Few things brighten up my day more than receiving a gorgeous Limited edition DVD. Well, being Dutch, maybe one thing:

Receiving a CHEAP and gorgeous Limited Edition DVD!

Produced by renowned animation studio “Studio 4° C” in 2006 and recently released on DVD in several versions worldwide, ”Tekkonkinkreet” got very different reviews provided who you were listening to. People have professed disappointment at the treatment of its source material, have praised the technical craftsmanship on display in every scene, have awarded it higher than anticipated at festivals, made it lose from “Aachi & Ssipak” at another festival…

So is this misunderstood art, a flawed masterpiece, an emotionally empty tech-demo or just a mess? As always it’s for each viewer to decide for himself.
And unfortunately there are two different versions as well, one more than ten minutes longer than the other, so when you pick this up take that into account.

The DVD reviewed here today is the Hong Kong Limited Edition, and the short of it is: brilliant value for money.
It’s cheap, gorgeous, decent video and good sound, English-friendly with subs on the main feature, which by the way is the longer (111 minute) cut…

And it’s cheap and gorgeous. Did I mention this edition is cheap and gorgeous?

Read on…

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... And you really should go.  The film was a big favorite of both myself and Kurt at this year’s Fantasia Festival and is the sort of thing likely to slip through the marketing cracks.  So get out there.  And bring a friend.

At the 25th Brussels International Film Festival I had a chance to sit down with Andreas Prochaska on his Austrian slasher film ”Dead in 3 Days” aka ”In 3 Tagen bist du tot.” Me and Todd (Fantasia notes) both seemed to be pleasantly surprised with this film. A real gem of the 2007 films I’ve seen and it didn’t feel like a throwaway ”I Know What You Did” type movie. For my tastes it was a horror movie with a beating heart that I could get into with a leading character in Sabrina Reiter that I really cared about. Having a chance to chat with Mr. Prochaska on this film was a real highlight of me for this year. He is a director that isn’t about maintaining the status quo or not taking risks, he wants to use cinema as his expression for his own personal stories and in his own exploration of it without being confined to regional commercial demands. I would put him in the current crop of directors taking risks like 70’s directors did in not conforming and in pushing the limits of what good cinema is one picture at a time, regardless what genre it fell into. ”Dead in 3 Days” while not a classic is certainly a good film for those willing to give it a chance and the start of a filmmaker giving it a go with something new for Austrian filmgoers.

Note from Christian of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation (EFFFF):

Dead in Three Days will be screened at Lund International Fantastic Film Festival, and director Andreas Prochaska will attend. The film won the Méliès d’Argent at BIFFF and will as such compete for the Méliès d’Or - Best European Fantastic Film 2007 at the Award Ceremony in Lund on September 16th.

And now onto the interview (SOME SPOILERS)…

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The title says it all, no?  Read on for the full press release with all of the award winners ...

Continue Reading "Fantasia Comes To An End … Winners Announced!"...

[It has been over a week since I returned from Fantasia, but a few films caught in the flood of genre cinema goodness have continued to occupy some headspace. Not the least of which is Chris Gorak’s urban apocalypse drama which blends intimacy and FUD in equal proportions.]

Relationships between family, friends or a significant other are typically done poorly (or completely ignored) in those big money blockbusters featuring an apocalypse of one kind or another which destroys swathes of urban infrastructure to the tune of millions of dollars of computer graphics. While the recent (mighty fine) 28 Weeks Later… took great pains to integrate ‘the family relationship’ into the gears of its thematic gristmill, some of those elements were overpowered in the stylistic brouhaha of that film. Perhaps it is a slight irony that an art director of lush, visual films such as Fight Club and The Hudsucker Proxy woudl be the one to take a sparse, tight and emotional approach to the genre. Sure, it is more likely the tiny budget played more of a factor here, but that does not change the fact that Right At Your Door is damn effective at what it does.

Continue Reading "Fantasia Dispatch—Right At Your Door"...

One of the downsides of a festival the scale of Montreal’s Fantasia is that it’s just impossible to see everything that you want to see.  It’s physically not possible even if you’re there for the entire duration and having only been able to attend for five days this year I missed far more than I saw. 

One of the ones I regret missing most is Ted Sikora’s Hero Tomorrow, an indie take on the super hero film that was drawing a lot of praise from those who saw it for its smart writing and quality cinematography.  The buzz on this one is very strong and a quick browse of the website says why:  it’s got the Kevin Smith indie-quirk thing going on combined with camera work by someone who actually knows his way around a camera.  Nice.

Hero Tomorrow website
Hero Tomorrow trailer (downloadable Quicktime)

I must start this review with a bit of a disclaimer. As the observant will know Mirage Man is a film I programmed for the Fantasia Festival, currently wrapping up in Montreal, and I have so far resisted writing any new reviews for Fantasia-involved films. It’s an objectivity thing. I’m biased as hell, really, and so have just stayed away from writing to avoid putting myself in any awkward spots. But I’m going to break that rule here what with the having just had it’s world premiere and I hope you can take me seriously thanks to these two points: first, there are no tickets left to sell so it’s not like I’m shilling; second, if I didn’t like the film a good amount in the first place I’d never have programmed it. So, I’ll certainly understand if you don’t take my opinion seriously due to the conflict of interest here, but I hope you do …

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FOR TRAILERS, SEE THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE

Régis Wargnier’s Seeds of Death (Pars vite et reviens tard)—a.k.a. “Have Mercy on Us All” (English working title)—is scheduled to have its North American première at this year’s Fantasia Festival in Montréal, Canada on July 23rd at 9:40 p.m.; it’s to be the festival’s closing night film. Gaumont Columbia TriStar Films released the movie theatrically in France on January 24th. Gaumont S.A. is the international sales agent for it.

The screenplay for Seeds of Death (Pars vite et reviens tard) was written by Julien Rappeneau, Ariane Fert, Harriet Marin, Lawrence Shore, and Wargnier—with dialogue by Rappeneau and Fert—based on the eponymous (with regard to the French title) novel Have Mercy on Us All (Pars vite et reviens tard) by Fred Vargas. The movie stars José Garcia, Lucas Belvaux, Marie Gillain, Olivier Gourmet, Nicolas Cazalé, Linh Dan Pham (she’s also in Marc Caro’s upcoming Dante 01), and Michel Serrault.

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Danny and Oxide Pang have been going backwards since their widely embraced two-punch of Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye. This is likely due to them churning out a film every year collectively as The Pang Brothers, and managing a solo film (often each of them) on top of that. That they both have a gifted visual style is not in dispute, but their combined diluted CV and the fact that they are often marketed as a brand is doing them no favours. The problem lies with undercooked screenplays combined the handicap of their less than perfect storytelling abilities. Their solo efforts often border on unwatchable, although Oxides work is a bit better. (Danny is more suited as the editor).  Diary is an Oxide solo effort so going in there was some hope, but it may be a good time now to mention that the translation of the Chinese title (Mon Seung) is ‘wishful thinking’.

Continue Reading "Fantasia Dispatch—Diary (Mon Seung)"...

[Fantasia info page here.]

Glory be, Dan Chupong is back!  While he may not be quite as talented a pure martial artist as his compatriot, the ever-serious Tony Jaa, Born to Fight star Dan Chupong brings one important element to the table that Jaa, so far, has lacked:  a sense of humor.  While Jaa continues to position himself as an ambassador for Thai culture, Chupong simply wants to kick some ass in the name of entertainment and that he does.

Continue Reading "Fantasia Report:Dynamite Warrior (Tabunfire, Kon Fai Bin, คนไฟบิน) Review"...

[Fantasia info page here.]

Philip Yankovskiy’s The Sword Bearer is a film unlike any other, one that takes a premise familiar from The Watchmen—what would it look like if an actual person in the real world were to have super powers—and then plays it surprisingly and compellingly for a purely adult audience. The Sword Bearer is a super hero film for the art house set, highly impressionistic with heavy noir overtones, lacing its stunning photography with bursts of shockingly graphic violence all while focusing purely and entirely on the emotional journey of its central character. The blend here is unique—equal parts art and popcorn, character and action, all of laced with tragedy—and that it works at all, never mind working as incredibly well as it does, is purely a testament to Yankovsky’s skills behind the camera and the magnetic performances turned in by Artyom Tkachenko and Chulpan Khamatova as the doomed lovers at the center of the piece.

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[Fantasia info page here.]

The problem with big expectations is that they often lead to big disappointments and the sad reality is that Korea’s “action kid” Ryoo Seung Wan has followed the best film of his career – Crying Fist – with his weakest. Though City of Violence—available on DVD here—does indeed deliver on the promise of plentiful martial arts action from Ryoo himself and co-star / fight choreographer Jung Doo Hong the film as a whole is positively crippled by a less-than-half baked script.

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[Fantasia info page here.]

While I hesitate to label Johnnie To’s Exiled—available on DVD here— a masterpiece I do so only because it is playing in this festival opposite his Election films, films which surpass this one in terms of social criticism, both of which clearly merit that label themselves. Suffice it to say that To is on a hot streak right now. A very, very hot streak.

Bearing all the marks of a film created as raw entertainment to cleanse the palette after the grim ride of the back to back Election features, Exiled is the much rumored quasi-sequel to The Mission. And let’s clear those rumors up right now. While it shares a cast and a similar tone with The Mission the cast here are playing entirely different characters, so Mission-reunion yes, but Mission sequel no.

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Hey kids! Sunday was Marko Zaror day at Fantasia! The festival boasted both the international premiere of the Chilean martial artist’s breakout film Kiltro and the world premiere of his follow up, the just-completed Mirage Man. Was a good time had by all? Damn straight.

Continue Reading "Fantasia Roundup! Kiltro! Mirage Man!"...

[Fantasia info page here.]

Clocking in at two hours and fiften minutes Yu Ha’s A Dirty Carnival—available on DVD here—is perhaps a little over long but beyond that it’s difficult to find anything negative to say about it. Fans of Yu’s previous works, notably Once Upon A Time In High School, are already well aware of the writer-director’s gift for creating rich characters and that gift has done nothing but develop and strengthen over the years. Nominally a gangster film but really a lushly realized character drama A Dirty Carnival is blessed with a detailed script, a host of realistic and fully fleshed out characters, and a charismatic and complex lead performance from Jo In-Seong.

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