[Twitch-O-Meters will remain at the top of the page during the duration of the day they were published. Please scroll down for today’s film news]

Recently we got a nice mainstream genre (yes, they exist!) surprise in the cinemas with the horror movie “The Ruins”.

Doesn’t automatically sound like the best of movies, does it: obnoxious American students on holiday in Mexico visit an uncharted archaeological dig and encounter something which starts to pick them off one by one.
A rather lame set of trailers didn’t exactly help…

But what made it actually a nice surprise was the amount of detail lavished upon characterization, acting and the general portrayal of how a small group of people (might) react in an extremely stressful situation.

All these things were fleshed out to the extent that, in general, people were shocked to discover that this wasn’t just a funny B-movie but a pretty serious drama.

It might even have been one of my all-time favorites if not for some big issues I had with the “monster”, but I digress.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big spoiler when I tell you the big threat in the movie is (beside human nature) a big flesh-eating member of the “flora”, instead of the traditionally popular “fauna”.

Which brings me to my top 5 movies featuring extremely aggressive plants.
Read on!

Continue Reading "When Plants Attack!"...

For a low-budget Austrian movie which STILL hasn’t gotten a distribution deal in its home country, Peter Koller’s “Auf Bösem Boden” (On Evil Grounds) has had a remarkable amount of success. So far it has been an audience favorite at every single festival it played at, and it even managed to win some awards for itself.

Not bad for a… for a…

...damn, this one is rather hard to describe. Is “cleverly wicked” a genre?

“Auf Bösem Boden” tells the story of a young couple who stumble into a seemingly vacated factory, only to get caught by a brutal psychopath who imprisons them, then plans to have a long leisurely session of torture, rape and murder. But before you can yell “Hostel rip-off!” it has become apparent that you wouldn’t wish these victims on any psychopath, no matter how deranged…

Double-billing “Auf Bösem Boden” with “The Machine Girl”, the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival had made sure that there weren’t any faint-hearted people in the house during its one and only screening. Maybe this helped create the perfect mood for this picture, because the audience had an absolute blast with it!

Read on after the break.

Continue Reading "AFFF 2008: ON EVIL GROUNDS Review"...

The title of this article immediately gives away this DVD-boxset’s biggest draw: it contains the bundled version of “Planet Terror”, “Death Proof” and the famed fake trailers which was released in United States’ cinemas under the name “Grindhouse”.

For now this is the only DVD-edition which can boast that, and it is a sweet looking package indeed. Its six (!) discs also contain the longer international cuts of both “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof”, with loads and loads of extras.
No English subs, but hey, it’s all in English anyway, extras and all!

Now, a word of warning: even though we probably have enough reviews for these movies on the site already, I only saw them last weekend through this release and I cannot resist adding my 0.02 USD. This has made it my longest review yet. Heh.
To make amends I also included a picture of Rose McGowan somewhere, dodging a rocket in a spectacular way.

If you are just interested in the quality of the discs and the extras, skip to the end where it’ll say “On to the DVD”.

Read on....

Continue Reading "GRINDHOUSE Japanese R2 Complete Box DVD Review"...

The Twitch website (yes, this one) got its highest spike in traffic last year when word got out that we were hosting the trailer for Noboru Iguchi’s “Kataude Mashin Gâru” (The Machine Girl). And very much rightly so because it was one of the most outrageous trailers in ages.

And as a good trailer should, it sure whetted the appetite for the main course…

I finally caught up with the movie itself this weekend at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, and it was a definite audience-pleaser. While it didn’t dislodge “[°Rec]” from first place it scored a very respectable 8.1 out of ten.
That should answer the question whether or not this movie delivers on the promises made in that yucky trailer: it does.

So what is it about?
Well, it’s an exploitation revenge flick of the highest (or rather lowest) order, with gore flying around by the bucket loads.

There Will Be Blood!


Read on after the break…

Continue Reading "AFFF 2008: THE MACHINE GIRL Review"...

When I saw Johnnie To’s “Exiled”, it became one of my absolute favorites and I still consider it to be one of the best films of the last few years. It has style, a masterful use of sets and locations, with a gallery of memorable characters.

Amongst the cast one man stood out and totally bowled me over. He turned what could have been a one-note supporting role into a masterful charismatic performance, combining quiet dignity with a dry sense of humor.
I’m talking of course about Anthony Wong as the older hitman called Blaze.

Shortly after that I saw him as a deranged madman in one of his exploitation films and couldn’t fathom that I was looking at the same man. And then I noticed how prolific he was, constantly popping up in titles I had already seen years ago.

What an actor…

Which means that once again, I’m going to use a turn in the Twitch-O-Meter to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of one of my favorite thespians.
Guess which 5 movies they’re from. The “Exiled” pic on the top-left doesn’t count.
No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.

And I’ll post the answers Friday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).
Good luck!

By far the flashiest title on the roster of this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, we’ve covered Aramaki Shinji’s “Appleseed: Ex Machina” extensively. Fond memories abound: it was my first press screening ever!

I wrote a review in January and, working together with GhibliWorld.com’s Peter van der Lugt, even had the good fortune to interview the director himself!

At the end of my review I stated I’d get to reviewing the DVD of it as quickly as possible.
Problem is, which edition?

“Appleseed: Ex Machina” has been released worldwide by Warner Brothers, and everywhere you can buy more or less the same one-disc and two-disc editions. Exception to this rule is Japan, as Warners is not doing the domestic release. This is a big exception though as the Japanese LE seems to be a gorgeous monster indeed!

But for this article I review the Hong Kong two disc edition because it’s the cheapest of the two-disc editions, hence most likely to come under consideration if you take one of the worldwide Warner releases.

And I was somewhat surprised at the contents.
Read on…

Continue Reading "APPLESEED: EX MACHINA R3 Hong Kong DVD review"...

...AND IT ROCKS!!!


I’ve been dreadfully neglecting the latest news concerning this year’s Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, but thanks go to Peter Cornelissen who shook me awake in our forum. Because man… this festival brings the goods this year.

Not only have they secured most of the premieres and hits from the Brussels festival, they also have Tim Burton showing up in person to receive a lifetime achievement award.

I’d love to be able to cover Brussels and Amsterdam in the same way as I did Rotterdam, but time constraints thwart me. I’ll sure as hell try to see a couple of titles in Amsterdam though!


The complete program can be found at the AFFF website, but look at this for example:

5 Centimeters Per Second
Sword of the Stranger
Dante’s Inferno
Film Noir
Vexille
Appleseed: Ex Machina
Fears of the Dark

That’s only their animation line-up!
And the rest of the list reads like a veritable summary of what we cover (and like) here at Twitch: Wolfhound, Sukiyaki Western Django, The Machine Girl, King of the Hill, Timecrimes, Doomsday, [*Rec], The Cottage…

The list goes on.

The AFFF starts on the 9th of April and ends at the 20th. There are certainly worse reasons to visit Amsterdam!

Ard Vijn here with what I assume to be the last article concerning this year’s IFFR, and it’s an interview.

While its world premiere was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam last January, Jeff Pickett’s “The Skyjacker” will soon be shown on US soil: the North American premiere is set to take place in less than three weeks at the Atlanta Film Festival.

“The Skyjacker” is a movie loosely based on an incident which happened in the early seventies: a man aboard a passenger airliner claimed to have a bomb in his hand luggage. He demanded a parachute and 200.000 dollars. After receiving both at an inbetween stop he jumped from the plane in mid-flight (of course with parachute and the money), never to be heard from again. His name is assumed to be D. B. Cooper and he has become a bit of a legend.

Funnily enough Jeff Pickett told me this incident is currently back in the news, because the FBI is researching the recently found remains of a parachute which might be the one Cooper used during the crime.

In my review I was anything but kind about his movie, but Jeff was very nice about that.
So what do you ask a director whose first movie you just roasted?

Read on...

Continue Reading "IFFR 2008: Interview with “The Skyjacker” actor / writer / director JEFF PICKETT"...

When I read here at Twitch about upcoming manga adaptation ”Detroit Metal City” this picture on the left really had me in stitches, even more so when I read that the character’s name is ”Johannes Krauser II”! That is… so wrong, it’s brilliant.

But really, not in a million years would I have recognized Matsuyama Kenichi, and neither would his mother, I think.

Which gave me the idea for this week’s topic: 5 actors who were so rigorously made up that they became completely unrecognizable.
To my surprise some good examples turned out to be quite recent. So much for the theory that computers will make that art obsolete (although I love what they did with Davy Jones in the Pirate films...).

Read on to see my list! 

Continue Reading "His Mother Would Not Recognize Him!"...

Government censorship. Brrrrrrrr......

We cringe whenever we hear about actors being banned from working in China, just because the movies they starred in show adult aspects of relationships between people, and how those aspects influence both the characters and their surroundings.

But that’s just China, right? I mean, we’re used to them being a tad Draconic when they feel threatened.

Alas, issues like these often hit closer to home, although the rules are more shady or their existance are downright denied.
Take Canada. According to these articles on the CBCnews.ca site and the National Post website, a new bill called ”C-10” is before the Canadian senate which holds a few changes on the Income Tax Act.
Right now, film projects in Canada get a hefty tax cut and you can be sure an ‘edgy’ project teetering on the very edge of its (difficult to attain) budget will be dependent on this. 
The changes which are now being discussed propose the following: productions deemed offensive or not in the public interest can be labelled “unsuitable” and therefore ineligable for tax credits.

Huh?
Oooooh… Kayyyy. Who would be doing the deeming and labelling? A panel of heritage and Justice representatives, behind closed doors.

Hm. Hm. 
I know there is a Bruce LaBruce zombie movie coming but this seems a bit of an overreaction.
Mind you, this still has to pass into legislation, so there are no stories of this being used unfairly. Yet.

David Cronenberg (who earns himself a place in this page’s picture) is rather against the bill, calling the panel “a layer of censorship”. He had more to say of course, and so have the people in favor of the bill, so please go read the articles.

Yet what is “not in the public interest”, and when is legislation inappropriate? Doesn’t the government have ANY right ever to say “no” to content it may find objectionable? We all agree child pornography should not be government-sponsored, so don’t claim there are no bounderies here.

It’s an interesting discussion to be sure, one that was raging through the Netherlands a few weeks back when the old porn movie ”Deep Throat” was broadcast on a state-owned channel, paid by government funds…


And Thanks go to forumer “verisimilitude” who alerted us in the forum.

(EDIT: Oops, I first mentioned the Japanese versions didn’t have subtitles, but that was an error on my part. The first Appleseed didn’t have subs, and I read in several forums that the Japanese “Ex Machina” wouldn’t either. This has been proven wrong: the Japanese “Ex Machina” has English subs!)

A mixed bag but a gorgeous one, I found “Appleseed: Ex Machina” to be very much worth a look. It shares some faults with its predecessor, but it also solved some and introduced new ones. The short of it is: if you liked the first, you owe it to yourself to see the second.

It’s being released worldwide on DVD, Japan has a typically beautiful edition out but that is very expensive.

Thankfully, in Hong Kong we trust.
Two nice editions, cheap as dirt, English-friendly and out SOON (as in next week): from the 11th of March onward you can choose between single-disc and double-disc editions.

Get them while they’re hot!

Ard Vijn here, with an introduction for the next interview.

Missing “Flower in the Pocket” has been my biggest regret at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, especially since Peter van der Lugt (GhibliWorld.com) and I kept running into writer/director Liew Seng Tat. We even got a chance to interview him!

Now I would have loved to participate in interviewing Liew Seng Tat, but fate had its way of making me miss every single screening of “Flower in the Pocket” prior to the meeting.
And I didn’t want to bother the man with made-up questions while I hadn’t even seen his film (I did stick around to take the pictures though...)

But thankfully Peter had managed to see it and he had several questions prepared. Liew Seng Tat had just had a very successful week in Rotterdam: he received the Prince Claus grant which is a financial injection for producing his next feature, and Peter caught up with Mr. Liew the morning after “Flower in the Pocket” had won the Tiger Award…


Read on after the break.

Continue Reading "IFFR 2008: Interview with “Flower in the pocket” writer / director LIEW SENG TAT"...

After mentioning the upcoming Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, reader “kvdm” correctly reminded me that there is an even bigger festival in the neighborhood before that, and this one has the full program already on display.

He was referring to the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, and their website is damn tasty! Indeed it features a total line-up including most of the titles mentioned for AFFF and then some.
A quick grab:

13 Beloved
Dark Floors
Descendants (Chili’s zombie-movie with children)
The Devil’s Chair
Doomsday
Eden Log
Funny Games (US remake)
Machine Girl
Pop Skull
Timecrimes

A helluva line-up, as you’ll agree!
And they have other things going on as well, like bodypainting and cosplay contests.

Damn, I may need to find time to go there…
The Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival starts on March the 21st and ends on the 8th of April.

I can still remember when the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival was still called “The Weekend of Terror”.
Since then they’ve grown a bit: already in it’s 24th iteration, it now takes 12 days to show their full program.

Last year’s AFFF had a fantastic (haha) selection of titles, including not only “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”, but also a retrospective of Terry Gilliam’s work including a visit from the man himself.

So of course I’ve been oggling their website (found here) often to see what the AFFF will have in store for us this year!
Lo and behold, the following titles have been revealed:

-Appleseed Ex Machina
-Vexille
-5 Centimeters per second
-Fears of the Dark
-Hatchet
-Jack Brooks Monster Slayer
-Diary of the Dead

Granted, most of these are not exactly new, in fact all of these have already been reviewed here at Twitch.
But it gives a terrific indication of what kind of festival this is: A BLOODY FUN ONE!
And rest assured it’ll turn out they have their fair share of (world)premieres, like every year when the full line-up is revealed…

Can’t wait!
But I will have to: the AFFF starts this year on the 9th of April.

“Pimped" might be an unfortunate choice of words to describe the following DVD, but those Koreans sure do know how to pretty up a DVD release.
I’m talking about the uncut, English subtitled Korean Limited Edition of Ang Lee’s sultry spy thriller “Lust, Caution”.

Now to be quite honest this isn’t the most difficult title to get hold of on DVD: there are cut and uncut versions out in the US which are perfectly decent (haha).
But they’re not Korean, nor particularly pimped! For starters this set includes cards in different sizes depicting the different onesheets used.

The discs also feature some nice extras including several trailers. Although it’s hard to say if these, unsubbed, will match the sole extra which is on the US disc (a pretty nifty 17-minute-long “making of” mini documentary which was short but sweet).

Thanks go to loyal forumer “Tigrbalm” who provided the tip!