In September 2008, Yoshihiro Nishimura visited Austin, Texas where his film Tokyo Gore Police (Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu) won the first place prize in the AMD Next Wave competition at Fantastic Fest. The following interview was conducted while Nishimura was in Austin. Those who recall Todd Brown’s report about new Nishimura projects, including Drill Bra Sisters, and Ju-On will notice that he mentions entirely different projects here. The assistance of Yoko Hayama of Media Blasters, Mike Rosalies (translation), and Chiho Mori of the Asian Film Festival of Dallas (transcription) was essential in completing this interview.
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A.J. Annila’s horror film Sauna has been one of our conversation pieces around these parts. We have been talking about it a long time and a lot of us finally got to see it in September at TIFF and Fantastic Fest. Most of us liked it. Some did not. But that is not as important as the news that IFC Entertainment has picked up the U.S. rights for VOD and DVD sales for this Finnish supernatural thriller.
When more details surface we’ll keep you in the know.
Acolytes is a hard-edged, stylish horror film from Australia that cleverly plays with genre formulas. In this film, a trio of teens, including two boys and a girl, stumble across what they believe to be the resolution of a classmate’s disappearance. An ex-convict and a strange fellow in a S.U.V. are part of the story the kids weave to explain the mystery. Instead of talking to the police, however, the boys naively try to leverage the situation to their own advantage. As the scheme inevitably falls apart, perceptions of who are the antagonists and protagonists shift until almost all of the characters are compromised.
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Following up the world premiere of their documentary Zombie Girl: The Movie at Fantastic Fest 2008 I caught up with 66% of the directing team of the film I called a ‘candy store Heart of Darkness’. Aaron Marshall, Justin Johnson and the absent Eric Mauck followed young filmmaker Emily Hagins as she set out to make her first feature film, a zombie film, at the tender age of 12! They did so for two years and came up with a very fun and inspiring documentary as the end result. What follows is the conversation I had with Aaron and Justin… first starting with a bit of background from each filmmaker.
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A key part of analyzing Paco Limón’s Doctor Infierno is understanding how the film was made. Limón came up with the idea for Doctor Infierno in 1996. He made a twenty-minute short film based on this idea in 2000. In 2003, the short became the first twenty-minutes of a full-length feature. Over the next few years, Limón shot film on weekends with limited cast and crew. Once the production was finished, various people, none of whom the director met until recently, contributed music, computer modeling, and other elements based on their enthusiasm for the original short. The result of these efforts is a black-and-white do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) sci-fi/horror epic that is a testament to cleverness and persistence in the face of limited means.
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Daisuke Goto’s A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn aka Cowshed of Immorality (2003) is a pink film about a senile man who mistakes his daughter-in-law for a cow. The description and title alone are enough to grab some immediate sales, but the film offers a bit more than subversive thrills.
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The indie horror film Deadgirl emerged from nowhere to a world premiere as part of the Midnight Madness program at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival in mid-September. To say that the film, which plays like a mixture of Larry Clark and Jorg Buttergeit, set some people off would be putting it mildly. Much to the likely chagrin of detractors, however, Deadgirl is proving it has staying power. For example, various distribution deals for the film are in discussion and festival screenings continue to fall into place. Deadgirl picked up the second place prize in the AMD Next Wave Competition at Fantastic Fest 2008. The next screenings will be part of the “New Visions” competition at Sitges in October. Screenings at Leeds International Film Festival and Stockholm International Film Festival will follow. Screenwriter Trent Haaga shared his thoughts with Twitch about the film’s origins, development and public reception. He also commented on his career, including past and present projects.
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Sure, this is coming to you a couple days after the festival ended but because they’re showing three films from the festival today at the Alamo Drafthouse for free I think I still have an open window to write one more review. That, and I completely forgot I saw this [not a good sign] and Todd said he was going to write it up, but didn’t. Too busy looking handsome I suppose. The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson’s follow-up to his much lauded teen-noir flick Brick was one of the secret screenings as this year’s festival.
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At the end of the festival my tally stands at:
26 feature films
2 barbecue runs
1 shotgun range
1 opening night party
1 party at Bill Pullman’s suite
1 100 best kills party
1 Fantastic Feud/Karaoke Party
1 Fantastic Debates
9 very late nights
Unknown numbers of beers consumed
It seemed fitting that my last night at Fantastic Fest was spent enjoying the fine work of our Aussie brethren. I caught the much lauded Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood and then one of the fine examples from the era of filmmaking, Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Turkey Shoot, at the Ritz at midnight. Bango Kablooie! I got my fill of booze, blood and boobs in only a couple hours. Something I’d never thought possible.
What we witness is a young generation’s response to a cultural absence. Up until the 70s Australia did not have their own film commission. When they did get started they certainly weren’t going to fund films with naked women, excessive violence and all sorts of promiscuity. Still, there was a void to fill and as soon as the first R-Certificate in the world was issued many young upstart filmmakers like Brian Trenchard-Smith and producers like Antony Ginnane began banging out every type of genre film, answering the call to fill this void of genre cinema. Their films spanned the spectrum: booze, blood and boobs. They were low budget but the body and booty counts were high. They laughed in the face of their well-mannered contemporaries then shoved their faces into the ‘chunder’ [vomit].
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Because it pleases me to do so I have just uploaded the contents of my camera from this year’s edition of Fantastic Fest into an image gallery here at Twitch. Now, as the lady friend would be all-too-quick to point out I’m not the most camera-happy guy in the world so my own photos are dominated by the trip we took out to a local shotgun range - other Twitch-folk who were there, feel free to add your own photos into the gallery - where it turned out that mild mannered Gachi Boy director Norihiro Koizumi was a surprisingly good shot, Man From Hong Kong director Brian Trenchard Smith is the guy you most want covering your back in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and the lady friend kicked my ass - distressingly easy to do as I didn’t hit a damn thing. It also pleases me to no end that I now possess a photo of Hobo With a Shotgun director Jason Eisener with a shotgun. Hit the link below to browse the gallery.
Shuji Kataoka’s S&M Hunter (1986) was one of two films supplied by Pink Eiga for the Behind The Pink Curtain retrospective at Fantastic Fest. The screening of the company’s newly subtitled digibeta source proved to be one of the highlights of the festival. S&M Hunter’s casual parade of vulgar humor and taboo imagery might be as extreme as pinku eiga gets.
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Post-apocalyptic children’s fantasy City of Ember, which ‘secret screened’ as the closing night presentation of Fantastic Fest, is not my cup of tea, either thematically or otherwise, but if I was 14 again it might hit me dead center. As a much older, oft-befuddled middle-aged man, I could appreciate the production design and the generally handsome look of the film, though I lost interest in the proceedings from time to time. I didn’t think it was terribly compelling for anyone outside of the target audience.
Bill Murray plays the major of the titular underground city, and was the surprise guest star of the evening. (No disrespect to director Gil Kenan, who was also present for the intro and post-screening Q&A.) I think it’s safe to say that Murray is one of the greatest comic influences of the past 30 years. I wish he had more to do in the movie, but, as Kenan hoped for, he lent gravity and a twinkle in the eye to his small supporting role.
I only thought to take notes on the last two questions in the Q&A: “Will you do another Ghostbusters?” Murray said, “Now that the wounds have healed from Ghostbusters 2 ... That could work.” He’d heard the recent news about the screenwriters hired, and thought they might bring fresh ideas.
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Howdy y’all. Just about to head off to the airport and head back home after a wicked time here in Austin at Fantastic Fest. My thanks and gratitude go out to festival programmers and their staff. I’m going to get this review of the one Secret Screening that I did manage to make it into. All in all it sounds like they were all hit and miss. None of them really seemed to hit it out of the park this year. I questioned my devotion to Todd yesterday afternoon when it appeared that the Secret Screening of Rocknrolla was far from full, but I was committed to finishing my review for Martyrs and adding another vote to our mix.
Two friends, Virgil and Everrett, played by writer/director Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen, are hired to police a small town is suffering under the rule of a ruthless rancher, Randall Bragg. played by Jeremy Irons. Bragg has recently killed the former sheriff and his deputies and these two are called in to restore order to the town of Appaloosa. They soon find things get more complicated by the arrival of a young widow, Allison French, played by Renee Zellweger.
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The recent crop of French genre films like Frontière(s) and À l’intérieur (Inside) has been both condemned and praised for embracing new levels of graphic content. Whether one is a critic or supporter of this trend, one of the most obvious questions to arise after watching these films is how far can these filmmakers go with hard-edged realism? Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs answers this question in forceful fashion. In Martyrs, Laugier has created a film that is obviously rooted in genre conventions but transcends the boundaries of genre to achieve something unique and unforgettable.
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While it seems that the bulk of the world is content to dish out boring and typical slasher and psycho killer horror films the French scene continues to push the envelope both in terms of graphic violence but also deep and meaningful content. This is the type of film that director and writer Pascal Laugier has given to us.
Martyrs opens to a young girl, Lucie, running through an industrial complex. She has been stripped to her underwear and she is bruised, bloodied and broken. She is escaping from something or someone. Film footage then unveils an investigation into her ordeal. A single chair sits in a room with a hole in the seat so she can relief herself into a bucket. A soiled mattress sits in the corner. Chains run from the walls. Clearly this little girl has been held for some time, we learn it has been one year. She is taken to a hospital where she is studied and cared for. Another young girl, Anna, befriends Lucie and the two form an impenetrable bond. When they are older Anna joins Lucie on her quest to find those responsible for her ordeal.
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