Free! Free at last! Free from the shackles of employment I braved a surprisingly chilly night to catch my first screening of TIFF. I met up with the boys as we settled down for the third Midnight Madness screening of the year, a wonderful teen movie featuring your common teen staples; drugs, booze, guns, breasts, sex, and lots and lots of blood. Is it any surprise that All The Boys Love Mandy Lane?
Mandy Lane is the object of every young man’s desire at her school. A desirable creature made all the more desirable by her inclination to lead a pure lifestyle and abstain from common teenage vices. You want what you can’t have and it drives the male teenage population around her mad. A weekend away at a classmates’ Texas ranch appears to be the perfect opportunity to crack that nut and be the first to get with Mandy. Jostling for position begins and the game is on. Unfortunately another game is being played and someone lurks in the shadows, quickly eliminating the competition. Is someone taking their affection for the lovely Mandy Lane too far?
Continue Reading "FANTASIA: All The Boys Love Mandy Lane Review"...
Well, I’m in heaven. Guy Maddin‘s fabulous Brand Upon The Brain! is coming to the Criterion Collection (not in Blu Ray, but I don’t think that is too critical here). Touring festivals with a live narrator accompaniment before playing in the Cinema with Isabella Rossellini on the audio track, the Criterion DVD takes advantage of the audio track selection to allow you to watch the film with your choice of narrator, including this eclectic selection: Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Crispin Glover, Guy Maddin, Louis Negin, and Eli Wallach. This sweet baby is available August 12 as Spine #440.
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* Optional narration tracks by Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Crispin Glover, Guy Maddin, Louis Negin, and Eli Wallach
* The Making of “Brand upon the Brain!”, a new documentary featuring interviews with the director and
* Two new short films directed by Maddin: It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today and Footsteps
* Deleted scene
* Trailer
* PLUS: A new essay by film critic Dennis Lim
[With the DVD release of Cashback hitting Canada on July 24th now seems a good time to revisit the film. What follow is Kurt’s review of the film from when it played at the Toronto International Film Festival with some words on the DVD thrown in for good measure.]
Put on your raincoats ladies and gentlemen, because I am about to gush very, very hard for Cashback. This British romantic dramedy focuses on the same early 20s transition from school to ‘real life’ as Kevin Smith’s original Clerks or Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World. What makes this one stand out with those films is how it treats the subject with a visual wit as accomplished as modern visual stylists Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Danny Boyle and David Fincher. The resulting film is the pitch perfect blend of high and low culture (Don Carlos to Coldplay if you will) to yield a feel-good film which earns its romantic elements. It is a rare film which chooses not to angrily condemn plastic suburban culture in the western world, but look hard and find small beautiful things amongst the banal. There is a detached joy at work in the film which slowly sheds the former and finds the latter. It is a hopeful movie for those looking to find their way in life, even as it simultaneously exists as a wish fulfillment fantasy. Director Sean Ellis loves to celebrate things as even more beautiful when there is a flaw or two.
Continue Reading "Cashback Review"...
[What follows is the review of Renaissance originally penned by Opus back when the film screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. With the DVD releasing on these shores July 24th I am simply updating Opus’ thoughts with a word or two on the DVD release.]
It took seven years for Christian Volckman and his team to bring Renaissance to the big screen. However, if I had to make a guess, I’d say that only about three months of that time was spent working on the storyline. Visually and technically breathtaking, the film is nevertheless riddled by a number of sci-fi/action movie clichés that basically leave one feeling as if they’ve already seen this movie about a dozen times.
The setting is Paris in the year 2054. Karas (voiced by Daniel Craig) is a devoted member of Section K, specializing in kidnapping cases. While very good at his job, he’s a lone wolf prone to doing whatever it takes to solve a case—much to his superiors’ chagrin. Karas’ latest case involves the abduction of a woman named Ilona, a well-respected researcher who works for the Avalon Company, a powerful-yet-shady bio-medical firm that has much of the city in its grasp.
Karas joins forces with Ilona’s older sister Bislane (voiced by Catherine McCormack), who turns out to be something of a rebel and a hothead. As he works on the case, he begins uncovering information about Ilona’s involvement in a top-secret project involving the human genome, a project that has far-reaching implications. Of course, Avalon has a huge interest in the project, and so they have their own forces at work on the case, and aren’t afraid to eliminate anyone who gets in their way.
DVD Details
And now on to the DVD release, specifically the Canadian edition distributed on these shores by Alliance Atlantis. The film itself is simply gorgeous, the transfer anamorphic and in the proper ‘scope ratio and—as you would expect from a purely digital production—perfectly clean. Most importantly the contrast pops and the blacks are deep and true. The soundtrack includes both the English and French dialog versions and it is important to note that although this is a French production the lip synch was originally done to match the English voices so you are getting the film correctly in the English version rather than the French. There is only one special feature included but it is a good one, a twenty six minute making of featurette that gives all of the principal players involved ample time to talk about the process and also give us, the viewers, a good look at how the motion capture process works.
Continue Reading "Renaissance Review"...
[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.
Continue Reading "Fantasia Report: Exiled Review"...
[Fantasia info page here.]
Japanese cult director Takashi Miike continues to amaze with his restless ability to continually re-invent himself. Though very different in terms of setting and degree of violence Big Bang Love, Juvenile A plays almost as a companion piece to his recent IZO moving further down the line of experimentation and metaphysical questioning begun in his hyper-violent time hopping samurai film. Once again Miike has crafted a film that utterly rejects conventional narrative and film making conventions to instead try to break new ground while asking big questions about the destructive nature of humanity.
Continue Reading "Fantasia Report: Big Bang Love, Juvenile A Review"...
[Fantasia info page here.]
The temptation when writing about Jade Warrior—available on DVD here—is to make a big deal about how this is both young Finnish director AJ Annila’s first feature out of film school as well as it being the first ever Finnish martial arts film. The problem with doing this, of course, is that it by attaching the ‘worthy first attempt’ tag on to it you risk also implying that the film is flawed in some way that more experience would likely cure. But whether it be a first film, fifth film or tenth film, Jade Warrior is, quite simply, a very good film.
Continue Reading "Fantasia Report: Jade Warrior Review"...
[Fantasia info page here.]
Forget everything you know about Feng Xiaogang. While Zhang Yimou, one of China’s most revered arthouse directors, used the wuxia epic to make a move towards mainstream success director Feng, one of China’s most successful commercial directors, is here using the wuxia to make exactly the opposite move. Feng’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Banquet—available on DVD here—is every inch an epic scaled art film—deeply theatrical, stunningly beautiful, filled with intriguing contradictions, and a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the source material.
Continue Reading "Fantasia Report: The Banquet Review"...
[Fantasia info page here.]
It’s back to the bad old days for director Kim Ki-Duk. After a string of much loved films that broke with the harsh, ranting polemics of his older work in favor of gentler meditations on life and love Kim is back to his old tricks with Time—available on DVD here— a film that shows he hasn’t lost his angry edge and sets the stage for repeated accusations that the man is, essentially, a misanthrope who sees little in the world and people around him that doesn’t inspire contempt. This is Kim in his Von Trier mode, brash and as subtle as a hammer blow to the head.
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Cashback was a stylish and pleasant surprise at last years Toronto International Film Festival. Finding a tone somewhere between Amelie, Trainspotting and Clerks, it is a simply a fine piece of entertainment. The good fellows over at Movies For the Masses have the trailer. Note that the film is an extended version of the 2004 award winning short film from Sean Ellis. Interestingly, rather than re-shoot the footage (as in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket), the actual short footage is incorporated into the film. I only tell you this, because below is also the link to the short online, and it is spoiler loaded if you want to go into the feature fresh.
**UPDATE** It looks like Cashback is getting the day-and-date release from Magnolia. Limited Theatrical on July 20th, R1 DVD on July 24th. Note that the R2 UK DVD is September 24.
Trailer (Embedded Flash - viewer discretion is advised - due to a bit of tasteful nudity)
Kurt’s TIFF Review
Original “Cashback” 18min Short (Embedded Google Video)
Various Other Cashback videos (Cashback French MySpace Page)
Pre-order Cashback DVD at Amazon.com
Pre-order Cashback DVD at Amazon.UK
On the eve of Cannes, is it too early to start talking about the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival? Well the TIFF Group do not seem to think so, as they announced yesterday that Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces will be the opening film for this years edition of TIFF. Because so many of us at Twitch are local, expect mondo coverage this year (as always) from the usual suspects around here.
The choice is a low key one as it has been 8 years since Podeswa’s The Five Senses and the man has been busying himself with mainly TV drama. It is rather surprising that TIFF went with this rather than the much higher profile David Cronenberg film Eastern Promises currently in post-production (and features festival friendly folks like Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl), but then again, the opening film has often been the lower-key one, such as last years Inuit Epic, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.
Based on the bestselling Canadian novel from Anne Michaels, “Fugitive Pieces tells the story of Jakob Beer, a man whose life is haunted by his childhood experiences during the Second World War. As a child in Poland he is orphaned during wartime then saved by a compassionate, Greek archeologist. He then spends the rest of his life trying to come to terms with the losses he has endured. Through his writing, and then through the discovery of true love, Jakob is given the opportunity to free himself from the legacy of his past.”
Expect things to gear up more in July when the new TIFF website goes live.
Back in September during TIFF as we darted from theatre to theatre you couldn’t help but hear that every one of us who saw Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain loved it! Unfortunately, Todd was spot on when he prophesized it was doomed to failure in the box office, earning not even half of its budget back word wide [ouch!]. So why give it a moments notice when the DVD release was announced? Box office or not, it is still a very good film. Perhaps it will find success in the home theatre market. The release date is set for May 15.
English and French DD5.1 Surround
English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles
Inside The Fountain: Death and Rebirth - Gallery of six featurettes exploring the film’s various periods and settings:
“Australia” (RT: 7:40)
“The 21st Century” (RT:10:20)
“Spain-16th Century” (RT:13:35)
“New Spain” (RT: 10:00)
“The Endless Field” (RT: 7:10)
“The Future” (RT: 15:13)
[source] thanks log
Read Todd’s TIFF Review
The Last Winter, multi-hyphenate filmmaker Larry Fessenden’s latest offering, garnered a slew of absolutely glowing reviews following its premier at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. Cinema Scope magazine has published a compelling interview with Fessenden from their latest issue online, coupled with yet another stellar notice for the film.
Very much worth a read, right here.
We got word of some very big theatrical releases from Tartan Films for 2007. It is going to be a very, very good year for film thanks to those guys and gals. We already knew that they were going to release Johnnie To’s triad film Triad Election is coming out. What is also of fantastic news for us here are Twitch and films that we have talked about quite about is Princess and Taxidermia.
So you can click the link below to read the full press release from Tartan. Also take a moment to read our TIFF reviews of these films so you know why they tickle our fancy so…
Todd’s Taxidermia review
Opus’ Election series review of which Triad Election is, just renamed.
Todd’s Princess review
Continue Reading "Tartan 2007 theatrical schedule announced"...
[What follows is a modified version of the review of The Banquet written when the film screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival, modified and expanded to include commentary on the recent Hong Kong DVD release along with a quintet of screen captures.]
Forget everything you know about Feng Xiaogang. While Zhang Yimou, one of China’s most revered arthouse directors, used the wuxia epic to make a move towards mainstream success director Feng, one of China’s most successful commercial directors, is here using the wuxia to make exactly the opposite move. Feng’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Banquet is every inch an epic scaled art film - deeply theatrical, stunningly beautiful, filled with intriguing contradictions, and a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the source material.
Continue Reading "The Banquet Review"...
