Okay, Toronto folks ... incredibly short notice, but if you want to meet Enki Bilal - the director of Immortel and well known comic artist - head on down to The Beguiling (601 Markham St.) oh, right about now.  He’s slated to put in an appearance at 3:30 this afternoon.  All the info is at the Beguiling web site here.

The trailer for the Japanese release got a lot of peoples attention a while back. And the recent Japanese DVD (without English Subtitles) passed everyone buy it seems.

Thankfully Media Blasters “Tokyo Shock” label will give it a reasonably quick American release, coming our way February 22nd 2005. I haven’t read any reviews or gotten much of an impression about the film, but i do remember the trailer did look pretty wacked-out.

If anyone wants to point out reviews for this film, or give impressions if you’ve seen it, put in the comments below or email me. Thanks.

Spotted again over at asiandvdguide.com (props to Zuba for this and the MPD Psycho info).

First volume is February 22nd apparently. Then volume 2 will hit sometime in Arpil, with the final in June of 2005.

That’s a little longer between each volume than the UK issues, but if you want the R1 DVDs because they’re often cheaper - go for it. The UK volumes are £11.99 which is cheaper than usual DVD prices.

These American discs come courtesy of Adness / Ventura. Spotted over at asiandvdguide.com.

So, only a few years after the HK edition. I don’t really know if this is of much use to anyone except those with a multiregion taste who don’t have a multiregion player.

I suppose there’s an element of not being in the know as much as some are, and so wanting the basic UK DVD will bring limited sales in.

Oh, and by the listings of the disc I would say it’s going to be exactly the same specification as the USA disc which is due soon.

So, shop at Miramax? Buy some nice Asian films? Some company can… Spotted this over at kungfucinema.com a couple of days ago. Been thinking about it a bit : it’s odd isn’t it, to license all those wonderful films and not release them? Plenty of people kicked up a fuss over the handling of Hero - rightly so - and now it seems to mend it’s finances, Miramax may offload all or the majority of it’s stuff to someone else.

OK, so this could mean no release for all those Shaw Brothers films. Could be good new, bad news, or a mixture of the two. Miramax has also cut a load of its staff this year, so hopefully they’re sorting their act out.

Hollywood Reporter have annouced the right for Casshern in America have been signed over to Dreamworks. OK, so now we know there will be a DVD release sometime down the line, but expect to wait around a year (possibly) because they will probably do a cinema run first. Even then you can’t be sure you will get a disc as good as the Japanese edition which has just come out.

The official Casshern site has been redesigned slightly so you can now see a really nice photo of the DVD packaging, if you desire, here

Yours truly is proud to offer you a chance to glance over my latest (and certainly not last) Halloween Update. But this one comes to you courtesy of Home Vision Entertainment who asked me to cover their Halloween oriented fare for their website. Crass marketing ploy? far from it. HVE has some hard to find titles that any self-respecting horror fan should familiarize themselves with.

Continue Reading "HVE: SCREAM YOUR BRAINS OUT THIS HALLOWEEN"...

I doubt there is a single more under appreciated film maker in North America today than Errol Morris.  Yes, he won an Oscar last year but go out and ask someone on the street if they’ve heard of him and I’ll bet that better than ninety percent of the time the answer will be no.  The man is a master of his craft, spinning these odd little documentary films that unfold to reveal just incredible things about human nature. 

In many ways Morris - with his quiet, subtle style and insistence on remaining firmly off camera - is the anti-Moore, as stylistically opposed to Moore’s in your face antics and bluster as is humanly possible but if they agree on one point it’s politics.  While Moore continues to make waves with Fahrenheit 9/11, Morris has just shot and posted online a series of pro-Kerry election ads in which he finds people who voted for Bush in the previous election but are voting for Kerry in this election and simply lets them explain why.  The spots are vintage Morris, simple, minimalist, and very effective.  Check them out here.

via Greencine

The Japan Times has just run a review of Blood and Bone, a violent family drama starring Takeshi Kitano that drew rave reviews at the Pusan Film Festival with many declaring it the performance of Kitano’s career.  The Times’ take?  Five stars, “the finest performance of [Kitano’s] long career”, “Kitano has found the role he was born for”.  That’s high praise directed at a man who is already an international critics’ darling.  Read the full review here and check out the official website - with a trio of remarkably pointless trailers, here.

Yeah, you read that right.  And, yeah, it’s a spy movie based on the series of yellow-covered instructional books.  What are you thinking, John?  I know you hit a bit of a dry patch after Windtalkers and Paycheck both tanked but are you trying to throw your career away?  Spy Hunter, He Man and Espionage for Dummies.  This is not a production slate to be proud of.  The full story is here.

We originally ran this review a solid month ago but with the discs about to hit shelves it seems like a good time to revisit this.  Enjoy.

It seems like Artsmagic is making it their personal mission to dig up and release every Takashi Miike film ever made and, given how prolific the man is, that’s no small task.  The latest to come down the line are the two films from the Young Thugs (Kishiwada Shonen Gurentai) series that Miike directed.  These films have been virtually impossible to find outside of Japan which is a shame as they showcase a seldom seen side of the director as he delves into nearly autobiographical territory.  These are very personal films for Miike - he has gone on record saying the second entry is his personal favorite of his entire extensive canon of work - and that is shown in attention to detail and rich characters.

Continue Reading "Young Thugs: Innocent Blood & Nostalgia DVD Reviews"...

I hit the theatre at least every weekend to catch a show. Now, I am in the fortunate position that when I am not convincing old age pensioners that they should get life time warrenty brake pads for their 1977 Toronado I do get Friday’s off so I will usually catch the first matinee show of the day on opening weekend. So I save a couple bucks and will the see the movie usually before any of my friends do while they’re stuck at work. Huzzah!

But how much can getting good seats, let alone tickets in Korea suck? Apparently it can suck a lot.

Continue Reading "All the good seats are taken? How much does this suck?"...

Is this the first image of Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka? While it is yet to be confirmed England’s The Sun Newspaper is claiming it is. Let’s keep in mind that this is the same paper that builds it’s readership on the Page 3 Girls.

Tim Burton’s remake of the 1971 classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will hit theatres July 15, 2005 and is currently filming on the other side of the pond in England at Pinewood Studios.

via ComingSoon.

It appears that someone other than you has already seen a rough draft version of Revenge of the Sith minus some special effects and musical score.

There’s no telling how long this review will be up on the message boards over at TheForce.net before someone at LucasFilm comes over with a baseball bat. A warning though. It looks to contain heavy spoilers so if you’re like me and you don’t want to know then don’t read it. The choice is yours of course.

Click here to read the first review of Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

via EmpireOnline.

Ben, Ben, Ben, we hardly knew ye ... first the Thuderbirds, then Suspect Zero and now BloodRayne.  I hope you’re being well paid, because you’re in the midst of a streak of Very Bad Films.

I cringed when I heard that Kingsley was set to appear in a film by Uwe Boll, a man whose talent for making immensely bad films is surpassed only by his talent for writing angry rants defending said very bad films as ‘art’.  A note to Uwe:  saying your film is better than Resident Evil (a debatable claim in the first place) is not really a firm base to work from when arguing for quality. 

BloodRayne actually managed to attract an interesting cast, a fact that made me at least consider the possibility that the suck factor may be significantly lower on this one than earlier Boll projects.  But no.  The trailer is available for download here.  What were you thinking, Ben?  And what’s with the wig?