FanTasia Festival 2004

Montreal's FanTasia Festival advertises itself as "North-America's premier genre film festival", and who can doubt it looking at the festival's hefty line-up showcasing the latest and best and wildest of Thai, Korean, Japanese genre cinema, and also adding some homegrown Quebecois efforts into the mix. Also spotlighted with special retrospectives are Spanish horror movie icon Paul Naschy and Hong Kong kung fu moguls the Shaw Brothers. The FanTasia Festival is credited with introducing international audiences to the imaginative excesses of Takeshi Miike and having the international premiere of Ringu, which sparked interest in the current cycle of Japanese horror. It seems like quite a show, and worth a trip if you're near by (I, unfortunately, am not... maybe next year).

Il Thrilling Italiano

More giallo stuff-- By far, this is the best English language introduction and overview to the perverse thrills of Italian giallo films I've found yet on the web. From The Uppers Organization, "Your Guide to the Pleasures of Modern Living". Also check out their overviews of 60s Italian fumetti.

Carlo Jacono

While some may know that the incredibly violent and sexy Italian murder mysteries filmed in the 60s and 70s known as giallos inherited its name from a series of mystery novels published by the publisher Mondadori which were easily recognizable by their bright yellow covers and garish illustrations, very few know of the contributions of the cover artists of these cheaply produced paperbacks. One such artist is Carlo Jacono, whose work has a simple pulp grace and pop craftsmanship that sets it apart from other pulp artists in Italy, or elsewhere for that matter. Jacono also did some interesting work for the Italian Urania science fiction series.

Some Films by Finns

Here's an interesting collection of Finnish movie posters from the 50s through the 70s. Most of the films are not from Finland, but some are.

Leone on Ford

Sergio Leone on John Ford:

"'As Romans, we have a strong sense of the fragility of empires. It is enough to look around us. I admire very much that great optimist, John Ford. His naivete permitted him to make Cinderella - I mean, The Quiet Man. But, as Italians, we see things differently. That is what I have tried to show in my films. The great plains - they are very beautiful, but, when the storm comes, should people bury their heads in the sand of the desert? I believe that people like to be treated as adults from time to time. Because a man is wearing sombrero and because he rides a horse, does not necessarily mean that he is imbecile...

Ford, because of his European origins - as a good Irishman - has always seen the problem from a Christian point of view ... his characters and protagonists always looks forward to a rosy, fruitful future. Whereas I see the history of the West as really the reign of violence by violence'"

From Fistful of Leone.

Nick Ray on Metafilter

Extraordinary Metafilter uber-post on Nicholas Ray with 42 (yes, 42!) Ray-related links. Way to go, matteo! Might as well take a day off!

Kubrick Meets Escher

Another 2001 conundrum -- It's one of the most impressive shots from a movie that's loaded with impressive shots: the Pan Am space hostess walks up a circular walkway until we see her upside down and she delivers meals to the craft's cockpit. While 2001 has been rightfully lauded for its scientific accuracy and plausibility, Agostino Ambrosio has explicated from the evidence offered from the film how the physical geography of the Aries 1-B spacecraft is completely illogical, and how it more resembles an Escher illustration than a scientifically sound ship.

Popcorn For Your Head

Popcorn for your head -- For your perusal, a list of films divided and catagorized by philosophical theme. Film buffs may find the list lacking as it seems to only include recent Hollywood efforts (although in defense of the list's creator, it appears to be a list made primarily for beginning students), and most of those are science fiction or fantastic in nature. SF, as a literary genre, has always been one to put ideas and hypotheticals to the forefront, and it would seem to follow that SF films should do likewise. However, instead of constructing taut trampolines intended for philosophical leaps, films such as The Matrix, Minority Report, and Vanilla Sky tend to use these ideas (usually the problems of identity, perception, and deception) as a plot twist to take us to the next shock and awe action sequence. It seems like so much window dressing. Even a great movie like 2001 (probably my all-time favorite) has this problem. While one can wrap their mind around the meanings of the monolith and the star-child (which after 36 years of media promulgation seems almost kitschy), it only gets in the way of enjoying some of the most beautiful cinema and sly satire ever accomplished. For a more satisfying philosophical climax in a science fiction film, look no further than the defiantly existential ending of Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man. Maybe it's dime store metaphysics, but it's quite unique, especially for a Hollywood film from the '50s. "To God, there is no zero. I still exist!"

Joyce and The Volta Cinematograph

As we celebrate the Bloomsday Centenary, we also mustn't forget that James Joyce was also an early champion of the nascent art form of the cinema. After some time abroad, Joyce and his family returned to Dublin in 1909. It was at this time that Joyce opened and ran Ireland's first cinema, The Volga Cinematograph. According to film historian Luke McKernan, Joyce's programming at the Volga was eclectic and diverse. He exhibitions ran the gamut from exotic travelogues to Louis Feuillade. These films are now being compiled as The Volta Programme by McKernan, an attempt to replicate an evening of Joyce programmed films and to maybe show the influence the very young medium had on his work.

The Volga did not succeed, and Joyce headed to Trieste and to bigger and better things. But he never lost his enthusiasm for cinema. After Ulysses was published, he asked Eisenstein to consider a cinematic adaptation of the novel. Joyce even preferred actor George Arliss to play Bloom.

More on I, Robot

More on I, Robot -- Director Alex Proyas wasn't too crazy about the trailer Fox put together for his sci-fi opus so he edited his own version and posted it on his Mystery Clock website. Frankly, I'm still not impressed. Via The Movie Blog.

I, Not Amused

I have to admit it's been 20+ years since I've read Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, but when I recently viewed the trailer for the new film version (you can watch it here, if you so desire) I found myself a bit perplexed. I saw nothing of Asimov's collection of robot stories within the standard Will Smith sci-fi actioner except the inclusion of the classic 3 Laws of Robotics, which every SF fan knows by heart. And even then, the 3 laws are thrown out the window when the robots start killing people.

Apparently, the title of the movie is I, Robot not because it was an adaptation of Asimov's book, but because the director, Alex Proyas, probably thought it was a kick-ass title for a summer blockbuster. Jayme Lynn Blaschke of RevolutionSF has a fairly comprehensive wrap-up of what seems to be another classic case of Hollywood bending over backwards to do anything but the right thing.

The Older Wilder

He was Billy Wilder's brother, older by one year. His name was Willie Wilder and he made a good living selling women's handbags in New York. An apt example of the American dream (hardworking immigrant version), and wanting to share his new world success, in 1935 he asked his younger brother Billy to come to America. With his movie career at a standstill and the Nazis in power, Billy jumped at the opportunity. Just as plucky and interprising as his brother Willie was in accumulating his fortune, Billy went west to California, roomed with Peter Lorre, learned English from listening to baseball games on the radio, teamed with Charles Brackett, and started writing and then directing some great movies. Soon, Billy's success and wealth surpassed his older brother's. Apparently, this didn't sit well with Willie.

Evidently thinking that if his brother could, he could too, Willie sold his business and moved his family to Hollywood in 1945. He had enough connections (and, no doubt, enough liquid cash) to start producing and directing films. These films were produced in the depths of Poverty Row, with emaciated budgets, skeletal sets, and schedules that hardly lasted a week. When he first started directing, he used the name William Wilder in the credits. He then changed it to W. Lee Wilder, in order not to confuse his film credits with his much more famous (and Oscar winning) brother. He needn't have bothered. The older Wilder's most famous film is probably Killers From Space, which is probably best known for the ludicrous appearance of its aliens. Other highlights from his filmography include Phantom From Space, The Snow Creature, and The Man Without a Body.

Despite living in the same town, and sharing the same profession, the two brothers rarely spoke. Billy saw one of his brother's films, didn't like it, and never saw another one. Billy rarely discussed his brother, but when he did, he was usually dismissive. "He was a fool," he once said. "He lived in America many years before I even came here. I came here, really kind of pushed by Hitler. He was in the leather-goods business—he manufactured handbags. And then one day he said, ‘Well, if my brother can do it, I can do it too.’ He sold his business, he bought a house here, and started making pictures, one worse than the other, and then he died." Billy also referred to his brother as a "dull son of a bitch".

Sibling rivalry? It's quite apparent some odd fraternal dynamic existed between the two Wilders. One can see resentment, embarassment, envy, snobbery and arrogance. There's no doubt more to the story, but the secrets probably died with the principals. For a lot more info, here's an interesting piece by Allen Frost on the films of W. Lee Wilder, and considers what moviemaking lessons he may have learned from his more illustrious brother. Very little, it appears, but was it because the older Wilder was too arrogant to listen, or was Billy too disdainful to even offer advice?

Joe Stalin, Cinema Fiend

Joe Stalin, Cinema Fiend -- Stalin loved movies. He loved Tarzan pictures. He also liked American Westerns, digging on the lone hero archetypes and the harsh and arbritary nature of frontier justice. He also wanted to kill John Wayne. He also told Sergei Eisenstein how to make films. While Eisenstein was making Ivan the Terrible, Stalin offered this insight: "Ivan was very cruel. You can show he was cruel. But you must show why he needed to be cruel." He was also a prude. He hated outward signs of affection in movies, and once, outraged and apparently apoplectic after witnessing one long, slow, soulful kiss on the big screen, he forbade any kissing in any Soviet picture.

Boca do Lixo

Boca do Lixo - it means "Mouth of Garbage" in Portuguese, and it's one of the sleazier and most crime-ridden parts of Sao Paulo (the name is a play on a much swankier and wealthier part of town, Boca do Luxo, "Mouth of Luxury"). It's also the neighborhood where some of Brazil's sleazier cinematic offerings were shot. Consider these films to be the moist and grimier flipside to Brazil's Cinema Novo, a homegrown movement that borrowed from neo-realism and ethnographic films to address the country's political and social ills. Boca do Lixo films instead took their cues from the avant-garde and popular culture. Among the favorites of the Cinema Marginal crowd (as they were known) was Jose Mojica Marins, who starred and directed a series of lurid and primitive horror films in the early '60s as the grimly Nietzchean Ze do Caixao (Coffin Joe).

The signature film of this underground movement was Rogerio Sganzerla's O Bandido da Luz Vermelha (The Red Light Bandit), which seems to be an amalgam of underground and popular tendancies. Its subject matter makes the movie seem like classic gindhouse and drive-in fare: a man breaks into women's houses, illuminates their faces with a red flashlight, talks to them, and then rapes and kills them. Beyond this exploitative aspect, the film also addresses issues of cultural identity, and parodies Brazilian popular culture (this is all based on descriptions of the film -- sadly, this film is not available in the States).

While Sganzerla had aspirations to art and used the "aesthetics of garbage" to make commentaries on the state of Brazil, other films made in the Boca do Lixo had no such pretensions. Taking advantage of the loosening of moral strictures (and in spite of the military dictatorship), these filmmakers started churning out sleazy sex pictures like pornochanchadas, an indigenous form of sex comedy (which borrowed the name chanchada from another uniquely Brazilian cinematic genre, the samba-musical). These movies were cheap and easy to make, and they were big hits at the box office. Some of the higher-end of these vehicles even crossed over to the US like Lady on the Bus and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (the latter of which is not a pornochanchada per se, but an adaptation of a literary novel by Jorge Amado that neverthless carries many of the sexy and ribald trappings of the pornochanchadas). These two films, featuring the talents of the statuesque and often nude Sonia Braga, were often shown on late-night Cinemax in the '80s.

But Boca do Lixo films generally did not make it beyond the Brazilian borders. They were homegrown entertainments from the heady days before globalized cinema (i.e., Hollywood dominated). The graphics used to market these pictures would put your garden variety American pornographer to shame (particularly the one advertising Ou Da... Ou Desce).

You can also listen to some of the music of these kinds of films, via streaming audio (Windows Media) courtesy of Phono 70, an excellent online radio show that specializes in Brazilian rarities.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

An appreciative shout-out to Filmbrain for including Bitter Cinema in his overview of film related blogs. Very happy to be among such distinguished company.

And giving credit where credit is due, thanks to Filmbrain's enthusiastic and thoughtful reviews, I have recently been bitten by the Korean Film bug. Saw a scratchy DVD-R of Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance over the weekend. What an exquisitely odd and brilliant film! I was half expecting the fist in your face cinematics that Miike is (in)famous for, but little did I realize that Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance would be such a somber poem on the human costs of vengeance (and I use the term poem advisedly: the film's elliptical structure and visual strokes do not explicate the narrative, nor push it along in a Hollywood fashion, but instead builds layers of emotional and intellectual responses that transcend the narrative --much like a good poem). It plays like a dream, or rather like a nightmare. Imagine yourself in the middle of a darkened highway, totally naked, less one kidney (shoddily removed by a junkie surgeon), deaf and dumb, trying to hitch a ride back home as autos whip by, unconcerned. Our tragic hero Ryu finds himself in such a situation. While the scene can be considered comic, Park's close-ups of Ryu whimpering in the dark has the pathos hitting you like a 2X4. The movie's filled with many scenes like this (another one is when Ryu is holding his girlfriend's hand in the elevator --if you've seen it, you would know how wonderfully touching and tragic it is), and it's the humanity that sets Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance above a lot of know-it-all post-modern slash-and-dash neo-pulp (heads up, Messrs. Miike and Tarantino). It's good to mix a little Truffaut in with your Godard once in a while.

1219 Sample Sources

A list of 1219 sample sources in various recordings, of which almost all are from movies. Number one? That distinction belongs to Blade Runner, which seems obvious enough, considering that film's place and importance within cyber and techno undergrounds. Other popular sources include Star Trek (actually a cheat, as it encompasses all the movies, and the TV shows), Apocalypse Now, Aliens, and, surprisingly, Exorcist III. It's interesting to note how the genres break down. There's science fiction (which are sampled by mainly techno and electronic acts), horror (metal and industrial), and gangster films (hip hop). Even Godard is included, with Alphaville coming in at 263, although it misses Cobra Verde's rip of Alpha 60's voice in their album Viva la Muerte.

Non EC Pre-Code Horror

Speaking of non-EC pre-code horror comics, here's an informative article about just that. Contrary to common knowledge, E.C. did not invent the horror comic, nor were they the first to realize the first successful horror comic series. They were the best, but they weren't the only ones who provided quality chills.

Enter These Weird Worlds

Enter These Weird Worlds -- A nice collection of '50s horror and crime comic book covers. A lot of non-EC titles I've never seen before.