Surprising news here:  Word is out that Fox has pulled the plug on the McG produced American remake of classic UK sitcom Spaced. Hurray!  Be a good boy or girl and buy the North American DVD release of the original show when it hits this summer. 

The web monkey has been keeping tabs on upcoming comedy Hank And Mike for a good while now.  The film is something of a local product, a feature length expansion of a short film by a pair of young Canadian film makers, and the premise is just stellar.  Easter bunnies, unemployed and unhappy.  The first official teaser has just arrived and it lives up to the premise.  You’ll find it in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "Bad Bunnies!  The HANK AND MIKE Teaser Arrives!"...

This is wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Screen International has announced that sales company Velvet Octopus will be launching international pre-sales on S. Darko at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.  And, yes, this is what you think - a sequel to Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko with Daviegh Chase reprising her role as the younger Darko sister.  Richard Kelly has no official involvement whatsoever.  Darko needs a sequel about as badly as the original Highlander did, which is to say not at all, and I fully expect the results of this to be about the same, which is to say horribly bad.  I’m bothered that they’re doing a sequel at all, that they’re doing it without Kelly boggles the mind as Darko was Kelly’s baby ... my guess is Kelly has too much love for his creation to bastardize it this way himself and not enough financial control over the property to stop other people from doing it for him ... Icky.

Graham Leggat introduced Graydon Carter, one of the producers of the closing night film Gonzo: The Life and Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and the editor of Vanity Fair magazine since 1992.  Not only was this the West Coast premiere of Gonzo, but the Vanity Fair Reel Relief benefit, which Carter proudly announced had raised $100,000 for the Natural Resources Defense Council.  He, in turn, introduced Alex Gibney.

Gibney credited Carter as being the individual responsible for phoning him with the idea of doing a film on Hunter Thompson, some of whose writing Vanity Fair had published.  Gibney further acknowledged two other producers in the audience: Alison Ellwood and Eva Orner.  He stressed the importance of showing Gonzo to a San Franciscan audience since the city was so much a part of Thompson’s life.  To preface the film, he offered a quote by Thompson on show business: “Show business is a cruel and shallow money trench; a long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.  But there’s also a negative side.” Gibney added that Thompson also had a saying: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” “You bought the ticket,” Gibney shouted out to his cheering audience, “take the ride!”

And what a ride!  Equally hortatory and hagiographic, Gonzo frames a larger-than-life personality, the likes of which is nowhere to be found elsewhere even if crucially needed in such desperate times.

Continue Reading "SFIFF51: GONZO—Q&A With Director Alex Gibney"...

For many years, Hollywood had been threatening to unleash a big-budget live-action adaptation of the iconic 1960s cartoon “Speed Racer”.  Everyone from Johnny Depp to Nicolas Cage was rumored to be involved at one point or another.  Now, at long last, the film has arrived, touting the unmistakable star power of… John Goodman??  Okay, to be fair, the cast of this film does a remarkable job of bring out the heart and vital family dynamic of the Racer clan.  But the fact that the cast may lack marquee value doesn’t matter, as the true stars of this film are its makers, Larry and Andy Wachowski (of the Matrix trilogy fame).  And in accordance to the visual whirligig that is this film, not once do they let you forget it.  Dare I say it; they’ve opened door into some kind of new live action visual experience.

Already semi-controversial for its manic, color-crazed visual style, “Speed Racer” is a film that’s not going to appeal to everyone.  I suspect that it will, however, appeal to far more people than some negative box office predictors are indicating.  The spark is such in the fabric of this film that it could very well catch on with the kids in that slow burning “National Treasure” sort of way.  But don’t take that as a judgment on the quality of the movie itself (although it was a compliment) (but I haven’t seen “National Treasure”).  While it’s interesting that the heretofore R-rated Wachowskis have seen fit to make what they dub “a family movie”, it’s even more interesting to process “Speed Racer” in the context of their other work. 

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He seems like such a pleasant young man in person but then, that’s what they say about all sorts of deviants, now isn’t it?  Canadian writer-director Karim Hussain has just announced his latest project, the aptly titled Filthy, a film revolving around garbage fetishists.  And that’s fetish in the true, deriving-sexual-pleasure-from sense, I make sure to point out.  Fresh of the success of their Pakistani splatter picture Hell’s Ground, Filthy is the first of a slate of new pictures to be announced from the Mondo Macabro lads and they’ll be touting the picture to prospective investors in Cannes with a nasty little promo teaser in tow.  You’ll find details below the break and a larger version of the poster linked below.

Continue Reading "Karim Hussain Has A FILTHY Mind"...

We here around Twitch are big fans of the Canadian National Treasure that is Guy Maddin.  After a highly successful run on the festival circuit, his latest film, My Winnipeg, is set for a limited theatrical release next month.  Perhaps his most accessible film to date, don’t let the fact that it is a documentary (and a documentary on a city, and that city being Winnipeg) scare you away.  My Winnipeg is delightful, vitriolic, unique and funny all at the same time (and often in the same scene) as it goes about truly mythologizing the coldest city in the world. 

Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD) casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in MY WINNPEG, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. The film is a documentary (or “docu-fantasia” as Maddin proclaims) that blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths that cover everything from the fire at the local park, which leads to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads, to pivotal, sometimes traumatic, factually heightened scenes from Maddin’s own childhood.

A big thanks to the Quiet Earth boys for passing the heads up on this.

The characters of debuting writer/director Thomas Callaway’s rustic noir Broke Sky exist in a world perched somewhere between everyday reality and a slightly heightened, off-kilter pastiche of rural Americana.  They booze it up at the local saloon, obsess over talent pageants, and dream of movin’ on up from a single- to a double-wide trailer; they also find themselves caught up in murder and near-operatic levels of personal disaster.  Against the odds Callaway’s script (co-written with four other writers) melds its incongruent elements into a subversive, satisfying whole.  Broke Sky assembles a unique world through cleverly deconstructing overworked genres, resulting in an original and highly rewarding low-key thriller.

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Coming at your faster than a bolt of lightning, the Wachowski Brothers Speed Racer kicks cinema into the 5th dimension and is 10,000 volts of gooey fun at breakneck racing speeds of visual excitement that the entire family can enjoy. This is an explosion of eye-popping Busby Berkeley meets Stanley Kubrick meets anime styled techno delirium that will leave your eyes and brain feeling like it has just been hit by a tornadic sugar high (view image gallery). In some respects it should have been easy to see the Wachowski Brothers were heading in this direction with very anime influenced scenes from their previous movies and importantly of note here is they pick up their original Matrix magic wand, leaving their Reloaded and Revolutions hats behind.

From retro futuristic designs and its symphonic techno color overdrive, the anime universe of Speed Racer gets translated perfectly to the big screen. Make no mistake the Wachowski Brothers have turned anime into live action visual opera that promises to be the benchmark and standard all other type of adaptations will be judged against for the foreseeable future. Live action anime cinema has been born with this visual feast that rivals anything that has ever come before it in history. I didn’t like the upcoming trailers (absolutely hated them) or anything I had seen for it walking into it, so believe me I was very surprised at how well this movie turned out. Cue your inner disco monkey, it’s time to have some summer movie time fun!

Continue Reading "Speed Racer Review - Live Action Anime Bliss"...

It’s kind of a good thing / bad thing scenario being Joseph Hahn.  On the good thing side, Hahn is best known as the DJ for hugely successful band Linkin Park and there are worse things in life than traveling the world and making buckets of cash for playing music.  Also a good thing is that the buckets of cash and influence as a member of the band has allowed Hahn to pursue his other major interest, that being film making.  He got his start shooting videos for his own band and has moved on to shooting for other acts and now is taking his first step into the fiction word with an impressive short film titled The Seed.  The bad thing about Joseph Hahn?  Being a famous and well financed musician means he could well have a hard time convincing people that he’s serious about this whole film thing, which would be a shame because he’s quite good.

While it has many of the hallmarks you’d expect from a video director turned fiction director - the slick shooting style, the rapid fire editing, the musical appearances by his bandmates - Hahn shows that he’s got the conceptual goods to back up the style.  The Seed is the story of a seemingly homeless man who is actually caught in the center of a shadowy military action.  It may appear to outsiders that he is fighting phantoms - throwing punches at empty space and talking to people who aren’t there - but the hero of the piece is actually a traumatized military officer who has been made the subject of an experiment in cloaking technology. He can both hide himself through the use of this technology and also see others using it.  And, oh yes, there are others.  He may have been the first but there are more out there, all of them battling it out to control the technology.  Think about it: soldiers that can’t be seen.  Exclusive properties that are simply invisible to all but the privileged few.  How much would the technology be worth on the open market?

Fans of the Ghost in the Shell franchise will immediately recognize the central device - this sort of cloaking technology is heavily featured in the series - but Hahn takes it in some different directions.  The script of The Seed is a little under written as it stands but the seeds - if you’ll pardon the pun - of some stellar ideas are embedded in there.  What he’s done is found a simple device that allows him to dive into issues of class warfare, the politics of military technology and a host of other issues while wrapping it all up in a slickly produced, martial arts heavy package.  There are rumblings that this may be further developed into a feature length film and I hope they pursue that possibility, there’s lots of good stuff here worth exploring more.

The Seed is currently available on iTunes.

The opportunity to enjoy my two favorite pastimes in one sitting – movies and basketball – comes along once in a great while.  Said fusions often take the form of lower-brow comedies like Semi-Pro, but the occasional gem like The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh or acclaimed doc Hoop Dreams shines through.  The second feature-length directorial effort from Adam Yauch (better know as MCA of seminal hip-hop / punk trio The Beastie Boys), Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot lands firmly on the “gem” side of hoops / film hybrid, even if squanders opportunities to dig deeper into the fascinating issues and events it chronicles in favor of a more generalized presentation.

Continue Reading "IIFF 2008 - GUNNIN’ FOR THAT #1 SPOT review"...

Alex Rivera’s debut feature Sleep Dealer was developed at the 2000 and 2001 Sundance Institute Feature Film Program labs, and won the 2002 Sundance/NHK award and a 2004 Annenberg Feature Film Fellowship.

It then moved on to win two major awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.  Rivera and David Riker won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for outstanding achievement for their screenplay and Sleep Dealer was also the recipient of this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize.  The Prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the filmmaker provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character.

Sleep Dealer was selected “for its visionary and humane tale of a young man grappling with a technological future in which neural implants, telerobotics and ubiquitous computing serve a global economy rife with fundamental challenges and opportunities, and for its powerful and original storytelling and direction.”

The critical response has been qualified but almost without exception Rivera has been praised for his ambition and ingenious maximization of a meager budget to achieve his vision.  What strikes me as the true challenge with this film is whether audiences spoonfed multi-million dollar special effects will be willing to shift suspension of disbelief or be able to overcome their addiction to blockbuster visuals to accommodate Sleep Dealer‘s unique angle on the near-future?  Certainly the ideas are noteworthy enough and the film features a solid doe-eyed performance from one of Mexico’s rising stars.  Luis Fernando Peña—the lead actor of Sleep Dealer—is likewise starring in Desierto Adentro, Rodrigo Plá’s critically-acclaimed follow-up to La Zona (featured in this year’s festival lineup).  I encourage debate on whether audiences can be expected to shift their expectations of what a sci fi film should be to recognize the promise in Rivera’s flawed yet impressive debut feature.

PlumTV’s video interviews with Rivera, actress Leonor Varela and co-actor Jacob Vargas, include some clips from the film.  Hollywood.com’s Sundance interview with Rivera is up on YouTube.  And as of today, via The Hollywood Reporter, Maya Entertainment has picked up the U.S. Rights for Sleep Dealer.

Cross-published on The Evening Class.

Yes, kids, everybody’s favorite transplanted Brits are back with the fourth episode of their Twitch Podcast.  In this episode Broken and Devil’s Chair writer-director duo Simon Boyes and Adam Mason deliver lots of naughty words! Samantha Fox!  A brush with the law! The UK age of consent!  Answers to listener questions and a discussion of Swarez’ gender!  Onwards!

The city of Marfa, Texas, is always the kid in the back of class that wildly raises its hand when anyone states Texas is one long flat state. Sitting at an elevation of 4,685 feet, its picturesque mountain ranges and sparse signs of modern human fixtures make it an oasis and retreat from everyday life. Where else can you revel in such land that would make any Spaghetti Western fan drool with awe at the surrounding landscapes that encompass them from all sides as if they had just stepped back into time. Years ago when Paul Thomas Anderson was at his wits end trying to find a place in California to film There Will Be Blood, his location scouts came across the nearly 60,000 acre plus McGuire Ranch that sits several miles south of Marfa. It not only provided a perfect backdrop with its horizon-to-horizon views void of any modern signs of life, but it also had an unused railroad track that ran through its property. It wasn’t California yet it certainly could evoke the Bakersfield, California circa the early 1910’s that Paul Thomas Anderson envisioned for his film (view Twitch exclusive pictures from the set and day one of the Marfa Film Festival here).

Production Designer Jack Frisk and Paul Thomas Anderson scoured the McGuire Ranch dreaming up ideas for where to plant Little Boston, only to return to a location close by an old water tank that ran by the railroad track. It was at this location that Little Boston sprang to life. The current set while still standing is looking like it’s feeling the effects of the very dusty and cross heavy winds that rake across the plains. Electrical wires you would expect to see dotting around the set are nowhere to be found. When it came to building the set they found ropes looked much better onscreen.

Continued after the link bump >

Continue Reading "Marfa Film Festival 2008 – There Will Be Blood on the set of Little Boston"...

Good news for fans of incredible animation. Mamoru Hosoda’s excellent animated feature film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time will have limited theatrical runs in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. We here at Twitch flat out love this film and would implore anyone who lives in the cities to jump at the opportunity to see this wonderful film on the big screen, even if you have the import DVD at home and you have watched it over and over again as any of us have. Such a good movie!

The movie will screen at The ImaginAsian theaters in Los Angeles and New York from June 13 to 19, then at Landmark Theatres’ Varsity Theatre in Seattle from August 29 to September 4. The film will be subbed for Los Angeles and Seattle, while New York will have the dubbed version.

What’s going on in New York? Dubbed version? This implies two things. One, that New Yorkers are illiterate or two, they’re lazy. What a shame they cannot see it in its original language.

The report suggests that Bandai Entertainment, one of the company’s responsible for these screenings, also has plans to release the movie on DVD.