Film at Eleven

After a successful launch in the USA and Canada, No Right Turn (review, trailer) finally returns home and with a much anticipated Region 2 DVD release in Europe.

Working with ground breaking distribution company Another World Entertainment, the movie will street on April 14, 2010.

Rachel Grubb is a pin-up model that’s been compared to Bettie Page. She’s a Scream Queen with more than 30 films under her belt. She’s also an award-winning producer, writer and director. And for one night on March 26 in Las Vegas, genre fans can get up close and personal with her for $5 as PollyGrind.com presents a grindhouse event honoring Grubb.

The event at the Sci-Fi Center will kickoff at 8 p.m. with a batch of trailers, followed by the Las Vegas premiere of the Minnesotan beauty’s award-winning directorial debut Why Am I In A Box?. There will also possibly be other footage shown, such as sneak preview clips of upcoming projects.

Grubb, along with actress and model Lisa Pechmiller, will be on hand after the cinema fun for a Q&A, meet and greet and autograph session. There will also be collectables such as poker chips, trading Terror Cards, as well as DVDs and photos for sale at the event.

Grubb has been featured in the indie horror films Terror Overload, Tales of the Dead, 13 Hours in a Warehouse, Bad Girls Burn in Hell, Strip Club Slasher, Camp Kill and Cave Women on Mars, to name a few. In 2009 alone, she appeared in 13 different projects. Just this week Why Am I In A Box? won six Creative Spirit Awards, including golds for low budget feature, original comedy, originality and film feature. Not bad for somebody who a very short time ago considered herself
“just a writer.”

Located at the northwest corner of the Commercial Center (right off Sahara on 2520 State State, Las Vegas, NV 89109), the Sci-Fi Center is a comic book and film geek’s paradise. Owned by William Powell, the store houses a true grindhouse movie theater dubbed The Underground Screening Room that seats 50 and showcases arthouse, horror, cult, science fiction, fantasy and independent cinema not usually available at traditional theaters in Vegas.

You can find more information and RSVP to this event at either Facebook or Meetup.

Personifying the phrase “never give up”, Ningen Manga Productions have finally signed a distribution deal for their first film, Women’s Studies (review, trailer). The film will be distributed by R-Squared Films who launched their first titles last year with a focus on new media, VOD, pay-per-download, and broadcast as well as traditional DVD release.

Not only do they have a new distributor, it’s also a new version of the film. The cut that R-Squared will be releasing on June 15th, 2010 is streamlined: 10 minutes shorter than the initial cut of Women’s Studies, though footage and scenes have been added back in. Additionally, a voice over by the character of Mary, runs throughout the film, telling the story in a different perspective.

Shriekfest 2010 is now accepting applications for its 10th annual horror and sci-fi film competition. It is a great opportunity for young filmmakers to have their work seen and now the festival has gone green, making the submittal process that much easier. Applicants can send their films or screenplays in via email.

They also have two additional categories in the contest: Webisodes and Original Song.

The 10th annual Shriekfest, the Los Angeles International Horror/Thriller/SciFi/Fantasy Film Festival is dedicated to screening and recognizing the works of filmmakers and screenwriters in the often forgotten genres. Superior screening facilities, parties, and panels make this a wonderful networking experience for all. Awards will be given in most categories and the final entry date is July 10th . Go to www.shriekfest.com for more details.

Magnet Releasing, genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, announced yesterday that it has acquired U.S. rights to Centurion, an epic sword and sandal thrill ride from cult-favorite filmmaker Neil Marshall, starring Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, David Morrissey, and stunning Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko.

Magnet is launching Centurion as the 6th entry in the second “Six Shooter Film Series,” a collection of six of the most exciting contemporary worldwide action films which also includes Bronson, Red Cliff, Ong Bak 2, District 13: Ultimatum and The Warlords. A summer theatrical release is planned.

Boasting savagely violent battle scenes and an adrenaline fueled chase through the breathtaking Scottish highlands, Centurion is set during the war between Roman soldiers and Pict tribesmen during the 2nd century Roman conquest of Britain. Fassbender stars as Quintus Dias, Roman centurion and son of a legendary gladiator who leads a group of soldiers on a raid of a Pict camp to rescue a captured general (West). The son of the Pict leader is murdered during the raid, and the Romans find themselves hunted by a seemingly unstoppable group of the Pict’s most vicious and skilled warriors, led by a beautiful and deadly tracker (Kurylenko), who are hell bent on revenge.

The judges of the seventh annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival have selected this years award winning films in the four competitive categories: Best Feature, Big Sky Award, Best Short Film and Best Mini Doc (under 15 minutes). The awards were announced Thursday evening at the awards ceremony at The Loft in downtown Missoula.

The Best Feature Award was given to Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan for Last Train Home. The emotionally gripping film draws us into the fractured lives of a single migrant family (the Zhangs) as they are caught up in this desperate annual migration to return home for Chinese New Year. Jurors Doug Pray, Jeanie Finlay and Cliff Froehlich noted that Fan offers “a beautiful, very human journey into vast modern China, migrant workers, the global economy, family politics, obligatory holiday travel, and the universal phenomenon of the sullen teen.” The Jury also awarded an Artistic Vision Award to Josh Fox’s Gasland, the first-person exploration of the devastating effects on human health and the environment of a natural gas extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

Joseph Aguirres Next Year Country received the Big Sky Award. The heartfelt story of three families facing drought in Eastern Montana is the seventh film to receive the honor. An award for Artistic Excellence was give to Lucien Castaing Talors and Ilisa Barbashs extraordinary film Sweetgrass which follows the last modern day cowboys to lead their flock of sheep up into Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. Judges of the Big Sky Award were Shirley Sneve (NAPT), Thomas Phillipson (Northwest Film Forum) and Tim Huffman (Crystal Video).

The Best Short Film Award was awarded to Danza Del Viejo Inmigrante (The Old Immigrants Dance) by Charlene Music. Of the film, jurors Gordon Quinn and Rick Prelinger wrote, “in simple, unpretentious and elegantly framed sequences, this alternately serious and playful film shows us the challenges that (the subjects) face, but more important, shows them as full human beings, with strength and spirit, sexuality and zest for life.” Additionally an Artistic Excellence Award was given to Kelly Anderson’s Never Enough a film about people with hoarding disorders that the jury called a sensitive and nuanced portrait of characters who might, in a lesser film, manifest as caricatures.

The Mini Doc Award, given to the best film under 15 minutes was presented to the 6-minute Found by Paramita Nath. The visually rich film tells the story of Torontopoet Souvankham Thammavongsa whose parents lived in a Lao refugee camp in Thailand. An additional award for Artistic Excellence was presented to Tony Donoghues animated piece A Film About My Parish 6 Farms. The Mini-Doc category was judged by Richard Saiz (ITVS).

There were also four Programmers Choice Awards, awarded by the Big Sky programming staff. Michael Angus’ Salt and Robert Drew’s The Sun Ship Game both received awards for Excellence in Cinematography. Rainer Komers Milltown, Montana received an award for Excellence in Editing. And Briar March’s There Once Was An Island was awarded the Natural Facts Award for its artistic rendering of a vital environmental issue (climate change) and its effect of human life.

The Best Feature and Big Sky Award films will receive a guaranteed broadcast deal and licensing fee from Free Speech TV. Both shorts categories will receive a broadcast guarantee and generous licensing fee from The Documentary Channel.

The Filipino Freethinkers Film Festival is a series of films about faith and belief will be screened at UP’s Cine Adarna on February 27… but these films will leave you with more questions than answers.

The Filipino Freethinkers Film Festival is the first film fest in the Philippines intended to challenge your thinking about belief, faith, and reason.

The films include a bittersweet one-woman show by a former Saturday Night Live cast member, a documentary exploring the link between religion and terrorism, and a couple of short films originally screened at the American Atheist Film Festival.

The films screened during the Filipino Freethinkers Film Festival are intended to reach out to both the religious and the irreligious, questioning long-cherished assumptions on both sides of the debate.

Magnolia Pictures announced today that it has acquired North American theatrical rights to Countdown to Zero, a stunning documentary about the escalating global nuclear arms crisis that recently bowed at the Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker, the film features an array of important international statesmen, including President Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair. It makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal today. Valerie Plame Wilson, who is also featured in the film, spoke and introduced a clip from Countdown to Zero at the annual TED Conference in Long Beach yesterday, and a screening for TED attendees took place at a nearby theater last night. Additionally, it screened earlier this month in Paris for select attendees of this year’s Global Zero Summit.

Countdown to Zero traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, with the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. Magnolia is planning a theatrical release for Countdown to Zero later this year.


After a successful run in Los Angeles, the 6th Annual International Artivist Film Festival comes to London from 5th – 6th March 2010 at the historic George Bernard Shaw Theatre, screening a selection of independent documentaries and short films.

The Artivist Festival’s mission is to strengthen the voice of advocate artists – ‘Artivists’ –while raising public awareness for social global causes. Since its inception in 2004, the Artivist Film Festival has showcased over 400 films, representing more than 45 countries around the world, reaching millions of people through film festivals in London, LA, Tokyo, Lisbon and Mexico City. Artivist has been endorsed by Claes Nobel of the Nobel Prize family, Amnesty International, and the United Nations Department of Public Information.

The festival opens with critically acclaimed, award-winning documentary Children of War. This film is set in the east African country of Uganda and chronicles the daily struggle towards rehabilitation and reconciliation by a group of recently escaped child soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army, one of the world’s longest running and most brutal militias.

Many films that have premiered at Artivist have gone on to great acclaim, including Academy Award winner Born Into Brothels, Academy Award Nominees Super-Size Me and God Sleeps in Rwanda, and the Los Angeles Premieres of Fast Food Nation, Emmanuelle’s Gift, Stolen Childhoods, Zeitgeist, Zeitgest Addendum and Trudell.

Russ Diapper, the actor/writer/director behind such films as Spirirts of the Fall, Halloween: The Wake and Stay out of The Woods recently dropped me a line to let me know about his latest project.

Cocaine Saints is a gritty Police drama about Bad Cops, Good Cops, gang war and Drug Addiction. The script has been in development for a while, but the film has now gone into production in conjunction with Rami Hilmi’s Eagle Eye Productions. It stars Diapper and Hilmi along with Kate Korbel, Kim Sonderholm, Leo Moore and Mitch Powell.