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Jeonju 2013: Narrative Experiment DECEMBER Let Down by Weak Story

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Jeonju 2013: Narrative Experiment DECEMBER Let Down by Weak Story

Jeonju 2013: Narrative Experiment DECEMBER Let Down by Weak Story

Posted: 26 Apr 2013 04:00 AM PDT

These days, in a bid to stand out from a crowded field, a lot of young filmmakers experiment with their chronologies. While there's nothing wrong with experimenting with form, it's very important to have a strong narrative before playing around with it. Jeonju competition film December follows this trend, but does it get away with it? This ultra low-budget feature from Park Jeong-hoon is split into 12 chapters, beginning with January. In the first segment, a couple that we can't make out is having a stroll on the street one evening. The February segment features a young man and woman on the roof of a hospital, he in a wheelchair and she the reason he's in it. March introduces us to two high school girls....

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The Teaser For Sono Sion's WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL? May Be The Most Insane 35 Seconds Ever Teased

Posted: 26 Apr 2013 01:15 AM PDT

At this point it just feels plain crazy to call Sono Sion merely prolific. I mean the man has made  nearly two movies a year for the past five years. But whatever the case may be Sono is a beastly magician of a moviemaker. And the teaser for his latest Why Don't You Play In Hell? just proves how loud and boisterous and fantastic a magician he is. Yes, Sono looks to be going the way of the blockbuster, but without losing any of the eccentric and outrageous traits that make up a Sono film. Described by the man (or magician) himself as an action film about the love of 35mm, Why Don't You Play In Hell? boasts an impressive cast with Sakaguchi Tak and...

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Review: COMMUNITY S4E11, Basic Human Anatomy (Or, Commit To The Bit, Even When It's Not Great)

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 11:00 PM PDT

Basic Human Anatomy is an odd duck of an episode. It shouldn't work based on a number of reasons going in, but then largely succeeds on some of those same reasons (and then some), thus proving that the craft of executing a television show in all its stages (from writing to performance) is a rather nuanced, hard-to-pin-down specter (less a muse) of creative urges and tasks. The task at hand tonight is to address the status of Troy and Britta's relationship, which has been one element of this season that never quite felt justified or even really very real... despite so many of us wanting the two to get together. I haven't talked about their relationship in quite some time mainly because it was largely...

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Jeonju 2013 Review: GROGGY SUMMER Teaches Us You Can't Always Get What You Want

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 10:01 PM PDT

As viewers, sometimes we take for granted the decisions made by filmmakers that affect their works. A lot is decided in pre-production, and one particularly important element is a film's shooting style. Outside of a few highly stylized works, the language that a film's crew uses to tell a story is remarkably similar from film to film. A wide establishing shot opens a scene, mid-shots introduce characters and relationships, and close-ups get down to the nitty gritty of details and emotions. In fact, we've become so accustomed to this style of shooting that anything else is jarring. Case in point is Groggy Summer, a film that is almost entirely shot in close-up. It takes a little getting used to but the result, unsurprisingly, is very...

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Review: THE COLONY Leaves You Cold

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 09:00 PM PDT

Man, I had such high hopes for The Colony. Sure, my feelings of hope were coloured a bit by a set visit a year ago that went comically awry. This low-budget, independent sci-fi film, starring Kevin Zegers, Bill Paxton and Laurence Fishburne, was shooting an hour's flight north of Toronto in an abandoned, subterranean, Cold War-era NORAD Air Defence base. Once we arrived (and were greeted by the mayor!), we traveled 600 feet under ground to visit the sets, strewn amongst the detritus of and cabling from the previous tenants. This was the first film to shoot in the Bunker, and likely the last. The scope of the project looked immense, and shooting with an Anamorphic kit on Alexis cameras made the thing as glossy as...

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Opening: KON TIKI Drifts Deep Into Dangerous Waters

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 08:00 PM PDT

"If you take anything away from Kon-Tiki, it's how amazingly brave the pioneers of exploration were." That's how Bill Graham began his review of Kon-Tiki, which we published recently during the Dallas International Film Festival. The film, directed by Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandber, opens in limited release in the U.S. on Friday, April 26. As a brief refresher course, here's the set-up: The film revolves around a Norwegian man's obsession with proving that someone used a raft -- not a sailboat or anything with the ability to steer -- to drift from Peru to Polynesia across nearly 5,000 miles of open ocean. The idea that anyone would set out to sea on a raft made of balsa wood logs strung together with rope was...

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Review: HANNIBAL Recap Thus Far And S01E05 - These Are Not Your Sunday School Angels

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:30 PM PDT

At the bequest of some of our readers we will continue to look at Bryan Fuller's Hannibal. So we have a bit of catching up to do as we let two episodes slide by without as much as a squeak. In episode two Graham is encouraged (read as 'sent') by Crawford to Dr. Lecter to talk about the shooting of Garret Hobbes. During the various meetings throughout the episode Lecter pokes and prods Graham into revealing his feelings about the shooting and how he feels about Hobbes' daughter Abigail. I should add that Abigail is currently in a coma after the traumatic events in episode 1. Though at first reluctant Graham still goes back and Lecter suggests that the shooting of Hobbes has taken away...

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Review: TAI CHI HERO Shifts Up A Gear ... Eventually

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:00 PM PDT

Stephen Fung's post-modern martial arts odyssey continues, replacing some of the goofiness of Tai Chi Zero with a more complex plot, while struggling to deliver a knockout punch. Tai Chi Hero follows on immediately from its predecessor, with "freak" Yang Lu Chan (Yuan Xiao Chao) exchanging marriage vows with the beautiful daughter of Grandmaster Chen. An act of gratitude and nothing more from Yu Niang (Angelababy), their union brings Lu Chan into the fold, making him eligible to train in Chen style kung fu, which is all he's ever wanted. Yu Niang is quick to lay down the ground rules of their relationship - they are not husband and wife, but master and pupil. She will teach him kung fu and he will sleep on...

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Review: AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY Connects On A Visceral, Emotional Level

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 06:00 PM PDT

Terence Nance's An Oversimplification of Her Beauty teeters precariously on the border between unbearably pretentious and brazenly original. With a film as potentially divisive as this one, I often fall on the side of condemnation, branding pretentious films as full of shit and guilty of self-indulgent fart smelling. However, thankfully, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty never tips into that nebulous wasteland of the 'too artsy for it's own good.' The film's saving grace is very simple: it all hits home. Behind the circular timeline, repetitive voice-over, and avant garde narrative devices, there is truth, which goes a long way. The film begins with several minutes of footage from Nance's short subject How Would You Feel?, which traces his relationship with a romantic interest. The short...

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Review: SUN DON'T SHINE Haunts A Fateful Road Trip

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 05:00 PM PDT

There's a small scene in Sun Don't Shine that keeps playing over and over again in my head. A woman is telling a story about the time she was making a pizza and almost burned her house down. She mixed her prescription sleeping pills with wine and passed out during the aforementioned pizza-making. Hours later, she woke up to a smoke-filled house. (Somebody up there must be looking out for her.) Without any hesitation, she blames this happening on her doctor. After all, he gave her the medication, which means it's in no way her fault that the sleeping pills made her fall asleep, resulting in a non-edible pizza and near non-existent house. This small moment reminds me of Sun Don't Shine's running theme. It's...

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Review: GRACELAND Dramatizes A Kidnapping With Chilling Reality

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 04:00 PM PDT

Marlon has been the chauffeur of the wealthy Chango family for many years. His wife lies in a hospital room waiting for an organ transplant. His daughter is friends with the daughter of his boss and will frequently get rides to her school as well. Marlon's boss, Manuel, is a well-known Congressman; he has a penchant for little girls and has been suspected of doing so in the press after Marlon fumbles a drop off late one night. Marlon is blamed for slipping up and exposing Manuel to the scandal. He loses his job, but he still has to pick up his daughter and Manuel's daughter from school at the end of the day. On the way home they are pulled over by the police....

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IFFR 2013: A Talk With Richard Raaphorst About FRANKENSTEIN'S ARMY. Part 1 of 2: Getting Started...

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 03:00 PM PDT

The long-awaited (and long-covered) film Frankenstein's Army is currently touring film festivals worldwide. This month it was shown at the IMAGINE Festival in Amsterdam and Tribeca in New York, and it had its World Premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, back in January. Last year I visited the set in the Czech Republic and was very much taken with what I saw. Therefore it was with great anticipation that I awaited the press premiere. After that, and literally a few hours before the official world premiere, I was able to get a few minutes with director Richard Raaphorst, who was at that time excited enough to walk on the ceiling... Twitch: First of all, thank you for taking the time to talk with me,...

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Yamaguchi Gets Claustrophobic With ABDUCTEE

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 02:30 PM PDT

Best known as the yin to Takasguchi Tak's yang - the duo work together incredibly frequently - director Yamaguchi Yudai has built himself a very well earned reputation as one of the merriest of merry pranksters in the Japanese underground scene. His work is more often than not playful and silly in the extreme, fusing elements of action,horror, scifi and general geekery into some of the oddest concoctions to come out of Japan in recent years. But he's doing something entirely different with his latest effort, Abductee.Atsushi Chiba, aged 50, wakes up one day half-dead. He's tied up in a container, being shifted somewhere... To make things worse, he's also a world-class loser. Inside the container lies a mysterious stone which doesn't give him even...

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Tribeca 2013 Review: The Bad Touch Leads To The DARK TOUCH

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 02:00 PM PDT

Six months from now, Kimberly Pierce's remake of Carrie will hit theaters and you've got to wonder--why? (Money.) DePalma's iconic adaptation is over thirty-five years old, and from the looks of the new version's trailer they're banking on young blood and bad memories, because it is beat by beat the same basic film. I don't care that they've gone "back to the book" and this version adheres closer to King's vision--that didn't stop The Shining mini-series from sucking. Why not make like a Python and do something completely different with the property? There's already been a shitty remake and a sequel to the shitty remake and even an ill-advised Broadway musical. You could do worse than make a movie like Dark Touch and slap the...

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Julia Stiles, Scott Speedman And Stephen Rea Anchor Haunted House Thriller OUT OF THE DARK

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 01:45 PM PDT

Given that XYZ Films - where I'm a partner - are executive producers on this, I shall just let the press release do the talking:Los Angeles, CA - April 25, 2013 - Julia Stiles (Silver Linings Playbook, The Bourne Ultimatum), Scott Speedman (The Strangers, The Vow) and Stephen Rea (V for Vendetta, The Crying Game) star in Out of the Dark, a supernatural thriller presented by Participant Media in association with Image Nation and produced by Colombia's Dynamo and Spain's Apaches Entertainment. Participant's Jeff Skoll and Jonathan King and Nick Spicer of XYZ Films serve as executive producers on the film, which began filming in Bogota, Colombia this week. Spanish filmmaker Lluis Quilez is directing the screenplay by Alex & David Pastor and Javier Gullón about...

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Final Trailer For Pixar's MONSTERS UNIVERSITY

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 01:15 PM PDT

I will confess to having a soft spot for Pixar's Monsters Inc. As the first film that The Boy ever really fixated on it is a film that I have seen literally dozens of times - during several screenings of which I was either vomited or shat upon - and yet somehow I still like it. There's just something simply effective about the story, John Goodman is great as Sully and Billy Crystal far less irritating as a little green ball than he normally is. So, yes, I'm looking forward to Monsters University. And now here's a new trailer to try and convince you to look forward to it, too.Ever since college-bound Mike Wazowski (voice of Billy Crystal) was a little monster, he has dreamed...

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Tribeca 2013 Review: THE PRETTY ONE, With a Great Performance by Zoe Kazan In an Uneven Film

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 01:00 PM PDT

Actress Zoe Kazan (The Exploding Girl, Ruby Sparks) shines in a dual role as twin sisters in Jenée LaMarque's debut feature The Pretty One, receiving its world premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Unfortunately, the film Kazan is in (whose screenplay was on the 2011 Black List) is pretty much a tonal mess, veering so wildly from offbeat comedy to melodramatic intensity - sometimes even within the same scene - that the whole endeavor is ultimately a letdown.Kazan plays twin sisters Laurel and Audrey whose personalities and demeanor are polar opposites. Audrey is the titular "pretty one," an outgoing and stylish young woman with a high-powered job selling boutique real estate properties. Laurel, on the other hand is a dowdy, wallflower type who is...

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Review: NO PLACE ON EARTH Goes Dark With History

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 12:00 PM PDT

The new documentary No Place on Earth attempts to take viewers back in time to the dark days of the second world war, when Nazis were pursuing Jews, peril was everywhere, and still no one had any real notion of just how horrifying the truth really was.  Through the use of full-on detailed re-enactments, first time feature film director Janet Tobias attempts to lucidly display the true-life plight of five Ukrainian families that hid in a massive underground cave for well over a year, unable to ever see the sun. Through the bookending exposition offered by Chris Nicola, the expert explorer who recently discovered proof of 20th century human activity in the cave, the unthinkable conditions these people so valiantly toiled in is clearly...

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Hot Docs 2013 Review: THE MANOR is the GODFATHER of Jewish Strip-Club Owning Family Films

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 11:00 AM PDT

About an hour West of Toronto lies Guelph, Ontario. It's a college town, known for its slightly hippie vibe, strong connection with all things agricultural, and a quaint downtown. Attractions include a local brewery and a nearby Antique Festival that's open on Sundays during the summer. What it's not especially known for is The Manor, a strip club built in the mansion built in 1896 by John Sleeman, the namesake of that local brewery. It's probably like almost every strip club you can think of, with cheap beer nights and Amateur events, oil wrestling and loads of (mostly) men coming in to unwind while fake-tittied women gesticulate and writhe about on poles.This was what I was expecting The Manor to be about, the strange, sordid,...

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Review: MUD Soars Far Beyond Its Roots

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 10:01 AM PDT

Jeff Nichols is fully in tune with nature and how people relate to it, reminiscent of certain Australian filmmakers in the 1970s. The feature films he has made so far are pure pieces of modern Americana, though, reflecting a sensibility that is fiercely independent, no matter the varied landscapes that seep into the characters who inhabit them. By "Americana," I mean a dictionary definition of the word: "Things associated with the culture and history of America, esp. the United States." Mud, Nichols' latest film, in no way trumpets American culture as superior to any other; it is, however, firmly rooted in the time and place of its very particular setting, namely, rural Arkansas in the Southern United States. The story revolves around two teenage boys...

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SADAKO Returns For Another Dose Of 3D Horror

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 09:30 AM PDT

She crept off the video tape and through the TV screen of The Ring and onto the web for Sadako 3D and the villain that kicked off the J-horror wave is proving particularly persistent. Yep, Sadako is back once again, Sadako 3D proving a big enough success that it has spawned a sequel. One with a slightly classier, higher end teaser than I would have expected, really.The basic rules have shifted slightly in these latter days films - Sadako's curse is now spread through computer screens rather than video tape - but the essentials remain from the Ringu days. If you see her, bad things will happen. Hanabusa Tsutomu directs with Takimoto Miori in the lead. Check the teaser below....

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Review: Baring Body And Soul In Ulrich Seidl's PARADISE: FAITH

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT

The second installment of the Paradise Trilogy by Austrian provocateur Ulrich Seidl, Paradise: Faith premiered at the Venice Film Fest last year (Love at Cannes 2012 and Hope at the Berlinale 2013). And it will be screening as a part of Film Comment Selects preview at the FSLC this weekend (April 26-27) in New York. It is by far the strongest and most affecting effort among the three.Paradise: Faith tells a story of Annamaria (played with an uninhibited gusto by Maria Hofstätter), last seen in Paradise: Hope, helping her sister Teresa (Margarete Tiesel) prepare for her vacation to Kenya. She is a Catholic whose devotion verges on fanaticism. Like her sister, Annamaria is taking the summer off. But instead of going on a third-world sex tour,...

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SHAUN THE SHEEP Headed To The Big Screen

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 08:30 AM PDT

Initially a spin off from the popular - and Oscar winning - stop motion animated Wallace And Gromit series of short films, Shaun the Sheep has gone on to become arguably the biggest title in the Aardman Animation catalog. Shaun is now the star of his own long running television series, has spawned a spin off series of his own (Timmy Time) and is now following his predecessors on the the big screen.Yep, Shaun is getting a feature film of his own, one in which Shaun's antics lead to their farm home being lost and Shaun needing to trek to the big city to save their Farmer and their home. Richard Starzak and Mark Burton will write and direct with Aardman producing and financial backing...

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Review: PARADISE: LOVE Illuminates Complex Emotional Truths

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love, the first in his trilogy of "paradise" films (next up is Faith followed by Hope), is a confrontational, often ugly depiction of different forms of desperation and exploitation set against a sex tourism backdrop, and indeed, the audience seemed split between vehement disgust and fervent praise. It's no surprise given the subject matter and the characteristically explicit, unflinching way with which Seidl handles the material. While my own opinion leans toward the fervent praise side of the debate, it's still a decidedly flawed film, to the point where I can't really fault the opposition either. The titular paradise is the beachfront of Kenya, where middle-aged European women have taken to hiring African men known as "beach boys" who indulge their emotional...

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Up Next From The Makers Of THE RAID And KILLERS: Joe Taslim Stars In THE NIGHT COMES FOR US

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:45 AM PDT

The night is falling on Jakarta and the makers of The Raid and Killers are coming out to play.Coming next from PT Merantau Films is The Night Comes For Us, a dark action film being co-written by The Raid director Gareth Huw Evans and one half of the Mo Brothers (Macabre, Killers), Timo Tjahjanto, with The Raid co-star Joe Taslim - soon to be seen in The Fast And The Furious Six - slated to take the lead with Evans producing and Tjahjanto directing.With the script still in the works all that has been said publicly about The Night Comes For Us is that it is a neo-noir hitman thriller but with production scheduled for the fall - essentially as soon as Tjahjanto is clear...

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Review: PAIN & GAIN Mocks Meatheads, Is Meatheaded

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:00 AM PDT

Pain & Gain is a brash, puerile action-comedy of errors about a trio of muscle-obsessed idiots who set out to extort money from a sleazy Miami businessman by kidnapping and torturing him. Michael Bay, who directed it, is almost the right person for the job. Almost. Based on real events that unfolded in 1994 and 1995, this version of the story, written by Captain America: The First Avenger scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, emphasizes the goons' crassness, clueless bravado, and misplaced -- almost endearing -- commitment to their stupid ideals. Those qualities are to be found in abundance in Bay's other films (which include Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and the Transformers trilogy). You could make a strong argument for those qualities being evident in Bay...

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Michael Bay Wants to Bring TRANSFORMERS 4 to the Streets of Hong Kong

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 06:00 AM PDT

Michael Bay is planning to shoot parts of the latest installment in the Transformers franchise in Hong Kong. Reportedly, after looking at photographs of different parts of the city, he is most interested in Sham Shui Po because of its unique aesthetic. The district, situated in North West Kowloon, is one of the oldest and most densely populated areas of Hong Kong. The producers have already approached local government officials and businesses to propose the closure of sections of roads for filming.For many years, Hong Kong's film industry has complained bitterly about the lack of support from the HK Government. A recent example of this is the failure to gain approval for Donnie Yen's Iceman Cometh 3D to be filmed on the Tsing Ma Bridge,...

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Udine 2013 Review: Despite Lame Title, HOW TO USE GUYS WITH SECRET TIPS Is a Minor Revelation

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 05:00 AM PDT

Being one of the more tired genres to litter the multiplexes, every so often romantic comedies need a little boost to remind us that they can be worthwhile. Out of all of the national industries that regularly churn them out, this seems to happen the most often in Korean cinema. Many western film viewers were introduced to the country's cinematic output through the contemporary classic My Sassy Girl (2001), which launched the careers of both Jeon Ji-hyun (The Thieves) and Cha Tae-hyun (Speedy Scandal, 2008). Though the industry makes a great number of intensely formulaic and forgettable romcoms, that hasn't stopped gems like Penny Pinchers (2011), Love Fiction and All About My Wife from appearing in recent years. The first few months of 2013 have...

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