If in an alternate universe, Edgar Wright had a brother living in Iceland making his own Spaced feature on the fanboy culture, then Astrópía (Dorks & Damsels) is at that film and Gunnar B. Gudmundsson is that brother (no they are not really related). Astrópía is a rush of fantasy cinema that is drawn to parallel the current world of fanboys. It’s a refreshing and highly entertaining comedic spin through all things fanboy that is dare say the most charming film in theaters this year. You don’t have to know a single thing about it to enjoy it as Gudmundsson carefully layers the film whereby novices and more intimately familiar audiences can follow along. He also wonderfully realizes the real world of the characters and shows us in full detail their fantasy worlds. If ever there were a perfect film for Comic-Con audiences, this is it. Astrópía makes certain to poke fun at everything while also highlighting its thrills and excitement without ever seeming condescending. In any other hands this film certainly would have been plagued with too broad or simplistic takes showing how nerdy everyone is that reads comics, LARPs, watches cult videos and more. Gudmundsson and the Astrópía screenwriters have demystified this culture, which is a very diverse and passionate one and has now made walking into a comic book store feel cooler than a Reservoir Dogs movie opening. This indie low budget gem is by far one of my favorites for 2008.
I recently interviewed Gunnar B. Gudmundsson to go over Astrópía in more detail and learn about its making. Interview follows after the link bump.
Continue Reading "NIFFF 2008 - Gunnar B. Gudmundsson Talks Astropia/Dorks & Damsels"...
I’ve actually had the chance to see Go Ohara’s Geisha Versus Ninjas now and while it does in fact feature both geisha and ninjas in plentiful combat it otherwise fails to live up to its premise. But, you know, the trailers are out now and I figure some of you may want to watch a wee bit of geisha/ninja mayhem. If so I recommend heading here.
Yes, it’s a bit of viral marketing for the upcoming Babylon AD but you know what? If all viral marketing was this much fun we’d link to a whole lot more of it. It’s an animated Vin Diesel laying waste to this season’s summer blockbuster in very amusing fashion. You’ll find it below the break in the Twitch Player, but be aware that the language is rather salty.
Continue Reading "Do Not F@$% With Vin Diesel."...
Just when you thought it was safe to close the book on George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, a new “Star Wars” film is arriving in theaters. Granted, prior to having seen it, this latest entry in the saga had a few things going against it. First and foremost, although it is “Star Wars”, thereby assuring my interest (on some level) as a lifelong fan, it is “The Clone Wars” – a once enigmatic period of Star Wars history that has since been well covered in a wide variety media. The best of those efforts, Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Clone Wars” animated shorts, were considered by many to be superior to the prequel trilogy which spawned them. Those shorts did a wonderful job of bridging the gap between Episdes II and III.
Now, three years out from the conclusion of the live-action “Star Wars” films, the once-cool notion of yet more gap bridging lacks much of the appeal it once had. We know how it all turns out, with Anakin going bad, and the war itself revealed to be a power-grabbing sham. Yet, Lucas is convinced that the fan appetite for more Clone Wars tales is ripe to the point of justifying a new computer generated animated television series. To release the feature length premiere episode of the series to movie theaters, at first glance, simply seems to be yet more commercial opportunism. So, despite all of this, is “The Clone Wars” worth a trip to the multiplex? In a word, yes.
Continue Reading "STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS review"...
Quoth the sales agent on this one which - like all Charlie Kaufman films - defies easy synopsis:
Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful theatrical run in his hometown of Schenectady, New York, Caden decides to trade in the suburban spectators and local theater for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Awarded a “Genius” grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan’s theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside.
As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden’s own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany’s art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele’s friend, Maria. Caden is helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire into the ground while neglecting his second daughter. Sammy Barnathan, the actor Caden hires to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and makes it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid box office girl, Hazel. Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than counseling him. And a mysterious condition begins systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one.
As the years rapidly fold into each other, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.
By seamlessly blending together subjective points-of-view with traditional narrative structures, writer/director Charlie Kaufman has created a world of superbly unsteady footing. His richly developed cast of characters flutter between moments of warm intimacy and frightful insecurity, creating a script that brings to life all the complex and beautiful nuances of shared life and artistic creation. Synecdoche, New York is, as its definition states: a part of the whole or the whole used for the part, the general for the specific, the specific for the general.
While there does not appear to be an official trailer for the film just yet a trio of clips have turned up in France and I’ve loaded all three into the Twitch Player so you can get your first look at one of American cinema’s most unique minds at work. Check them below the break.
Continue Reading "Three Clips From Charlie Kaufman’s SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK"...
Oh, sweet lord ... you may have asked yourself when the original trailer for Aussie b-film doc Not Quite Hollywood hit why someone would feel the need to make a documentary devoted to Australian b-movies. surely there can’t be that many of them, right? Er, wrong. The NQH trailer alone was a ripping good time and now the full website has gone live and the producers have gone all out, providing full theatrical trailers for many (if not all) of the films featured in the documentary. There are twenty one of them in all and they are brilliant displays of low budget trash film making at it’s finest. You can be damn sure these willbe turning up in the Twitch Player just as soon as I can load ‘em up but there’s no need to wait, get on over and check them out.
[Abiding by the Twitch-O-Meter rules of conduct and fair play this post will remain up top for one day. Further posts about far more interesting things are below this. Scroll down!]
Well, Day 5 of the Olympics came and went and my country still hasn’t won a freaking medal. While other sport powerhouses like Togo and Tajikstan have managed to get at least one medal our Canadian athletes are failing to bring home the hardware.
The Olympics are funny in a way when it comes to their Dream Teams. Since 1992 every Summer Olympics the focus is on the USA Men’s basketball team – though it is interesting to note that the Toronto Raptors up here in Canada have the most players from any NBA team on Olympic teams! Then starting in 1998, when the cold winds of winter come whipping through our lands, everyone in Canada pretty much goes mental when the Canadian Men’s Hockey team plays.
So is it any coincidence that I am reading Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt this week and there is a section of that book called The Dream Team. The first selection is his Dream Film Cast: Sean Connery as God, John Cleese as the Angel Gabriel, and Goldie Hawn as Mother Theresa’s younger sister, Trudie. With a guest appearance by Bob Hoskins as Detective Inspector Phil Makepiece. I’ve been reading a lot of Adams lately. That’s damn funny. I don’t get some of it, but it is damn funny.
So what about film? What if you had a movie and you could hire whomever you wanted to fill any role in your production? Who do you want to direct? Who do you want to do the special effects? Who would create kick-ass stunts for your movie? If you were to name your cinema Dream Team who would be in your starting five? As the great philosopher Dane Cook once said, ‘It can be anything you want dreamers… Dream it you fucking dreamers’.
Continue Reading "Time to put together your ‘Dream Team’"...
Funky Forest and Taste of Tea director Katsuhito Ishii has always been a man who likes to keep busy, but this is crazy. His most recent feature Yama No Anato is freshly released in Japan and already he’s got two other projects on the go. And they are:
Sorasoi. This one is described as a comic mockumentary tracking a group of college students in a hostel training for a dance competition. Shooting occurred last month and the director aims to have the film one hundred percent complete by next month with an eye to premiering it at the Hawaii International Film Festival. The fine lads at Nippon Cinema have stills here.
Project the second? Titled U-BEE, it is described as an attempt to “express video art as a form of interior decoration.” It’s pretty pictures to put on your TV while not watching it, basically. The “right way” To waht U-BEE is summed up like this:
U-BEE is not something to be watched. Like a table or a chair, it is to be treated as a piece of furniture, to be there in the living room on a day off reading a book, in the bar lounge at a party where people gather, or in a hotel room welcoming the guest.
This means I have just spent rather a lot of money to own something not meant to be watched. Hee hee.
It’s no secret we here at Twitch love up-and-coming director Adam Wingard’s low-low-budget shocker Pop Skull. On the eve of the release of his freshman feature, Home Sick, in a feature-laden special edition courtesy of Synapse (the disc streets August 26th, 2008), I had the opportunity to speak with Wingard about his work thus far and what fans can look forward to from him in the future.
Continue Reading "Interview with HOME SICK, POP SKULL director Adam Wingard"...
If you’ve been reading this site at all over the past few months you can’t help but be up to speed on Yoshihiro Nishimura’s Tokyo Gore Police by now. The outrageous splatter film stars Audition‘s Eihi Shiina is a cop in a near-future world tasked with hunting down and killing a variety of bizarre mutants - mutants who sprout deadly weapons on the site of any injury. It’s a twisted, bizarre picture and for proof you need look no further than the brand new trailer. This raises the current video count for TGP to three, with a sales reel and now two trailers in our Video Player, and you can find all three below the break. And yes - there are new creature and gore shots in this one.
Continue Reading "More Tokyo, More Gore In The New TOKYO GORE POLICE Trailer"...
Because there just aren’t enough technicolored westerns about vegetarian cowboys sworn to protect the interests of cattle in India we have been very pleased to provide a steady stream of images and trailers from one such film: the upcoming Indian western Quick Gun Murugan. We posted the first trailer for the film back on my birthday - so happy birthday to me - and now we’ve got a second trailer in which our hero gets killed, goes to heaven, is reincarnated to do battle with the evil purveyors of meat-based McDosa’s and sprouts an octet of arms, a six gun in each and every one of them. Yes, I’m excited to finally see this one.
Quick Gun Murugan is a western spoof with attitude, featuring outlandish songs, outrageous melodrama and crazy action sequences including a classic duel in a traffic jam. The film tells the story of Quick Gun Murugan - a South Indian karmic cowboy whose duty is to protect vegetarianism and cows. When faced with a world-conquering arch-villain restaurant owner who wants to create the ultimate McDosa chain using beef, Quick Gun enters into an epic battle of vegetarianism vs. non-vegetarianism that spans time and space, from a small South Indian village to an Indian heaven and then finally to a cosmopolitan Mumbai across 15 years.
These trailers are essentially the film’s international sales reel split into two parts, which means that you get some quirks in the pacing and narration as these things are generally put together fast while the film is still in production. So the presentation’s a little bit odd but the actual film itself looks absolutely insane in the best possible way. Both trailers in the Twitch Player below the break.
Continue Reading "The Karmic Cowboy Sprouts Eight Arms of Death! It’s The Second Trailer For QUICK GUN MURUGAN!"...
Well, well, it seems Quentin Tarantino is up to his old casting tricks and this time he may have even topped himself. Remember the eyebrows raised when John Travolta was cast in Pulp Fiction after years of nothing but crappy straight to video work? Well, hold on for this one ...
The UK’s Telegraph is reporting that Tarantino has just cast pop starlet Britney Spears in the role of Varla - a lesbian killer (as in a killer who is lesbian) - in his upcoming remake of Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!. If this works - which I have my doubts about - it could be a brilliant move. If not, Tarantino has just opened himself up to a massive amount of derision.
In other Tarantino casting news, word is also circulating that he’s cast his friend, director Eli Roth, to a significant role in his upcoming Inglorious Bastards. I assume Roth is taking the Peter Hooten role - which he’d actually be a decent match for - because Bo Svensen and Fred Williamson he aint. I suppose the good news here, for Tarantino fans, is that if he’s at the casting stage for both of this films already it means that he might actually stop talking about them and actually make them sometime soon.
Yes, it was just yesterday that we commented that Spanish maverick Alex de la Iglesia’s next project would be a big budget adaptation of Edgar Jacobs’ The Yellow M. What we failed to mention at the time - because we didn’t know it at the time - is that Iglesia has been hard at work over the last year directing a new sci fi sitcom for Spanish television. Titled Pluton Verbenero this looks like pretty vintage stuff for Iglesia, though I expect the sex and violence to be softened somewhat for the television audience. Scheduled to hit the airwaves in September there do not yet appear to be any promo clips available but I have turned up a quality behind the scenes reel that gives a very good look at the set and some work-in-progress footage. Check it below the break.
Continue Reading "Go Behind the Scenes of Alex de la Iglesia’s PLUTON VERBENERO!"...
Who wants a movie with Tadanobu Asano having a guitar battle with space aliens to reclaim the drum kit that is the source of his power? I do! I do! Throw in the fact that the piece was directed by Asano himself - just the second directorial effort from the international star - and written by Shinji Aoyama and I’m sold well before I even get to the other people involved in R246 Story. That the other contributors include the likes of Shido Nakamura is purely a bonus in my books. We’ve been tracking this one for a while and now we’ve got a full theatrical trailer to go along with the two earlier teasers. Tasty. Check them below the break.
Continue Reading "Full Trailer For Japanese Anthology Film R246 STORY With Tadanobu Asano!"...
Fans of Spanish maverick Alex de la Iglesia won’t have long to wait for his next film. Word is now out that Iglesia’s next will be an adaptation of Edgar Jacob’s classic crime comic The Yellow M. The budget is large and Kenneth Branagh has signed on to play the lead role which should inspire confidence as Branagh generally doesn’t do crap and seems perfectly suited for this sort of retro-throwback film. Of course people said the exact same thing about Branagh and Wild, Wild West and the sad reality is that an excellent cast couldn’t stop Iglesia’s English-language debut, The Oxford Murders, from turning out to be an absolutely atrocious film. If this one turns out to be a train wreck as well I’d be willing to wager that’ll be the end of Iglesia working in English ...
