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Glasgow FrightFest 2016 Review: Pandemic, A Bleak If Derivative Viral Apocalypse
20 hours ago
"Just try to think of it as a game. It'll help." This is the unnamed Gunner (Mekhi Phifer) speaking to his unit's new doctor Lauren Chase (Rachel Nichols), as he describes the best mental attitude to adopt while beating people from their moving armoured bus with a baseball bat. Gunner is likewise modulating the viewer's reception of the film. For Pandemic, directed by John The Scribbler Suits, restricts itself not only to intradiegetic cinematography, but also mostly to the digicams fixed in the four principal characters' helmets, so that what we see closely resembles a first-person shooter (with variable perspectives). As Lauren, Gunner, navigator Denise (Missi Pyle) and driver 'Wheeler' (Alfie Allen) make their way through a virus-ravaged, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles on a mission to rescue the unit...
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Monster Fest 2016 Opens Call For Submissions
20 hours ago
Attention filmmaking weirdos! The Monster Fest 2016 call for submissions is now open! Now's the chance to get your film in early! The festival wants to see your features, shorts, and expanded cinema projects. Those in the know head to Monster Fest every November , as the fest is known far and wide as Australia’s premiere festival of cult, horror, and the fantastic. The fest returns for its sixth edition from November 24-27, 2016 at the Lido Cinemas in Melbourne, with support from Screen Australia. Submissions for Monster Fest 2016 can be processed via Film Freeway, Without a Box and Film Festival Life. You'll find details and submission guidelines via their website. Deadlines: Early Bird: April 29 Regular: June 3 Extended: August 12 Headed up by Festival Director Kier-La Janisse (author...
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Glasgow FrightFest 2016 Review: Anguish Is Two Films In One Body
20 hours ago
A mother Sarah (Karina Logue) and her teenaged daughter Lucy (Amberley Gridley) are out driving. "It's not fair!" complains Lucy, upset about the boundaries being imposed on her adolescent conduct. This leads Sarah to cite the traditional saying amongst the womenfolk in her family: "If your aunt had a moustache, she'd be your uncle." In anger, Lucy steps out of the car --- and right into the path of a passing truck. This prologue to Anguish lays out all the film's key themes: frayed mother-daughter relationships, the desire to cross forbidden boundaries, the fluid nature of identity (inscribed in that peculiar saying, repeated several times over the course of the film), and of course death. If Lucy's passing leaves a painful gap, then the subsequent...
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Tfw 2016: Texas Frightmare Weekend Announces First Wave Of Screenings
26 February 2016 9:00 AM, PST
Texas Frightmare Weekend, the largest horror convention in the Southwest United States, has announced the first wave of their film screenings for the 2016 event. In addition to the multitude of fantastic guests and vendors Tfw attracts every single year, they've become one of my favorite venues to see new underground horror films. Past Texas premieres have included Kurando Mitsutake's Gun Woman, Astron-6's Father's Day, Nishimura Yoshihiro's Helldriver, and dozens more. This year the first wave includes several eagerly awaited by gorehounds nationwide as well as some lesser known films that are sure to please! Texas Frightmare Weekend 2016 takes place April 29-May 1 at the Hyatt Regency Dfw Hotel in Irving, Texas....
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Groundhog Day With Extra Death In Hungarian Time Loop Thriller Hurok Trailer
26 February 2016 8:00 AM, PST
Hungarian writer-director Isti Madarasz makes his feature debut with Hurok, a time looping thriller following a man living the same sequence of events in a continuous cycle as he tries to save the life of his girlfriend. There have been a good number of these time looping films in recent years, the subgenre thriving because when well done it allows for a potent blend of entertainment value and character depth on a budget and Madarasz appears to be making good use of the device here. The first trailer for the film is freshly available online, check it out below!...
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Indian Film Festival Of Los Angeles Announces Its 2016 Lineup
26 February 2016 8:00 AM, PST
The 14th annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles announced its lineup for this year's edition and it is an incredibly solid set of films that makes me wish I was able to attend! Among the highlights are the Opening Night films and Tiff star, Angry Indian Goddesses, along with a huge number of amazing films, several of which I can personally vouch for. Check out the press release below along with summaries for each feature, and snippets from our reviews of several of the features. Many of these will appeal greatly to TwitchFilm readers, including Visaranai, Kirumi, and Brahman Naman among others. Enjoy! Iffla 2016 takes place April 6-10 at the ArcLight Hollywood....
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The Many Faces Of Chiwetel Ejiofor
26 February 2016 7:00 AM, PST
This week, John Hillcoat's dirty cop thriller Triple 9 premieres, and according to Kurt Halfyard's review it is definitely worth your time. And one of the many fine cast members happens to be British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who for the past two decades has appeared in many a noticeable role, in many a noticeable film. Seriously, the man (or his agent) has a stellar taste, and thankfully he always delivers. So once again I'm going to use eleven pictures of one of my favourite thespians to make a quiz. Click through the images, and guess which movies or shows they're from. No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDb! And I'll post the answers next Thursday,...
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Review: Jack Of The Red Hearts Means Well, But Falls Flat
26 February 2016 6:00 AM, PST
It's not easy to make a film about a particular issue prevelant in society - be it an illness, a social problem, a political situation - and make it dramatically interesting. This is especially true if the issue is one that has been around long enough for there to be a certain number of texts about it. In such cases, if there is nothing new to be said, or if the film isn't done in a new and interesting way, it can end up predictable and clichéd. Sadly, such is the case with Janet Grillo's Jack of the Red Hearts. While well-intentioned, with a very good performance by Taylor Richardson, it seems more fitted to be a TV movie-of-the-week as opposed to a theatrical release,...
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Super Stylish Trailer For Polish Crime Noir Geisha
26 February 2016 5:00 AM, PST
A night club lends its name to the title of upcoming Polish thriller Geisha (Gejsza), a steamy concoction of sex and violence revolving around a bouncer (Konrad Eleryk) drawn into a sordid underworld. Writer-director Radislaw Markiewicz shows off a fusion of art and style here that calls the likes of Refn to mind and that's no small feat. Take a look at the trailer below!...
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Review: Gods Of Egypt, Unworthy Of Praise
25 February 2016 3:01 PM, PST
More video game than movie, the primary positive takeaway from the new digitally-driven mythology-based Gods of Egypt would have to be, as the uneducated gamers often refer to cinematic visual effects, “good graphics.” This is irritating sand in the eye for those hoping that somewhere in this overcooked onslaught of unreal bigness and loudness there might be a good old fashioned adventure yarn. I have friends who've commonly lamented the loss of the old fashioned quest film. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings aside, the charm of the old school low budget Italian Hercules or even Ray Harryhausen spectacles, in which a cardboard hero must venture forth and take down a string of creatures with nothing but his sword, his sandals, and his beard,...
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Cult Cinema: The Arrow Video Companion Hits Bookshelves This Spring
25 February 2016 11:00 AM, PST
If there is anything that I love almost as much as I love watching movies, it is reading about movies. One of our favorite home video distributors, the unbeatable Arrow Video, is making its entry into the coffee table book market with their upcoming release of Cult Cinema: The Arrow Video Companion. This book will include a compendium of writing on a number of films, some of which are illustated in the images below, as well as the delivery methods of cult home video into the eyeballs of viewers over the years. Cult Cinema: The Arrow Video Companion is due at retailers in limited numbers on March 29, there is a pre-order link below. In the meantime, enjoy the preview images and details from Arrow Video...
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Review: The Last Man On The Moon, For Those Who Stare Into The Sky And Wonder
25 February 2016 10:00 AM, PST
Initially more of a hagiography than a documentary, The Last Man on the Moon gradually expands beyond its worshipful stance to examine the U.S. space program and, in particuar, the contributions of the titular astronaut. The U.S. space program in the 1960s was a thing of awe and wonder, at least as reported in the mainstream press. That was certainly my impression as a child. Like a fair number of my peers, I wanted to go to space. I still remember sitting in the family car, snuggled between adults, listening to the news on the radio as we drove home from an event one night in July 1969. I stared up into the sky and wondered what it would feel like to walk on the...
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Watch Some Icky Sticky, Ooey Gooey Horror In Bad Blood: The Movie Trailer!
25 February 2016 8:30 AM, PST
When we first heard about Tim Reis' horror flick Bad Blood: The Movie the director was presenting his Werefrog film as a work in progress at the Frontieres Co-Production Market at Fantasia last Summer. Thankfully for fans of sloppy and sticky horror Reis found the partners he needed to finish his film and now we have the first trailer, and some stills, to share with you below. The Creators of The Demon's Rook and Goat Witch bring the slime with sci-fi creature feature, Bad Blood: The Movie. After a horrific amphibian attack leaves college student Victoria Miller (Mary Malloy) infected with a mutational disease, she returns home where the antidote to her affliction is mistaken for drugs by her evil stepfather. Locked in...
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Beware The Arrival Of The Man From Death
25 February 2016 8:00 AM, PST
We have long been fans of filmmaker Eric Lim in these parts, with a quick search of the TwitchFilm archives pulling up stories about his work going back around a decade now. He's a bit of a hard guy to pin down, really, most often serving officially as a producer on projects but typically far more involved than that tag implies with Lim generally fostering communities of like minded talents with whom he creates a pretty much glorious assortment of oddities. There have been giant monster films, science fiction, action, and a dark fantasy fueled by personal tragedy. And now he's going somewhere he's never gone before: The western. Lim's latest work sees him re-team with director Stephen Reedy - with whom he collaborated on...
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Review: They Look Like People, Terror At Its Very Best
25 February 2016 8:00 AM, PST
It begins in the dark hollows of your mind. But you can feel it in your heart. Pumping through your veins. The notion that something is wrong. That the world is wrong. That reality is not what it seems. That you are not worthy. And then the phone calls begin. And you're told you are worthy. You are one of the blessed. You must prepare for the coming war against a world that is now hidden, but will soon be revealed to be full of monsters. Your friends, your lover... they are all monsters. They only look like people. This is the nature of director Perry Blackshear's feature debut They Look Like People. The film crackles with technical and narrative ingenuity, exploring the fragile state...
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Destroy All Monsters: What I've Learned From Completely Failing At #52FilmsByWomen
25 February 2016 7:00 AM, PST
As bootstrapping initiatives go, the 52 Films By Women project - hashtagged #52FilmsByWomen - seems easier than most. The ask is simple: watch one movie by a female director per calendar week in 2016. Hey! That's right in my wheelhouse! No problem, I thought to myself. It's been happening on Letterboxd and elsewhere since the New Year, and nearly 2 months into 2016, I've got to acknowledge the hilarious reality: I suck at this. It's not an outright disaster yet - I've banked four films in the available eight weeks, so far - but I'm beginning to run up against repeatable themes and problems that threaten to stop this whole project dead. The good news is, I'm learning a few things. With Variety reporting on...
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Review: Triple 9, An Accomplished Potboiler
25 February 2016 6:02 AM, PST
"The monster has gone digital," warns Woody Harrelson in a fashion that only Mr. Harrelson can. As a bedraggled detective cleaning up the mess of a bank manager whose vault was just not only breached in a daylight heist, but documents of his families whereabouts are left behind by the thieves as a threat. Triple 9 is a gritty fusion of the dirty cop drama, and the 'one last job' thriller. Mostly it feels like the last hurrah of the ensemble heist film. With Gps, closed circuit cameras, and other omnipresent technologies, pulling off a smash-and-grab bank job seems as foolish as grabbing a few strapped stacks on impulse on the way out the door only to find them loaded with dye packs. John Hillcoat,...
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Rotterdam 2016 Review: Chevalier Shows The Ultimate Dick-measuring Contest
25 February 2016 5:00 AM, PST
Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari is seen as an important part of the current Greek "Weird Wave" of cinema. She produced several of Yorgos Lanthimos' films like Dogtooth, and he helped produce (and acted in) her previous film Attenberg. But there's something worth noting about that film: while Attenberg was unusual, it wasn't exactly "weird". It worked fine as a straight-faced drama, and though it contained some wry humor, it wasn't even all that absurd. Cue Tsangari's newest film Chevalier, of which the same thing can be said. Its main strength isn't so much that it is weird or absurd, but that it is all too believable: a group of men, on a holiday together, have themselves a dick-measuring contest to end all dick-measuring contests....
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Rotterdam 2016 Interview: Udo Kier Talks Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lars von Trier And Past And Present Roles
25 February 2016 2:00 AM, PST
While roaming the screen rooms and adjacent spaces in Rotterdam, TwitchFilm had the honor to sit down with acting cult icon Udo Kier, who was there to promote his latest endeavor, Austrian miniseries Altes Geld, in which he portrays a patriarch with power and wealth in his hands and a failing liver inside him. The pursuit for a new organ turns the family upside down in a subversive version of a family soap opera. Udo Kier´s prolific career envelopes 250+ films and counting. He has collaborated with big names from history books and has a diverse portfolio starring in thrash, cult, genre and award-swooping arthouse films all over the globe. TwitchFilm chatted with the actor over a glass of white wine. TwitchFilm: You flew to...
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The Propaganda Game: Alvaro Longoria Explains What Happened To The Truth While Filming In North Korea
24 February 2016 10:00 AM, PST
In a world where information is ever more readily available, it can sometimes seem as if there are few real mysteries left, and for that reason North Korea can represent a darkly fascinating horizon to many of us. But what if you found out as a filmmaker that you had a realistic opportunity of crossing into this shadowy realm – would you take it? After years of perseverance, that’s what documentarian Alvaro Longoria discovered upon finding a mysterious Spanish-North Korean called Alejandro who had powerful ties with the Kim Jung-un cadre. The feature he subsequently created has played at the Festival de San Sebastian, received distribution in a number of countries (including now most recently the UK), and saw Longoria nominated for his second Goya...
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