Okay, I’ve been open in the past about my dislike for Lynch’s Dune - the weakest of his films, in my opinion - but if this is true, I’m so there.  So very, very there.

“fantastic news today regarding the recently delayed Dune extended edition dvd—it appears that the release date was pushed back b/c lynch had a last minute change-of-heart and decided to revisit the film (which he had previously claimed he was done w/ forever).  this means that we will finally get to watch a lynch-approved director’s cut of Dune, which is infinitely better than the previously-announced crappy alan smithee tv edit.  considering that lynch should have some 5+ hours of footage to work with during the re-edit process, hopefully this new version will add a significant amount of lynch-y goodness and flesh out the scope of the cool-yet-flawed theatrical version.  this was totally one of those things, along with fincher revisiting Alien 3, that i thought would never ever happen.  very happy about this…

from:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents”

Big thanks to Jung for the note ...

Hurray for us!  Sometime this afternoon Twitch rolled over the five hundred thousand visitor mark.  Not bad ... in just slightly over six months we’ve gone from four or five hundred page loads a day to four or five thousand with the numbers continuing to climb all the time, and those numbers don’t even include our forum traffic.

To celebrate I went out and ponied up for another ten gig of bandwidth per month because we maxed out again yesterday.

The Hollywood Reporter has just announced that the Disney / Weinstein Brothers split is complete with Disney retaining the Miramax name and the Miramax / Dimension back catalog while the Weinstein’s will take the Dimension label with them on their exit.  Bob and Harv will stay with Miramax on a non-exclusive basis until September 30th at which point they’re gone for good ...

The big question for me, and the unanswered one, is what the new guy will do with all the titles Miramax is still sitting on ... read the full story here.

Or at least that’s the rumor ... I can’t turn a list up on Google and the festival’s official site won’t load up for me ... a little help?

Alright all you commie pinko Canadians, listen up.  Tp celebrate the DVD release of The Corporation - It just won a Genie award, you know.  Did the broadcast cross the magical Brampton line this year? - director Mark Achbar will be loitering about Toronto on April 1st and 2nd and making himself available for widespread adulation and fondling by groupies.

Okay, I made part of that up.  He is going to be here, though.  Read on for the full press release.  And we should have a couple copies to give away in a contest, probably starting tomorrow if the FedEx notice I found on my door today means what I think it does ...

Continue Reading "The Corporation DVD Launch in Toronto"...

Title says it all, really.  Not bad for a film shot in eight days ...

Well, according to Davis DVD you’ll only have to wait until August, when Lion’s Gate will be putting it back on the shelves ...

“Lions Gate Home Entertainment plans on re-releasing Takashi Miike’s
incredible film Audition on DVD sometime this August. Previously
released through Ventura Entertainment, Audition will include a new
introduction and on-camera interview with Miike, select scene
commentary with Miike, a Q&A at the American Cinematheque, a Tour of
the Egyptian Theatre, an interview with author Ryu Murakami, a photo
gallery, trailers and more.”

Another one courtesy of Logboy ...

No specs yet but word is that the Hong Kong DVD of the Pang Brothers’ Eye 10 will release May 17th.  I haven’t seen anyone talking about this one on different asian film boards ... is it just that the Pang’s appeal has taken a beating with their recent string of sub-par films or is it so bad that it’s not worth saying anything about?  I’ll probably pick this one up if it’s cheap but I’m certainly not itching for it like I have with past Pang efforts ... here’s hoping Recycle lives up to that early test footage ...

Via Logboy and DVDAnswers ...

I just got a note from Jung pointing out that the 2005 San Francisco Film Festival site has gone live and, although the program hasn’t officially been announced, you can find this year’s films here. Yes,yes that link says 2004 on it but I did some poking around and those are really the 2005 films.  The list of films having their premieres at the festival can be found here ...

I just got a note directing me to the website for a little film titled Red Doors that looks pretty fascinating ... the director has worked with Scorsese in the past and had a decent number of shorts do the festival rounds and it looks as though she’s gone majorly autobiographical with her feature debut.  No trailer yet, but I’m writing to find out when one will be available ... here’s the word from a student who helped edit it:

“Hi guys, I’ve always loved the site and finally have something cool to tell you! I attended The Edit Center in NYC this summer as part of a college project for Penn State and 6 months later the dark asian comedy my class worked on has actually materialized into a real film! And it’s good!  (Edit Center lets folks learn final cut helping on small features, big deal right? They do deserve coverage in their own right, I got to meet Craig McKay and listen to him talk about cutting ‘Silence of the Lambs’, not shabby for a college kid from PA).

Here are the sites:

reddoorsthemovie.com
bdcfilms.com

It’s in competition at Tribeca this year for the NY prize.
The director has won awards for her shorts and was Martin Scorsese’s apprentice on Gangs of NY, so there’s talent there.”

Thanks to Michael for the heads up ...

Oh, sweet lord ... I was one mighty pleased boy when I heard that Tony Scott was going to be shooting a film based on a Richard Kelly script.  Why?  Though overshadowed by his bigger, splashier brother I’ve always found Tony to be the more consistent of the two and also the one more willing to take risks that pay off large.  His entry in the BMW films series was the strongest of the lot in my view and he’s already shown with True Romance that he’s more than able to take a script loaded with independent spirit and make it into something that manages to be larger and glossier without coming anywhere close to losing its soul.  Which brings us to Domino. 

As has been pointed out in the old thread here where the trailer first came to my attention this thing looks like a Tony Scott film - which means big, gorgeous and technically superb - but I, for one, can also see Kelly’s fingerprints all over this thing.  If there’s a big mainstream director out there who shows more respect to his writers than Tony Scott I don’t know who it is.  For big summer fun that doesn’t entirely involve checking the brain at the door, click here.  Yum.

Many people including myself have been enjoying the first season (from 2002) of ‘Stand Alone Complex’, and like me you might have spotted the Second Gig (second season, from 2004) has been coming out in Japan on DVD. When do we get it then? Well, fairly soon after the First Season ends is the answer.

Hopefully this time there will be no slight hiccups in the audio on the discs, which seamed to plague the first couple of discs. Additionally, I know the scale of the story telling goes up and the production values might even get better if that’s possible.

There’s a great inteview with the Director of the show Kenji Kamiyami at Patrick Macias blog here.

No news on English Subtitles. Special Edition catalogue number is BBIJ-5422, and the Standard is BBIJ-5423. The American disc is due in 2005, but loads of us are hoping this first and probably best edition will have Subs when we find more details. For now, just hope.

Man ... this thing just looks better and better the more I see of it ...

Filmacco has spotted the link to the new Japanese trailer for A Bittersweet Life.  This one’s got fewer ‘money shots’ in it than previous trailers but thanks to a gradual build that follows the emotional arc of the story I think this is my favorite trailer for the film thus far.  It definitely does the best job of balancing the story with the action.  It’s only available in streaming Windows Media format, which is unfortunate, but at least it loads up fast ... check it out here.

Yes that’s right - a decent British film, ‘cos it’s not trying to be anything other than a film about the British as they are now (well, a slice of the society anyway), and it’s not trying to sell itself to anywhere else. It’s a titles that’s starting to get some decent recognition and reviews. Ashley Walters is being heavily praised for his ‘top job’ in the lead and from the trailer alone he looks like a very promising talent. It’s also worth pointing out the music is by Robert Del Naja (3D of ‘Massive Attack’).

The ‘Verve Pictures’ site for the film has the downloadable trailer in QT and WMV (two different sizes for each also) here. The movies official site is here. Great looking film.