You know what the fun thing is about having a couple of writing gigs outside of Twitch?  From time to time I get to take a run at a truly horrible film not once, but twice.  Such is the case with Paul Anderson’s wretched Death Race.  Not to worry, there’s enough badness here that I didn’t hardly have to repeat myself at all.  So if you want two doses of Death Race hit the links below ...

While I’m not entirely certain what the status of Aaron Woodley’s Drone - the film being produced by Woodley’s famous uncle, David Cronenberg - is, I do know this:  Woodley is one very busy man.  Tennessee has wrapped up, the Toronto Stories anthology project is complete and ready to premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival and he’s already got another feature in development:  League of Monster Slayers.  Wondering where all the Goonies have gone?  Missing the Monster Squad?  It looks like Woodley is preparing to scratch that particular itch:

Orphaned twin siblings LILLY (10) and SEBASTIAN (10), live at their wealthy uncle - MR. BLACKBURN’s estate. The castle-like house is run by the cold and stern cook, MRS. KIND (60), the odd groundskeeper SAMUEL (50’s), and mysterious, mute maid CAMILLE (60s). The orphans are alone, all their previous nannies have quit, exhausted by the children’s overactive imaginations, discounting their wild stories that the house is haunted and that monsters are lurking.

Everything changes with the arrival of their new nanny, MADELINE THATCHER (29), a prim and proper sort who occupies them with intense schooling each day. But Madeline is more than she at first appears. In fact, the children quickly discover that their new nanny has trained in the dark arts since her father was killed by a werewolf when she was just 10. With vengeance she hunted the werewolf down and killed it with a silver bullet. Part detective, part warrior, Madeline is on business - undercover. Someone is up to no good at this house and she’s there to put an end to it. The children agree to keep Madeline’s identity under wraps, on the condition that she teaches them everything she knows about fighting monsters.

They name their newly formed alliance the “League of Monster Slayers” (L.M.S. being an acronym for Lilly, Madeline, Sebastian), and begin to uncover the dreaded secrets of the grand estate by doing battle with an onslaught of monsters and confronting an evil ghost constructing a portal to hell.

Ummm ... yes, please?

Though he had some other titles to his credit earlier, Reg Harkema forced audiences to sit up and take notice of his work in 2006 when his Monkey Warfare took home a Special Jury Award at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, a prize hard won not only by the film itself but with the sort of street level guerrilla marketing that you normally expect to find with independent bands, not independent films.  Now Harkema is back, hard at work on his latest effort, the brilliantly titled Leslie, My Name Is Evil.

Perry, a sheltered chemical engineer, falls in love with Leslie, a former homecoming princess, when he is selected as a jury member at her hippie death cult murder trial.

Are you think Manson Family?  Because Harkema clearly is.  While the film is still being cast the director has cut together a conceptual promo that plays out like twenty years of American history told collage style and set to a fantastic bit of music.  My description isn’t doing it justice but you can check it out below the break in the Twitch Player.

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I’ve spent the last day in Ottawa on the set of the latest film from Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter director Lee Demarbre and while I’ve got to hold off a bit to comment on what I’ve seen on this set as part of the visit I was just given a look at several scenes from Demarbre’s Smash Cut, the director’s tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis starring horror icons David Hess (Last House on the Left) and Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes) along with *ahem* adult star Sacha Grey.  Lewis has not only given his blessings to the film but appears in a small role while Hess takes the lead as a struggling film maker who resorts to extreme measures to add realism to his films.

So, what did I think?  The second film shot on the Red camera here in Canada the thing looks great.  Cinematography is very strong and the production designers have obviously had a blast with the color schemes and set design.  Hess looks very strong in a rare lead role, delivering a bizarrely compelling off-kilter performance.  The balance of humor and gore is very strong, there are some very strong kill shots and all involved are obviously having a blast.  It’s early days yet, but from what I saw today this looks like the real thing.  We’ve got a few stills to share already along with a conceptual teaser that includes no actual footage from the film, and have been promised more images along with a first look at the proper trailer once it’s cut together.  You can check that teaser below the break and hit the link below for the images.

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Okay, Mike Judge fans here’s news to to brighten and / or darken your world.  On the positive side the director of Office Space, King of the Hill and Idiocracy has gotten the green light to make a new film about an ambulance chasing lawyer titled Extract.  On the negative side the lawyer is slated to be played by Ben Affleck.  Am I being a bit hard on Ben?  Maybe, but I don’t plan on being any nicer to him until he stops making crappy movies.

Yes, this is indeed That Zac Efron, the one from Disney’s High School Musical films, represented here on Twitch because he’s making his “serious” acting debut in Richard Linklater’s Me And Orson Welles, soon to debut at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.  Here’s the skinny on the latest from the director of Dazed and Confused and School of Rock:

The story of a whirlwind week in 1937 NYC when a young aspiring actor (Efron) is thrown into the middle of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre Company on the eve of the opening of Welles’ historic staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. During this week, Richard will find romance with a worldly older woman (Danes), become immersed in a creative experience few are afforded, and learn the downside of crossing the imperious, brilliant Welles (strikingly portrayed by newcomer Christian McKay).  Richard is about to grow up FAST.

We’ve got a quartet of brand new images from the film - including a pair of Efron in character - which you’ll find at the link below.

What’s better than a science fiction feature from The Flaming Lips?  How about brand new stills from the production and a high res trailer from the film itself?  You betcha.  The film in question is Christmas on Mars, directed by the Lips own Wayne Coyne, who also stars as a Santa-suit-wearing Martian.  And Lord knows we could use a few more of that type of Martian and a few less of the kidnap-and-probe variety, Trailer below the break, images at the link below.

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Europa Corp has unveil the teaser poster for Transporter 3 with Jason Statham as the unstoppable Frank Martin, springing into action.  No, this isn’t an advertisement for a wrist watch.  The object attached around Frank’s wrist is actually an explosive device and it seems he is on the move to prevent it from detonating.  If you haven’t done so already, watch the teaser trailer at the official site.

The theatrical release date in France is on November 26th.

Alex Proyas. The man does sci-fi and he does it well, there is no doubt about that. Any misgivings aside about I, Robot, his other film, Dark City, stands out as one of the genre’s great offerings. And news has come forth that Alex Proyas is setting himself up to write and direct an adaptation of The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag by author Robert A. Heinlein. Just reading the plot summary for it gets me all excited and tittering like a little school girl. This sounds like excellent material for someone with Proyas’ visual strengths.

Originally published in 1942, the offbeat tale centers on a man who becomes increasingly disturbed when he realizes he cannot account for his activities during the day, or even what he does for a living. He divulges his problem to the husband-and-wife partners of a private detective agency, and their investigation leads to a series of revelations they could never have fathomed.

The budget will be in the $40 million-$50 million range. Proyas is in post on “Knowing” and is attached to direct the Universal project “Dracula Year Zero.” Presumably, the Heinlein project will lense in 2010.THR

If I was a betting man I would hedge a bet how long Twentieth Century Fox was holding out from dropping this bomb on fanboy land. Just long enough for the trailer to come out and get that Pavlov reaction a swirling? I would have bet they used our collective geek drool to seal the envelope of their claim to the rights of Alan Moore’s graphic novel thus their presumed share of the profits when the film adaptation of The Watchmen comes out in March 2009… maybe. Alas this appears to have been a long time coming as they originally made the claim back in February that they still hold the rights to the graphic novel.

Following a series of complex legal arrangements in the ensuing years that involved the joint venture Largo Entertainment and producer Larry Gordon, US District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess ruled that Fox still held a claim to the rights.

The ruling leaves both parties clear to proceed to litigation. Fox claims it is owed a share of the profits when a Watchmen film is released and foreshadowed a possible request for an injunction blocking the release when it issued a statement that said: “We will be asking the Court to enforce Fox’s copyright interests in The Watchmen and enjoin the release of the Warner Brothers film and any related Watchmen media that violate our copyright interests in that property.” Screendaily

Enjoin - law to forbid or command somebody to do something by means of a legal injunction.

This of course adds up to “DAMNIT”. I know we’re many months away from the actual release but it would be a shame for something so pretty to wallow away in darkness while studios bicker about rights and profit shares. 

For fans of The Flaming Lips the fact that front man Wayne Coyne has directed a film - psychedelic scifi picture Christmas On Mars - is not exactly news at this point.  The picture has been in the works for a few years now and its development fairly well documented.  What is news is that the film is finally done and the very first New York theatrical dates are due to be announced later today.  So if you’re a fan you’ll want to be keeping an eye over here.  Want to know what it’s all about? You’ll find a lengthy trailer and an interview with Coyne talking about the film below the break.

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If we’re being honest most films to emerge from Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix label tend to wear their budget limitations on their sleeve a little bit.  But you now, we keep an eye on them because small budgets or no, Fessenden has a knack for both finding and nurturing talent and the imprint tends to get behind some truly interesting work.  The latest to come down the line is I Can See You, a trippy horror picture written and directed by Graham Reznick.  Here’s how a producer describes it:

It’s a twisted narrative about upstart ad-men, left to their own devices on an ill-devised camping trip and how they cope when something unexplainable unfolds.  It’s a bit of a psychedelic experience, in the vein of David Cronenberg, Nic Roeg, or Kenneth Anger…

The first teaser has just arrived and you can check it out below the break in the Twitch Player.

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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.

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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.

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For an allegedly Christian country, the United States seems to have forgotten the lesson of Eve’s apple, which is not only that Edenic ignorance is bliss; but, that consciousness is a painful but necessary act that leads to hard work.  Foisting that hard work on others in an effort to regain the bliss of the Garden is not only hypocritical but misses the point of conscious discernment altogether; which is as serviceable a definition of globalization as any.  In his first film, Mardi Gras: Made in China, David Redmon infers that the flip side of prideful excess is shameful impoverishment.  Inference, in style, is his editorial strategy and it works—at least in part—by an astute focus on something as simple as following a string of party beads from the Chinese factory where they’re produced to the Bourbon Street revelry where they’re thrown away.  Through such a simple premise, Redmon stares unflinchingly into the frightening face of complex socio-economic processes, providing obvious answers that provoke even more probing questions.  Not only does his documentary expose exasperating facts; but, Mardi Gras: Made in China exasperates further for revealing no ready solutions.  Then again, the Biblical injunction is that mankind has to toil for its consciousness.  Let the work begin.

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