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So, Todd is away and it doesn't look like we will all get to put down a top 10 of favourites for the year, and it may be a little odd to say in publice what i've been watching, but this could be the last post of the year and i want to find out in the comments what you've been buying and seeing : in any way or format. Personally, i did little 'cinema' or 'tv' and more 'videogames' and 'dvd' this year... so just look at this as a little reminder or inspiration for you to point out good stuff we might have overlooked.

Continue reading "That was 2004, Soon will be 2005. Logboy : I Enjoyed These This year..."

Keeping with the Chan-Wook Park theme, the director, along with 38 other filmmakers and actors, including Old Boy's Choi Min-sik, announced that if the organization committee of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) finally agrees to drive the Executive Director Kim Hong-joon out of his post, they would no longer participate in the film festival.

The organizing committee of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan), under pressure from the new mayor of Bucheon, has voted to remove popular festival director Kim Hong-joon from his position. The mayor's office maintained that Kim's other job as head of the School of Film, TV and Multimedia at the Korea National University of Arts would distract him from the demands of the festival post. Festival staff and the Korean film community in general have reacted with outrage, organizing protests and threatening to boycott next year's festival. Many maintain that the mayor's actions were motivated by personal grievances against Kim. In the meantime Jung Hong-taek, former president of the Korean Film Archive, was named to be Kim's successor - KoreanFilm.org

PiFan is one of those festivals that you dream about going to. It would be a shame if thing progresses as planned by the organization committee and all this talent didn't offer their works for the festival next year.

We linked to KoreanFilm.org's 2004 PiFan retrspective back in the Fall. Read it here to get an idea why this festival is so cool.

Despite reportedly getting numerous offers [or love calls?] from Japan and European coutries for distribution deals Sympathy for Lady Vengeance director, Chan-wook Park, stands by his intentions to debut the final picture in his Vengeance Trilogy at the Berlin International Film Festival to be held in Germany in February, next year. The film is set to open in theatres in Korea in June.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is the third film following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Old Boy. We'll keep a close eye on reaction to this wildly anticipated finale when it screens at the festival.

via Han Cinema.

Nobbled from yahoo auctions japan, where (if you have the appropriate characters and knowledge) you can find pics of just about anything however obscure. So, i pop over there occasionally to see what turns up, cos they're often a better illustration of anything than i can find elsewhere.

This time, i turn up a nice couple of pics for the Izo DVD that's just out : they do unfortunately have the sellers name plastered across them (ala eBay) but thats not too distracting.

The standard cover is popping up here. The special edition pops up here. Anyone buy this unsubbed edition (other than bootleggers)?...

I should really stop reading up on things about Kung Fu Hustle. Ever since the 'Third Reel Fiasco' at TIFF this past September my anger and rage has been growing the more good stuff I hear about this movie. Knowing that I was but hours away from experiencing the bliss and glee that can only come from viewing a Stephen Chow movie only to have it snatched away from me like a small child is by a dingo? Well that just hurts real deep.

Kung Fu Hustle opened around Asia this past weekend and it broke records everywhere it played. In mainland China it broke the single and three day records set by HERO two years ago. In Hong Kong it almost broke the three day record in just two days. In Taiwan it broke the opening day record set by The Day After Tomorrow. Then it broke the two day record set by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And finally, in Singapore, it set a new record for the island nation for opening weekends. It holds the No.7 spot at the All-Time Opening ranking, blowing past big Hollywood titles like The Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter and The Mummy franchises.

If any of our readership from these areas has seen it and would like to pass along their thoughts and feelings about this movie please e-mail me and we'll post your review.

via MonkeyPeaches

::: EXTRA ::: If you go to MonkeyPeaches and scroll down you can also find a link to a 40 minute making of featurette. I'm trying to d/l it now as I type this. No telling how many seeders and leechers there are. If you don't have a bit-torrent program you will need it to d/l this special. MonkeyPeaches has made a link available for that.

So there you go, KFCcinema just posted it : so i am making it a little obvious here also, as lots of people will be looking forward to this (with fingers crossed for English Subs, which we should get). Oh, and i am assuming this is a HK disc, so it will be cheap too... cool.

Originally slated for the end of March 2005, its now shifted to April 5th. Why do i say this? Well, it's mostly an opportunity to point out that we only unfortunately (initially at least) get the theatrical cut of the film in a single-disc edition, and not a simultaneously released unrated or extended version.

I suppose there will be another edition announced soon, so i for one will probably hold off a little longer. Still haven't seen it : it's apparently out in the UK during January, but no TV adverts have so far been shown.

My obnoxious holiday season run of shifts at work has finally come to a close so I'm heading out of town for a few days and won't likely be posting here until the New Year ... I leave you in the capable hands of the other Twitch folk until my return ...

I'm not sure if anyone here at Twitch is actually looking forward to the Dukes of Hazzard movie. Perhaps Nick. But I'm from that school of thought that any eye candy is good eye candy even if it is the reigning doofus queen, Jessica Simpson.

So here she is with her co-stars Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott.

Thank you FilmRot.

Monsters & Critics posted a press release yesterday from Dreamworks announcing that Steven Speilberg is set to be the executive producer of a live action Transformers movie slated for release in the summer of 2006. This more or less confirms what we have been speculating for a couple months now.

Legendary Transformers franchise. Steven Spielberg will executive produce. The film is slated for release in the summer of 2006. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Constantine), Don Murphy (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Tom DeSanto (X-Men and X2: X-Men United) are attached to produce.

DreamWorks Head of Production Adam Goodman stated, Steven and everyone at DreamWorks are very excited about the prospect of expanding the world of 'Transformers' into the live-action feature film arena. The possibilities for a thrilling action adventure are virtually endless, and a film holds the definite promise of expanding an already worldwide fan base to new audiences.

It wasn't that long ago that we were talking about a writer for the film and the possibility that Tom Hanks may somehow be involved in this production. Now that Steven has been confirmed it would seem that all Tom has to do is ask.

via FilmRot.

Don't know much about them personally, so feel free to educate me in the comments below. But, having said that, they are AnimEigo and they released all the wonderful "Lone Wolf and Cub" movies in such superbly mastered editions.

Incident at Blood Pass : is out March 8th 2005. Samurai Assasin is out a month earlier, on February 8th 2005. I expect to find nothing less than two superb samurai films with copious amounts of excessive violence and blood, but a heavily dramatic and deep storyline.

Here's a little something for fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa ... though he's not nearly as well known internationally as his acclaimed mentor Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama has built a solid name for himself with films like Eureka generating major critical acclaim around the world. Before launching out on his own Aoyama tutored as one of Kurosawa's ADs and the man's influence is unmistakable in Aoyama's approach to storytelling and the way he shoots his films. Plus he tends to use a lot of the same actors.

Case in point: The Lakeside Murder Case. Logboy just pointed this one out to me and I know very little about it other than that it came from Aoyama, it's a thoughtful crime thriller, the trailer looks beautiful, and it stars Kurosawa fave Koji Yakusho. Check the trailer out here.

Those disappointed with the video quality of the Chinese and Hong Kong DVD releases of House ofFlying Daggers will have another option a little closer to home pretty soon ... I haven't seen much in the way of specs yet but Sony's North American DVD of the film is slated to release May 15th and it's a fairly safe bet that Sony's releases will offer pretty much the best transfer world wide ...

God bless those Koreans. They know a marketing opportunity when they see one and they go for it with gusto.

Case in point: Steven Chow's Kung Fu Hustle releases and sets all sorts of box office records throughout Asia and, voila! A three disc release of Chow's brilliant Shaolin Soccer. And what have they put on those three discs? Why, three different versions of the film, of course, all apparently English subtitled, including DTS tracks and region free. Plus a stack of other bonus features. You get the original cut, the extended version and the Miramax cut-to-pieces version. Now that is a release worth calling an 'Ultimate Edition'.

I've already got a Hong Kong issue of this but I'll be making the switch for three reasons - I'd love to have all three versions of the film, the video quality should be higher and the subtitle quality pretty much has to be higher. Miramax was going after US based importers of Shaolin Soccer pretty hard a while back, so you'll probably need to go through a Korean based seller for this, though these guys are in the US and are currently taking pre-orders.

Check out DVD Debate for a larger cover image and more specific specs.

Ah, it's funny because it's dirty ... or at least it sounds dirty.

X Men's Nightcrawler will be releasing a frangrance line in early 2005 labelled, appropriately enough since it is his name after all, Cumming.

This has got to be a publicity stunt on Alan's part - can you imagine the conversation? "What's tht perfume you're wearing?" - but it's a mighty good one ...

via the news page at Zooma Zooma.

Aiight. The trailer for Unleashed has been out a couple days. Sue me, I've been in Vancouver for the weekend.

Yes, it has a different title for its North American release. Yes, we're not particularily thrilled about that either. Nothing wrong with Danny the Dog. But then again some ignorant parent may take their child into the theatre mistaking it for a Clifford the Big Red Dog spin-off or something.

But if there is one Jet Li movie outside China/Hong Kong that I will enjoy I bet it's gonna be this one. Why? Because none of this movie is tainted by Hollywood. Action powerhouse Luc Besson has written and produced it [this guy is really close to achieving god-like status in my books]. Louis Leterrier learned some things under Besson's tutelage and we hope to god he learned from his mistakes in Transporter.

So let's pray for well framed action sequences, the absence of MTV editing practices and the sheer utter delight of listening to a movie soundtrack without a smidgen of hip-hop. Pray hard.

Release date set for April 8th, 2005.

OK, so I like to see what artwork Homevision come up with: they're pretty much as good as any of their Criterion releases. Over at the site now, you can see large versions of All About Lilly Chou Chou, as well as the specs (anamorphic 16:9 digital transfer in 1.85:1, Shunji Iwai essay, making of documentary, pop video) and then Fukusaku's "Sympathy for The Underdog" (starring LW&C main main Tomisabaru Wakayama) which has another short interview with Fukusaku biographer Yamane Sadao, then finally (from my point of view) there's Fukusaku's "Fall Guy".

Click on the small artwork at each page i have linked into to get a larger version of each cover. The "Lilly Chou Chou" shown here to the left is lovely...

In his brief career Wes Anderson has proven himself to be very much a love-him or hate-him director. There are those who find his highly stylized work off-putting but those who get him tend to get him pretty hard and amongst that crowd he’s had something of a charmed life with fans generally agreeing that he’s gotten better every time out. Thus, there was a huge amount of anticipation for his fourth film – The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou – as fans tried to figure out how he’d top his past efforts. The cast was in place with Anderson stalwarts Bill Murray and Owen Wilson in the leads and the trailers were enough to show that his unique visual sense was in full effect. But would that be enough? Sadly, no. There’s an awful lot to like about The Life Aquatic but not enough to love and it certainly goes down as the weakest Anderson film thus far.

Continue reading "The Life Aquatic Review"

So, while purchasing my copy of Born To Fight yesterday I stumbled across this listing at EthaiCD. Check it out. C'mon. Go. Yes folks, The Adventure of Iron Pussy: an all singing, all dancing musical extravaganza following the adventures of The Iron Pussy who is, of course, a balding middle aged transvestite who works at a 7-11 by day and fights crime on behalf of the Thai government by night. As if that's not strange enough the film is directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a major critical favorite whose films Tropical Malady and Blissfully Yours have both won major awards at Cannes. I haven't been able to turn up a trailer on this one yet but the good people at Ethai tell me the DVD should be out in a week or so and that it is supposed to include English subtitles ... Thai stuff is so cheap that I'll be buying this based on the synopsis alone.

But here's one that DOES include a trailer. Yes, folks, it's everybody's favorite respiratory disease. It's SARS Wars, a fairly big budget action comedy. Funny thing: I was in Toronto for the entire SARS outbreak and I don't remember it turning anybody into zombies. And I really don't remember hot chicks running around with swords, axes and guns. I wish I did, though. The trailer is painfully small and grainy, but there's some great stuff in the gallery page ...

Not sure how I missed this but I did ... thanks to a reader for calling it to my attention.

Documentary film maker Roy Frumkes - director of Document of the Dead - has been hired to do a new behind the scenes doc on the filming of Romero's Land of the Dead and has posted a detailed blog about his first day on set here. It's a good read ...

The same reader included this tantalizing little bit of news:

"Tom Savini plays the same character he played in DAWN OF THE DEAD. He is a zombie version of the biker. Photos verifying this will be coming out soon."

Photos? Yes, please.

The official website for Hideo Nakata's The Ring 2 has gotten a full overhaul with some very cool interactive image galleries added ... it's not gonna tell you anything about the film you don't already know but it's a very cool, very moody piece of work ...

Michael Keaton wants to make a sequel to Beetlejuice. I count nine films in Keaton's filmography since his very brief, and uncredited, cameo in Out of Sight - the last good film he appeared in. Six years ago. His last decent starring role was in Burton's Batman Returns, all the way back in 1992. Anyone surprised he's floating rumors of a return to his most successful role? Nope, me either.

via Dark Horizons.

Tony Jaa. Jackie Chan. Drunken Master 3. Whee!

Can you say "Passing the torch"? Word is that Jaa is already at work learning English in preperation for this film in which he'll play Chan's pupil in the art of Drunken Boxing. I have no idea how the writers will get around Jackie's alcohol induced brain damage from the end of part two, but frankly I really don't care. I'll accept just about anything that gets this made.

By my count this makes three new projects currently in the works for Jaa, not including Tom Yum Goong. There's a rumored weapons-based historical epic, the sequel to Ong Bak and now Drunken Master 3. Nice.

via Rotten Tomatoes.

Jet Li has officially been added to the missing persons list following this weekends massive 8.9 earthquake in south-east asia. Li was vacationing with his family in the Maldives - a small string of islands - when the quake hit and the region took significant damage. His manager has been unable to contact him since, which could be due simply to widespread damage to the country's communications infrastructure. The confirmed death count for the Maldives is relatively small thus far but the most recent figures I've seen put the total human cost for this quake over twenty three thousand and that number is sure to leap as clean up and rescue efforts continue and bodies are unearthed.

via Aint It Cool

No real reason ... I just really like this film and pretty much nobody's heard about it. Take a minute and check it out here. And, yeah, it's as much fun as it looks ...

Does it have subtitles? Nope. Do I care? Not a bit. Why not? Enjoy.

The Thai VCD is available now here which means the DVD - which is also reported to not include subtitles - will turn up in the next little while.

You're probably bored out of your mind right now with whatever crazy holiday spectacles you were involved in (random Toronto cold, the only open hotel bar in the area and Life Aquatic) and need some mind melting time. Well, good for you - Twitch is here!!

Here's a list of the trailers that have recently slipped between the cracks either because they're going to be nausea inducing - look, Martin Lawerence! - or just a plain oversight a la the new Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson comedy. So now put down the turkey, ham or canned beef; the brand new gadget that makes you feel better about your life, and view away.

Continue reading "Trailers, Trailers, Trailers!"

There's a post at the dvdtalk.com forum which talks about the subtitles for the newly released USA disc. Apparently, according to the specs on the packaging there was supposed to be a "for the hearing impared" captions / subtitles mixed track, as well as a "for the japanese impared" plain old English Subtitles track. What have they done? Well, they put the captions track on, but missed off the subtitles track : it seems.

I have the disc, but haven't looked at it myself : i would normally trust things like this not to happen, and would prefer to avoid having to check everything i buy for mistakes before i sit down to watch it. I am trusting the poster at the forum on this one, and saying expect a recall / reissue (hopefully). It's not been a good time for "ghost in the shell" disc errors this year, with SAC discs also being bodged.

This error apprently puts oversized subtitles with audio guides practically in the middle of the picture, making it "unwatchable"... oh well.

There's nothing listed over at Pathfinder's site yet but according to a post on the Asian DVD Guide Forum Takashi Miike's Agitator will soon be hitting DVD in North America via Pathfinder. I've not yet seen their edition of Gozu but word is they've done a good job and - in a move sure to make Miike fans happy - Pathfinder will be releasing this as the full 200 minute version rather than the 150 minute version released in other areas. As far as I know this will be the first time the full length cut of Miike's yakuza epic will be available on DVD anywhere in the world ... according to that same post Pathfinder is also looking into rights for Miike's Man In White, another acclaimed but nearly impossible to find film ...

If you're at all a fan of Peter Jackson or King Kong you really should be checking out Kong is King on a regular basis. Beyond simply having a stack of information on the history of Kong and news from the current production they've been regularly posting behind the scenes 'Production Diaries' courtesy of Peter Jackson himself ... Check the latest edition out here for some behind the scenes set shots and looks at the cast and crew as well as some more candid, down time footage and Christmas wishes from all.

So, here I am confirming that I have no life, posting new things to the website on Christmas Eve. Actually, thanks to the fact that I have to be up at five in the morning to go to work on Christmas Day and that my family lives out of town I've been stranded at my house watching Wong Kar Wai movies all day while more sensible people are off enjoying the holiday. I'm stuck working until the night of the 28th so no holidays for me for a while, yet ...

Anyway ... while poking around looking for some other stuff I noticed that Palm has posted a quality trailer for Last Life in the Universe on their site. You can check it out here.

Here's some good news for Tsukamoto fans ... A Snake of June will finally be getting a North American DVD release on February 22nd thanks to Tartan Video. For my money this is Tsukamoto's finest work, the one that best balances his trademark technological paranoia with strong characters. I've got the Tartan UK release of this and, though it's a little sparse on extras, they've done a dead solid job with the film itself. The only trailer I was able to turn up online is at the Korean website here ...

Also releasing February 22nd will be the landmark Korean horror flick Whispering Corridors ...

The first trailer for Ridley Scott's Kindgom of Heaven in now online. It's beautiful. Majestic. Large in scale and scope. Everything you could want in a Ridley Scott movie. Then why am I so troubled by it?

Since the subject of this film is no doubt going to be an incredibly touchy, controversial - insert appropriate adjective here - issue in our current geo-political times I personally don't feel up to the task to comment on it at this time. But. I do agree with what Todd wrote when he first heard word of Kingdom of Heaven while he was still over at The Movie Blog. He wrote this under his former monikor Bubba.

Then maybe I am saying something then...?

via AICN.

AICN came through again for me this morning as I was fumbling about and they have images from the upcoming The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. I've always loved The Muppets. Anyone within earshot of me at our webmonkey's Christmas shin-dig would have heard my bang-on Swedish Chef impersonation.

Doing a little more digging, I went over to IMDB to check out the human cast. Ashanti will play Dorothy Gale and Queen Latifah and David Alan Grier will play Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. It could be worse. We could have gotten more Woopie. Jeffrey Tambor of Arrested Development fame will play the wizard and Quentin Tarantino, playing himself, will, fingers crossed, set in motion a momentous - but cinematic - bloodbath in which the end result would leave mankind enslaved to our hand-stuffed overlords.

And is it me or does Fozzy look like Jeff Bridges' 'The Dude'?

If your computer is like mine and it only gets by on it's stunning good looks then this week's revelation of the Sin City trailer left you a bit wanting. Especially since it was streaming video. But now, glory be, Apple has come through for us and we now have a link to the trailer in gorgeous Quicktime. Thank the maker. No more jittery images. Just the fluid motion of Jessica Alba's hips... erm... I mean... uh. crap.

Click here to watch the Sin City trailer in glorious Quicktime.

Thank you AICN for the heads up.

So, the end of the year is coming and this is when all the film geeks gather around and look at box office numbers to see who all the big winners and losers were. Rather than re-hash what everybody already knows I decided to take a look at Box Office Mojo's International chart to see what was going on in the rest of the world and I turned up some fun stuff ... I've got to qualify this by saying that to appear of Box Office Mojo's charts at all - even the International chart - the film has to appear in the US at some point during the year. It keeps things from being anywhere near as inclusive as I'd like but if there's a truly international chart out there I couldn't find it ...

I would like to begin by pointing out that Garfield was the number 14 film in international box office take this year, thus proving that bad taste knows no bounds. And before moving into the lesser known stuff it's worth noting that Howl's Moving Castle is already resting in the number 24 spot with a take of eighty one million despite the fact that it still months away from rolling out in most of the major territories. Miyazaki's latest is going to be just huge ... From here on I'm going to be omitting films like Bad Education and The Sea Inside that we've talked about extensively in the past ...

Onwards! At number 26 is the German sci-fi spoof Raumschiff Surprise a very, shall we say, happy mocking of the whole Star Trek phenomenon. The production values don't seem to be as high as Turkey's GORA but the trailer made me laugh a good bit and this thing just dominated central Europe for a good chunk of the year against some tough competition ...

Sitting at 27 was another German film - Germany had a very good year - in Good Bye Lenin, a comedy about a young East German man whose mother falls into a coma and sleeps through the fall of the Berlin wall. When she awakes the son is told that any shock could kill her so he sets out to re-create pre-fall Germany on her behalf. Sony Classics gave this a limited release - and a very cool website - and I remember hearing nothing but good stuff about it ...

Number 30 is a French film titled Les Choristes that looks to these eyes to be basically a French take on Mr. Holland's Opus. If there's anything less appealing than a French Richard Dreyfuss I don't know what it is.

At number 34 was Seven Dwarfs, which I was unable to turn up any info on. It's not listed on the IMDB and searching google just turns up stacks of Disney propoganda. A little help?

Back to Germany for 38 with the gorgeous and controversial World War Two film Der Untergang ... I'm not a big war buff but from what I've read of this, what I've just seen in the trailer, and just from the fact that I'm half German I think I need to look this one up ...

And, finally, at number 89, from the career killing Renny Harlin, it's Mindhunters. A film that is apparently very bad but stars quite a few big names so Dimension can't seem to make up their minds whether they're actually going to release it here or not ... Yeah, you could look up the North American trailer, but it's much more entertaining to listen to Val Kilmer, LL Cool J, Christian Slater and the chick from Cold Case dubbed in German.

The ever watchful Logboy, clever British man that he is, just dropped me a note telling me ... well, telling me exactly what I just said in the headline. Kind of stole my own thunder, there.

It seems that Gervais, the writer / star of the hugely acclaimed series The Office, met up with Simpsons creator Matt Groening at yesterday's British Comedy Awards. The two men proclaimed their enduring love for one another and lacking the required equipment to procreate they decided to instead have Gervais write an episode of The Simpsons, in which he will also have a role. No word yet on when it would air, but it'll probably be at least a season away.

Here's a happy little bit of news Logboy just passed along ...

The good people at Homevision Entertainment are starting to firm up their spring release slate and the coming titles include Seance and Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and the cult-classic Hanzo the Razor series. Seance is an excellent made for TV film from Kurosawa currently legitimately available only from Korea while the only legit subtitled version of Charisma in the world is the out of print Japanese release. I don't believe the Razor films have ever been available on DVD in the western world, but they came from the same production team that produced the classic Lone Wolf and Cub films and starred Katsu Shintaro, best known for his work playing Zatoichi. Animeigo once produced VHS copies of these and their summary page is still available here.

Via the DVD Maniacs forum

I sent an email to YesAsia yesterday asking about the availability of Survive Style 5 and Abnormal Beauty and received a good news / bad news response.

First, the good. Survive Style 5 is available for pre-order now. The two disc version is here and the limited edition collector box is here. As is usually the case with YesAsia the list price is slightly higher here than you'll see on other sites but when you factor in the free shipping and dodging of customs fees thanks to their local shipping centers you stand to save at least a few bucks.

The bad news? "We are sorry to tell you that due to the problem of licensing, we are not allowed to sell "Abnormal Beauty" DVD/VCD to the US and Canada. We apologize for any inconvenience caused." This would mean the local rights holder - Tartan in this case - have pulled rank and asked them not to import any copies into the regions they hold rights to. This is totally within their rights and not something I'm worked up over but I do find it a little odd that other Tartan properties - including Old Boy, which you would think has much higher potential revenues - are still widely available while they're blocking this one. At the end of the day it just means you'll have to hit a Hong Kong site - like this one - if you want to see the film now.

I'm really not sure what to make of this. KungFuCinema posted a link to a very short blip of info about a 3-D Cartoon [ed: computer generated] movie that is being released in China by the title Dragon Blade on January 6th. Tha article claims it to be "the worlds first three-dimension cartoon movie".

While that doesn't necessarily grab me by the collar the voice talent does... somewhat. Karen Mok, Daniel Wu and Stephen Fung are among those who lent their voices to this project [though you can be sure that any domestic release will come dubbed with a hip hop soundtrack]. And Stanley Tong, a long time collaborator with Jackie Chan [SuperCop, Rumble in the Bronx and First Strike] designed the action sequences for the movie.

I'm still not fully convinced yet. Honestly it looks like someone taped their buddy playing Final Fantasy for 90 minutes and tinkered with it enough to make it look 3D-ish. I'm teetering on whether I like it nor not. You can watch the trailer on the official site and make up your own mind. I am sure that thing that looks like a mutated Tweety Bird will annoy the crap out of me. Then there is the official site calling it a 'CG extravaganza that can best be described as Shrek meets Crouching Tiger". I kid you not.

The official movie site is here.

Pictures via Sina.

IGN has managed to score themselves the first images from the upcoming Tim Burton / Henry Selick collaboration The Corpse Bride as well as a full cast shot from Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and they're both mighty sweet. Click here for the high-res Corpse Bride shot and here for Charlie.

It's a Tsukamoto kind of day around here ... the Japan Times has just published a review of Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital here, as well as an interview with the man himself here.

We're big fans of both the man and this particular film around here ... check out my review of it here and the film's official site (including a pair of trailers) here.

I just stumbled across a fantastic Japanese film news site here and I've got to recommend that everybody go take a look right now. There's too much good stuff there to cover it all, but there are two things in particular that I need to mention ...

First, Italian DVD company Raro Video has just released a new, remastered box set of three films by Shinya Tsukamoto. You get Tetsuo, Tetsuo 2 and The Adventures of Rod Boy - an incredibly rare early effort that I've only ever seen available on obviously bootlegged VCD. All films are English subtitled and the set includes subtitled interviews with Shinya Tsukamoto. The site also includes a trailer for the release - largely made up of Rod Boy footage - here. The set's region free and PAL formatted. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Major find number two was a link to this set of four short films currently in production starring Tadanobu Asano and Ryuhei Matsuda. There's no trailer yet but that's a meeting of some major talents and I'll be keeping an eye on it for sure.

Okay ... I lied ... there are threee things. While poking around that Asano site I stumbled across this: the Japanese website for The Naked Man. Written by Ethan Coen and directed by longtime Coen collaborator J. Todd Anderson, The Naked Man stars brilliant character actor Michael Rappaport - chiropractor by day, wrestler by night. His wrestling gimmick involves dressing in a Naked Man - as in the anatomy diagram, not as in, well, a naked man - body suit. This thing looks completely and utterly bizarre and I can't believe I've never heard of it before ...

I confess. I am a Woody Allen fan. Yes, his personal life is more than a little bit creepy. And, yes, it has been a very long time since he made a good film. But, that being said, when he's on his game nobody does neurosis better and the word from the European festival circuit is that Melinda and Melinda marks a major come back for the man.

Well, the US trailer has just hit online and I've got to say that the hype looks correct. It's smart, it's funny, the cast is fantastic and putting Will Ferrell into the requisite Woody Allen role looks to be a stroke of absolute genius. Check it out here.

Poor Wong Kar Wai. Imagine for a moment that you’re a notorious perfectionist who has just created a film acknowledged as a masterpiece around the world, a film that you are unlikely ever to top but that you are under an immense amount of pressure to best nonetheless. Do you run from the pressure? Crack under it?

This was the exact situation that WKW was in following the release of In The Mood For Love, a film that was hugely, and deservedly, acclaimed world wide and one that I am convinced will go into the books as the man’s defining moment. That film is one that comes as close to perfection as any film ever will and yet he was called upon to up the stakes. To his credit the man faced the challenge head on, creating a pseudo-sequel that openly invites comparison to his masterpiece. Yes, the shoot was fraught with difficulties and seemed to stretch on forever and, yes, the film has some significant flaws but although 2046 will likely end up in the books as one of the lesser works of a master, the work of a master it clearly is.

Continue reading "2046 Review"

If you happen to be one of the early converts to Twitch and were around when we were covering the Toronto Film Festival en masse then you're already aware that my favorite film from that festival was Kim Ki-Duk's brilliant 3-Iron. It's just a beautiful, subtle little film that blurs the line between fantasy and reality and could serve as a film-school text book in economical story telling. My full review is at the bottom of this page.

Anyway ... enough of the raving ... I noticed at the screening that the film had been picked up by Sony Classics - the same people currently doing a fantastic job with the equally fantastic House of Flying Daggers, nudge nudge - and so every time I've been in contact with them I've been sure to ask about the status of this little gem. Well, the persistence has paid off ... The Sony Classics website hasn't been updated yet but I've just received a note that the film will begin its run with a limited release in New York and LA on April 29th. Assuming Sony Classics follows their normal release pattern that should mean it'll hit most other major centers within the next couple weeks after that.

There's no official North American website for the film yet, but the fantastic Korean site is here. Be prepared to spend a fair bit of time poking around when you check it out ... it's a good one ...

The American website for Appleseed has been updated with a new trailer for the film and theater details for its coming January release. Click here to see if it'll be hitting your town ...

Whee! There are two films from Japan that I've been following closely for months now, just itching for the chance to finally take a good look at them. One is The Taste of Tea. The other, the wickedly absurd Tadanobu Asano / Sonny Chiba / Vinny Jones star vehicle Survive Style 5+. Both have received hugely positive press around the world while hitting the festival circuit, though both mysteriously skipped the Toronto festival, thus killing my shot at a theatrical screening.

Well, the news improved a couple weeks back when the Japanese DVD for Taste of Tea was announced and it turned out the film would include English subtitles. And now Geneon has announced the full specs for their coming March releases for Survive Style 5+ and it will also be getting the full, subbed treatment. And yeah, I did say releases in the plural. March 4th sees the release of the 'premium' two disc edition of the film, while the big ol' collector's box set comes March 25th. Both releases will include DTS sound, English subs on the feature, a making of feature, interviews with the actors (Tadanobu Asano, Reika Hashimoto, Hiroshi Abe, and Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), opening day stage greeting, deleted scenes, a talk between the director (Gen Sekiguchi) and screenwriter (Taku Tada), and footage of overseas film festivals (Locarno International Film Festival and Pusan International Film Festival). On top of all that the big box will include a mouse pad, sticker, postcard, bandana, and 200 page storyboard book.

You can find the trailers here and the Japan Times review here. The only retailers listing it so far are CD Japan and HMV Japan, so as soon as something turns up locally I'll post a link. Still looking for artwork, too ...

via the Asian DVD Guide Forum.

All that talk about Spider-Man being the best comic-book adaptation ever can stop right now. Seriously. As if the early Comic-Con footage that leaked from the upcoming Robert Rodriguez / Frank Miller adaptation of Sin City wasn't impressive enough the full, official trailer has just appeared online and now that it's got all of the post-production effects in place this stuff is simply staggering. Incredible visuals, amazing cast and the graphic novel's creator on board as a co-director ... it's just not going to get a whole lot better than this.

How good to I think this is going to be? Good enough that it'll vault Rodriguez - who has had an interesting but workmanlike career thus far - straight to the top of the geek-director list. This is going to make him a genre film icon.

The Quicktime version is available here, the AOL Moviefone version available here. In a rather irritating move the AOL people have deliberately lowered the frame rate on the Quicktime version to make sure that their own format is the highest quality version out there ... And who says convergence isn't a good thing?

Links via The Movie Box. If you were a member of our forum you'd already know this. Huge thanks to the keen-eyed Father Godiva for pointing it out.

There can't be that many of you (surely) who haven't seen at least one Ghibli film, or many of you who haven't seen at least some footage from one of them? There is? Blimey...

Anyway, there's a trailer online now which features footage from each of the initial wave of USA Ghibli DVD release due in the new year. It's a couple of minutes long and shows you glimpses of the dubbing work done on them. See them here.

When the first still shots for Crying Fist began to circulate a month or so back it immediately jumped on to my 'films to look out for' list for 2005. Why? It's the latest film from the director of Arahan (my review here) starring Old Boy's Choi Min-Sik as an aging boxer along with Arahan's Ryu Seung-Beom. Well, no official site or trailer yet, but with some help from the folks at Koreanfilm.org I just managed to turn up a bunch more film stills and some behind the scenes footage.

Check out the image gallery here for a slightly battered Choi Min-Sik and to develop a man-crush on Ryu's dreads. Or you can click here to check out the behind the scenes footage of Min-Sik going all Kaufman and boxing women in the streets. Nice.

Well, my copies of 2046 have braved the Christmas mail rush and what will most likely be the coldest day we experience here in Toronto all year and have arrived safe and sound. I've just given the two discs a quick scan so I can't comment too much but I can confirm the early rumor that the 'Making of 2046' feature on the second disc does include English subtitles. That appears to be the only one of the features on the second disc to include subtitles of any kind - the disc one 'Databank' is also available in English - but it's also the only thing on disc two that really requires them.

So ... if you've been wavering on which version of this to pick up, go for the two disc set.

Well, our final pre-Christmas contest has come to a close. An awful lot of you knew that the big award-winning Korean film that Tartan was putting in theaters in February was Chan Wook Park's Old Boy - though I kept having people say Phone, even after I posted saying that wasn't the answer - and these five correct-answer-giving type people are now the proud owners of a Tale of Two Sisters poster. Congratulations to:

Eugene Lee
Greg Mann
Peter Galvin
Ben Wilson
Daw Ho

The giveaways will start again in January with a couple DVD copies of 6ixtynin9 courtesy of the good folk at Palm Pictures.

And why should we look at the artwork? Well, most sites, including the official film site and all the major retailers, have nothing more than a really tiny preview of the standard dvd cover. Not even cdjapan.co.jp or amazon.co.jp have it.

Why be bothered? Can't answer that one, though it's always nice to take a look at how a film is being presented, particularly in japan, incase it's something really special.

It is nice. The standard dvd artwork is the one to the left (larger picture here), and the special edition dvd is this nice white one here. If anyone finds other pics of the contents of the special edition one, let us know. Incase you didn't know : the discs are both out about now, but without English Subtitles.

I love the Oscars. Love them. Love the corporate butt slapping feel good fest that it is. But what I love even more is sitting down with friends and seeing who can predict the most winners that night.

With only a couple more months to go nomination lists are wrappinng up and the competition for the Visual Effects Oscar just got really good. Last Friday the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the seven films being considered for Achievement in Visual Effects for the Academy Awards.

The Aviator
The Day After Tomorrow
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I, Robot
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Spider-Man 2

The Visual Effects Award Nominating Committee will screen Fifteen-minute clip reels from each of the seven films. Three of these seven films will then be voted for Oscar consideration. The nominees will be announced on January 25th.

I'm at a slight disadvantage here. Only a select few of course have see The Aviator. I haven't trusted Emmerich since Godzilla so The Day After Tomorrow may never come. I won't pay to see a Harry Potter film and I haven't invited myself over to the Wonder Twins' house to see it on DVD. And Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events just opened and I am still working around to seeing it. I have seen the other three though (Robot, Captain and Sider-Man) and all three were very impressive visually and in some cases quite ground breaking in their efforts. It will be a tight race and boiling it down to just three only makes it more difficult to choose the winner.

And speaking of choosing, here's my conundrum. For the past few years now I have gone over to the Wonder Twins house to watch the Oscars and we have a friendly competition to see who can predict the most winners. For the first time in a couple years one of the Wonder Twins isn't going to be in the country - blast his servants heart. Understandedbly it wouldn't be the same without him and I know I will also get an invite from Todd, as I did last year, to go to his humble abode and do the same. What do I do? Todds? One half of the Wonder Twins? Where or where do I take my shrimp dip this year? Either way there is a predicting party at each house. Where do I have the greater hope of predicting glory? Careful negotiation will have to be done.

Okay ... I have to get up at five to go to work tomorrow, so I really should be in bed right now but I just got sucked into the American Film Market website. The AFM would be the big annual confab where independent film makers try to sell their films to different distributors. Now, as much as we love independent film around here the simple fact is that a great many independent films are independent for a reason. They're really, really bad. A lot of films at AFM fall into this category. A quick perusal of the official film list answers the ol' 'where are they now question' quite simply: they're still here making films that nobody is ever likely to see.

Example? It seems like just yesterday that we were talking about Nightcourt and the original cinematic Beastamster round these parts. That's because it was just yesterday. And look! Marc Singer and Richard Moll in a horrific 'erotic thriller' with post-breakdown Margot Kidder! You can watch the trailer here, but I honestly recommend against it, especially if you happen to be at work ...

And, Dave! Look! Dave! It's COREY FELDMAN! IN A LEAD ROLE! I'm not making this up! Here he is!

What do you do if you're a washed up Belgian action star with a North American career locked in straight to video hell? If you're Jean Claude Van Damme you take a minor part in a French film about a narcoleptic who dreams of being a super-hero! I'm not making this up, either, and it shockingly looks as though it could be a half decent film ...

The French are also giving former Guy Ritchie star Jason Flemyng another shot following his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen debacle, co-starring with Mrs. Johnny Depp in this alien-invasion comedy ...

And what do you do if you're a giant ant? You just keep right on going ...

There are actually quite a few good films tucked away in there, but the only one I'm going to point out is the big-budget live action adaptation of Arsene Lupin AKA The Castle of Cagliostrato AKA Lupin The Third. This same source material drove a very long running anime show much loved around the world and the live action footage looks killer ...

You can find the complete AFM list - with a ton of other trailer links - here.

Just a reminder that Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers has now opened across the continent. Go, see, now. It's an amazing film that really needs to be seen on the big screen ... check my review from the Toronto Film Festival here.

In follow up to Todd's article about Stephen Fung's second project, House of Fury, I stumbled upon something over at the Wu-Jing web-site. They are images of what some claim to be the teaser poster and a promotional flyer image. This information was to have come from the now defunct forums page over at KungFuCultCinema which according to the site got hit by hackers recently. Poor souls.

Click here to see an image from promotional material.

Click here to see the teaser poster.

Going on the assumption that these are the real deal we can see from the movie poster that they're going to use Wo Ping's name to sell the movie. Don't know why Chan's name isn't on it. After all he did produce it. And we still haven't heard anything about Fung's first picture Enter the Phoenix to get a sense if this is just clever marketing or an attempt to recover a fan base, that wasn't convinced with the first film, in an already struggling market.

But I am tired and still fuddled on Christmas cheer from a small gathering of old college friends over at our web monkey's house tonight. I'm off to bed.

Tah.

Hey kids ... when we switched servers our new host included some handy-dandy forum software which I've just gone and installed. The color scheme aint so pretty at the moment, but it works. Go ahead, talk amongst yourselves ... the forum can be found at www.twitchfilm.net/forum ...

I was just digging around looking for trailers for Sha Po Lang and Seven Swords and though neither of those appear to exist just yet I did stumble across some information on Stephen Fung's next film.

Fung is a young Hong Kong actor who has recently made the switch to directing and, from the looks of things, is systematically working his way through the old classic Hong Kong film genres and giving his own revisionist take. His first film, Enter the Phoenix, took a run at the classic triad film. His just wrapped second film, House of Fury, is Fung's take on the 70's era martial arts spy thriller a la Bruce Lee. Is Fung angling to become a younger version of Stephen Chow? Could be, and he's getting some serious help getting there. House of Fury features Jackie Chan as executive producer - and apparently appearing in a cameo - Yuen Woo Ping serves as martial arts director, and Fung is joined in front of the camera by Anthony Wong, Daniel Wu - also featured in Chan's New Police Story - and Gillian Chung. In a study of contrasts legendary old-school martial artist Wu Ma is also slated to appear along with 14-year old American Jake Strickland. Mack posted a good article on Strickland a while back here.

The film's official site hasn't launched yet, but when it does it'll be here. In the meantime you can check the production company's official synopsis here. Check the Enter the Phoenix site at the link above while you're at it ... there's something inherently funny about Chinese people swearing in English. I just ordered myself a copy of that one ... I'll let you know if this guy's the real deal when it arrives ...

The web-monkey just instant messaged me to point out that the North American trailer for Steamboy has just hit the web and it's a dandy ... Movie-List is the trailer's exclusive home for the time being and you can find it here. Not sure what's up with that '2 Days in the Valley' tag in the title bar for the Steamboy page, but there you have it.

Can I also take this opportunity to suggest that nobody not named Jerry Seinfeld be allowed to employ Mr. Movie Voice ever again? Do people really think putting that over top of their visuals really helps to sell a movie? It's like William Shatner without a sense of humor ... give it a rest already ...

My review of Steamboy from the Toronto Film Festival screening is here ...

There is only one more week until the jolly fat man makes his rounds and reminds us that commercial consumption is the only way to bring families closer during the holiday season.

The Canadian contingent of Twitch Film has banded together and created for you, our faithful readership, what we deem to be essential viewing this holiday season. So as you prepare for the holidays, take a moment to sit back and relax, ignore your family and friends, and watch these seasonal gems.

We present to you Twitch’s Essential Christmas Movie Guide.

First, is what our webmaster Dave calls the “Best Christmas Movie That Never Appears On Any Christmas List" Movie...

Continue reading "Twitch's Essential Christmas viewing guide!"

The official website for Terry Gilliam's Tideland has launched here and it includes a video introduction from the man himself - an introduction replete with donkey references, for some reason - and a promise of behind the scenes footage to follow.

When posting about the Wonderful Days / Sky Blue release dates a few days back I mentioned that I found it strange there was no English language trailer for the film ... well, there is now. It loads painfully slowly - I'm downloading as I type - but you can get the Quicktime versions here (lo res) and here (high res) or a Windows Media version here.

My download finally finished ... looks nice, but if the trailer is any indicator they're releasing this in a dubbed version. Oh well, at least the voice actors seem to be decent ...

Via IGN

I reviewed three of these back at the start of November this year, but haven't put them up yet : the set isn't out til the end of March 2005 if i remember correctly. I will put them up early in the new year, after everyone has had the chance to see these trailers, and then repost them towards the release date. At the time, two of the films hadn't had their subtitles completed : I look forward to seeing those soon.

They're not easy things to write about as info is short on the ground, but it's safe to say if (like me) you like odd Japanese films then there should be a whole heap of stuff in these five films for you to enjoy.

The trailers page is here. Or visit individual films here : Red Vertigo, Red Porno, Nami, Red Classroom, or High School Co-Ed.

According to The Korea Times, the uber-hot Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi has signed to play a major role in the third installment of the 'My Wife is a Gangster' series. Zhang had a cameo role at the end of the second installment.

Negotiations are underway with actress Shin Eun-kyoung to reprise her role as the gangster boss Eun-jin. The third film of the series will tell the story of Eun-jin going to China on a mission of revenge.

I am presently writing a film treatment myself. I've got a pretty good feeling that Zhang Ziyi will sign on for it too. It's called 'My wife is Zhang Ziyi'!

Oh the impossibilities.

via HanCinema.

I've mentioned on a couple of threads how I wanted to gussy the ol' website up a little bit ... well, in rides our good friend and sometime contributor Opus to the rescue. Not sure when it will be live on the front page yet - it won't be long - but the design mock-up is now live here. Take a good look at it - make sure to hit refresh a few times - and then come back and tell Opus that he's a web-design god. Because he is. And he also does this for a living, so if you know anybody that needs a website you can get him via his own site here.

Palm Pictures has just posted trailers for their current theatrical releases - Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future, Takeshi Kitano's Dolls, and the Zhang Ziyi star vehicle Purple Butterfly. I've been pretty vocal about my opinions on all of these films and the trailers go a long way towards reinforcing those happy feelings. Kurosawa and Kitano are huge favorites of mine and these are very strong entries in both of their respective canons - Bright Future tops my list of favorite Kurosawa films most days and Dolls is simply compellingly atypical Kitano - and though it's not without its flaws Purple Butterfly does an awful lot right.

They exist in multiple formats but I'm going to give you the larger Quicktime files ... check 'em out ...

Bright Future
Dolls
Purple Butterfly

Nothing is definite as of yet but according to CHUD Nicholas Cage is actively campaigning for the lead role in the US remake of Old Boy ... if this was the Leaving Las Vegas / Raising Arizona era Cage we were talking about I'd be pretty excited about this but given his wildly inconsistent output of late it leaves me feeling pretty ... meh.

You could do worse, but you could also do a lot better. Personally I'm still holding out for Johnny Depp and Ed Norton in the lead roles. If they go with Cage you also have to think of who would play opposite him because the two leads need to be the same age ... one Cage-inclusive option that would have me feeling pretty good would be to flip Cage into the jailer role and put Sean Penn in the lead. I'd find Penn a LOT more believable in that sort of character than I would Cage, plus we'd have the added bonus of letting the two men vent their public dislike for each other on screen ...

I wasn't expecting miracles when I started the thread to ask for opinions on the artwork (shown to the left) for the American DVD for "Innocence". I did send the comments, at the time I said I would, to a Dreamworks employee directly associated with the release, but heard nothing back. People have occasionally continued to post in that thread too, so the feelings still run deep.

Bad news: no, it's not the Harry Knowles comment now on the box... the disc has shipped, and there has not been any change of heart from Dreamworks in the time between the announcement and now. Good thing is, in about a weeks time i will be able to watch it (it's officially out December 28th, but these things always seem to ship early).

Thanks to all those who posted, it was the most comments for a post ever in out short history! You can still view it here.

Our Palm Pictures DVD Giveaway contest has come to a close and we've got four, count 'em four, lucky winners.

Congratulations to Curtis Pullen and Scott Cunningham who both take home a copy of Time of the Wolf while Robert Meeker and KT have both landed a free copy of Springtime in a Small Town.

We'll have copies of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's 6ixtynin9 to give away in January, so keep your eyes open for that, and remember there are just a couple days left to enter our Tale of Two Sisters poster giveaway.

It's all rumor and innuendo at this point, but that's the word over on the News Askew website ... word is that Smith has been hired to shoot the pilot of the upcoming Star Wars television series and that Hamill is reprising his role as Luke Skywalker and will appear in the show on an occassional basis. If this pans out it at least lets us know where the show will occur in the Star Wars timeline ... could this be Lucas' way of getting the material planned for episodes seven, eight and nine out there without going through the feature film grind?

The News Askew story is here.

A sad day for those of us in the TiVo-less world who use BitTorrent to catch up on our favorite shows when we miss the broadcast ... the MPAA is going after the file-sharers again, this time specifically targetting eDonkey and BitTorrent. The BitTorrent software itself is pretty innocuous and should remain untouched, but they are specifically taking a run at sites that post and archive links to bootleg materials that use the Torrent format ... apparently a hundred or so sites have been targetted for prosecution. Full article is here.

The BBC recently aired some behind the scenes footage from the upcoming Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and some kind soul was good enough to digitize it and make it available here. It doesn't show a whole lot, but you do get a good look at all of the principal characters in costume ...

Via H2G2themovie.com

Hey! Chow Yun Fat might just end up in a North American film that doesn't suck! According to Yahoo News Fat has been approached by Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski about appearing in the two sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean playing actual 15th century pirate Cheung Po Tsai.

They can't confirm or deny anything until the contracts are signed, sealed and delivered, but this looks to be a pretty done deal. Read the whole article here.

Via FilmRot

As information slowly trickles out about the upcoming live action adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe the good feelings I have towards the project just keep on growing ... well, there's a little more than a trickle now as the PR folk have just sent out this link to behind the scenes footage from the film. Whee! Creature and prop shots o'plenty and WETA is definitely living up to the high standards they set themselves with the Lord of the Rings films. This stuff looks sweeeeeet!

That's in Quicktime format, by the way ...

I gotta make the trip out for the Sitges Film Festival one day ... Logboy just sent me the list of prize winners from this year's edition and it reads like a who's who of Asian film ... check it out:

Best Make-Up: Three... Extremes, directed by Takeshi Miike, Fruit Chan, Chan-Wook Park

Best Special Effects: Izo, directed by Takashi Miike

Best Film & Jose Luis Guarner Critic Award: Old Boy, directed by Chan-Wook Park

Best Animated Film: Steamboy, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

New Visions Award: Vital, directed by Shinya Tsukamoto

Audience Award (Favorite Film): Howl's Moving Castle, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki was also presented a career acheivement award.

Orient Express Casa Asia Award: Innocence, directed by Mamoru Oshii

The festival's official site - which appears to be down at the moment - is here.

0605 - the final film from murdered film maker Theo Van Gogh - has just been made available for download here. It's in Dutch, and thus of little use to me, but it's nice to see his legacy being spread, rather than capitalized upon, by the film's producers in the wake of his shocking death.

For those who weren't already aware Van Gogh - yes, he was related - was stabbed to death in an Amsterdam park following the release of a film criticizing the treatment of women in some Muslim cultures. The killing was religiously motivated and word is a letter threatening the life of Van Gogh's collaborators on that film was left impaled into on his chest with the killer's knife.

According to Screen Daily Icon Entertainment will be putting Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ back on theater screens in the UK on Good Friday. Part of me is a little surprised that they think there will be a market for it with the DVD already out but the more cynical part of me is considerably less surprised. Is this going to turn into an annual event? A Rocky Horror for the Jesus set? Looks like Mel's gonna take a run at it ...

According to Fangoria the ultra-low budget Japanese doll-horror flick Marronier will be hitting DVD in North America sometime next spring, likely by March. Though Marronier is primarily the work of director Hideyuki Kobayashi it also has some sort of tie to famed Japanese horror-comic writer Junji Ito of Uzumaki fame.

Word is that the film has some problems on the narrative front but is a pretty twisted trip regardless ... Midnight Eye has a lengthy review of it here and you can check out four and a half minutes of footage here.

DVD Times has got their mitts on the full artwork and specs for the upcoming DVD release of I Heart Huckabess and it looks like a pretty good release ...

The one odd note is that the first disc of the two disc set will be a flippy - pan and scan on one side, anamorphic widescreen on the other. I can't remember the last time I saw one of these and I'm a little confused about why they'd bother inclduing the pan and scan for this sort of film at all ...

Anyway, specs: a commentary from writer / director David O Russell; a commentary from actors Jason Schwartzman, Naomi Watts and Mark Wahlberg (hurray!); a wack of deleted and extended scenes; all of the Huckabees commercials and PR materials; Open Spaces Coalition PSAs, and a bunch more ... they've loaded 'er up nicely ...

Check the full details here.

The mighty web-monkey has just pointed out that the link I posted to the trailer for the US remake of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water has died an ignoble death. Not to worry, the trailer is now available in purty Quicktime format here.

Let me declare my bias right off the top here and say that if American Beauty is not the best directorial debut to release within my lifetime then it is, without doubt, within the top three. It launched the film career of Sam Mendes, established Alan Ball - who went on to create Six Feet Under - as a top flight writer, marked the last truly great performance of Kevin Spacey's career, and launched Chris Cooper into a critical glow that has been growing steadily ever since.

Now, Mendes is no dummy. He knows he's got something good going in his relationship with Cooper so it's not really surprising that he's just signed the man for a critical support role in his upcoming Gulf War film Jarhead. Cooper joins Jake Gyllenhall, Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx in the film playing the Colonel in charge of Gyllenhal and Sarsgaard's sniper unit ...

That's quite the cast ... with Foxx going from Ray and Collateral to this, and Gyllenhall moving into this straight from Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain you can expect to see both riding waves of critical support for a good while ... I think it's safe to say that there are no more Bubble Boy's in Gyllenhall's future ...

via The Hollywood Reporter

Well, this story just keeps going ...

After irritating fans with his alterations to the content of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials director Chris Weitz has abruptly quit the project. They're saying this isn't about creative issues - New Line will use the Weitz penned script with whoever takes over - but Weitz didn't think he could handle a film of this scale.

Pullman fan site Bridge to the Stars has a lengthy piece on the move here.

Filmforce directed me to an interview with Canadian actor, Nathan Fillion, of Firefly fame and the eventual release of what will be the long long long anticipated spin-off feature film Serenity. Why it's on About.com's romantic movies page I have no idea. Don't let that be a threat to our masculine readers.

I don't want to ruin any of the revelations in the interview but this one is pretty major. In the interview Nathan admits that he and the cast are signed on for a trilogy and if Serenity does well next Fall there will be two more movies.

Will there be a "Serenity" sequel?
If this first movie does well… We’re all roped into a trilogy. We all signed for a trilogy so if this first one does well, we’re going to do two more.

So let’s say you do three movies, can you go back and do a “Firefly” TV series again after that?
I hope so. Daddy’s got bills to pay!

Serenity is on my must see list this Fall. And the possibility of a trilogy has me slightly optimistic. It would be nice to see this work and work well. Let's hope for the best.

Go read the Nathan Fillion interview over here.

IFC Films has posted the trailer for Nobody Knows - the best actor winner at this year's Cannes film festival - here. They're making it look surprisingly chipper for a film about four young abandoned children and Mr. Movie Voice must die, but it does look like fairly compelling stuff ...

Empire has just posted a pair of high resolution still shots from Revolver, the new Guy Ritchie directed, Luc Besson produced crime pic starring Jason Statham and Ray Liotta. The verdict? Ritchie's learned a thing or two about visuals ... these things look way better than anything he's done in the past. Check 'em out here.

And, yeah, it's being widely reported that Ritchie's famous wife will appear in the film, but it's also being reported that her part amounted to little more than a walk on. Following the near career suicide that was Swept Away that last bit is truly good news ...

Big budget Korean anime flick Wonderful Days turned a lot of heads a year or so back, and deservedly so. The film uses a fairly unique fusion of 2D cel animation, 3D CGI techniques and even some modelling work to create one of the best looking pieces of animation out there. Korean animators have been the cheap labor of the animation industry for years and this was their chance to show that they can actually play on the same field as the big boys and they pulled it off quite well ...

The point? Back when the eligible films for this year's animation Oscar were announced you may have spotted something called Sky Blue. That would be Wonderful Days under a new title for the US market. I'm really not certain what the point of renaming the film was considering how much buzz it had already generated in the anime community, especially considering that the new name is far superior, but there you have it.

Again, the point? Yes, right. The point. It's coming to US theaters in a series of limited engagements starting at the end of December. The current list of screening locations is available on the film's US website here. That site is strangely bereft of a trailer, and the original Korean site has been taken down, but you can find a trailer at the film's French site by clicking here. The purty Korean limited edition box set - this is seriously one of the best DVD sets I own and it comes with a cut of the film eight minutes longer than the theatrical edition - can still be had here or you can get the Korean theatrical version here. Both include flawless audio / video transfers as well as english subtitles.

I've been stopping off at the BBFC site regularly to see how the "cut" or "uncut" situation goes for this series... still no news or listing on the disc contents. I would guess they would get through uncut, though i am prepared to be proven wrong.

Anyhow, to the left here is the artwork (only pics available, hence the size) for the three volumes (1 to 3 from left to right ofcourse). Don't know if they will get away with these : a removed eyeball, and an exposed brain, but again i am prepared to be proven wrong. I don't know who is releasing them still, as i would like to try and get review copies too. Keep going below for the Episode Guide.

Continue reading "MPD Psycho. by Takashi Miike. Artwork and Episode Details."

KungFuCinema.com has done the world a huge favor and posted a link to a 3 minute preview clip of Tony Jaa's next martial arts actioner 'Tom Yum Goong'.

In this 3 minute clip you'll get a number of promotional shots from the Ong Bak press junket tour. You'll also get teaser shots and what appears to be choreography/training footage for 'Tom Yum Goong'. Follow the link above and you can d/l the preview clip and watch it over and over again.

Faithful reader and all around good guy Joel said there is too much Sydney. Meh. That may be true. But something is better than nothing though. It's a step in the right direction. We're sure that more footage will follow and we'll keep you up to speed. When we know you'll know.

Our Ocean's 12 contest has wrapped up and everybody say congratulations to Julia Padgett who was well aware that George Clooney and Brad Pitt took out ads requesting Matt Damon be declared the People Magazine Sexiest Man of the Year. Personally I think it would've been funnier if they'd done it to Elliott Gould, but that's just me ...

A reminder, as well, that there is just one more day to throw your hat into the ring to win a free DVD of Springtime in a Small Town or Time of the Wolf. Click here for all the details on that one ...

Is there going to be anything left unseen by the time The Life Aquatic finally releases? Who knows ... here are five behind the scenes clips from the film, all in Quicktime format.

Team Zissou
The Belafonte
Father and Son
Creatures
Captain Wes Anderson

Don't let that little 'Posted By' thing fool you ... this one's actually from Nick, but he's having massive computer problems so he passed it along to me and I'm putting it up from here.

So, here we go with a look at Jackie Chan's New Police Story. Will a return to his native Hong Kong also mean a return to the form that made him a massive star around the world? Well, it's a hell of a lot better than anything he's made in North America in a good long time, but it falls short of Chan's truly top-tier work. Read on ...

Continue reading "Jackie Chan's New Police Story Review"

Here's one out of nowhere ... although Zhang Yimou is currently hard at work on a small domestic drama it is fairly widely known that he is already prepping his third large scale martial arts film (the first two being the stellar Hero and House of Flying Daggers) but what hasn't been mentioned is who will star in it.

Well, citing a Chinese newspaper report Monkey Peaches is saying that Yimou may be meeting with Jackie Chan to discuss the possibility of working together. Chan has been talking for years about wanting to do some more serious work and I guess he sees this as his opportunity. I can see Yimou wanting to draw on Chan's immense stunt / martial arts knowledge, not to mention his box office power, but you've got to question whether he's got the dramatic abilities to pull off a Yimou film ...

Well, the Golden Globes have announced their nominated films which means awards season is now officially in full swing. There are always a few surprises to be had with the Globes, but they tend to be a fairly accurate indicator at least for what will be nominated for the Oscars.

So, what do they tell us? First, the critics really like Sideways, which leads all films with seven nominations. Paul Giamatti is definitely my pick for best lead actor. Second, they like their genre movies, with Uma Thurman and David Carradine both nominated for Kill Bill 2 and House of Flying Daggers nominated for best foreign language film. Third, they confirmed my Toronto Film Festival prediction that awards voters always bite on disability films with Javier Bardem getting a nod for The Sea Inside and the film also being nominated for best foreign language film. Fourth, this is indeed Jamie Foxx's year with the actor drawing nominations both in lead (for Ray) and supporting (for Collateral) categories, a nice trick if you can pull it off. And, while it didn't surprise me, I was quite happy to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind draw Best Picture, Actor, Actress and Screenplay awards.

The closest thing to a nomination surprise here is Joel Shumacher's Phantom of the Opera, which has gotten pretty much universally negative reviews, pulling a nom for best comedy or musical but that's considerably less surprising when you consider that it's pretty much the only straight musical released this year. You'd have to be horrifically bad to not pull a nomination when you're the only film of your type ...

Check out the full list of film noms below.

Continue reading "Let the Oscar Handicapping Begin - Golden Globe Nominations Announced"

The Korea Herald posted an article today covering western critical response to Kim Ji-woon's horror, A Tale of Two Sisters. It's a short but sweet article which suggests that it is best to stick with the original material and forget about the remakes.

With the quality of product coming out of Korea and the quantity of films to choose from thanks in part to Korea's Screen Quota System more and more films are selling their rights to be remade into an American version.

My favorite quote comes right at the end of the article, "Don't wait for Dreamworks to cast Jessica and Ashlee Simpson in the remake. Go see "A Tale of Two Sisters" while it remains a Korean work of art," wrote Booth [Michael Booth - Denver Post]

Read further news/rumors about the inevitable remake here.

And don't forget about our Tale of Two Sisters poster giveaway contest.

via HanCinema.

It's now or never if you want that handsome poster to the left ... our Ocean's 12 contest closes today. Click here for the details and get cracking.

A duel post, and my first post in a few days (i think). Not a common thing for me, but something which most posters do occasionally. Basically, a few things at once to avoid writing more than is necessary. Anyway : Unearthed Films late-December releases get each get a review at mondo-digital, which i love for its' carefully chosen subjects, so go here and scroll down for some of the rarer cyberpunk japanese stuff.

Previously annouced, but never discussed by me is "S S Hell Camp" (aka "S S Beast Stable"), one of the more notorious "Nazisploitation" flicks, out December 28th in the USA. Why do i say this now? Cos "S S Experiment Camp", probably the best know of this genre (at least from a "Banned in the UK" point of view) has been announced for Januray 25th 2005 in the USA also. I will be checking out both...

Don't know if it has anything to do with the Christmas season or not but there are tons of fantastic new Asian DVD releases either out right now or just announced ... here's what you should be looking for:

From China / Hong Kong

Not only has Wong Kar Wai's 2046 just released on DVD in Hong Kong but the early rumblings are that Mei Ah has gone the extra mile and put english subtitles on the bonus features as well as the feature. I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere yet, but my copy's on the way and I'll update this once it arrives. WKW fans should also be looking at Mei Ah's remastered, two disc edition of In the Mood For Love. My copy of this arrived last week and they've done a good job on it ...

The Hong Kong / Japan joint effort Explosive City - starring Simon Yam and Sonny Chiba - is also hitting the streets right about now and word is that it's pretty good.

And if you've been a bit slow off the mark Jackie Chan's New Police Story is pretty easily the best thing he's done in years and is required viewing, as is Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers.

From Korea

The Old Boy Final Edition - yes, the third distinct Korean DVD release of the film this year - hits soon. The long awaited martial arts epic Sword in the Moon has just released as have romantic comedies Windstruck, a reteaming of the director and star behind My Sassy Girl, and Love So Divine, starring Kwon Sang Soo from Volcano High and Once Upon a Time in High School. If you haven't already ordered Kim Ki Duk's 3-Iron I'm afraid I can't talk to you anymore.

From Thailand

No sign of the Thai issue of Born to Fight yet, but art house and festival circuit hit Tropical Malady has just released as has Beautiful Boxer - the true story of a man who becomes a professional muay thai fighter to finance a sex change operation. There's a US trailer for that one here.

From Japan

These are the big finds in my book. The stellar anthology Jam Films - featuring shorts from Ryuhei Kitamura and Shunji Iwai - has just received a dirt cheap Hong Kong release, so there's no excuse not to pick this thing up and if you're the impatient sort the Japanese edition of the second Jam Films collection also includes English subtitles.

And speaking of Iwai, his early film Ghost Soup has just been released while Hana and Alice - his latest - is awaiting a late January release in subtitled form.

Shouting Out Love At The Center of the World - the latest from the director of the incredible GO - hits at the end of the month.

The biggest news, though, comes from a pair of just-announced releases. Kore Eda's Nobody Knows - winner of the best actor award at this year's Cannes film festival - hits March 11th and the hugely anticipated (by me, anyway) Taste of Tea - the latest from the director of Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl - releases February 25th in both regular and limited editions. I've already got mine ordered ... get to it ...

We've posted links to trailers for most of these in the past ... a quick search of the site should turn those up if you want more info ... everything listed here includes english subtitles ...

Apparently there's a new full length international trailer for Kung Fu Hustle up on the film's official site but since the site won't load up for me I have no way of saying if that's true or not ... Maybe you'll have better luck than I'm having ...

It was just a couple months ago that the trailers for Banlieu 13 started to circulate and drew our attention to some stellar French martial artists. Is it Germany's turn now? Could be ...

While I was drawing the winners' names for the House of Flying Daggers contest this morning a regular Twitch reader sent me this:

"I check all your site every day just stumbled across some cool news you guys might want to check out.......Check out this site for this upcoming kung fu no wires no stuntman movie from the Germans......Looks like we have another competitor for the Panom Yeerum aka Tony Jaa title.....Thanks Guys for your great site......"

I don't think these guys have Tony Jaa beat, but they're certainly no slouches in the martial arts department and the production values on the film look fantastic ... Check out the official site for upcoming German martial arts flick Kamfansage (The Last Apprentice) - complete with trailers and demo reels - here.

Thanks to PerfectBlueIllusion for the heads up.

Our House of Flying Daggers poster giveaway contest has wrapped up and we want to say thanks to everybody who entered and congratulations to our three winners, who all answered correctly that Zhang Ziyi originally trained as a dancer. And our winners are:

Elaine Vanderwerf
Ryan Ruppe
Scott Cunningham

If you missed out on this one make sure to throw your hat into one of our other contests! There are only two days left to enter our Ocean's 12 giveaway, four days left on the Springtime in a Small / Time of the Wolf DVD giveaway, and just a week left to enter our Tale of Two Sisters poster giveaway!

We are unabashed Shaun of the Dead fans. We are even bigger fans of its creators, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. So when I saw Fangoria and Dread Central post that the film will be re-released back into theatres the same day the R1 DVD comes out on December 21st I just knew that I had to share that news with all of you.

Seen it already? See it again. Missed it and want to know what the fuss is all about? See it for the first time. Then go see it again. Here is the list of cities and theatres that will be honored to have this film grace their screens.

Atlanta, GA: Regal Perimeter Point 10
1155 Mt. Vernon Hwy

Houston, TX: Houston Marquee Stadium 23
7620 Katy Freeway

Dallas, TX: Hulen 10
4920 South Hulen Street

Ontario, Canada: Ontario Palace Stadium 22
4900 East 4th Street

King of Prussia, PA: King of Prussia Stadium 16
300 Goddard Blvd

San Diego, CA: UA Horton Plaza 14
475 Horton Plaza

Portland, OR: Lloyd Center 10 Cinema
1510 NE Multnomah St

New York, NY: Union Square Stadium 14
850 Broadway

Kingston, MA: Independence Mall 14
101 Independence Mall Way

Minneapolis, MN: Brooklyn Center Stadium 20
6420 Camden Avenue North

Read Todd's review of Shaun of the Dead here.

Not a fan of the voice over on this one but everything else looks fantastic ... it's the international version of the trailer and it's got a LOAD of new footage ...

Check it here.

The Disney Database has managed to land pictures of the upcoming DVD release for The Incredibles along with what looks to be a fairly complete list of features. The way things are going right now this thing might still be in theaters when the Easter 2005 release date rolls around ...

Anyway ... the features ... it looks like this will be a typically loaded up Pixar DVD with lengthy behind the scenes documentaries - some focused exclusively on the unique issues around created believable human characters - as well as a blooper reel, the Boundin' short, and a brand new short titled "Jack Jack Attack". That last bit has got to have you thinking sequel if you weren't already, and as far as I'm concerned that's a very good thing ...

Anyway ... check out a larger version of the cover art as well as the disc art here and the feature list here.

Via Animated News

Is it too late for John Travolta to re-invent himself again? For him to veer away from the dismal work of his recent past and get back to something decently compelling? My hunch is yes, the luster's just a little too far gone, but if I'm going to be proved wrong - and I'd really like to be on this one - this film will be the one to do it.

Be Cool is the sequel to Get Shorty in which Travolta's mobster character Chili Palmer ditches his movie producer career in favor of the music industry. It's based on a book by Elmore Leonard so, at the very least, it should have some incredible dialog but it's also got a cast to kill for. And, really, The Rock's afro wig deserves its own billing on the marquee.

Check it out here.

Sweet! Logboy just clued me in to this page over at Digitally Obsessed. Some kind and clever soul in Fox's marketing department decided to post a series of clips from the upcoming DVD release of Napoleon Dynamite and you really need to watch them. All. Right now.

What do you get? There's a lengthy deleted scene with Napoleon and Pedro trying to buy lottery tickets and a pair of scenes from the film presented with the audio commentary tracks. Now run along.

Faithful poster, 'crazybee', alluded to it in his post on Canfield's review of Blade: Trinity. SuperHeroHype.com drew my attention to it this morning but I had to duck out for a couple hours and experience the camp of Trinity for myself.

To answer your question 'daniel', yes, there is apparently an alternate ending to Blade: Trinity that will be part of an extended cut of the film available on DVD. Dread Central was the first to bring this news to light here.

I'm not going to give anything away, especially since B:T has only been out for a couple days and I don't want to ruin any of that action for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. If you want to know more just follow the link above.

What did I think of B:T? I didn't love it. I didn't hate it as much as it appears Goyer hates filming action sequences. Hit the vampire. Now cut to a shot of them falling on the ground. You sense he doesn't have faith in either the sequence, his choreographer, or that the action is that good to give it a full shot. Sad really. B:T is a lot of fun though. Reynolds rules the roost. Biel is... well... she's Biel and that's all that matters. And it was good to see 'Couver again. Don't worry baby, I'll be home for a couple days over Christmas. But you should make up your own mind and then speak it over at Canfield's review.

Tah.

Sweet mother of pearl! First we get a decent domestic poster. Then we get that kick ass international poster. And now, some way, some how, the next Batman Begins trailer is online three days before is was supposed to be. It is supposed to be in some trailer loops for B:T and Oceans Twelve but it shouldn't be online. Yet.

dTheatre.com has got a link and a mirror and they've got the next trailer RIGHT FREAKIN' NOW!!!

WHERE ARE YOU?!!? [here]

MY UMPTEENTH UPDATE::: The mirror works best. Go to the mirror site. Wait a few seconds and you can d/l the trailer. Once we have a proper link on Monday we'll link the faitful to that as well. And despite what anyone says in the comments it is a different trailer than the one off the official page.

Monkey Peaches has gotten ahold of some images of Ken Takakura on the set of Zhang Yimou's QIAN LI ZOU DAN JI through The Beijing News.

This is reportedly the final film in Takakura's incredibly prolific career of close to 50 years.

Click here for a beautiful image of screen legend Ken Takakura.

And another one for good measure.

via MonkeyPeaches and Sina.com.

Zowie. If this thing accurately captures the tone of this film it is going to be absolutely brilliant. It plays out like a vintage Cold War era b-grade paranoia-fueled sci-fi invasion picture, only with much, much better production values. Incredibly effective stuff that doesn't once show us either Tom Cruise or any of the alien invaders ...

Consider me teased. I'll be there opening day.

Check it out here.

If there was any doubt at all that Tim Burton was the right man to remake Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or that Depp was the man to play Willy Wonka, that doubt is now gone ... click here to behold the wonder of the most Burton-y Burton film since Ed Wood! But be warned: the music is going to burrow its way deep into your brain ...

A huge thanks to Greg for the heads up.

I saw it on AICN first and then a bit more on ComingSoon! Due to be released one year from today it has been announced that Brian Cox [Troy, X2, The Bourne Supremecy/Identity] has been cast to provide the voice for Aslan in Disney's adaptation of the famed Chronicles of Narnia, penned by C.S. Lewis.

This is a relief. I could only imagine how many time I would have ended each sentance he spoke in the movies with 'Simba' if it was other famed lion voice actor James Earl Jones. I would have punched myself out.

On the casting of Cox, producer Mark Johnson says, "Brian has an amazing resonance to his voice, a certain majesty, which suits Aslan perfectly...I've always found Brian to be so versatile...we first talked to Brian about the role of Aslan maybe nine months ago, and I'm glad it worked out". via ComingSoon.

Wow! Did critics hate this one!! I think critics and tons of fans desperately need to get a grip. Doesn't anybody ever go to the movies to have simple fun anymore?! I guess everything has to be some vain glorious epic masterpiece before we're willing to cut it any slack.

This movie is Shaft with Vampires- get a grip.

Continue reading "BLADE TRINITY: REVIEW"

This has got to be a joke but I couldn't resist posting it. I'm trying to find out what the original source of this is and if I manage to turn it up I'll be sure to post it ...

According to a post on this thread at Mobius, where people generally know their stuff, currently lobbying for the lead roles in the upcoming North American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters are:

The Olsen Twins.

I kid you not. I seriously couldn't make this stuff up if I tried ...

**** UPDATE ****

We got a source on this ... it came from Defamer ...

Whee! IGN Filmforce is reporting that there is more Appleseed in the works: a lot more. Though the film has not yet been released in North America it did well enough in Japan that the production companies involved have already approved a pair of animated sequels to be produced simultaneously, and are also looking into producing a television series and a potential live action version.

To all of the above I say this: HOT DAMN!

I watched my Japanese DVD of the film yesterday and ... wow. Just wow. Did I understand a word? Nope. Did I care? Nope. Though employing entirely different techniques Appleseed is every bit as impressive technically as was Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell: Innocence but Appleseed boasts a much more audience friendly sense of pacing and action. And this thing positively begs to be turned into a decently budgeted live action film. Seriously ... turn Kaz Kiriya loose on it and I'll be ecstatically happy ...

A couple weeks back I posted this article blowing off a little steam after learning that Tom Stoppard had been bumped from His Dark Materials in favor of a script adapted by American Pie director Chris Weitz.

But wait! you cried ... how could I slag a film that hadn't even started filming yet. Because I'm a clever boy, that's how. It's now coming out that Weitz has made some MAJOR changes to the content of the books, including stripping the explicitly anti-religious subtext in favor of something a little friendlier. Fans of the books are, shall we say, less than pleased ...

Am I surprised? Not even a little. After the previous post about Weitz' work as a screenwriter I finally got around to checking out the screen version of About A Boy, which Weitz adapted from the Nick Hornby novel. For the first two acts everything was spot on as Weitz essentially lifted text word for word, but in act three things started to change. A lot. Weitz took an emotionally complex book and jettisoned very nearly all of the more difficult material in favor of something far more cheerful and uplifting that what Hornby actually put on the page. It looks as though he's now doing the same thing here ...

Digital Spy has an article about this here.

MTV has just posted a new - and lengthy - trailer for Constantine here and it's a good one.

Yeah, I know ... fans of the comic are still mightily pissed off about the character being Americanized but taken on its own merits I've got to say that the look and feel of the thing is spot on what I'd expect from my limited exposure to the books and Reeves actually seems to suit the character. Plus I'm just a sucker for Rachel Weisz. Anyway ... check it out ...

The folks over at Empire have gotten their hands on the international poster for Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and it's purty ... click here for a larger version.

Hey look! A film with Colin Farrell that I might actually pay money to see! I'm not a fan of the drunken Irishman - I generally don't understand why he keeps getting cast in big A-list films - but I am a bit of a fan of Terrence Malick, the reclusive film maker behind The Thin Red Line, and this is his latest. The trailer's available in high resolution Quicktime, and it looks mighty nice ... check it out here.

Via AICN

Like the title says, you've only got one more day to enter our House of Flying Daggers poster giveaway. Click here for contest details and get your entries in!

Disney and Pixar have decided to move their final [fingers crossed?] collaborative work, Cars, back to June 2006. In it's place Disney will plop down Chicken Little.

Now what they're both saying is that this is a clever ploy to make their movies more successful in the long run. Though The Incredibles has pulled in scads of cash it is losing momentum to that creepy animated feature, The Polar Express [Those kids scare the geewillagers out of me] and it's more holiday themed story. Finding Nemo was Pixar's last summer timed release and it had great legs [fins?] and staying power throughout the summer.

In a statement released to the media, Dick Cook, Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, said, "The move from November 2005 to June 2006 makes perfect sense. CARS is the quintessential summer film for audiences of all ages. It has a fantastic story full of action, adventure, comedy, heartfelt emotion with cutting edge animation and incredible voice talent." Cook continued, "In the vein of FINDING NEMO, we feel the movie will have legs throughout summer and beyond." Cinescape.com

"'Cars' longs to be a summer movie," Jobs [Pixar CEO] said in a statement Tuesday. "We plan to finish 'Cars' on its original schedule and look forward to 'Cars' and our future films benefiting by summer theatrical releases and holiday DVD releases."

It's perfect really. You release the movie in the summer where the kids are home all day and the parents are desperate for anything that will grasp the attention of the little ADHD bastards for at least 90 minutes. Then you release it as a DVD around the holidays knowing that parents will buy it for their kids if it means that the candy cane and hot coco induced ravings of their toddlers will be silenced for even half of Christmas break. Until of course they start pretending they're NASCAR race cars in the living room.

Some, however, don't buy it and offer this opinion. Meh.

Via AICN for the lead on the SFGate.com article.

Oh. And I wasn't talking about your kids. Their all lovely and well behaved little angels and they're wondering when you're going to come home.

Now here's some fun news for Japanese film fans ...

The original Jam Films anthology is one of the finest anthology projects to ever come out of Asia. It's made up of six short films from six of the absolute hottest young Japanese directors - most notably Ryuhei Kitamura of Versus and Godzilla: Final Wars fame - and there's not a single mis-step in the lot. Kitamura's entry, titled The Messenger, is absolutely essential viewing for any fan of the man and is beyond doubt one of the highest points of the man's filmography.

The only problem with this is that, until now, it has only been legally available as a pricey Japanese import. Well, no more. A Hong Kong release is being quietly snuck out to market in a mere two days for the low, low price of $7 US. Nice. So far Layoyo looks to be the only company stocking this and you can find their listing here.

Sony Classics has just released the official one sheet poster for Imaginary Heroes, the directorial debut from X2 (and Superman, and Logan's Run, and ... you get the picture) scribe Dan Harris. This is a much smaller, more intimate picture for Harris and I'm really curious to see what he comes up with ... you can check the official web site here.

Japanese b-movie auteur Seijun Suzuki is one of those rarest of creatures: a film maker spurned for his unorthodox ways who has suddenly been re-discovered and received international acclaim. Okay, the re-discovery and acclaim isn't so rare, what make it unusual is that it happened within Suzuki's own lifetime and it has allowed him, now well into his eighties, to resume a stagnant career.

Enormously prolific throughout the fifties and sixties Suzuki was fired from his Japanese studio position for consistently producing films that were just too strange for the Japanese studio system. A man who, at his peak, routinely produced three or four films a year was reduced to picking up scraps where he could and experienced gaps of six and seven years of complete inactivity before disappearing entirely in the early nineties.

The offending film - Branded To Kill - acquired underground cult status as a result of it's career stifling nature and as word slowly spread more and more people became attuned to Suzuki's bizarre world of surreal and psychedelic yakuza gangsters, resulting in the western world finally cluing in to his unique vision. He's now become one of the golden boys of the Criterion Collection, with a handful of Suzuki titles already released on the art film label and a mitt full more coming soon.

The end result? In 2001 Suzuki returned with the garishly technicolor Pistol Opera - a quasi-sequel, quasi-remake of Branded to Kill. That film was well enough received that he is now back again, this time with Princess Raccoon, a trippy looking musical with A-list stars Joe Odagiri and Zhang Ziyi. The official website, complete with trailer, has just gone online for Suzuki's latest and this bad boy looks to be every bit as pot-fueled as his work from the sixties. Those garish color schemes and psychedelic effects are back in a big way and it looks glorious in a very camp, b-flick trash sort of way. Check the trailer - in Real Video format - here.

via Monkey Peaches

December 10th release, so if you held off : go to it. It does have English Subtitles : Asiandvdguide.com have confirmed it.

The specifications are :

Specs - Regular Edition (1 Disc)
Disc 1 - Film. Letterboxed and 16x9 enhanced. Cantonese (DD 5.1), Mandarin (DD 5.1).Chinese (Traditional). English. Chinese (Simplified) subtitles. DVD-9.

Specs - Limited Edition (2 Discs). Disc 2 - Extras. Making Of. Zhang Ziyi Special. Photo Gallery. Unseen Footage. "Casta Diva" Music Video. Premium: A Set Of 5 Postcards.

Also : see the pics they've posted of the cover here. YesAsia's listing for the two disc set is here.

Apart from spawning some of the best britcoms [Spaced and Black Books personally] Channel 4 also has a smashing page committed to film. And it's on this technological wonder that they've come about with their Film of the Year 2004 review. And it looks like they're having a contest as well for whoever picks the correct top three films of 2004. Five lucky winners will win a copy of the final LOTR Special Edition DVD sets. I couldn't tell if this contest was open to only residents of England like logboy and Mr. Terry. I carry a British passport. Perhaps I qualify?

It's simple really. Just follow the link to the competition page and enter your top three choices. Then see if you've guessed correctly and you won't have to pay for your third installment of the LOTR trilogy. Huzzah!

Oh. What are you voting for? Glad you asked. Here's Channel 4's Top 20 List of 2004:

American Splendour
The Bourne Supremecy
Capturing the Friedmans
Collateral
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fahrenheit 9/11
Finding Neverland
The Grudge
Hero
I Heart Huckabees
The Incredibles
The Motorcycle Diaries
My Summer of Love
Old Boy
The Return
Shaun of the Dead
Shrek 2
Spider-Man 2
Super Size Me
Zatoichi

And what films does Channel 4 think are the worst? Read on chums...

Continue reading "Channel 4 says cast your vote now and feel powerful for at least 3 minutes!"

The acclaim just continues to roll in for Sai Yoichi's Blood and Bones with the picture now cleaning up at the Nikkan Sport film awards ... all told the film took home four major awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Takeshi Kitano.

You can read the full story at the excellent KitanoTakeshi.com

The George Almighty has announced that the first season of the animated Clone Wars will be hitting DVD on March 22nd. I've never actually seen one of these shorts so I'm fairly pleased that I'll soon have the chance to sit and watch 'em all in order ... I know I'm looking forward to this more than the next live-action installment in the saga ...

The DVD Times is reporting that Pathe will be releasing a three disc special edition of Christopher Nolan's Memento on December 27th.

On the one hand I'm quite pleased by this since Memento is one of my very favorite films ever, and has pretty much made me a Nolan fan for life. On the other hand this will be the fourth, yes - the fourth, time I've bought this film.

First came the stripped bare Canadian edition which was immediately replaced by the still sparse but still superior basic US edition, which was in turn replaced by the US two disc limited edition. This new three disc job only appears to add a pair of interviews to the material on the two disc US release so I'd stick with what I've got if not for one simple factor: new menus. I think there's stuff on the US release that I still haven't been able to find thanks to the maddening menu system ...

Check out the full specs and screen caps of the new menus here.

Because I told him I would. I want to thank this man to the left, Kieran Naidoo, for popping by last night and getting my computer back up to speed. It had not been well for the past couple days and Kie was good enough to come over, eat my chips, drink my roommate's juice and get things right. He's a good man that Kie.

To make this movie related I did lend him my copy of Bubba Ho-Tep.

No surprise really given how incredible this film is. Park Chan-wook's second installment of his revenge trilogy took home five awards on Sunday at the Korean Film Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Music. Old Boy also earned the most nominations this year with 11.

via The Korea Times.

Not my review, anyway: this disc snuck out hardly advertised. Not surprising, as contrary to popular belief, most British TV fans don't know where every gem is hidden away. It took lots of people ages to catch onto some of the best-loved stuff and much of the classic stuff is clearly ignored in favour of something more "modern".

"The Office" had a good impact on American fans of comedy. It's not the best of everything in the past few years, but it's certainly up there and will probably be repeated for decades. Some other stuff, like the Channel 4 show "Peep Show" will probably be regarded as too contemporary to repeat too often, if at all. I highly recommend it though.

I love the POV shot with over-dubbed thoughts from the minds of the characters, revealing their true selves. Two flat mates, one hard working and "responsible" who has no pleasure in his life but desperately wants it, and his unemployed friend who sees "all the action". Superb stuff.

So, check out the review and also the BBC comedy guide to the show here, the BBC America site here, and finally the Channel 4 website here. Oh, and the "Big Brother" audition tape trailer here at the play.com listing.

There's been a whole range of choices if you've wanted to see this film. Now, add one more: the USA disc.

It's released on February 15th 2005, a date etched on my mind cos it also happens to be the date for "All About Lilly Chou-Chou" and "Last Life In The Universe" too.

Specs: Anamorphic 2.35:1. Korean Audio track (English and French Subtitles available), loads of special features. Two Discs. There's no mention of the running time, so I assume it should be the 150 minute version of the film as released elswhere.

See the announcement and a large pic of the box (as seen to the left here) over at dvdanswers.com here.

Todd has the Japanese Boxset, but it has no subtitles. Todd also has said the vague possibility is that the film will get a release on DVD in the USA (with subs) in March 2005. For now, we know this: the thing will hit American Cinemas during January 2005.

The picture on the left is a slice of the artwork from the magazine adverts, shown in full at Animated-News.com here

The official website for the USA is also now up, and it's here.

Click here. Just do it.

Via Dread Central.

That's the word ... Moviehole is citing a report in Teen Hollywood that claims Timberlake has already signed on to the film, and the rumor has a lot more credibility than it may appear at first glance. First, Timberlake already has two films in the can awaiting release and has actually been generating some very positive buzz for his performances. Apparently the guy's actually got some acting chops. Second, one of the aforementioned films is Alpha Dog, helmed by Nick Cassavetes, who just signed on to helm Iron Man. Timberlake would have the drawing power a studio would want and Cassavetes should be as aware of his acting abilities as anyone on the planet so if he wanted Timberlake on board it would require practically no effort for Cassavetes to have signed him up.

Let me say as well that while I don't like Timberlake's music AT ALL he's always struck me as pretty much the most intelligent and wide ranging of the teen pop crowd, often looking very uncomfortable with that whole circumstance. He showed he's got some serious balls and an equal amount of class dealing with an overwhelmingly hostile crowd in the half million range when playing the SARS benefit concert here in Toronto last year and the fact he keeps turning up in odd places - guesting with The Flaming Lips and The Black Eyed Peas, among others - shows he's got a lot more going on, and has a lot more respect from his peers, than you might expect.

So, who knows ... could all be a rumor at this stage but if it turns out to be true I'm going to wait until I see some footage before forming any sort of opinion on this one. I think the guy's got some hidden depths ...

It's always risky to jump to conclusions based on a teaser trailer, but Fangoria and Bloody Disgusting are both all over Ti West's no-budget indie horror flick The Roost and based on the trailer it's easy to see why ... West may just be the second coming of Sam Raimi with his killer bat flick tapping deep into a 1970's era American Horror vibe. Yeah, the footage is grainy but it's filled with a nervous, jittery energy and an unmistakable sense of style ... check the trailer out here.

Via Bloody Disgusting

OK, so this isn't a review unfortunately : it's a pointer to something that's coming soon. A new Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp book about Japanese Cinema.

It covers the background and work of Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike, Hideo Nakata, Shinya Tsukamoto, Hayao Miyazaki, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (amongst others) : so it has a popularist or familiar slant it seems.

You should be able to preorder it now as it's due between now and the end of Decemeber 2004 : so it immediately goes on my "to buy" list.

Check out the Midnight Eye page(s) for the book here, which includes links to amazon sites all over the globe, or pop to your local bookshop to place an order if you have any interest in Japanese Cinema.

See the updated Midnight Eye site, with reviews of Satoshi Kons timely "Tokyo Godfathers" and "Howls Moving Castle" from Hayao Miyazaki here.

The good folks at Warner Brothers were so happy with how the Alexander giveaway went that they've turned around and offered us an Ocean's 12 poster - and other goodies for future films which shall remain nameless for the time being - to give away.

Personally I'm really looking forward to this one ... I don't think Soderbergh's made anything even remotely approaching a bad film yet, the cast is fantastic, and while the first one was fluff by Soderbergh's standards it was some mightily entertaining fluff. This oughta be one of the best straight popcorn films of the year ... check the official site here.

You know the routine by now ... answer the question and you've got a shot at winning the prize. Well-labelled entries get sent here by December 12th to be considered. And the question is this:

George Clooney and Brad Pitt - both past recipients of the People Magazine Sexiest Man Of the Year Award - took out full page ads requesting People to consider which co-star for the award during the filming of Ocean's 11?

With digital technology finally make it possible to create impressive artificial landscapes and characters relatively cheaply there is a bit of a rush on live action anime adaptation in Japan right now ... Casshern and Cutie Honey got the real world treatment in the past year, and live action versions of Devilman and Neon Genesis Evangelion are currently in the works and receiving a lot of advance buzz ...

Proceeding a little more quietly is the work on Tetsujin-28, an anime show about a boy and his robot that received a North American release as Gigantor. The first teaser didn't include any of the digital effects at all, but the ever keen-eyed Logboy just spotted a new, 90 second trailer that includes robot-action o'plenty. This looks like it could be fun in a goofy, family friendly sort of way ... they're definitely going for the campy-nostalgic vibe with this one, and there's a fantastic Matrix gag included in the trailer. Check it out here.

It is cruelly brief, but the BBC has just posted a trailer for the upcoming series of Dr.Who. Now, I'm not an obsessive Who fan - especially not in comparison to a good friend of mine who has every Dr. Who video ever made - but I do have a weak spot for the Tom Baker incarnation and I have to say that the news that Christopher Ecclestone would be taking over the role has had me giggling like a school girl for a good while. Ecclestone is, in my opinion, a hugely overlooked actor and an absolutely inspired choice for the part ... I'll definitely be seeking this out as soon as it begins to air.

Check the trailer - in Real Video format - here.

The Batman Begins poster has turned up over on the film's official website and it's looking good ... I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan so I've got high hopes for this one ... click here to see a larger version ...

via our very own Logboy

Hey look! We're giving more stuff away!

The good people at Subway Cinema are helping Tartan with the promotion for the stellar Korean horror flick A Tale of Two Sisters and they've offered us five, count 'em, five official Tale of Two Sisters posters to give away to you, the Twitch faithful. These babies measure a hefty 27x40 inches and they're lovely in a creepy, rather bloody sort of way.

Tartan's trailer for the film doesn't really do it justice ... this is a truly haunting, subtly atmospheric film that's won numerous awards around the world and that'll stick with you for a good while post-viewing. It hits North American theaters in a limited release December 17th ... take my word on this one: if it's anywhere near you, go.

Want one? You've got to answer me this:

What other award winning film from Korea will Tartan be releasing to North American theaters in February?

Fire your answers to me here and remember to label them clearly. We'll accept your entries until the film's release date of December 17th. And don't forget to enter our House of Flying Daggers poster giveaway - only a week left to enter that one - and Springtime in a Small Town / Time of the Wolf DVD giveaways while you're at it.

These have been floating around for a little while, but (with some prodding from Logboy and Canfield) I've just realized that we neglected to link to them ...

Movies Online has a gallery of 18 shots from George Romero's Land of the Dead here. There are a few there that you won't find anything else and while most are fairly indistinct and there are no stars to be found, there are a few good shots of sets and zombies ...

NixFlix also has a stack of shots from the upcoming Ring 2, again including a few that you won't find anywhere else. Check 'em out.

Just a quick heads up that Yahoo has just posted a series of clips from House of Flying Daggers here. Go. Now.

The website for the upcoming Stellan Skarsgaard / Sara Polley starring adaptation of Beowulf and Grendel is now live here and it includes a stack of pictures and production info. No trailer yet, so you can't see what this stuff looks like in motion, but the still pictures are looking mighty fine. If nothing else the scenery should be spectacular thanks to the entire film being shot on location in remote parts of Iceland.

That last sentence implies that there are parts of ICeland that could be considered 'not-remote'. Heh. Funny.

A trio of still shots from the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha have turned up online over at Blackfilm. All three are gorgeous and all three are available in high res versions ... the Spielberg-produced drama is due to release sometime in 2005 ...

via Monkey Peaches

The official French website for Jet Li's Danny the Dog - to be released in North America as Unleashed - has launched here. All that's there at the moment is the trailer, available now in its largest and highest quality form yet. And if French is your thing you can even watch a French dubbed version.

I've said it before and I'm saying it again now ... if this trailer is any indication this film will be - BY FAR - the best western-produced film of Li's career. He's finally in a decently compelling script with a fantastic cast of actors including Bob Hoskins and Morgan Freeman. If you've not seen the trailer yet, go now.

Saw this over at animenewservice.com (superb site). Looks as though they could have recieved a press release, which i am going to take the specifications from and put them here.

Here on the left is the first look (as far as i know) of the cover, which is pretty much the original poster design that's always been used, this time framed in silver. Hopefully everyone is familiar enough with Mamoru Oshiis' 1995 film to be interested in getting this upgraded edition, out January 11th 2005 in America.

Ghost in the Shell – Special Edition”. Studio: Manga Entertainment. Sales & Distribution: Anchor Bay Entertainment. Street Date: January 11, 2005. Pre-Book Date: December 11, 2004. Running Time: 120 minutes. Suggested Retail Price: $34.98. Barcode: 0 1313 82004-9 5 Selection # M2004.

Disc One: Digitally Re-mastered Anamorphic Widescreen Feature. Custom Motion Interactive Menus. English 6.1 DTS-ES Surround. English 5.1 Dolby Digital-EX Surround. Japanese 6.1 DTS-ES Surround. Japanese 5.1 Dolby Digital-EX Surround. Spanish Dolby Digital Stereo. French Dolby Digital Stereo. Italian Dolby Digital Stereo. German Dolby Digital Stereo. English Subtitles.

Disc Two: Character Dossiers. Creator Biography. Director Biography. Digital Works Production Report. Ghost in the Shell Trailers. Previews. DVD Catalog & Web Links.

It's December already. It came round so quick, i only just remembered i haven't done my monthly wants list to see what you guys and girls and also looking forward to.

Firstly, my "Lord of The Rings : Return of The King" which isn't due out 'til the 16th has just shipped (one advantage of being in the UK and buying USA discs), the second volume of Yauomi Umetsus' "Mezzo : D.S.A" is on its way too (due out on the 14th), also we finally get Homevisions' "Yakuza Papers Boxset" (delayed from a while back - problems with the maniufacturing of the metal tin apparently), "legendary" anime feature "Robot Carnival" is out on the 7th (in Korea, with English Subtitles).

On the 28th we get all these : Takashi Miikes' "Kikoku" released as "Yakuza Demon" in America, the superb-looking "Innocence" (aka "Ghost In The Shell 2") is also out around then, as is the controversial "S.S. Hell Camp", and Unearthed Films issues of more japanese sickness "Rubbers Lover" and "Pinnochio 964" too.

Besides these new releases, i am starting to explore things i haven't gotten round too, as I have pretty much caught up with my "wants" list. So, I am buying some more Italian Horror / Giallo and other weirdness too, in the shape of "Beyond the Darkness" (aka "Buio Omega"), Blue Undergrounds superb disc of "Night Train Murders", "What Have You Done To Solange?", "All The Colors Of The Dark", "Seven Blood Stained Orchids", and "My Dear Killer". Soon (the New Year) I will try to pin-down "FLCL", the few Buttgereit films out in the USA, "Now The Here There", "The Giallo Collection" ('cos Vol 2 is Summer 2005), "The House With Laughing Windows", and "Wife To Be Sacrificed".

Any Giallo, Pinku film recommendations (beyond the "obvious") welcomed, as they're two relatively hard to research areas. Tell me what you're getting this month also...

Whee! HBO has just posted a trailer for the second season of Carnivale here. While everybody else continued fixating on Six Feet Under and The Sopranos as HBO's 'premiere' shows last year I was getting totally hooked on Carnivale and Deadwood. There's something about this dustbowl apocalypse that I just find completely engrossing ... the characters are so well written and acted - Clancy Brown, in particular, was born to play Brother Justin - and it's just completely unlike anything else out there right now. From the look of things they'll be upping the pace of matters a little bit with Season Two ... go check it out ...

via AICN

A couple days back Logboy posted this article commenting on how surprising it was that the American DVD of Takashi Miike's Audition had gone out of print so quickly, a situation that has frantic Ebay-ers paying upwards of $150 for a copy.

Silly Ebay people.

I've just gotten a note from someone who works for the American rights holder that a new - and much improved - edition is in the works, hence the old version going OOP. After all, why make more copies of the old version when there's something better coming down the pipe ...

No solid word on complete specs yet, but this version will include a new transfer and a new audio commentary by lead actor Ryo Ishibashi. The new edition is in the final, prettying up stages now and should release in early 2005.

Huzzah! Some lucky scooper gave The Hollywood News the heads up on a first image for the upcoming Wallace & Gromit movie Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit.

The Hollywood News has the first image and complete film synopsis of the Wallace & Gromit movie right here.

Or, click here just for the image.

The Critics Choice Awards presented a total of five awards to PARK Chan-wook's acclaimed Old Boy, including Best Picture. The awards ceremony has been held since 1980 by the Korean Film Critics Society.

Other awards won by the film include Best Director, Best Actor (CHOI Min-shik), Best New Actress (KANG Hye-jung), and Best Music.

Other Twitch favorites won as well. KIM Ki-duk won Best Screenplay for 3-Iron and Kang Je-gyu's war film Tae Guk Gi also won Best Cinematography and Best Effects.

And just to prove you can never win enough awards Old Boy was also awarded The Star! Audience Award at the Stockholm 15th International Film Festival. The award is given to the film screened at the event that the audience votes to be most popular.

You can read Todd's review of 3-Iron here.

You can read Mack's review of Tae Guk Gi here.

via HanCinema and Korean Film Council.

The first image of actress Lee Young-ae as the lead in Chan-Wook Park's Sympathy For Lady Vengeance has turned up online. This will be the final film in Park's thematically linked trilogy of revenge flicks that started with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and continued with the massively acclaimed Old Boy.

Click here to see a larger version of the picture.

via cria on the KoreanFilm.org forums and Empas.com

One of the most critically acclaimed films to come out of Japan in the past several years, Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou-Chou was left twisting ina legal limbo when their original US rights-holder, Cowboy Pictures, went under a little while back ... despite a successful run in North American art-houses a local DVD release appeared unlikely. Well, HVE have come to the rescue ... Lily Chou-Chou has turned up on their release slate for February 15th. The DVD will include a making of documentary, music video, essay from director Shunji Iwai and a trailer reel.

This one was spotted by the keen-eyed Logboy ... I'm just doing mop-up duty ...

I wonder how my kid would feel about relocating to Japan ...

Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku has just announced a new Yokohama-based film school with 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano heading up their production major program. Also on the faculty is genre-auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa ...

Nick? Howitt? You reading this? You have no excuses ...

**** UPDATE ****

Japan's Daily Yomiuri has a brief story about this here.

How sweet is this? Toronto based art-film auteur Atom Egoyan also happens to be the co-owner of Camera: a combination bar / lounge / screening room in Toronto. With ownership like that you'd expect some interesting stuff to happen from time to time and you'd be right ... December 4th - December 8th Camera is hosting a free screening series with a slew of special guests in attendance.

The 4th gets Egoyan's Citadel, with Egoyan hosting a post-screening discussion. On the 5th there are shorts from Sook Yin Lee and Sarah Polley as well as Kristen Thomsen's presentation of I, Claudia. The 6th has Egoyan presenting his own Portrait of Arshile and Calendar with Michael Ondaatje (yes, the English Patient author) presenting his film The Clinton Show. The 7th gets a series of NFB award-winning shorts and the 8th gets shorts from Cronenberg, Guy Maddin and Don McKellar as well as Peter Wellington presenting his feature film Luck.

Check Camera's website for more info.

We've got another pair of Life Aquatic clips for your perusal ... once again I'm linking to the large Quicktime versions of these ... et, voila:

The Reknowned Scientist
Mutiny on the Belafonte

A large and extremely excited crowd gathered in the foyer of the Piper's Alley Theater in Chicago last night to catch the latest installment in the Blade series. One fan even showed up in full Blade costume minus the kitano sword. Were they dissapointed? Or did director David Goyer deliver the goods on what has been hinted as the final appearance of Wesley Snipes as the Daywalker?

Continue reading "BLADE III: TRINITY"

Primer was one of the best films I saw this year at the TIFF and I have been waiting for it to open here in Toronto to make all my friends view it as well(it's been opening over the past 3 months all over the US). This day is now upon us friends.

Primer opens this Friday in Toronto (December 3rd) with a little cool incentive that is absolutely necessary in viewing this film. Primer is puzzling to watch, requiring your full attention and most definitely a second viewing and the film company agrees as it appears that when you see it in Toronto, you can save ticket stub and see it for FREE a second time during the films run at the theatre. How wicked awesome is that, it totally makes sense and for once their doing something right (who exactly are "they" Nick?).

I wish they had something like this for Alexander, except if you kept your movie stub you could go see something that wasn't the film equivalent of the ebola virus.

Check the old Primer post here on Twitch for the trailer and website. This is a MUST see. Seriously.

...But theres no content of note there. You can "register for further updates" (whoopee!), and look at a nice drawing on the front page. Anyway, it's worth a visit if only to bookmark it to come back to at a later date.

It should be a good movie, though i am worried they're knocking this one out a little quick : it's touted as a Summer 2005 release. So, hopefully they've got thousands of people bashing out CGI segments at the same time Tom and Steve and grabbing shots on public streets all over the USA. See it here.

There's a good chance you're sat there now thinking "Wha?!?! Another Oldboy DVD? Already?!?!" like i was a minute or two ago. So recently we've had the "Ultimate Edition" which was apparently botched-up and damaged by the people who shoved (literally) cardboard slipcases against sturdy copper studs (those holding the case together), and that has spawned a "recall" - see the details below.

Now, the high-definition telecine used in the Ultimate Edition has been used to create a new edition that's apparently got the same content as the original DVD, yet this time has a slightly different cover and case design. So, if you love the film, like "double-dipping" (don't tell the wife) or just want the best option if you haven't already bought it, look for the edition like the picture here. See a listing at koreandvds.com here.

The following posted in an edited form by Shintaro at DVDTalk.com forums (thanks...). Suggest people use the email address to confirm recall details just incase. A small section seems to be missing also.

Continue reading "Oldboy. Final Edition. R3 Korean DVD. December 10th 2004."

Okay, this has nothing to do with anything, filmwise, but it makes me laugh pretty hard ...

A friend of a friend - yes, it's one of those stories - works for a local religious broadcaster, the one where they shoot Huntley Street, and as part of their job they get to screen audition tapes for singers who want to perform, live, on a show which broadcasts on national television. This is one such tape.

It starts off slow, but just wait until you hit the crescendo in the middle of the song. The emotion! So true! So pure!

Click here to download. And remember: this man wanted to sing live on national television.

According to the Korean Film Council's official web site the director of Shiri and TaeGukGi, Kang Je-gyu, is poised to sign with the major Hollywood talent agency CAA. This will make him the first Korean director to join one of the major Hollywood agencies.

CAA (Creative Artists Agency) was founded in 1975, and is one of Hollywood's top three talent agencies together with William Morris and International Creative Management. The company manages both top stars as well as directors and noted crew members. Among its members are Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, and members of the music and video game industries.

Continue reading "Kang Je-gyu to sign with Hollywood talent agency - the end is nigh!"

YesAsia is now accepting pre-orders for the Korean DVD of the stellar 3-Iron from acclaimed director Kim Ki-Duk. This film was, pretty comfortably, my absolute favorite film from the 2004 Toronto film festival and is due for a North American release sometime in the spring. Check out my review from the film festival here, the film's official website (in Korean) here, and the YesAsia listing here.

They've also got Yesterday Once More, the latest from Johnnie To available here. Now, I've never caught the To bug, but the last film he did with Andy Lau - Running On Karma - is pretty easily my favorite of the To films I've seen thus far, so I'm willing to take a chance on this one ...

Title says it all, really ... the Independent Spirit Awards can be a pre-cursor to the Oscars and they're definitely one of the 'purest' awards programs out there. The big winner in the nomination race looks to be Alexander Payne's Sideways and while I still don't think it's best-picture material I absolutely think Paul Giamatti deserves the best actor award. Nice to see Badassss! represented as well ... Read on for the full list:

Continue reading "Independent Spirit Award Nominations Announced"

Following up their prior announcement of in-competition titles the Sundance Film Festival has just announced all remaining screenings for the 2005 fest and it's one mighty fine line-up ... Check it out:

Kim Ki-Duk's 3-Iron; Dear Wendy, a new film directed by Thomas Vinterberg and scripted by Lars Von Trier; Game 6, a new film scripted by acclaimed author Don DeLillo; The Girl From Monday, written and directed by Hal Hartley; Steven Chow's Kung Fu Hustle; Matthew Vaughn's Layer Cake; Kevin Bacon's Loverboy; Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Mirrormask; Rodrigo 'My Dad Won a Nobel And I Shoot All of HBO's Best Stuff' Garcia's Nine Lives; 9 Songs; Old Boy; Three Extremes; Crispin Glover's What Is It? and a slew of others ...

I just might have to make the trip ...

No idea if this is authentic or not - if not somebody spent an awful lot of time mucking about on Photoshop - but you can click here
to see a shot of a full on space battle, reportedly slated to appear in an early sequence of Episode Three ...

via FilmRot

Thanks to the recommendation of Logboy and a few others I recently spent a day perusing the disturbing world of Monkey Dust, a compelling though incredibly bleak animation series out of the UK. Logboy dropped me a note today directing me here: a detailed review of the just-released Monkey Dust Season One DVD.

I've got to echo pretty much everything the reviewer has to say ... this is truly biting satire, very definitely not intended for children. You'll laugh, yes, but you'll also be disturbed both by what you're viewing and by how strangely familiar the source material is. The BBC has some stellar clips from the show online here and if you find those sufficiently compelling, the DVD is available here.

Something odd is happening. The word has gotten out that the American DVD for "Audition" by Takashi Miike is "Out Of Print" or "OOP" in Ebay speak... so look at ebay now : $150 is what this disc is currently fetching. That's just ridiculous. If you check DVDBeaver, you will see the recent "Collectors Edition" here in the UK is actually alot better in terms of the transfer and indeed everything else on offer.

So, please buy the UK disc. I know, I would normally (like so many) say avoid Tartan discs, but this one is superb. High bit-rate, beautifully rich colours and truly superb to look at and listen too. If you live in the USA and want it, your amazon.com account will be recognised at the amazon.co.uk site.

So, I say "Dodge this!"... Personally, i've seen them all at the cinema, even watched the second one TWICE (once on IMAX), which in itself was a cure for insomnia. But, if you like the films, you won't even need reviews to know it has got to be worth the money - if you haven't already got them all. So, double-dip?. Up to you - but as i keep saying, there's plenty of other stuff out there to be watching.

Still, the remastered first film looks alot better from the example grabs, and the review is long and detailed, so there must be something worth talking about. See it here (it's the first i've spotted).