It's a rare thing to sit down to a film and know just from the opening shot how bad it's going to be. Sadly this was the case for me at the world premiere of 90 Minutes, a new low-budget... More »
Last year's Yubari Grand Prix winner - and the only non-Japanese filmmaker to win the award - South Korean director Oh Young Doo returns to the wintry city with his follow-up to Invasion Of Alien Bikini, the time-travel detective thriller... More »
The opening of Belenggu (aka Shackled), could not be more promising. In the dead of night, a woman half hidden behind by a headscarf and sunglasses, drives down a remote stretch of country road. A panicked and bedraggled young man... More »
Low-budget filmmakers love to dabble in genre fare and, despite inexperience and other shortcomings, they often wind up making more pertinent and exciting works than more established helmers, who may have lost their youthful filmmaking pizzazz. Horror is particularly popular... More »
This is it, folks. PiFan 2012 is less than 3 days away. But before we pack our bags and head for the mysterious treasure trove that is the 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, it's time to reveal our most... More »
Having gone through all of the main sections, here a few more retrospectives and sidebars that seem particularly worthwhile:Myung Films RetrospectiveA respected Korean production house that has consistently fought to give cineastes freedom in their craft, Myung Films sports one... More »
As we enter the home straight of our PiFan 2012 preview coverage - the festival kicks off in just over a week's time! - there is still so much left to dig through, highlight and generally drool over ahead of... More »
There is so much to discover at this year's PiFan that the mind boggles. Here are my fifteen picks from the Vision Express section, from a total of 27. A very wide selection of films from an even wider range... More »
With just over a fortnight to go until the 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival gets underway, we stop to take a look at the main section of the programme, World Fantastic Cinema. 47 of the best genre films from... More »
Soon to open the upcoming PIFAN festival, Korean anthology project Horror Stories gathers together the best and brightest young horror talents in the nation. Here's how the festival describes it:The opening film of the 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival(PiFan)... More »
This announcement somehow managed to slip through the cracks here at Twitch Towers, but news that a new Noboru Iguchi film will be having its world premiere at one of our very favourite film festivals simply cannot pass without comment... More »
Soon to premiere as part of the PIFAN festival in Korea, Indonesian director Upi looks to put an eerie spin on atmospheric horror with her upcoming offering Belenggu. The festival describes the film like this:Elang, who lived in the flat,... More »
Yesterday PiFan unveiled its official lineup and boy is it packed to the brim with some great films! Here is an overview of the main competition section, there really isn't any film I don't want to see here though I... More »
The 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) has just released its full line-up, and it comes as no surprise to see that it is to be another fun-packed year of thrilling entertainment and some of the world's very best... More »
The lineup for next month's 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival will not be revealed for another week but we now have our first indication of some of the films that will screened at the event. PiFan will be holding... More »
Things are starting to heat up for the 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (which will be taking place July 19-29) now that a brand new teaser trailer has been released. It's a well-designed and whimsical little montage but does... More »
The Korean indie western Bloody Fight in Iron-Rock Valley, which won awards for Best Korean Indie Feature and Best Asian Genre Film at last year's Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, is getting ready to debut in Korean theaters on July... More »
With just over a month until the 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) kicks off in South Korea, we get the first news of what to expect from this year's film programme. Space Battleship Yamato, known to audiences in... More »
Well this is a pretty neat and interesting development, the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival's (PiFan) Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) has selected Indonesia as for its spotlight this year. Following Taiwan, China, Singapore and Japan, this is a... More »
Apparently someone told Song Il-Gon (Flower Island, A Feather, Magicians) that exquisite lo-fi indie character studies are all very well, but they don't pay the bills. Try a melodrama, they must have said. Try something so syrupy it'll have Koreans... More »
While the internet is tearing itself apart in its efforts to empirically determine whether Man of Steel "sucks" or "is awesome" - because such things are now apparently possible, given Superman Returns' near-unilateral, and intellectually disturbing, dismissal - I'd like to pause to make a gentler request: may we please...
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Ah, the 'unfilmable' novel. Go back ten or fifteen years and it seems everyone had some sort of list of great novels that could never be brought to the screen. The limitations at the time were largely technical and in recent years those lists have dwindled with titles such as...
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Back in 1933, while Hitler was ascending into power in Germany and diasporic Jews throughout the world looked on with concern, two high school students created one of the most indelible mythical heroes of the last century. Borrowing from the Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch, Joe Shuster and Jerry...
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This is the big week of Superman's return, with Zack Snyder's take on the caped saviour hitting our screens. While my opinion's kind of mixed on the film, there's still plenty to admire about it. I also discuss the overt Jesus imagery throughout, as expanded in a full cineruminations column...
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Amazon's Prime Instant streaming service is not as well-established as Netflix and has far more modest offerings in off-beat and strange cinema. Still, since I temporarily dropped Netflix, I've been diving deeper into Amazon's catalog, and discovered a good number of films from my favorite movie decade. Here's a selection...
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