Winter is coming. We’ve heard this quite a bit over the last few months and with the release of “Game of Thrones” on DVD and Blu-ray earlier this week and the premiere of season two only a few weeks away (clear your calendar for April 1st), winter isn’t slowly creeping on us but coming at full speed and in full force.

So while some of us power through book two and try to squeeze out time to re-watch season one, the Vancity Theatre has taken it upon themselves to up the ante. On Friday, March 23th, the theatre will open it’s doors at 8AM and for the next 10 hours, will set about screening the entire first season with the season finale airing at 6PM. All of this, at zero cost.

If having the opportunity to check out the show on the big screen for free isn’t enough, the day will have some additional bonuses like contests, photo opportunities with the Iron Throne (eek!) and costumed characters from the show. Seriously. Double win!

More details on the event’s Facebook page and at Movie Central.

I am serisouly considering taking the day off.

What is Gamble’s next door neighbor up to? Matt grades a special homework assignment this week and a variety of scenarios are proposed and considered in detail to the point where one member of the cinecast breaks out a pretty spectacular Ted Levine impression. Also theatrical reviews of Canadian Hockey Hoser-y happens in Goon. And the found-footage mega-party, Project X, not only brings the age-divide into stark relief but also results in an overall missed opportunity. The Watchlist covers a lot of ground: Robert Bresson, Danny Boyle, Errol Morris, Neil LaBute, Paul Greengrass, Nevaldine/Taylor, Martin Scorsese, Tim Roth, and delightful gay men. Onward!

As always, please join the conversation by leaving your own thoughts in the comment section below and again, thanks for listening!

Cinecaste Episode 249 [ 2:20:25 | 96.42 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup

To download the show directly, paste the following URL into your favorite downloader:
http://rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_12/episode_249.mp3

 
 
Full show notes are under the seats…
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New Release Pick of the Week

Game of Thrones: Season 1
Yep, I’m featuring a TV show this week. Game of Thrones quickly sped to the top of my list of must-see shows last year, and rewatching some of it this week has only solidified that. Both in terms of an adaptation from the books and taken on its own, this show is fantastic, a perfect combination of medieval-style court intrigue and menacing fantasy.
2011 USA. Starring: Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Fairley.

Other New Releases

Footloose (2012 USA, dir Craig Brewer, stars Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough)
High Road (2011 USA, dir Matt Walsh, stars Ed Helms, Lizzy Kaplan)
Jack and Jill (2012 USA, dir Dennis Dugan, stars Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes)
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life (2012 USA, dir Tamar Halpern, stars Mira Sorvino)
London River (2009 UK, dir Rachid Bouchareb, stars Brenda Blethyn, Sotigui Kouyate)
MI: 5 Vol. 10 (2011 UK, stars Peter Firth, Hugh Simon)
Recoil (2012 USA, dir Terry Miles, stars Steve Austin, Danny Trejo)
Wyatt Earp’s Revenge (2012 USA, dir Michael Feifer, stars Val Kilmer, Shawn Roberts)

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After the modest success of Robert Rodriguez’s blown-up bubble-gum grindhouse feature, Machete, is the world ready for more Danny Trejo films? One might think they would come in the form of Machete sequels (two of which are on the way) but not so fast, Craig Moss (Saving Ryan’s Privates, Breaking Wind) somehow managed to make and secure a theatrical release for Bad Ass in which Trejo plays his age (67!) but still manages to bust a fair number of heads. This is hardly Mensa-stuff (the leading lady’s character name is Amber Lamps – Take that, Bond Franchise!) and surely not worth your $10, but somebody thinks so. Charles S. Dutton and Ron Perlman also star. The winner here is Trejo who has managed such an unlikely turn into leading man; albeit he still makes about a dozen films a year in which he is supporting bad ass.

The second trailer is below.

Decorated Vietnam hero Frank Vega returns home only to get shunned by society leaving him without a job or his high school sweetheart. It’s not until forty years later when an incident on a commuter bus (where he protects an elderly black man from a pair of skin heads) makes him a local hero where he’s suddenly celebrated once again. But his good fortune suddenly turns for the worse when his best friend Klondike is murdered and the police aren’t doing anything about it.

Directed By: Mototsugu Watanabe
Starring: Saeko Fuji, Kyôko Hashimoto, Yukijirô Hotaru

Trivia: This film was banned in Germany

For more Cinematic oddities and reviews, head over to dvdinfatuation.com

Produced primarily over a 20-year period, from the mid 1960′s to the 80′s, Japanese Pink films were a genre unto themselves. Soft-core, yet undoubtedly erotic, these movies placed nudity and sex center-stage, often shrouded within bizarre, violent stories. I myself have very little experience with Pink films, but after watching 1986′s Sexy Battle Girls, I plan to change all that.

Young Mirai (Kyoko Hashimoto) has just transferred to a private all-girl’s school, one that instructs its students in much more than reading, writing and arithmetic.  Under the watchful eye of the headmaster (Yukijiro Hutaru), the girls in this school are being “sold” to local politicians, who use them to act out their most depraved sexual fantasies. More than a perverted criminal, the Headmaster is also the very man who tore Mirai’s family apart.  To gain her revenge, Mirai will unleash her “special power” and teach the headmaster a lesson he won’t soon forget.

There’s action aplenty jammed into Sexy Battle Girls‘ one-hour running time, but more to the point, there are no less than seven sex scenes, some of which evolve beyond simple soft core into more graphic, not to mention violent, displays of affection.

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Director: Martin Guigui (Cattle Call, 2 Flats)
Screenplay: Bruce Wilkinson
Producer: Ronnie D. Clemmer
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Tony Oller, Aimee Teegarden, Stephen Lunsford, Devon Werkheiser
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 96 min.

(2/5)

For the most part, it’s interesting seeing actors try new things so when I saw charming leading man Dennis Quaid in a trailer for a thriller where he plays the bad guy, I was instantly on board.

Beneath the Darkness opens with a promising scene in which Quaid’s character approaches an apparently random man jogging (in the middle of the night no less) and kills him. Fast forward to years and we learn that Quaid is Ely, the mortician of a sleepy little town. The kids think he’s weird and that his old house is haunted, an idea that is cemented when a group of friends spy what they think are ghosts in the window of Ely’s well appointed home.

It’s not too difficult to figure out what happens next. The kids plan a break-in to check things out, things go wrong, they narrowly escape but not before seeing something really bizarre. Trying to prove to everyone that Ely is the creepy man they always knew him to be, they regroup and plan a second entry only to find themselves face-to-face with the crazy creepy man whose job is to take care of the town’s dead.

Oh yeah, and along the way we find out why Ely killed the midnight jogger.

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Redbox achieved an entertainment milestone this weekend having rented its two billionth movie and video game. The two billionth disc, Drive, was rented at a McDonald’s restaurant in Philomath, Ore. To thank America for making Redbox its destination for entertainment, Redbox invites everyone to enjoy a free, one-night movie rental on Thursday, March 8, by using a promotional code available on the Redbox Facebook page.

said Scott Di Valerio, interim president of Redbox:

“We’ve always known how much America loves easy, affordable entertainment, and today we can prove it two billion times over. Just 18 months ago, we rented our one billionth DVD and we couldn’t be more excited to celebrate this remarkable second rental milestone with our customers.”

Consumers can join in the celebration by visiting the Redbox Facebook page to share a promo code for a free, one-night DVD rental with friends and family. The promo code is valid on March 8 only. New-release titles now available include Hugo and In Time. Starting tomorrow, Footloose, Jack & Jill and Like Crazy will be available at kiosks nationwide.

Redbox is located where America shops with more than 35,400 kiosks nationwide across 29,000 convenient locations. Today, more than 68 percent of the U.S. population lives within a five minute drive of a Redbox kiosk. Finding the nearest Redbox location is simple on redbox.com, via the Redbox iPhone and Android apps or by texting FIND to 727272.

Miyazaki Reuninon (click for larger):

Amazing BTTF Posters. Buy them through MondoTees ($88/set):

(click for larger)

A Cameo in Hugo:

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Monday, March 5

6:15am – TCM – Bombshell
One of the first films to really bring Jean Harlow to prominence (or at least use her talents to their fullest), as she plays a Hollywood star who tries out various other life pursuits, with comic results.
1933 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone.

11:45am – TCM – Only Angels Have Wings
I’ve never gotten into Only Angels Have Wings as much as I have into other Howard Hawks films – why I don’t know. It has elements I like – Cary Grant as a daring pilot making dangerous cargo runs in exotic locales, Jean Arthur in an uncharacteristically dramatic turn, and a sighting of a young Rita Hayworth. Just doesn’t seem to come together in a memorable whole for me.
1939 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell.

3:45pm – TCM – The Outlaw
After being a successful aviator and before becoming a hopeless hypochondriac, Howard Hughes tried his hand at moviemaking, most notably with 1930′s Hell’s Angels and this 1943 film, notable for being Jane Russell’s first major role as well as for being suppressed/banned for a few years thanks to Russell’s frank and earthy sexuality. I actually haven’t seen it myself yet, so I can’t comment on its quality, but the story surrounding it is interesting enough for me to want to take a look.
1943 USA. Director: Howard Hughes. Starring: Jane Russell, Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell.

5:45pm – TCM – To Have and Have Not
It’s said that this film came about because Howard Hawks bet Earnest Hemingway that he (Hawks) could make a good film out of Hemingway’s worst book. Of course, to do that, Hawks ended up basically changing the story entirely, but hey. It’s the thought that counts. Mostly notable for being Lauren Bacall’s first film, the one where she met Humphrey Bogart, and the one that spawned the immortal “you know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve” bit of dialogue. That one scene? Worth the whole film.
1944 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan.

8:00pm – IFC – Pan’s Labyrinth
One of my absolute favorite films of the past decade (or ever, really), an absolutely beautiful and terrifying fantasy that juxtaposes the gruesome horrors of the Spanish Civil War with an equally horrifying fantasy world that provides, if not escape, at least some measure of importance and control to the film’s young heroine. Guillermo Del Toro solidified my view of him as a visionary filmmaker with this film, and it still stands to me as a testament to what fantasy can and should do.
2006 Spain/Mexico. Director: Guillermo Del Toro. Starring: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Meribel Verdú, Doug Jones.
Must See

10:00pm – Sundance – L’auberge espagnol
A French student moves into an apartment with six other people in Barcelona. The interactions of these roommates with diverse cultural backgrounds and personalities forms the basis of the film as a whole, which may be short on plot but is great on the interpersonal relations and conversations that the French are so good at putting on film.
2002 France. Director: Cédric Klapisch. Starring: Romain Duris, Judith Godrèche, Kelly Reilly.

5:30am (6th) – TCM – Suddenly, Last Summer
Hollywood powerhouses Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor clash as Hepburn, an imperious matriarch, wants to have Taylor lobotomized to cover up the circumstances of Hepburn’s son’s death, which Taylor witnessed and for some reason drove her insane. Seeing these two duke it out in an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play sounds like my idea of a good time.
1959 USA. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Mercedes McCambrige.
Newly Featured!

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[Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox program The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson is currently underway, and will be continuing through Sunday, March 18th. Film blogger Corey Atad has provided a summary of the program over at Dork Shelf.]

For many cinephiles, the absolute pinnacle of cinematic interpretations of the Joan of Arc story is Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent masterpiece from 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc. When one first watches Robert Bresson’s 1962 film The Trial of Joan of Arc, it is all too easy to mentally compare it to the Dreyer film – especially since both works specifically limit themselves to the peasant-born leader’s trial and execution. Yet, as with Lancelot du Lac, Bresson’s specific vision quite clearly distinguishes his take on the much-retold tale from other artists’. Closely adapting the actual records of the trial, his film clocks in at a lean 65 minutes and, fittingly, quite ably exemplifies his rigorously crafted aesthetic.

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From all accounts Ralph McQuarrie was a really special person. Not just for his amazing talents with a paint brush, but for who he was as a person. Everyone who got to meet the man or had him as part of their lives personally all say the same thing: “He was an especially kind, sensitive, deep, modest, funny and fascinating gentleman. And as fine a role model as any one could have wished for.”

I never got to meet the man, but there’s no doubt that in some ways he shaped me (and I suspect you too) as a lover of film, even if you don’t realize it directly. George Lucas is credited with the original Star Wars trilogy. But without McQuarrie’s imagination on the pre-production side of things, the Star Wars universe might’ve looked very very different. And likely would not have become the phenomenon it did; creating the likeness for many of the iconic characters we all know and love today, including Chewbacca, Darth Vader, C-3PO and many others. He also worked on E.T., Battlestar Galactica and won an Academy Award for his work on Coccoon.

McQuarrie died yesterday, in his Berkeley, California home. He was 82. You’ll be missed sir, but even by those who didn’t know you directly, I can honestly say you’ll never be forgotten. Every time we pop in that scratchy old VHS copy of The Empire Strikes Back, you’ll be thought of.

Director: Andrew Kötting
Starring: Andrew Kötting, Eden Kötting
Producer: Andrew Kötting
Country: UK
Running Time: 57 min
Year: 2011
BBFC Certificate: U

I‘m going to get it out there straight away, I really didn’t like This Our Still Life. However, I’m going to go easy on it. This is mainly because this isn’t really a ‘film’ as such and not even a documentary as it’s labelled on IMDB. It’s more of an art-piece, so giving it a star-rating seems wrong and I can appreciate that those more inclined to experimental lo-fi work might get more from it. OK, so all films can be classed as art in some way or another – even churned out blockbusters have been crafted with some level of artistry. Something like this though has a whole different approach to the medium and doesn’t feel like the same experience even watching quite surreal films such as David Lynch’s gives, let alone your run of the mill Hollywood output. So instead I’m going to express my problems with This Our Still Life, but try not to just label it as ‘crap’.

I actually thought the central idea of the film was great and that’s mainly why I didn’t like it, as it didn’t really make the most of it in my mind. The film consists of the director (and camera op, editor, producer etc.) Andrew Kötting filming excerpts of his life in the Pyrenese with his wife Leila and his 23 year old daughter Eden, who was born with a rare neurological disease. We observe their life over a year, living very basically, seemingly miles from any sort of ‘civilisation’ as we’d know it.

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