the projection booth

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Sting of Death

2009-09-14T09:20:00.004-06:00

Sting of Death (1965)

Critter: Mutant Physalia physalis, Portuguese Man-of-War + Mad Scientist = “Jellyfish” Man

Size: Man-sized, of course

Modus Operandi: Sneaks up on unsuspecting, but deserving human victims and stings them with his stinging gloves & tentacles

How the Menace Emerges: A disgruntled Igor-like research assistant breeds his own extra-large man-of-war on electricity, seawater and human blood creating a lethal headdress wielded for revenge

End Goal: Being alone with the pretty lady and vengeance

Sting of Death is the sort of film that just isn’t made any more. Many folks might see that as a good thing, but they’re also the same folks you try not to invite to your parties. It is a fun movie, but that’s just the obvious part. Although buttressed upon tried and true formulas, the premise is unique and the critter is entirely absurd. The budget was nil, yet with a low-budget craftsman at the helm, everything that counts is in place. It is well-paced and looks gorgeous. It is the combination of these conflicting things that makes Sting of Death such a rarity and such a resounding success.

William Grefé is the craftsman behind Sting of Death, the man responsible for skillfully turning a disfigured research assistant into a vengeful “jellyfish” man while still managing to toss in an equally absurd (but catchy) poolside dance number (The Jellyfish, sung by Neil Sedaka). If you listen to the commentary, a priceless chat between Grefé and the immeasurable Frank Hennenlotter, you can get a sense of what sort of process is required to pull this off. This is real grindhouse. Sting of Death is packaged on DVD with Death Curse of Tartu, the even lower budget film Grefe made as a drive-in companion piece at the distributor’s last minute request. Even though the baddies in this one are all vertebrates, it too comes with a gratuitous dance sequence and fabulous commentary from Grefe and Hennenlotter. For only 10 bucks, it’s a steal.

For those of you who laughed at the absurdity of using an inflated plastic bag and leftover Mardi Gras beads to represent the mutant Man-of-War here, I suggest that you check out these photos of the real deal here, here and here.

Nit-picking Science: To be fair, the Portuguese Man-of-War is not a jellyfish at all, but a related, rather more complex, colonial supercritter. As siphonophores, each “individual” Man-of-War is actually made up of a colony of specially differentiated individuals collectively and obligately living as a single organism. Although they are all the same species, this species differentiates itself into four distinct types of organism (zooid), each with its own purpose in creating a fully functional Man-of-War, and each unable to survive on its own. The first zooids are the pneumatophores, which look like floating plastic bags and keep the collective critter afloat. The next zooids are dactylozooids which are the nasty, stinging, venomous tentacles that capture and kill prey organisms, but in order for the man-of-war to eat, it needs the next set of zooids, the gastrozooids. These guys do the digesting for the group. Lastly, no Man-of-War is complete without a means of reproduction, and that’s where the gonozooids come in. Sting of Death merely added another mutualist to this party: the human host who expanded the Man-of-War’s hunting range to include large terrestrial mammals. Oh, and while I couldn’t find out for sure, I suspect that Dr. Richardson is mistaken when he says that Man-of-War venom is exactly like cobra venom.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Parasite (2004)

2009-09-07T11:31:00.002-06:00

Parasite (2004)

Critter: The worst CGI, toothy Annelids ever committed to film.

Size: Apparently, this was up to the whim of the animator for each scene

Modus Operandi: Slimily slither around, gnashing teeth and occasionally biting or eating people.

How the Menace Emerges: An environmentally concerned bioengineer gets a gig with an oil company to try to make things right from the inside by creating an oil-eating enzyme. When the drunk, cowardly and otherwise useless blue-collar crew ignores her precise instructions, a huge dose of the enzyme is sprayed on an annelid and wreaks genetic havoc.

End Goal: Who cares.

A worm, of sorts, is sprayed with an experimental enzyme engineered to eat oil. It then builds a chrysalis made of masking tape (well, at least it’s not CGI). Strangely, once it’s out of it’s chrysalis, it hasn’t metamorphosized at all. Add to the mess a group of ecoterrorists from the head scientist’s past and you have a heck of a mess. So, what about the so-called parasites of the title? They don’t seem to be parasites at all, but rather run of mill predators. And they are portrayed with, hands-down, the worst CGI ever.

I know I’ve said this before, but Parasite really is the worst entry in the Guide to date. Terrible acting, terrible, terrible CGI and an absolutely useless story. It attempts to play the eco-horror card, but fails miserably. Just tossing in a villainous corporate executive, a concerned scientist and a group of ecoterrorists without any story or character development just doesn’t cut it.

To be fair, the makers of Parasite were attempting to make a complete rip-off of Alien/Aliens. They saw a successful formula and thought that stealing bits and pieces of it would be enough. It just wasn’t.

Nit-picking Science: Dr. Hansen, there is no way that you can tell if the cells you are looking at are acidic or not. Also, what about those little cells tells you that any organic matter, living or dead, can serve as hosts for this so-called parasite? Despite your completely unfounded prognosis, these things behave exactly like man-eating predators in every way. Just because 90% of your film was a sorry rehash of Alien/Aliens that doesn’t mean that you have to stretch the story to include parasites, too. If you are going to, at least look up what they are in the dictionary first.

david lynch thursday!

2009-09-03T10:21:00.001-06:00

"Oww God Mom The Dog He Bited Me," 1988.

scary monsters, super freaks: district 9, tokyo!, grace

2009-08-27T13:43:00.005-06:00

As the shadow of QT's latest flick, and by some accounts, his cache as a popular and artistically relevant figure in film, slowly disperses - and those weird screamy arias you hear? They're the neo-cons and right-bloggers singing their weird screamy praises for a film that apparently has something to do with the war on terror - let's take a quiet moment to reflect upon the best movie to make the summer scene, a star-less, South African sci-fi actioner that only runs 84 minutes long.

What sets Neil Blomkamp's District 9 apart from the run-of-the-mill summer fare isn't producer Peter Jackson's name over the title, but that it takes a page from sci-fi classics like Blade Runner (1982) and Children of Men (2006). Like those films, District 9 is willing to accept the same sort of limits on the narrative it asks the audience to accept at the outset: that what you're about to see is a moment in time from a diminished and cruel place that's filled with either brutal or cowardly people who arent' likely to find their better angels over the next hour and a half. Blomkamp powers what's essentially a well-bred action pic quickly and smoothly, so much so that it doesn't have the time to ponder the motivation of scientists at Multinational United who obssess over captured alien weapons, or the depravatiy of Nigerian gangsters who squat on the edge of the refugee aliens' camps to barter off-world artifacts for catfood, but instead pauses just long enough to remind us that this is how things are here, so as we move from alien slum to South African suburb to a horrifying secret lab beneath MNU's headquarters, it becomes clear - but never ponderously so - that there's a lot more to overcome in this picture than broken-down spaceships and rampaging alien viruses.

So D9 is paced, yes, but Blomkamp doesn't just chuck a jumble of unconnected ideas into his movie in the hopes that they'll pass for politics; maybe what makes D9 so special for a summer flick is that the political and racial ideas not only give the film a dense moral core, but it makes this movie sing. Lots will no doubt be written about the distant and contemporary history surrounding the setting, and rightly so, but for me District 9 's shanties, forced relocation, and images of terrified and angry aliens rioting had echoes of the narrative here in the United States following the Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, the tragedy of losing one's home, or having to wade past bloated bodies to go break into a corner store for food and diapers was transformed into a kind of shame, that to have suffered so marked those people not as refugees deserving compassion but scorn, just another facet of their cursed and barely-like-us lives they lead. I have to wonder if the abuse and degradation we humans heap on the "prawns" of District 9 wasn't so much about their difference, but our profound disappointment in their vulnerability.

Paul Solet's Grace, about a young, beautiful mother (Jordan Ladd) coping with a zombie infant, is a chockablock with ideas, none of which ever come together the way they should. I really, really wanted to love Grace - Jordan Ladd's after-bar air drumming gave me my only thrill from Deathproof (2007) - and Solet sets up an potentially promising flick with lots of atmosphere, but despite the bravery Ladd and the other actors here show, it's almost as though he ends up squeamish at the prospect of having to film his own horror movie. Grace is not all that bad, but not nearly as good as it should've been.

And for Tokyo!...you know, I generally approach these little omnibus things with some skepticism. Who, except stone cold fanboys and girls wants only a few minutes of your fave director or star? And do those directors ever manage to grasp the limitations of the format enough to give us a little of that good stuff? Anyway, from the top: Gondry, as usual, wanks; Leos Carax's segment, a riff on the giant monster movie, roars off to a fantastic start before it all-too quickly tires out (though I'd be willing to go back and see the advertised sequel); and the always-excellent Bong Joon-Ho turns out an eerie, funny, and heartbreaking piece about Tokyo shut-ins, special tattoos, and Saturday afternoon pizza.

UPDATE, 8.28.09>> Now this - this is the Tokyo story I'd like to see.

david lynch thursday!

2009-08-27T11:16:00.003-06:00

"Clay Head with Turkey Cheese and Ants."
Photo, 1991. From the book Images, 1994.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Mothra

2009-08-24T18:10:00.003-06:00

Mothra (1961)

Critter: Enormous, magical member of the order Lepidoptera

Size: Huge- at least 100 m long as a larva (some report Mothra is 180 m long with a 250 m wingspan in the adult stage)

Modus Operandi: Rubber-suit & robot rampage by land, sea and air

How the Menace Emerges: The two twin “tiny beauties” that are Mothra’s representatives are abducted by an evil capitalist pig, and Mothra gets very angry.

End Goal: To save the tiny beauties, somehow implying that this will restore peace on Earth

Ah, finally! An A+ invertebrate flick! Mothra is one of the three films in the Icons of Sci-Fi, Toho Collection DVD set just out this past Tuesday. While the film could have used a bit of clean up, this is its first time out in the US on DVD and it’s uncut, in Japanese and has a killer commentary. Although it’s a classic Toho studio rubber suit monster masterpiece with Ishiro Honda (Godzilla, Matango, Dogora) at the helm, this time, the monster is hardly monstrous. Like King Kong, Mothra is a sympathetic monster. She does wreak havoc in both Tokyo & a faux US city named New Kirk City, but who can blame her. The adorable Mothra is instinctually compelled to do so out of a sense of justice. She’s not angry at Japan or humanity like Godzilla, she just wants her pals back home.

While American sci-fi was busy commenting on the awesomeness of radiation and its fictional capacity to make insects (and anything else) huge, Japanese sci-fi responded to the atomic age in an understandably more complex fashion. There is no real explanation of Mothra’s origins, but she is most likely not a mutant born of radiation, but rather a quasi-religious figure (perhaps fashioned after old animistic kami of old Japan) whose sole purpose is to protect two very special ladies. Her role is to make the world right again, and she doesn’t give a damn who gets in her way.

The tiny beauties live on Infant Island, an idyllic and supposedly uninhabited island that was bombarded with radiation in military tests (a stand-in for Bikini Atoll, no doubt) by the nefarious nation, Rosilica (a satirical stand-in for Russia & America), known for its weapons, capitalist stances and its evil representative in Japan, Nelson. It is Rosilica’s Nelson and his inhumane greed that unleashes Mothra’s wrath on innocent Japan, and the Rosilican government stands behind Nelson’s claim that the tiny beauties are not people but property. It is also Rosilica that provides the atomic heat rays that Japan hopes will kill Mothra. Of course, Rosilica’s high-tech atomic weapons don’t fix anything, in fact, they seem to make things much worse. Mere technology can’t destroy the nature that Mothra embodies, and rather than perishing, she emerges from the blast as a very fuzzy and adorable moth. She then heads straight for Rosilica for some rampaging in deserving New Kirk City. Mothra is a rather simple moral tale, and the tiny beauties bid farewell to Rosilica and their Japanese pals on a sweet note: “May all the world’s peoples live together in peace and harmony!”…or else.

Not only is Mothra chock full of insightful satire and social commentary, it is also a technical masterwork. The Toho studio system was in full swing in 1961, with a stable of excellent actors, directors and special effects folks at the ready. The effects in Mothra are a combination of models, puppets, rubber-suit monsters, remote controlled robots, blue-screen and animation, all of which are rendered beautifully. The planes glide through the sky in formation, shooting rockets with real flames that leave sooty marks and flames on larval Mothra when they land. Mothra undulates just as a caterpillar should, and bounces when she falls. Once in full adult form, she glides through the air with graceful wings that move naturally. Not all of the effects necessarily look real, but with natural lighting, a real physicality and inventive cinematography, all of these effects are convincing enough, and downright impressive.

Nit-picking Science: Mothra is light on entomology, so there’s nothing for me to rip apart here. A physicist may have a better time with stuff like the telepathy-blocking plastic and the atomic heat ray than I could.

david lynch thursday!

2009-08-20T08:40:00.001-06:00

get yr release on

2009-08-18T12:01:00.004-06:00

Tilda? Tilda? The Tuesday releases are down here, Tilda!

U.S. Region 1>>
- Brave Archer and His Mate (Shaw Brothers production)
- Five Deadly Venoms (reissue)
- Hannah Montana: The Movie
- Husbands (directed by John Cassavetes)
- Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho (box set includes the films: The H-Man, Battle in Outer Space, Mothra)
- Inglorious Bastards 2 (starring Fred Williamson. That's the one good thing about the onslaught of bullshit and hype and bullshit that now accompanies a Quentin Tarantino release - lots of old good stuff - old good region 1 stuff - finds its way to the stores and the websites)
- Julia (2008) – (featuring a stunning performance by one Tilda Swinton, directed by The Dreamlife of Angels' Eric Zonca)
- Last House on the Left (2009) (it is to blarg)
- Pete’s Dragon (this is one of the first movies I remember seeing. This may explain a lot, eh Pike?)
- Surveillance (directed by Jennifer Lynch, if that sort of thing gets you off. However you wanna live your life, man. We don't judge you [We're judging you].... )
- Versus (special edition) (I hear this is so-so, despite it being all samurai'd and ninja'd and zombie'd out)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Away With Words (PAL UK) (directed by Wong Kar-Wai's uber-talented cinematographer, Christopher Doyle)
- Tea Fight (HK version, VCD) (from Yesasia.com: "[applies] ancient curses, modern duels, underground rivalries, and journeyman adventures to, yes, the art of tea.")

Region 1 Blu-Ray>>
- Go
- Kagemusha (Criterion Collection Blu-Ray directed by Akira Kurosawa)
- Playtime (Criterion Collection Blu-Ray directed by Jacques Tati)

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Tail Sting

2009-08-17T08:00:00.000-06:00

Tail Sting (2001)

Critter: Genetically altered members of the order Scorpiones

Size: They start off small, but soon grow to man-sized monsters

Modus Operandi: Annihilate human victims with razor-sharp stingers and crushing claws.

How the Menace Emerges: One of three scientists is overcome by greed and in mid-flight, attempts to steal the mutant scorpions he helped create, but they escape. Inexplicably, they grow much larger and meaner.

End Goal: Rampaging, mayhem

At first, I was under the impression that Tail Sting was a very slight variation on the Snakes on a Plane model: comedy, critters and general tongue-in-cheek absurdity in a tight spot. Then I checked the date. That’s right, folks, Tail Sting predated the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon by a full 5 years. Points for originality, perhaps, but I have a sneaking suspicion that someone else has tried the escaped-critters-on-a-plane trick before.

Still, this film was a bit of a surprise. Prior to Tail Sting, I was fairly confident that the formula for a successfully fun B-critter flick consisted mainly of practical effects, rather than CGI, and a sense of humor that did away with the pretension of self-seriousness. Although this film had both of these prized ingredients, they were not enough to save it from the rubbish heap. Apparently, I need more.

The critters seemed to be based the stars of The Black Scorpion rather than the real deal, and were mostly puppet work, prosthetics and shadow attacks. Kudos to the makers of Tail Sting for giving the folks some homespun creative puppets and camera tricks, rather than succumbing to the CGI cop out, but yet something was still lacking in the final execution. The same goes for its tongue-in-cheek-ness. The pilot, Jack Russell, is named after an adorable breed of small dog, the mysterious Middle Easterners that sneak on the plane & speak of their solemn mission turn out to be electricians, the Goth kid with the German accent is really an American faker, it goes on and on. It tried to be funny (and to make fun of itself), but maybe it tried too hard.

Nit-picking Science: How many times do you people need to be told that scorpions are not insects! Dr. Ryan, you should be ashamed. And whoever heard of a queen scorpion? If there’s one critter that isn’t likely to build up a cozy little commune with her comrades, it’s the scorpion. Although, there is a real Scorpion Queen in Thailand who recently wed the Centipede King, I kid you not.

friday's deep thought

2009-08-14T10:54:00.003-06:00

All across the universe, they're waiting...

Will Neil Blomkamp's District 9 count as an entry into our Amber's globally known, locally shown "Film Guide to Invertebrates?" This Saturday, everything will become clear...

david lynch thursday!

2009-08-13T08:47:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-08-11T10:58:00.006-06:00

Summer's almost over, so you should do like the cast of Alien Trespass and get yr grill on.

Region 1 U.S. releases>>
- Alien Trespass (it's cute. Not that that's bad, but - it's cute, and I'm a straight-up sucker for late 50s-earlier 60s American saucers and pseudo-science)
- Batman vs Dracula/The Batman Superman Movie (it's like they ripped this from my daydreams or something. Does Natalie Portman do the voice of Batgirl?)
- Born in 68
- The Class (2008) (Laurent Cantent's highly regarded French slice o' life)
- Eagles Over London
- I Love You Man
- Katyn (directed by Andrzej Wajda)
- London to Brighton
- Lone Wolf and Cub: Collection 1
- One Day You’ll Understand
- Paris 36
- 17 Again (and hopefully, never again)
- Tale of Sorrow

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Gate of Flesh (UK PAL) (pinku eiga from the brillinat Seijun Suzuki)
- Inglorious Bastards (UK PAL) (the '77 vers)
- Little Drunken Masters (HK version) (VCD) (best title ever?)
- Mega Shark v. Giant Octopus (UK PAL) (okay - that might be the best title ever)
- Sasori (UK PAL) (murder, mistaken identity, and martial arts mayhem! With the great Simon Yam, apparently)
- Three Fellas (Japan Version) (region 2) (looks like it could be an interesting angle on the gangsters-grow-up story)
- Watcher in the Attic (UK PAL) (60s adaptation of sex and weirdness from Japan's classic mystery author, Rampo Edogawa)

Region 1 Blu-Ray releases>>
- Chaos
- The Class (2008)
- I Love You Man

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Attack of the Giant Leeches

2009-08-10T18:18:00.004-06:00

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Critter: Mutant members of the subclass Hirudina

Size: Man-sized

Modus Operandi: Cruising around a swamp, grabbing human victims and depositing them in their underwater cave to feast on them until they run out of blood

How the Menace Emerges: It’s a mystery, but maybe the radiation at Cape Canaveral had something to do with it

End Goal: Dinner

Attack of the Giant Leeches is the Guide’s first foray into leeches, blood-sucking invertebrates that seem so fitting for horror films, and yet so rarely put in an appearance. It’s also our first Roger Corman flick, and while not one of his best, it is infused with all of the fun that comes with Corman’s hand in the production. As in most of his films, there is very little fat in this flick. At just 62 minutes there’s not much time for things to be built up or fall apart. The giant-sized leeches are rubber suit monsters on a plastic sack budget, but they do have creepy mouths and leave convincing leech hickeys on their victims. The characters are caricatures with just enough back story to earn a pass and establish the requisite conflict, sympathy, repugnance and catharsis: the victims deserve to be victims, the Doc is a smart, wily sun of a gun, the useless girlfriend/daughter pours coffee, listens sympathetically and provides a link between the game warden and the voice of science, the sheriff is conceited and useless, our hero the game warden vows to protect the critters of the swamp and get behind the mysterious killings and of course, the moonshine-swillin’ hillbillies are hillarious.

Being a Tennessee gal myself, old school hillbilly horror is one of my favorite B subgenres, and Attack of the Giant Leeches must have been one of the first. While some have claimed that Hershel Gordon Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) was the start and that the post - Deliverance (1972) 70s were the heyday, if Buddy Ebsen has taught us anything it’s that hillbillies have always been fun to make fun of and there’s no exception for horror. In the 70s, the hillbilly horror genre did take a turn away from fun-filled kitsch and drive straight into slasher/psycho-killer/inbred mutant sadist territory, but I’d hardly say that HG Lewis was the inventor of this fine subgenre, and Attack of the Giant Leeches stands as evidence.

Apparently, someone made an absolutely terrible remake of Attack of the Giant Leeches in 2008. Look for it on the Guide someday, although I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

Nit-picking Science: I may have missed something, but I really don’t recall any science whatsoever in this film. Well, aside from the fact that leeches don’t have arms, but I write that off as on-the-cheap costuming. If you are dying to know more about our armless blood-sucking pals, check out this (barely) film-related dispatch from the American Museum of Natural History.

call my name or walk on by

2009-08-07T13:04:00.002-06:00

This being a film blog and all, I suppose it's sort of incumbent that somebody post a little something on the passing of John Hughes.

I can't say that he really had much to do with my own coming out as a film geek, or even as a teen, which I know a lot of people who are probably smarter and/or make more money than I do might claim. Only in the last couple of years have I come to appreciate Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and then only up to where it starts getting all whiny.

But - Breakfast Club was the second R-rated movie I ever saw. And I remember liking it then. And I do still have a thing for Simple Minds stuff from that period. So - John Hughes. There you go.

translated accounts: bruno, los bastardos, adoration

2009-08-06T12:57:00.010-06:00

Well, howdy stranger! Go on, sit for a spell by the fire! Don't mind if I keep whittlin' here while you make yourself warm, do ya? And help yourself to some vittles, don't be shy! While you dig into that there chow, I got a story to tell ya, stranger. It takes place in a different time, a more innocent time - back, back, way back: the salad days, a time some 'round here call "July 2009."
See, back then, lots of people were a hootin' and a hollerin' 'bout a little 80-some minute movie called Bruno. It was something called a satire, but a very broad one, done by this comic feller with three names, and some people thought this here movie'd change the way people thought about a touchy subject - homosexuality! See, lots of people seemed to think that the movie was all about homosexuality, and lots of those people were a-feared that plain folks like you and me would take it wrong, that the comedy in the movie would have us laughin' at this character's prediliction fer sleepin' with other menfolk, instead of the scrapes he manages to get hisself inta. But plain folks can catch on to satire, 'specially the broad kinds - see, this comic feller played this here "Bruno" as a very out, very wild, but gentle and well-meaning bumbler who just wants to be famous here in America: this here character is a little bit like them silent movie heroes, ya see? He's on our side from the start, stranger, and we're on his, and what we're really having our guffaws about is just how unrealistic and weird and inappropriate the real live people act around this totally manufactured persona! Ya see, it's not about how silly this feller is - it's about how nasty we can get! I'd say that's pretty clever, huh stranger?
Needless to say, the hubub died down pretty fast about Bruno. Yep, ya don't hear about it so much anymore. Lot of it has to do with the fact that the movie that comic feller made was basically the same one he'd made before, 'bout another gentle and silly ferrner who wanted to find happiness and fame here in America too. You may be surprised to hear this, stranger, but that one was actually a bit more nuanced than Bruno. Though, there weren't no dancin' weiner in that one, and it's not everyday ya get to see one a them, do ya stranger? But there it was, a whippin around and a winkin' with its one little weiner eye there all across multiplex screens, all across America, way back in July 2009...that's something some folks might call just a little subversive, and I admire that comic feller with the three names for that, yessireebob...

I could envision a similar sort of transference Bruno-scolds projected onto Sascha Baron Cohen's flick happening to Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos, which follows the course of one catastrophic Los Angeles day in the life of two undocumented workers Jesus and Fausto, who (also a little like a Sascha Baron Cohen character) have made the mistake thinking that the America represented in hot rod zines and quiet suburban streets is a real place filled with opportunity. Instead, the grim-faced pair suffer the burning hot parking lot where they gather with other early riser day laborers, casual harrasment from rip-off artists and goading by white trash Los Angeleans, and partake in a perverse betrayal (also casually purchased) hiding among the sidestreets and bungalows. Los Bastardos simmers with desperation, fear, and defeat, and it might be easy for more, shall we say, sensitive viewers to see the movie pointing to those elements as making up who Jesus and Fausto are rather than evidence of the walled-off lives they're being forced to lead. So look carefully - in Los Bastardos' most successful moments (and it is a film of moments), it's a devastating and surreal portrait of wrenching, unresolved sadness, a place where there are no room for mistakes. Or being poor and brown.

Atom Egoyan has made a few films about the failure of people to find resolution - or maybe, the right kind of resolution. This presentation of characters who find themselves connected to one another not only by passing incidents, but the narratives that make up the deeper oceans of their own lives continues with Egoyan's latest, Adoration. It may be a little more heavy-handed, a little less true than his brilliant 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, but it's probably one of his best ones since. And no, it's not about fucking terrorism: like Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos, you also have to look and look carefully at Adoration. It shouldn't be too hard, though, as it's probably one of the most stimulating films in general release this year.

david lynch thursday!

2009-08-06T08:00:00.003-06:00

Don't look so sad, David - people can hear your song when they visit the Denver Projection Booth!

NPR's reporting that a new album put out by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse may feature a full roster of talented musicians and singers - including one Mr. David Lynch - but some rights disputes may never see it released. Click here for the skinny, and here for DL's Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse team-up.

get yr release on

2009-08-04T10:00:00.000-06:00

The knives are back out for Tuesday releases at the Booth.

As I was MIA last week, this week's ed. includes releases from that lost Tuesday as well...

Region 1 releases>>
- Bad Lieutenant (special edition) (now with more Harvey Keitel penis!)
- Big Man Japan (so-so spoof on giant monster movies)
- Bill Plympton’s Dog Days
- Combat Shock (director’s cut) (Troma Films re-release of the super cool, super bleak, super gory homage to Eraserhead and Taxi Driver by way of the Jersey Shore)
- The Green Hornet
- The Green Hornet Strikes Again
- Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (I rolled my eyes at this when I first saw the poster for this too, but this documentary on a late-60s Ivy League classic has more to do with the changing face of America in the throes of Vietnam and attacks on civil rights leaders than school rings and fight songs)
- Ichi the Killer (3 DVD special edition)
- Repulsion (Criterion Collection directed by Roman Polanski)
- Terry Jones Collection (Monty Python alumnus)
- The 10th Victim ("It is the 21st Century, and society's lust for violence is satisfied by "The Big Hunt," an international game of legalized murder. But when the sport's two top assassins - Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress - are pitted against each other, they find that love is the most dangerous game of all." Pretty cool, eh?)
- The Last Starfighter (25th Anniversary edition) (meh...)
- Machine Girl 1.5 (school girls, ninjas, and chainsaws oh-my via Tokyo Shock)
- Race to Witch Mountain

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Ahhn Joong Keun (Korea version region 3) (here's something you don't see everyday - a biopic of Japan's prime ministerial shooter Thomas Ahnn Joong Keun)
- Ashes of Time Redux (HK version) (all region VCD)
- Plastic City (HK version region 3) (Hong Kong-gangster actioner set in Brazil, starring the fab Anthony Wong)
- Running Wild (All region) (Korean-gangsta-shoot-em-up)
- X-Cop Girls (HK version all region) (More Anthony Wong - you can't wrong!)

Region 1 Blu-Ray releases>>
- 12 Monkeys
- Bad Boy Bubby
- Big Trouble in Little China
- Inglorious Bastards (1977) (see it now before something something)
- Repulsion (Criterion Collection directed by Roman Polanski)
- Sweeney Todd (2007)
- This Is Spinal Tap

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: The Hellstrom Chronicle

2009-08-03T20:00:00.001-06:00

The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)
Critter: Multiple members of the phylum Arthropoda
Size: Varies
Modus Operandi: Through their capacities for speedier adaptation, insects are taking over the world and ousting humanity in the process
How the Menace Emerges: Evolution and a bit of thoughtlessness on the part of humanity
End Goal: World domination
Winner of the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle is an oddity: part documentary, part science fiction, all eco-terror. On the whole, it is a nature documentary, but coupled with a foreboding, existentialist narrator, the fictitious entomologist Dr. Hellstrom and an ominous and unnerving soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin. The cinematography is outstanding, which is presumably the reason that it was considered a documentary at all in the 1972 Oscars. It is also what helped a generation of young filmgoers take the over the top Dr. Hellstrom at face value. In the 70s, this film actually disturbed people, convincing them that humanity was on the brink of disaster and that insects were truly taking over. The interesting thing about this is that the insects are merely continuing what they’ve always done, for 300-400 million years. Couching all of this in faux eminent disaster talk doesn’t change a thing. Of course, not all of the footage in this film is nature-show material. This was the psychedelic era after all. In a favorite sequence, rapid-fire edits of the menacing eyespots on moth wings blend into the menacing blips from a huge mainframe computer in an attempt to show both the similarity and the intensity of the war between insects and humans.

Altogether, The Hellstrom Chronicle is an interesting entry into the Guide, as a period piece, as fantastic macro-cinematography, for its weirdness and yes, for its unintended hilarity. I can’t say that I truly think that the marriage of documentary and sci-fi really worked in this one, but I can’t say that it didn’t work well enough. Unfortunately, this is as of yet entirely unavailable in any legitimate form such as DVD. Still, it’s worth asking your internet savvy pal to dig up and burn for you (Thanks, Joel!).

Nit-picking Science: Astoundingly, the science in The Hellstrom Chronicle is, as far as I can tell, very sound. It is the context that these real-life oddities of nature are put in that makes this film less of a documentary than sci-fi. Through this trickery, The Hellstrom Chronicles lured a number of adventurous but unaware filmgoers into theatres to see a trippy, eco-horror flick, and instead handed them a fair amount of bug knowledge (and wonder) along with nightmare-inducing imagery and a false sense of dread. Yipee!

and now back to your regularly scheduled portman

2009-07-31T11:04:00.006-06:00

All apologies for the downtime around here: I've been waiting on a fresh adapter for the laptop - no juicey, no bloggy. So while I reset the blog - reviews for Bruno, Los Bastardos, and others are in the pipeline - here's a loverly picture of Natalie Portman, who will probably not be at the Sonic Youth show tonight, nor any screenings of Tokyo Sonata or that new Atom Egoyan that's opening up this week.

david lynch thursday!

2009-07-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-07-21T15:47:00.002-06:00

There - now you don't need to see Zack Snyder's
wretched Watchmen adaptation. And you're welcome.

U.S. and region 1 releases>>
- Coraline (I can't see footage or stills from this stop-motion fantasy directed by Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas collaborator without seeing a girl who broke my heart a couple of years ago. Am I sad, or what?)
- Global Metal (a fun-lovin' look at metal worldwide, if that's how you think people should live their lives)
- The Great Buck Howard (John Malkovich as a goofball, aging stage magician and hypnotist who finds fame again with one apparently amazing performance)
- Made in U.S.A (Criterion Collection directed by Jean-Luc Godard)
- 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (Criterion Collection directed by Jean-Luc Godard)
- The Watchmen (right-wing scumbag Zack Snyder's stunted interpretation of Alan Moore's comic series)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- All's Right With the World (Taiwanese version, all region) (well-received doc on living in poverty in the shadow China's "unique" brand of capitalism at work HK)
- Battle Creek Brawl (HK version, all region) (one of young Jackie Chan's first forays in America and action-drama)
- The Bunker (UK PAL) (Anthony Hopkins is Hitler! Susan Blakely is Eva Braun!)
- Bunsinshaba (Korean version, region 3) (teen bullies suffer the curse of Bunsinshaba!)
- The Evil Twin (Korea version, region 3) (South Korean period-piece-horror from 2007)
- The King and the Clown (Korea version, region 3) (2005's highly popular, gender-bending, "taboo-breaking" comedy-drama set in the regin of King Yeon-San)
- She's On Duty (Korean version, region 3) (a "21 Jump Street"-style comedy by way of So-Ko, set in an all-girls school...and that means schoolgirl unis!)
- World of Silence (Korea version, region 3) (South Korean serial killer-thriller from '07)

Region 1 Blu-Ray>>
- Coraline
- Midnight Express (featuring an early, Oscar-winning script from Oliver Stone)
- The Watchmen

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Tremors

2009-07-20T19:07:00.003-06:00

Tremors (1990)
Critter: An enormous and hideous underground worm called a graboid,or more formally Caederus mexicana. A frighteningly complete life history is available here.
Size: 30 feet in length
Modus Operandi: An eyeless, underground predator that senses prey vibrations on the surface, attacks by grabbing prey and gorily consuming them
How the Menace Emerges: A lovely mystery
End Goal: Dinner
Ah, finally a decent invertebrate flick. It’s been so long since I’ve reviewed a movie that wasn’t awful that I hardly know what to say. Tremors does right what so many critter flicks get wrong. It’s fun, smart, funny, action-packed, quick-paced, made for adults and loaded with likeable practical effects. It would be overdoing it to say that Tremors is a masterwork, but it is without a doubt, a solid piece of critter filmmaking. It isn’t exactly original, and a lot of its charm comes from the utilization of time-tested techniques, but it seems to land in that well-crafted category of B-flicks* that hits all of the necessary points to come off as a fine piece of craftmanship. There are far too many folks on the internet that are obsessed with this fine film for me to add anything to the mix, but if you have a spare 96 minutes one Saturday afternoon, it won’t be a waste of time.
* I’ve read that Tremors had a budget of about 11 million, which in my book makes it more of an A flick. Still, in 1990 Arachnophobia had a budget three times as large.

Nit-picking Science: One of the nicest things about Tremors is that, aside from a bit of healthy speculation, the scientific explanations are left almost entirely out of this tale. It might make this section of the guide a little dull, but it does wonders for a monster action flick. Even so, the makers of the Latin name for the critter picked a good one. If I’m not mistaken, the genus designation Caederus is derived from caedes or caedo, both words having to do with killing, slaughter, carnage, etc. Yay!

and the ass saw the angel: whatever works, revanche, and moon

2009-07-16T15:32:00.006-06:00

Three of the last four Woody Allen films - an excellent Match Point (2005), featuring Scarlett Johansson's best performance to date, along with more middling Cassandra's Dream (2007), and a mostly minor Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) - have all been pictures from bleaksville: sure, we all hope for and chase after love, but in the end that's all so much superstructure to base factors like class or nationality from which we can never achieve escape velocity; ho to the hum, yo. His latest, Whatever Works, is conceived as an apology of sorts for all the director's current doom and gloom obsessions, so the Woodman gets points for trying, anyway. But Whatever Works is still an absolute train wreck, lacking any sort of the requisite energy to make the madcap comedy this so badly wants to be go and move. People's exhibit 'A' is Woody's choice of Larry David for his stand-in this go around. David's overall persona is twitchy and neurotic, sure, but there's a little street there, too, and not all the CGI in the world could make me believe that that Larry David doesn't like a good roll in the hay, or that he would pick through Allen's closet for weird old man shorts, and the Woody-speak sounds utterly ridiculous falling out of David's mouth to boot. Anywho, just to be sure you know where Woody's coming from, he has David end the film with a painfully earnest monologue, and I have to believe that he actually believes all the things his woefully miscast star says about happiness, togetherness, and our ever-so-short time on earth. However, I don't think we needed his avatar to literally turn to us and plead to take love where and whenver we can find it because it's here today gone tomorrow: I know for a fact that Woody Allen believes in heaven, or a place like it - maybe a film set where all the directors, even if they're nebbish, bespectacled and slight, they always have a cast of actresses on tap who're statuesque, raspy voiced and curvy, or otherwise blonde.

There is no such heavy-handedness in Gotz Spielman's Revanche, a 2008 nominee for the best foreign film Oscar, which, somewhat like Whatever Works, also proceeds from the idea we dupe ourselves into believing in the control we have over our lives. Rather than face the audience and tell us, Spielman does what filmmakers are supposed to do and shows us: the cinematic themes and motifs are all there - a not-so-good guy, his "angel" (really, we don't get a name until at least thirty minutes in), his gun, his plan, a trigger-happy cop, the cop's wife, and a house in the country. If it sounds like you know where all this is going, you don't, not the way you think. And because of this richness, and despite being Spielman being a filmmaker who chooses to show us rather than tell, Revanche also feels like something quite literary.

Duncan Jones' Moon is probably the most disappointing movie of the summer, a flick that appeared to promise to warm up some of the sci-fi tropes mined by Kubrick, Tarkovsky (and of late Soderbergh) - or as J.G. Ballard mused, that space, by its very spacey nature, even some space on a moon a few million miles away, is not at all like here, constituting a different reality altogether. Instead, Jones never bothers to scrutinize either the good ideas he introduces into Moon's story or the ones laying in wait, but dispenses with them almost as quickly as they pop up, choosing to hold us by the scruff of the neck and march us, one step two step fast as you can, to the movie's blah blah ending. But nevermind all that: bad scifi flicks are inevitable, a sad fact of our lives, like white trash neighbors who move in right next to you and stay up all hours like every night of the week, no matter how many times you call the cops, no matter how many times you call the building manager, they stay up all night drinking shitty beer and SINGING EAGLES SONGS VERY VERY LOUD ALL NIGHT DRINKING THEIR BEER. No. The issue is Moon's star, Sam Rockwell, so memorable in A Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (2005). That's the issue - will someone please give Sam Rockwell a project worthy of that talent? Pretty please?

david lynch thursday!

2009-07-16T08:56:00.001-06:00

get yr release on

2009-07-14T10:51:00.002-06:00

Look deep, deep into the blood-red eyes of the Tuesday releases elf...

U.S. and region 1 releases>>
- Door into Silence (words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm)
- For All Mankind (Criterion Collection directed by Al Reinert)
- Grey Gardens (2009) (a non-musical adaptation of the musical adaptation of the Maysles' doc with Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore)
- Journey to the Moon: 40th Anniversary (holy fucking shit, man walks on the fucking moon)
- Rec (enjoyable Spanish horror romp - with a supercute lead, hoo-boy- was the inspiration for the U.S. Quarantine)
- 12 (12 Angry Men by way of the Russian invasion of Chechnya)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- British Intelligence (UK PAL region 2) (Brit WWII-spy thriller featuring Boris Karloff as a menacing butler)
- Double Agent (Taiwanese version, region 3) (Korean spies-n-lies flick)
- The First 7th Night (HK all region) (a modern-day HK ghost story starring Gordon Lam and Michelle Ye)
- Shinjuku Incident (HK VCD) (this HK gangster flick opened the 33rd Hong Kong Film Festival; stars Jackie Chan, in a rare dramatic role)
- Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (UK PAL region 2) (medieval period piece featuring martial arts great Sammo Hung and Andy Lau, Maggie Q, and Vanessa Wu)

Region 1 Blu-Ray releases:
- For All Mankind (Criterion Collection directed by Al Reinert)
- M*A*S*H (Blu-Ray versions are painless; it brings on many changes)
- Towering Inferno

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: They Crawl

2009-07-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

They Crawl (2001)
Critter: Genetically engineered cockroaches that completely resemble the cinematic Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, let’s call them Gromphadorhina portentosa var. conspiritatus
Size: Singly, about 2 inches long, en masse as big as a mac truck
Modus Operandi: Burrow and eat
How the Menace Emerges: The government is surprised when two physics geeks decipher and solve their blueprints for deadly surveillance bugs… or are they?
End Goal: Who cares!

I should retract all of the nasty things I have said about such gems as Mesa of the Lost Women and The Horrors of Spider Island. I hadn’t seen one of these new fangled bug flicks in a while, and I had forgotten how much worse things could be in this new age of CGI. They Crawl is one of the lowest forms of invertebrate film I’ve run across: a budget and nothing to show for it. Its better than B-grade production value only guarantees that it won’t even hit the campy-charm sweet spot. This mediocre movie is essentially an unending TV police procedural with glaring plot holes, a red herring cult, sub par TV soap opera stars, horrible CGI and inane dialogue parading as edgy. Do two characters have nothing better to say at the moments of their separate, impending demises than “Fuck you!” with eyes squinted in their best Clint Eastwood impersonations or did the scriptwriter just like that one enough to use it twice? It’s odd that with a visual effects guy in the director’s seat that not even the special effects are worth a peek. The handful of poor cockroaches that wasted their valuable time on this film are quickly tossed aside to make room for their ineffectual and utterly un-insect-like CGI replacements. Uggggh.

Nit-picking Science: Hey, encryption-boy! You have vastly overestimated the mass of insects on the planet! Although I am unaware of a decent estimate, 90% of Earth’s biomass is unlikely to consist of insects. Sure, ants and termites might make up about a third of forest biomass, but what about bacteria, protozoa and plants? And you, Mr. Coroner. Frequencies can't electrocute people. Stick to bodies and leave the physics up to the professionals.

david lynch thursday!

2009-07-09T06:02:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-07-07T17:00:00.002-06:00

Putting a dirty towel over your head doesn't make it near dark.

Region 1 U.S. releases>>
- Beau Geste (1939) (dir. William Wellman)
- The Beloved Rogue (1926) (starring John Barrymore)
- Coco Chanel (starring Shirely MacLaine)
- Grave of the Fireflies (1988 anime on the firebombing of Kobe, Japan)
- Knowing (what a dumb title)
- Le Jupon Rouge (talky Holocaust survivor flick with GLBTQI-appeal)
- Mr. Rock N’ Roll: The Alan Freed Story
- Near Dark (reissue) ('87's super-fantastic southern-fried vamp flick featuring Aliens cast members Jeanette Goldstein, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton; Hurt Locker helmer Kathryn Bigelow's first flick)
- One Missed Call 3 (wait - there was a second one?)
- Sherlock Holmes (1922)
- The Tempest (1928)
- Unborn (hotties versus demons, with Gary Oldman and Carla Guigino)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Bronson (PAL UK region 2) (Brit prison bio-pic getting lots of fanboy buzz)
- Glass: A Portrait of Phillip in Twelve Parts (PAL UK region 2)
- GP506 (Japan region 2) (supernatural box-office hit taking place in the South Korean-North Korean DMZ)
- Kung-Fu Girl (HK all region) (1973) (stars former Shaw Brothers' actress Chang Pei Pei, Corey Yuen and Jackie Chan)
- Lola Montes (PAL UK region 2) (Max Ophuls' wonderful bio-flick gets a DVD remaster; stars Peter Ustinov and Martine Carol)
- Meatball Machine (PAL UK region 2) (super-gory Japanese cyberpunk)
- Shadows in the Palace (Korea region 3) (period-piece-murder-mystery)
- The Show Must Go On (Japan region 2) (highly-praised Japanese gangster melodrama)***
- Three Monkeys (PAL UK region 2) (the best film of the year, thus far)

Region 1 Blu-Ray releases>>
- Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets
- Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix
- Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone

*** - Pike Bishop informs me that this is actually a Korean highly-praised gangster melodrama, tho this particular release is for the Japanese market. Thanx Pikey!

Field guide to Invertebrates in Film: The Horrors of Spider Island

2009-07-07T00:06:00.004-06:00

Horrors of Spider Island (1960)
Critter: The dreaded tropical five-fingered monkey spider and its mutant creation, Gary
Size: About Chihuahua-sized, man-sized
Modus Operandi: One bite from this critter will either kill you or turn you into a hairy faced, toothy thing that likes to run around shirtless
How the Menace Emerges: Our crew of dancing gals encounters this undescribed spider species after they are stranded on deserted island
End Goal: Hard to say, neither critter seems to eat

Hmmmm. Let’s see, what if a plane wrecked in the middle of the ocean with 8 buxom dancing girls and you were the only guy? You might enjoy the strip-joint sax soundtrack, but watch out, you’re on an island with an oddly buck-toothed spider sporting monkey paws, and soon you’ll become a were-spider-monkey more interested in strangling than making out. That’s the German sexploitation wonder that is The Horrors of Spider Island (a.k.a. A Corpse Hangs in the Web or It’s Hot in Paradise). Here, the sexploitation comes first, catfights, cattiness and skinny-dipping all trump horror, critters and critter attacks. When we finally get some monster action, there’s only about 10 minutes of film left. Once we discover that the barely mutated spider-monkey-were-man is afraid of flares, and barely remembers his lost human self, poof: we’ve reached the sorriest of all endings.
When I viewed Mesa of Lost Women, I had to add a drop my rating scale a notch (to zero) to hold such a wretched film. Still, with its leering dwarves, it had more charm than this piece of schlock. Even for a cheap sexploitation film, The Horrors of Spider Island sets a new low. Granted, the version I’ve seen had been burned from a video transfer, trimmed to remove the nudie bits and terribly dubbed, but I still doubt that a crisp, restored version of this would help one whit.
Nit-picking Science: Science? What science?

puts you there where things are hollow: anvil! the story of anvil and jcvd

2009-07-02T12:41:00.004-06:00

Even if he has no intention whatsoever to explore or exploit it, Anvil! The Story of Anvil director and band fanboy Sacha Gervasi still can't avoid capturing on film the very real and very strange tension between reality and stage life that exists for original bandmates Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner: we get Kudlow and Reiner are best buddies - always were and always will be - and we get that the pair and their bandmates seem to be genuine, decent people who're dearly loved by their families, friends, and their few remaining devoted hometown fans. We get that the pair are still talented musicians, effervescent onstage even after twenty-plus years. And we get that even talent and effervescense means little to the corporate-dominated music culture, one that nevertheless acknowledges Kudlow and Reiner's hard work and Anvil's legacy. In this respect, Gervasi's love letter to his heavy-metal youth (he worked as a roadie for the group in the mid-1980s) and to his music idols is an unqualified success: we get all these things, and we're rooting for Lips and Reiner the moment we see Anvil's frontman whip out a fat, flesh-colored vibrator in archival concert footage to the final, wistful scenes of his flick.

What we don't get, and what we should, is more about that tension. I went in thinking they were one-hit wonders, but the revelation that Anvil has been hard at work making albums since the early 80s - thirteen of them - is glossed over with an aside that they had bad management, bad label representation, and that's why they never made it big. Really? That's all it was? Lips and Reiner repeatedly state throughout the film that they accept that what's past is past, that they're happy with the impact they've had among current metal acts, or some variation of this; yet, the pair continue to scrape and claw for success, and it's clear that it's not just any kind of success they want, but the sort of fame and money their metal brethren enjoy. I know a lot of people have been throwing around This is Spinal Tap (1984) as well as (the wantonly voyeuristic and cruel) American Movie (1999) comparisons, but I think a more apt film to hold up alongside Anvil! The Story of Anvil for contrast would be The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years (1988). In so many ways, Steve Kudlow and Robb Reiner appear to be grounded in lives among loving people the way the bands and musicians (the ones which survived success, anyway) featured in the latter film probably never will, and maybe, just maybe, some of that has to do with their lack of "success" (at what point do you think somebody like, say, Bret Michaels stopped being a real person? The first million? The second? Five?). While it's hard to blame them, and hard not to root for them, Lips and Robbo are still starstruck after all these years, and it looks like Gervasi cares too much to lift the curtain on the contradictions permeating their heavy metal fantasies.

The economy of fame is the theme for Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD, an A-grade arty action vehicle for C-grade action star Jean-Claude Van Damme. The Muscles From Brussels is essentially playing a variation of himself, here - broke, divorced (again and again), his weathered face a document testifying to the years of excess and addiction since he broke as a high kicking hero back in the late 1980s. Mabrouk and his screenwriter Frederic Benduis designed JCVD almost as a gauntlet of embarassment and low blows for Van Damme to act his way through; remarkably, the film's titular subject accedes in practically every way, pulling off a charismatic, nuanced and unselfconscious performance. Indeed, from the exhausting opening master shot the forty-plus actor huffs and puffs his way through to the surreal, rambling, tear-laden apology for a life of indulgence and family neglect midway into the film to the smack on the head with he gives himself in the movie's last shot, you might be inclined to say that Van Damme saw JCVD as penance. He's often so good in JCVD you hope and wonder if you're seeing a real person up there on the screen, but if not, it's definitely a real actor.

david lynch thursday!

2009-07-02T10:36:00.000-06:00

happy birthday, atrain!

2009-07-01T11:02:00.001-06:00

get yr release on

2009-06-30T15:58:00.001-06:00

As you can see here, Rosie doesn't quite know what the right thing may be, or how she might go about doing that right thing.

U.S. Region 1 releases>>
- Do the Right Thing (20th Anniversary release)
- The Education of Charlie Banks (directed by Fred Durst--whaaaaaaaaaa?!?)
- Kaidan (a 2007 reinterpretation of classic Japanese horror)
- King of Kings (1961) (imdb says "The Life of Christ" - need you say anything else?)
- The Legend of Big Foot/Snowbeast! (there's-monsters-in-them-hills schlock from the mid 70s)
- Lookin’ to Get Out (Hal Ashby, Jon "He Bit Me!" Voight, and Baby Jolie)
- Monster X Strikes Back (starring Takeshi Kitano - ahh, it is Guilala! Run!)
- Oliver Twist (1922)
- Pedro (on Pedro Zamora, the Poz Real World Cast member from the mid 90s)
- Rip! A Remix Manifesto (a doc about remixin'; could be interestin...)
- Split Sides: Merce Cunningham Dance Company
- They Call Me Bruce? (25th Anniversary Edition) (hey, that goofy Korean looks like Bruce Lee!)
- Tokyo! (directed by Bong Joon-Ho, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax)
- 12 Rounds (starring another WCW wrestler)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Che, 1 & 2 (dir. Steven Soderbergh) (Region 2 PAL UK)
- The House by the Cemetery (there's a house, it's by the cemetery, it's 1981, it's Lucio Fulci) (Region 2 PAL UK)
- Macabre (dir. Lamberto Bava) (Region 2 PAL UK)
- Modern Boy (an action/drama set in Korea's colonial period) (DVD Region 3)
- Push (a sort of unofficial adaptation of Marvel's "Exiles?") (Region 2 PAL UK)
- The Scam ("where sleek black suits hide white-collar crime", via Korea) (DVD Region 3)
- Sleepless (directed by Dario Argento, but since it's from 2001 it may not be worth the bother) (Region 2 PAL UK)
- Surveillance (David Lynch's daughter directs Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond in a weird and ultraviolent thriller) (Region 2 PAL UK)

Region 1 Blu-Ray releases>>
- Do the Right Thing (20th Anniversary release)
- Tokyo! (directed by Bong Joon-Ho, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax) – movie

happy birthday, amber!

2009-06-30T09:37:00.004-06:00

(it gets especially buggy about the four and a half minute mark...)

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Feast of the Praying Mantis

2009-06-29T09:38:00.005-06:00

Feast of the Praying Mantis (2003)
Critter: Mantoidia sapiens var. plantii
Size: About 5 feet 8 inches tall
Modus Operandi: Woos victims with a bouquet of flowers, then sexes them to death
How the Menace Emerges: A mystery. Apparently this species is only found in the south (in Belgium I presume), but exists throughout time as illustrated by the lamest epilogue scene I’ve ever seen.
End Goal: Sex and death

The Feast of the Praying Mantis is a different kind of terrible bug film than I’m used to. Rather than settling comfortably into being a slow, Euro-art film or a cheeky B-movie, it attempts to straddle the line of both, achieving nothing by its compromise. The film is about Sylvia (Get it? She’s a nature girl because her name means “of the forest”! Yawn!) an immortal, critter who seems to be a hybrid between a humanoid, a vine and a praying mantis. She can talk to Doberman pincers and plants, likes to have tarantulas walk on her and is an excellent gardener. Oh, and she’s also really into S & M. The plot is carried out through the barbiturate-induced voiceover of her bewitched, cello-playing boyfriend who is willing to anything to actually sleep with her. In the first line of the film, we learn that he is dead, while near the end, he tells us that he’s in oblivion. Who knew that they could record droll voiceovers from oblivion? Add to the mix a bit of bad and pointless CGI (a dove bursting into flames and a swarm of green dots that please Sylvia for no apparent reason), superfluous melodrama from subsidiary characters and tedious sex scenes, and you have a big waste of time.

Nit-picking Science: There’s no science in Feast of the Praying Mantis for me to pick apart, so instead, I’ll just talk a bit about Fabre. The film opens with a quote from Jean Henri Fabre’s incredible 1921 work Fabre’s Book of Insects. Fabre was an observant naturalist and an excellent writer, and his Book of Insects is a wonderfully written look at some of the most intriguing critters he studied. While the language is too anthropomorphic to pass for science in today’s standards and much of his observations have been disproved, it is a delightful read nonetheless. Talking of the praying mantis, Fabre said “The Mantis, I fear, has no heart. She eats her husband, and deserts her children.” Now that’s the film I wanted to see.

david lynch thursday!

2009-06-25T07:06:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-06-23T08:54:00.002-06:00

Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir - coolest trailer of 2008?

U.S. and Region 1 releases>>
- Cherry Blossoms (directed by Doris Dorrie)
- Jem Cohen: An Evening’s Civil Twilight in Empires of Tin (artsy rendering of the decline of the American Century)
- Dillinger (1973) (directed by Hollywood right-winger John Millius, starring Warren Oats, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton, and Ben Johnson)
- Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection directed by Alain Resnais)
- My Dinner With Andre (Criterion Collection directed by Louis Malle)
- Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, a former Israeli soldier, and his animated mediation on memory, guilt, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
-Franklyn (Brit sci-fi with Ryan Phillipe and Eva Green) (PAL Region 2)
- Hardware (1990) (special edition of Richard Stanley's punky cult hit) (PAL Region 2)
- Occupation (story of three British soldiers' experiences, and their aftermath, in Iraq) (PAL Region 2)
- Open City (Korean crime opera) (Region 3)
- Handphone (Korean thriller set around a lost telephone and a loan shark) (Region 3)

Blu-Ray releases>>
- American Gangster (directed by Ridley Scott)
- Casino (Scorsese's last great film before 2006's The Departed)
- Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg's sophomore outing with Viggo Mortensen)
- Last Year at Marienbad (Criterion Collection directed by Alain Resnais)
- The Pink Panther (1964)
- Waltz With Bashir

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Kingdom of the Spiders

2009-06-22T07:27:00.000-06:00

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
Critter: Once again, our fine, photogenic friends from the Theraphosidae family
Size: 4-5 inches in diameter
Modus Operandi: Swarms of deadly tarantulas overwhelm a victim with multiple venomous bites
How the Menace Emerges: Through the overuse of pesticides, humanity has eliminated the majority of the spiders’ typical food supply. Desperate to survive, the spiders evolve social behavior and venom 5 times stronger than their pre-pesticide days, enabling them to take down cows, puppies and people.
End Goal: Dinner

Kingdom of the Spiders is yet another entry into the 1970s eco-horror, critter attacks subgenre. No more, no less. It’s a bit slow, but there’s a spider panic riot at the end that’s worth sticking around for. The laughable William Shatner delivers an uncharacteristically understated performance as Dr. Rack Hansen, veterinarian to the farming folk of sleepy Verde Valley, AZ. When blood samples from a dead calf are sent off to Flagstaff, Dr. Denise Ashley, a sharp and strangely glamorous entomologist with big-city sensibilities and a knack for rebuking the patronizing flirtations of local yokel Hansen, enters the scene. Unfortunately, she soon crumbles under Hansen’s freakishly redneck come-ons and before long, I kid you not, she is fetching his beer. The venerable Woody Strode (Once Upon a Time in the West, The Professionals, Sergeant Rutledge) makes an excellent, sympathetic appearance that is cut far too short. Another unlikely appearance is on the soundtrack. Country/rockabilly icon Dorsey Burnette was somehow convinced to record the soundtrack, contributing four fine songs to this mess of a film.

At least the makers of Kingdom of the Spiders spent their meager budget well. According to IMDB, $50,000 went to spiders alone. That may explain how the final scene became a zoom out on a somewhat lame drawing, rather than something that could have conveyed the creepiness that they were after. It’s just too bad that a number of these fine furry actors and actresses were obviously squashed in the filming.

Nit-picking Science: Dr. Ashley, you stated that no members of the infraorder Mygalomorphae are remotely social, but oh how mistaken you are. Surely, you read Drachen’s 1967 paper describing the quasi-social behavior of the funnel-web tarantula Macrothele darcheni (Family: Hexathelidae). Or perhaps you’ve heard about the tarantula Hysterocrates gigas (Family: Theraphosidae) whose juveniles have been observed feeding cooperatively. Social behavior may be rare in spiders, and even rarer in Mygalomorphae, but it ain’t unheard of. And another thing, your comprehension of the long-term effects of DDT on arthropods is despicable, misleading and makes the rest of us look stupid. Individual spiders do not develop immunity to DDT, but populations of spiders may develop genetic DDT resistance over multiple generations. I suggest you consult an undergrad Biology textbook to discern the difference between Lamarck’s discredited theory of acquired characters and Darwin’s brilliant theory of natural selection before you mouth off again.

david lynch thursday!

2009-06-18T08:58:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-06-16T11:42:00.006-06:00

The Shaw Brothers weave it so well in
their 1975 zombie-kung fu flick, Black Magic 2.***

Region 1 U.S. releases>>
- Ashes and Diamonds (Essential Art House edition directed by Andrzej Wajda)
- Bergman Island (Criterion Collection directed by Marie Nyerod)
- Black Magic 2 (Shaw Brothers release)***
- The Diary of Anne Frank (50th Anniversary edition)
- Essential Art House Vol. 3 (box set featuring Ashes and Diamonds, Forbidden Games, The Hidden Fortress, Last Holiday, Richard III, Variety Lights)
- Forbidden Games (Essential Art House edition directed by Rene Clement)
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
- Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning
- Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives
- Friday the 13th (2009)
- The Hidden Fortress (Essential Art House edition directed by Akira Kurosawa)
- Last Holiday (Essential Art House edition directed by Henry Cass)
- Madea Goes to Jail (Tyler Perry's multi-million dollar wurlizter plays on)
- Operation Valkyrie (Deutscheland version of the Tom Cruise/Brian Singer potboiler)
- Richard III (Essential Art House edition directed by Laurence Olivier)
- The Seventh Seal (Criterion Collection 2 DVD set directed by Ingmar Bergman)
- Thank You, Good Night (more alt-rock 90s nostalgia)
- Three Stooges Collection: Vol. 6
- Variety Lights (Essential Art House edition directed by Federico Fellini) – movie
- What’s Up Tiger Lily? (reissue) (dir. Woody Allen)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Anvil! The Story of Anvil (cheeky/touchy-feely doc on has been metal band Anvil) (PAL Region 2)
- Aria (Special Edition of the 1987 film featuring Liz Hurley, Bridge Fonda, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and a slew of art-house heroes like Derek Jarman, Godard, Altman, and Ken Russell) (PAL region 2)
- The Class (dir. Laurent Cantent) (PAL region 2)
- Exodus (HK-serial killer thriller) (all region)
- Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia (All region) (Japanese Burroughsian-sounding flick)
- The Italian Job (40th Anniversary Ed. and holy shit look at that cast: Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill, Tony Beckley) (PAL region 2)
- Shinobi: Heart Under Blade (ninjas! duels! ninjaaaas!) (All region)
- Strange Circus (weirdo Japanese sex drama) (All region)

Blu-Ray releases>>
- The Diary of Anne Frank (50th Anniversary edition)
- Dr. Strangelove
- Friday the 13th Part 2
- Friday the 13th Part 3 (in 3D!)
- Friday the 13th (2009)
- Ghostbusters
- Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn)
- Rockers
- The Seventh Seal (Criterion Collection 2 DVD set directed by Ingmar Bergman)
- Sling Blade (some people callit a slingblade)

*** - Oh internet - what did I ever do to make you lie to me? So, Pike sez that contrary to what OTHER websites told me (prob'ly coz few ppl have ever seen it, according to His Pikeness) this pic is indeed not from Black Magic 2, but from the first one, and it's got not nothing to do with kung-fu. Here's Pike:

Black Magic 2 is about a magician who controls zombie ladies by driving 6" nails into the top of their heads. here is a good synopsis plus pics.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Slugs, Muerte Viscosa

2009-06-15T09:19:00.003-06:00

Slugs, Muerte Viscosa (1988)
Critter: Mutant members of the order Pulmonata
Size: Huge, for slugs- about 6 inches long, on average
Modus Operandi: Traveling in slimy packs, the slugs burrow into the victim and eat them
How the Menace Emerges: Sometime in the distant past in this sleepy town, and evil corporation dumped all of their toxic waste into the soil, mutating the native, harmless slugs into vicious killers.
End Goal: Dinner

“You ain’t got the authority to declare Happy Birthday, not in this town.”

I’m a sucker for even the worst eco-horror flick (yes, I’m even fond of The Milipitas Monster). In Slugs, it’s true that the acting is terrible, the dialogue is awkwardly nonsensical and that much of the narrative is just ridiculous. Still, Slugs was a fantastically fun romp through amazing critter and gore effects, topped off with an excellent visual sense and decent cinematography (for a B-critter flick).

The effects are delightfully practical ones in Slugs, with plenty of competent prosthetics and titillating gore. When it counts, real slugs in all of their black, slimy glamour are introduced in large enough numbers to seem ominous. Of course, the scene that stole my heart is the stop motion one seen above. Those little un-sluglike teeth and tongue were just too perfect.

This was directed by the little mentioned J.P. Simon (Pod People, Cthulhu Mansion), whose anglicized name hides his Spanish origins. Apparently, he’s been a sort of Spanish B-movie king since the 80s, and Slugs impressed me enough to seek out more of his B-movie delights.
“Killah slugs, for christsakes! Whaddal it be next? Demented Crickets? Rampaging Mosquitas, Maybe?” Yes please, Mr. Simon.

Nit-picking Science: Another thing that softens me to Slugs is that someone did their homework. Yes, there are predatory slugs and yes, while snails are more commonly the carriers of the icky Schistosoma parasite, slugs can too. Aside from a bit of artistic license, (e.g. slug eggs are usually laid in clumps, not in singles) the science in Slugs is better than it should be.

do you really think she'll pull through? : the girlfriend experience

2009-06-12T11:01:00.007-06:00

I know, I know, it's serious.

There's a scene towards the very end of Steven Soderbergh's latest, The Girlfriend Experience, where we watch a fey, Jewish jeweller nervously disrobe in the back office of his store, droning on about voting McCain and the chances for Israel's continued survival under a President Mac. Meanwhile, his companion, played by lissom porn actress Sasha Grey, strikes a tasteful pose in her tasteful off-white lingerie, a charitable look on her face. Eventually they embrace ("C'mere," whispers Grey, half-sexy, half-tender), but only their torsos and faces touch - not the lower part of their bodies - indeed, neither of them have even taken off their underwear. Holding Grey, the jeweller begins to breathe harder and harder, sighing and weeping, until he reaches orgasm, and she reaches up to stroke his hair.

The vulnerabilty Soderbergh showcases in this scene is what I'd really like to take away from the film: one that speaks directly and plainly to a notion the director manages to shape over the first half of The Girlfriend Experience only to dump for trite melodrama; that somewhere just beyond the shadow of desperation and grasping cast by significant but otherwise unspoken class divisions that loom over a big city like New York in late 2008 (and now), that there are sad and weird needs, sad and weird and basic needs people continue have, regardless of whether they're Wall Street douchebags, Saudi Princes, whiny screenwriters, hustling personal trainers, or call girls with a yen for something called "personology."

Casting Grey as the latter is Soderbergh doing his meta thing, through and through, so much so that it's hard not to see her reflecting on who she is outside of this brief stint in artsy stuff like this during a number of scenes with a probing and possibly infatuated journalist which are cross-cut with the rest of The Girlfriend Experience's goings on (ditto Soderbergh's process). She's a striking young woman, but when called on, can barely keep a scene together (though the same could be said for Scarlett Johannsen, frankly). That's not really the point though - she's a very young and somewhat notorious porn star doing a Steven Soderbergh flick about a very young high-class call girl with a vacuum in place of a personal life, so sign, meet signifier, etc., etc. Anyway, points for effort, I guess, and I have to imagine she knows the score here too, being a Herzog fan and all (at least that's what she says).

In the end, The Girlfriend Experienceis exactly what it says on the tin - curious, a little more than a little ephemeral, an experimental film cooked up in Steven Soderbergh's secret lab hidden inside the second 'L' on the Hollywood sign. And as is often the case with experimental film, this is more involved with an idea (the color and the shape of shared humanity in a substantially unequal place like 21st New York) or series of linked ideas rather than characters, though Soderbergh would've delievered a better and much more effective film overall if he hewed closer to the consistent clinicism and detachment he exhibited in his '06 stuff, like Bubble or The Good German instead of letting the piece droop into a sketch of Holly Golightly done in Joe Buck's chintzy colors.

david lynch thursday!

2009-06-11T09:02:00.001-06:00

get yr release on

2009-06-09T07:18:00.002-06:00

A particularly orange-ish scene from John Woo's Red Cliff 2.

DVD releases for the week of 6/9/09...

U.S. and Region 1 releases>>

- Fired Up! (cheerleader humor-pron for you fans of ah, cheerleader humor-pron)
- Gran Torino (dir. Clint Eastwood; here's a long piece from "The Nation" on the Grimace That Launched a Thousand Westerns)
- The International (dir. Tom Tykwer, with Clive Owens and Naomi Watts; Aaron sez the shoot-out in the Guggenheim's alright but little else is worth watching)
- Ladies or Gentlemen
- Nelson Mandela: Son of Africa (re-release of the 1996 film)
- Were the World Mine (High School Musical by way of Q-Cinema)
- Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music (featuring Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Canned Heat, and the editing skills of one Marty Scorsese; also, check out this NYT piece on recent 60s "youth cult" DVD re-releases)

Mult-region and other foreign releases>>

- The Dirty Harry Collection (PAL Region 2)
- Disciples of Shaolin Temple (HK all-region)
- Red Cliff 2 (John Woo follow up to his swords and stuff epic, starring Tony Leung) (Region 3)
- Viy (the very wild, very first horror film ever made in Russia) (PAL Region 2)

Blu-Ray releases>>

- Fatal Attraction (dir. Adrian Lyne, possibly Hollywood's most successful misogynist)
- Gran Torino
- The International
– Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music

Field Guide to Invertebrates: Parasite

2009-06-08T22:21:00.003-06:00

Parasite (1982)
Critter: Unclassifed ecto-/endo-parasite of human hosts
Size: It starts small, but eventually gets about Chihuahua sized
Modus Operandi: This is a bit complicated, since the two specimens in the film behaved entirely differently- Specimen A: Burrows into gut, eats host from inside, eventually exploding from barely-living host’s gut, releasing millions of reproductive spores; Specimen B: Attaches to host’s exterior with 6 suction cups arranges in 2 rows of 3, drains all of victim’s blood and moves on to a new host.
How the Menace Emerges: The evil corporation that runs the world had them engineered by a parasitologist for nefarious purposes
End Goal: Kill, Kill, Kill!
It’s the 1980s and CGI has yet to be invented. Ahhh, practical effects, how I miss you so! The critter effects in Parasite were created by a super crew of Stan Winston (Aliens, Monster Squad, Jurassic Park), Jim Kagel (The Thing (1982), Running on Karma) and Lance Anderson (The Thing (1982), Pet Semetary) and it shows. In fact, the critters are the only parts of Parasite that are truly worthwhile. After all, Charles Band (better known as a producer of the Puppetmaster series and head of Full Moon Pictures), is not known for making fine films. Other than a crazy dream sequence and some fine critter moments, this movie is a run of the mill 80s post apocalyptic affair, with nonsensical gangs of thugs and expensive petrol. Parasite was originally shown in 3D, and some of the scenes tailored for this type of showing look a bit silly when they are flat. One such scene focuses in on a pipe jutting out of a dead thug’s stomach and seems to pay homage to one of my favorite scenes from 1979’s Tourist Trap, which I don’t mind at all. Since Band was the producer of Tourist Trap, I suppose we can’t call it “ripping off”. Just as a side note, this is one of Demi Moore’s first films, and her only real purpose here seems to be to look concerned and be slapped around.

Nit-picking Science: I don’t know what it is with you movie scientists and your love of auditory pest control. What the hell did taking a “fluid” sample and exposing it to various frequencies actually tell you?

david lynch thursday!

2009-06-04T07:58:00.000-06:00

if the exquisite turkish slice-of-life don't get ya, the sweet nostalgia will: three monkeys, my winnipeg, the limits of control (and a bit o' trek)

2009-06-02T16:45:00.006-06:00

Oh, the billowing curtainamity: Nuri Ceylan's
superfantastic Three Monkeys.

Is it too soon to be talking about best movie of the year? If not, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s taut and ingeniously rendered Three Monkeys certainly makes a strong case for the top slot. It’s a film that manages to be all the more brilliant for what it doesn’t do for the goings-on in-frame: Ceylan’s story of a broken family - Eyup, its beleaguered and frustrated patriarch, Hacer, his yearning, broken-hearted wife, and Ismail, their dull-witted, if well-meaning son - while often bleak, is never cynical or heartless or stretched all out of shape by outsized There Will Be Blood-style emotional confrontations. In fact, director Ceylan’s confident enough here to begin the movie and the events that profoundly change these characters’ lives with something as simple as a man drifting off to sleep behind the wheel of a car late at night. And with a pensive nod, Eyup, in a sleepy gesture of something like what he’s sure is one befitting a man, accepts responsibility on behalf of his employer, that suave driver, and his equally sleepy mistake.

We’re never privy to what Hacer or Ismail first thought of Eyup’s dubiously honorable act. Rather, their feelings and the arc of pain Eyup’s flawed sense of pride caused is his family is grist for the rest of Ceylan’s story. That silent, inarticulate despair over love and purpose might just be the heart of the problems with these three monkeys. Perched in their precarious-looking apartment building, with the rest of the world busily coming and going in the nearby a train, or staring out of their window and brooding over an implacable ocean that signals at them everything Eyup, Hacer, Ismail have lost and continue to lose.

Ceylan’s exquisite film unfolds in its own deep time, and the striking saturation he and cinematographer Gokhan Tiyraki adds to this poor, sweaty corner of Turkey never overwhelms. It’s the kind of film that we are rarely privileged to see nowadays: a movie which never underestimates the humanity of its characters, or the intelligence and patience of its audience. Be a smarty and go see it at the Starz before it's done gone.

Jim Jarmusch’s latest, The Limits of Control, takes aim at Three Monkey’s intensity but misses the mark. Jarmusch’s trademark embrace of classic foreign filmmakers like Pat-fave Ozu and Jean Pierre Melville does not translate well here - his neo-naturalistic and deliberate tempo is best suited to tragicomic characters and situations. There is little of either in what is essentially a movie with a few weighty ideas sunk deep under a deep river of style, numbing repetition and trancey music. Yes, there is Christopher Doyle’s gorgeous cinematography, and yes, there’s some substance; so while there’s lots to gab about afterwards, The Limits of Control is basically two hours of Isaac de Bankole wearing neato suits and a scowl.

Guy Maddin’s 2008 film My Winnipeg is about memory, secret rivers, love and hate, hockey, Mom, dead horses, the dreamy socialist super heroine Citizen Girl, hockey, family trauma, family triumph, secret back allies, pre-adolescent sexuality, class oppression, the Native people of Winnipeg, and the pointless sweetness of nostalgia. It’s also the best summer movie out there after J.J. Abrams’ fabby re-imagining of the Star Trek universe (a movie that in its own way is also an exercise in memory, love and hate, pre-adolescent sexuality, family triumph, family trauma, and the pointless sweetness of nostalgia).

get yr release on

2009-06-02T10:15:00.002-06:00

It's mucho Macha Meril this week with the release of
Jean-Luc Godard's Un Femme Mariee.

Hullo, DVD releases for the week of 6/01/09!

Region 1 U.S. releases>>

- Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
- He’s Just Not That Into You
- Henry Hills: Selected Films
- Revolutionary Road (directed by Sam Mendes)
- Shinobi No Mono 4
- Tender Mercies
- Thank You, Good Night
- Thrilla in Manilla
- Une Femme Mariee (“A Married Woman“) (directed by Jean-Luc Godard)

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>

- American Yakuza (with Viggo Mortensen) (Japan region 2)
- Battle Royale (Special Edition) (Japan region 2)
- Battle Royale 2: Revenge (Limited edition) (Japan region 2)
- A Christmas Tale (PAL/Region 2)
- Crying Freeman (Japan region 2)
- Daisies (Sedmikrasky) (PAL/Region 2)
- Dark Star (directed by John Carpenter) (PAL/Region 2)
- Shallow Grave (Special Edition) (PAL/Region 2)

Region 1 Blu-Ray>>

- Fletch
- The Graduate
- Revolutionary Road
- To Live and Die in L.A.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Kiss of the Tarantula

2009-06-01T00:11:00.002-06:00

Kiss of the Tarantula (1976)
Critter: Sure looks like Brachypelma smithi to me, the cinematic queen of tarantulas
Size: Large, about hand-sized
Modus Operandi: Looking very creepy, causing heart failure or panicked accidents
How the Menace Emerges: Sent out into the world…for revenge
End Goal: Death, destruction, mayhem and a nice tasty cricket or two

Kiss of the Tarantula is just another installation in the 70s arty-horror cannon- not too good, but not too bad, either. I’m fond of the less splatter-driven parts of this genre, with its feeble attempts at artiness, lack of comeuppance, sympathy for the monster and generally disaffected cynicism. Our monster in this case is a spin off from Carrie without the supernatural mumbo jumbo and Willard. After murdering her spider-hating, adulterous siren of a mother, Susan (Suzanna Ling in her only IMDB entry) grows up to be an odd, reclusive gal with an inordinate fondness for red-legged tarantulas. Still, the world is not kind to kooky girls, and between being harassed by her over 30 year old classmates and molested by her creepy uncle (a murderous, adulterous cop, the lecherous swine!), she really has no choice but to turn to her furry little pals for help.
The highlights of the film, which are too few, are the scenes in which Susan unleashes her creep army on unsuspecting victims in tight spaces.

Nit-picking Science: For the first time, I have no nit-picking. Although there’s no science in the film for me to pick apart, I must comment on their good judgment nonetheless. Rather than pretending that tarantulas are chock full of venom deadly to humans (which of course they aren’t), Kiss of the Tarantulas lets them be instruments of death through their natural inclination to creep us out. Good job, sirs!

david lynch thursday!

2009-05-28T07:34:00.001-06:00

two girls, one suck: why horror fans should run screaming from pascal laugier’s 'martyrs'

2009-05-26T13:10:00.016-06:00

Martyrs: Throbbing squirm, gurgling bloody mess.

The American DVD release of splatterpunk-of-the-week and internet controversy-machine Pascal Laugier's 2008 film Martyrs prominently features an option by which you can watch a brief introduction by the director - actually, that's two features by which you can watch a brief introduction by the director, one by itself and one that'll run as a sort of intro before the movie: Dimension Extreme really wants you to watch Monsieur Laugier talk about his movie, dig.

But to paraphrase Burgess Meredith, the thing of it is, though, the thing of it is is that Pascal doesn't introduce his flick by way of his process or the ideas behind it. That's not to say it's not revealing: indeed, Laugier's phony introspection about all le trouble he's caused since his movie debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and musing over whether or not he really hates his own film is such an obvious schtick that the vaudeville pianist from "Family Guy" should've played him out of frame. He's a natural to take up Clive Barker's Hellraiser remake, since the erstwhile Future of Horror has done little since the early 1990s save flog his own dubious brand in the name of filthy lucre (that's you all over, Clive - a lie, and no heart). It's a match made in schlockmeister heaven.

It's a shame, because lots of buzz-makers on the internets apparently love them some Martyrs. And not without reason - for sensation-seekers, Martyrs must be like money from Bill Gates. That's fine, there's plenty of room in the theatre for people who like a sugar rush, yours truly among them, and yes, there are plenty of jump scares. But because Laugier here is so heavily reliant on other people's work - the movie can basically be broken down into three or four segments, each of which owes such an enormous debt to the look and tone of a slew of recent movies ranging from The Orphanage, (a deeply flawed) Hostel, (an even more deeply flawed) Funny Games, and a broad swathe from (the all-too-often flawed) Dario Argento, that it's hard to see it as an original piece. It's troubling that something so bereft of any ideas - so much so that the result is something approaching irresponsibility - has so many fans.

The paucity of Laugier's thesis is shown when, right around the seriously?-seriously?-that's-what-this-was-all-about? "reveal" he leans on the shock value via a collection of horrific real-life photos of young women being tortured and/or killed not once, but twice. It's practically a cry for help, an admission that all the screaming and yelling and naked girls he's shown in the first two-thirds of the movie can never unsettle you like the real thing. This isn't misogny, or masochism, it's disrespect. In this gesture, Laugier shows us that the genre and this movie means about as much to him as porn: see, a porn user who isn't too far gone into his or her loneliness has to eventually admit to him or herself the realization that this is all fake and nobody's getting off here, just transacting money. This isn't a story or even a movie by Laugier's standards, he just needs to get to act four so he'll have a reason to beat the hell out of Morjana Alaoui.

By the time we reach the supposed payoff, Martrys' structure is weak and moral compass so skewed, it resembles something more like what Kirk Cameron thinks horror movies are rather than cutting-edge cinema. If you're looking for a challenge from the land where Jerry Lewis is loved - one that pays tribute to it's influences instead of ripping them off and out of context - then go Inside. Because at bottom, Martyrs is just one of those dipshit video games they sell during WWE broadcasts, except with prettier girls.

get yr release on: week of May 24th

2009-05-26T12:00:00.004-06:00

The highs and the lows of this week's releases are, in their own ways, things of beauty.

U.S. DVD releases:

- Beyond Rangoon (dir. John Boorman)
- Exploitation Cinema: Don't go in the Woods / The Forest
- Exploitation Cinema: Mark of the Witch / Devil Times Five
- Falling Down: Deluxe Edition (dir Joel Shumacher; starring Michael Douglas)
- Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King (dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg; starring Harry Baer)
- M. Butterfly (dir. David Cronenberg, starring Jeremy Irons, John Lone)
- Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (starring Debbie Gibson, Lorenzo Lamas- Oh Asylum, thank you!)
- Nenette+Boni (dir. Claire Denis)
- On the Beat (dir. Ying Ning)
- Philippe Garrel x 2 (I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar / Emergency Kisses)
- Revolution (dir. Hugh Hudson; starring Al Pacino)
- Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (dir. Cheng Cheh; starring Ti Lung, Alexander Fu Sheng)
- The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk (Fong Sai Yuk 1 and 2)(dir. Corey Yuen; starring Jet Li, Michelle Reis, Josephine Siao)
- The Sky Crawlers (dir. Mamoru Oshii)
- Zabriskie Point (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

U.S. Blu-Ray releases:

- Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron; starring Clive Owen)
- Falling Down: Deluxe Edition (dir Joel Shumacher; starring Michael Douglas)
- Inside Man (dir. Spike Lee; starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen)
- Shamo (dir. Soi Cheang; starring Francis Ng)
- The Sky Crawlers (dir. Mamoru Oshii)
- True Romance (dir. Tony Scott; starring Christian Slater)

Foreign DVD and Blu-Ray releases:

- 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (dir. Michael Haneke) UK R2 PAL DVD
- Benny's Video (dir. Michael Haneke) UK R2 PAL DVD
- Blood: The Last Vampire (dir. Hiroyuki Kitakubo) Japan All-Region Blu-Ray
- Breath/Time: Two Disc Special Edition (dir. Kim Ki-Duk) Korea R3 DVD
- Central Bazaar (dir. Stephen Dwoskin) UK R2 PAL DVD
- Daytime Drinking (dir. Noh Young-Seok) Korea R3 DVD
- Election (dir. Johnnie To; starring Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-Fai) Hong Kong All-Region Blu-Ray
- Election 2 (dir. Johnnie To; starring Simon Yam) Hong Kong All-Region Blu-Ray
- Il Grido (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni) Masters of Cinema UK R2 PAL DVD
- London In The Raw (dir. Arnold L. Miller) UK R2 PAL DVD/UK All-Region PAL Blu-Ray
- Martyrs (dir. Pascal Laugier) UK R2 PAL DVD/UK Region B PAL Blu-Ray
- Primitive London (dir. Arnold L. Miller) UK R2 PAL DVD/UK All-Region PAL Blu-Ray
- The Bed Sitting Room (dir. Richard Lester; starring Duddley Moore) UK R2 PAL DVD/UK Region B PAL Blu-Ray
- The Magick Lantern Cycle (Fireworks/Puce Moment/Rabbit's Moon/Eaux D'artifice/The Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome/Scorpio Rising/Kustom Kar Kommandos/Invocation Of My Demon Brother/Lucifer Rising)(dir. Kenneth Anger) UK R2 PAL DVD/UK All-Region PAL Blu-Ray
- The Michael Haneke Trilogy (71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance/Benny's Video/The Seventh Continent) UK R2 PAL DVD
- The Seventh Continent (dir. Michael Haneke) UK R2 PAL DVD
- Lust, Caution (dir. Ang Lee; staring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Teng Wei) Taiwan All-Region Blu-Ray
- The Sniper (dir. Dante Lam; starring Richie Jen, Huang Xiao-Ming) Hong Kong R1&3 DVD/Hong Kong All-Region Blu-Ray
- The Storm Riders: 10th Anniversary Edition (dir. Andrew Lau; staring Ekin Cheng, Aaron Kwok) Hong Kong All-Region DVD/Hong Kong Region A Blu-Ray

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: The Black Belly of the Tarantula

2009-05-25T22:13:00.005-06:00

Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)
Critter: Venom from a Tarantula Wasp (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae)
Size: Never seen in the film, but they can be up to 2 inches long
Modus Operandi: How these gals are milked for their venom is never said, but the venom is placed on an acupuncture needle. The needle is then placed into the victim’s neck at the base of the skull, paralyzing her while our killer slices away.
How the Menace Emerges: Well, telling you would ruin the mystery, wouldn’t it?
End Goal: Most likely, the real victims here are the wasps, who would much rather be stinging spiders for their little ones. Poor little gals.

This little giallo gem is a highlight of the genre. For you giallo purists, the black gloves have been replaced by surgical gloves, but there’s still plenty of the genre’s trademark blood and boobs. There are also plenty of hair-brained twists, red herrings and mysterious, hidden identity hand/voice scenes. Despite containing all of the giallo clichés and tropes, The Black Belly of the Tarantula stands out as an outstandingly filmed example of the genre. Pop art and 60s mod kitsch are the dominant visual themes throughout, and off kilter edits and pans add to the film’s angular charm. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also scored by Ennio Morricone, with a soundtrack that’s creepy, cheesy, beautiful and just plain odd in equal measures.
Note that the tarantula belly mentioned in the title is not the source of this film’s inclusion in the Invertebrate Field Guide. The lady victims (including 3 Bond girls) are the tarantulas who get their bellies carved, although our photogenic, furry pals can be seen guarding little boxes of cocaine in one scene. Instead, it is our little unseen wasps who provide the murder with his ideal weapon and myself with a reason to review The Black Belly of the Tarantula here.

Nit-picking Science: Silly Professor, I don’t know how you got a film of a bee stinging a non-tarantula spider, but I’d like you to tell me why you are showing it while talking about the tarantula wasp stinging tarantulas. Not only that, the wasp doesn’t disembowel the spider in order to lay her eggs. She merely paralyzes the spider before laying an egg on the surface of the spider. It is the larvae who do the disemboweling from the inside. Inspector Tellini, I wouldn’t expect you to know that spiders are not insects, but you should slap the old Professor for lying to you.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Slither

2009-05-19T23:24:00.002-06:00

Slither (2006)
Critter: Parthenogenic space slug
Size: It starts out small at about 6 inches, but wait until it aggregates
Modus Operandi: Like many parasites, our space slug has a complicated life cycle. Initially, it enters a male human, burrows into his brain and gives him an ungodly carnivorous urge, multiple icky looking sores and growths, incredible speed and tentacles. He then impregnates a female human with billions of copies of the space slug. She too has an insatiable need for meat to nurture her little ones. When the space slug larvae complete their development, they burst out and seek new host brains.
How the Menace Emerges: An asteroid, of course
End Goal: Food, reproduction, world domination

Since it has been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted a real review, I thought I’d actually toss out a good film for once. Without any hesitation, I say that Slither is one of the best horror flicks to come out of the 2000s. Strangely, much of its charm comes from the fact that it harkens back to a more fun-filled time in horror but with a fresh take. Despite the fact that it’s chock full of nods to the greats that made the 70s and 80s such fun for horror fans (Carpenter, Cronenberg, Henenlotter), Slither outclasses the crappy fanboy pastiche that we’ve come to expect from the likes of Tarantino, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. Rising out of the world of Troma, James Gunn (Writer of Tromeo & Juliet and Terror Firmer) has crafted a truly fun and truly creepy horror flick, and I hope he gets to do it again sometime soon. The one-liners are instant classics that ease out naturally and catch you off guard. The critter effects are manifested through an excellent blend of practical and digital effects and are thoughtful, convincing, gross and creepy, often at the same time. On top of that, Slither has a great script, with a rarity in horror: well-developed characters played by excellent actors. Although Gregg Henry (Lots of TV) steals the show as the ornery mayor with a sailor’s mouth, all of the actors come across as memorable and nearly naturalistic. Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) is as creepy in his own skin as in the monster prosthetics, yet somehow manages to invoke sympathy, Frankenstein’s monster-style. While not quite matching the caliber of a Henenlotter or Cronenberg, Gunn is a young kid who might be going places rather than one of the greats who has already proved his mettle and just gets better with age. Slither might be as good as it gets on the big screen these days, and that’s not too bad.

Nit-picking Science: Starla, the genus Homo may have split from our ancestors about 2.5 - 2 million years ago, but Homo sapiens didn’t spring up until about 250,000 – 200,000 years ago. Same with the cockroaches: Blattoptera may date to 350 million years ago, but our little roach pals didn’t truly arise until about 150 million years ago.

get yr release on: week of May 17th

2009-05-19T11:05:00.004-06:00

A week that sees two movies featuring Lady Snowblood's Meiko Kaji (one with Sonny Chiba!) is in the running for best week ever.

!Hola, DVD releases for the week of 5/17! How was the end of your semester?

U.S. DVD releases:

- 3 Seconds Before Explosion (starring Akira Kobayashi)
- Billy Jack (dir. Tom Laughlin)
- Bollywood Horror Collection, Vol. 3 (Mahakaal / Tahkaana)
- Def by Temptation (starring Samuel L. Jackson)
- Detective Bureau 2-3: Go To Hell Bastards! (dir. Seijun Suzuki)
- Detective Story (dir. Takashi Miike)
- Eden Log (dir. Franck Vestiel)
- El Dorado: Paramount Centennial Collection (dir. Howard Hawks; starring John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan)
- Fanboys
- The Friends of Eddie Coyle (dir. Peter Yates; starring Robert Mitchum)
- Girl on a Motorcycle (dir. Jack Cardiff; starring Marianne Faithfull, Alain Delon)
- The Last Horror Film: Uncut Special Edition
- Man Hunt (dir. Fritz Lang; starring Walter Pidgeon)
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: Paramount Centennial Collection (dir. John Ford; starring John Wayne, James Stewart)
- Masaru Konuma: Debauched Desires (Wife to be Sacrificed/Cloistered Nun: Runa's Confession/Tattooed Flower Vase/Erotic Diary of an Office Lady)
- My Bloody Valentine 3D
- Nightmare Castle (starring Barbara Steele)
- Pigs, Pimps, & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura (Pigs and Battleships, The Insect Woman, Intentions of Murder)
- Valkyrie (dir Bryan Singer; starring creepy scientologist #1)
- Wandering Ginza Butterfly (starring Meiko Kaji)
- Wandering Ginza Butterfly 2: She-Cat Gambler (starring Meiko Kaji, Sonny Chiba)

U.S. Blu-Ray releases:

- Batman (dir. Tim Burton)
- Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (dir. Tim Burton)
- Circle of Iron (starring David Carradine)
- Eden Log (dir. Franck Vestiel)
- Fast Company (dir. David Cronenberg)
- The Machinist (starring Christian Bale)
- My Bloody Valentine 3D
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Skynet Edition (dir. James Cameron; starring Arnold Schwarzenegger)
- Three Days of the Condor (dir Sydney Pollack; starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway)
- Valkyrie (dir. Bryan Singer; starring creepy scientologist #1)

Foreign DVD and Blu-Ray releases:

- A-1 (Dir. Gordon Chan; starring Anthony Wong, Edison Chen) Hong Kong Blu-Ray All Region
- City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan) Mainland Chinese DVD All Region PAL
- Claustrophobia (dir. Ivy Ho; starring Ekin Cheng, Karena Lam) Hong Kong R3 DVD
- The Last Dinosaur (dir. Tsugunobu Kotani; starring Richard Boone) Japan R2 DVD
- Nanayomachi (dir. Naomi Kawase) Japan R2 DVD
- Parking (dir. Chung Mong-hong; starring Chang Chen, Guey Lun Mei) Taiwan All Region DVD
- Tactical Unit: The Complete Series (Produced by Johnnie To; starring Simon Yam, Lam Suet, Maggie Shiu) Hong Kong All Region DVD

Ten Recent Views

2009-05-18T20:05:00.017-06:00

Wild in the Streets (dir. Barry Shear, 1968) -
From the director of Across 110th Street comes this look at the youth movement of 1968, something viewed with a total fear and cynicism from its adult filmmakers. In it, a pop idol (who encourages racial and gender equality and is homo-friendly) creates a wave of political change across the nation by encouraging his youthful following to overthrow the adult authority ruling the country by pairing with an ambitious senator who helps pass legislation lowering the voting age to 14. Naturally, the film finds that once it happens and the youth begin altering national policy, their choices are foolish, quickly lowering things to a totalitarian state. Its contempt for youth is constantly highlighted by how shallow, selfish and stupid they're made to appear, while most of its adults seem similarly ridiculous and idiotic. A time capsule of reactionary forces speaking out in a progressive time.

The Tale of Despereaux (dir. Sam Fell/Robert Stevenhagen, 2008) -
I'm not sure if the pacing and structure is ingenious or unknowing. I think that a lot of the bad reviews for this films stem from the fact that you have a film about a cute little mouse in a swell hat and yet it doesn't kowtow to Disney-fied cuteness, doesn't pander to the audience and offer the adorable little hero they expected. That said, I think its ambitions outstrip its reality, taking on several subplots that don't entwine together, just sort of co-exist. It reminds me in this way of Bergman's Persona, which never seems to be able to make up its mind if it wants to be a heavy psycho-drama or an avant-garde experiment and ends up treading a somewhat unsuccessful line between the two, just as Tale of Despereaux still comes on charming and interesting without engaging as fully as it could (or should). It's never cloying and cutesy, so I appreciate that for sure, but it also never goes a step beyond and turns its bounty of ideas into something better.

Patrick (dir. Richard Franklin, 1978) -
Everything you need to know about this film is on the outer packaging. An Australian film about a telekinetically endowed young man in a coma, in which a nurse begins to suspect that he's not the vegetable that everyone else believes. Also important on the outer packaging is its rating - PG - which tells you about how intense they're going to allow it to get. Given that it's my namesake, I really hoped for more - I've actually had this movie in the back of my head since I first heard of it 31 years ago - and it just didn't deliver, despite a few interesting ideas and pieces. Good concept, but it builds endlessly toward a very anti-climactic climax. Ho-hum. Even Spielberg did more with a suspenseful idea and a PG rating.

Tropic Thunder (dir. Ben Stiller, 2008) -
When Stiller is the main creative force behind the characters and the story, he's approximately 6000 times funnier than when he's hired on as actor for someone else's film. Though he'll never be as artsy or experimental he reminds me of John Cassavetes, taking on mainstream work to make money to fund his more esoteric ventures that are always more interesting. This one's no exception, making character the central idea over plot - no surprise to me that Downey got a nod from the Academy for his work here even if I didn't think it was as great as they did; he took an idea and ran with it. But Stiller's brand of humor is all over this, starting with the great opening sequence of clips setting up each of the main characters and then developing them over the film, rather than just having one-note characters who have some change late in the film, as in so many so-so comedies out of Hollywood. And when it starts getting less funny and winding you up in the lives of the characters they've invested the time to make, it works there too. I prefer the goofy stuff of course - when Stiller is on stage in a drug lord's prison camp recreating a role his captors know from their only video tape they have for entertainment, you know they've made something special - but the fact that they don't only do pratfalls and kick-in-the-balls type of humor makes this different from most Hollywood fare.

The Last Wave (dir. Peter Weir, 1977) -
Probably the best of Weir's early films, beating out the L'Avventura Redux of Picnic at Hanging Rock for my tastes and way more coherent and thought through than The Cars That Ate Paris. Richard Chamberlain plays a lawyer hired to defend an Aboriginal accused of murder. As he gets deeper into the case things start to get weird, finding an apocalyptic prophecy and possible evidence of magic that seem tied into things - and into his own life. I like that it remains ambiguous, like the overall feel of the film, there's some great imagery - and I still think it's an interesting view without loving the film. But I'm sure I'll watch it again, for all the reasons listed above.

Milk (dir. Gus Van Sant, 2008) -
I should love it as a film and I don't - it's a little too obvious in spots - but as a social document I have to give it major props. It's a fairly uncompromised view of the gay world that's making major inroads to all kinds of viewers, not just a ghettoized version that stays within a gay (and gay-friendly) viewership. Like a lot of Gus Van Sant's films, especially recent ones, there's an underlying (implied) motif of the violence resulting from repressed homosexuality - in this case, that of Dan White, who murdered both Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. Van Sant's been more effective recently, but I guess his reigned in/more audience friendly version of the stories that have been fascinating him lately - less experimental than Elephant and Last Days and Gerry for sure, even if it's related - still tells a story worth telling (and seeing, of course), and the fact that it's gotten such a great reception is gratifying and encouraging. Not my favorite Van Sant, but if you don't know the Harvey Milk story, this is a good dramatic representation of it. Proceed directly from here to the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. And as a last note, Sean Penn deserves major props for his representation of Milk here - there was not a moment of the film that I thought of it as Penn playing a character, he simply vanishes into the role.

Iron Man (dir. Jon Favreau, 2008) -
Self-deprecating humor throughout, and Downey is great in the title role. It's "just" entertainment of course, nothing loftier but if you wanna see A) shit blowin' up real good and B) and enjoyable couple hours of well made popcorn movie, you've got a fine pick on your hands here. Comic book reading is not a pre-requisite, either, you can walk into this without knowing the name Tony Stark and still have fun with it - if fun's what you're looking for. I think you'd be stretching things beyond their substance to try to read anything about a political situation into this, other than a generalized set of ideas about current concepts of war and the role of industrialized warfare in the U.S.

Kung Fu Panda (dir. Mark Osborne/John Stevenson, 2008) -
Not bad, I guess for an animated set of watered down eastern-isms. I just wish that they'd made it funnier than it was, or more serious, or maybe just less predictable. Fluffy, and if I had kids it might be the way i'd introduce them to concepts that I'd be forcing on them more and more later. But I don't have kids, so the likelihood of me watching again is pretty damn slim.

Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindô, 1964) -
A strange little story of evil and demons and human desperation that probably has a lot more resonance with people who might've grown up with a background that included the folk tale(s) that formed part of the story - or at least studied them first - than it did with me. That said, it's a great visual story and a really engrossing - albeit grim - tale of people living in dire straits, carving out their survival by any means they can in a surprisingly brutal and frank manner (especially for the time). There's a lot going on here that I feel went over my head on the first viewing and it's definitely a film I'll be going back to.

Big House, U.S.A. (dir. Howard W. Koch, 1955) -
Lots of nice Colorado footage here - always a plus for me - but the story's really the thing that powers this. Ralph Meeker plays an opportunistic sociopath who kidnaps a lost boy when he finds out the kid's family has money and ultimately is tracked down and ends up in jail, denying his involvement all the while. He's pretty great as the absolutely cold-blooded criminal, perfectly illuminating the character he's given - nicknamed "Ice Man" for his cool demeanor and refusal to crack under pressure from the feds once he's inside - but Broderick Crawford is given a great role here and steals the show as a crime kingpin. He's planning a jailbreak and Meeker's Ice Man being dropped into things only means his plans need to be altered slightly, with or without Ice Man's acquiescence. The breakout and subsequent action are where it's at though, even if the lead-up feels nicely gritty and intense. Lots of fun, even if nothing incredibly special.

3 by Mizoguchi Kenji

2009-05-18T19:58:00.009-06:00

Note - I have been told that my approach to what you kids like to call "spoilers" is to ignore them altogether and tell you whatever I want about the film with no warning whatsoever. Consider this a warning that this is meant as a discussion of thematic elements of the films in question (Sisters of the Gion (1936), Osaka Elegy (also 1936), and Sansho the Bailiff (1954)) , not a "thumbs up/thumbs down" review of the films in which I recommend that you should or shouldn't see them and preserve surprises of plot for your enjoyment. I will talk about several elements of the plot that elucidate my ideas about the films. If you haven't seen them, I recommend seeing them before reading this.

In taking on the incredibly broad idea of writing about Japanese film, I was encouraged not to fall back on things I could write in my sleep, thereby leaving out any kind of look at the work of Kurosawa or something more to detail my recent infatuation with Ozu. So I went this way - checked out some stuff from the fine Eclipse box set Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women (specifically Sisters of the Gion and Osaka Elegy) and also Criterion's Sansho the Bailiff to see what commonalities I could find. And behold, in addition to fallen women, I found more to feast on for sure. I know - auteur schmateur, right? A good director is a good director, period, and this is only some pretentious French theory that's never been indisputably proven. But if, as has been suggested, not every director is an auteur and there are those who are merely hired craftsmen and those who leave an indelible stamp on everything they touch, Mizoguchi's definitely in the latter category.

Take for instance, these films, which all revolve around some common themes of societal positions (especially those of women) and the idea of people as property, as beholden to those who have money and the lengths they find themselves forced to go to to hold on to their ideals and their selves. The first one I watched - Sisters - even opens with an auction, quite neatly setting up a central idea that each film puts its own spin on. This auction turns out to be the selling off the property of one Mr. Furusawa, a businessman who has lost his business. He's a regular client of Umekichi, one of the sisters, and a geisha who stands behind traditional values, honor, and loyalty. Her sister Omocha, on the other hand, views the institution of the geisha as a corrupt vehicle for men to retain power over women and her approach to being a geisha is that of the opportunist and manipulator, despising the activities, but still mindful of the opportunities for social and fiscal success it offers a woman unafraid to be perceived as ruthlessly mercenary - a cab driver in one scene even tells her "You'll do anything for money" - and also mindful of the fact that in that society, there were very few other options available to an independent woman who is of no mind to marry a man.

Throughout the film we are presented with the two opposing approaches that the sisters take in their approach to the institution of the geisha, Umekichi's traditional set of values offering her the options of playing supplicant to snag a wealthy patron or of being a "good girl" with no status. When her primary patron, Furusawa, goes broke, she still retains a sense of obligation to him, one who has consistently kept her in his good graces, even though he has no means to support her any longer and even becomes a drain on her own resources. Omocha, on the other hand, ridicules her sister's old fashioned approach to men, preferring to retain her independence but understanding also that being a geisha offers her one of the few ways she can advance herself, an opportunity she resents and approaches as a necessary evil, even bemoaning the entire institution at one point late in the film. This dichotomy runs through all three films - the only seeming options available to women are to kowtow to traditional values in which they are offered no real power unless it's granted to them by men with money or to rebel against this order and suffer ostracization or real physical threat.

Osaka Elegy strikes me as somewhat less effective early on, because the characters and their motivations are less believable, but wow, what an ending! The film slowly offers up a portrait of a family in financial straits - a young woman with a promising job at a pharmaceutical company and an up-and-coming boyfriend finds out that her father has embezzled some money from the company he works for. Her brother may not be able to complete his schooling if the father's name is dragged through the mud as well. She decides that she may be able to solve her father's financial problems by accepting her boss's offer of money for a date, but this proves to be the beginning of a slide for her in which her every effort to extricate her family from their problems - and she does try, saving her father's name, supporting her troubled younger sister whose wildness had previously brought trouble on to the family, and even paying her brother's tuition - merely causes the further muddying of her own name, a loss of face that causes even her own family to ultimately reject her in the brutally hard closing scenes. Again, Isuzu Yamada delivers a strong performance which like her Omocha in Sisters of the Gion is a strong and self-reliant character, though unlike Omocha her character Ayako is working here for others throughout, trying her best to support not just herself, but her family. The idea of women trying to keep a family together in the face of societal and financial pressure is expanded in every direction in Sansho the Bailiff, released 18 years later.

In Sansho the basic idea of the film is set up as a father tells his son: "Without mercy, man is not a human being." This is the main thing explored here as a family is again subject to oppression and domination, scraping by as best they can to survive. The father is a minor regional leader whose controversial position sympathizing with local peasants causes him to be ostracized to an outlying post. When his family travels to meet him they are kidnapped and sold into slavery and prostitution, separating the mother from her children. The children learn to survive under the cruel bailiff Sansho, who deals out harsh punishments for those who try to escape his slave camp or break any of his rules - the young brother Zushio helps Sansho enforce his rules, moving far away from the principles he'd been taught while his sister Anju manages to continue to show mercy and kindness to others but becomes more meek and hopeless as she sees her brother's humanity fading. When they learn that their mother - long assumed dead - is still alive, they both renew their hope and take an opportunity to escape to try to reunite with her.

The film's grim tone and downbeat ending seem to be considered a real downer by many but for me it's only by these kinds of trials that the humanity they put on display - where the brother overcomes the easier route to success by willfully choosing kindness rather than maintaining a position within Sansho's camp - can be truly earned and believed. Without the harshness of much of what preceded it the emotionally gripping final scenes would've had a greatly diminished impact. And again, we find a family tested, with the son yielding - temporarily - to the wrong path and the women taking whatever option is available to them to survive. It's a brutal look at how the lack of mercy saps one's humanity, a hard lesson learned, but in Mizoguchi's hands it's also delivered as a complex, beautiful, even poetic rumination on what it means to be human. The film ups the ante of the earlier works by following out several shifts in tone and the meanings attributed to several characters. Unlike the "Fallen women" films, this one centers on both brother and sister primarily. not just on the female half of the story and it's interesting to see how his approach plays out with the male character. It's a masterwork where the other films are great, and it puts Mizoguchi for me in the first ranks of Japanese directors, one whose films I'm now gonna have to do a lot of work to explore.

david lynch thursday!

2009-05-14T07:42:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-05-12T12:27:00.000-06:00

The Criterion Release of John Huston's Wise Blood is
sure to make this a Dourif-a-riffic week!

Silly DVD releases for the week of 5/12/09 - Trix are fer kids!

Region 1 U.S. releases>>
- Alexander Korda’s Private Lives (Eclipse Series 16; includes the films: The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Rise of Catherine the Great, The Private Life of Don Juan, Rembrandt)
- The Passengers
- S Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale
- Star Trek: Best of the Original Series
- Star Trek Motion Picture Trilogy (box set)
- Taken
- Wise Blood (Criterion Collection directed by John Huston)
- Withered in the Blooming Season

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>
- Compulsion (2008, w/ Ray Winstone) (UK PAL)

Blu-Ray releases>>
- Fargo
- The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
- License to Kill
- Man With the Golden Gun
- The Passengers- S Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale
- Star Trek Motion Picture Trilogy (box set)
- Star Trek – Original Motion Picture Collection (box set)

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: The Cameraman's Revenge

2009-05-11T19:34:00.002-06:00

The Cameraman's Revenge (1912)
Critter: Ladislas Starevich
Size: 13 minutes long
Modus Operandi: Stop-motion animation using bug parts
How the Menace Emerges: Finding actual, live bugs to be terrible actors, Starevich killed them, turned them into tiny puppets and made them behave.
End Goal: Surreal tales of life, love and infidelity as told through insects

Since I still have way too much on my plate this week, I haven’t had the chance to sit and watch a new bug flick. Instead, you get another short film! The Cameraman’s Revenge is one of dozens of fantastic stop-motion animation films by the Russian genius of the genre, Ladislas Starevich. Enjoy!

Opening today- Fados by Carlos Saura

2009-05-08T11:32:00.008-06:00

In 2007, Carlos Saura put a capper on his trilogy of films dedicated to music* with Fados, a film that pays tribute to the Portuguese folk music of the title. Finally getting a U.S. theatrical run, Fados arrives on the big screen in Denver starting tonight with a special presentation over at the Starz FilmCenter. Although it has won awards nationally as a documentary film, it is really more of a performance film that couches song and dance in a world of cinematic splendor. Check out the trailer to get a feel for the film:

Saura's approach is apparently unorthodox and has rubbed some purists the wrong way by including hip-hop and pop hybrids of the music in the film, but don't let that dissuade you from seeing the film as many of Fado's shining stars are represented. The most famous living exponent of the art, The Mozambique born Mariza, is in the film. Here is her performance of Ó Gente Da Minha Terra on David Letterman from a couple of years back (it's a knock-out!):

If that clip made you wish you could see her live, well, if you live in Colorado you just missed her as she performed at the Macky Auditorium at CU Campus on April 22.

Tonight- Friday, May 8th- at 7:00 The Stars FilmCenter is starting its run of Fados with a special presentation that includes an after-film Flamenco performance (???)** by local Flamenco dancer and teacher Natalia Pérez del Villar. They will also be serving tapas and Sangria for your snacking pleasure. Tickets are $11.00. If you don't get to go tonight, please catch it before it leaves the theater on May 14th.

* The other films in the trilogy are Flamenco (1995) and Tango(1998).

** The Flamenco performance has to be in recognition of Saura's previous work like his famous Flamenco trilogy (Blood Wedding, Carmen, El Amor Brujo) and the fact that he is Spanish, not because the folks over at Starz don't know the difference between Portugal and Spain, right? Don't get me wrong, anytime is a good time for Flamenco but this kind of pair-up might come across as old-fashioned American cultural ignorance if not presented properly.

david lynch thursday!

2009-05-07T07:23:00.001-06:00

get yr release on

2009-05-05T06:39:00.000-06:00

Cate Blanchett looks happy now, but she doesn't realize yet that
the further you scroll down this post, the younger it will get.

Region 1 U.S. titles>>

- Chandi Chowk to China
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Criterion Collection directed by David Fincher)
- Last Chance Harvey
- Maraschino Cherry (dir. Radley Metzger)
- Mississippi Chicken
- Nuns of St. Archangel
- Psychos in Love
- Smother
- Wendy & Lucy

Multi-region and other foreign releases>>

- He Ran All the Way Home (1951) (UK PAL)
- Listzomania (UK PAL)
- The Myth (with Jackie Chan & Tony Leung Kar Fai) (UK PAL)
- Ong Bak 2 (Malaysian import, all region)
- War Wolves (Tim Thomerson, John Saxon, and Adrienne Barbeau) (UK PAL)
- The Young Savages (1961) (UK PAL)

Region 1 Blu-Ray>>

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Criterion Collection directed by David Fincher)
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Grease
- Imax: Amazon
- Imax: Blu Sea Trilogy
- Imax: Journey Into Amazing Caves
- Imax: Magic of Flight
- Saturday Night Fever
- There’s Something About Mary
- Twilight

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Green Porno

2009-05-04T15:07:00.004-06:00

Green Porno (2008, 2009)

Critter: Isabella Rossellini

Size: Tiny

Modus Operandi: Posts small films that amuse, educate and creep you out

How the Menace Emerges: Sundance supported the creation of two seasons of these delighful shorts

End Goal: Edutainment!

Since I'm bombarded with all sorts of school-related responsibilities this week, I have no time for a full length invertebrate flick. Instead, I bring you Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno. Her first season was dedicated entirely to terrestrial invertebrates. Learn about the mating habits of the fly, the bee, the spider, the earthworn, the snail, the firefly and the praying mantis. Even though season 2 centers on marine life, you can still get your invertebrate fix with the sex lives of the starfish, the barnacle and the limpet. Check out the rest of them here. It's worth it.

What!? You Haven't Seen... Marnie?

2009-04-30T19:30:00.006-06:00

"Oh Ms. Marnie-penny, sometimes a phallic symbol is just a horse's mouth."

Marnie (1964)- Alfred Hitchcock

Pike's take:

Some of us folks here at the Booth have decided to play a little friendly game of film recommendation with our intent being that we post our impressions after watching the films. For this kick-off post I was recommended the 1964 Hitchcock film Marnie by the master of the ten-film review, Patrick. Now I must admit beforehand, that I am not a big fan of Hitchcock's work in general and that I always enter into one of his films with a skeptical eye. I have found his work for the most part to be alternately hackneyed or bombastically overbearing, and generally consider his films to be lesser works in comparison to his English compatriots Carol Reed, Michael Powell, David Lean (in his early years) and Anthony Asquith. With Marnie though, Hitch really outdid himself in that he finally let his hackneyed and bombastically overbearing sides merge into a completely stupefying whole.

Marnie stars Tippi Hedren as the titular character, a compulsive thief who goes through life trying to gain her mother's love and affection with ill-gotten gains. Her trick is to fall into the confidence of her leering male bosses and then, while working a little overtime, rob the office safe of its contents and split town. It's a good gig until she applies at a publishing house that does business with her last place of employment/heist. The publishing house owner, Mark Rutland (played by Sean "007" Connery), recognizes her from her last job. He hires her knowing full well that she stole ten-thousand in cash from her previous employer, and it is with this knowledge that he plans on trapping Marnie and forcing her into the most compromising position of all.

What starts out as a controlled thriller à la Vertigo, soon gives way to some of the most ripe melodrama Hitchcock has ever produced. In the mix we get: A grown woman speaking in a little girl's voice, a disapproving mother straight out of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie that speaks (of course) in a full-on magnolia drenched drawl (... after living most of her adult life in Baltimore? Really?), one of the most ridiculous old-moneyed New England families ever put to screen and, last but not least, the most disturbingly ambiguous rape scene since Rhett took Scarlett upstairs in Gone With the Wind. All the while, Freudian nonsense (repression as a self defense mechanism, transference, sexual sublimation) is flying off the screen fast and hard. In one scene Marnie and Mark even go tête-à-tête with a little free association that could be considered comically heated if only this was a screwball comedy. As for the ending- I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen the film but- Oh my! What an ending it is! Marnie ends with so much overwrought emotional bloodletting (literally) and pop-psychology mumbo-jumbo that it had to be Hitchcock's intent to push the film over the cliff into pure camp. There is no way that he believed that this stuff could have been taken seriously by even the most unsophisticated audience of its day.

I shouldn't give the impression that Marnie is a complete misfire though, as it has a lot going for it. Some scenes are well handled and in their own way prove to be iconic examples of filmmaking, such as the opening scene with Marnie walking down the train platform or the scene where she shoots her horse after a riding accident- all we see is her gloved hand in the foreground carrying the pistol forward and firing, while in the background her horse's legs kick one last time. The most controlled and impressive scene has to be the the first Rutland heist scene where Marnie is emptying the safe while a cleaning lady is mopping the floor close by. The way that the tension of the scene is resolved is pretty fantastic and funny to boot.

These moments though are not enough to overcome what the film asks of my suspended disbelief. In addition to the aforementioned "heightened emotionalism" and Freudian bunk in Marnie, there are also some moments of shear laziness in the filmmaking. One example is with the character of Mark's sister-in-law who is introduced as a lesbian (maybe bi-sexual) tigress on the prowl but then is later shuffled off in a abruptly dismissive manner as just a caring sister with a proclivity for Nancy Drew-like antics. There are also moments of over-explanation in the visual storytelling that become almost ham-fisted motifs in their use and repetition. In Marnie, Hitchcock shows either a lack of confidence in his material or a lack of confidence in his intended audience. It amazes me that he, being the master craftsman that he was, was not able to eschew the blatantly clunky elements in the film. I mean how many times do you have to fast zoom in and out on the money to show that Marnie is having a moment of troubled conscience or how many times does a character have to repeat an action to show that he hasn't memorized the combination to his own safe and that the said combo is in his drawer. After a while, all of these little things pushed the film past the point at which I could continue to enjoy it. Watching it just became a chore to trudge through. It also didn't help that Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery felt like a couple of also-rans in the casting of their respective rolls. Neither one ever came close to producing the on screen magic of either the James Stewart and Kim Novak pairing (Vertigo) or that of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief). Both performers run the gamut from bland to comically bad in this film.

Having said all of that, I think it's time for Patrick to give his take on the film.

Patrick's Take:

Well, sure it's over the top. That's one of the things I liked about it. I'll grant you that it belabors some points heavily - didn't bother me, but I'll grant it - but saying it starts out as a controlled thriller which then turns into a ripe melodrama sounds like it's as a bad thing, which I certainly don't believe.

This was recommended to Mr. Bishop with the proclamation that it took many of the themes running through Vertigo to extremes. For me, if it pushes it into melodrama, if it uses unrealistic effects - a tree ten stories up, a rear-screened process shot of a horse ride - to highlight the emotional state of the characters, so be it. It adds to the overall feel of the film, even if elsewhere Hitch has been subtler and slyer. I've never been one to be upset by a filmmaker who takes a sledgehammer to things to drive an interesting point home.

It takes a lot of ideas out of Vertigo and gives them a different spin here - in particular, I focus in on the obsessive drive of the male character to take control of an errant woman and in some ways, break her. In the case of Marnie, he's breaking her to reset the bone and have her heal properly but like Jimmy Stewart's Scottie in Vertigo, it seems he's got to go to some real ugly lengths to do what is supposedly right and along the way we begin to question not just how pure the man's motives are but if what's he's doing to the lady in question is really in any way a good thing. In fact, I'd say that this one's even more brutal in how it portrays Mark's behavior as compared with Scottie's, given that Madeline/Judy could've actually walked away from Scottie if she chose to - though then she'd probably be in deep trouble with the even more sinister Elster - while Marnie is left little choice by Mark and he manipulates her knowing that at any time he could turn her over to the law.

Again taking a trick from the Vertigo bag (maybe even the Spellbound bag), the horse rides, the red screens, the Poltergeist-y evil tree branch - all are effects the aren't necessarily meant as realistic, they're more expressive in the way that the green light of the Judy's hotel room reflects back to her green dress the first time Scottie met her (as Madeline) or the famous telescoping "vertigo" shot puts us inside Scottie's head when his acrophobia kicks in or the hazy, dreamlike quality of the cemetery and redwood scenes. For me these are merely visual referents intended to express the mindsets of the characters (though it may just be Freudian hoo-hah to you). You may be right, Mr. Bishop, that these in conjunction with repeated dialogue that also offers these same ideas is too much - it's been years since I saw the film and I don't remember if they too frequently double up ideas that could have been expressed visually - but I also don't remember it bothering me in the slightest.

Long story short - Vertigo's a better film, nobody's arguing that. It's subtler, better shot, requires less suspension of disbelief and Stewart's performance is terrific (though I think that I might actually prefer Hedren's Marnie to Novak's Judy (but not her Madeline)). It's a masterful and beautiful film. Marnie takes some of its ideas and motifs and takes them in a different direction. Certainly it veers to melodrama but it's nothing that turned me off, and I was quite taken with parts of the film - the central relationship is a fascinating extension of the Scottie/Judy relationship and even if the overall technique of the film is blunter, rawer, less refined, it doesn't make it less fun for me to watch.

david lynch thursday!

2009-04-30T07:21:00.000-06:00

get yr release on (very late tuesday edition)

2009-04-29T09:10:00.009-06:00

Center for Disease Control officials say they have traced
the new and virulent strain of canine flu back to this abandoned hotel filled with Rube Goldbergesque machines.

Top of the morning to ya, DVD releases for the week of 4/28/09!

U.S. Region 1 -

- Alexandra (directed by Alexander Sokurov)
- Cargo 200
- Cold Eyes of Fear (directed by Enzo Castellari)
- Deadly Sweet
- Empire of Passion (Criterion Collection directed by Nagisa Oshima)
- End of the Line
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West
- Frost/Nixon: The Complete Interviews
- The Hairdresser’s Husband (directed by Patrice Laconte)
- The Hit (Criterion Collection directed by Stephen Frears, staring Terence Stamp)
- Hotel for Dogs
- In the Realm of the Senses (Criterion Collection directed by Nagisa Oshima)
- JCVD
- Johnny Got His Gun (directed by Dalton Trumbo)
- K*ke Like Me
- Little Dorrit (2008)
- Martyrs
- Mum and Dad
- Naked Rashomon
- Outside the Law/The Trap (silent double feature starring Lon Chaney)
- Perfume of Yvonne
- The Price of Sugar
- Alain Resnais: A Decade in Film (Life is a Bed of Roses / Love Unto Death / Melo / I Want to Go Home) (box set)
- Revenge of the Crusader (directed by Riccardo Freda)
- Scarce
- Shaolin Against Wu-Tang (3 DVD set)
- The She-Beast (1966)
- Stranded
- Waiting for the Clouds

Region 1 Blu-Ray -

- In the Realm of the Senses
- JCVD
- The Reader

Multi Region DVD and Blu-Ray -

- Arabian Nights (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Blu-Ray and R2 UK PAL DVD
- Barquero (starring Lee Van Cleef) R2 UK PAL
- Canterbury Tales (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Blu-Ray and R2 UK PAL DVD
- The Decameron (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Blu-Ray and R2 UK PAL DVD
- Gardens In Autumn (dir. Otar Iosseliani) R2 UK PAL
- Julia (dir. Erick Zonka, starring Tilda Swinton) R2 UK PAL

Pike talked about JCVD once upon a time here. Color us excited.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Beginning of the End

2009-04-27T18:05:00.003-06:00

Beginning of the End (1957)
Critter: Gigantic mutant grasshoppers in the Family Acrididae
Size: Bus-sized
Modus Operandi: Chomping with razor sharp mandibles
How the Menace Emerges: A USDA agricultural research project investigating enlarging vegetables to feed the world goes awry when grasshoppers sneak in for a munch
End Goal: Dinner

Beginning of the End is the aptly titled second feature from the king of the gianormous, Mr. B.I.G. (Earth vs. the Spider, Empire of the Ants). This time, an agricultural experiment using radioactive isotopes to improve crop yield goes haywire. Grasshoppers that fed upon the gigantic tomatoes and strawberries respond very well to the radiation in their snack and grow to enormous size. They consume an entire town in southern Illinois before heading off to Chicago for some real fun.

Mr. B.I.G. uses his characteristic back projection to inject the enormous fiends into the scene, and for the most part it’s pretty effective. Although grasshoppers are typically not scary when we encounter them in reality, these gigantic ones climbing up photographs of Chicago’s skyscrapers and peeking in the windows would scare the pants off most of us, no matter how herbivorous we knew them to really be. As an interesting side note: this was filmed in California, which even in 1957 had very strict importation regulations against potential agricultural pests. The 300 grasshoppers that star in Beginning of the End were brought in from Texas, where they know how to grow ‘em big. Since they could escape from the set and create a much more miniaturized, but still pesky mayhem in CA, only males were allowed to be brought into the state.

Peter Graves (Night of the Hunter, It Conquered the World) stars as the entomologist responsible for the disaster and determined to fight the military with science until all is well in the world once more. He is joined in his quest by Peggie Castle (White Orchid), who starts out as an independent, star journalist after a scoop, but winds up a meek girlfriend-type by the end. Despite her character flaws, Beginning of the End is punchy and rolls right along. While nothing close to Them! caliber, it would make a fine Saturday afternoon pastime for you B-movie folks.

Nit-picking Science: Dr. Wainwright, I think you’re exaggerating the communication & social capacity of these guys. Rather than working together to devour everything as a team, these guys are usually solitary. When they get too cramped, little hairs on their legs get rubbed, and they go nuts, undergoing a Jekyll and Hyde-style transformation that turns them into an army of destruction. Just as a side note, serotonin has been experimentally implicated as the possible neurotransmitter responsible for this change.

david lynch thursday!

2009-04-23T07:15:00.000-06:00

--- A scene from his 2007 exhibit at The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, "The Air is On Fire."

get yr release on

2009-04-20T08:52:00.003-06:00

How'dya like me now, Costanza?

Don't call it a comeback, DVD releases for the week of 4/21/09 - we've been here for years!

Region 1/U.S. releases:

- Finding Me
- Frost/Nixon
- Hellraiser (box set)
- House of the Sleeping Beauties
- A Jihad of Love
- Long Ride from Hell
- Malatestas Carnival of Blood
- Mulligans
- Nickelodeon/Last Picture Show (directed by Peter Bogdanovich)
- Notorious (2008)
- Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painleve (Criterion Collection directed by Jean Painleve; music by Yo La Tengo)
- The Wrestler

Multi-region/other foreign releases:

- The Baader-Meinhof Complex (UK PAL)
- A Borrowed Life (Taiwanese version, region 3)
- The Divine Weapon (Malaysian version, region 3)
- Dark Floors (UK PAL)
- Dynamite Warrior (HK version, region 3)
- The Manchu Boxer (HK version, all region)
- Mr. Vampire II (all region)
- Rape of Nanking (HK version, all region)
- Santa Sangre: 2-disc special edition (All region)
- Stone (1974) (UK PAL)
- Une Femme Mariee (Masters of Cinema, UK PAL)

Region 1 Blu-Ray:

- Arctic Tale
- Frost/Nixon
- Hellraiser
- Notorious (2008)
- Sin City
- The Wages of Fear (Criterion Collection directed by Henri-Georges Clouzout)
- The Wrestler
- X-Men Trilogy

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: The Swarm

2009-04-20T08:00:00.000-06:00

The Swarm (1978)
Critter: Africanized Killer bees, a hybrid between the vicious African honeybee Apis mellifera scutellata and one of the infinitely adorable and helpful European honeybees A. mellifera ligustica, carnica or caucasia
Size: About 3/4 inch in length individually, but en masse, as big as a small town.
Modus Operandi: Attack in large numbers and kill with unbelievably potent poison stings. As few as 3 stings can kill you.
How the Menace Emerges: Sick of life down south, the bees decided to hit Texas.
End Goal: After taking over Houston, the bees just want a peaceful life of beeness with no homo sapiens in the way

Packing the cast with such notables as Shelley Winters (Night of the Hunter), Richard Widmark (Night and the City), Slim Pickens (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), Henry Fonda (Once Upon a Time in the West) and Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity), The Swarm is another disaster of a disaster film from Irwin Allen. Coming straight off of his made-for-TV Fire! and Flood!, the “master of realism” is back with another “man against nature fight for survival”. This time the menace is the dreaded Africanized honey bee, and only entomologist Michael Caine (The Muppet Christmas Carol) can save the day. Despite the danger being of such small stature, Allen still finds a way to pack in a ton of his patented disaster footage, most notably a spectacular train wreck and a man jumping out of a window on the 60th floor of an office building entirely engulfed in flames. No matter how well rendered these spectacular effects were, I was much more enamored with the victims’ cheap hallucinations of enormous bees and the slow-motion scenes of children dying as they run in terror from these wee terrors. Thankfully, Allen spared no expense in the bee department. About a billion real live bees were invited onto the set, and that’s a sight to see!

Unfortunately, the bees are the only real draw in this overwrought piece of schlock. Sure, there’s a certain fascination with seeing Widmark as a grumpy old man completely in touch with his lines when they rip someone a new one, yet bored senseless when his lines just advance the plot, but all in all, Allen takes his characters too seriously to treat them as badly as he does. First, he gives them too many subplots drenched in sickly sweet sentimentality than the flimsy story could possibly handle, and then he just drops them in the first train wreck he can squeeze in. Given that Allen had the balls to drag this piece of trash out for 156 minutes, you’d think he could have given Slim Pickens just a bit more screen time.

Nit-picking Science: Rather than dissect the many things that The Swarm got wrong about Killer Bees, I’ll just mention this one as a public service: There is no such bee that delivers some weird venom that will kill you in just 3-4 stings. (Unless you’re unlucky enough to be allergic, and seeing that less than 1% of the population has this allergy, you should consider yourself very unlucky if you’re in that camp.) Here in North America, Killer Bees have been slowly migrating northward from Brazil, where Dr. Warwick Kerr, a real mad scientist, accidentally unleashed them back in 1956. They are distinguishable from cute, fuzzy honeybees only by behavioral differences. Unlike our helpful honeybee, Killer Bees are just downright mean. They’ll chase you for up to half of a mile, and if they catch you, you’ll get a whole lot more than 4 stings. Now why can't anyone make a film as cool as the real thing?

happy birthday, patrick!

2009-04-20T06:59:00.001-06:00

As you might say, "Uh-mazing."

okay, it's spring - are we getting a david cronenberg movie, or what? (denver premieres for 4/17/09)

2009-04-17T12:00:00.001-06:00

Authorities are asking citizens to be on the lookout
for this man, who is suspected of eating Russell Crowe.

Tokyo!- This omnibus film follows in the tradition of such recent films such as New York, I Love You and Paris je t'aime in that it presents quirky little vignettes about the film's titular city. Tokyo! is divided in to three parts with Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlees Mind, Be Kind Rewind), Leos Carax (Pola X) and Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host) directing a story apiece. General consensus among those that have seen it is that the Gondry and Bong entries are good but the Carax is uneven, starting out strong but ending as a drawn out courtroom drama.

State of Play - So, 'New York' magazine is claiming - at least in a headline - that "most moviegoers are too dumb to enjoy State of Play"; this likely means the film is aimed (as Pike might put it) squarely for the middle of the brow. Indeed, I looked over David Edelstein's review, and it's one of those big timey movie reviews which is impressed with how many simulacrums and references from the big timey media and politics landscape said movie can jam into its allotted time, but little else (and even Edelstein seems a little mystified that he's supposed to like a movie he himself says loses the dramatic tension and intelligence of the original source material and feels like a cut n' paste of Alan Pakula's All the President's Men. Also, kudos to the mag for the way they're pumping the flick up: "Hey, dumbass, go see this movie, or be a dumbass, dumbass!" Dumbasses). (Dex)

Shall We Kiss? - I feel lucky I'm not dating the type of gal who would ask me to go see this. Stars Virginie Ledoyen (who made her international bones in hot-then-not director Danny Boyle's The Beach) and a bunch of EuroActors I don't recognize. (Dex)

Crank 2: High Voltage - Do you know what would be cool? What would be cool is that Jason Statham gets to roundhouse kick that old lady I see him rubbing up against in the teevee previews for this thing. Just once. Alas, he broke my heart in that suckfest he did with Jet Li as well as that wretched Bank Job (2008) thing. Fool me once, Jason...(Dex)

david lynch thursday!

2009-04-16T07:43:00.001-06:00

get yr release on

2009-04-14T09:53:00.008-06:00

I bet you could've bottled and sold that bathwater for a mint.
Especially after she got that Oscar.

Can I claim you on my taxes, DVD releases for the week of 4/14/09?

Region 1 releases:

- Abar: Black Superman
- Gateway Meat
- Dark Matter
- The Reader
- Scarred
- Slaughter High
- The Spirit
- The Telling

Multi-region and other foreign releases:

- Candle for the Devil (All region)
- The China White (VCD)
- The Equation of Love and Death (All region)
- His Girl Friday (Region 2 PAL)
- Iri (Region 3)
- Peking Opera Blues (digitally remastered, all region)
- The Putin System (Region 2 PAL)
- Song of the Exile (star. Maggie Cheung, all region)
- Tiger Blade (Region 2 PAL)
- Wicker Man: The Director's Cut (Region 2 PAL)
- Wushu: The Young Generation (VCD)

Blu-Ray releases:

- 8 Mile
- Imax: Deep Sea/Into the Deep
- Mean Girls
- The Reader
- The Spirit

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Empire of the Ants

2009-04-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

Empire of the Ants (1977)
Critter: Multiple members of the family Formicidae
Size: Many variations of huge
Modus Operandi: Gnashing mandible attacks that gorily kill, or sinister coercion for nefarious purposes
How the Menace Emerges: Nuclear waste dumped at sea washes ashore and mutates normal ants into gigantic freak ants!
End Goal: World domination through mind control! Oh, and all of the sugar they can get too.

I’m always a sucker for a bug-horror flick that kicks things off with a doom-saying narrator talking of the wonders and horrors of the insect world. The opener for Empire of the Ants is a classic example of this little joy of mine. Mr. B.I.G. is at it again, this time with a so-called adaptation of H.G. Wells’ 1905 story retooled for a modern age. Rather than the ants staying normal-sized and taking over humankind by sheer force, Empire of the Ants opts for a more insidious sort of takeover that will knock your socks off. Since Mr. B.I.G. is at the helm, we know the ants can’t stay the small, insignificant little guys Wells employed.

It’s 20 years down the road from Earth vs. the Spider, and Mr. B.I.G. has learned that on screen attacks make us much happier. In Empire of the Ants, we get models attacking folks combined with back projection ants. We even get up-close gore shots! It seems that Mr. B.I.G. finally got the hang of it after all of these years.

Empire of the Ants stars Joan Collins (Tales from the Crypt) in another of her fabulously bitchy horror roles, this time as a swindling real estate agent trying to bamboozle an odd group of folks into buying crappy swampland in Florida. In many ways, this is a character piece. The characters range from a sleazy, cowardly rapist to a sympathetic older woman, down on her luck and trying not to be swindled out of her last bit of hope and cash. These are stock characters from the 70s but more fleshed out and believable than most. Their personalities come in handy and add interest as the story moves from light conversation to banding together to fight giant, menacing ants and then into even weirder territory. The story of Empire of the Ants is quite a treat. I would have been happy with merely a giant ants stalking humans type story, but no, Mr. B.I.G. had more nefarious plans for his little tale.

Nit-picking Science: 1) Mr. Narrator, there aren’t quite 15,000 known species of ants. To date, there are only 12,471. 2) Hey Sheriff, you’ve been hoodwinked! That’s no queen!

david lynch thursday!

2009-04-09T06:32:00.001-06:00

a woman in trouble, pt. 1 - norifumi suzuki's sex and fury & school of the holy beast

2009-04-07T11:08:00.005-06:00

Reiko Ike prepares to fuck your fucking shit up in Sex and Fury (1973).

Amber's gonna hate this, but her excellent post on the great Frank Henenlotter's latest got me thinking about...Quentin Tarantino (yeah - sorry, Amber. First the postmodernism, and now this).

Here's why - it's hard to say what the exploitation flick, and it's many manifestations - say like Henenlotter's superweird and somewhat trashy-sexy exploration of desire and satisfaction, or blaxploitation, or chixploitation, or the more niche-y nunsploitation, or it's inbred cousin the rape n' revenge flick, or it's penpal from across the sea, Eurotrash - it's hard to say just what it is now, and a big part of that is the way people come to movies now: for instance, is DVD the rightful heir to the grindhouse theater? Was the exploitation flick the product of a cultural moment, now since evolved, and do we mostly see only more skillfully and artistically deployed variations on those themes? Or are the way exploitation filmmakers used to "emplot" their movies dressed up in layers of budget and big names?

Which brings me back to the Tarantino thing (and I promise, we're just about to get to the subject of this post) - if there's one truly remarkable thing about his pop culture phenom Kill Bill (2003) and the sequel, it's that he managed to introduce multiplex audiences (and reintroduce hepper peeps) to a kind of cinematic character type (albeit with zero calories and only some of the taste) that had only previously stalked second run houses in big cities or rural backwaters back in the day - self-made ladies who used their bodies, brains, and above all the strength of character to scale whatever walls a vulgar, hyperviolent and chauvanist world threw up in their way. Characters like Yumi Takagawa ("Maya") in School of the Holy Beast (1974) or the sparkling Reiko Ike ("Ocho") in Sex and Fury.

Your shit? She'll fuck
it up!

Actually, there are probably two chixploitation archetypes - the first show up onscreen as wily, hip, and rock solid women who'll likely stay that way the rest of the film (think Cleopatra Jones or Foxy Brown), while the other type ends up tested (and usually unclothed at some point) by events, only to emerge at the end of the film stronger, if a little more world-weary (think Coffy).

Ocho and Maya occupy the former category, though they were far from original archetypes even for Japanese moviegoers. But originality isn't exclusive to the exploitation subgenre - lots of times, it's all in the execution. Indeed, director Norifumi Suzuki is as much the star of these two films as his tough-gal leading ladies. The director had already been churning out a slate of voguish girl gang boss (sukeban) flicks and the four-film series Terrifying Girls' High School (1970-72) by the time Reiko Ike (who, because of a Traci Lordsish rumor she let slip, was one of Toei studio's most infamous stars) starred in Sex and Fury, and from a glorious nude sword fight (which is twice as genius if you consider it's shot and edited in a way that wouldn't offend Japanese censors)and an array of stunning visual sequences and set-ups, in a lot of ways the film represents a culmination of Norifumi Suzuki's outrageously arty style. And having Swedish sexpot Christina Lindberg tag a long as a secret agent and object du lust done up as an early anime-style Sweet Lolita doesn't hurt either.

(as they say in teeveeland, "to be continued in part two...")

get yr release on

2009-04-07T10:00:00.001-06:00

Hit 'em with your siren, Emanuelle, hit 'em with your siren!

How are things on the west coast, DVD releases for 4/7/09?/I hear you're moving real fine/You wear those shoes like a dove!

Region 1 releases:

- Alexandra (from the director of Russian Ark)
- Bedtime Stories (2008)
- The Boys From Brazil (reissue)
- Cleopatra (75th Anniversary edition)(directed by Cecil B. DeMille)
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
- Donkey Punch
- Doubt
- Fun in Girls’ Shorts 2
- A Galaxy Far, Far Away
- Goldwyn Follies
- It’s A Pleasure
- La Grande Bouffe
- Loyal 47 Ronin
- No Country For Old Men (collector’s edition)
- Pre-Code Hollywood Collection
- Shaw Brothers Collection (4 DVD set)
- Shuttle
- A Song Is Born (1948)
- Tale of Despereaux
- Tales of Ordinary Madness
- 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests (music by Dean & Britta)
- Tokyo Zombie
- Vinyan
- Yes Man

Multi-region and other foreign releases (courtesy the inimitable Pike Bishop) -

- The Bela Tarr Collection (includes Damnation, Man From London, Werckmeister Harmonies) UK Region 2 PAL
- Damnation (dir. Bela Tarr) UK Region 2 PAL
- The Film Noir Collection: Quicksand (starring Mickey Rooney) UK Region 2 PAL
- The Film Noir Collection: Trapped (Richard Fleischer) UK Region 2 PAL
- The Film Noir Collection: Woman On The Run (starring Ann Sheridan) UK Region 2 PAL
- Hansel And Gretel (dir. Yim Pil-Sung) UK Region 2 PAL
- Man From London (dir. Bela Tarr) UK Region 2 PAL
- Red (starring Brian Cox and Robert Englund, Dir. Lucky Mckee and Trygve Allister Diesen) UK Region 2 PAL
- Silence Of Lorna (dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) UK Region 2 PAL
- Werckmeister Harmonies (dir. Bela Tarr) UK Region 2 PAL

Region 1 Blu-Ray releases:

- American History X
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
- Doubt
- Final Destination
- No Country For Old Men (Collector's Edition)
- Point of No Return
- Tale of Despereaux
- 2010: The Year We Make Contact
- The Wedding Singer
- Winged Migration

Dex on Vinyan:
You came for the creepshow and the Rufus Sewell, got some first-rate cinematography but were left holding second-rate psychohorror draped in phony-baloney Herzogishness. And, Why. So. Serioussss? I ask, 'cause I think that's why you sucked, see.

Patrick on Tale of Despereaux:

I'm not sure if the pacing and structure is ingenious or unknowing. I think that a lot of the bad reviews for this films stem from the fact that you have a film about a cute little mouse in a swell hat and yet it doesn't kowtow to Disney-fied cuteness, doesn't pander to the audience and offer the adorable little hero they expected. That said, I think its ambitions outstrip its reality, taking on several subplots that don't entwine together, just sort of co-exist. It reminds me in this way of Bergman's Persona, which never seems to be able to make up its mind if it wants to be a heavy psycho-drama or an avant-garde experiment and ends up treading a somewhat unsuccessful line between the two, just as Tale of Despereaux still comes on charming and interesting without engaging as fully as it could (or should). It's never cloying and cutesy, so I appreciate that for sure, but it also never goes a step beyond and turns its bounty of ideas into something better.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: The Naked Jungle

2009-04-06T08:00:00.002-06:00

The Naked Jungle (1954)
Critter: The dreaded Marabunta- army ants, Cheliomyrmex andicola
Size: Individually, less than ½ an inch long, together they’re “40 square miles agonizing death”
Modus Operandi: Destruction by tearing with sharp mandibles
How the Menace Emerges: Periodically, these ants go on the march eating everything in their path
End Goal: To turn the jungle into a wasteland

Oh, the drama…melodrama: “How do you stop them?” “You don’t, just get out of their way.”

It’s odd for me to say, but the real draw of The Naked Jungle isn’t the ants. Instead, it’s the over the top exchanges between the straight-faced and arrogant Charlton Heston (Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green) and his fiery, sexy mail-order bride Eleanor Parker (Caged!, The Sound of Music). While some B-movie fans have complained of the heavy hand of romance in The Naked Jungle, the tension and sheer perversity of the early exchanges between Heston and Parker, all drenched in syrupy 50s technicolor, are pure gold. Sure, once they resolve their differences, it’s as boring as any romance, but by then, the ants make their entrance.

Marabunta! The first shot we have of the dreaded Marabunta is a brilliant matte painting of bald mountaintops with ants streaming down their slopes. Soon enough, they’re crossing the moat in little leaf boats on their way to destroying everything that crazy ol’ Heston has built. The ant shots are great, if only for the sheer number of ants involved: odious masses of writhing black death, as frightening as a sentient blob in their malleable advance. Unfortunately, the reign of ants is far too brief in this flick, and before we know it, the triumphant romance music is at it again. Too bad.

The Naked Jungle may not even be a good movie, but between the campy, unsettling tension of the early dialogue and more ants than I’ve seen in any other insect-disaster flick, it’s worth a small slice of your afternoon.

Nit-picking Science: Now, Leiningen, I could be mistaken, but that ant you’re investigating sure looks like a Camponotus spp. to me.

Vroom vroom! denver premieres for 04/03

2009-04-02T12:00:00.003-06:00

Ha ha Vin Diesel, I get it! They're Pitch Black. Clever Vin... Clever.

Since I got to the pictures first this week, you won't be seeing any A.) Natalie Portman, B.) alterna-waifs or C.) creepy sexual innuendo. What you do get are the only two reasons you would ever want to see the movie Fast & Furious for: A 1970 Chevy Chevelle (top) and a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T (bottom). So go ahead and save your ten bucks or better yet, go out and rent some of the great car porn of yore that I've listed off bellow. (pike)

Adventure Land- The New York Times says this is not in fact a teen sex comedy, but a sweet coming-of-age story. I tend towards coming-of-age flicks with either vampires or John Cusack, so I wish you and yours the best of luck in finding out. (Dex)

Alien Trespass- Word is that director R.W. Goodwin, a longtime "X-Files" producer, skips the kind of subversive reading of Cold War America scifi which made his teevee contributions so genius for comedy homage instead. All the same, Alien Trespass looks like the sort of fanboy valentine that pushes every single button I have, so maybe I can root around and find a leftist critique in Jody Thompson's breathy delivery of dialogue or Eric McCormac's spitcurl. (Dex)

Crips and Bloods: Made in America- This doc is playing over at the Starz FilmCenter. Their synopsis reads:

"A cluster of neighborhoods lies in the heart of Southern California, streets and boulevards forming a grid between concrete ribbons of freeway. Surrounded by the California Dream, this region has a legacy. It is heavily guarded, yet no one is protected. Nearly a quarter of its young men will end up in jail or prison. Many others will end up dead. These neighborhoods in South Los Angeles are home to two of America's most infamous African-American gangs, the Crips and the Bloods. On these streets over the past 30 years, more than 15,000 people have been murdered in an ongoing cycle of gang violence that continues unabated. It was here, just a few miles from the gated communities and sprawling mansions of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, where this nation’s most bloody and costly outbreaks of civil unrest erupted — not once, but twice, 27 years and just three miles apart. In Crips and Bloods: Made In America, renowned documentarian Stacy Peralta (Dogtown and Z Boys, Riding Giants) examines the story of South Los Angeles and the gangs that inhabit it. Blending gripping archival footage and photos with in-depth interviews of current and former gang members, educators, historians, family members and experts, Peralta brings his trademark dynamic visual style and story-telling ability to this often-ignored chapter of America's history. Hard - hitting, yet ultimately hopeful, Crips and Bloods: Made In America not only documents the emergence of the Bloods and the Crips and their growth beyond the borders of South Central, but also offers insight as to how this ongoing tragedy might be resolved. Produced by NBA superstar Baron Davis and narrated by Academy Award winning actor, Forest Whitaker."

Everlasting Moments- Mother's Day might be a month away, but that doesn't mean you can't take her out this week to see a movie. As for what movie, I would recommend skipping the $1.50 showing of Last House on the Left and take her to see Everlasting Moments. It's about a Victorian hausfrau that begins learning to express herself through the hobby of photography. Isn't that nice? Now go call your mama, she misses you.

Fast and Furious- I'm 99.99% sure that this film is going to blow. It is obvious that the main reasons to see a movie centered around automobiles is to see the cars themselves going outrageously fast or crashing into things. It should also be obvious that directing action scenes (much less a white-knuckled, adrenalin pumping chase scene) seems completely impossible for anyone in the present-day Hollywood system (yes, including Tarantino). So add to that the fact that the acting will be at best mediocre, the character development will be nil and the plot a chore to enjoy, and you have an idea about how this movie will play out. That is sad because good car porn can be an enjoyable cinematic treat. Here is a list of ten greats from years past that you might want to see or see again when you get the hankering for some masterfully executed reckless driving:

1.) Vanishing Point (1971- Richard Sarafian)- It might end on a hippie-dippy note but this movie is manna from heaven for gear-heads.

2.) Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974- John Hough)- Helicopter vs. Dodge Charger in an orange grove- unbelievable.

3.) Bullitt (1968- Peter Yates)- Steve McQueen + '68 Mustang = Bad Ass. The scene in the middle with the black Dodge Charger is like a WWII dog fight. Amazing.

4.) Ronin (1998- John Frankenheimer)- The last of the greats. This film has two chase scenes that will not be topped for a long, long time.

5.) Gone in 60 Seconds (1974- H.B. Haliki)- The original, not the Nick Cage abortion (I mean come the fuck on- 80% of the 'Elenore' theft scene was faces in close-up! Why the fuck would I want to watch the actor's reaction shots in a car chase. That's just mind numbingly stupid!). The original's police chase with the '73 Mustang is amazing. Also of interest is the fact that most of the pedestrians/other vehicles in the scene didn't know a film was being made around them.

6.) The Driver (1978- Walter Hill)- Along with Hard Times, Walter Hill's only stab at greatness. All I have to say is, "Ryan O'Neal in a red Chevy truck vs. a Trans-Am." If you've seen it, you'll remember it- 10 minutes of bliss.

7.) Two Lane Blacktop (1971- Monte Hellman)- An existential street racing movie??? Yep, that's what it is. Oh, and the only worthwhile thing James Taylor ever did with his whole stinkin' life was drive that 55 Chevy.

8.) Grand Prix (1966- John Frankenheimer)- Frankeheimer knew how to translate the thrilling precision of human/mechanical interaction better than anyone. The Monaco race in particular is a great piece of drama expressed through sound design.

9.) The Big Steal (1949- Don Siegel)- This has one great chase scene in the middle with enough muscle and grit to go toe-to-toe with anything from the 70s. Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer star in this fun little crime drama.

10.) Thunder Road (1958- Aurthur Ripley) Robert Mitchum again, but this time as a moonshine runner with a hot-rodded 57 Ford and cops on his tail- What more do you need?

I know there are a ton of great car films out there so if you've got one I didn't mention, put it in a comment and we'll make running list.

david lynch thursday!

2009-04-02T09:39:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-03-31T08:58:00.016-06:00

Methinks the words "happy" and "together" don't exactly mean what they usually mean in a Wong Kar-Wai movie.

Jai ho, DVD releases for the week of 3/31/09!

Region 1 and other U.S. releases:
- Biker Triple Mania!
- Bollywood Horror Collection Vol. 2
- Cat in the Brain (dir. Lucio Fulci)
- Crazy Animal (a Troma Films release)
- The Cremator (dir. Juraj Herz)
- Christina Lindberg: Exposed
- Crows Zero (dir. Takashi Miike)
- Cthulhu
- Danton- Criterion Collection (dir. Andrzej Wajda)
- Experiments in Terror 3 (includes films by Guy Maddin and others)
- Fallen Angels (dir. Wong Kar-Wai)
- Fatty Girl Goes to New York (starring Anita Ekberg)
- Film Noir Double Feature Vol. 3: Amazing Mr. X & Reign of Terror
- Fugitive Girls
- Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-Wai)
- Holding Trevor
- Il Generale Della Rovere- Criterion Collection (dir. Roberto Rossellini)
- Isle of the Damned
- Marley & Me
- Martial Club (starring Gordon Liu)
- No Regret
- Poultrygeist (2 DVD edition)
- Raven
- The Same Old Song (dir. Alain Resnais)
- Seven Pounds
- Sinful Dwarf
- Slumdog Millionaire
- Star of David: Hunting for Beautiful Girls (dir. Norifumi Suzuki)
- Tell No One
- Terror Circus a.k.a Barn of the Naked Dead (dir. Alan Rudolph)
- The 3 Faces of Shinji Aoyama
- 3 Films by Alexander Sokurov: Oriental Elegy; Dolce; Humble Life
- Timecrimes
- Tokyo Zombie (starring Tadanobu Asano)
- Un Chant D’Amour (directed by Jean Genet) (reissue)
- William Eggleston: Photographer

US Blu-Ray:
- An American In Paris
- Chronicles of Riddick
- Ghosts of Mars (dir. John Carpenter)
- Gigi
- The Matrix (10th Anniversary edition)
- The One (starring Jet Li)
- Slumdog Millionaire
- South Pacific
- Tell No One
- Two Evil Eyes (directed by George A. Romero and Dario Argento)

Multi-region and other foreign DVDs:
- Celia (Dir. Ann Turner)- UK Region 2 PAL
- The Children- UK Region 2 PAL
- Choking Man- UK Region 2 PAL
- Detroit Metal City- Hong Kong Region 3
- Derek (doc about Derek Jarman, narrated by Tilda Swinton)- UK Region 2 PAL
- Escapees- UK Region 2 PAL
- Forever Enthralled (dir. Chen Kaige)- Hong Kong Region 3
- Gomorrah- UK Region 2 PAL
- Mandate- Southeast Asia Region 3
- Muriel, ou le Temps d'un retour (dir. Alain Resnais)- UK Region 2 PAL
- Nighthawks/Strip Jack Naked - Nighthawks 2 (dir. Ron Peck)- UK Region 2 PAL
- Not Quite Hollywood- UK Region 2 PAL
- Rivals- UK Region 2 PAL
- Rouge: Digitally Remastered (dir. Stanley Kwan)- Hong Kong Region 3
- Red Cliff 2: 2-Disc Edition (dir. John Woo)- Hong Kong Region 3
- A Time To Love and a Time To Die (Dir. Douglas Sirk)- UK Region 2 PAL
- Trail Of The Lonesome Pine (dir. Henry Hathaway, starring Henry Fonda)- UK Region 2 PAL
- Waltz with Bashir- UK Region 2 PAL
- The Wild Geese- UK Region 2 PAL

Dex on Slumdog Millionaire:
That the guy who helped make Irvine Welsh an international phenomenon jumped up and down like Tigger when he won the Oscar for best director makes me very happy; that it was for a Stay-Puft piece of nonsense like this does not. You can also feel Patrick's hate here.

Pike's DVD round-up: This is a big week for DVD releases so I'm want to quickly spotlight some of the interesting genre and foreign film releases that deserve more recognition than more widely known faux-Hindi crapfest above. First we have some real Hindi films coming out (albeit from the trashier side of the spectrum) with The Bollywood Horror Collection Vol. 2 offering up The Ramsey Brothers' Veerana and Purani Haveli in one set. Supposedly Veerana is the choice cut for fans of the fantastique as it is a Bava-esque gothic horror story about a resurrected witch, but transplanted to the rural plantations of India. Also out this week, from the seamier side of the film world, comes Lucio Fulci's self-reflexive gross-out picture Cat in the Brain from 1990, which beat Craven's New Nightmare and Scream to the meta-party by four years. Both Christina Lindberg (Thriller: A Cruel Picture) and Anita Ekberg (French Sex Murders and something called La Dolce Vita) have exploitation films premiering in region 1. Lindberg's Exposed (out from Synapse) is a sexploitation number about young Miss Lindberg being blackmailed by her older, sexually controlling lover who has compromising pictures of her. Fatty Girl Goes to New York is a comedy staring Italian pop singer Donatella Rettore as a plump ugly-duckling type that gets her sweet revenge against all of the meanies in her life thanks to Baroness Judith von Kemp's (Ekberg) secret slimming elixir. As for the cream of the crop (or bottom of the barrel, depending on how you look at exploitation cinema), we get two notoriously vile pieces of work this week with The Sinful Dwarf and Star of David: Hunting Beautiful Girls. The Sinful Dwarf is exactly what you think it is- a wee little pervert locks-up teen girls for forced fun in his mom's house (with her consent of course) while she sings dance hall numbers dressed-up like Carmen Miranda! Seedy stuff for sure but Star of David might have it beat. It is the only roman porno under the Nikkatsu banner that Norifumi Suzuki directed and is considered one of his best films. It centers on a young man who was conceived during a horrible home invasion incident where an escaped serial rapist took advantage of his mother and made his stepfather watch. Now on the verge of inheriting his stepfather's estate, he decides to get in touch with his biological family traditions! Beautifully shot, this film is like the completely irresponsible cousin of Imamura's Vengeance is Mine.

Getting out of the gutter for a minute, we also have some great art-house and studio fare coming out this week. Aside from the two Criterion Collection discs, we also get two massively cleaned up Wong Kar-Wai films with Fallen Angels and Happy Together. The transfers on these discs are amazing and make the old discs obsolete. The Happy Together transfer was taken from the new UK Artificial Eye transfer and you can check out difference at DVD Beaver. Also this week, we have an Alexander Sokurov box of short films that documents his work in Japan and a Czech new-wave film titled The Cremator. It is strange little film about a middleclass man who, with ever increasing delusions of grandeur, slips seamlessly into the Nazi Party line during Hitler's takeover of Czechoslovakia. Amber has pointed out that Lars von Trier's Europa has lifted elements from this film as I see a very definite influence on Lynch's Eraserhead. The Film Noir Double Feature Vol. 3 features two films shot by one of the masters of noir cinematography, John Alton. The first feature, Reign of Terror (directed by Anthony Mann), is an oddly compelling mix of film noir, camp and raw violence packaged as a French Revolution-type period piece. The other film, The Amazing Mr. X is a more conventional crime picture about a phony spiritualist/confidence artist, but is fun in its own right and looks fantastic. Finally, on the domestic front, Alain Resnais' delightful little romp through Dennis Potter's (The BBC serials The Singing Detective, Pennies from Heaven) garden, The Same Old Song (On connaît la chanson) is out for those enjoy the Gallic charms found in Resnais' late period work (also check it out if you enjoy the films of Demy, Varda, Chabrol and the like).

On the multi-region front, we have a slew of treats coming our way this week. From Asia we get subtitled discs of both John Woo's newest film Red Cliff 2 (which is the second half of his Han Dynasty epic starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Chen Kaige's latest Beijing opera melodrama, Forever Enthralled staring Leon Lai and Zhang Ziyi. We also get a re-release/digital clean-up of Stanley Kwan's great little love/double suicide/ghost story, Rouge, starring the late Hong Kong stars Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui. From over in the UK comes the Documentary Derek, put out last year by his friends Isaac Julien and Tilda Swinton. Here is an interview with Julien and Swinton from the Sundance channel that will give you a feel for the film. Also out is Ron Peck's Nighthawks packaged with the documentary about its making titled Strip Jack Naked: Nighthawks II. I guess you could say that this DVD is also Jarman related as he has a small role in Nighthawks. Also coming out is Not Quite Hollywood, the documentary about the Australian exploitation boom of the 70s. If you are going to watch this film, do it with pen and paper in hand because it covers a lot of films that you'll probably want to look into. Finally, the three films I'm most looking forward to getting this week are also UK releases: Alain Resnais' fantastic third feature Muriel, ou le Temps d'un retour, Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and a Time to Die and Ann Turner's creepy girl-coming-of-age film, Celia. I have these on order and will do a proper review of each in the weeks to come.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo

2009-03-30T08:00:00.002-06:00

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (1977)
Critter: Banana Spiders, Phoneutria nigriventer (a.k.a. Wandering Spiders)
Size: 3 to 5 inches in diameter
Modus Operandi: Bite victims with enormous fangs, injecting a deadly poison containing both a neurotoxin and serotonin. Victims either become feverish for hours and die or just keel over and die instantly.
How the Menace Emerges: Stowaways on an Ecuadorian coffee shipment crash land in a sleepy CA orange town and head straight for the oranges
End Goal: Bite, bite, bite; kill, kill, kill

This is an odd little eco-horror flick, one without the usual nature’s revenge angle. Instead, this town lives on its organic produce production. Sure, killer spiders are bad news, but the problem is that if the townsfolk use pesticides, their oranges, nay the towns’ very life’s-blood will be worthless. What to do? The solution to all of their problems comes from using a little creativity to warp bee buzz into a scary, wasp-like sound to paralyze our deadly pals. But will it work?

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo is much better made-for-TV fare than say, Ants. Although the acting and the script tend towards melodrama, it is chock full of the super star power of Sheriff Lobo and Dr. Johnny Fever with more “Hey, look! It’s that guy.” moments than you can shake a stick at. It’s well shot, with an awesome post-plane crash scene. And the kid gets bitten! Boy, I do love the 70s for that. Somehow, we’ve lost the capacity to introduce wide-eyed innocents and bump them off just to raise the ante against our cinematic enemy. It’s just too bad.

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo rolls along just as you’d expect in a 70s TV horror flick. The ending is no different, except for one misplaced sequence. It seems as if the film ends early for two of our heroes, while the rest of the town had to keep up the fight. Because I’d hate to give away any more of this flick, I won’t say more, but I couldn’t let such an oddity slip by without mention.

As an interesting side note, the venom from the Wandering Spider might be the most toxic of all spider venoms, but it is rarely known to kill people. In fact, one of the nastiest side-effects that males have from being bitten is priapism.

Nit-picking Science: Come on! We recognize that your deadly spiders are nothing more than a handful of our pals from the photogenic Theraphosidae Family! Dr. Benton, what’s that about vertical fangs? I think you are confusing these guys with real tarantulas, the only spider family with fangs that move up and down, rather than side to side.

Review: Alone Across the Pacific

2009-03-29T12:00:00.004-06:00

Alone Across the Pacific (1963)

Directed by Kon Ichikawa

Based on events that took place only a year earlier, Ichikawa's 1963 film, Alone Across the Pacific, details Horei Kenichi's amazing 94-day solo voyage from Osaka, Japan to San Francisco in a engine-less yacht. Kenichi, played by pop star and matinee idol Yujiro Ishihara (Crazed Fruit), is a headstrong and unapologetically individualistic young man, which puts him at odds with every aspect of Japan's post-war society. There is a popular proverb (kotowaza) in Japan that says, "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." Kenichi, knowing that he is the nail sticking up, decides to put all of his effort into escaping from Japan and, in turn, from his own Japanese-ness. He puts every scrap of money he has saved from working odd jobs into the construction of a 19-foot yacht, The Mermaid, to get him across the ocean. The film begins with Kenichi sneaking off to his yacht in a row boat under the cover of darkness, as a law that restricts non-commercial sea craft from leaving Japanese waters is in place. As he gets his yacht out on the open waters, Kenichi is immediately beset by problems. First he is stuck adrift in Osaka Bay as no wind will come along to blow him out to sea. Then, a day-and-a-half later, when a wind finally shows up, it is followed by a storm of typhoon-like conditions. It is here that the film seems to be veering off into a man-against-nature type of story, but in actuality that is not the concern of the film at all.

As Kenichi sails along we get flashbacks of recent events leading up to his trip. We see him act the rude taskmaster with a couple of shipbuilders working on The Mermaid; we also see him callously and pointedly creating strife within his family when talking about his plans to sail to San Francisco; most revealingly though, we see a fellow sailing enthusiast of Kenichi reprimand him for being a "maverick" who doesn't understand the price others have to pay for him wanting to do things his own way. These moments, along with a tour de force, mid-film scene (shown in split screen) of a scrolling supplies list matched by shots of the said items' acquisition, use or bulk physicality, paint a full picture of this young man's make-up that we would not get otherwise by just watching him sit in the claustrophobic hull of his yacht. Ichikawa paints Kenichi as an obsessive, who in his single-minded determination comes across as alternately mired in an existential funk and propelled by a quixotic urge to sail to San Francisco.

This type of character will, of course, sound familiar to people who have followed the films of Werner Herzog, but Ichikawa mined this territory first (and I would argue better) with his films The Burmese Harp, Enjo, Odd Obsession, An Actors Revenge, Tokyo Olympiad and this one. Where Herzog tends to emphasize the idea that obsession leads people to peer into the abyss of their own destruction or madness, Ichikawa views it as a great focusing agent. As Kenichi's voyage drags on, he begins to discover his own self-worth through his constant attention to the mundane tasks of survival. By the time he pulls into San Francisco Bay, he has gone through an almost Zen-like transformation. He left Japan to get away from the burden of Japanese societal obligation. He even went so far as to leave his Japanese identity behind him by refusing to get, much less carry a passport. But when he arrives in San Francisco, Kenichi finds himself transformed by his experience into a man who has found his place in the world. He has forged his own inner fortitude, and it is with this newfound strength that he has found a sense of harmony with and dedication to his surroundings. As in the film, so it was in real life. Horei Kenichi went on to be a kind of sailing activist, taking on waterborne challenges to promote environmentally friendly technologies and the use of recycled materials.

One final note about this film is that it has an interesting take on the core conflict in most Japanese storytelling, the conflict between giri and ninjō. Giri is, in simplified terms, the Japanese idea of an individual's obligation or duty to the group and/or social hierarchies. Ninjō on the other hand, is one's own personal emotions or attachments. In the classical mode of Japanese storytelling, the themes and plots arise from a conflict between giri and ninjō. But in Alone Across the Pacific, Ichikawa seems to be saying, in a similar manner as he does in The Burmese Harp, that the rejection of social obligations (giri) in favor of one's personal feelings of conviction (ninjō), if taken seriously, will lead a person to a more far reaching, inclusive and humane state of giri. If you ask me, that's an alright message coming from what could have easily been just another uplifting "man vs. nature" film.

the lost weekend- denver premieres for 03/27/09

2009-03-27T12:00:00.013-06:00

Hey Fellas, Look! The Booth didn't forget us!

-In an attempt to catch-up on things, here is the post for the theatrical premiers for Friday, March 27, a week late and a dollar short.- (pike)

Monsters vs. Aliens- Following up the success of last year's Kung-Fu Panda, Dreamworks seem to be hitting a stride of sorts with another quirky animated group comedy. This time the premise is a high-concept mash-up of Monsters vs. Aliens. You get the 50-foot Woman, the Blob, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mad Scientist (maybe a Brundle-roach?), and something called Insectasaurus* trying to save the world from an alien invader that resembles a four-eyed, tentacled Mekon from the old Dan Dare comics. The jokes in the trailer are hit-or-miss, but over all it looks enjoyable enough. The film was shot in what is being tauted as stereoscopic 3-D (the same process being used on the upcoming James Cameron flick, Avatar) and is probably best seen in that format. Although I'll admit that Monsters vs. Aliens is a good mash-up idea, my inner-child is still waiting for his dream mash-up: Cowboys and the undead vs. Aliens or as I like to call it, "Invasion of the O.K Corral a.k.a. My Darling's Creeping Spine." Where is it Hollywood! I've been waiting 25 years!

*this movie reference makes Amber happy but I don't want to give it away as it is the big ending reveal.

The Haunting in Connecticut- The acting talents of Elias Koteas, Martin Donovan and Virginia Madsen aside, everything about this movie stinks from a distance. Let's see, first there is the fact that it is a Amityville Horror/Exorcist rehash straight out of the bargain basement. Next is the grating tag-line, "Based on True Events." Oh, really! You mean the part about the folks moving into a new house or that their kid gets cancer, right? Because you can't be seriously talking about the ghost bullshit. Much like God, the invisible hand of the market and an authentic Chicago deep-dish pizza joint in or around the city of Denver, ghosts are myths- they don't exist! But Oh, oh my... the last nail in this rickety shit house has to be the poster art:

What the Fuck! So you want me to believe that ghost are real so that the half-assed scares you put in the movie will somehow affect me more, but then you show me what these ghosts can do and it doesn't amount to anything more than what a hard night of drinking can get you. Fuck you ghosts! I've seen fellow boother Dex do this a couple of times 'round about the witching hour and never, not even for a second, did I fear the reaper.

Of Time and the City- To be honest, I don't know that much about Terence Davies, but the trailer for this documentary looks promising. It starts a one-week run at the Starz FilmCenter and they have this to say about it:

"From the original voice of British auteur Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives) comes a visual poem about the director's life in Liverpool from 1945 to 1973. It is a very personal portrait of Liverpool, beyond its Beatles and its football clubs, the home of the writer's birth, where youth and inspiration weave his own story into the recent history of the city with fascinating found footage and a lyrical soundtrack. The visual poem is played out against a backdrop of densely packed urban living and backbreaking domestic labor. But Davies counterpoints the slums with beautiful, soaring music and lifts us into the world of fantasy and collective emotion which makes the misery of life bearable. For lovers of Davies' previous work many of his themes from his earlier narrative pieces thread through this film—Catholicism, homosexuality, violence, death, loss, the glory of cinema, outsiderness and childhood. Narrated by Davies."

12 Rounds- Oh Renny Harlin, there is really no sport in picking on you. Of all of the low hanging fruit in Hollywood, at least you know your place- directing movies that capitalize on the niche popularity of a WWE wrestler. I just hope you are having a good time playing director, you little scamper you!

The Afterbirth of (true) Grindhouse: Bad Biology

2009-03-26T11:16:00.004-06:00

In an interview about Bad Biology, Frank Henenlotter said: “I just thought, ‘let’s go back and make an exploitation film as if the world still wanted them!’” Some of us do still want them.

No one knows the nostalgic tug of a seedy movie in a seedy theater more than Henenlotter, except perhaps John Waters. Like Water’s A Dirty Shame, Bad Biology is an unapologetic and joyous revelry of bad taste, irreverence, exploitation and comedy that harkens back to a B-cinema time before there were so-called auteurs claiming to do grindhouse for the multiplex. Henenlotter was a part of the grindhouse theatres of New York’s 42nd Street, both as a fan and a contributor, until the home video age and Mayor Koch put an end to those days forever. Kids nowadays get their so-called grindhouse neutered, canned and sugar-coated by the likes of Tarantino, Rodriguez and the shlubs behind the Saw & Hostel franchises and they don’t know what they’ve missed. Kids, if you think you have the stomach for it, check out Bad Biology for a fresh take on all that made grindhouse infamous. Henenlotter is back in full-force with a film that goes beyond exploitation straight into artful masterpiece.

While I would have been thoroughly satisfied with a retread of classic Henenlotter (Basket Case, Brain Damage), Bad Biology is oh so much more. The returned Henenlotter has kept his 80s aesthetics intact, shunning the prepackaged digital age by shooting in beautiful, visceral 35 mm and using practical effects rather than hollow CGI. Not that Henenlotter is a neo-Luddite, but rather he understands that the physical nature of this sort of film demands a physical, not digital, rendering. Henenlotter’s old special effects pals, Gabe Bartalos and Al Magliochetti, do not disappoint. Rather than sticking to the same sort of everyman characters that inhabited Henenlotter’s New York of days gone by, Henenlotter brings us today’s unglamorous New Yorkers. The cast consists mainly of R. A. “The Rugged Man” Thorburn’s non-actor pals, who are given free rein to be natural, yet seem to take their roles seriously enough that we easily get sucked into their world. And what about the narrative itself? Yes, it is shocking, but this isn’t the mindless gross-out we’ve come to expect from today's hackneyed hacks. Instead, the script and story are smart and thoughtful, without sacrificing the fun we came for in the first place. Much of this is achieved by Henenlotter inviting us, his audience, into the world he’s created. Our lead and narrator, a smashing Charlee Danielson, weaves in and out of the 4th wall effortlessly. The crew of a metaphor-gone-awry photo shoot argues whether or not the theme is safe, true, nice, edgy or just plain sick, cleverly burying all of the criticisms, misunderstandings, fears and delights that could be aimed at a film like Bad Biology within the context of the scene itself. From the first line: "I was born with seven clits.", it is no secret what sort of film you’ve stumbled into, but the joy comes from the fact that as each scene rolls by, the ante is upped, escalating the blasphemy and perversity until the final, glorious turn. Despite all of this, there’s a humanity in his characters that never gets corroded. There’s a strange sweetness to the fun and sick world of Henenlotter, and I’m glad to see it’s back!

I’d love to pop into my local seedy theater and see Bad Biology with a crowd of like-minded strangers, but alas all of the grindhouse theaters are gone, and no multiplex in its right mind would touch it with a 10-foot pole. On top of that, Bad Biology is unlikely to even get an MPAA rating here in the US, much less a proper domestic DVD release. So, pick up the Region 2 Pal DVD, invite over that scant handful of your most-discerning friends and watch this singular and outstanding film. Do it now!

david lynch thursday!

2009-03-26T09:32:00.000-06:00

--- "Fetish." Photo by David Lynch, shoes by Christian Louboutin.

get yr release on

2009-03-24T08:45:00.002-06:00

It's not too much of a stretch to say that Opera Jawa's among the best releases you'll see this week. Heh. Stretch.

You'd tell me if this blogpost was trying to be too romantic for you, wouldn't you, releases for the week of 3/24/09?

US DVD releases:
- Bolt
- The Cake Eaters (dir. Mary Stuart Masterson)
- Careful (dir. Guy Maddin)
- Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3
- A Galaxy Far, Far Away
- Goldfinger (collector’s edition)
- Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything
- Hong Kong Godfather
- The Last Metro- Criterion Collection (dir. Francois Truffaut)
- Never Say Never Again (collector’s edition)
- The Odd Couple (Centennial 2 DVD edition)
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (collector’s edition)
- Opera Jawa
- Quantum of Solace
- Side Effects (starring Katherine Heigl)
- 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests (music by Dean & Britta)
- To Catch A Thief (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
- Wedding Wars
- A Woman Called Golda
- You Were Never Lovelier

US Blu-Ray releases:
- Bolt
- The Fast & the Furious Trilogy
- The 400 Blows- Criterion Collection (dir. Francois Truffaut)
- Goldfinger
- James Bond Collection Vol. 3
- The Kite Runner
- The Last Metro- Criterion Collection (dir. Francois Truffaut)
- Moonraker
- Never Say Never Again
- Quantum of Solace
- Things We Lost in the Fire
- The World Is Not Enough

Multi-region DVD releases:
- Antique- Korea Region 3
- Assembly (dir. Feng Xiaogang)- UK Region 2 PAL
- Cape No. 7- Hong Kong All-Region
- Chocolat (Claire Denis)- UK Region 2 PAL
- The Empress and the Warrior- UK Region 2 PAL
- The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (dir. Tony Richardson)- UK Region 2 PAL
- The Perfect Couple- Korea Region 3
- Saturday Night Out- UK Region 2 PAL
- Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (starring Albert Finney)- UK Region 2 PAL
- The Wind Will Carry Us (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)- UK Region 2 PAL

Dex is On Her Majesty's Secret Service: Historically, Bond films have been the cinematic equivalent of the turducken, and until Daniel Craig's leaner, against-the-grain '06 debut in Casino Royale, the only other Bond film I could stomach was George Lazenby's one-off On Her Majesty's Secret Service - with a host of on-screen pop culture references, "The Avengers" original kick-ass heroine Diana Rigg, and Lazenby's Picasso painting looks, OHMSS owes more to the mod stylings of the era than any of the Connery Bonds, and is also much more memorable (for all the right reasons) than fey Roger Moore's subsequent interpretation of the superspy. Because of this - and because of the utterly ridiculous plot - it feels more like a movie than the assemblage of chauvanist and Cold War tropes that typically passed for plot and people in Bondland.

Field Guide to Invertebrates in Film: Mesa of Lost Women

2009-03-23T08:00:00.000-06:00

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)
Critter: Hormonally altered men, women and a spider
Size: Female humanoids- approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall; Male humanoids- approximately 3 feet 5 inches tall; Female spider- approximately 25 feet tall
Modus Operandi: The spider-women dance or stare menacingly, the spider-dwarf-men leer and scurry, the giant spider with a woman’s pituitary gland sometimes bites people
How the Menace Emerges: A mad scientist exchanges the pituitary glands of humans and spiders to create 1) sexy, violent-looking women that rarely harm anyone, but make great lab assistants, 2) grinning, menacing dwarf men that jump a lot and 3) one man-sized super spider that he can talk to telepathically
End Goal: World domination

And now it’s time for an entry into the Guide that makes Ed Wood look like a craftsman. The Mesa of Lost Women is quite possibly one of the worst movies ever committed to film. Even at only 70 minutes you will miss that chunk of your Saturday afternoon. The film opens with a very talky, ominous narrator warning us of the power of nature over humanity: “In the continuing war for survival between man and the hexapods, only an utter fool would bet against the insects.” That, however, has nothing to do with this fractured narrative at all. In fact, there are no insects involved in this film.

One-eyed Dr. Aranya (Jackie “Uncle Fester” Coogan) working in his underground lab stocked with wild-eyed, intense spider-ladies in togas is playing around with hormones. His piece de resistance is a giant she-spider with reasoning skills that may someday control the world with Dr Aranya at the helm. We also have a rag tag bunch of characters who enter his domain: the despicable rich man and his gold-digging fiancée, their Chinese servant who is only allowed to speak in poetic, fortune-cookie proverbs, the dashing and pointless young pilot, the male nurse from the asylum and the scientist turned lunatic who holds them all at gun point. This could be fine, but there are just too many unanswered questions for even this jaded B-movie aficionado: 1) How is there a lush jungle on the obviously barren mesa we see in long shots? 2) How did the super-spider get back into the underground lab just in time to be blown up? 3) Why do the guitar and piano continue playing the same structure-less tune? Despite scenes of ominous dwarves and evil looking sexpots sitting in groups watching the camera, then scurrying off, this film isn’t easy to watch.

Mesa of Lost Women is plagued by terrible dialogue, an incoherent narrative and nonsensical edits. Why would anyone decide that the line: “I’ve had to work ever since I was a kid, and of it wasn’t very much fun.” should be punctuated with the leering face of one of the mutant dwarves?
But it may be that moments like these make Mesa of Lost Women one of your favorite movies of all time. Some people are like that, you know.
Just as a side note, the superstar of the un-credited little person’s role, Angelo Rossitto (Freaks, Spider Woman (Yes, that’s poor Angelo in the suitcase), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) makes an appearance as Dr. Aranya’s main henchman.

Nit-picking Science: 1) Mr. Narrator and Dr. Arayna, you both surely recognize that tarantulas couldn’t possibly belong to the subphylum Hexapoda. That classification is reserved for our six-legged pals. 2) Spiders certainly do not have pituitary glands, so I have no idea what you actually transplanted, Dr. Arayna.

i love you, blog (denver premieres for 3/20/09)

2009-03-20T11:28:00.013-06:00

You know, it's kinda funny, but the clouds
in Absurdistan all look like a blog post titles to me!

Since we here at the booth feel that this week's release schedule is bland beyond belief (except for I Love You, Man which is, as Patrick will remind you, a Judd " The Greek god of laughter and awkward male bonding" Apatow related project), we have put no effort into previewing these films. Instead we have inserted the studio plugs for these cinematic mash notes to the color beige, as they can probably pitch these things better than we can. You are welcome and enjoy!

I Love You, Man-I gotta say that I'm pulling for this Paul Rudd vehicle - his appearances on buddy Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" always manage to be entertaining, and I've got a soft spot for Anchorman, where he played Brian Fontana ("It's made from bits of real panther, so you know it's good.") - even though the movie doesn't appear to fall all that far from the Judd Apatow tree, since I Love You, Man looks to be complete with lovable simpletons, hot chicks, and humorous-slash-slightly-rocky personal situations. But it also features Lou Ferrigno, the greatest actor to ever be painted green; with that in mind, my sense is that no one will die if you buy a ticket to this (though I have been wrong about this sort of thing before). (Dex)

Duplicity- This Film opened across Denver. One theater it is playing at is the Greenwood Village Landmark Theatre. Their synopsis reads:

"Clive Owen and Julia Roberts star as spies-turned-corporate operatives in the midst of a clandestine love affair. When they find themselves embroiled in a high-stakes espionage game, they discover the toughest part of the job is deciding how much to trust the one you love. CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Owen) have left the world of government intelligence to cash in on the highly profitable cold war raging between two rival multinational corporations. Their mission? Secure the formula for a product that will bring a fortune to the company that patents it first. For their employers—industry titan Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and buccaneer CEO Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti)—nothing is out of bounds. But as the stakes rise, the mystery deepens and the tactics get dirtier, the trickiest secret for Claire and Ray is their growing attraction. And as they each try to stay one double-cross ahead, two career loners find their schemes endangered by the only thing they can't cheat their way out of: love. Written and directed by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)."

Knowing- Before you decide to star in another dumb, sci-actioner-sequel thingy, Christian Bale, you should take a long hard look at Nicholas Cage's new movie. The career you save may be your own. (Dex)

The Great Buck Howard- This film is now playing at the Chez Artiste. Their synopsis reads:

"Once upon a time, Buck Howard (John Malkovich) spent his days in the limelight. His mind-boggling feats as a mentalist extraordinaire—not to be confused with those of a mere magician—earned him a marquee act in Vegas and 61 appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. But nowadays he performs in faded community centers and hasn't sold out a theater in years. Yet, with a hearty handshake and a trademark "I love this town!," Buck Howard perseveres, convinced his comeback is imminent. He just needs a new road manager and personal assistant. As it turns out, recent law school drop-out and unemployed, would-be writer Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) needs a job and a purpose. Working for the pompous, has-been mentalist fills the former requirement, but how it satisfies the latter is questionable, especially to his father (Tom Hanks), who still assumes Troy is in law school. Nonetheless, with the aid of a fiery publicist (Emily Blunt) and a bold stroke of fate, Buck surprisingly lands back into the American consciousness, taking Troy along for the ride of his life."

Sunshine Cleaning- This film is now playing at the Mayan. Their synopsis reads:

"A single mom and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in this offbeat dramatic comedy. Once a high school cheerleading captain who dated the quarterback, Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams) now finds herself a thirty-something single mother working as a maid. Her sister Norah (Emily Blunt) is still living at home with their dad Joe (Alan Arkin), a salesman with a lifelong history of ill-fated get rich quick schemes. Desperate to get her son into a better school, Rose persuades Norah to go into the crime scene clean-up business with her to make some quick cash. In no time, the girls are up to their elbows in murders, suicides and other…specialized situations. Directed by Christine Jeffs (Rain, Sylvia), Sunshine Cleaning is an uplifting film about an average family that finds the path to its dreams in a decidedly unique way."

Fuel- Bio-fuel enthusiasts make up an odd, if interesting sub-group of environmentalism - the more mechanically-inclined students at Naropa would take every opportunity they could to stuff a flyer for one of their meetings into your hand and speak rapturously about all that contraptions some dude in Boulder had that could run on vegetable oil - and it would appear that Josh Tickell's movie about his personal and environmental awakening is that clique's media breakthrough.

Much like hempters, bio-fuelers would tell us nearly all of our energy problems can be solved if we set aside the pretzel twist of money and power that equals the worldwide extractive fuel industry and start using plant matter instead; alas, a funny thing happened on the way to our new green futures. The filmmakers say that ethanol and ethanol-like fuels - which would be a potential disaster if it were attempted on a large, industrial scale - makes up only a piece of the movie's narrative, but an interested blogger at Grist says otherwise in a couple of '08 reviews here and here. Perhaps it's best to see for yourself, at least before peak oil strikes civilization down or something. (Dex)

Absurdistan- This Film is playing at the Starz FilmCenter. Their synopsis reads:

"Welcome to Absurdistan, a small village in the high desert mountains, just on the outskirts of reality, where magical visions and bizarre events fuse together, but the sexes are divided. The village is facing a water shortage, but the men are too lazy to fix a rickety pipeline and the women are getting fed up with their good-for-nothing husbands. Led by young Aya (Kristýna Malérová), the women make a simple vow: "No water, no sex." The men's only hope is Temelko (Maximilian Mauff), whose long-promised wedding with Aya is put on hold until he finds a solution to the water problem. From the wild imagination of Veit Helmer, the award-winning director of Tuvalu, comes this perfectly pitched lyrical comedy that is romantic, surreal and boundlessly poetic."

A Secret- This Film is playing at the Starz FilmCenter. Their synopsis reads:

"Adapted from Philippe Grimbert’s best selling novel, A Secret (Un Secret) is a story of passion and guilt in troubled times, which unfolds as a young teenager uncovers the truth about his parents’ past. He finds out that before the war, his father Maxime (Patrick Bruel - The Comedy of Power, O Jerusalem) was married to Hannah (Ludivine Sagnier - 8 Women, Swimming Pool, A Girl Cut in Two, Love Songs) when he fell madly in love with his mother Tania (Cécile de France - The Russian Dolls, Avenue Montaigne). As a young Jewish couple living in Nazi-occupied France, Maxime and Tania had to make difficult choices to survive the war and the Holocaust."

Shuttle- This Film is playing at the Mayan. Their synopsis reads:

"When Jules (Cameron Goodman) and Mel (Peyton List) return from a girls’ weekend vacation, they find themselves stranded at the airport, late on a rain-drenched night. Wanting just to get home safe and sound, they board an airport shuttle with a helpful, friendly driver (Tony Curran, Red Road) for the short trip...that turns out to be anything but safe. From writer/director Edward Anderson, making his directorial debut, comes a terrifying thriller about a night that starts like any other, and a ride home that descends into darkness."

david lynch thursday!

2009-03-19T09:27:00.000-06:00

get yr release on

2009-03-17T12:06:00.012-06:00

Old Faust could hide like two other whole books up that sleeve, yo.

[Yawn!] Oh, hey DVD releases for the week of 3/17/09! Did I oversleep?

US DVD releases:
- Dodes’Ka-Den (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
- Elegy (starring Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley)
- Faust: Restored 2-Disc Deluxe Edition (1926) (dir. F.W. Murnau)
- The Finances of the Grand Duke (1924) (dir. F.W. Murnau)
- Haunted Castle (1921) (dir. F.W. Murnau)
- Murnau 1921-1926 (includes Nosferatu/Faust/The Last Laugh/Tartuffe/The Haunted Castle/The Finances of the Grand Duke)
- Punisher: War Zone
- The Robe- special edition (starring Richard Burton)
- Three Stooges Collection Vol.5: 1946-1948
- Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu
- Twilight
- The Velveteen Rabbit (2007) (dir. Michael Landon Jr.)
- Yella (dir. Christian Petzold)

Blu-Ray releases:
- Clear and Present Danger/The Hunt for Red October (2 for 1)
- The Matador: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Triumph, and Love (doc.)
- Mission: Impossible 1 & 2 (2 for 1)
- The Princess Bride
- Quo Vadis (dir. Mervyn LeRoy)
- The Robe (starring Richard Burton)
- Rollerball (2001)
- Sweeny Todd/Sleepy Hollow (2 for 1)

Multi Region DVD/Blu-Ray releases:
- Black Snake (dir. Russ Meyer) UK Region 2 PAL
- The Company of Wolves (dir. Neil Jordan) Import Blu-Ray -All Region
- L'Air De Paris (dir. Marcel Carne) UK Region 2 PAL
- Therese Raquin (dir. Marcel Carne) UK Region 2 PAL
- Yangtse Incident (dir. Michael Anderson) UK Region 2 PAL

Pike on Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu: Shimizu began his directing career at Shochiku Studios along side the likes of Heinosuke Gosho, Yasujiro Shimazu and his close friend (and sometime collaborator) Yasujiro Ozu. Of this group, Shimizu was the one considered to be a natural talent. Both Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi praised Shimizu as being the true master director, the latter even going so far as saying, "People like me and Ozu get films made by hard work, but Shimizu is a genius." The four films in this box set will give you a good primer as to why Shimizu was held in such high esteem. Starting with Japanese Girls at the Harbor (1933), one is struck by moments of beautifully fluid camera work, some amazingly poetic use of visual ellipses and the masterful deployment of recurring scenes that gain an increasing sense of poignancy through the minor changes within the frame. Mr. Thank You (Arigato-San)(1936) is even more bold with its bravura camera work. There is some beautiful cross cutting work included that involves the bus' journey down the road, as seen from the point of view of someone inside the bus, played against some beautiful and immaculately framed scenes of the mountain landscape as it passes by. All together the fluid motion of the cuts gives the viewer a sense that they are along for the ride with the characters in the film. Also look out for the two scenes where the camera is running along with people either trying to catch up with the bus or jumping off of the bus, as they are little moments of magic that give the sense of floating on air. Another aspect of Shimizu's art was his willingness to play around with narrative convention. In The Masseurs and a Woman (1938), he uses little moments of episodic character development to grow an increasingly expanding view of the inhabitants of a remote mountain inn. Paying close attention to the aesthetics of form and structure while downplaying (or in some cases downright eschewing) the traditional narrative through-line, gives films like The Masseurs and a Woman a modern feel that also (although to a lesser effect) can be seen in the last film of the box set- Ornamental Hairpin (1941). The film stars a young Chishu Ryu Tokyo Story) as a soldier recovering from a war wound at a health spa where he steps on the item in the film's title and, after setting eyes on its owner, falls in love. This film, like the other three, is an immaculately shot and tightly structured affair that moves along with such an sense of ease that most folks miss the gentle prodding this film gives to the pre-war, imperialist Japanese culture. In fact all of the movies in this box are infused with social critique but their subtle nature has caused many critics to overlook them all together.

I for one am glad that the Criterion Collection has decided to release these film in the U.S. as I think Shimizu is in dire need of re-discovery. I have complained in the past that the main Criterion line has increasingly become a little too conservative and stodgy with its heavy lean towards the official film school canon, but with their Eclipse line they seemed to have realized that it is also important to introduce some under-seen and under-appreciated material to the public. For this I thank them and hope (at least for my sake) that their venture is financially rewarding enough for them to continue putting out releases like this one.