Sitges 2011 Dates Announced

As you can see from the huge banner image above, the dates of the 2011 festival have been announced. It’s pretty much as expected and we’re guessing that following on from the success of scheduling it around the national holiday last year, this year will be the same.

There’s no word as yet on the theme of this year’s festival, but it seems that for the last few years this hasn’t been much more than a reason to put a clever image on the poster anyway.

We’ll keep you informed with any developments as they occur, but for now, keep it Corridorstyle.

CHRYSALIS Director Julien Leclerq Is Up For L’ASSAUT

2007 was a pretty good Sitges year and a 33 film festival marathon for team CS. One of the films to come out of nowhere was France’s Sci-Fi answer to Jason Bourne, CHRYSALIS. The stylish near-future production combined with old-school, bone-crunching fight sequences meant this was a festival hit for the team.

Good news then to hear that CHRYSALIS director Julien Leclerq is ready to tackle his second feature L’ASSAUT, based on the real life highjacking of Air France Flight 8969 on December 24th 1994. The account of the highjacking reads like a script written for Bruce Willis which should suit Leclerq who certainly has “action” in his directorial locker.

Head over to Twitch to check out the trailer.

A Serbian Film And Its (New)Bourne Identity.

Those that followed our Sitges Film Festival Blog this year will know that we were fairly under-whelmed by A SERBIAN FILM.  It made our festival short list purely on the buzz that preceded it (some might say as intended by the filmmakers) with the deal being sealed when it was pulled from the UK’s Film4 Frightfest program. Though not ones to chomp-on about exclusive, premier screenings and little-seen uncensored cuts, we do nonetheless like the fact that Sitges affords us the opportunity to see films (or versions thereof) that may otherwise lay a little off the beaten track.

Although we ultimately felt that the film bordered on silliness, losing much of its dramatic impact in the process, it would appear that from this post over at Alan Jones’ Frightfest Diary we were in fact fortunate to see it in its uncut form and the Sitges Festival organisers may have bitten off more than they can chew as a result.

Rare Exports Director Jalmari Helander Talks Turkey

Though we were a little surprised to see RARE EXPORTS scoop the best film award at Sitges this year it was certainly worthy of its best Director and Cinematography awards. Then again, a Christmas film where we’re presented with full-frontal nude shots of Santa’s little helpers swinging their christmas baubles in the crisp Finnish air certainly registers on the festival’s weirdometer scale.

Head over to our friends at Quiet Earth for an interview with the film’s director Jalmari Helander where he makes reference to the great reception the film received from the Sitges audience (something we can attest to)

Mason and Howard. Not lacking in LUSTER.

Good news from Todd Brown over at Twitch with THIS PIECE on the latest installment from the collaborative force that is Adam Mason and Simon Boyes. Throw in Andrew Howard (Wales’ answer to Jason Statham), the man who has the enviable pleasure, and uncanny knack, of bringing to life the twisted imaginations of Mason & Boyes, and this has the Corridostyle team’s full and undivided attention. And that’s before we even get around to blurting out repeatedly (in an overly-excited schoolboy crush kind of way) that LUSTER will also be bringing the eye-catching talents of Holly Valance to the screen.

We unfortunately didn’t make it to the screening of Mason & Boyes’ 2009 collaboration BLOOD RIVER at this year’s Sitges festival (Shaun had actually already seen it anyway) but Mr Mason kindly gave us the opportunity to view their impressively crafted experimental horror PIG earlier this year.

Our very first experience of this trio revelling in each other’s company was during Sitges 2007 with the excellent THE DEVIL’S CHAIR. In that mind f*ck gore-fest Howard carried off “insane” all too convincingly and judging from LUSTER’s Synopsis, with its two lead characters being one and the same, it looks like these three are going to have plenty of fun messing with our minds once more. (and what a great one sheet for LUSTER by the way)

And if you fancy listening in on how the minds of  Mason & Boyes warp together then check out their Podcast series where they “ramble on about their lives both professional and personal and the experience of being a Brit trying to make it in LA”.

Somebody should be crucified for this

Following similar gripes about planned remakes of OLDBOY (Sitges 2004 – thankfully still on the drawing board) and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Sitges 2008 – we played mardy and refused to watch the remake LET ME IN screened at this year’s festival), we’re to be reminded once more that we, as speakers of the English language, are just not that into foreign language films and the only thing for it is to repackage them without those annoying subtitle-type-thingys at the bottom of the screen.

The LA Times have a piece (HERE) on how Pascal Laugier’s MARTYRS (Sitges 2008 – Colin loved it, Shaun didn’t. Get the wine in) is to be remade for American audiences with Daniel Stamm (THE LAST EXORCISM) at the helm.

The opinion we voiced previously was nothing new for those opposed to these kinds of remakes but we’re going to bleat it out again anyway as we’re firmly in the camp that believe the original films have far more to offer before Hollywood breaks out the make-up.

Good To Know We’re Not The Only Ones

Though not necessarily what we expected we liked Gareth Edwards’ MONSTERS when we saw it at Sitges this year. We unfortunately didn’t bump into Gazza at the festival otherwise we would have bought him a beer but it’s nice to know he enjoyed himself while he was there:

(From an interview by Kurt Halfyard (www.rowthree.com) posted at  Twitch (www.twitchfilm.net)

Kurt Halfyard: Hi, How are you doing today?

Gareth Edwards: I’m good, how are you, are you doing OK?

KH:  Fine.  I am glad we finally got a chance to sit down and talk, because I missed you in Toronto and then I just missed you again in Spain.  How was your Sitges experience?

GE:  It was great!  I think that out of all the festivals they have it down the most, everything run so well in one location!

Day Eight – Achtung Maybe…


It’s pretty standard that by this point in the trip Shaun is missing breakfast to give himself an extra few minutes in bed but today he excelled himself by also skipping a shower. Subsequently this meant that that anyone who even dared to think about sitting close to us was greeted by the aroma of stale beer, sobrasada and two day old pants and socks which allowed us a rare treat of plenty of space to spread out into our first film, Red Hill…

RETIRO – 10.00hrs – Red Hill

Australia’s Patrick Hill chose a pretty standard revenge thriller for his first film. The clever twist he put on it is that it’s essentially a modern-day western set in rural small-town Australia. It’s a pretty standard story of a big city cop on his first day after being re-posted to a small town and being thrown into turmoil immediately as a convict escapes from a nearby prison and returns to town to get his revenge on the people who put him there.

Shaun was more impressed by this than Colin but it’s a pretty taut and well paced thriller with good acting performances from True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten as the newcomer and veteran Aussie actor Steve Bisley as the grizzled old cop.

…so, after our Aussie western fix we headed back to the hotel for Shaun to shower and get rid of the flies that were following him around like Pigpen from Charlie Brown. Once we were a clean, lean, film watching machine again, we headed up to the Auditori for our second film of the day, Korean revenge horror Bedevilled…

AUDITORI – 13.45hrs – Bedevilled

Really, we should have probably done a bit more research on this before we saw it. It was Shaun’s choice mainly based on the fact that it’s Korean and had been shown at Frightfest but wasn’t really what we were expecting. What we got was a film about a woman who, after losing her job and needing to re-evaluate her life, retreats to the remote island she grew up on but finds herself dragged into the issues her childhood friend is experiencing and the events that then occur.

This was pretty much treated with indifference by the pair of us as it was very slow moving and you could find very little sympathy or empathy for any of the characters and therefore didn’t really care what happened to them….

So, bidding farewell to the Auditori for the final time this year we headed down to the Retiro for our next film, barely making it in time…

Retiro – 16.00hrs – Jackboots On Whitehall

We were a little surprised that this puppetised (is that a word? it is now!) version of World War 2 wasn’t more of a hit when released in the UK as it had a stellar voice cast and quite a bit of publicity. I suspect that the reason is the same problem we had with this and also last year’s Panique Au Village – they might make a great trailer / short film but stretching them out to a full 90 minute feature film is just a bit too much to ask….

So, with aching backsides from the seats in the Retiro we did the one thing we probably shouldn’t do when we have an extended period of time between films – went  straight round to Cafe Del Mon and got straight on the wine. Cut to 6 glasses each later and we were legging it back to the Retiro to watch our final film of the festival, Spanish horror chiller Atrocious…

Retiro – 20.45hrs – Atrocious

Another one of Shaun’s choices, the decision was made due to the fact that it was made in Sitges and looked Paranormal Activity-style scary. Unfortunately, only one of these was true and although we respect the director’s attempt at purely making a film to get into the Sitges festival, it wasn’t really good enough. It was a fairly standard setup of a found footage hand-held documentary story, but unlike Paranormal Activity, didn’t follow through with the scares and just ended up being a bit silly. Also the fact that we were drunk, hot, a bit giggly and sat up in the gods didn’t help and this really struggled to hold our attention, which for a horror film is unforgivable.

So, wandering out with a buzz on into our final night in Sitges, we rounded up Em and Laura and set about visiting our regular haunts to say adios and drink wine and eat tapas until the early hours.