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[caption id=”attachment_7619” align=”alignleft” width=”50” caption=”Jacob “JJ” Jones”][/caption]

Film fans may hate me for saying this, but this upcoming winter looked like it would be just as cold at the box office as the temperatures outside. From Peter Jackson’s 48 frame-per-second adaptation of the first third of The Hobbit, and a new adaptation of Les Mis, nothing has really caught my eye. Sure, Quentin Tarantino’s new film is coming out, but I planned to save myself $10 by looping myself shouting “fuck” on my iPod while playing Grand Theft Auto. 

But there was one diamond in the rough: Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Luhrmann, the academy award nominated director of Moulin Rouge! showed the world that he could craft great tales of bohemian young love and socioeconomic class struggles; thus, making the 49-year-old director the perfect choice to direct an adaption of that classic novel we all were forced to read in middle school English.

Original Article

Guest Contributor – Irv Slifkin from www.moviefanfare.com

Although he is only 32 years-old, writer-director Ti West has five horror films under his belt and more in the planning stages. And while he is too old, perhaps, to be called a “wunderkind” West’s age and amount of realized projects are certainly nothing to sneeze at.

West, a native of Wilmington, Delaware, has a new film about to open in theaters called “The Innkeepers.” The movie was actually shot and is set in the Yankee Pedlar Inn, an aging hostelry in Torrington, Connecticut, that, in the movie, is about to close. Clerks Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) tend to the place in its final days. Only a woman and her young child stay there, while an aging actress who is now a New Age psychic (Kelly McGillis) checks in. Is the place haunted…or not? Luke has a website devoted to the Inn with live webcam feeds that may prove it is.

Like West’s previous film, 2009’s acclaimed House of the Devil, The Innkeepers relies on slowly building tension, characterization and edginess to win its scares—gore and violence are kept to a minimum. There is also an element of humor in his treatment of horror, particularly in the first portion of the film, when the focus is on the interplay between the naïve Claire and the cynical Luke.

“It was a concentrated effort to make it funnier,” says West by phone. “I could relate to the kind of job of working at a hotel,. I’ve always said I am either qualified to direct movies or have a minimum wage jobs. I spent ten years doing minimum wage jobs. There’s a charm with coworkers. You make the best of the situations when things are like that.”

What sort of jobs did West have? “I mowed lawns, worked at Dick’s Sporting Goods, worked at a shoe store and a video store and Diesel (a clothing chain) at the King of Prussia Mall.

West said things got a little weird while attending a film festival.

“I was in span with my first film and there were lots of people there,” he recalls. “I was standing next to Quentin Tarantino and I realized that I had to be on a plane the next day asking people what size they wanted.”

West, who is planning a science fiction film next, now lives in Los Angeles. The idea for the Innkeepers came from staying at the actual Yankee Pedlar Inn while shooting House of the Devil.

“People think it is haunted and there was a special allure to it,” says West. “It’s kind of a kooky place. I had wanted to write a ghost story, and I figured now I could since I lived it.”

West recalls that the crew for The Innkeepers comprised most to the patrons at the Yankee Pedlar at the time. The shoot, which lasted an amazingly short 17 days, had to be scheduled between wessings and proms that were booked there.

Like his other films like The Roost, Trigger Man and cabin Fever 2 (which he disowns and tempted to have his name taken off of because of studio tampering), The Innkeepers was filmed on 35mm, a format West prefers to the digital shooting, so prominent today, especially with horror films.But he realizes he may have to make the move to digital soon because of costs. “It’s going to be hard to justify an extra $160,000 to shoot in 35 mm soon,” West laments.

Meanwhile, West is “desperately trying” to make a studio film. From his Cabin Fever 2 experience with Lionsgate, he admits he’s been a little ”gunshy.”

“I come from a do-it-yourself indie background, but it’s all about the right pairing. I don’t want to make a movie not a sequel. Test screenings scare me. If someone liked my movies and want to make a big movie with me, when it gets to test screening, everyone panics and then they change their mind after agreeing with me. I was shocked to see people go 180 degrees who were with me before.”

The writer-director has a strong opinion on what makes a horror film work—and not work. “The key is the contrast between horror and non-horror,” he explains. “That’s all it takes. They (the filmmakers) are afraid of losing the audience. If you put time into making all the non-horror elements good, it should work. A lot of horror movies are kill, kill, kill.”

“My brain doesn’t work this way. My sensibilities are old fashioned. Everything I am inspired by…they have respect for audience and the notion that the audience doesn’t have to be titillated the whole time.”

West’s influences are films that he saw when he was a kid, but they all share on thing in common.

“I like to see movies where I pay attention closely,” he relates. “Indiana Jones and the Karate Kid And I became interested in horror when it was one step above porn. It was back in the corner of the video store. They were daring you to watch these movies. As far as making films, Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste was important, a goofy disgusting film. It was the first movie I could watch and I could wrap my head around how they made it. It was silly but good and you can see how they did it and it was homemade. The Evil Dead was the same way and (director Sam) Raimi was only 19.”

Like House of the Devil, The Innkeepers has adapted a multi-platform release strategy, available On Demand, then being issued in (mostly art) theaters by Magnolia Pictures, and eventually getting a DVD and Blu-ray release. All of this follows extensive exposure—and praise—in film festivals.

How does West view this new way of releasing films?

“It is what it is,” he says. “I didn’t believe in it until House of the Devil cam eout. hen I saw it was really successful. It didn’t really make sense, but it worked—you can’t argue with the fact. Ever since then, I realized that we’re not a big movie. We’re going to come out in 25 cities and people in Des Moines will order it (on demand). It becomes a home viewing experience. I want them to see them in theater, but it is silly to expect them to.”

Irv Slifkin, the author of Filmadelphia: A Celebration of a City’s Movies, writes for www.moviefanfare.com.

Original Article

For years, Paul Schrader’s seminal revenge classic has been out of print and on the most wanted list for DVD distribution.  Finally we can stop passing around those poorly transferred VHS dubs.  Courtesy of MGM’s financial troubles, the film is finally seeing the light of day.  You may remember Rolling Thunder as one of Quentin Tarantino’s oft cited influences, going so far as to name his production shingle “Rolling Thunder Films” and granting Brad Pitt’s character in Inglourious Basterds the moniker of Aldo Rane after William Devane’s character, Major Charles Rane.

The film is a must see for lovers of stripped down 70s revenge machismo with a nihilistic bent.  Rolling Thunder fits right in with films like Death Wish and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

Not interested in plunking down the scratch on such a deserving classic?  Luckily Hulu has it for free… but likely only for a limited time!

Original Article

Why do movies exist?  How are our lives bettered by seeing them? and why does a movie about a tire that goes on a killing spree exist?  No reason.  Welcome Quentin Dupieux’s (aka electronic musician Mr. Oizo) 75 minute rumination on the absurd nature of entertainment.  Yes, the killer tire movie, Rubber.

Simply pigeonholing the film as a Grindhouse style 70s exploitation flick where the hero/heroine has been replaced by a rubber tire is to undersell the concept entirely.  Mr. Dupieux seems intent on playing with the very definitions of what entertainment is/has been/can be.  Yes, there’s a bit of a philosophical underbelly at play here.  Where for years directors like similarly monikered Quentin Tarantino have been lambasted for a lack of substance over style, Dupieux seems content to say that there is only style and substance is entirely objective, undefinable and  meaningless.  You can’t help but anthropomorphize (my favorite big word)  the tire in the same way you’re tricked into crying over a computer generated object in any of Pixar’s entries.  None of it is real and all of it is entirely constructed, and yet we invest ourselves and our emotions and allow ourselves to be manipulated.  Tonally Dupieux’s film is reminiscent to Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control.  What does any of it mean?  Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.  It simply is.  So enter what may be the first manipulation free film.

Should you see Rubber?

Definitely.

Will you like it?

It depends entirely on what you hope to take away from the experience.

Did you like it?

Yes, I did.

Why?

No reason.

10 Poisoned Turkeys out of 10

Original Article