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Review: MAMA, A Stylishly Directed But Disappointingly Predictable Horror Film

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Review: MAMA, A Stylishly Directed But Disappointingly Predictable Horror Film

Review: MAMA, A Stylishly Directed But Disappointingly Predictable Horror Film

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 06:00 PM PST

"Once upon a time," reads the title card that kicks off Mama, a supernatural horror film by first time feature director Andy Muschietti, which is being sold under the imprimatur of a much more famous name, Guillermo del Toro, who serves as executive producer/mentor/godfather on this project. That opening clues in to the fact the Mama seeks to tap into the fairy tale, the primal source for spooky tales, a very old, tried-and-true form of storytelling. Mama is an expansion of a 2008 short that was very much a calling card for its director, who honed his filmmaking chops during 15 years of making commercials. The short gained the attention of del Toro, who eventually shepherded this film and took an active role in shaping it...

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Out Now On Australian DVD: PROHIBITION Is The Last Word On This Era

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 05:00 PM PST

Prohibition is a documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. If you have seen or heard of Boardwalk Empire then you will probably pick this up as it expands on the snippet of complexity depicted in the HBO drama to properly retell the extraordinary story of what happens when a freedom-loving nation outlaws the sale of intoxicating liquor -- and the disastrous unintended consequences that follow.This documentary looks into this era as an utterly relevant cautionary tale that raises profound questions about the proper role of government and the limits of legislating morality as America 'goes dry' and millions of law-abiding Americans become immediate lawbreakers overnight. Burns focuses on the stories of the petty whiskey-jobbers, big-time bootleggers, and of course brutal gangsters before turning...

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Out Now On Australian DVD: AMERICA IN PRIMETIME Is Informative, Not Definitive

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 04:00 PM PST

America In Primetime is a PBS documentary program that assumes that the new Golden Age of television is now. While it is true that more sophisticated plot-based serials are 'mostly' being created today than yesteryear, this four-parter only half succeeds in conveying the iconic nature of contemporary television today, missing some vital moments and missteps and adding too much grandeur to the leading actors and their roles.Weaving between past and present effectively, each episode focuses on specific shows with the cast and crew providing talking heads about the vital importance and ground-breaking relevance each element of their program has brought to the nature of televised serials as a whole. The documentary makes each element generic and each episode is given an archetype as such; the...

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Get Behind The Scenes Of Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTER

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 03:00 PM PST

[UPDATE 2:  Added three more making-of videos that focuses on Chen Chang and Zhang Ziyi's Kung-fu training and on Yuen Woo Ping choreographing the fights.][UPDATE:  Added third making-of video that focuses on Tony Leung Chiu Wai's Wing Chun training.]Our very own James Marsh recently gave Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster a rave review, stating it "is one hell of a beautiful kung fu movie."  It's a quality that certainly holds true, even when glancing through the behind-the-scenes video.  The video showcase interviews with the cast & crew and shots of the various gorgeous locations & sets.You'll find the two making-of video embedded below....

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It's Adkins Versus Lundgren In Exclusive UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING Clip

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 02:30 PM PST

The latest installment of the Universal Soldier franchise hits home video January 22nd and Twitch is proud to present an exclusive clip from the film, one that features a fight sequence between Scott Adkins and Dolph Lundgren.Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski and Dolph Lundgren star in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING, which ups the ante in the UNIVERSALSOLDIER series, giving you more hard-hitting, bloody, no-holds-barred fighting action. John (Adkins, The Expendables 2) wakes up from a coma after his wife and daughter were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Haunted by images of the attack, he vows to kill the man responsible, Luc Deveraux (Van Damme). While John tries to piece his reality back together, things get more complicated when...

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Review: BROKEN CITY Falls Down, Can't Get Up

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 02:01 PM PST

Murky, unclear, and blunt, the first sequence in Allen Hughes' Broken City proves to be representative of the movie as a whole. NYPD Detective Billy Taggert (Mark Wahlberg) is presented as a wronged hero, an honorable officer who shoots a suspect in self-defense, yet is forced to resign by the sympathetic Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) and antagonistic Police Commissioner Fairbanks (Jeffrey Wright). What were the circumstances surrounding the shooting? Why is the Mayor so friendly? Why is the commissioner so angry? And why are the interiors bathed in so many shadows? In the original screenplay credited to Brian Tucker, those are questions that are raised but then pushed to the sideline as the story jumps forward to the fall of 2012. Taggert is now a...

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Win A DVD And T-Shirt Of Acclaimed Documentary SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 01:00 PM PST

Acclaimed documentary Searching For Sugar Man hits DVD on January 22 - that's this coming Tuesday - and not only does Twitch want you to have a copy of your own but we also want you to proudly proclaim this fact to your friends and neighbors by wearing your very own Searching For Sugar Man t-shirt.We have one DVD copy of the film to give away along with the aforementioned t-shirt and we're making it easy. All you need to do for your chance to win is email me here and name the subject of the documentary. His real name. Not Sugar Man. Please include your mailing address....

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Watch A Clip From Yen Tan's Sundance Drama PIT STOP

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 12:00 PM PST

Yen Tan's Pit Stop will have its World Premiere at Sundance on January 21 and Twitch is proud to present a first clip from the film. Recovering from an ill-fated affair with a married man, Gabe finds solace in the relationship he maintains with his ex-wife and daughter. On the other side of town, Ernesto evades life at home with his current live-in ex-boyfriend by spending much of his spare time in the hospital with an ailing past love. Impervious to the monotony of their blue-collar world, they maintain an unwavering yearning for romance. Far from the gay centers of the world, director Yen Tan explores the complex and oft-forgotten lives of gay men in small-town America. The understated, contemplative nature of Ernesto and Gabe's...

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Gorber's Epic Guillermo del Toro Interview, Part 4: On "Foreign Films" and the Nature of the Remake

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 11:00 AM PST

Scheduled to last a mere 15 minutes, the famously loquacious and erudite filmmaker spent 90 minutes at our roundtable discussion. In this, the fourth of our five part series, he talked about his role of language in shaping the reception of a film and what he thinks about so-called "remakes."Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Please Note: There may be spoilers below for Mama and other works.I'm going to ask a really complicated question. Please.  Not about Frenzy! [laughs] I'm fascinated by films like MAMA because I think in some ways, while financially they wouldn't do as well, I think critically they would do better if they were in Spanish. It's funny, when we started, I wanted the movie [to be] in Spanish. And...

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Review: LUV, An Almost Likable Movie About Unshackling the Past

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 10:01 AM PST

While watching LUV, I kept thinking about a painfully true line of dialogue in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. The quote, which is a premonition for every character in the film, is this: "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." Some of our poor choices never escape us. This is the motif of LUV, starring Common as Uncle Vincent, a man who's plagued by the half-baked decisions he's made in his life and has spent the last eight years in jail as a result. We learn early on that he's fresh out of jail, on parole, and desperately wants to better himself. He used to be quick on the trigger; now he just wants to be a straight shooter....

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Sundance 2013 Exclusive: Trailer Premiere for Quentin Dupieux's WRONG COPS

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 09:30 AM PST

The wacky wonderful world of Quentin Dupieux involves everything from psychopathic car tires (Rubber) to existential canine retrieval journeys (Wrong). Now we can add to that drugs sold inside live rats, deformed racist officers of the law, and prostitutes... lots of prostitutes. This is Wrong Cops, and we've got the exclusive trailer premiere for you ahead of chapters one through three unspooling at the Sundance Film Festival this week! From the press release: Imagine a Los Angeles where crime is so low that a bored cop (Mark Burnham) sells drugs and harasses a teenager (Marilyn Manson) to pass the time. Shot in stand-alone chapters as it is being financed, screened, and released, Wrong Cops is gonzo filmmaking with a unique online strategy. Watch the...

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Sundance 2013: Twitch Raises the Curtain with Our Top 20 Picks of the Fest

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 09:01 AM PST

Today is the big day, as Sundance 2013 kicks off tonight in frigid Park City, Utah. We've already taken you through the catalog with our three-part series providing a look at the four competition slates, the dramatic and documentary premieres, and the Midnight, Next, Spotlight, and New Frontiers sections. I hope you caught our Slamdance Preview as well. Now we turn our attention to the rest of the gang who will be reporting from the frontline of indie cinema's biggest snowball fight. Be sure to check back for more news, reviews, and interviews, plus follow along on twitter: @TwitchFilm | @EricDSnider | @ChaseWhale | @AlexKoehne | @RylandAldrich Here are a few words from each of our global voices at the fest, along with their...

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FEAR & Loathing @ Sundance. Boozie Movies boards a plane straight to HELL!

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST

PROLOGUE: PANIC ATTACKS AND PROSTATE INFECTIONSFor anyone who's stuck going through life dealing with any form of an anxiety related disorder, there is no hell quite like having a panic attack in an airplane bathroom. I'm drunk with the spins even though I haven't had a drop of the sauce and the already tightly confined walls of the small toilet space are closing in on me. I try holding in my breaths and counting Mississippi's in between my inhales, but it's a futile effort. I'm officially freaking out on a packed commercial flight to Salt Lake City. I'm headed to Sundance Film Festival with nothing more than a press badge, three hundred bucks, a bike messenger bag with two outfits, a pack of business cards,...

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Win UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING On DVD!

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 07:00 AM PST

Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning hits DVD and Blu-ray January 22 - that's next week, for the calendar impaired - bringing with it your chance to see first hand why our own James Marsh declared that this film will take your head off. In a good way.We've got a DVD copy of the film to give away to a lucky Twitch reader and all you have to do to have a chance to win it is email me here and name the fight choreographer responsible for the high octane action. Please include your mailing address....

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Bikinis, Bad Girls, and James Franco in Cornrows: SPRING BREAKERS Trailer

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 06:30 AM PST

Teenage girls in tiny bikinis jostle for screen time with James Franco in cornrows in the first trailer for Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, which is due out in the U.S. on March 22. Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine also star in the film, which follows four friends who steal a car and rob a diner so they can escape to Florida for spring break. Franco plays a drug kingpin who befriends them. Our own Ryland Aldrich was seduced by Spring Breakers: In lesser hands, this could have ended up a drab morality tale or a wacky mess. Instead we have a raw and randy, yet also rather mature (in more ways than one) piece of cinema that's probably unlike anything you've...

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World Cinema Invades Geneva for Black Movie Festival

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 06:01 AM PST

Just as Sundance gets underway, another snow-covered city across the ocean is gearing up for a huge celebration of auteur-driven international film. Featuring the best international cinema from across the world, including Portugal, China and Russia, and bringing in many noted filmmakers to speak, including Carlos Suares (Post Tenebre Lux) and Miguel Gomes (Tabu), Black Movie Festival in Geneva promises to keep the focus on cinema, and only cinema, from January 18 - 27. I'll be there starting in the middle of next week posting dispatches and reviews, in between building snowmen, of course. Stay tuned!Check out their website for more information. Here's the full lineup:El muerto y ser feliz (The Dead Man and Being Happy) - Javier RebolloSofia's last ambulance - Ilian MetevEspoir voyage -...

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Ard Vijn Wonders If His Best-Of List For 2012 Will Even Reach Ten...

Posted: 17 Jan 2013 05:00 AM PST

Like many of the people here at Twitch I love making a Top-10 list, but now that I sit down to do so and actually look back upon 2012, I notice I haven't actually seen all that many films. Huh... what happened? Where did my year go? Thing is, I've seen loads and loads of films, just not that many new ones. Review-wise, most of my activities were in anime series releases this year. Recent theatrical releases ... less so. Several of the Oscar-nominated films aren't out yet over here, and to my shame and chagrin I managed to miss both Looper and Cloud Atlas. Of those I did see, many were undeniably cool but underwhelming, like Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises. There are...

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