Festival Daily Blog……..A Week Late

Yes, yes. We know how a festival blog should work. Up to the minute, breaking news snippets and exclusive Q&A sessions with hitherto undiscovered directors. Hot off the press Tweets from the back row of the Auditori proclaiming how “Awesome” the opening credits were for the latest Korean must-see movie “EXCUSE ME BUT YOU APPEAR TO HAVE MY CLAW HAMMER STUCK IN YOUR CRANIUM”

Our blog, on the other hand, is far from being hot off the press, contains no exclusive interviews and would only include the word “Twitter” if that happened to be a locally brewed Catalan beverage we’d recently discovered. However, it is our blog, and you can now find it here.

Lights! Camera! Action……

…..Roll ’em!

This time tomorrow we’ll be propping up the bar in El Cable buzzing at the excitement of what’s to come. We’re a little film-lite this year, thanks in part to large chunks of our program being dedicated to partying. However,  it’s not all about drinking and we’ve managed to line up an appropriately superstitious and spooky 13 films for our viewing pleasure. The program is likely to ebb and flow in tune with the festival’s alcoholic tides, and their resulting pull on our ability (or lack thereof) to attend early matinees or midnight extremes.

But for the record, here’s our starter for 13:

The Unjust

Gantz

Another Earth

Revenge: A Love Story

Bellflower

Vampire

Melancholia

Corman’s World

The Yellow Sea

Invasion Of Alien Bikini

Transcendent Man

Carre Blanc

Resurrect Dead

Gentlemen, start your engines.

Meat But No Gravy

Scratch that last post. Why jump to the festival’s closing film and miss out on all the fun that takes place beforehand?

The organisers have now posted the complete festival line up HERE (with the official program available as a PDF download at the top right hand corner of the list)

We’ll be throwing up our previews for each film over the course of this weekend making Corridorstyle your one-stop, fun-filled, and rakishly handsome resource for all things Sitges

Go get ’em tigers

Invasion Of Alien Bikini. The Festival Announces This Year’s Oriental Spice

The reputations of such highly regarded journalists as ourselves (stop laughing at the back) hang squarely on our ability to remain impartial during our extensive coverage across the many genres of the festival (I said quit sniggering). Good job we don’t give a flying roundhouse for our reps then as we love us some “Casa Asia”, especially if it comes with extra Kimchi.

The organisers have today announced their Asian selections for this year’s festival and the potential for moody, blood soaked scenes of serial killers is matched only by the hilarity of their (translated?) film titles.

BANZAI!!

Sitges. Von Trier. Soderbergh. Pow! Blam!

Generally speaking we swerve the more “mainstream” films presented at the festival as we can always catch them at the local multiplex. This in turn allows us more room in our Sitges schedule to watch Koreans have at each other with hatchets and claw hammers.

However, with the announcement today of the films to be screened as part of the festival’s Panorama Selection the organizers may have dangled us a mainstream carrot too tempting to pass up. Von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA, Soderbergh’s CONTAGION, and Nicolas Winding-Refn’s DRIVE to name just three.

Five films a day anyone?

 

Sitges Announce Films For “Noves Visions” Section

Wow! Prophetic stuff from my esteemed colleague and hair-style consultant with his previous post forewarning of imminent festival news. The organizers obviously follow our site closely and have therefore decided to release the program for the festival’s NOVES VISIONS section.

With this list of film titles we can now take our first step on the long and winding road to establishing our own personal program of must-see films. However, straight off the bat Abel Ferrara’s name jumps off the page along with his film 4:44: THE LAST DAY ON EARTH. Not a great deal to go on for this film but here we’re less interested in the film and more interested to see how off-his-tits Abel will be at the post-screening Q&A.

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW was a film I’d ear-marked so it’s good to see that’s made the list (yes Shaun, I will spit my dummy out if you don’t let us go see it), and what’s not to love about the prospect of viewing an offering from our Korean brethren titled INVASION OF THE ALIEN BIKINI.

We’re excited, are you?

Over the coming weeks the festival program will begin to flesh out and we’ll be adding our thoughts and comments as we try to hone our short-list. Stay tuned.

A Quick Heads Up…

So, esentially this is a news post to say that there’s actually no news yet. Clever, huh? Well, although there’s not any confirmed news, there’s plenty to speculate on and look out for.

Firstly, entries closed at the end of July and after checking e-mails from last year,it looks like the list of films in the festival should be released around the middle of September.  This leaves us here at Corridorstyle HQ a frantic few weeks of hardcore (ahem) writing to keep you updated with the details of as many films as is humanly possible, hopefully our friendship will still be intact after we have our third argument about who has to try and find out details on the films in the Catalan Focus section, time will tell.

Secondly, it’s always worth keeping an eye on the films that are shown at Frightfest as there are some very close relationships between them and the guys at the Sitges Festival. Looking at their programme, I would expect that Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark will probably be shown due to the Del Toro link, but the ones I would really like to see at Sitges are Kill List and A Night In The Woods.

One final thing to point out is that perennial floating-turd of a director Ti West has got a film showing at Frightfest called The Innkeepers. After the ticket money he’s stolen from us at previous festivals, here’s hoping Angel Sala has given this a wide berth. However, if it is shown, expect to see a short fat bloke and a tall thin bloke in a funny hat protesting outside the cinema.

Keep checking back for updates, we’ll be posting news as soon as it’s available.

Why We Keep Coming Back For More 2006

By the time 2006 and our fourth visit to the festival rolled around we were on the brink of adopting Korea as our mother nation and changing our names to Park and Lee, so impressed had we been by previous offerings from the likes of Park Chan-wook, Ryoo Seung-wan, and Kim Ji-woon. However, even with the impressive MEMORIES OF MURDER  in his locker, Bong Joon-ho let the side down with the pretty abysmal THE HOST.

Fortunately for us, Europe stepped into the breach and delivered the goods with THE UNGODLY and LA CAJA KOVAK (Spain), THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP and RENAISSANCE (France), and PRINCESS (Denmark). The U.S actually stole the show (as they like to do) with Rian Johnson’s incredible debut BRICK, but they were all class acts in their own way. However, it’s RENAISSANCE and PRINCESS that we want to remember here as they fall into a category of Sitges we’ve still not fully got to grips with. Animation.

We’re certainly no connoisseurs of animated films and probably still guilty of calling them cartoons (something that would no doubt get us a kicking from all the 8 year old fan boys), but we’ve come a long way in a short time and that’s entirely down to the fact that the festival doesn’t exactly screen Tom and Jerry re-runs.

Still a genre that’s a bit hit-and-miss for us (Oh how you enjoyed GHOST IN THE SHELL and GENIUS PARTY Shaun. Ahem!) but here are a few that hit harder than an ACME anvil:

 

Artificial Intelligence A.I Confirmed As The Inspiration For Sitges 2011

So it’s now official. This year’s program will draw inspiration from the world of artificial intelligence, something we’re very familiar with here at Corridorstyle. Being artificially intelligent.

Not a great deal of additional information to go on for now (below) but, Holy Kimichi!, the first thing that does jump out is the inclusion of HWANGHAE (The Yellow Sea), Hong jin-Na’s follow up to 2008’s masterpiece THE CHASER. Having captured incredible performances from Yun seok-Kim and Jung woo-Ha in his first film, it will be great to see Na pitch them both into battle again.

SITGES 2011, an edition inspired by artificial intelligence

EVA, by Kike Maillo, will be opening the festival’s 44th edition

Program Preview