Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ) and I met up at the Duboce Park Café the Monday after Pride Weekend. As Peaches, Joshua had survived his Pilsner pork pull; an event he agreed to in support of his beloved BLT community. “Every year,” Joshua admitted, “Peaches seems to do less and less [at Pride] in an attempt to reserve energy for the next eight weeks [of Midnight Mass].” Being that it’s now official that this is the last year of Midnight Mass at the Bridge Theatre (“Peaches Christ: R.I.P.”), I felt it compulsory to find out what’s up. Although our conversation was primarily to serve my upcoming Fangoria article on Joshua’s recently completed first feature All About Evil (I’ll let you know when that hits the newsstands), I took time to probe about the summer swan song of the 12th season of Midnight Mass.

Continue Reading "MIDNIGHT MASS 2009—Interview With Joshua Grannell (aka “Peaches Christ”)"...

[UPDATE:  Two guys also capture the promo at the convention and unloaded on youtube.  It has a better view than the last video.]

Imagi Studios has set up a booth at the Anime Expo 2009 in Los Angeles and “Anime3000” has capture on camera the Gatchaman promo being on display on the floor. Of course, the video quality ain’t so great as typical with any cam-job.  We have to bear with it until a proper version comes along.  Hopefully, more news update on this promising superhero film will emerge soon. 

You’ll find the promo after the break.

Continue Reading "Cam-job Promo for Imagi’s GATCHAMAN"...

Once again, Michael Hawley helps the Twitch readership keep abreast of one film festival after the other in the San Francisco / Bay Area.  Thanks, Michael!

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) turns a ripe young age of 29 this year, continuing its reign as the oldest and largest festival of its kind in the world.  Over the course of 18 days (July 23 to August 10) SFJFF will present 71 films from 18 countries—showcasing the best Israeli and Jewish Diasporan cinema to emerge in the past year.  Although I missed last week’s press conference announcing the line-up, I’ve poured over the catalog and compiled this list of ten programs I don’t want to miss.

Continue Reading "SFJFF09—Michael Hawley Anticipates the Line-Up"...

My biggest gripe with animated films in Hollywood today is the lack of mature or edgy content for adults.  Most of the animated films getting produced are driven by slapstick gags and the characters are drawn in cartoony fashion.  Creative studio Nathan Love, in collaboration with Perspective Studios, has completed a three-minute trailer for Blood Trail that utterly go against this convention.  Its a horror piece based on writer Matt Cochran’s screenplay of the same name and its expected to be developed into a feature film, video game and/or graphic novel.  Before you watch this trailer, I must warn you that it contains extreme gore and graphic violence in full CG animated glory.  This is definitely not safe for work so keep your kids away.  What transpire in the last half had me going “oh shit!”.

You’ll find the trailer embedded below after the break.

Continue Reading "Trailer for CG Animated Horror BLOOD TRAIL"...

The Eternal director Justin McConnell just passed along five new teaser posters for his developing vampire flick. He also let us know that at this year’s edition of Rue Morgue’s Festival of Fear they will be in the house and hosting a contest for visitors to their booth that weekend. Things are still at the developing stages for Justin’s film but as soon as things start rolling again I’m sure he’ll have more news for us to pass on to you.

The Eternal will be once again represented at this year’s Rue Morgue Festival of Fear in Toronto (August 28 – 30). We urge all attending to swing by the Unstable Ground booth to grab some free swag, meet the crew and lead actor Adam Kenneth Wilson, preview the entire first issue of the graphic novel The Eternal: Final Dawn, and enter to win one 3 of “The Eternal” prize packs.

First Prize - A “one-of-a-kind” painting by co-creator Kevin Hutchinson (www.secondskincreations.net), a copy of the printed limited edition first issue of “The Eternal: Final Dawn” (only 20 of this version of the pressing will ever be made!), a “Final Dawn” T-shirt, and the short film prequel “Ending the Eternal” on DVD.
Second Prize – A “The Eternal: Final Dawn” T-shirt, copy of the printed limited edition first issue, and the short film prequel on DVD.
Third Prize – A copy of the printed limited edition first issue, and the short film prequel on DVD.

And The Eternal film synopsis…

Samuel Gradius has lived too long. In his 500 years on earth he has seen empires rise and fall, changed the course of history with his bare hands and experienced countless revolutions first hand. Samuel Gradius is a vampire, perhaps the only vampire, and he’s had enough. He wants to die. No longer content with the idea of simple suicide, he makes the decision to go out in the ways of old. He wants a warrior’s death. THE ETERNAL follows Samuel on the pursuit of his own personal oblivion, he hopes, at the hands of someone worthy.

It’s kind of funny how easily the reptile part of the brain can take over.  It makes us do odd things, makes us fixate on the things that make our nether regions tingle, to the exclusion of all else.  Makes us so focused - for example - on a certain Oscar-winning director casting a porn star in one feature that we cmpletely miss the fact that he’s working on another one as well, this one starring an actor with more than a little bit of awards hardware on his shelf at home.  A well ... I guess I just don’t find Matt Damon as attractive as Sasha Grey.  Such is life.

The director, of course, is Steven Soderbergh, and the film - the new one - is The Informant!, a based- on-a-true-story tale of quite possible the least competent corporate whistle-blower in the history of ever.  i can’t help but feel that the Coen Brothers stole a little bit of the stylistic thunder on this one with Burn After Reading but Damon looks fantastic in it - as, bizarrely enough, does Scott Bakula - and I got more than one good laugh out of it when I caught it screening before Public Enemies.  And, yep, it’s online now so I rather suggest checking it out.

The man with 30 films somewhere in the production ether has just added another project to his list. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of the Transformers films and the upcoming G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra feature has dipped his grubby hands once again into the 80s properties pool and won a bidding war- A BIDDING WAR!!! for the rights to make an Asteroids movie. Yes, yes, the game where you, a small triangle, shoot and destroy asteroids of varying shapes and sizes until you are mercilessly crushed by one of them yourself. Insert another quarter and go again!

Now, given that Asteroids was around in the days where back story and characters didn’t matter, we were too caught up in the actual state of the art video game action back then, this gives the script writer Matthew Lopez [Bedtime Stories and Race to Witch Mountain... I know] pretty much free reign to do what he wants and create an exciting world around the simple concept of blowing up Asteroids.

So let’s theorize and make up our own script shall we? Here’s what I can make up off the top of my head. Aliens have redirected asteroids from the belt in orbit around the Sun, that one between Mars and Jupiter, and they are launching them at Earth, hoping to wipe out the human race from a distance. It’s up to the Asteroid Defense Human Defenders [ADHD - get it?], a collection of young, hot, thrill seeking space pilots to intercept these Asteroids before they become Meteorites and plunge into the soft recesses of our fragile Earth. They’ll be doing some plunging into some soft recesses of their own because they are so young and hot and thrill seeking. Either an Asteroid will get through their defenses, kill millions, and one of the pilots will have this big emotional moment where they torture themselves in grief only get their vindication when Earth can finally launch an assault on this Alien race and these pilots will be asked to lead the charge once they arrive at the belt. Or, one of their pilots will die, planting themselves on the front side of a massive Asteroid, and everyone will have a joined emotional moment then everyone can get their vindication when Earth can finally launch an assault on this Alien race and these pilots will be asked to lead the charge once they arrive at the belt. There will be lots of special effects and lots of explosions [which you must have even though there is no sound in the vacuum of space] and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is done in Real 3D. After all, it’s Asteroids damnit!

What say you?

We are mighty big fans of Nimrod Antal‘s 2003 Hungarian subway drama, Kontroll, which at the time, due to its sense of style, humour and intensity, besides being a breath of fresh air in the stuffier Hungarian Cinema circles, also seemed like a Hollywood calling card of sorts.  That proved true and resulted in the enjoyable thriller Vacancy and the decidedly more generic-looking Armoured which is on its way to the multiplex presently.  But here is the blockbuster big-time moment for Antal, as he is being handed the keys to the Predator franchise.  Hmmm, I find this to be pretty exciting.  Antal had to beat out some tough competition, namely Neil Marshall, for the gig.

The 1987 original is practically canonized as one of the great 1980s beef-cake action pictures with great action and macho humour and sensibility.  And the awesomeness of Predator 2 is often overlooked?  I mean that quite seriously, Predator 2 rocks.  Can Nimrod Antal and producer Robert Rodriguez stuff lightning in a bottle for a third go-around?

Either way, Robert Rodriguez‘s Troublemaker Studios is aiming for a fall start on Predators with elements of his 1994 screenplay draft and the KNB group practical special effects philosophy.  Excited?  Ready to wash the bile of the AVP films out of your craw?

Shortly before the hordes began chanting, “The Daily is dead; long live The Daily”, David Hudson gathered reviews of Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, first from its Cannes debut, and then later mid-June when it opened stateside. Here in San Francisco, Coppola met with his audience at the film’s first screening at the Sundance Kabuki.

Outlining how The Godfather created a “tsunami of success” that irrevocably changed his life and filmmaking, Coppola has gleaned from the passing of years a restoration of creative spirit leaning into what he admits is his “second career.” Tetro is, in fact, the second film of his second career; Youth Without Youth being the first. Lustrously shot in digital and projected in 35mm, the film is a rapture to watch, even as its rich visuals disguise an anemic narrative that doesn’t quite ring true. One is grateful for what one has seen; but, not completely satisfied. I’m not a huge Vincent Gallo fan so I place the blame there—for me, he just couldn’t carry the movie—but, Coppola’s “discovery” Alden Ehrenreich has charisma to spare in his debut role and is a talent to watch in future years.

Michael Guillén: One of the images I’m going to carry away with me from Tetro is that of the staged dance sequence near the edge of the sea. It reminded me of One From the Heart for being thrillingly artificial; the kind of artifice that lends itself in some odd way to emotional authenticity. Can you speak to your use of theatrical artifice to create emotion in your films?

Francis Ford Coppola: Of course. Just as the story implies, when Bennie [Alden Ehrenreich] was a little kid, his older brother Tetro [Vincent Gallo] used to take him to movies that were a little bit advanced for a seven-year-old kid and gave him some books to read and what have you and that’s why the boy idolized his brother so much. It’s true, in my own life I have an older brother who took me to see the Korda films, The Red Shoes—of which there’s an excerpt in Tetro—and also Tales of Hoffmann, which is much stranger for a young kid. Just as the character Bennie says, whenever he thought of his brother he always thought of Tales of Hoffmann.

My idea was that—when Bennie is reading [Tetro’s] cryptic notes and writings—that he imagines the story as though it’s scenes from a Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger dance film. The version of the story that the boy understands is as though it’s told in dance. It’s great that film is one of those mediums that can use different art forms to do different things. It was also fun for me—as someone who has admired The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus and all those beautiful Technicolor films—to get to fool with telling this little story in those images. The image you mentioned of the dancers on the stage with the sea coming in is very much inspired by the dance in The Red Shoes, as you can imagine.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

So, Ricky’s first feature film as director, writer and lead actor is on its way. I’ll make no bones about it, I am a fan, and although Ghost Town was a slightly underwhelming first foray into leading man territory it was affable enough with charm and sarcastic wit to spare. Taking more creative control this time round, The Invention Of Lying should see him hit his stride with more of the edgy humour from his stand-up routines and The Office, though at first glance the trailer has a whiff of 12A muting.  An eclectic if not entirely undesirable supporting cast includes Patrick Stewart, Rob Lowe and an ever expanding Jonah Hill. I’m hopeful.

The Invention of Lying takes place in an alternate reality in which lying - even the concept of a lie - does not even exist. Everyone from politicians to advertisers, to the man and woman on the street speaks the truth and nothing but the truth with no thought of the consequences. But when a down-on-his-luck loser named Mark (Ricky Gervais) suddenly develops the ability to lie, he finds that dishonesty has its rewards. In a world where every word is assumed to be the absolute truth, Mark easily lies his way to fame and fortune. But lies have a way of spreading, and Mark begins to realise that things are getting a little out of control when some of his tallest tales are being taken as, well, gospel. With the entire world now hanging on his every word, there is only one thing Mark has not been able to lie his way into: the heart of the woman he loves.

You can check out the trailer below the break. It’s due an October 2009 theatrical release in UK.

Continue Reading "Ricky Gervais in a trailer for THE INVENTION OF LYING"...

We all know how much man love Swarez has for Fred Dekker and his film Night of the Creeps but I think this little contest that Amazon is putting on to choose the cover for the upcoming DVD release might be enough to put him over the edge and send him on a drunken rampage throughout Iceland, drunk on whatever the Icelandic people get toasted on. And given that Swarez has himself designed some really good posters and DVD covers himself I don’t think the nation of Iceland will sleep well tonight. You’re going to have to see for yourselves.

Here’s the deal. Go to the link below and choose one of the three options at the bottom of the page. The cover with the most votes will be the winner and you’ll know what to look for when you go to buy this DVD when it hits store shelves. I think all three are ugly as sin but it looks like it is a matter of choosing the lesser of three evils. Option # 1, the one I think is the least hideous is the one on the left.

And you will buy it because it is an awesome cult film and you don’t want a drunken Swarez showing up at your door in the middle of the night. Do you? DO YOU!?!

Once again, Michael Hawley privileges the Twitch readership with his preview of YBCA’s upcoming calendar.  Thanks, Michael!

Norwegian Black Metal, Graphic Sexual Horror and a Headless Woman.  Jeez, is it Halloween already?  No, it’s just this summer’s insouciant film/video line-up at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  But before we dig into what curator Joel Shepard has in store through September, here’s exciting news for YBCA filmgoers.  Starting July 6, ticket holders will be allowed FREE admittance into YBCA’s exhibition galleries, whose days and hours of operation have been adjusted to align with evening film and video screenings.

Continue Reading "Michael Hawley Previews YBCA’s Summer 2009 Lineup"...

Seventy years later and 1939 is still hailed as a benchmark year for Hollywood cinema.  Celebrating that fact, this evening The Castro Theatre launches its 18-film tribute to 1939, including such classics as Son of Frankenstein and The Man They Could Not Hang, At the Circus and You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man, They Made Me A Criminal and Each Dawn I Die, The Women and Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Destry Rides Again, Wuthering Heights and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Tarzan Finds A Son and Another Thin Man, Gunga Din and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, wrapping up with Golden Boy and Only Angels Have Wings.

If you prefer your home entertainment system to a movie palace, at least 10 of those titles are likewise included in Turner Classic Movies’ 39-film tribute “1939—70th Anniversary of Hollywood’s Greatest Year.”  Each Thursday night through the month of July, TCM will shoot off 1939’s most celebrated fireworks, including all 10 Best Picture Oscar® Nominees (reminding—in the light of recent events—that everything old is new again).  Robert Osborne offers a preview of the festival at Now Playing: The Show and the full schedule can be found at TCM’s website.  TCM’s “39 From 1939” Film Festival also features the premiere of the new Warner Home Video documentary 1939 (2009), which recounts the astonishing accomplishments of Hollywood during this historic film year.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has, of course, been screening all 10 Best Picture Oscar® Nominees throughout the Summer, with only four screenings left to go.

Of related interest, at One Way Street Alan Rode angles in on 1939 by way of a sterling portrait of “the incredible twelve month run of film roles by the great character actor, Thomas Mitchell.”

And, of course, no survey of any given year in cinema history would be complete without a tip of the hat to Thom Ryan’s Film of the Year.  He chose Confessions of a Nazi Spy as his focus on 1939.

So, out of sheer curiosity, what is your favorite film from 1939?

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

[Our thanks to Captain Awesome for pointing out a series of fresh stills for this one.  More bio.  More slime.  You know the drill.  Hit the link below to check ‘em out.]

I’ve always had a sweet spot for 1950’s b-grade science fiction and a particular weakness for The Blob and apparently low budget film maker John Lechago feels exactly the same way.  His latest effort, Bio Slime is an obvious nod to the blobby days of yore, albeit a nod filtered through the much more explicit filters of films such as Evil Dead and Braindead.  If you’re a fan of this sort of thing then the plot line shouldn’t matter very much but if you’re curious it revolves around a strange mass of slime released from a mysterious brief case during a drug deal gone bad. 

Any fans of American animator Bill Plympton out there?  Because have I got a DVD for you.  Or, rather, Plympton does.  The man was in town for the Worldwide Short Film Festival a couple weeks ago and while here he passed me a copy of his brand new DVD Dog Days - signed it, too, and gave me an original drawing on a postcard, the man knows how to work a room – a complete collection of his work from between the years of 2004 and 2008.  If he made it in those five years, it’s here.  The Dog Trilogy?  Santa, The Fascist Years? The Fan and the Flower? All here.  And it’s not just the shorts.  Nope.  His commissioned work – music videos, festival trailers, etc – are all included as well along with a generous assortment of bonus materials, including audio commentary on each and every one of the shorts.  And everything is featured in the correct aspect ratios with tip-top transfers. Call this one absolutely essential for any fan of animation in general or Plympton in particular.