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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: DETEKTIV DOWNS Brings a New Dimension to Gumshoe Noir

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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: DETEKTIV DOWNS Brings a New Dimension to Gumshoe Noir

Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: DETEKTIV DOWNS Brings a New Dimension to Gumshoe Noir

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 09:08 PM PDT

A lot of movies about mentally disabled private investigators are gimmicky and insensitive, but not Detektiv Downs! This is surely the most warm-hearted and clever Norwegian movie about a detective with Down syndrome that I have ever seen. What possesses a man like Bard Breien to write and direct a movie in the traditional Bogart noir style but with a protagonist whose world-weary cynicism has been swapped out for a chromosome abnormality? I don't know, but I'm glad he did, because this is one of the more pleasant surprises of the year, a film that works as a straightforward P.I. mystery as well as a tweak of the genre. Our gumshoe, Robert Bogerud (Svein André Hofsø), has a hat, a trench coat, and an office,...

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Fantastic Fest 2013: Images From Day Two - THE SACRAMENT, DETECTIVE DOWNS, GRAND PIANO And Many More!

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 08:30 PM PDT

In this gallery from the second day of the mighty Fantastic Fest exists what might be the best photograph of Nacho Vigolando we will ever see. It was taken during the Chaos Reigns Karaoke Party at the end of day two of the festival....

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TIFF 2013 Review: WHEN JEWS WERE FUNNY, A Serious (And Funny) Testament To A Lost Age

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 08:00 PM PDT

Once upon a time, Jews were funny. You'd turn on Ed Sullivan, and some Ashkenaz from the Lower East Side would be kvetching about his wife (please), or slyly kibitzing about slurping soup in a deli. Alan Zweig's documentary makes a bold claim, that 20th Century American comedy is Jewish comedy. Born from Yiddish theatre during the vaudeville age, its the almost Talmudic cadence of performance born from Eastern European immigrants that provides an almost musical delivery to standup comedy. Think of the rhythm of an Alan King, a Rodney Dangerfield, or a Seinfeld, and you get a sense of the Jewish DNA in what generations have considered funny.It's an incredibly Jewish thing to be obsessed about being Jewish (see this for one of many...

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TIFF 2013 Review: UNFORGIVEN, A Remake That Acts As Love Letter Rather Than Redux

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 07:00 PM PDT

The cross-pollination between Japanese chambara films and the traditional Hollywood-style Western has resulted in some of the most important films in cinema history. As Kurosawa looked to John Ford for inspiration, the cycle would continue in the 60s and 70s as Italians like Sergio Leone would traipse all over Spain remaking one Japanese film after another. The star of many of these projects, Leone's Mifune, was a tall lanky TV actor best known at the time for his role on Rawhide.In 1992, Clint Eastwood toyed with his own mythology with the extraordinary Unforgiven. Telling the tale of a former gunslinger forced out of retirement to settle one last score, it would go on to win a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture and Director for...

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Fantastic Fest 2013: Images From Day One - MACHETE KILLS, SEPTIC MAN, PROXY And Many More!

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 06:30 PM PDT

Welcome to the first of many galleries committed to giving you a visual essay of the treats and fun going on in Austin at Fantastic Fest this week. A small gaggle of our intrepid staff is there right now whooping it up Texas style so the rest of us get the enviable task of sorting through a bevy of images from each day at the festival. Goody. Todd claims that the gang at ground zero cannot commit to creating these galleries because of dodgy wi-fi. Those of us who have been to many a Fantastic Fest, including myself, know this is simply not the case. I feel that I should be quoting Pickles from that episode of Metalocalypse when he tries to buy 'that cinnamon...

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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: LOVE ETERNAL, Capturing Sparks Of Life Flickering Beneath The Darkness

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 06:14 PM PDT

An everlasting sadness has gathered in the soul of Ian Harding, and he embraces it. The spectre of death hangs over Love Eternal, yet it's never oppressively dour or aggressively doom-laden. Death may be the most important thing in the world to Ian -- and his daily life reflects that -- but seldom has a film in recent memory captured the sparks of life that flicker beneath the darkness as well as this one does. As a boy, Ian lost his father, and he's never been the same since. Withdrawing into his light, airy, and spacious room, he is provided for by his mother, but beyond that, his only contact with the outside world is through the internet. By his late teens, he is convinced...

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Cinefilipino Review: Ron Bryant's BINGOLERAS is All Romp with Little Pleasure

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 04:00 PM PDT

Ron Bryant's Bingoleras is a comedy of scant pleasures and even scanter insights. Sure, the jokes are plenty. However, for a film that prefers to abandon reason and logic for an overflowing stream of supposedly funny skits and sketches, it lacks any real wit. Early Almodovar is an obvious inspiration as several of Bryant's gags rely on sexual antics, as observed from Catholic eyes. He indulges in the sudden raunchy relationship of Mimi (Charee Pineda), dressed in a nun's habit, and Dodong (Junjun Quintana), the helper of the parish church, milking the irreverent repercussions of their very unique affair for everything its worth. Also targeted for laughs is the broken marriage of Jean (Eula Valdez), a lesbian socialite and Wally (Art Acuna), gay lawyer, with...

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Watch The Explosive First Teaser For Indonesia's GUARDIAN

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 03:00 PM PDT

I think I have never seen a more ballistic teaser trailer for an Indonesian movie than the official teaser of Guardian, a femme fatale action film from director Helfi Kardit, which marks his 19th feature. The story idea came from the executive producer Sarjono Sutrisno and produce under his production house Skylar Pictures. Here's the official synopsis:After Wisnu got killed in his own house, his wife Sarah urge their daughter Marsya to train martial art which she despise. Until the day Paquita and her gang come to hunt them. Sarah ask for help from her dead husband best friend in the force, Captain Roy, who later found out they also hunted by the men who work for a guy name Oscar. as the story unfold they'll...

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Review: Katharian Mückstein's TALEA, a promising but not convincing look at a Mother-Daughter relationship

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 02:00 PM PDT

Having been one of Haneke's students at film school in Vienna, Katharina Mückstein chose to emancipate from her almighty teacher, quit film school and made her debut feature Talea (Italian for sprout), the story of a mother-daughter relationship that is overshadowed by the past imprisonment of the mother.Jasmin, is a fourteen year old teenager, struggling with life with a mother who was just released from prison. Now Jasmin desperately tries to spend some time with her mother and runs away from her foster home.Mückstein tells a coming-of-age story here, and she is deeply interested in the alienation of the daughter caused by the forced separation of her mother. Though the movie occasionally offers brief glimpses of hope it becomes apparent that Jasmin and her mother...

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TIFF 2013 Review: MANAKAMANA Transcends The Simplicity Of Its Journey

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 01:30 PM PDT

Two elderly women sit in a gondola while it travels down a verdant Nepalese mountain.  Having visited the Manakamana temple earlier in the day, they have purchased ice cream on a stick for the ride down and it is melting in the hot interior of the cable car. They laugh and carry on, unguardedly about the futility of neatly consuming the frozen dessert.  The simple joy might be the single best scene seen in film all year.  It's certainly the warmest. How else would this image be possible without Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's super-16mm camera (presumably travelling without an operator) sitting on the opposite bench in the car?  They allow us to stare without being impolite or influencing the experience in the Heisenbergian sense....

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Fantastic Fest 2013: Tamae Garateguy Drunkenly Reviews Tamae Garateguy's SHE WOLF

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 01:00 PM PDT

My movie is the World's most innovative film, I like sex. And my movie has the hottest scenes and funny Anios the last 30, first Was the empire of the senses, I remember that movie was hot, I liked the scene of the knife, but we were talking about shewolf. It is colossal, is original, authorial, has the icon of penis trauma fantastic fest, the girls are cute, the boys also, how good is the Fantastic fest, there are guys very cute, cute cute! Seeketh telling a lover .... Listen I m Shewolf principal, I like sex And I want you to have sex!! Ok I m Latinoamerican Wonderwoman! no, I'm nympho!But we were talking about the movie and not me, it's noise, it's punk,...

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Watch The Chilling First Teaser For Victor Vu's VENGEFUL HEART

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 12:30 PM PDT

Vietnamese director Victor Vu refuses to be confined to any one style or genre. He's done comedies, he's done action, he's done thrillers but he started off with horror and he's returning to that world now with Vengeful Heart, a chiller that could be his most poised and polished yet.Vengeful Heart tells the story of a bridegroom who escorts his new wife to Da Lat resort after heart transplant surgery. But the new heart in her chest is cursed, causing the ghost of a strange young girl to appear, which leads the couple into a frightening nightmare.We ran a behind the scenes reel from this one a while back and while that was already impressive it is greatly improved upon by the just released first teaser....

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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: O'APOSTOLO, A Beguiling Fantasy Bolstered By Stop-Motion Animation

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 12:02 PM PDT

As delightful as it can be to watch stop-motion animation on the big screen, it can't entirely cover up other areas where a film may fall short. Case in point: the eminently watchable yet only intermittently compelling Spanish stop-motion animated feature O'Apostolo (English title: The Apostle). It is a slight, ghostly fantasy that is definitely bolstered by its beguiling, hand-crafted appearance. From a narrative standpoint, though, the film dawdles when it could be exploring either the characters or its surroundings more closely, forcing the superior third act to start over, story-wise, in order for its resolution to have any impact. The set-up is good: two career thieves escape from prison so they can recover jewels that one of them has hidden in a boarding house...

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Watch Tony Jaa Like You've Never Seen Him Before In ONG BARK: THE BEGINNING

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 11:30 AM PDT

File this under the "What the?!" video of the day.While always playing the no-nonsense valiant hero in films, Thai action star Tony Jaa reveals an unusual goofy side of himself in the parody short Ong Bark: The Beginning.  It's got a Michael Jackson-esque dance sequence, the return of David Ismalone as Mad Dog from Ong Bak and a chicken.  Perhaps Jaa can branch out to comedies in future projects?You'll find the video embedded below....

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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: MIRAGE MEN Offers Disclosure And Discomfort In Equal Measure

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 11:00 AM PDT

It was a classic Fantastic Fest experience. A documentary with a seemingly wonky premise that ultimately offered profound food for thought. It seems fitting that in the same year the festival honors Errol Morris it also embraces Mirage Men. The premise? That the UFO narrative and much of the conspiracy narrative, that have created such enthusiastic communities of true believers are in fact largely the creation of a constant stream of misinformation by various US Governmental agencies. What sounds like a pitch for a TV show is in fact irrefutable. But what's also irrefutable is that people are pretty glib in the sort of thought they give to stuff like this. Of course the UFO folks are nuts. Of course the government lies. It seems like...

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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: LFO Tunes In Dark Comedy And Control Issues

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 09:00 AM PDT

I love minor keys, and the new Swedish film LFO is filled with them. Deftly casting a spell with low-frequency hums, surging synthesizers, and enigmatic characters, it's immediately captivating, even though the setting is not immediately apparent. Initially it reminded me of Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio, in which a sound engineer is infected by the murderous atmosphere in an Italian studio where he works on horror movies. But Antonio Tublen, who directed LFO from his own original script, has a very different kind of horror in mind. The film's sly, outrageous wit contributes to a jaunty atmosphere, creating an environment where, literally, anything goes. Robert Nord (Patrik Karlson) is the putative protagonist, a sad sack whose somber appearance -- uncombed hair, unshaven face, shirt...

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Fantastic Fest 2013 Review: GRAND PIANO Executes Its Goofy Premise with Precision and Skill

Posted: 22 Sep 2013 07:00 AM PDT

Make no mistake, the premise of Grand Piano is 100 percent ridiculous. Do you remember Phone Booth, where Colin Farrell couldn't hang up or he'd be killed by a sniper? It's like that, only it's concert pianist Elijah Wood who has to keep playing or risk being shot. "Now you know the true meaning of stage fright!" is something that the villain really says to him. There's also an element of the plot that's not entirely dissimilar to the Bugs Bunny gag where Yosemite Sam has rigged a certain key on the piano to explode when Bugs plays it. So yes, it's complete nonsense. The bad guy's plan, the mechanics of the plot, the pianist's ability to multitask while performing -- ludicrous, all of it....

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