Film at Eleven

Fangoria has a first set report from Shusuke Kaneko’s God’s Left Hand/Devil’s Right Hand, which is promising a lot more splatter than recent Japanese horror films.

“The film is turning out fairly grisly by normal Japanese standards,” Kaneko says from Stage 12 at Nikkatsu Studios on the final day of GOD’S shooting earlier this month. “It’s not a ghost story at all, but a crime drama that transforms into horror. In Japan, crime is becoming more serious and outlandish. Our victims are getting younger and younger. This film is expressing my anger against the people who perpetrate such crimes.”

God’s Left Hand/Devil’s Right Hand is slated for a summer 2006 release in Japan.

Reuters reports that Dakota Fanning has signed up to voice the title character in the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Henry Selick is writing and directing the film which centres on a young girl who discovers an alternate version of her life after walking through a secret door in her new home.

On the surface, this parallel reality is similar to her real life, only much better. The adventure turns dangerous, however, when the girl’s counterfeit parents try to keep her forever.

The poster for Peter Jackson’s upcoming King Kong is revealed (via)

Nine News (via) reports that the first film to come out of an alliance between Korea’s Daesung Group and New Zealand’s Wellington’s Park Road Post will be a comedy-horror film about genetically engineered sheep running amok.

Black Sheep, which is Jonathan King’s debut feature, is set in New Zealand, where famously there are 10 sheep for every person, and tells of a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong.

Design work for the film is to be carried out by Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop and filming is due to begin on location around Wellington in early 2006.

Fangoria reports that, with his third film, Satan’s Playground now in the capable hands of Anchor Bay, Dante Tomaselli is moving on to his fourth and most ambitious Film.

Felissa Rose and Judith O’Dea have already signed up to appear in The Ocean, which centres on Cathy, a psychic who travels to Puerto Rico to be with her daughter following the drownings of the latter’s husband and son. After arriving, Cathy starts to receive frightening premonitions while the ocean continues to claim more victims…

The Ocean marks the first time Tomaselli, who also scripted and directed Desecration and Horror, has taken on a writing partner: Fango’s own Michael Gingold. “A while back, Michael and I were talking about the possibility of collaborating on Alice Sweet Alice 2,” Tomaselli says, “so [original Alice director] Alfred Sole, my cousin, asked to see some of his writing. At that time, I had just finished up Playground and was starting to write The Ocean, and I knew for sure that on that I wanted to collaborate with someone for the first time on the screenplay. Michael jumped right out at me, but I didn’t want to officially announce anything until I saw proof of what he could bring to the table. Well, I wrote a first draft and then we had a meeting, and a few weeks later he sent me a revised draft that blew me way. It didn’t change the original concept or the characters, but rather enhanced everything and gave the story more depth. It definitely brought the quality of the screenplay up. Now you really care about the characters before all the horror consumes them.”

The Ocean is due to start shooting in Puerto Rico early next year.

From The Guardian:

Bollywood.tv, a website which streams Bollywood films directly to computers, has been launched in London. The site, which, unsurprisingly, is subscription only, currently offers 65 movies. However, co-founder Mohan Thariyan, has rights to 730 Bollywood movies.

On the day that Aardman celebrate a chart-topping opening weekend in the US with Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, they have been hit with the devastating news of a fire at their storage unit in Bristol.

The facility used to store sets, awards, and historical artefacts, is not a part of the Aardman studio, and no-ne has been harmed. However, they fire has destroyed a number of irreplaceable storyboards, awards, props and pieces of film memorabilia from Aardman’s 30 year history.

None of the material from The Curse of the Wererabbit was in storage at the time, but many original sets from Chicken Run, Creature Comforts, and the three Wallace & Gromit short films, have been lost.

Every year, the various activities of the European Film Academy culminate in the presentation of the European Film Awards, which includes the Jameson People’s Choice Awards - which is open for voting now.

The awards ceremonony will be held in Berlin on December 3rd.

FilmStew reports that documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s next film will be Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices which will be released in selected cinemas in New York and Los Angeles beginning on November 4th.

Greenwald recently directed both Uncovered: The War in Iraq and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. In Wal-Mart, Greenwald examines how major retailers are taking their toll on local communities.

The theatrical release will be followed by a “Premiere Week” from November 13th to 19th, durng which DVDs of the film will be shown at more than 3,000 house parties (currently being promoted on the film’s web site), hosted by various activists, across the US.

So I’ve just posted an interview with the man behind William Wincklers Frankenstein Vs. The Creature From Blood Cove, and the next email I read is announcing that the DVD is now available at Amazon.

Fans of vintage Universal-style horror films and old-fashioned Atomic Age creature features can celebrate — WILLIAM WINCKLER’S FRANKENSTEIN VS. THE CREATURE FROM BLOOD COVE has risen from the grave! Beginning today, Tuesday, October 4th, the movie is available worldwide exclusively at amazon.com. The open-region DVD features not only the 90-minute film, but also numerous extras, including a director’s commentary, “making of” featurette, bloopers and the theatrical trailer.

The film will also be enjoying a theatrical premiere at the Bay Area Film Events Terrorama at the Hyatt Cinema in Burlingame on Friday, October 21st and then again at Alameda’s art deco theater, Auctions by the Bay on Saturday, October 22nd.