedule.

I know that our reviews of "Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence" have been a bit lacklustre, due in large part to the shallow characters and somewhat abstruse plot. However, it totally succeeds as a visual spectacle, offering up some of the most stunning sites you're likely to see in anime... which should be obvious from the various trailers that have surfaced in the past. And now you can see even more of it for yourself.

AnimeNation is reporting that the first 8 minutes of the film are now available, in several resolutions and formats (yay QuickTime), on IFilm. The first 8 minutes includes the movie's first action sequence, between Batou and a renegade android, and the stunning opening credits sequence. Needless to say, this is something that really needs to be seen on the big screen, but hey... this is better than nothing.

Click here to see Batou in action...

In our opinion Donnie Yen (HERO, Shanghai Knights, Blade 2 and Iron Monkey) deserves much more attention than he is getting in North America. His skills at the martial arts clearly rival the likes of Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung.

So we will do what we can to promote him. Yesterday afternoon KungFuCinema.com posted an interview Donnie did with a local Boston television station last month with the opening of HERO. It also features his mother, Master Mark, who can clearly beat up all our moms. Go here for the post to link to the television spot.

Keep in touch here for updates on Donnie's latest project with Sammo Hung, Sha Po Lang. Some stills on MonkeyPeaches.com to keep you salivating for more. Here.

Here's the first review I've come across for the Criterion issue of "Les Yeux Sans Visage", the 1959 George Franju horror masterpiece. It's over at the superb mondo-digital.

Helpful to those who have heard the buzz around this great release, but haven't seen the film.

Here it is. Seems to have first gone up at DVDAnswers.com in a larger form than i can put up here.

Specs for the disc (out 30th Nov 2004 / rrp is $30). anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen. DD 5.1 and 6.1. Chinese with English Subtitles and Dubbed in English. Making of Featurette. Storyboards to 4 scenes. Interview with Tarantino.

We're hard at work digging up details on Marebito - the latest from Takeshi Shimizu, best known for the Ju-On films - And we've managed to turn up some fantastic cast and author news and our very own Logboy has also turned up some screen shots and one very nice behind the scenes shot.

As we reported yesterday the film will star Shinya Tsukamoto - best known as a director for Tetsuo: The Iron Man, best known as an actor for his role as Ichi's handler in Takashi Miike's ultra-violent Ichi The Killer. This in itself is enough to make the film a must see, but we've got more. The film is based on a novel of the same name written by Chiaki Konaka, a name anime geeks will recognize as the author of the HUGELY acclaimed Serial Experiments Lain.

Shimizu, Tsukamoto and Konaka all on the same project? Sounds like a sure winner to me. Continue on for the pictures ...

Continue reading "How's This For a Collision of Major Talents? The Director of Ju-On, The Director of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and the Writer of Serial Experiments Lain Meet For Marebito!"

I must admit I didnt expect it to come this soon but Fruit Chan's contribution to Three Extremes gets its own Hong Kong DVD release at the end of September, coming just in time for me to preorder it along with Takashi Miikes "One Missed Call".

Again, you can preorder it from reputable HK sites like DDDHouse.com. It has English Subtitles, 5.1 and DTS and works out at $80HK (about $10 USD / £6).

Also listed at Yesasia.com ($11.99) and Cd-wow.com (£7.99)

Each of the short films that make up the Three Extreme anthology - Takashi Miike and Chan Wook Park also contribute - were originally shot as full length features and then edited down for the anthology. This DVD of "Dumplings" is the extended 91 minute version of that part.

When you've just done some time at a major film festival you're always interested to see what other festivals have had to offer throughout the year. Given the depth and variety of viewing habits that we have here at Twitch there are some others that we could dream of attending. FanTasia is one that we got a small taste of for a couple years in Toronto before moving permanently to Montreal (John Woo's Taiwanese edit of The Killer is still a major highlight). And if we only had the money you can bet we would be at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival in Korea.

One of the voices in Korean cinema that I respect is Darcy Paquet over at Koreanfilm.org and recently he added his perspective on PiFan 2004 here along with reports from two other contributors to his site.

Again, if we had the money we would be there. Watching movies. And using our limited knowledge of Korean pickup lines on the ladies. Oh yeah.

That pretty three disc, tin case edition of Korean war drama Taegukgi is now available for pre-order at Yesasia with an expected release date of October 11th. Surprisingly cheap, too ...

A good few months back I posted this link over on The Movie Blog. It's all in Japanese, so none of us had a clue what it actually said but check out those pics ... those are a straight up, flawless real world version of the motor cycles from the classic anime film Akira. Naturally, speculation at the time was that there was a live action version of the story in the works ...

I've still got no clue who's actually behind it, but it looks as though that speculation was correct and anime director Katsuhiro Otomo has some sort of stake in the project. Dark Horizons is reporting that Otomo has just returned an early draft of the live action script for re-writes ...

Here's another case of 'ask and you shall receive' ... mere hours after posting those interviews with Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright, in which I do my very best to bully one and all into checking out Spaced - the absolutely brilliant TV show involving all of the Shaun principals - I came across this article proudly trumpeting that Spaced will be hitting US airways on the Trio channel. Seriously, if you don't already have the channel now's a good time to sign up. Spaced is pure gold. Check that link above for airtimes.

via Filmrot.

A couple days back I was wondering aloud if anyone knew anything about Marebito, the new film from Ju-on helmer Takeshi Shimizu. Maybe someone over at Fangoria was listening, because they just posted this. The film stars cult director Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man, A Snake of June, Vital) as a fear obsessed camera man who is drawn into a supernatural underworld. Sounds like a good time, in a very creepy sort of way. A trailer? Anyone?

via Filmrot.

I've known this existed for a while but didn't actually get around to actually watching the North American trailer for Infernal Affairs until just now. Let me say first of all that Infernal Affairs has a very well deserved reputation as one of the finest crime thrillers to release anywhere in the world over at least the past decade. In terms of plot, direction and acting this is simply an incredible film. Let me say secondly that something has, once again, gone horribly wrong over at Miramax.

One of two things has happened here: either someone who has never actually seen the film was assigned to write the dialogue for the trailer or Miramax has actually gone and changed the script of the film when it was in the subtitling / dubbing process, whichever route they've chosen to go. It wouldn't be the first time for either, or both, of these scenarios to come out of the big M, and both are equally odious. No matter which it is, though, something's wrong because that trailer is just plain wrong on some MAJOR plot points ...

Pixar good. Brad Bird good. Go watch now.

It's been a while since I had a Lynch fix so I swung by Dugpa.com today to see if anything was new - Dugpa and Lynchnet being the two best David Lynch resources on the net - and was there ever ...

The big news is that the region one DVD of Wild At Heart is finally coming down the line, and is apparently available for pre-order. Check the impressive list of specs over at Dugpa's site. I've been sorely tempted by the Korean edition of this a few times - the second disc with the Pretty as a Picture documentary has almost been enough to win me over - but it looks as though my patience is about to be rewarded ...

Also of note on there is that the world outside of North America - where the rights holders are having a bit of a tiff - can expect season two of Twin Peaks to hit DVD sometime in the spring of 2005. Thank god for my all region player ...

Now this is the best news I've had all day. It took a little more than a year but someone has finally realized that the delirious Korean genre-hopper Save the Green Planet is a work of insane genius and is bringing it to North American theaters. According to Screen Magazine Fox Lorber has purchased North American rights to the film and will be giving it a limited theatrical run starting in January 2005.

I can't even begin to summarize this film in any sort of concise way beyond saying it's about a mentally ill man who believes aliens are on their way to destroy the earth. And he may just be right. Read the review Opus wrote for it here and one I wrote here. The Korean trailers and a stack of screen shots are available here.

Via mhvf.

Ah, this happens every year ... I prep as well as I can for the Toronto Film Festival, catch a stack of films and then, as soon as everything wraps up, I start hearing about titles that I kick myself for not seeing. Case in point this time is a little film out of New Zealand titled In My Father's Den. What about it caught my eye? Well, when the folks at GreenCine start by describing a film as "Mystic River set in Twin Peaks" my blood pressure immediately starts to rise. The trailer's got the goods to back that description up, too ...

Ah, well ... it's financed by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions, so it should be hitting screens soon enough ...

Granted, the image of Woody Allen on top of anything is more than a little disturbing but the fact remains that he is one of the most important American film makers in history and he has been in a slump of simply epic proportions. So epic, in fact, that I have simply blocked his last few movie titles right out of my conscious mind. They're gone. And I like it that way. Has he passed the point of no return or is there a modicum of hope left? Has he got anything left in the tank?

Well, word is that Melinda and Melinda is going to be the film that reminds the world what made Woody Allen great in the first place. If nothing else a cast that includes Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller (aka Sickboy), Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chloe Sevigny says the man still knows how to assemble talent. The San Sebastian Film Festival has posted a lengthy video clip here and it looks to be classic Allen. My hunch is that not only could this return Woody to public favor but it may also be the film that gets people to take Will Ferrell seriously as a performer.

Via GreenCine.

I've been catching up on my sleep for the past couple days since TIFF ended so I'm admittedly a bit behind on this bit of news. If you frequent martial arts sites like we do then you probably already know this. If you don't and you only come to twitchfilm.net as your only source of movie info then Lord bless you. It looks like we're going to get a sequel to Kung Fu Hustle...

Continue reading "Kung Fu Hustle sequel approved!"

In honor of the impending release of Shaun of the Dead I'm reprinting here a pair of interviews I did originally for The Movie Blog, so thanks are due to Movie Blog honcho John Campea for giving the thumbs up to my running these here as well.

The first interview is a telephone conversation I had with Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright as he was editing trailers for on the film's European releases - German, I think - and is split between talk on Shaun and his earlier work on a brilliant little television show called Spaced. If you're a genre fan at all Spaced is your Holy Grail. Seek it out at all costs. Trust me.

Interview number two was an in person job during the Shaun of the Dead press junket ... I was only able to score fifteen minutes with the boys but it was fifteen glorious minutes of mostly sitting back and watching as Edgar, Simon and Nick just pick up the ball and run with it. I hardly said a word the whole time. This one revolves around their upcoming cop / action / comedy with a bit more about Shaun thrown in for good measure.

In case you don't figure it out from the amount of time devoted to it here, let me say this clearly: Shaun of the Dead is a work of genius. It is to this decade what the Evil Dead films were to theirs. It comes out here Friday. Check the trailer here and then go see the film.

Continue reading "Edgar Wright Talks Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hard Fuzz."

As I came into this final day of the Toronto Film Festival I toyed with the idea of jamming three more screenings in, just to be sure that I'd taken maximum advantage of what the festival had to offer. In the end, though, OldBoy was rejected on the grounds that I already own it on DVD and have seen it several time and I passed on Trauma due to pure fatigue. The one film that I absolutely refused to miss out on, however, was Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Steamboy Review"

This is my last report from the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay in Toronto for the entire film festival, which meant that I missed a lot of anticipated films that played only during the last few days ("Steamboy", "Vital", "Zebraman"). However, I did manage to catch three films before returning to America's heartland.

Continue reading "TIFF Report - The Ninth Day, The World, Kontroll Reviews, and some closing thoughts"

Everybody Sing!! And thank Uncle Dave for clueing you in on some wonderful DVD news. The entire series, all nineteen episodes of Eerie, Indiana are about to be made available in a five disc box set by the good folks at BMG.

Continue reading "EERIE, INDIANA, EERIE INDIANA, EERIE INDIANA LET ME SAY IT ONCE AGAIN!!"

So it's the last day of the film festival and I'm sitting here behind the desk of my regular day sulking away because my movie marathon has come to an end (I have to go from 19 movies in 9 days to the regular 2-3 per week - I'm such a bitch). Anyways, so Will Ferrell and ACT (Americans Coming Together) made this 4 minute tv spot with Ferrell playing Bush on his Texas Ranch. I peed my pants (I seem to be doing that a lot lately) watching this and yes, I know it's been out for a while but I'm posting it now because you ALL must watch it. Will Ferrell is a genuis (GOULET!). Check it out here. Just be sure to have clean pants around - I made the mistake once already (nothing like spending 12 hours smelling like the alley at Spadina and Kensington).

Well there we are. Another year has past and I am done. Yesterday was my last day and as it is when you see so many films in a week there are bound to be some highs and lows. After being starstruck by Ted Raimi I managed to get back on movie track and start my day with Im Kwon-taek's Low Life...

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Low Life, Cafe Lumiere and Vital Reviews"

The Toronto Film Festival is quickly coming to an end but there are still some quality films to be had. Case in point: Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital. Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man is one of the most influential and extreme pieces of experimental film to come out of Japan - or just about anywhere, really - in past years but it was his Bullet Ballet that really convinced me this was a man to watch, someone with important things to say about humanity. Last year's Snake of June is a flat out masterpiece that cemented Tsukamoto's reputation as a master film maker, at least in my mind, so I was more than a little excited to hear that he had a new film coming starring Tadanobu Asano - one of my very favorite actors in the world. Tonight was my chance to see that film and I did not leave disappointed.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Vital Review"

So the strategy has always been to look at the best bets e-mail each night and plan out the following day. Wake up at the butt crack of dawn and buy tickets at the box office. A sound strategy that has worked, with one exception. Today was no different except I had time to kill so I grabbed some breakfast and went underground in the ManuLife building to await my viewing of Low Life. When who should I see at the table next to me but Ted Raimi. Ted FREAKING Raimi!!!

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Andrew harasses Ted Raimi"

The problem with doing a run of shows through to and past midnight to only have to do it all again four hours later is that you would much rather grab those precious few minutes of sleep rather than write reviews. But I am only one show away from ending my TIFF experience tonight so I better get cracking and get you the goods you've been waiting to read...

Continue reading "TIFF report: Millions, Eros and Zebraman"

The plan was to hit the box office in the Manulife Centre when it opened at 7:00 a.m. and buy tickets for Millions, Eros and Zebraman. It's worked out beautifully for me all week. Yesterday morning, though, I only got two out of three. Eros was playing at the Elgin Theatre and tickets for Elgin Theater screenings are only available at the Elgin Box Office, not at either of the main Festival box offices. Problem was the Elgin box office opens at 11:00am and I'm already up at 7:00am and in the regular box office. Pooh pooh to hanging around downtown in the dead hours of the morn waiting for stuff to open up. I head back to Todd's and plan to hit the Elgin box office before my viewing of Danny Boyle's Millions...

Continue reading "How I got into Eros and the Twitch gets schmoozed!!!"

Will you have fun at the new effects blockbuster? Oh if only it twer that simple. For those hoping for more than just another empty promise of franchise heaven Sky Captain falls pretty short of it's potential. Another Flash Gordon? Buck Rogers? Indiana Jones? Heck, how about another Neo? Sadly there's not that much new or creative opnce you get beyond the visuals.

Continue reading "SKY CAPTAIN AND THE MARKETING OF TODAY REVIEW"

It's the last day of film viewing for me at this year's festival which makes me a sad young gent but I'm ushering it out with a four film viewing day. I'm half way through it now, holed up in an internet cafe with a four hour lull between films and eating candy that will surely rot my teeth while singing the metal songs swimming in my head from last night's Midnight Madness screening of "Zebraman". Ok, but really, I should talk about the films. I had high hopes for Calvaire but, like my first time being intimate, tall hopes and pleasure were lost - quickly. Going into The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things having already read the novel by J.T. Leroy I was prepared for a tough subject material watch.

Continue reading "TIFF Report - The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, Calvaire"

Yes, I know i've got a habit of turning up Takashi Miike news. Thats nothing bad...

Anyhow : we now finally get confirmation of the first official DVD of "Chakushin Ari" aka "One Missed Call" to feature English Subtitles. Its released in Hong Kong on September 28th.

You can find the listing at DDDHouse.com now : but you can't preorder yet, least not when i last checked. Theyre a perfectly good and reliable supplier : i've used them many times.

Initiall the Korean DVD seemed to be the first with Subtitles. But that information was retracted.

Anyone got any guesses as to how many more Miike films get announced for DVD this year?

Variety is reporting that British distributor Tartan Pictures has just picked up rights to Todd Solondz' Palindromes and the latest from Juon director Takeshi Shimizu, Marebito. Tartan has just recently signed a US deal for theatrical and DVD distribution with TLA so these should be coming to American shores sometime soon ... I caught Palindromes at the Toronto Festival, and it's excellent, but I haven't been able to turn up anything on Shimizu's latest - not a photo, not a trailer, nothing - despite the fact it just played at the Venice film festival. I'm a huge fan of Shimizu's Juon films, so if anyone can help me out with Marebito I'd appreciate it ...

Y'know Harv, if you want me to replace my import DVDs of Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi and Sonatine this isn't the way to convince me. IGN is reporting that Miramax is releasing a single double feature DVD for the pair of Kitano films on November 9th. While they don't have full technical specs yet it appears that both films will be contained on the same DVD which means an awful lot of video compression, crappy quality and no space left for any extras at all. This is a very poor way to treat a pair of fantastic films ...

In related news I have yet to see a single Miramax affiliated film at the Toronto Film Festival. It wasn't a planned thing but it certainly looks as though Miramax is really dropping out of the acquisitions hunt ... in past years you couldn't really move without tripping over a Miramax film ...

You know. The ones you see him wearing in interviews and in photographs. Nice text-based tshirts you dont see on sale anywhere... except at the site of the people who make them... GENEVEtokyo.

I knew about this site cos it was linked from the Japanese Gozu site. I then forgot about it, until today when I saw a picture for the IZO release showing one in a similar design for Zebraman being worn by Takashi Miike. Then i managed to find the site again, and the damn things have sold out in all sizes apart from small - and i am not that small. Anyhow: tip is to keep an eye on the site as they are bound to do some more shirts for different Miike films. How cool is that? A proper Miike shirt could be yours one day...

I love sick people. Japan has loads of them. Hideshi Hino is probably the sickest person on the planet who makes a career out of it. You might have seen (and this isnt a dare!) "Guinea Pig : Flowers of Flesh and Blood" or "Guinea Pig : Mermaid in a Manhole" on DVD: the only two of the incredibly infamous "Guinea Pig" series he directed. You might have read some of the many mangas being published in the USA currently. If you liked those you might be interested in "Fear Grotesque Theatre", as it seems to be called, a collection of 3 short films running at an odd 48 minutes each which will be shown together in Japanese theatres from October 2nd 2004. They are "Hell Young Priest", "My Baby", and "Mystery! Deceased Girl".

Sure, they're low-budget. Sure they're odd enough to have gone straight-to-video (as other Hino-based work seems to have in the past), but as far as i know this is the first set of live-action films based directly on his work. If you go to the (apparently) official Hideshi Hino site you can find short and small trailers for each of them. Some pictures are also floating around in there.

It something else i will look out for on DVD in the future. Perhaps "Unearthed Films" will pick them up?

Some nice High-Resolution shots of "House of Flying Daggers", which apparently will get a USA cinema release before the end of the year (?). Looks nice, but the only problem with these high-res shots is they're not quite big enough to turn into desktop wallpaper...

Ok. I dont approve of bootleging, and I am sure film companies don't either. So why this trend of not putting (at least) English Subtitles on the first official release of a film? The DVD for "Innocence" was only officially released on the 15th in Japan, yet i have already found a DVD rip thats been fan-subbed available to download on the internet. No, I cant tell you where, I dont want them in trouble: yes, at least I admire their knowledge of Japanese and ability to get the DVD so quickly. You see, even if companies don't put subtitles on, we are going to find things like this happening... I suppose the film companies are happy because fansubbers are marginalised and appear to be small-fry. I want more films with subs on so people arent criminalised. I dont want this trend of importers being penalised for being interested in foreign cinema, just because a minimal amount of people will not buy the USA dvd.

It's a site I've never been to before but after seeing all the still images and captures from the new Star Wars DVDs i was seriously considering (still am...) buying the discs just to see the changes. Now DVDTown have put up a page containing an embedded QT movie comparing Jabba from the old and new versions. See it here and compare for yourself.

Just found this Gozu DVD cover shot posted at KFC Cinema in the forum, and not at the Pathfinder Pictures site. Remeber the dvd is out in the UK at the end of October 2004 and in the USA at the end of November 2004. There's apparently an hour long behind-the-scenes feature (the same one as on the japanese dvd it would seem) and a Takashi Miike interview as usual. Pathfinder seem to be building up a "Takashi Miike Collection" so if anyone from over there can tell us of anything else licensed and not announced... like, erm "Man in White" or "Shangri-La", then you would make my day.

Well, the Toronto Film Festival is winding down which, at this point, ranks as a pretty good thing in my book. I've done sixteen screenings so far, with tickets for two more in hand, and I'm starting to overload. That said, I did catch two solid screenings today and would have done three if this morning's Kung Fu Hustle screening hadn't been cancelled. Read on for word on the Eros anthology film and Takashi Miike's Zebraman.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Eros, Zebraman Reviews"

Okay, here's a doozy and judging from the source it's legit ...

While introducing tonight's Midnight Madness screening of Takashi Miike's Zebraman, Toronto Film Festival programmer Colin Geddes first relayed Miike's regrets for not being in attendance and then relayed this little bit of news:

Miike and Quentin Tarantino were both in attendence at the just-wrapped-up Venice Film Festival this year and at some point during the proceedings the two of them sat down for a little chat. I'm willing to bet Quentin did most of the talking. But what came out of that talk was this: when writing the screenplay for Kill Bill Tarantino originally gave Go Go Yubari a twin sister, a character cut out of the final script for pacing reasons. Tarantino and Miike talked about the character some and the end result was Tarantino giving Miike permission to direct a stage play based on the Yubari twin and the removed section of screenplay.

No word on what the title will be or when this will actually hit the stage - Miike's got three films in various stages of production right now, so it won't be any time soon - but Geddes is in regular contact with the man and I very much doubt he would have spilled this if it wasn't definite.

Ah, the wonders of Google ... I was just sitting here talking about the film festival with a friend who has just returned after a couple years out of the country when I figured why not go looking for a trailer for 3-Iron (still my pick for best film of the festival) online ... et voila. I just found a seven minute clip posted on a German site. All I can tell you about the site is that it is German. My mother would be so disappointed in me. Anyway. It doesn't get across the sense of humor and innocence that the film has but it is still worth watching here. In Real Media format.

One of the tricks to surviving a film festival the scale of Toronto's is knowing how to pace yourself. I did not do this yesterday. Five screenings, with start times running from twelve noon till twelve midnight, is enough to sap the life out of anyone but luckily the films were good enough to keep me going through the day. The fatigue didn't really set in until today, the morning after ... Anyway, on the slate were Todd Solondz' Palindromes, Alexander Payne's Sideways, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Cafe Lumiere, Alejandro Almenabar's The Sea Inside and Nimrod Antal's Kontroll.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Palindromes, Sideways, Cafe Lumiere, The Sea Inside, Kontroll Reviews"

Logboy just turned up a couple shots of Immortel's DVD packaging over on the DVDtalk.com forums and they look purty ... We got links to trailers and retailers here.

Gah! I was lusting after this film! All of us Twitch-ers were! We all had tickets for this morning at nine, but they didn't do us a whole lot of good ... apparently some time between the first screening and last night the Festival organizers released their print for a private screening. Bad move. The private screening people killed the third reel. Killed it dead. Thus, no second Kung Fu Hustle screening. All you people who went to the first one: I hate you.

Michael Moore has announced that his next film - to be titled 'Sicko' - will be tackling the American healtch care system and is currently doing the rounds at the Toronto Film Festival looking for financial backers. Given the massive box office done by Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 that should take him all of about five minutes.

Q: "Who wants to finance my film?"
A: "Me! Me! Me!"

Moore describes the motivation for the film this way:

“I just don’t understand why one of the richest countries on the earth allows 44 million of its people no help when they are sick. It’s a human right. Every other country on this planet has some form of system that says you have a right to see a doctor if you get sick. So the film would look at the lack of the healthcare system in the US, at the insurance companies, the big hospitals, the pharmaceutical companies. It will be 90 minutes of punishment for these corporations and politicians who have put us in this situation.”

The full Screendaily article is here, but a subscription is required ...

I'm completely bogged down in the Toronto Film Festival right now but every now and then something comes along to tell me that there's still a world outside of here and that things are still happening there. Good things. Things Like Sky Captain And the World of Tomorrow. Screendaily has just run a review of what has to be one of my most anticipated films of the year ... check it out here.

Someone who managed to get their hands on an early copy of the film "Thriller: A Cruel Picture" went to pick up this and other dvds from his USA P.O. box and drove back towards the border to Canada. At the border he declaired the dvds he had with him in order to pay duty. The officer(s) at the border confiscated "Thriller" (and others, i believe) on the grounds it may be child pornography. The admitedly young-looking Christina Lingberg, who was in her early 20s at the time the film was made, is not the only star of the film though: it also contains hardcore segments filmed with another "performer". We all have heard and read stories about customs and excise. I would love to hear you opinions on this case (see the extended entry info below), especially if you got your hands on an early copy of the film. And i would love to hear your customs stories and opinions on these cases.

see reviews and stills of the dvd at : www.dvdmaniacs.net and www.dvdtimes.co.uk amongst others...

Continue reading ""Thriller : A Cruel Picture" ... Beware?"

Finally free of the shackles of necessary employment I made my way back into the circuit to make a strong finish to this year's festival. Last night I made two stops on the festival gravy train: Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside and Nimród Antal's Kontroll at Midnight Madness.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: The Sea Inside and Kontroll"

Ever on the lookout for excellence in the creation of entirely needless cultural ephemera I stumbled across Palisades Toys. Actually I've seen scads of their stuff before but have to admit these new Ren and Stimpy variant figues excited me. Not only are they doing Microbusts and the like but these limited edition figures feature waaaaaay cool accesories. Tongue Out Stimpy comes complete with a newly sculpted protruding tongue, his Dr. Stupid hat, his silver Dr. Stupid glasses, a blue littlerbox, a bag of Gritty Kitty Litter, the yellow Ren & Stimpy Secret Club helmet, a figure base, and "CLASSIC" LOG. For a look at other cool Ren and Stimpy shtufff push the jolly candy like link

And just in time for Paramounts October 12 release of Ren and Stimpy Seasons One and Two on DVD!!!!

Continue reading "PALISADES TOYS MERGES WITH BLAMMO!"

I was lamenting to some people earlier that, due to my constant running around to theatres and whatnot, I had yet to have a real "line experience". You know, where you strike up a conversation with someone, start sharing films, etc. Well, I had my first line experience of the festival last night, while standing in the rush line for Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's "Niceland". While talking to some acquaintances, a man came up to me out of nowhere and asked if I wanted a ticket to "Niceland", and for only $10. Before the other people in line could react, I whipped out the billfold and - Score! - snagged my ticket (checking to make sure it was the right screening and that I wasn't getting ripped off).

Continue reading "TIFF Report - Niceland"

How irritating is this ...

Anybody that's read this site or The Movie Blog when I was posting there knows that I've been an active member of the KFC Cinema forums for a couple years. I've had a lot of fun there hashing things out with other fans of Asian film and have pulled a lot of news items for my own sites - news which is absolutely always properly cited and linked to. It's a basic courtesy that if you're going to quote someone else's work you acknowledge it as such.

Well, as I've been attending the Toronto Film Festival and attending a lot of Asian films that aren't widely available yet I've been reviewing them here and posting about them on the KFC forums and directing people to the full articles if they want to read something more detailed. As near as I can tell this is the general point of news forums. I'm pretty certain this is why they have a specific 'Reviews' area on the KFC site ... you know, so people that see films can tell other interested people what they thought. I would like to be very clear here that I have never once posted a link to a news article that had already been discussed there or to a film review that wasn't relevant to their site.

Today the KFC folk sent me a message telling me to stop posting anything that pointed back here. What!?! I'm supposed to stop posting relevant info about Asian films on an Asian film discussion forum? Not sure how that makes sense, but here's the email telling me to do so:

Are you goin to post a message everytime you post a news on your web site? You already sperad the news about the openign of it., can you slow down a bit now.

KFCC dosent member linking to their own external review, the same goes for the news. Thank you!

If it's a forum rule I can live with it, but here's where things get fun. The day before they sent me this message KFC posted a news article on their front page that had clearly been copied and pasted from Twitch with only one line changed.

Here's what KFC posted on the 14th:

Variety is reporting that Lion's Gate has bought the rights to both the original Three horror anthology and the new Three: Extreme which features short films from Fruit Chan, Chan Wook Park and Takashi Miike. We don’t know if these 6 movies will be released straight to DVD or have a limited Theatrical release. You can read Fangoria's story on this here and see the trailers for Fruit Chan's submission here and Chan Wook Park's here.

And here's the story I posted here on the 10th:

Variety is reporting that Lion's Gate has bought rights to both the original Three horror anthology as well as the new Three: Extreme, featuring shorts from Fruit Chan, Chan Wook Park and Takashi Miike. No word yet on whether these will receive any sort of theatrical release or if they'll be headed straight to video, but Lion's Gate has done right by their Asian acquisitions, so this is good news.

You can read Fangoria's story on this here and see the trailers for Fruit Chan's submission here and Chan Wook Park's here.

Yeah. Changing one line doesn't make it any less plagiarism, boys. Basically I'm being told that I can't post my own info on their site but that they should be free to steal it from me and claim it as their own. Nice.

Kim Ki-duk won his second major directing award of the year for his film, 3 Iron, in Korea under the title Empty House. Kim Ki-duk had already won the best director award, the Silver Bear, at the Berlin Film Festival for another film Samaria.

It's rare that a director wins two of the major directing awards in one year. And for two different films too. He must be doing something right.

Reports are also out that the rights for 3 Iron have been sold to over 20 disutributors, including Sony Pictures, for US1$ million.

Zhang Yimou [pictured here with House of Flying Daggers star Andy Lau] is reportedly ready to begin working on a third martial arts film when he returns home from his visit here in Toronto. Our friends over at MonkeyPeaches.com have the exclusive here.

Oh. And there are some pics of Zhang Ziyi in her many roles in her upcoming film Jasmine Women.

::: sigh :::

I've held off posting about this for a couple of days now purely because the hosts for this stuff have been appearing and disappearing faster than I care to keep up, but it looks as though it has now found a permanent home ...

The Comic-Con footage from Robert Rodriguez' Sin City is now available for download here. It's pretty easy to see what all the buzz is about ... this is incredible looking stuff, easily the most direct page-to-screen adaptation attempted yet and more than enough to make sure I'm there opening day. Be warned, though: definitely not workplace friendly.

Just yesterday Opus and I were wondering aloud when someone would be smart enough to bring the Pang Brothers into North America with an English language film. These guys are visual stylists of the highest degree and have already won over international audiences with a string of solid flicks. Well, all hail Sam Raimi. Raimi has hired the Pangs to direct Scarecrow for his Ghost House Pictures. With any luck this will get the brothers the attention they deserve 'round these parts ... read the story in Fangoria here.

Screendaily has just run reviews of a pair of my more anticipated film of the year - those being Danny Boyle's Millions and Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. Early word on both is very good and I believe both will be in theaters before the end of the year ...

Screendaily has announced that Takashi Miike has signed up to direct Dragon's Fin Soup, his first ever English language film. The film is being described as "a fantasy comedy, telling of an encounter between an American ex-pat, a young Chinese woman living in Chinatown and a dragon" and is based on a novella by Thai writer S.P. Somtow. Miike's got to get The Big Spook War out of the way before he starts into this, but expect to see it sometime in 2005.

The Pusan International Film Festival has just announced their lineup and it's a good one ... the big news is that Wong Kar Wai's new - and hopefully final - edit of 2046 will play at the festival. Other big names include Takeshi Kitano's new film Blood and Bone, Shinji Aoyama's Lakeside Murder Case and Gen Sekiguchi's Survive Style 5.

If anybody's managed to dig up a trailer for Blood and Bone, feel free to share ... I'd love to see it ...

The script was a bit of a disappointment but there's no arguing with the visual style of Mamoru Oshii's new Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and you can now check out some high-res still shots of the film here.

Link by logboy®

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that MGM has agreed to a buyout bid from Sony after Time Warner dropped out of the running. While this has some pretty big consequences for the industry at large, the only one that really matters to me is that this means those 'Peter Jackson will direct the Hobbit' rumors are officially good and dead. The Hobbit's rights are held partially by New Line - a Time Warner company - and partially by MGM and neither is willing to let the other in on a potentially enormous payday. When Time Warner was in the running for MGM there was a chance that all the rights would end up in the same place thus paving the way for the film to go ahead, but don't hold your breath on that happening now ... The Hollywood Reporter story is here.

Variety is reporting that a pair of excellent film - My Summer of Love and A Hole in My Heart, two of the best I've seen at this year's festival - have been picked up for domestic distribution. My Summer of Love will be coming through Focus Features which is a good fit for both film and company. A Hole In My Heart will be distributed through Newmarket and while it's an excellent film they're going to have a hard time finding anybody willing to actually put it on their screens. This is a guaranteed NC-17 film, and a pretty harsh one at that ...

Aside from the celluloid melting and causing a 30 minute delay in my viewing of the Machinist at 9:30am (in which I agree with Todd’s review, but I think I liked it less than everyone else), I was a happy man at the end of this day of film fest viewing. This is because I was able to view two new films (Bad Education and Palindromes) by two director/writers (Pedro Almodovar and Todd Solondz) who I respect and enjoy above most others. This was also my first day I got to experience the sheer pleasure of the rush line twice in a row, in which I spent more time waiting in line for the films conversing with fellow film enthusiast and plugging my ears with whatever garbage was around on the ground to drown out the inane conversations in front and behind me (it was very much like that scene from “Annie Hall”), then I did actually watching the films. But for these two viewings it was well worth the wait.

Continue reading "TIFF Report - Bad Education, Palindromes Reviews"

Not exactly film news and not exactly new news but sadly new to me. In such broken prose do I begin my eulogy of one of the great comics of the last decade, Bone. I first began hearing about it almost ten years ago, then came the toys, movie rumors and inflatable dragons. Now, nothing left but to read the last few isues and make sure to pass Jeff Smith's kinder gentler comic book universe on to future generations.

The book detailed the adventures of Bone from Boneville. Here's Smith's plot synopsis of the first part of the story arc "After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins - Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, are separated and lost in a vast uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures." Believe me that doesn't even begin to cover the wonder of beautiful Thorn, Gran,Ma, Red Dragons, Cow races, Rat Creature's and Kingdok.

Before you boneheads start chatting up the obvious jokes make sure you've read an issue or two. With Eisner's sense of panel, an art style composed of equal parts Walt Kelly and Disney, Jeff Smith constructed a work that made me fall in love comics all over again. I love the dark stuff, own the complete Sandman (thanks Todd!!) but Bone is for those times when I need to let the light shine in and bathe my soul with the idea that goodness and innocense aren't just something from the comics.

You can now get all the comics in hardcover from Smith directly or get ahold of this massive complete paperback.

And Smith has one last bone left to throw fans. There will continue to be Bone merch largely because of an exciting development. Scholastic Inc. has picked up the Bone series for colorized reprint. Fans who remember those gorgeous color covers will now get to experience the entire story that way courtesy of Smith and the newly formed Scholastic Graphics imprint. The first installment of that is due in February.

Smith himself will be keeping busy for the next while doing a mini series of Shazam!.

Today was pretty much the half way point of the festival for me - the day my viewings broke into the double digits and also the day before I take a solid day off from screenings for a bit of a breather and to inject some normalcy back into my life. I was feeling pretty smug about my choices thus far having not seen anything that I'd consider a bad film yet but that string of good luck came to a screeching halt. I started well with Pawel Pawlikowski's stellar My Summer of Love - which has just been picked up by Focus Features which is a good move on both sides. I then descended into more middling territory with Spider Forest before descending into "I'd like my life back" territory with the horrible Dead Birds.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: My Summer of Love, Spider Forest, Dead Birds Reviews."

As invigorating as I often found "House Of Flying Daggers", the fact that I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep following the midnight screening of "The Machinist" left me in a bit of an exhausted state. I knew that I'd need my strength come that afternoon, as I was going to have to endure a 3-film barrage. I survived, even though I ended the night with might be the worst film I will have seen in the entire festival.

Continue reading "TIFF Report - Symmetry, The Overture, Throwdown, Schizo Reviews"

Ah, John Waters, the reigning king of raunch. My festival experience thus far had been composed of fairly highbrow fare and underground genre film. It was time for a change of pace and the world premiere of John Waters' A Dirty Shame was just the ticket. Advance word was that this film marked Waters' return to full on sexual sleaze - featuring Selma Blair's ridiculously oversized prosthetic breasts front and center on the poster was more than enough to get that particular word out - and the word was not wrong.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: A Dirty Shame Review"

Volunteering at the Film Fest means free passes to festival screenings, but it also means that with all that dead time between films you are able to watch the movies on your shift. Enduring Love -the new film by director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Changing Lanes) starring Samantha Morton, Rhys Ifans, Daniel Craig and Saint Ralph, a Canadian film from director Michael McGowan starring Campbell Scott, Jennifer Tilly and new comer Adam Butcher as the 14 year old Ralph were two such films I was able to watch during my most recent volunteer shifts. Enduring Love, a dark pyschological thriller, and Saint Ralph, what I would call a feel good dramadey, were both pleasant surprises for me at this years festival.

Continue reading "TIFF Report - Enduring Love, Saint Ralph"

We're still a long ways away from seeing this on the screen but while I was confirming release dates for my Sony Classics thread I was thrilled to see a tenative release date for Nick Park's THE WALLACE & GROMIT MOVIE: THE CURSE OF THE WERERABBIT from DreamWorks Pictures. Peter Sallis reprises his role as Wallace and Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes are listed in the cast as well.

It looks like AICN was on top of this sometime ago and has a promo image here.

Okay. So I saw House of Flying Daggers this morning at TIFF and it rules like lords. I already have my ticket for Kung Fu Hustle on Thursday and you can expect a report from me then. And there is a connection between the two...

Continue reading "Why my next television may be a Sony..."

So how do you follow up two really in depth and eloquent film reports? Throw everything up into the air and hope that when it hits the ground you have something coherant with correct spelling. It's simple. If you want to know about the content go back to Todd and Opus' lengthy and complete reviews. What I will do is share my thoughts and feelings about the movies the best I know how. With hand puppets and the banging of sticks...

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Machinist, House of Flying Daggers and 3 Iron"

A major strength of the Toronto Film Festival is the range of programs it has. It's possible to cram a ridiculously wide cross section of films into a very short time and that's precisely what I've done over the past fourteen hours or so with viewings of The Machinist, House of Flying Daggers and 3 Iron - psychological thriller, historical wuxia, and magical realist films respectively.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: The Machinist, House of Flying Daggers, 3 Iron Reviews"

I'm afraid that any review I do of "I Heart Huckabees" is going to echo Todd's word for word. Needless to say, I loved the film, and it was the perfect film to catch first thing in the morning. After all, it's got Jason Schwartzman hiring a couple of existential detectives to help him figure out the meaning of life while simultaneously trying to prevent an upstart salesman played by Jude Law from taking over his environmental activist group. At the same time, he falls in with a bitter firefighter played by Mark Wahlberg (who should be getting all kinds of nominations for his performance) who is concerned about the world's petroleum issues and is increasingly falling under the sway of a nihilistic outlook being preached by the detective's French rival.

Did you get all that?

Continue reading "TIFF Report: I Heart Huckabees, The Machinist, House Of Flying Daggers Reviews"

Now is a great time to be an anime fan. A number of highly anticipated movies are hitting North American screens this year ("Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence", "Steamboy", and "Appleseed"), with plenty of other titles currently being released or coming out soon as well. Certainly the most unusual looking is "Dead Leaves", the new OVA from Production I.G. How unusual? Well, it does feature a guy with a TV for a head as one of the main characters...

The DVD is slated for North American release on September 28th. But get this... Manga Entertainment (the title's distributor) will also be streaming the entire 50-minute OVA, for free, directly from the "Dead Leaves" website on that day. For more info, check out this article on Anime News Network, or go to AnimeOnDVD.

With a mix of elements that owes a little bit to Charlie Kaufman, a little bit to Spike Jonez and a little bit to Andersons Wes and p.t. David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees will definitely be one of the best films to come out of America this year and will also almost certainly prove just a little too strange to catch on with a mainstream audience.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: I Heart Huckabees Review"

Okay, so this isn't a TIFF report - well, I did just get back from "I Heart Huckabees", and it's well worth your time and money if only to see Mark Wahlberg's performance - but it's still big news. Maybe even a matter of national security. A new "Team America" trailer has just been posted on Apple's trailer page! It's bigger, longer, and louder than the previous trailer... and there's even some sweet puppet romance for good measure, if you're into that sort of thing.

Click here to see the strings...

I started my day off today by getting up far too early and pretty much collapsing, thanks mostly to the fact that I'd had no more than four hours sleep a night since Sunday and was pretty much entirely exhausted. So I cancelled my volunteer shift, crawled back into bed and slept well into the afternoon. Feeling perky and refreshed I caught two wildly different films back to back: Lukas Moodyson's intense A Hole In My Heart and Christopher Smith's Creep.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: A Hole In My Heart, Creep Reviews"

Just walked in the door after catching the North American premier of David Gordon Green's latest, "Undertow". I decided against joining the rush line for the Midnight Madness screening of "Creep", which might have been a mistake seeing as how that might've been the only chance I'll have in this lifetime to be in the same room as Franka Potente. Oh well... this weekend is shaping up to be pretty packed so I can use all of the sleep I can get.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Undertow, Automne Reviews"

Hey ... we just added the ability for you all to subscribe to particular threads on the site. When you go to post a comment now there's a check box at the bottom of the form. Click it and from then on you'll automatically receive an email every time somebody else posts to the thread. Each email you receive will also include a link to a page where you can opt out of the subscription at any time, so it's all nice and simple.

Variety is reporting that Lion's Gate has bought rights to both the original Three horror anthology as well as the new Three: Extreme, featuring shorts from Fruit Chan, Chan Wook Park and Takashi Miike. No word yet on whether these will receive any sort of theatrical release or if they'll be headed straight to video, but Lion's Gate has done right by their Asian acquisitions, so this is good news.

You can read Fangoria's story on this here and see the trailers for Fruit Chan's submission here and Chan Wook Park's here.

I'll confess to being a little unconvinced when I heard Robert Rodriguez would be adapting Sin City to film. Sure, I like the guy's stuff well enough but this is a whole world away from Rodriguez's normal thing and I just wasn't sure how he would handle it. Well, Aint It Cool just posted links to three sets of stills from the film and you can consider me sold. Check 'em out: set one, set two, set three.

Whee! As if that new teaser for Steven Chow's Kung Fu Hustle that just turned up on the official web site wasn't enough, another one just popped up here.

Here's a phrase tht makes me smile: Pang Brothers crime thriller. Mmm. The Pang's haven't really picked up a gun since the stellar Bangkok Dangerous, and that's just far too long, so I was pretty happy to find the trailer and website for Danny Pang's upcoming Leave Me Alone. The bad news here is that the leads in the film are pop stars Ekin Cheng - in a dual role, no less - and Charlene Choi, neither of whom are really known for their acting chops though Ekin does have his moments. The good news is that it's a Pang film, which means that even if Cheng and Choi are at their absolute worst there will at the very least be a stack of stylish images and edits to keep you entertained. You can find a synopsis of the film here.

Danny's Leave Me Alone is due in Hong Kong theaters November 11th with brother Oxide's Abnormal Beauty due November 23rd, and the duo's Recycle is due sometime late in 2004 or early 2005.

Oh my. The more I see of this film the more I need to see it on the big screen. The site is mostly just stills and music, but it's beautiful stuff ... check it out here ...

According to TheForce.net Lucasfilm has announced that they are at work on a new Star Wars TV show. Lucasfilm is not yet answering any significant questions about the show so, alas, we can't tell you anything about setting, time frame, characters, whether it's live action or animated, or whether it will suck more or less than the prequels. We can, however, direct you to this audio file of Mark Hamill talking about the possibility of episodes 7-9.

The incredible Thai martial arts film Ong-Bak will be hitting DVD in France October 7th. This is the first edition of the film to appear outside of Asia, and for a moment I entertained the possibility that it might also be the first legal edition to include English subtitles, but alas, it doesn't. There's not much in the way of specs announced so far, but what has been announced so far can be found here. Note that running time: 105 minutes. That's the run time listed on my less-than-authorized, uncut version which raises the interesting question of whether Besson has gone back to the original version of the film for the DVD release. I certainly wouldn't object to that.

And why should you care about any of this ... hoo boy ... Tony Jaa will be the next major international action star. The man can do insane things. But don't take my word for it. Head to the official French site here and check the trailer and Making Of footage. Not sure how long that Making Of stuff has been there but it is sweeeeeeet ...

Ong-Bak will be hitting North American screens in November. And if that stuff tweaked your interest you really should check out the trailer for Born To Fight - the new film from the same director / action choreographer combo. Yummy.

Roy Disney is a very happy man today. After a little more than a year of board members - led by Disney - and share holders calling for his ouster Michael Eisner has announced that he will step down from his position as the head of Disney at the end of his current contract, in 2006. Recent days have seen Eisner fighting with pretty much everybody - Pixar is on the way out, the Weinsteins look to be following, and the cell animation department that the company was largely built upon has been dismantled. Is there anybody who will be sad to see Eisner go? Nope. Not really at this point. You can read the letter announcing his intentions here.

After giving away a couple in contests I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and plunked down $70 for Sideshow/WETA’s incredible Cave Troll Bust. That’s a lot of cha-ching for little ol’ me but man was it worth it. Even at approx. ¼ scale ol’ thumpie was an impressive showpiece. I waited a loooooooong time as the item was on backorder. I still remember how excited I was when I opened the package.

But no sooner had I opened it than I got a newsletter from Sideshow about a matching set of 4 count 'em four pretty affordable Troll maquettes that showcase each of the kinds of trolls featured in the LOTR trilogy. ! Be still my troll hungry heart….

The baby on the left is an Attack Troll. Others in the series include a Siege Tower Troll, Grond Troll and Catapult Troll. While not as massive as the ¼ scale Cave Troll Bust these four Troll Maquettes are still pretty big and as a set I confess I think they are the crowning glory of the entire LOTR polystone Sideshow/WETA line second only to say, a complete set of balrog items. Originally used by the WETA digital artists to help provide final armor design & skin colors, these four guys just scream (or is that snarl!) completism for a big ole geek like me.

Sideshow is offering them for $65 a piece. The larger cave Troll Bust is a mere $70. Edition sizes will be limited but quantities haven't been determined yet.

Screendaily has just published detailed reviews of four films appearing this week at the Toronto Film Festival, including the high profile I Heart Huckabees. You can read their reviews of David O. Russell's Huckabees here, Kim Ki Duk's 3-Iron here, Lukas Moodysson's A Hole In My Heart here and Roger Michell's Enduring Love here.

I'll be seeing A Hole In My Heart tonight and from the sounds of this review I'll probably come out feeling the need to bathe. This sounds like harsh, intense stuff. The trailer is available online here.

Russell's Huckabees is one that I don't expect to be able to get into at the festival but I've already been greatly intrigued by the website and trailer and any film that draws comparisons to Charlie Kaufman, which is Screendaily's primary point of comparison, is sure to have me in the audience opening night.

After the hellish flight that Todd described a few posts back, and after a good solid sleep to take care of any jet lag, and my first viewing of "Spaced" (brilliant!), I finally darkened a theatre door around 9:30pm, to catch the first screening of "After The Day Before" before heading on to the midnight screening of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

Continue reading "TIFF Report: After the Day Before, GITS 2 Reviews"

This one's going to brief out of necessity ... I 'm just way too tired to go into detail right now. Perhaps Nick or Jason will see fit to expand on this later on tomorrow ...

First viewing of the festival: the much anticipated Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. I've been waiting for this for so long, anxiously snapping fansubs of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV show to tide me over until this finally released and I'm a little bit disappointed. Of the three Ghost titles I think this one is the weakest. It's not the visuals or animation work - this is one of the finest technical pieces of animation you'll ever see and is well worth a viewing on this level alone - but that Oshii seems to have lost sight of his characters in all the philosophizing. The character quirks are all but gone and there's nary an actual conversation to be found with Oshii preferring to have Batou, Togusa et al drop famous quotes at each other rather than say anything in their own voice. There are some very clever, very funny exchanges, but on the whole the dialogue feels more like you're reading an essay than it does like you're listening in on actual people having actual conversations. This is particularly sad considering how the dialogue is such a major strength in the first Ghost in the Shell film and the subsequent television show.

So, to sum up: pictures good, talking bland.

And now I sleep.

So I went searching the Daily Variety web site looking for that Jet Li ad of gratitude but it turns out you have to subscribe to get the full articles. Curses!

But I did see something else that tickled my fancy. Looks like Warner Bros. decided to hang ten [yeah that's right. I wrote that!] and buy the rights to remake Hawaii Five-O. This was perhaps the only cop drama I would watch as a kid after cartoons were done after school.

George Nolfi will write the script and I can only hope to God that it is better than his first effort Timeline. We'll have to wait until Ocean's Twelve to see if he is getting better.

Sing the theme song with me now. Da da da da dah daaaaaaah. Da da da da daaaaaaah.

Nobody?

:::sulk:::

Given the success the Hero has had the past two weekends at the box office Jet Li saw fit to put up a full-page ad in Daily Variety. Read the short news byte here.

Now, I don't want to jump to any conclusions here or make any outlandish assumptions. But I am like the rest of you when I have had it up to here with this whole Miramax/Hero thing. While I don't doubt Jet's sincerity in his thanks for the success of the film since it's opening one cannot forget that Miramax/Disney owns the rights to a few of Jet's movies.

We may not certainly like what went on with Hero and other properties owned by Miramax/Disney but you cannot fault Jet for showing a little gratitude. No sense biting the hand that feeds you?

I started my film fest out with Notre Musique, the newest offering from Jean-Luc Godard. I was looking forward to this film launching off the fest for me and it was a good idea I must say. I enjoy Godard's work and I enjoyed this film, though this is where I confess that I hate films that use crude and off key piano sounds to display emotion. With that said, the film is split up into 3 "kingdoms" (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) with Purgatory encompassing most of the film and delievering the story. It was overlooked at Cannes, and also called "senile work" (by Le Nouvel Observateur) but even with it's short comings (poor editing, intolerable music moments - a personal thing more than anything), I believe his newest work to be one worth the view. It clearly has grand moments that make audiences think and react and shows Godard's personal thoughts of today's society. To find out more about the movie and the remaing times at the film fest, click here.

Next up is trying to find Todd in the line up tonight to watch Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence.

A word of advice. If you want to fly from Seattle to Buffalo, from whence you will be picked up and brought to Toronto for a major film festival, and your travel agent tells you that being routed through Washington DC is a good idea, run away. Run hard. Run fast. Jason from Opuszine is crashing at my place for the duration of the festival and took exactly that route ... four hour flight delay and a long drive through quite a lot of rain later I dropped into bed for a good four hours sleep before getting up early to hit the festival box office - today was the first day that volunteer vouchers could be redeemed - and then head off to my volunteer shift. The original plan for today included Godard's new film, but I don't think I can handle a french art film in my current sleep deprived state, so I came home to sleep instead ...

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Day One, Part One"

This is the first I've heard of this film and it sounds fascinating - a Danish directed children's movie animated entirely with marionettes, and these marionettes are not employed in nearly the self aware, ironic way as are those in Team America. Check out the detailed review here.

Looking to fill your anime jones? How 'bout a stack of high res still images from Howl's Moving Castle and Steamboy.

Link by LogBoy®

Look. There it is.

Link by LogBoy®

Uber-bizarre Japanese cult director Takashi Miike has signed on to direct a big budget adaptation of Yoshiyuki Kuroda's manga The Big Spook War - a popular children's story about a young boy fighting against magical creatures. Eleven year old Ryunosuke Kamiki will star with Chiaki Kuriyama of Battle Royale and Kill Bill fame. I can only presume that Miike will be toning down his body fluid fixation for what is being marketed as a mainstream children's fantasy ... You can find some more details here.

Link by LogBoy®

The Europacorp has set a European release date of February 2nd for Danny the Dog. Rogue Pictures - who are releasing the film as Unleashed - are currently saying only Spring 2005 for North America.

For those who don't know Unleashed is the Luc Besson produced flick starring Jet Li as an emotionally stunted man who has been raised in captivity and forced into a life as an illegal pit fighter by a very disturbing Bob Hoskins. Morgan Freeman also stars. If the trailer is any indication Unleashed will be pretty easily the best western production Li has appeared in to date ...

Thanks to LogBoy for the heads up ...

Yep, Twitch has only been around a few days and I've already racked up multiple posts about Takashi Miike's Bird People of China. There's a good reason for that. I think this is the best film Miike has ever made, and is one of my absolute favorites to come out of Japan in recent years. And now you can see the trailer. Voila.

I have a new mantra for myself: "Already have good copy of OldBoy. Special Features not subtitled. Very expensive for pretty box. Don't buy new OldBoy. Already have good copy of OldBoy. etc etc etc" I really don't need to spend the money on this, but it's getting harder all the time and LogBoy certainly isn't making it any easier by sending me close up shots of what might be the best DVD packaging ever.

For those not keeping score Starmax - OldBoy's Korean rights holder - is releasing an ultra limited edition four DVD set of Chan Wook Park's award winning film housed in a hand made copper case. This thing's so limited that it's available by pre-order only, with only enough copies being made to fill the pre-orders. The set includes a soundtrack disc, multiple commentaries, stacks of documentaries, a set of Chan Wook Park's short films and much, much more. It's also insanely expensive, especially by Korean standards where even limited edition releases are priced very reasonably. Outcry over the pricing of this set in Korea has been strong enough that Starmax has announced what they are called the OldBoy Final Edition - slated for release sometime in November - to include the new transfer prepped for the Ultimate Edition and 2 1/2 hours of the big set's special features ...

Not many details yet - i.e. no word if those rumors that this edition will include Yimou's original 20 minute longer cut - but the North American DVD release of Hero has been announced for November 30th. I'll keep my eyes open for specs ...

*** UPDATE ***

Hey, look! Specs! And they aint so hot.

Technical specifications:
- 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen transfer
- Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
- English dub Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround

Supplemental Features:
- Making-of Featurette of "Hero"
- Interview with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino on "Hero"
- "Hero" Theatrical Trailer

No DTS, and word is it's the theatrical release rather than the long version. I'll be sticking with my pretty Korean edition, I think.

*** Another Update ***

More specs. According to DVD Answers this will include a DTS track, as well as an English language dub - I knew they couldn't resist - the Hero Defined documentary, and some storyboards. Hero Defined is the half hour english documentary I mentioned above, and it's pretty good. A solid overview of the different stages and aspects of production, as told by Zhang Yimou and the film's stars.

Hello,

Dave Canfield here. Some of you may remember me as big bald dave from themovieblog.com others from my own web site Imagine 'Dat! others from meeting me at the Cornerstone Festival Imaginarium, still others from my stint as the fifth member of Spinal Tap (COWBELL BABY- ALL COWBELL ALL THE TIME!!!) I'll be one of the regular folk chiming in on all things geekola and love to hear it if you think i'm fulla beans.

To understand where I'm coming from on most of my posts I encourage you to visit my intro at Imagine 'Dat! where I go a little further into just why a grown man does this instead of working for a living.

My turn ons are ideas, horror movies, Sideshow Toys, and vintage TV animation. My turn offs are political extremes, rant instead of dialogue and tuna.

More soon to come....

All righty.. The GiggleShorts International Film Festival is about as self-explanatory as you would like any event title. If you can't figure it out, they'll explain it for you here. Yup. A Comedy Short Film festival. You're a genius.

The sucker takes place in Toronto Sept 29 - Oct. 3 with over 200 Film Shorts - mostly being shown at the Bloor Cinema.

The Passion of Jim has been recently added to the Festival's Roster - a dandy little short about a nobody filmmaker who, while being so completely passionate about his craft, hasn't a bleedin clue what he's doing. Sort of like my college days. Without the passion.

Anyway, what's the big deal about The Passion of Jim? Well.. Umm.. I'm in it. So there. I'm trying to make myself feel good.

Wow. You can even pre-order it and watch the Trailer or the first 2 minutes: Right Here.
(And allow me to add to the pressure to attend Shaun of the Dead on the 24th)

In my e-mail inbox yesterday was an update from shaunsquad.com informing me that there were only 17 days left until Shaun of the Dead landed on our shores. Shucks. That was sure swell of them. But there was a little sumthin' sumthin' that caught my eye. The film's director, Edgar Wright, has been keeping a press junket journal as he and the film's stars, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost tour North America showing the film at advance screenings.

Read Edgar's latest posting on their Austin screening with the AICN gang and special guest Robert Rodriguez. The only man in Hollywood who looks good in a cowboy hat. However, you do need to log in as a member of the site in order to read the journal.

Don't get me wrong. The night we got to hang with Edgar, Simon and Nick the night after the screening here in Toronto is a highlight of my recent memory. Right up there with the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot of '94. Todd, we are indebted to you. But to sit at the dinner table with those three lads, and Harry, AND Robert? Wow.

Shaun of the Dead opens in theatres across North America on September 24th. And you will go. Join us!

If it wasn't for Miramax, North America would be laughing their asses off watching Shaolin Soccer - but we won't get into that right now. Right now, we celebrate with the website for Kung Fu Hustle (thanks once again to MonkeyPeaches), the new film by Shaolin director Stephen Chow, with teaser trailer and all. It's also at this years Toronto Film Festival and well worth the money for the chance to catch it on the big screen before it's bought up by Harvey and edited to target helper monkeys. Hustle your way over to here.

*** UPDATE FROM TODD ***

There's a new teaser on there! It's not the old Shaolin Soccer spoof one ... nice ...

Wanna be the first on your block to own the original, restored, uncut version of Godzilla on DVD? Well, get thee to Australia. Due out at the end of October - man, October's one expensive month - the Australian DVD will feature the restored print of the original Japanese film - never seen in the US until the recent reissue - as well as the Raymond Burr starring US recut. Details available here. Now everybody say thank you to Logboy.

Well it would appear that Britain's Channel Four and the good ol' BBC have realized that the runaway success of Shaun of the Dead has provided them with ample opportunity to cash in on some old properties.

First out of the gate is Channel Four with a luxury three DVD re-issue of Spaced, quite possibly the finest sitcom ever unleashed upon humanity. Seriously, I love this show. I love it so much that despite having a signed copy of the original Spaced box I immediately went and ordered this set purely because I must own the third disc, which houses a feature length documentary. This is so good that everybody I have shown it to - absolutely everybody - has ended up watching at least one complete season in a single sitting. Good show. Good, good, good. Amazon's got it here.

Next out of the gate is the BBC with Big Train - a sketch based show starring Simon Pegg - of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead - and Mark Heap of Spaced. Hello, Brian. I know next to nothing about it but based on cast alone I'm already placing my order. That one's here.

And if you're not all hyped up about Shaun of the Dead you're obviously not spending enough time watching the trailer. Go! Watch! Enjoy!

Some early reviews of the DVD edition of the original Star Wars Trilogy have started to appear online. I'm still torn over whether to pick these up. On the one hand these are classic films of my youth. I saw the originals countless times and my Star Wars toys were staples of my childhood. Seriously, life would have been very different for me if not for Star Wars. But because of how much they meant to me when young Lucas' constant tinkering with the films and steadfast refusal to ever allow anyone to see them in their original form again has left such a sour taste in my mouth that I think those early memories may be tainted forever. I just can't watch these things any more without being angry over the treatment the originals have received since and without a bitter sense of disappointment over how the prequels turned out. So maybe, maybe not.

Anyway ... reviews are here and here. Links courtesy of Logboy.

Well, between here and the Movie Blog I've been talking about just what a strange and compelling film Gozu is for a good long time now, and here's you chance to see for yourself. Logboy has sent in a crystal clear real media version of the trailer which I'm going to make available for a limited time here. Now, this is just going to destroy our bandwidth, so if you want this to remain available I'm going to need some help coming up with mirror sites ... if you've got a bit of hosting space you can donate let me know and we'll try and keep this thing out there ... massive spoiler at the end, by the way ...

*** Update ***

No more trailer. Nope. All gone.

With the film festival starting tomorrow it seems like an appropriate time to re-post this interview I did with Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes. This will be familiar reading for those who caught it on the first go-round at The Movie Blog, but there's enough good reading in there to make posting it again worthwhile. Note that this conversation occurred a few weeks before the Madness lineup was announced, and Geddes was strictly forbidden from spilling the beans on any of the upcoming titles ...

Continue reading "TIFF Report: Todd Interviews Midnight Madness Programmer Colin Geddes"

Well, everybody else is reporting on this so I may as well jump on the bandwagon as well ... Word on the street is that Joss Whedon will head directly into production on the third X Men movie once he wraps production on Serenity. All I can say about this is good choice. He's an excellent writer who knows the characters inside out thanks to his current gig penning an X comic title and he's got a solid visual style. I really don't think you could make a better choice now that Singer's off the picture ...

Surprising as it is to say Korea is a relative novice when it comes to making martial arts films. Sure, they like to watch them - Bruce Lee was a star of iconic stature there - but they just haven't made very many of them. Korean martial arts flicks are so rare that the director of Volcano High was able to boast that that film was the first to ever use a Korean wire rig team, one which had been assembled and trained specifically for that film, and this was only a couple of years ago. That said, they're making up for lost time in a hurry. The latest big-budget wire fu flick to make it out of Korea is Arahan, and though it stops a little short of classic status it is an awful lot of fun.

Continue reading "Arahan Review"

A stack of pictures from the set of Sha Po Lang - the new martial arts film with Donnie Yen (Sky in Hero), Sammo Hung and Wu Jing - have hit the web here and they look mighty sweet. Yen's one of the most highly trained martial arts performers in the world - his mother is a world reknowned master who trained both Donnie and his sister from childhood - and he's promising to get back to the basics with this one: as little wire work as humanly possible, and lots of long straight up fight sequences. Given the caliber of his co-stars this should be one quality film. Sha Po Lang will be released in Asia in November, so look for official DVDs to hit around December or January.

A new trailer for Oxide Pang's new film Abnormal Beauty has just hit online and it looks incredible. The film is a psycho-sexual thriller about a young photography student who becomes obsessed with photographing death and based on what I've read it looks as though after a couple of pretty-but-vapid films the Pangs may be back to packing some substance to back up their wildly impressive visual style. You can view the trailer here and read a more detailed synopsis here. Tartan Films has picked up the rights to both Abnormal Beauty and Re-Cycle - co-directed by Oxide and his twin brother / producing partner Danny, and reuniting the brothers with their star from The Eye - for North America and the UK. Tartan's handled a few previous Pang titles and treated them quite well, so this is a good thing ... no new footage from Re-Cycle just yet, but this original six minute reel still packs a punch. Zowie. Pang Brothers good.

Thanks to Hitman at KFC for the new trailer ...

Ah, the goodness that is MonkeyPeaches ... you can always count on those fine folk to point the way to good things. The good things today are a series of ULTRA high res still shots from Wong Kar Wai's 2046 - including a few I hadn't seen before - tucked away in the press ection of the film's French distributor. This thing is just freakin' gorgeous. Check 'em out here.

Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are both reporting that Michael Moore is withdrawing Fahrenheit 9/11 from consideration in the Best Documentary race at this year's Oscars, choosing instead to target the Best Picture race. Why not go for both? Because a documentary cannot be broadcast on television and still be eligible for the Best Doc prize and Moore's got every intention of getting this thing on the airwaves before the presidential election. Moore explains here. Say what you will about the man, but he's certainly determined ...

The SciFi Channel has long been criticized for a low-budget b-film approach to their original material but I started to get a sense that change was in the wind of late, first with the two Dune mini-series, then with the announcement that Bruce Campbell and Mike Mignola were both shepherding original projects along for SciFi this year. Sure, Campbell's B, but he's precisely the right kind of B.

But here's some A list talent for you. The SciFi Channel have just announced that Tony and Ridley Scott will be supervising and executive producing a four hour version of The Andromeda Strain, from a script by a Pulitzer winner no less, while Oscar nominee Frank Darabont will produce a four hour remake of The Thing along with John Carpenter's Thing producer David Foster.

Yeah, they've just upped the talent quotient a bit. The full story is here.

Yes, yes. My Asian film fixation borders on the unhealthy and obsessive. I can't help it! There's so much good stuff out there, and there's more coming to our shores every day! Here's a list:

Artsmagic has confirmed Takashi Miike's Bird People of China for November 16th and Miike's pair of Young Thugs films for October 23rd. The ubiquitous Logboy is telling me that they've also got Miike's Kintaro: White Collar Worker slated for October 23rd. Bird People is by far the most anticipated of these titles for me, hence the great big picture. It's just simply a beautiful film, an adult fairy tale of sorts, and it hasn't been seen by nearly as many people as it should've been. It's a dramatic change of pace for Miike and he does it so well that I wish he would go this way more often.

Less compelling for me, but a pretty big deal for his many fans, is word that Tokyo Shock / Media Blasters will be releasing a pair of Ryuhei Kitamura titles. Aragami hits November 16th and Alive comes October 26th. As flawed as it is I love Kitamura's Versus but to my mind he's been on a downward slide ever since. I'm just praying that he manages to finally put it all together again for Godzilla: Final Wars.

If you're in the Toronto area we need your help this week to get the word out about Twitch. Got a spare minute or two and access to a photocopier? Here's what you can do. Download this wee Word document here - ooh, pretty flyers - print off a copy, make a stack of photocopies, cut them in the appropriate places and distribute to your local video stores, rep theaters, the free paper racks at your local bar, and all those great big lines of people you'll soon be seeing standing in line waiting to either buy tickets or get into screenings at the Toronto Film Festival. I just printed up 800 this afternoon and am hoping to blow through those in the first couple days, and anything anybody can do to help out will be greatly appreciated ... really, you can feel free to do this even if you're outside Toronto, but the 'festival coverage' line on there won't make nearly so much sense ...

Argh! If there's anything more irritating than spending an entire day building a site and filling it with content while having your modem disconnect every three or four minutes, I don't know what it is. This sucks. Really.

I would like to officially say that LogBoy kicks ass. I don’t know where he finds this stuff, but he just keeps turning it up … the latest from the House of Log are these two extremely high res images from Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. This is the new film from the director of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke that has animation geeks drooling all over themselves and I haven’t seen them anywhere else yet. I just couldn’t bring myself to scale them down any farther, so here they are in all their glorious largeness. Shot one is a larger version of the picture attached to this article. Shot two is the castle itself. Sweet.

I posted a link to the upcoming Japanese edition of the blockbuster Korean war film Taegukgi - now in limited release in US theaters, by the way - over on the Movie Blog a couple weeks back, but cautioned at the time that an equally impressive, and much cheaper, Korean edition was sure to hit the books soon. And here it is. Tin case, three discs, photo book, post cards, a stack of special features - unfortunately no subtitles on the special features - and then the film itself with a lovely widescreen transfer and English subtitles. All for under twenty five bucks.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Korean DVDs? Because I do. Hands down the best quality for the dollar in the international film world and they always have enough bells and whistles to keep the most serious collector geek buzzing happily along for weeks.

It's already available for pre-order at DVDfromKorea but I'm going to suggest you hold off until it gets into the system at YesAsia. YesAsia's sticker price will be slightly higher but between their free shipping offer and the fact they've got shipping centers in the US, Canada and the UK - meaning that you never get dinged for customs charges - they tend to come out the cheapest by a decent margin. I'll keep my eyes open for it to turn up in their system and post the release date as soon as I get it.

The American website for the film - complete with a list of theaters screening the film - is available here.

One of the beautiful things about foreign films is the way they can force you to rethink all of your assumptions, how they can take genre conventions that are played out and stale here in North America and turn them on end in new and unexpected ways. Such is the case with The Uninvited. I'd heard very little about this film until it picked up an award at this year's Fantasia Festival and the ensuing buzz earned it an immediate spot on my shopping list. Good choice.

Continue reading "The Uninvited"

Huzzah! The second most impressive sci-fi trailer of the year - well, maybe third. Sky Captain's hard to ignore - belongs to France's Immortel, a visually stunning story of ancient Egyptian gods looking to procreate towards the end of the 21st century. Word on the street is that the story line's a bit muddled and the CG is a little bit inconsistent, but just check the trailers - here and here - and the extended clips - here - to have your mind blown. There's no word on a North American release yet, but the French DVD is due for release on October 27th and will reportedly include a full english language track. Look! Here it is!

I know what you're asking yourself now. If Immortel and Sky Captain are duking it out for number two in the visuals department, what's number one? Casshern. Mmm. Trailer. That one's out on DVD in Japan on October 23rd. And look! Here it is, too!

Well, The Brothers Grimm may have been pushed back, but that doesn't mean there's no good news in Gilliam-land ... reports are that the former Python has signed Jennifer Tilly and Jeff Bridges to star in his next film, Tideland, due to start shooting at the end of this month. Bridges has already proven himself to be a good fit for Gilliam's bizarre world - his performance in The Fisher King is rivalled only by Lebowski in the Bridges canon - and Jennifer Tilly strikes me as a perfect fit as well.

The Toronto Star's Geoff Pevere and Peter Howell - the two best film reviewers in town, in my opinion - have written up a massive pre-Toronto Film Festival survey of what, in there opinion, are the Festivals hot films. A good number of the films I'm most looking forward to are not on their list, but I've already picked up a few new must-see's thanks to it. If you're looking for a solid, quick overview of what's what at this year's Fest, head here.

Harvey Weinstein's in a bit of a hard spot. After years of delaying the theatrical release of Hero, boucing it from release slot to release slot for no apparent reason, thereby incurring the anger of Asian film fans throughout the world he was finally pressured into putting the film on screens by Quentin Tarantino and, hey looky, all those fans who said you had a good film wasting away on your shelves were right! Number one two weeks in a row! So what's an egocentric autocrat to do? Acknowledge that he'd been sitting on a highly profitable piece of work for two years while his own productions failed to break even? Hell, no! That would mean admitting he'd made a mistake, and might lead to awkward questions about all the other Asian titles that have been wasting away on Miramax shelves for the past few years. The answer, of course, is spin and Harvey's nothing if not a master of the spin. Here's his take on the situation as well as responses from outspoken Miramax critics at Monkey Peaches and Kung Fu Cinema. Nobody's buying it, Harv.

Ah ... this just makes me laugh ... thirty second versions of popular films, animated, with bunnies ... Check it out here ...

Here's a little something courtesy of the folks at GreenCine ...

Just when you thought all the anti-war documentary furor was dying down, here it comes again. Director David O. Russell is having a documentary prepped for a special edition re-release of his acclaimed Three Kings suppressed for political reasons. Warner Brother's asked Russell to put together a follow up documentary to accompany a special edition re-release of his largely overlooked Three Kings - timed to piggyback on the marketing efforts for his new I Heart Huckabees - only to reject it on the grounds that it "came out to be a documentary that condemns, basically, war."

Err, yeah. Warners? Did you actually watch Three Kings before asking him to do this? What did you expect him to turn in, exactly? A happy, feel-good pro-Republican PR piece? When you ask for a documentary to accompany what boils down to be an anti-war film you shouldn't really be surprised when that documentary also turns out to be anti-war. The folks at WB have reportedly offered to give Russell the rights to the film to find alternate distribution, but not until after the presidential election. Whatever happened to the days when the media and the arts commentated on the state of politics rather than being meekly led by the nose? I miss those days.

The New York Times article on this is available here, and the LA Times has another here.

A while back on the Movie Blog I posted a link to a trailer for Chan Wook Park's submission to the anthology film Three: Monster - known as Three: Extreme in Hong Kong - and was mighty happy to do so. This is Park's first film following his powerhouse effort in OldBoy and the trailer - still available here - seemed to be a chilling continuation of the style he'd developed so strongly in that earlier film. Adding to the excitement was the fact this film was part of a three part anthology with the other submissions coming courtesy of Japanese shock-master Takashi Miike and Hong Kong's Fruit Chan.

My early assumption was that Park's would be the strongest of the three submissions, followed closely by Miike with Chan - who is not at all known for this sort of genre fare - bringing up a distant third. Then the reviews started to hit and, frankly, Chan's looks to be pretty easily the most disturbing concept of the three. Yeah. The trailer for his section - titled Dumplings - is out now. Shudder. You'll never look at Chinese food the same way again ... check it out here.

Ah, those wacky Japanese ... while us westerners are debating whether Vincent Gallo's latest film should be considered art, pornography or just a very bad film the Japanese are hard at work prepping one of their patented, ridiculously collectible limited edition DVD sets for it.

The Japanese Premium Box - available here - is limited to only 2000 copies worldwide and includes the feature, Gallo's comments on the film, a "digital pamphlet" (an EPK?), the North American poster and a limited edition t-shirt "art-directed" by Gallo himself. So now you can dress in stylish, Gallo-approved wear whilst watching Chloe Sevigny work for her paycheck over and over again in pristine digital quality.

Beyond the smirk that any Brown Bunny news brings to my face I am a little surprised that Japan - a country with incredibly stringent rules against genital nudity in film - is giving this film the deluxe treatment. No word on if they've had to alter the film to get it past Japanese censors ...

Fans, and / or the morbidly curious, can also check out the trailer for the film here.

A new trailer for the CG-laden live action adaptation of the classic Devilman anime has turned up on the official site here. The film's been getting some very mixed reviews - the people who don't like it REALLY don't like it - but not knowing the anime myself I have no preconceptions to be shattered and I'm thinking these trailers look like a good amount of fun ...

Pathfinder Pictures has announced that they will be releasing Takashi Miike's eminently strange yakuza film Gozu on DVD in North America on November 23rd. I caught this film at last year's Toronto Film Festival and ended up seated next to the film's local sales agent who spent the entire screening just shaking his head muttering, "This is so messed up ... this is so messed up ..." and he wasn't kidding. Picture, if you will, Lars Von Trier blended with David Lynch with the resultant stew fed through a patently absurd sense of humor. I guarantee that you've never seen anything quite like this and you really should ...

Unearthed Films has announced release dates for a slew of cult films on DVD ... notable titles include a pair of the infamous Guinea Pig films due in December, a complete Guinea Pig box set, the prequel to the infamous Ichi the Killer, and Sogo Ishii's utterly bizarre and absolutely fantastic Electric Dragon 80000 Volts. I've been waiting for Electric Dragon for a good while, so this is good news, indeed. Unearthed has also just landed a distribution deal for North America so their titles should be relatively easy to come by. You can get all the details on the Unearthed slate here and check out a detailed review of Electric Dragon here.

Well, here it is. Post number one. Welcome to Twitch, glad you're here, etc etc etc. I imagine a good number of you will know me as Bubba from my days over at The Movie Blog and to you I say I'm glad you've followed me over and you can expect more of the same here. The layout and design is pretty rudimentary at the moment. A lot of refining and adding on of features will be going on behind the scenes in the next little while so if you've got a comment / criticism / something you'd like to see, please let me know.

So, you've got something you want to say? A piece of news? Some feedback? Free stuff you want to send us? We like free stuff. Well, fret not. Here are all the relevant details:

Email:

Todd Brown - Founder / Editor
A compulsive pop culture geek, Todd has been working as a freelance writer for a little more than a decade with articles appearing in a stack of print and online mags - mostly of the music or film variety. All business related questions should be sent here.

todd at twitchfilm dot net

Logboy
Our go-to guy on all things British and resident fan of all things Takashi Miike.

logboy at twitchfilm dot net

Dave Canfield
The old man of the group, Canfield is slowly plugging away at a book on horror film when not running his own film site here. He also lives in a religious commune founded by Jesus-hippies. Really. I'm not making that up.

dave at imaginedat dot net

Andrew Mack

Animation freak and repository of more Korean film information than any other white man I know, Mack will one day be crushed and suffocated when his massive wall of DVDs collapses and pins him to the floor. Death by Woo.

kungfuguy at hotmail dot com

Nick Bechard

Man of fashion and style. Most likely indier than you.

skidallstarz at hotmail dot com

Here it is. The complete master list of all film and DVD reviews exclusive to Twitch. Most of these are stand-alone articles but from time to time - when the content of films are closely linked, or with our festival coverage where we covered by day more than by title - there will be multiple reviews in the same article. You'll figure it out. You're clever.

0 - 9
3 Iron (by Todd)
3 Iron (by Mack)
9 Souls
6ixtynin9
800 Bullets
2046

A
A Snake of June
A Tale of Two Sisters
Ab-Normal Beauty
After the Apocalypse
After the Day Before
Alexander
The American Astronaut
Angel Guts: Red Dizziness
Angel Guts: High School Co-Ed
Angel Guts: Red Classroom
Another Lonely Hit-Man
Arahan
Assassination of Richard Nixon
Automne

B
Bad Education
Bangkok Loco
Battles Without Honor and Humanity
Beauty Shop
Bird People In China
Blade: Trinity
Blueberry
Box: Three Extremes
Bright Future
Bullet Ballet
Bush's Brain

C
Cafe Lumiere (by Todd)
Cafe Lumiere (by Mack)
Casshern
Clean
Constantine
The Corporation
Creep
Cut: Three Extremes
Cutie Honey

D
Danny the Dog
The Dark Side of the Moon
Dead Birds
Dead Man's Shoes
Dias De Santiago
DIG!
A Dirty Shame
Dolls
Doppelganger
Dumplings: Three Extremes

E
Eerie Indiana
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Eros (by Todd)
Eros (by Mack)
Evilenko

F
Fade To Black
Ferpect Crime
Five Obstructions
Fun Bar Karaoke

G
The Game of Their Lives
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (by Opus)
The Green Butchers
The Grudge
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst

H
Hanzo the Razor
Head On
Hellevator: The Bottled Fools
Hiruko The Goblin
A Hole In My Heart
House of Flying Daggers (by Todd)
House of Flying Daggers (by Opus)
House of Flying Daggers (by Mack)
Howl's Moving Castle

I
I Heart Huckabees (by Todd)
I Heart Huckabees (by Opus)
Immortel
In The Realms of the Unreal
The Incredibles
Initial D

J
Ju-On

K
Karaoke Terror
A Kite
Koma
Kontroll (by Todd)
Kontroll (by Opus)

L
Ladder 49
Last Life in the Universe
Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Lonesome Jim
Lost Boys
Low Life

M
The Machinist (by Canfield)
The Machinist (by Todd)
The Machinist (by Opus)
The Machinist (by Mack)
Macked, Hammered, Slaughtered and ShaftedMadison
Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People
Memento Mori
Millennium Mambo
Millions
My Summer of Love

N
National Treasure
New Police Story
Niceland
Night Watch
Ninth Day
Nobody Knows
Noi Albinoi

O
Off Beat
One Missed Call
Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior
Onibi: The Fire Within
Only Human
The Overture

P
Palindromes (by Todd)
Palindromes (by Nick)
Phone
The Promise (La Promesa)
Purple Butterfly

Q
Quiet As A Mouse

R
Ray Harryhausen Early Years Collection
Reconstruction

S
Sahara
Salaryman Kintaro: The Animated Series V. 1
Samurai Assassin
Saw
Schizo
The Sea Inside
Shaun of the Dead
Shutter
Sideways (By Todd)
Sideways (By Jim Tudor)
Sin City
Sky Blue
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sky High
The Snare
Soundless
The Soup One Morning
Spider Forest
Springtime In A Small Town
Steamboy
Stratosphere Girl
Survive Style 5
Sword of Justice
Symmetry

T
Tae Guk Gi
The Taste of Tea
Team America: World Police
Three Extremes: Box
Three Extremes: Cut
Three Extremes: Dumplings
Throw Down
Time of the Wolf
Tropical Malady

U
Undertow
Unleashed
UNO

V
Vital (by Todd)
Vital (by Mack)
The Voyage Home

W
Who's Got The Gold?
The Woodsman
The World

X

Y
Young Thugs: Innocent Blood
Young Thugs: Nostalgia

Z
Zebraman (by Todd)
Zebraman (by Mack)