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
The organisers have today thrown up a few more of the titles showing at this year’s festival, and we now know that Matthijs Van Heijninjen’s prequel to John Carpenter’s classic will wrap up proceedings.
Freak out people.
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!!
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?
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:
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
Although we were already hooked 2005 gave us yet another reason to love Sitges. This was the year the festival moved from its temporary December slot back to its original October date and with that came the bonus of glorious weather. Sun, sea and sand obviously the perfect combination to then go and spend 8 hours a day in a darkened theatre.
2005 served up some classic Sitges films too. Still staggering around in a daze from the previous year’s Korean baptism and OLD BOY, Wook again nocked us off our feet with the vengeance trilogy closer SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE. However, it was his compatriot Kim Ji-woon and the simply brilliant A BITTERSWEET LIFE that stole the Korean limelight. If this film doesn’t grab you in the first 60 seconds then you best have the nearest person check to see if you have a pulse.
We can pretty much take all the graphic violence the Koreans can throw at us but when it comes to jumps and scares we’re the biggest pair of girls at the festival. We therefore must have been drunk when we decided to take in THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. Skirts held over our eyes for most of the film. Equally uncomfortable in subject matter but with more left to the imagination HARD CANDY had us cringing and wincing to all manner of testicular threats.
We don’t know much but we already knew what we’d be doing come October 2006.
And we can’t leave 2005 without including a look back to the absolutely f*cking bonkers film from Shinya Tsukamoto, HAZE.
Though not yet officially announced on the festival website it looks like Sitges will this year pay tribute to the Steven Spielberg film ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:AI which marks its 10th anniversary this year.
This actually appears to be a continuation of the festival’s love affair with Stanley Kubrick rather than a hat-tip to Spielberg’s disappointing sci-fi effort. This post over at Sitgesbarcelona.com makes reference to the Brian Aldiss short story “Super-toys last all summer long”, which served as the inspiration for the Kubrick developed script that eventually ended up in Spielberg’s lap.
If previous festivals serve as any guide then the organizers will likely only afford the film itself a small corner of the program, however, its inclusion as the festival’s theme does suggest another sci-fi slant to the program which is something to get excited about.
Having liked what we saw in 2003 we were quick to book our return to the festival, even attempting to prepare somewhat with a little research into the films on show. The problem with Sitges is that a little knowledge can be dangerous as we soon found out with THE BIRTHDAY. Shaun’s taking the rap for this one as he called it based purely on the involvement of Corey Feldmen. A return to former 80’s glory for Corey this wasn’t.
Fortunately for us and the festival 2004 was also the year of OLDBOY, PRIMER, THE MACHINIST, & ARAHAN. Four absolute belters and the films that would go on to define our love for the festival. For pure indulgence we’ve also included the opening scene from Johnnie To’s BREAKING NEWS. In the subsequent years Mr To has done his best to alienate us but perhaps it’s down to this 7 minute uncut introduction to his style of Hong Kong action that we keep giving him another chance.
Our previous post referred to Corridorstyle beginnings and Oldboy (2004) but technically we lost our cherry to the 2003 festival. Although an amateur assault (only a 7 film program) compared with our recent efforts it was nonetheless an accurate thin-slice of what the festival is all about.
In HAUTE TENSION we had a bloody, brilliant example of Sitges shit-scares, and with SO CLOSE we were treated to sumptuous Asian ass (kicking). After seeing the latter, I remember how The Ocho (Santiago) couldn’t stop singing “Why do birds suddenly appear” causing me to nearly go “haute tension” on his ass (personally, I couldn’t stop thinking about the shower scene).
But it was TWENTYNINEPALMS that had the most lasting effect that year. By most measures of a film it was the biggest, steaming pile of sheeite imaginable and it was testament to our novice status and accompanying enthusiasm that we sat through it to the end. However, it was the ending that chinned us and that’s been a sort of touchstone for us and the festival ever since. Don’t write a film off as pants after reading the synopsis, just go and see it because it’s the one in ten gem that you’ll remember for a long time (memory of the duds tends to fade by the time the first bottle of vino has been drained)
(You’ll have to accept the dubbed version here because it’s the visuals we’re interested in)
corridorstylefilms.com 