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"...