Film at Eleven

About a month ago, I mentioned The Moonlight Murders, an interesting sounding film noir style horror thriller based on the old Texarkana moonlight phantom murders case from the 1940’s.

Russ Diaper, the film’s director, has very kindly sent me an update and a fantastic looking set of stills from the film.

The cast, so far, includes Daniel Bennett, Russ Diaper, Kim Sønderholm, Katie Knighten, Peter Iasillo, Alan Cunningham, Corrie Daines, Jennifer Howgate and Kirstey Marie Young with more to be announced. The film will be scored by The Pumpkin Philharmonic and will feature songs from Badab8m, The Firefly Jazz Band, Cliff Morrison (son of Jim), among others.

And then to the shots. The colour correction isn’t finished yet but the colour shots are close to the film will look like.

Continue Reading »

This month’s Big Sky Film Series takes us into a world of sports fishermen, tattoo artists, housing developers, ecologists, and radiation scientists living and working in the Columbia Basin of south-eastern Washington State. Arid Lands tells the story of how these people changed the landscape over time, and how the landscape affected their lives. Sixty years ago, the Hanford nuclear site produced plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and today the area is the focus of the largest environmental cleanup in history. It is a landscape of incredible contradictions. Coyotes roam among decommissioned nuclear reactors, salmon spawn in the middle of golf courses, wine grapes grow in the sagebrush, and federal clean-up dollars spur rapid urban expansion. Following the screening there will be a Q and A with Arid Lands Director, Josh Wallaert.

The Big Sky Film Series is a periodic monthly screening series highlighting traditional and innovative non-fiction film and video. It is held the first Friday of the month as part of down town Missoula, Montana’s “Art Walk.” All screenings are held in the Historic Wilma Theatre (Wilma 3 downstairs) and are free and open to the public.

You lucky Americans! Kenta Fukasaku’s Yo-Yo Girl Cop will be playing an exclusive and limited engagement in San Francisco at Landmark’s Opera Plaza Cinema starting tomorrow.

will be your only chance to see this film in the US on the big screen. It’s a Japanese pop romp about a young delinquent girl recruited by the Japanese police and sent undercover in an all girl school to root out terrorists. Her only weapon is a razor sharp yo-yo and her mini skirt.

If you can’t make it to San Francisco, you can console yourself with the news that US DVD release for the film is scheduled for July 17th. In the meantime click here to see the trailer on YouTube.

Other Cinema Digital have announced a release date for their Xperimental Eros film collection.

Exploring realms both sacred and profane, XPERIMENTAL EROS invokes a shimmering fantasia of celluloid sensuality for the pleasure of our largest sex organ – the brain. Using exotic tropes and erotic footage from the world’s oldest genre, our program of ardent auteurs spin grindhouse dross into arthouse gold with perverse panache.

Highlights include Peggy Ahwesh’s “The Color of Love” (”Top 10 Film of 1994″ – Amy Taubin, Village Voice) which re-edits and optically prints a Super-8 stag loop, rarifying the degraded images into an abstract, stained-glass mosaic; Jeff Krulik’s “King of Porn” which profiles Ralph Whittington, a retired curator at the Smithsonian, who boasts the world’s largest collection of pornography; Naomi Uman’s “Removed” which reworks a piece of European 70s softcore, turning the images of women into white ectoplasmic blobs (“This is pornography re-[not -de]eroticized by the very act of removal” – Linda Williams).

X-EROS also features two rare vintage stag loops with an original score by the PornOrchestra, a Bay Area musical collective who perform live, composed, and improvised scores to pornographic film.

Be it tales of sexual obsession, rejected letters to Penthouse Forum, or the Mr. Nude Trucker Contest of 1976, no subject is taboo…nor above deconstruction. X-EROS strips bare the spectacle of sex in cinema, poeticizing the cinematic language of the body.

The 93 minute, Region 0 DVD hits the street on August 28th and will be available for pre-order from August 7th.

William Winckle’s retro-horror film Frankenstein Vs. the Creature From Blood Cove - a loving homage to the monster movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s - has been doing remarkably well in the US and now UK audiences can find out why.

The film is now available for UK rental through LoveFilm.

Go see it!

The Big Bang Film Festival is a celebration of exciting and inventive films in the Action, Adventure, Suspense and Asian Action Cinema genres.

They are also looking for exciting documentaries of sports and athletic events and activities. Extreme sports enthusiasts have contributed some of the most entertaining video of death defying speed, skill and daring. BBFF will showcase amazing films, some classics, some classics in the making. Every submission is featured as a rotating highlight on the front page of the BBFF website and on our 2007 Submissions page so that all of our filmmakers can link to their listing.

The festival’s call for submissions is now open. Click here for the submission details or click here to find out more about the festival, which runs from 17th to 21st October in Philadelphia.

After a world première at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival in April, Movie Seals Productions’ Recon 2022: The Mezzo Incident will have it’s North American première - along with their critically acclaimed vigilante film Deaden - at the FanTasia Film Festival in Montreal, Canada.

From a screenplay written by Christian Viel, John Fallon and William Alexander, the action packed story of RECON 2022: the Mezzo Incident picks up two years after the events of the first film and introduces a new cast of endearing characters as well as bringing back familiar ones. After the gruesome events on Caprini, Sharp (Anderson Bradshaw) and his elite team of tough, witty and trigger happy space Marines must now head out to the icy planet Mezzo to investigate further Ma’har activities. What they will encounter will defy their imaginations as they tackle giant man eating snow worms, an underground city of Cyborgs, a slew of murderous alien entities and maybe, finally, the ever elusive Ma’hars.

In Deaden, the story follows John Fallon as Rane, an ex-undercover cop forced to witness the brutal rape and murder of his pregnant wife (Anna Jaeger) by the ruthless members of a biker gang who have learned about his old policemen days. Shot through the head with a crossbow and dumped into a canal, Rane is believed to be dead… but miraculously survives the ordeal. Upon his exit from the hospital, he teams up with his old crime buddy Kersey (Deke Richards), arms himself to the teeth, and goes on a drug fueled, psychotic rampage all in the name of unapologetic retribution.

Deaden will screen on July 14th at 7:30pm and Recon 2022: The Mezzo Incident will play on July 19th at 9:20pm.

I’m a bit behind at the moment but didn’t want to miss mentioning that Animals has begun shooting in Salt Lake City, Utah. The script is based on the novel by John Skipp and Craig Spector - the team that has brought us the likes of Deadlines and Fright Night - with Spector handling the scripting duties.

The plot follows Syd Jarrett (Marc Blucas), an unsuspecting, down-and-out man in a washed-up hick town whose life is turned upside down when the drop-dead gorgeous Nora (Nicki Aycox) walks through the door of the local bar. Jarrett’s passion for Nora leads him peripherally into a sub-culture of werewolves and werecats where he encounters Vic (Naveen Andrews), a renegade whose animal instincts are stronger than his human ones. As things begin to get even worse, Jarrett realizes that his best chance for happiness, and survival, lies in his true love for Jane (Eva Amurri).

The film stars Naveen Andrews, Eva Amurri, Marc Blucas, and Nicki Aycox. Animals is a co-production of Anonymous Content and T&C Pictures and directed by Robert Rodriguez protégé, Doug Aarniokoski.

The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, the premier venue for non fiction film in the American West, is seeking submissions for its fifth annual event. From February 14-20, 2008 the festival will screen 100 films, including world and U.S. premières, classics, rare and experimental works on Montana’s largest screen at the historic Wilma Theater in down town Missoula, Montana. In addition to 7-days of screenings, many public and VIP events including panel discussions, galas, receptions and networking round-tables.

The competitive event is open to non-fiction films and videos of all genres, subject matter, lengths and production dates. Awards and cash prizes will be given for Best Documentary Feature (over 50 minutes), Best Documentary Short (15-50 minutes), Best Mini-Doc (under 15 minutes) and best documentary about the American West (the “Big Sky Award”).

For more information and to download an entry form in PDF format, visit www.bigskyfilmfest.org/entries.html.