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.