Martial arts film is at a crossroads. Yes, the fan base is still worldwide and massive but the supply of talent is in crisis and has been for years. Pretty much right from the beginning we have looked to China and Hong Kong for our screen fighters but the golden days of the Shaw Brothers grooming young talent, the Yuen Clan cherry picking the best youngsters and the Beijing Opera turning out performers by the boat load have long since passed. Look at what’s happening in Hong Kong film right now: Jet Li and Jackie Chan are both losing ground to age and talking retirement, leaving only Donnie Yen as a prime, top of his game fighter. The next generation? With the exception of Wu Jing it’s simply not there, or if it is nobody has recognized it yet. If you’re looking for fresh fists of fury turn your attention to foreign lands folks because the chances of an unknown savior appearing to save the game in Hong Kong are looking bleak. So the time has come, friends, to look to other nations.
Thailand has already become a leader with Tony Jaa and Dan Chupong filling the roles of a Thai Jet Li and Thai Jackie Chan respectively - the former the pure fighter, the second the stunt man / performer - and Chocolate has surely brought a fresh new face on to the scene in Jija Yanin. But who else is out there? Well here you go: from five different countries I present five different fighters with the potential to - if you’ll pardon the bad pun - kick start the industry once again.
Continue Reading "Will The Next Great Screen Fighter Please Stand Up?"...
An important note when choosing which films to see at the Toronto International Film Festival: don’t ignore the kids program. Heck, Wallace and Gromit were in there one year and every sees at least one title with serious potential to cross over into all age brackets. And this year that film looks like it could be Krabat. A German teen fantasy film about a youth being taught magic, it would be easy to write this off as a Harry Potter clone except that it looks far, far darker in tone than any of the Potter films have been so far, much more in line with fantasy pictures from the late eighties than anything current, only with much better production values.
We’ve got the trailer below the break in the Twitch Player. Watch out for the transformation shots in particular, those are fantastic.
Continue Reading "Impressive Trailer For German Teen Fantasy KRABAT"...
Fresh off the news that it will be part of the Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival we have just been given the very first look at the official trailer for Jon Hewitt’s Australian horror picture Acolytes. This trailer is actually a little bit shorter than the MySpace teaser we posted up yesterday but it’s a tighter, more focused look into this violent world. The story? Three teens blackmail a killer into taking down the violent bully who has been making their life hell, a nasty little turn on normal teen-horror conventions. You’ll find both trailers below the break.
Continue Reading "Brand New Trailer For Aussie Horror ACOLYTES!"...
Yes, boys and girls, it is time once again for the weekly Twitch Video Player Top Ten, wherein we - surprisingly enough - count down the ten most played titles in our erstwhile video system. And, boys and girls, it’s the end of an era: this is the first time Machine Girl has not appeared in the Top Ten since that trailer first appeared months and months and months ago. Are you ready for the excitement? Here we go!
1. Ong Bak 2 Promo Reel (8968)
2. Yatterman Teaser (5154)
3. Tokyo - Shaking Tokyo Clip (821)
4. Ichi Full Trailer (816)
5. The Good The Bad And The Weird Trailer (726)
6. Tokyo Gore Police Promo (549)
7. Ghost Town Trailer (540)
8. Red Cliff 9 Minute Promo (491)
9. Be A Man! Samurai School! Teaser (472)
10. Riki-Oh - The Story of Ricky Trailer (402)
It’s no surprise that the Midnight Madness lineup is our favorite block of films in the Toronto International Film Festival, the ten included titles making up the premiere offering of new genre films int he world today. And - along with the Wavelengths and Family Zone titles - the complete Madness lineup has just been announced! And they are: JCVD, The Burrowers, Deadgirl, SexyKiller, Detroit Metal City, Not Quite Hollywood, Acolytes, Chocolate, Eden Log and Martyrs. Let the blood letting begin.
We’ve got the complete announcements for all three lineups below the break and all of the Madness trailers with the exceptions of The Burrowers and Deadgirl - and we’re working on those - in the TIFF Trailer Park.
Continue Reading "TIFF Midnight Madness, Wavelengths and Family Zone Titles Announced!"...
Beating the ambitions of Quentin Tarantino to the punch by what looks to be an ultra-polished version of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (complete with crazy camera angles, remote desert ranches, and busty gals kicking mighty man-butt) comes the not-nearly-as-great-titled, Bitch Slap. Here is hoping that director Rick Jacobson is not limited to just injecting Michael Bay-isms and modern speed-ramp cinematography into the mix, which this trailer implies.
Movies Online (the source of this trailer) also has a review up. They indicate there is a little bit of the old Memento reverse-narrative thing going on in there as well as a sampler of pop philosophy which (hopefully) tip the hand that ambitions go beyond simply remaking the film (although there are many recognizable Pussycat shots in the trailer). With the success of exploitation mish-mashes Grindhouse and Doomsday this stylishly shot updating of the Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! ‘big-tits-and-sexy-violence’ grrrrl-power cult trash-terpiece from Russ Meyer is certainly hitting my guilty pleasure button mightily. The question is: will Bitch Slap be clever or pandering? The cast includes Sam Raimi-produced-TV regulars Lucy “Xena” Lawless and Kevin “Hercules” Sorbo, and the stunts are handled by Zoe Bell (who does not seem to be significantly in front of the camera this time, despite the success of her starring turn in Deathproof). I find it curious that they are omitting any sort of dialogue (one of the chief strengths of Meyer‘s flick) from the trailer.
What makes “Bitch Slap” different is a “B” Story device that runs throughout the film to illuminate character, backstory and relationship histories not previously revealed. Like the movie “Momento,” [sic] these scene flashbacks take place in reverse; so by the end of the film, the audience has a wholly different take on who these women are and why they are behaving so badly. “Bitch Slap” also employs a mysterious Female Narrator who comments periodically on the folly of humanity, the plight of the human condition and the vagaries of life and love through quoting the likes of Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, Sun Tzu and even Buddha. Bet you never heard THAT in “Jailbait Babysitter!”
Bitchslap is due out late 2008 (the trailer says Christmas, although the IMDb indicates early 2009). And more information is likely to seep out of San Diego as the Comic Con gears up down there tomorrow.
(While quite safe for work, THIS IS YOUR CLEAVAGE WARNING BEFORE YOU HIT PLAY after the Jump.)
Continue Reading "So Long, and Thanks for the Mammeries - Bitchslap Trailer"...
‘Tis the season for live action anime adaptations. Already on the ‘coming soon’ list are Spielberg’s spin on Ghost in the Shell, DiCaprio’s Akira and Tobey Maguire’s Robotech and now you can add to the list a 20th Century Fox-produced live action version of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop.
Now, Bebop is a show that could work beautifully in live action if done correctly and rumors of a live action version have circulated for years. When Watanabe was here in Toronto for the Worldwide Short Film Festival earlier this summer I put the question of a future live action version to him directly, to which he just smiled and commented that “That would be up to Hollywood.” And apparently Hollywood says yes. With further questioning Watanabe also spilled that he is currently preparing new animated and live action projects though he would not comment at all on what the new projects were, which at least opens up the possibility that he may have a hand in the Hollywood Bebop.
The inseparable pack of cigarettes on one side, the burdensome emptiness of a blank page on the other, all the menacing sound of silence enveloping it; the pen next to it, bearing the pomp and circumstance, the weight of a sword ready to penetrate into that endless white. Like a war fought with one’s imagination, choosing where and how it will start, what will signal that long awaited, mentally draining end. The bittersweet aftertaste full of lights and shadows; a moment of relax, and the urge to start again, because as much as it pains you to go on, that thirst is what keeps you alive. Jung Ha-Yeon still writes dramas in that old “analogue” way, just like when he started writing plays in the 1960s. A thousand handwritten characters per page; twenty five, thirty pages per episode at most. Words catching fire, as if pens were an idrant pouring creative fuel on an inflammable surface. Forty long years, spent running after that elusive, mysterious fire fate only bestows upon the best.
Korean TV dramas have always been accompanied by that exacting moniker: 대중문화, culture for the masses. Although we’re dealing with the most drama-crazy nation on Earth, there’s nearly no critical discourse about this medium online or in print, unlike the rivers of ink spent over Chungmuro’s karmic trips. It’s in that sense that the work of Jung Ha-Yeon, particularly in the last decade, feels like a scimitar wading through an ocean of condescending mediocrity, showing what dramas can really achieve. But, on the other hand, only a tiny portion of Korean drama fans are willing to make that emotional and intellectual investment into something that shouldn’t always be a mere divertissement, sandwiched in between dinner and sleep. It all makes things like 달콤한 인생 (La Dolce Vita) feel like broken glasses of the most savory of wines, half of their flavor wasted on all the cracks of the system, slowly dripping away.
Continue Reading "[K-DRAMA REVIEWS] 달콤한 인생 (La Dolce Vita)"...
Yes, Akira Kurosawa must be spinning in his grave right now thanks to the disrespect his son is showing by selling off remake rights to his films to seemingly anyone who comes knocking and, yes, it’s sad to see that Samurai Fiction director Hiroyuki Nakano has slipped to this but damn if it doesn’t actually look pretty good.
What is it? Hiroyuki Nakano - once an international darling, now absent from the feature film world for several years - has directed a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai starring Sonny Chiba and Nagase Masatoshi with several of Kurosawa’s original creative team on board in key support roles. As you’d expect from a Nakano film, it looks fantastic. And as you’d expect from a Nakano film it has a killer soundtrack - in this case all Rolling Stones tunes. The weird bit? It was prepared for a special edition pachinko machine. Yes, kids, to see the new Nakano film you’ll need to head to your local gambling emporium and get playing. Go figure.
There are multiple trailers available on the official website - if someone could figure out how to capture those and load them into the Twitch Player, I’d be grateful - and you can hit the link below for more details.
Hugofilm, Wüste Film West and Constantin Film are gathering their collective might to produce a film based on the 2006 novel Tannöd by German author Andrea Maria Schenkel. The story of the novel was based on a real event dating back to 1922 - Hinterkaifeck, where a family- a husband, his wife, their daughter, her two children and the maid- were all brutally murdered with a pickaxe. That crime remains unsolved. Schenkel used that event as inspiration for her own retelling of that story and sets it in post-war 1950s Germany.
Swiss filmmaker Bettina Oberli [North Wind and Late Bloomers] will be at the helm. Bettina also co-wrote the adapted screenplay with Petra Lüschow. Near as I can tell from reviews of the book it reads more like investigative journalism; along with a straight narrative of the events it also includes transcripts as eye witness accounts are recorded, not witnesses of the murder - there were none, but witnesses of the Danner family and the strains and tensions that existed within it. In one review I read the accounts include stories full of rape, incest, suicide, brutality and deception. Add a dash of religious poetry to the mix and by all accounts it makes for a very unsettling yet engrossing read.
Done right this could be could one of those films that effectively balances the horrors of the murders with the horrors revealed in the secretive lives, emotions and motives of the Danner family.
It should be noted that there is already a film titled Kaifeck Murder in post expected to be released early January 2009 in Germany.
High School Girl Rika: Zombie Hunter (Saikyo Heiki Joshikousei Rika) is set for a Region 2 Japanese language DVD release from GP Museum on July 25, 2008. One can almost guess the story from the title: a surgically-enhanced high school girl fights off a plague of zombies. High School Girl Rika does not seem to offer much in the way of innovation but of course, that does not mean it will not be entertaining. The graphic trailer is cut for maximum effect and can be pursued beneath the fold (viewer discretion advised).
Continue Reading "HIGH SCHOOL GIRL RIKA: ZOMBIE HUNTER Set for R2 DVD Release"...
In his Sundance dispatch to The Greencine Daily, Brian Darr queried whether the “nerve-wrackingly fun” Baghead would remain in audience memory 16 years from now? And if, indeed, it had the potential to end up being “the mumblecore film to outlast its moment?”
Baghead‘s fresh genre mash-up—part comedy, part horror, part relationship flick—completely worked for me, as I imagine it will for others; but, it is in a very real way undeniably tied into this particular moment in the history of independent film, let alone the burgeoning careers of Mark and Jay Duplass, which justifies Brian Darr’s prescient query.
Offered the chance to talk to the brothers, I did a little research first and found myself totally smitten with The Washington Post video of their arrival at Sundance where they immediately launched into a hunt for free food. Now aware that the way to a mumblecore director’s heart is through his stomach, I arrived at our interview at the Prescott Hotel armed with a baggie of homemade empanadas de calabasa (pumpkin turnovers). Their eyes lit up as they gobbled them down right in front of my eyes. We hold these truths to be self-evident….
Continue Reading "BAGHEAD—Interview with Mark and Jay Duplass"...
Filming began today for the adaptation of the novel Shikisoku Zenereishon by author Jun Miura. Taking the helm for only his second time in his career is noted actor Tomorowo Taguchi [Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Full Metal Yakuza, Dead or Alive and Doing Time]. The two were former band mates and this will be the second time that Tomorowo will adapt one of his friend’s works. It has been five years since Tomorowo’s debut film Iden & Tity. Not much is knows about the cast right now. What we do know is another friend of Jun Miura’s, Lily Franky, will playing the role of the father of the main character and former teen idol Hori Chiemi will play the mother. Mukai Kosuke, who wrote the screenplays for Linda, Linda, Linda and Shindo penned the screenplay.
Set in the 1970s, the story revolves around a Bob Dylan-worshiping virgin in his first year at a Buddhist high school who lives a pampered life with his caring parents (played by Hori and Franky) but struggles to cope with his teenage neuroses. One summer he heads off with his friends to Shimane’s Okinoshima, rumored to be an “island of free sex”…
The mammoth Fantasia Festival has come to an end and you know what that means: prizes! Who’s getting the hardware this year? Ahem ...
Swedish vampire picture Let The Right One In was the clear winner, taking home the jury award for Best Picture while also netting nods for Best Director and Best Photography. A surprising - and VERY gratifying - choice was Miki Satoshi winning best script for Adrift In Tokyo while Rule of Three and Shadows in the Palace took home Best Actor and Actress, respectively, and the jury awarded a special prize to Adrift In Tokyo‘s duo of Jô Odagiri and Tomokazu Miura. In the First Features category Koen Mortier’s Ex Drummer edged out Nacho Vigalondo’s Time Crimes and John Bergin’s From Inside, all three of which I truly adore.
Check out all the rest of the winners in the official announcement below the break!
Continue Reading "Fantasia Award Winners Announced!"...
Synapse Films has just released Seiichi Fukuda’s Japanese seedy sixties revenge movie “Madame O” and it’s an odd release to be sure.
For starters it’s the second film in a series of “Vice Doctor” movies, of which all other entries are considered lost.
The only reason this one still exists is that it was actually sold to a foreign distributor as a naughty picture. And as the only surviving copy is an American one, the English dub is a take-it-or-leave-it affair with the original Japanese soundtrack having gone AWOL…
All of this sounds very bad, but don’t dismiss this disc just yet. The story is self-contained to the point where (thankfully) no knowledge of any of the other “Vice Doctor” movies is required, and well… the movie itself is strangely enough rather good, and very much ahead of its time.
So read on after the break, and beware of angry women brandishing scalpels and syphilitic cotton balls!
Continue Reading "MADAME O DVD Review"...
The 28th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival ("SFJFF") takes place throughout the Bay Area from July 24 to August 11, and in terms of the number of films and screenings on offer, it’s their largest one yet. Although I’m sure the program contains some fine narrative features, the eclectic selection of documentaries is what really grabbed my attention this year. Here are a dozen that I’ve had the chance to preview.
Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel—Of all the documentaries in the festival, this one carries the highest profile, having garnered loads of media attention when it screened at the New York Jewish Film Festival this spring. Stalags were immensely popular Israeli pornographic novels from the early sixties, in which Allied POWs recounted tales of sexual torture by buxom Nazi SS babes. They arrived at a time when the world was first learning about concentration camp horrors (via the trial of Adolf Eichmann), and were penned in Hebrew using English sentence structures (to deceive Israeli readers into thinking the books were written abroad). In this loaded and densely packed film, Director Ari Libsker interviews Stalag writers and collectors, and goes about the messy business of deciphering the books’ psychological and sociological implications. Interestingly, the entire film was shot in black and white, save for the colorfully lurid book covers, which boast such titles as The Monster of Horror Stalag and I Was Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch. Stalags was produced by Barak Heymann and is showing on a double bill with his brother Tomar’s It Kinda Scares Me. For a closer look at the film’s reception in New York, The Greencine Daily compiles reviews and write-ups here and here. Highly recommended.
Continue Reading "SFJFF 2008—Michael Hawley’s Documentary Dozen"...
Comments threads are fun!
So. Christian Bale. Arrested for assaulting his mother and sister. That, my friends, is class. Or not, really. However this ends up playing out it can’t at all be a good thing when the female side of your family has you arrested. Bale’s denying it, of course, but what else would you expect him to do?
Fairly across the board (other than for the occasional sour grape), Tina Mascara and Guido Santi’s affectionate documentary Chris & Don: A Love Story has been favorably received by critics and public alike. Following my first write-up on the film during Frameline 32, Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily has—of course—compiled an aggregate of the film’s critical response, which continues through its ongoing theatrical distribution.
I took ill during Frameline 32 when Don Bachardy was in town granting press interviews, so I especially appreciated his taking time to talk with me recently by phone. My thanks to Karen Larsen for arranging same. Photographic portrait of Don Bachardy courtesy of Kevin Scanlon, L.A. Times.
Continue Reading "CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY—Interview With Don Bachardy"...
In the current political it’s very easy to think of terrorism as being a problem that exists ‘over there’ somewhere and very easy to forget that in the 1960s and 1970s terrorism was very much a domestic problem as well. Heck, even here in peace loving Canada we were briefly put under military rule in the early 70s thanks to the actions of the FLQ, a home grown terror group to call our own. There were equivalent groups everywhere, it seemed, each of them with their own causes, the only unifying factor seeming to be the willingness to use violence for their own ends.
The big German terror group of the late 1960s - active into the early 70s - was the Red Army Faction, or RAF, who engaged in bombings and assassinations throughout the country. That particular slice of German history has been captured on film in the upcoming Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex, and if the freshly released teaser is any indication this should be potent stuff. The great Bruno Ganz has a key role - always a good sign - the tech end looks spectacular and the attention to detail is impressive. Pay particular attention to the shots at the end of the actors next to the real people they are portraying: some of the resemblences are truly eerie.
Teaser is below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "Germany’s Past Explodes in DER BAADER-MEINHOF KOMPLEX"...
It aint always the case but sometimes more really is better and such seems to be the case with Denmark’s Kandidaten (The Candidate). Denmark is going through a pretty significant boom in noir-oriented films right now and Kaspar Barfoed’s latest fits neatly into that mold.
Jonas Bechmann, a defence attorney, is a man of the system. Until the day he himself is accused of murder. Taking matters into his own hands, he throws himself into the hunt for a group of blackmailers who threaten to expose him as the killer. But nothing is what it appears to be, and the blackmail links back to his father’s death under mysterious circumstances a year and a half earlier.
Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Kim Bodnia - two of my favorite actors in the world - star and both are perfectly suited to this sort of thing. We posted the first teaser a couple months back, blown away by the look and feel of the thing. The full trailer arrived on the scene today and it’s even better. Check them both out below the break.
Continue Reading "Fantastic Full Trailer For Danish Noir-Thriller KANDIDATEN!"...
Fans of Clive Barker and Ryuhei Kitamura alike have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Kitamura’s film adaptation of Barker’s story Midnight Meat Train and the wait has been a very long and troubling one thanks to less than a-list treatment of the film by Lion’s Gate. It’s getting only a limited theatrical release in the USA while going straight to video here in Canada but that’s not the case in other nations. Nope, the film’s getting a full PR push in Korea, where they have just released a blood soaked clip from the film. Here’s how our very own Ardvark summed up the plot in an earlier post:
The story concerns photographer Leon, played by Bradley Cooper, who is looking for increasingly more ‘gritty’ material. Leon thinks he’s found the perfect subject and starts to follow serial killer Mahogany (yep, Vinnie Jones) who stalks and butchers lone passengers on the nocturnal rides of the London Subway. Which would be creepy enough in itself, but when Leon discovers the horrific truth behind Mahogany’s actions things get really bizarre…
Want to check out the clip? We’ve got it below the break in the Twitch Player along with the earlier trailer.
Continue Reading "The MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN Gets Bloody."...
With Australia becoming a major production hub for genre film over the past several years - the Matrix films, Star Wars prequels and Superman Returns all shot there - and upcoming documentary Not Quite Hollywood shining a loving light on the nation’s b-movie history it seems only fitting that Australia is once again producing genre pictures of their own. The Edgerton Brothers seem to have their fingers in a huge percentage of these new films and that is once again the case with Jon Hewitt’s Acolytes, in which Joel Edgerton plays a key role. Here’s a synopsis:
James Tresswick and Mark Vincent are victims of a brutal bully Gary Parker who has maltreated both boys, marking their bodies and spoiling their young lives. In their last year of high school, James and Mark find a way to stop being victims. They’re going to kill Gary…
As dark as that sounds the kicker is how the kids set Gary up ... the first proper teaser for the film has just arrived and we’ve got it below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "First Teaser For Aussie Horror Picture ACOLYTES"...
In previous editions of the Hideo Nakata interview at the 2008 NIFFF (Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival) we have covered upcoming projects, horror remakes and more. In this last part of the interview we go over Amityville Horror and filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa. I had read slight pieces here and there with Nakata referencing or slightly mentioning Amityville Horror, but never much where it was specifically asked or gone into any detail. So in this clip we get much more to flesh out how this series influenced him. In addition we cover his thoughts on legendary filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa, which includes him mentioning a conversation he had with him in a dream.
In this interview we talk about:
* The Amityville Horror Influence
* The Nobuo Nakagawa Influence
* On Jigoku aka Hell (1960)
Interview after the link bump.
Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 - Hideo Nakata on Nobuo Nakagawa & Amityville Horror"...
You’d think things like these happened only on silly, pseudo-"drama vérité” like 온에어 (On Air). After Choi Dong-Hoon’s film version a few years ago, Heo Young-Man’s bestseller manhwa 타짜 (War of Flowers) will get its TV treatment on SBS later this summer, but the bone of contention right now is casting. Most of the casting for the show, which will go against MBC’s blockbuster 에덴의 동쪽 (East of Eden), has been completed, with the real problem being the role of Madam Jung, played by Kim Hye-Soo in the film. Sung Hyun-Ah was cast first, apparently, but yesterday Olive9 announced the casting of Gang Sung-Yeon, who played Jang Nok-Su in 왕의 남자 (The King & The Clown). Was it just a case of the good old switcheroo? Sung Hyun-Ah learned of this all on the net.
Now, who would give justice to the role, that’s up to debate (although both would be just fine). But a sort of war of words started raging today: Sung Hyun-Ah complained on her blog of unfair practices by Olive9, who just abandoned her and her efforts the last few months to cast one of their actors. And of course Gang Sung-Yeon replied on her site that she was originally cast in the role, and when the writer had to change and her role got a little smaller, producers might have misunderstood her intentions and cast someone else in the role. But she never stole anything from anybody, and the role belongs to her.
Although netizens are already casting the blame on one or the other party, the only parties to blame are really the producers Olive9, who allowed this to get out in the open so overtly, and the system itself. With producing companies also playing the part of talent agencies, the practice of what we could call “block casting” has become increasingly popular. Last year’s 고맙습니다 (Thank You) was filled to the brim with actors contracted under producers Sidus HQ, and since containing the spiraling costs of casting has become more and more important, it’s no surprise such practice is on the rise. It wouldn’t be so outrageous, then, if Gang Sung--Yeon (who’s under Olive9’s wings) was chosen over Sung Hyun-Ah for the same exact reason, although who’s feigning and who’s telling the truth is something we can only endlessly speculate.
War of Flowers starts airing in September, ironically right after another drama adapted from a Heo Young-Man manhwa, 식객 (Gourmet).
SOURCES
[Daum News]. [Daum News]
Everything seems to say “young” about this project.
Young is the protagonist Cha Su-Yeon, one of the most exciting new talents in Korea, as her choice of projects shows; young is fellow lead Yoo Ha-Joon, headlining an interesting cast featuring Lee Eol, Kim Byeong-Ok and even music director Bang Jun-Seok; young is the director, Lee Seung-Young, who after working on the interesting cable sageuk 별순검 (Byeolsungeom) and writing the script for the film 소녀X소녀 (Girl by Girl) makes his debut here.
Film stars Cha as a musician-wannabe who tries to make enough money for her trip to England, where she’ll learn the tricks of the trade. On the way, as you can expect, her plains are derailed, even if for a brief moment. Indiestory will release this on August 21 (very limited release, as always), and after that its Festival run should start, hopefully with a DVD release down the line.
Trailer is below the break.
Continue Reading "Cha Su-Yeon Goes 여기보다 어딘가에 (Somewhere Over Here)"...
In part one, I neglected to mention the Raro DVD for Il Profumo della signora in nero (The Perfume of the Lady in Black). According to Manlio Gomarasca, this video release was possible with the personal uncut pristine film print that its director Francesco Barilli had. All other home release versions out there have too much cut out. The Raro release is the real deal and it also features a great interview with Manlio and Francesco Barilli. Chances are if you have watched an interview on a Raro DVD, it was Manlio doing the interview.
Additionally, I should note in the current Italian monthly (print only), Il Caffe Del Teatro, there is a good article on Barilli on pages 48-49. This profile seems to highlight how though he hasn’t been able to make a film, he has channeled his passion for making movies over the years into paintings.
Now for part two of this interview we talk Mimsy Farmer and the painstaking detail Barilli went into getting his singular vision onto the screen.
In part two of this interview we talk about:
* Working with Mimsy Farmer
* Creating a Single Cinematic Vision & Voice
Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 - Perfume of the Lady in Black Interview Part 2"...
The New York Asian Film Festival completed another successful run more than two weeks ago. By all rights, this review should have run before United Red Army had its North American Premiere on the fest’s last day, but it took me this long to wrap my head fully around it. My apologies. I an currently self-criticizing my actions.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.
The dates, facts, and figures come flying out of the introductory section of United Red Army like a machine gun, accompanied by a hypnotic musical theme, shooting down any possible suspicion that director Kôji Wakamatsu intended to make an audience-friendly film about the Japanese student movement of the late 60s and early 70s.
Indeed, the tone is so strident that you feel guilty for not taking notes, as though a class were being taught and you were not properly prepared to answer questions asked by the deep-voiced narrator. Initially fascinating, the tone and pace becomes off-putting, frustrating, and finally wearisome. Suddenly, though, you notice that Wakamatsu has been sneaking in brief dramatizations of the student movement’s evolution that have grown longer each time they break up the narrated documentary footage. Almost before you realize it, you’re caught up in a brutally gripping dilemma facing sincere individuals.
In short, you face the same situation as the real-life characters depicted in the film.
Continue Reading "NYAFF Hangover: UNITED RED ARMY Review"...
