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17th Japanese Film Festival 2013: Twitch Interviews Two Greats!

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17th Japanese Film Festival 2013: Twitch Interviews Two Greats!

17th Japanese Film Festival 2013: Twitch Interviews Two Greats!

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST

The 17th Japanese Film Festival is on full swing in Melbourne, playing commercial fare, classics and festival favorites that have been igniting the rest of the world this year.Twitch colleagues Andrew Mack and Diva Vélez got to sit down with two of the great and prominent directors featured in the festival, check out their in-depth interviews below!Shinsuke Sato and Library Wars:Shinsuke Sato is an award winning film director, screenplay writer and video game designer. He joined a collaboration of Production IG and Fuji Television on a full-length animation film Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, which screened at the 10th Japanese Film Festival in 2011. He directed GANTZ and the sequel GANTZ Perfect Answer. Both films became box office hits grossing over 300 million yen....

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Warner Bros Wants Iñárritu For THE JUNGLE BOOK

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu is in talks to direct Warner Brothers' live-action adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic The Jungle Book. This is, indeed, a completely unexpected and bizarre move but "el Negro" Iñárritu might follow up Birdman, which just wrapped production, filming the adventures of Mowgli from a script by Callie Kloves. Steve Kloves, writer of seven Harry Potter films, is producing what it looks like Warner Bros' answer to Disney's new The Jungle Book movie, recently offered to Iron Man director Jon Favreau. Because the book is in the public domain, two live-action adaptations from Hollywood could hit the screens around the same time. As soon as Warner confirms Iñárritu as the director of their The Jungle Book, we'll let you know....

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FAST & FURIOUS Creators Release Paul Walker Tribute Video

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 11:30 PM PST

The team behind the hit franchise that propelled Paul Walker to stardom have released an official tribute video to the actor, who was killed on 30 November in a horrific car accident. The video shows clips from all five Fast & Furious films in which Walker appeared (he was absent from the third film, Tokyo Drift), accompanied by the track "Coming Home" from P. Diddy and Skylar Grey.Universal Pictures has announced that production on Fast & Furious 7, which was on a production break for Thanksgiving when Walker was killed, has been postponed indefinitely, and may yet be scrapped entirely. The studio has also announced that a portion of the profits from Blu-ray and DVD sales of Fast & Furious 6 - which goes on...

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Ben Foster Leads The Cast Of Duncan Jones' WARCRAFT

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 05:30 PM PST

Warcraft, the ever popular fantasy game franchise from Blizzard Entertainment (also makers of Starcraft), has been set to come to the big screen for nigh on half a decade now thanks to the folks at Legendary Pictures. Once set to roll with Sam Raimi at the helm, the film is now in the entirely capable hands of one Duncan Jones. With the film set to roll before cameras (and at the desks of visual effects artists) early next year, now is as good a time to announce a cast as ever. While some of them could eventually end up being elves, and others orcs, Jones and co. decided to cast actors who are at least initially of the human variety. The most interesting name among...

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Martin Cuenca's Thriller-Love Story CANNIBAL Set for North American Release

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 04:30 PM PST

While I wasn't able to attend TIFF this year, a colleague in the press office (knowing of my love for Spanish film & my film criticism) made sure that I was able to see Martin Cuenca's thriller Cannibal. And I'm certainly glad she did, as I expect it will be on my top 10 of the year list.  Luckily, North American audiences will be able to find out why: Film Movement have picked up the rights, with plans for release in 2014.The film stars Antonio de la Torre as Carlos, a tailor of men's suits who lives a relatively isolated life in Granada. He is also a cannibal, killing young, foreign women with few ties who cross his path. After he murders and eats his...

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Interview: ROCANROL '68 Director Gonzalo Benavente Takes A Trip Back To The 60s

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST

True story: back in the 1960s, a Peruvian band called Los Mads were playing a gig that, through sheer chance, had Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in the crowd. The Stones were so impressed with the band, they offered to bring them back to London to play a concert. That's just one of the many legends that sprung from the rock and roll scene in the capital city of Lima, one where local bands like Los Saicos, Los Yorks, and the aforementioned Mad's were household names and had every teen tapping their feet.This was right in the midst of hippie culture and the "flower power" movement, a vibrant, fun time which was cut short when the decade ended and the country found itself under the...

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First Images From Danish Martial Arts Short ECHOES OF A RONIN

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST

What's this? A new martial arts themed project? From Denmark? Yes, the Scandinavian country may not be the most obvious source of new fight stars - though Natasha Arthy's 2007 effort Fighter is pretty damn good and star Semra Turan absolutely deserves a return trip to the big screen - and yet it will soon bring us a new short film backed by New Danish Screen titled Echoes of A Ronin. Boasting fight choreography by Tim Man (fight coordinator on Scott Adkins star vehicle Ninja 2) with David Sakurai in the lead and Shaky Gonzalez directing the short explores aspecs of the bushido code in a contemporary story also influenced by elements of fairy tale and graphic novels.We've been promised a trailer for this one...

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Sundance Competition & Next Lineups Announced

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 01:50 PM PST

The day all the indie film maniacs have been hotly anticipating has finally arrived. The first Sundance 2014 announcements have just dropped! And boy are there some interesting sounding titles! The marquee US Dramatic Competition features films from the likes of directors Jim Mickle, Kat Candler, David Zellner, John Slattery, and Joe Swanberg. The acting talent on hand includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Christina Hendricks, Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham, Aaron Paul, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi, John Hawkes, Kristen Wiig, Anne Hathaway, Don Johnson, Sam Shepard, and Kristen Stewart. And that's just one section! There are also plenty of golden nuggets in the US Documentary, World Dramatic, World Documentary, and Next sections. Take a look at the announcements broken up by section below and let...

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Voyeurism Is A Deadly Game In First Teaser For CJ Wallis' BB

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 12:00 PM PST

Likely best known to regular readers of Twitch as a regular collaborator of the Soska Sisters - for whom he shot, edited and appeared in Dead Hooker In A Trunk - Vancouver based CJ Wallis steps out on his own with new feature film BB.BB is the provocative story of a girl named Leah who, under the name "Candy Cummings", performs strip shows online from her apartment for thousands of strangers every day, never fully knowing the extent of evils that could be watching on the other side of the screen.Newcomer Jennifer Mae takes the lead role as Leah and if the synopsis and Wallis' involvement in Dead Hooker have you thinking this is going to be some sort of grindhouse throwback the first teaser...

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TIFF Announces Canada's Top Ten

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 11:00 AM PST

It's become something of a December tradition and very much a talking point among film folk here in Canada: The TIFF Canada's Top Ten list. Every year the Toronto International Film Festival Group assembles a jury of Canadian film experts to select their picks as the ten best Canadian features and ten best Canadian shorts. As always there are some notable omissions - indie darling The Dirties did not make the cut, nor did new titles by Atom Egoyan and Bruce McDonald - and pleasant surprises, among this year's being the inclusion of Jeff Barnaby's gritty debut Rhymes For Young Ghouls. Here's the complete announcement: TORONTO - Tonight TIFF kicked off its celebration of the best in Canadian film with the announcement of the feature...

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Meet Gal Gadot, Your New Israeli Wonder Woman

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 10:22 AM PST

Gal Gadot, former soldier, former Miss Israel, and a recent featured player in the Fast and Furious franchise, has been cast as Wonder Woman in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie, according to Variety. It's not yet known if the role will be significant to the plot or a cameo / set-up for a future stand-alone or Justice League team-up movie. Zack Snyder is directing the sequel to Man of Steel, with Henry Cavill returning as Superman and Ben Affleck joining the fight as Batman. I expect we'll hear more before the movie is released on July 17, 2015. Gadot played a former Mossad agent in Fast 5, returning in the same role as she became a more integral member of the team in Furious...

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17th Japanese Film Festival 2013 Review: ORPHEUS' LYRE Plucks Uncanny Hope, Tunes Tragic Death

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 08:30 AM PST

Turning to Wikipedia, this wordy title actually refers to the mythic Greek figure of Orpheus, a man who used his musical instrument, a lyre, to charm all things in life, even returning his wife from death. While it is not a literal lyre that is used in the stirring score, composer Mamuro Samuragouchi evokes a piercing sound that greatly affects and moves.Drama and film legend Ryoko Hirosue stars as tragic mother Yoko. She has just lost her daughter in a freak accident. The film begins with an entrancing and ethereal funeral. The small coffin is loaded into the hearse and quietly disappears into pure white. Before the credits have even begun Orpheus' Lyre has commanded the tone and emotion effortlessly. The proceeding scenes play out...

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Bloody New Still From RESOLUTION Directors' SPRING

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

Someone needs to give the shower a bath in this bloody new image from Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's Spring. The Evil Dead's Lou Taylor Pucci stars with Nadia Hilker in what promises to be an unusual fusion of genre and dramatic elements, a blend that anyone familiar with the directing duo's previous Resolution know full well they can handle with ease."Spring" follows young man in a personal tailspin as he flees California to the Italian coast, where he meets a woman carrying a dark secret.That's Hilker in the shower up above and clearly her day is not going particularly well. You can click the image below for a larger version....

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Destroy All Monsters: The Awkward Moment When A Movie Star Stops Being One

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 07:00 AM PST

We need celebrities like medieval peasants needed kings and queens. Not to rule over us or impose taxes; but to offer us a tantalizingly distant glimpse into a glittering world wholly not our own, but of a piece with our own. The version of the universe where we won and everything's great. Movie stars are the best possible version of this phenomenon, because in addition to offering those selfsame tantalizing glimpses, they get at us by way of a job description that specifically requires us to identify with them on some level or another - to project ourselves into their bodies for good or ill, and live a different life with them for two hours in the dark, and thereby wander away from our own...

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Spike Jonze's HER Gets A New, Romantic, Haunting Trailer

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 06:30 AM PST

A new trailer for Spike Jonze's Her captures some of the film's magic without ruining any of the hidden treats. Joaquin Phoenix stars as a lonely soul who is still getting over the dissolution of his marriage to Rooney Mara. He buys a new operating system with advanced artificial intelligence -- think Skynet in the Terminator movies, but without the impulse to stamp out humanity -- and falls in love with it / her, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. When it played at the New York Film Festival, our own Dustin Chang gave it a very positive review (linked below), but the premise sounded nuts to me, even if the story is set in the near future. But then I saw it at an advance screening...

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Will FAST & FURIOUS 7 Really Scrap Everything And Start Over Again?

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 06:00 AM PST

As family and friends are still grieving over the tragic death of actor Paul Walker last Saturday, Universal Studios has been placed in the uncomfortable position of deciding what to do about Fast & Furious 7. And, though it sounds unbelievable to me, it appears they are giving serious consideration to scrapping everything they've shot so far and starting over again, according to The Wrap. The massive production, reportedly budgeted near $200 million, is more than halfway completed, but many of the key scenes involving Walker have not yet been shot. The studio is heavily invested in the future of the franchise, which has earned hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. Insurance would reportedly allow the studio to recoup the expense, if the decision is...

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THE LOST YEARS: Young Jesus As An Exorcist, From Eli Roth

Posted: 04 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST

Jesus cast out demons after he began his public ministry at the age of 30, according to the Bible, but did he spend his younger years as an exorcist? That's the premise of a show under consideration by The History Channel, according to Deadline, with Eli Roth on board as a producer. To be specific, The Lost Years is said to explore the years of Jesus' life that are not covered in the Bible (ages 13-30). Reportedly, it was "conceived in the horror genre, and it explores a theory about Jesus' origins as an exorcist. ... that, as the most powerful healer of his time, Jesus performed rituals akin to exorcism." Scott Kosar conjured up the idea -- his writing credits include The Machinist and...

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