The Road To Sitges 2009

hibernate
Verb [ intrans. ]
(of an animal or plant) spend the winter in a dormant state.
• figurative (of a person) remain inactive or indoors for an extended period

I like to think of Team CorridorStyle as a big bear.

While we here at CS could never claim to be the most active of Bloggers, even we experience a state of reduced activity and metabolic depression during the metaphorical winter that closes in between Sitges film festivals. However, as the permafrost acting of Nicolas Cage gives way to the first green-screen shoots of Korean cinema’s latest offerings, strange guttural sounds soon begin to emanate from somewhere deep within the Corridors of Style.

For the last few years Spring has heralded the start of our Festival preparations, and this year has been no different – until now.

Having recently moved to this new home for our cinematic musings we’ve decided now would be a good time to let others in on our pre-festival rummaging and ferreting. Why should we do all the hard work and you reap all the rewards? Because we’re Nice Guy Eddie here at CS – That’s why.

Between now and October 2nd we’ll be sharing our thoughts and findings as we scheme our schemes and hatch our hatches for what’s sure to be another full-on program of Movies and Mahous.

Even if you’re not planning to make it to the festival this year why not live the experience vicariously through us by following our Tweets or by hooking up to our Blog RSS.

Eric Bana – Tell him he’s dreaming

I’m going to be self-indulgent.

On reading this interview with Eric Bana over at The Onion’s A.V Club, I was reminded of my first glimpse of Bana.

On a trip to Oz a few years back a friend in Perth pulled one out of the hat by treating me to a hitherto unknown Bana back-to-back with THE CASTLE and CHOPPER. I was mightily impressed by both and, as is now customary with films I like, particularly comedies I like,  I scooted on over to IMDB and THE CASTLE’s “memorable Quotes” section to remind myself why.

Dale Kerrigan: Dad reckons fishing is 10% brains and 95% muscle, the rest is just good luck.

Eric gets two thumbs up here at CorridorStyle so, if you like his comedic turn in the latest Apatow offering FUNNY PEOPLE, we recommend storming THE CASTLE for more Bana beauties.

CS

Bad Lieutenant DVD rerelease

bad-lieutenant_jpg_150x1000_upscale_q85For those of you who marveled at our 2008 Sitges Film Festival Blog (we know who you are) you will have noticed that we like a bit of Abel Ferrara (see Day 2 entry). We’re not sure which bit specifically but we now know that all of his bits become infinitely more entertaining when they’re loosely held together by liquor.

What unbridled joy we experienced then at the DVD rerelease yesterday of one of Abel’s finest – BAD LIEUTENANT.

For those of you of a similar generation to myself, your strongest (perhaps only) memory of the film released 17 years ago may either be a) an unfortunate incident involving a nun or b), an unfortunate incident involving Harvey letting us see how God intended him to be.

However, 17 years is a long time and I’ll hold my hand up and admit that the film’s major draw for me at the time was it’s taboo status thanks, in no small part (no pun intended Harvey), to the above controversial scenes. So, after our recent Sitges brush with the great man, now would seem like a good time to give the film a view with new eyes. This review over at our friends at The Onion’s A.V club would suggest I need to look beyond the controversy , and search for the film’s true soul.

I feel I should also make reference to the A.V club’s footnote regarding the DVD’s release coinciding with the forthcoming Werner Herzog-Nicolas Cage remake Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans. From earlier comments we’ve made it will be clear that Team CorridorStyle is not Cage’s biggest fan, and we’ve already offered him outside for a fight (still waiting Nic) over his involvement with the sacrilege that would be an OLDBOY remake. Couple that together with Herzog’s involvement here (ok Werner, we quite liked RESCUE DAWN but what the hell was THE WILD BLUE YONDER all about?) and I smell a shit-storm brewing.

CS

Korean Klassics

Ok. We fess up. We’re never exactly first out of the gate with news here at CS but you could say that’s because we’re built for comfort, not speed. Forgive us then for the tardy appearance of this piece on our favourite film flavour – Korean Kimchi.

Cruise through the pages of our Sitges section and you’ll quickly realise we’ve somewhat of an infatuation with Korean cinema, albeit on an admittedly narrow horizon. So, for our small, but no doubt ever growing band of faithful  Blog-bait, we thought now would be a good time to enlighten you on the who’s who of Korean cinema’s go-to men. In no time at all names such as Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho will be skipping off the tip of your tongue to the stifled gasps and admiring looks of the secretaries gathered religiously at your feet around the water cooler.

Once you’ve read this piece over at our friends at Filminfocus.com (the website of Universal Pictures’ Focus Films) give yourself an extra gold star if you spotted their one glaring omission (well done if you guessed the debut director of  last year’s stunning film THE CHASER, Na Hong-jin)

CS

Let’s Hug It Out, Bitch.

Ari Gold

Somehow in the last six days I managed to polish off five seasons of the HBO show ‘Entourage’.

If you’re already a fan, get excited because season 6 has just started on ITV3 in the UK. If it’s something you’ve never watched, get ready ‘cos you’re in for a treat.

It’s the story of an up and coming young star and his entourage of childhood friends and the highlight for me is his foul-mouthed agent, Ari Gold. Check out some of his quotes here: http://www.arigoldquotes.com/

It’s The Final Countdown

gob-amazes-and-delights-the-crowd-as-the-final-countdown-blares_468x312Gob: [arms crossed] Then there’s me. The joker. The goofball. The magician.
[quickly makes a magician’s gesture with his hands]
Michael: I thought you were gonna do a little fireball there.
Gob: I was. It didn’t go off.

Is It Penry, the mild-mannered janitor? …Could be!

phooeyThere’s not much information at the moment, but it looks like the number one super guy is getting his own film.

Details are fairly scant but it’s shaping up to be a Garfield-style mixture of live action and CGI.

I can’t actually remember a great deal about the original cartoon other than the opening sequence, here’s hoping it’s an improvement on Scooby-Doo.

Triple R Shines A Light

Look For The Nines...I know we might be coming a bit late to this, but it’s just been announced that Corridorstyle favourite Ryan Reynolds has been cast as The Green Lantern, fighting off competition such as The Hangover’s Bradley Cooper and Justin Timberlake (??).

Along with The Flash, Green Lantern was one of my favourites. I think Reynolds is more than capable of pulling off (oo-er) a superhero role, but as we saw with Ben Affleck in Daredevil, it’s not just about the star. DC’s output can be described as patchy at best, with the Batman franchise and it’s susequent reboot hitting the spot, but the recent Superman and Punisher films failing to impress.

Fingers crossed, we’ll be giving you more updates on this as we get them.

Exciting Sitges News!!

Sitges '09

[REC]2 will be opening the 42nd edition of the SITGES 09 – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, to be held from October 2nd to the 12th. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza return to Sitges -they presented [REC] in 2007- with the eagerly awaited sequel that takes up the events occurring soon after the end of part one: It’s been 15 minutes since the TV camera’s batteries ran out. It’s been 15 minutes since the last images were filmed for the program “While You Sleep” inside the infected building. Outside, a curious crowd gathers behind the area sealed off by the Special Forces. The TV crews are putting on the pressure to find out what the hell is happening…

Alien by Ridley Scott is the inspiration for this year’s edition. The Festival will be including a screening of the director’s favorite version of the movie and will be attended by guests still to be determined.  

The OFFICIAL FANTÀSTIC SELECTION  will include the latest and most eagerly awaited genre films with titles like the vampirical Thirst, by Park Chan-wook; Yatterman , a zany version of the comic of the same name that has been one of the biggest box office hits in Japan, and Crows II, the sequel to the first part emphasizing teen ultra-violence (this one out-of-competition), both by Takashi Miike; Grace, by Paul Solet, representing the best in independent North American horror cinema, that participated in Sundance; Kinatay, by Brillante Mendoza, a literal journey to hell and a paradigmatic example of hyper-realistic horror, that snagged the Best Director Award at Cannes; Kynodontas, by Giorgios Lanthimos,  Un Certain Regard Award winner at Cannes; Musashi, by Mizuho Nishikubo; Surrogates, by Jonathan Mostow, out-of-competition and starring Bruce Willis and Moon, by Duncan Jones, recent winner of the Best Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Representing Catalan and Spanish cinema are the outstanding Orphan , a North American production by director Jaume Collet-Serra, and Ingrid, by Eduard Cortés, set to become an instant cult movie in European fantasy film.

European cinema will include movies like The Countess, by Julie Delpy, a return to the Countess Dracula myth, and Ne te retourne pas, by Marina de Van, a disturbing tour de force between Monica Belluci and Sophie Marceau.

Animation will be present -besides in the Anima’t category- in Fantàstic with films like the Swedish Metropia, by Tarik Saleh, an animated black and white science fiction movie. On the other hand, ANIMA’T will be including the biggest box office hit of the season in France, Lascars.

In NOVES VISIONS the Festival is banking on international variants of historical and realistic horror, like the Australian Van Diemen’s Land, by Jonathan Auf Der Heide; The Forbidden Door , the consolidation of Indonesian genre cinema or the brutal English docudrama Bronson, by Nicolas Winding Refn.

ORIENT EXPRESS will be including, among others, Goemon, by Kazuaki Kiriya, and Ip Man, by Wilson Yip, featuring Donnie Yen, the world’s number one martial arts expert.

3D FILM will be one of the most important new additions to SITGES 09, with outstanding screenings like The Final Destination and Toy Story 3D.

SEVEN CHANCES will be showing films like Youth Without Youth, by Francis Ford Coppola, or La Maison Nucingen, by Raoul Ruiz, a classic in Sitges.

Regarding tributes, besides the 30th anniversary of Alien, SITGES 09 will be recalling certain flashes from the 80’s, films that represent this decade’s different genre film expressions and that will bring special guests from emblematic movies to the Festival. In this review of classics we will be including an American cut, unreleased in Spain, of The Shining, with extra footage and horror; and A Nightmare on Elm St, with the attendance, among others, of John Saxon.

Another outstanding novelty at this year’s edition is the Els Altres Fantàstics retrospective, that will review productions which embody atypical genre films by Catalan and Spanish filmmakers who don’t usually delve into genre film, like Pedro Olea (A House Without Boundaries ); Antonio Isasi Isasmendi (A Dog Called… Vengeance); Vicente Aranda (The Exquisite Cadaver); or Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive).

Another of the Festival’s tributes will be dedicated to horror story writer Clive Barker, presenting two movies based on novels of his: Dread and Book of Blood.

MIDNIGHT X-TREME will be setting aside viewing time for the phenomena of the new, most recent extreme Japanese cinema. These midnight screenings will be including zany films like Best Worst Movie, based on the checkered and even grotesque commercial experience of the movie Troll 2, considered to be the worst in history by specialized web sites like rottentomatoes.com; Dead Snow, Lesbian Vampire Killers, Black Dynamite, a tribute to blaxploitation, or Smash cut, the resurrection of the eternal King of Gore Herschell Gordon Lewis.
    
CATALAN FILMS & TV strengthens its collaboration with the Festival and expands its program of parallel activities, with emphasis on an interactive fiction session led by Televisió de Catalunya. At SITGES 09, CF&TV will be supporting Catalan production through Catalan Focus, will participate in the opening party and will be organizing a workshop on videogames and the interactive fiction industry, designed by experts from TV3. In addition, there will be two sessions dealing with the synergies between animation and videogames where new formats and content distribution channels will be analyzed. In parallel, CF&TV is coordinating the arrival of a delegation of Mexican producers who will participate in a co-production encounter with their Catalan counterparts. Mexico is one of the territories where CF&TV is working on its proceedings plan for 2009 and that’s why it sent a group of companies to the Guadalajara Festival last March.

Sitges 09 – International Fantasy Film Festival of Catalonia continues to be committed to maintaining the spirit of youth, the Festival’s most loyal following. Proof of this is the presence, yet another year, of the Carnet Jove Jury, promoted by the Agència Catalana de la Joventut (Catalan Youth Agency), which, this year, is celebrating its fifth edition. The mission of the 5th Carnet Jove Jury is to hand out two different awards: the Carnet Jove Jury Award for Best Motion Picture in the Fantàstic Selection and the Carnet Jove Jury Award for Best Motion Picture in the Midnight X-Treme Category. Our commitment to youth is also clear through the Festival ticket discounts available to Carnet Jove card holders.

BRIGADOON will be including two film series by essential directors in Spanish fantasy, José Ramón Larraz and Juan Piquer Simón, who will be joining the list of tributes offered by the Festival. In addition,  it will be devoting two specials to Bollywood -one to its most bizarre cinema and the other to its most erotic- plus a section dedicated to Asian Trash, with the best of the worst in Asian cinema. In parallel to the Festival’s tribute to Alien, Brigadoon will be screening unreleased movies that are inspired by this film within the space After Alien. The Brigadoon NOSFERATU Life Achievement Award will be given to Jack Taylor.

SITGES 09 will be paying special attention to the zombie genre, holding a new edition of the Zombie Walk on Saturday, October 10th, and with a tribute to Zombie 2, by Lucio Fulci, that premiered in Sitges 30 years ago.