Whenever I come up against a genre I’m not too familiar with—especially from an Asian director—I need research no further than Twitch. With the Pacific Film Archives poised to launch their Johnnie To retrospective “Hong Kong Nocturne” May 29 through June 27, 2008, I’ve decided to focus on what my colleagues at Twitch have to say about Hong Kong’s favorite son and—though they comment on only five of the nine films in the PFA retrospective—they cover the most recent. Hopefully, the Twitch readership will comment on the rest. I’ve never seen a To film. I’m not exactly sure why I’ve resisted other than general comments I’ve heard about the limitations of the genre. I’m hoping to decide one way or the other what I think about To’s films come July. Help me out. Of the nine films listed, which five should I not miss? Of those five, which two should I not miss?
Continue Reading "PFA: HONG KONG NOCTURNE—Twitch on To"...
This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Screen International has announced that sales company Velvet Octopus will be launching international pre-sales on S. Darko at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. And, yes, this is what you think - a sequel to Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko with Daviegh Chase reprising her role as the younger Darko sister. Richard Kelly has no official involvement whatsoever. Darko needs a sequel about as badly as the original Highlander did, which is to say not at all, and I fully expect the results of this to be about the same, which is to say horribly bad. I’m bothered that they’re doing a sequel at all, that they’re doing it without Kelly boggles the mind as Darko was Kelly’s baby ... my guess is Kelly has too much love for his creation to bastardize it this way himself and not enough financial control over the property to stop other people from doing it for him ... Icky.
Graham Leggat introduced Graydon Carter, one of the producers of the closing night film Gonzo: The Life and Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and the editor of Vanity Fair magazine since 1992. Not only was this the West Coast premiere of Gonzo, but the Vanity Fair Reel Relief benefit, which Carter proudly announced had raised $100,000 for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He, in turn, introduced Alex Gibney.
Gibney credited Carter as being the individual responsible for phoning him with the idea of doing a film on Hunter Thompson, some of whose writing Vanity Fair had published. Gibney further acknowledged two other producers in the audience: Alison Ellwood and Eva Orner. He stressed the importance of showing Gonzo to a San Franciscan audience since the city was so much a part of Thompson’s life. To preface the film, he offered a quote by Thompson on show business: “Show business is a cruel and shallow money trench; a long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. But there’s also a negative side.” Gibney added that Thompson also had a saying: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” “You bought the ticket,” Gibney shouted out to his cheering audience, “take the ride!”
And what a ride! Equally hortatory and hagiographic, Gonzo frames a larger-than-life personality, the likes of which is nowhere to be found elsewhere even if crucially needed in such desperate times.
Continue Reading "SFIFF51: GONZO—Q&A With Director Alex Gibney"...
He seems like such a pleasant young man in person but then, that’s what they say about all sorts of deviants, now isn’t it? Canadian writer-director Karim Hussain has just announced his latest project, the aptly titled Filthy, a film revolving around garbage fetishists. And that’s fetish in the true, deriving-sexual-pleasure-from sense, I make sure to point out. Fresh of the success of their Pakistani splatter picture Hell’s Ground, Filthy is the first of a slate of new pictures to be announced from the Mondo Macabro lads and they’ll be touting the picture to prospective investors in Cannes with a nasty little promo teaser in tow. You’ll find details below the break and a larger version of the poster linked below.
Continue Reading "Karim Hussain Has A FILTHY Mind"...
Thai director Ekachai Uekrongtham has quickly built a reputation as one of his country’s very best thanks to his films Beautiful Boxer and Pleasure Factory, a pair of films that combine sensational storylines - a transgender boxer in one, sex trade workers in the other - with sensitivity and serious dramatic chops. So it drew a lot of attention when word came out that his next feature would be a horror film, more attention still when it turned out that the film would be his first in English. Starring Shutter‘s Ananda Everingham - whose English is probably better than my own, as I learned when I met him in Cannes last year - the film is based on the actual Thai ritual of lying in a coffin before it is used for good luck.
Entitled The Coffin, the English-language film tells a spine-chilling story about a man and a woman who are confronted by a series of paranormal and terrifying incidents after going through the bizarre death-before-dying ritual. Thrilling, mysterious and ultimately moving, it’s also a tale about the beauty of life and death, living and dying.
Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Ekachai Uekrongtham (Beautiful Boxer, Pleasure Factory), The Coffin stars Hong Kong actress Karen Mok (So Close, Shaolin Soccer) and Thailand’s heartthrob Ananda Everingham who was the lead in the original Thai horror hit Shutter. Other cast members include Napakpapha Nakprasitte (Art of Devil 2 & 3), Andrew Lin (The Heavenly Kings) and newcomer Japanese actress Aki Shibuya.
We’ve got the first three stills released form the film so far, you’ll find tham at the link below.
Japanese cinema has a long history of female revenge films. As my knowledge of Japanese cinema grows it’s be interesting to find action heroines outside of those who I knew from industries such as Hong Kong with actresses like Michelle Yeoh. So color me interested when I hear about a new female revenge film, Hard Revenge, Milly, starring Miki Mizuno, that finished lensing recently and will screen this August in Japan. I just hope it is longer than the listed 44 minutes run time over at Eigepedia. If not, V Cinema is just fine by us.
At some point in the near future gun and weapon control laws are deregulated by public order. Because of this, Asia quickly becomes the epicenter of violent criminal activity in the world. In Yokohama City this violence becomes so extreme that the population quickly drops as ordinary people try to escape the criminal element that remain, leaving the northern part of the city as a haven of sorts to a particularly violent gang of four miscreants that call themselves The Jack Brothers.
When The Jack Brothers viciously murder Milly’s husband in daughter in front of her, leaving her to die, she vows revenge. She learns the art of sword combat from a master swordsman named Juubee, and eventually sets off to confront The Jack Brothers at their hideout in an abandoned factory.
Miki Mizuno is well versed in action cinema starring in Sasori, last year’s remake of Female Convict Scorpion, has a long history with martial arts training and apparently according to the report over at Tokyograph did all her own stunts. Chick’s hardcore!
Alex Rivera’s debut feature Sleep Dealer was developed at the 2000 and 2001 Sundance Institute Feature Film Program labs, and won the 2002 Sundance/NHK award and a 2004 Annenberg Feature Film Fellowship.
It then moved on to win two major awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Rivera and David Riker won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for outstanding achievement for their screenplay and Sleep Dealer was also the recipient of this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The Prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the filmmaker provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character.
Sleep Dealer was selected “for its visionary and humane tale of a young man grappling with a technological future in which neural implants, telerobotics and ubiquitous computing serve a global economy rife with fundamental challenges and opportunities, and for its powerful and original storytelling and direction.”
The critical response has been qualified but almost without exception Rivera has been praised for his ambition and ingenious maximization of a meager budget to achieve his vision. What strikes me as the true challenge with this film is whether audiences spoonfed multi-million dollar special effects will be willing to shift suspension of disbelief or be able to overcome their addiction to blockbuster visuals to accommodate Sleep Dealer‘s unique angle on the near-future? Certainly the ideas are noteworthy enough and the film features a solid doe-eyed performance from one of Mexico’s rising stars. Luis Fernando Peña—the lead actor of Sleep Dealer—is likewise starring in Desierto Adentro, Rodrigo Plá’s critically-acclaimed follow-up to La Zona (featured in this year’s festival lineup). I encourage debate on whether audiences can be expected to shift their expectations of what a sci fi film should be to recognize the promise in Rivera’s flawed yet impressive debut feature.
PlumTV’s video interviews with Rivera, actress Leonor Varela and co-actor Jacob Vargas, include some clips from the film. Hollywood.com’s Sundance interview with Rivera is up on YouTube. And as of today, via The Hollywood Reporter, Maya Entertainment has picked up the U.S. Rights for Sleep Dealer.
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
Well, well. Back in March we posted a note about an open casting call for an at-the-time untitled Yuen Wo Ping project. Seems the master was preparing a new martial arts film and wanted to inject some new blood and so was looking for martial artists of all types from around the globe. Any news Yuen Wo Ping film is good news so we were happy to hear of it but little else was known at the time. Well, today I spotted word that Shawn Yue and Louis Koo have been cast to star in Iron Mask, a new Yuen Wo Ping directed sequel to the classic Iron Monkey. Could this be the same film? There’s some concern that Louis Koo - not a highly trained martial artist, though he’s dabbled in screen fighting - is cast in the lead role, though keeping the character masked during the major fight scenes opens the door for the use of a stunt double should the fight sequence demand it. Iron Mask is slated to begin shooting in July.
Good news for fans of incredible animation. Mamoru Hosoda’s excellent animated feature film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time will have limited theatrical runs in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. We here at Twitch flat out love this film and would implore anyone who lives in the cities to jump at the opportunity to see this wonderful film on the big screen, even if you have the import DVD at home and you have watched it over and over again as any of us have. Such a good movie!
The movie will screen at The ImaginAsian theaters in Los Angeles and New York from June 13 to 19, then at Landmark Theatres’ Varsity Theatre in Seattle from August 29 to September 4. The film will be subbed for Los Angeles and Seattle, while New York will have the dubbed version.
What’s going on in New York? Dubbed version? This implies two things. One, that New Yorkers are illiterate or two, they’re lazy. What a shame they cannot see it in its original language.
The report suggests that Bandai Entertainment, one of the company’s responsible for these screenings, also has plans to release the movie on DVD.
Now a guilty pleasure I’m sure sure everyone loves is a trashy Bollywood Action film, following hot on the heels of lasts Bollywood success Dhoom 2, the Screenwriter and Producers of said hot, comes ‘Tashan’. A very nice trailer can be seen in the links section, the film is showing in UK Cinemas nationwide.
The film tells the story about call center executive Jimmy Cliff (Saif Ali Khan), gangster Bachchan Pande (Akshay Kumar) and Pooja (Kareena Kapoor), a girl who can’t be trusted. The three of them are on a dangerous journey across India, which will alter the course of their lives in more ways than one. In addition to that, there is the evil eye of Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor), a maverick gangster who enjoys killing people as much as he enjoys speaking English
Learning about the upcoming Asian action flick Knife, I somehow get the picture in my head of that deadly duel between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing in SPL.
Knife is the latest project by LeBrocquy Fraser Productions, the team that brought us Osama, the Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film some years ago. It features a lead character who is a “martial arts hero with an east-meets-west style; his blend of Muay Thai, street fighting and Special Forces knife techniques are in a way unique to Asia.” The film also promises “some of the most extreme knife work ever seen on the screen.”
I say, bring it on already!
Knife will be directed by Xie Dong, who was assistant director on many of Zhang Yimou’s films. Sunny Pang, last seen in the Singapore exquisite-corpse film, Lucky 7, will play the lead, an ex-Special Forces soldier turned mercenary. Other confirmed cast include John Lone, Yasuaki Kurata and Jade Leung.
Here’s the synopsis:
An outcast Special Forces soldier returns to Southeast Asia after a fifteen year absence to get his daughter away from the biggest gang in the city. With the help of his former Colonel and Guru he takes on the gang who are planning a massive money laundering deal, but other forces are at work, not to mention police who are closing in on the gang. Our hero must unleash his incredible martial arts knife wielding skills to overcome the odds and bring his daughter around to accepting his true identity, but tragedy and death are all too close in what becomes an action packed journey through the pulsing heart of this Metropolitan Asian City.
Production is scheduled to begin “soon.”
Imagine driving hundreds of miles to a tiny town in West Texas, USA, for a film festival.
Marfa, Texas, population 2121, may be known best to some film fans as the town where George Stevens’ Giant was filmed in 1955 (the one with James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson). More recently, it’s the town where Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men were filmed.
Filming did not take place in the town itself on the latter two pictures, but in the dusty desert mountain country that surrounds Marfa. Located 200 miles from El Paso, 400 miles from Austin (from where fellow Twitch writer Blake drove) and 500 miles from Dallas (from where I drove), Marfa seems an odd spot for a film festival. When you take into account modern-day Marfa, as well as other festivals taking place in small towns, it’s not so odd after all.
Continue Reading "Marfa Film Fest Dispatch: Starting Under the Stars"...
I’ve been saying for a while now that genre film fans need to keep an eye on Chile and here is yet another example of one compellingly strange picture coming from the South American nation. Titled Humanimal it is being directed by Francesc Morales who did some work on Jorge Olguin’s zombie picture Solos and is described by Moreales as a “fable-horror”.
“It’s a horror story told from the point of view of a group of animals. The story starts when Turtle and Fox, two animals that live on a abandoned house, must learn how to act like humans. It will feature known Chilean actors Ramón Llao and Sebastián Layseca on the main roles, they will be dressed as animals on child-like costumes.”
With a premise like this it could go either way, obviously, but Morales’ connection to Olguin - one of the best the nation has to offer - is reassuring as is the fact that he’s using credible actors. Done right this could be creepy as all hell - Orwell’s Animal Farm is an obvious example of how this sort of premise can be played effectively for adults - and judging from the series of concept images that Morales sent in he’s certainly not aiming to make his characters cute and cuddly. You can check out a gallery of images at the link below.
Oh, this make Todd happy beyond words. To my way of thinking Britain’s Armando Iannucci is quite likely the world’s greatest living political satirist. Yes, yes, I love me some Stewart and Colbert as well but compared to Iannucci those two are positively dim which says mountains about the Brit’s fierce intelligence and wit. Thing is not much of anybody outside of the UK knows who Iannucci is thanks to his best work all being done for television. Steve Coogan’s I’m Alan Partridge? Iannucci wrote that. Biting news satire The Day Today (the show partially responsible for launching similarly brilliant satirist Chris Morris). Also Iannucci. His best work, however, is the absolutely brilliant political satire series The Thick Of It, a short run series revolving around behind the scenes strategists and mid-level ministers in the British government scrambling to spin the news and keep their jobs. It’s sharp, it’s brilliant and it’s hysterically funny. It’s also being remade for American television with Iannucci and the minds behind Arrested Development at the helm.
And now Iannucci is moving (finally!) to the big screen. The film is titled In The Loop and it’s tempting to label it a Thick of It film thanks to it’s overtly political nature and the appearance of several Thick of It characters but it is a lot more than that. Here’s the spin:
The US President and UK Prime Minister suddenly fancy a war. But it’ll be quick this time. Promise! The US General Miller (James Gandolfini) doesn’t think so and the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), agrees with him. But, after Simon accidentally backs military action on prime-time TV, he suddenly has a lot of friends in Washington, DC. If Simon can get in with the right DC people, if his entourage of one (Chris Addison) can sleep with the right intern (Anna Chlumsky), and if they can both stop the PM’s chief strategist Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) rigging the vote at the UN, they can halt the war. If they don’t… well, they can always sack their advisor Judy (Gina McKee), who they never liked anyway and who’s back home dealing with voters with blocked drains and a man who’s angry about a collapsing wall (Steve Coogan).
Capaldi reprising his Malcolm Tucker character alone makes this a must see - Tucker is one of the greatest comedy creations ever, all the more so because of how creepily recognizable he is - Addison’s a blast, Coogan reuniting with Iannucci is momentous and the addition of Chlumsky and Gandolfini is the mighty tasty icing on the cake. This can’t come fast enough.
Well, no. That’s not true at all, actually, but while most people who care about Japanese cult director Minoru Kawasaki - he of Calamari Wrestler, Everything But Japan Sinks and other assorted cult film fame - is up to have been focusing on his upcoming revival of Guilala - particularly now that he’s cast the iconic Takeshi Kitano is a key role - he’s snuck out and made something entirely different. Good thing the fine lads at Nippon Cinema have been paying attention ...
Titled Kamigakari the film is the story of a hair stylist who radically alters her clients’ style when they fall asleep in her chair and encourages them to let their new hair style change their lives. And given that this is a Kawasaki film I’d be willing to put down good money that the changes amount to a fair bit more than cutting off an extra inch. Kawasaki has built his name as a low budget creature feature man, a bit of a one hit joke machine, but I’m starting to think he must have a bit of a hair thing, too, as this is at least the second hair oriented comedy that he’s turned out, the first being The Rug Cop.
