The Night Visions movie marathon is the corner stone of the whole festival. The screenings start today already at 3.30 PM and the last film starts at 9 AM tomorrow. Please remember that the clocks are not turned until the last film has started!
If you still haven’t decided what films you are going to see tonight, here’s a couple of interesting options.
DEEP RED
A musician witnesses the murder of a famous psychic, and then teams up with a fiesty reporter to find the killer while evading attempts on their lives by the unseen killer bent on keeping a dark secret buried.
In the beginning of the screening there’s a video message from Goblin to you!
HIGH CRIME
An Italian police inspector matches wits with a powerful European drug ring. As he comes closer to the top of the underworld organization, his odds of survival decrease.
The main guest of the festival, Enzo G. Castellari, will be present at the screening. This is your last chance to see Mr. Castellari in person so don’t miss it!
RABIES
A brother and sister who run away from home find sanctuary in a deserted nature reserve. When the sister falls into the trap of a psychopathic killer…
The first horror movie ever to come out of Israel.
TRESPASS
As they’re held for ransom, a husband and wife’s predicament grows more dire amid the discovery of betrayal and deception.
If you are looking for the two biggest stars (Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman) in Hollywood to get robbed and mugged, this is a film for you.
THE WARD
A thriller centered on an institutionalized young woman who becomes terrorized by a ghost.
THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS
The story about a New England professor discovering alien horrors beyond his most dire imaginings is executed with stunning sense of style and atmosphere, reminiscent of the 1930s classic horrors of 1930s Universal monster movies.
One of the rare H.P. Lovecraft feature film adaptations.
DEADBALL
The gore-ladden story laced with politically incorrect humor centers on the misadventures of star pitcher Jubei, who ends up taking part in an deadly extreme sports tournament set inside the walls of a prison for juvenile delinquents.
For this one, I think the trailer speaks loader than words… but I’m sure it will bring the house down in Maxim at 3:00 AM.
So take a nap, drink shitloads of coffee and start getting ready for the Night Vision’s movie marathon, because it starts in a couple of hours. See you at the festival!
For the full list of films and schedule, check out the official site.
Night Visions started yesterday with a bang already breaking it’s own records. The lobby of Maxim (the theatre the festival is held) was once again familiarly packed and very crowded. If you don’t get at least a little bit claustrophobic at Night Visions, it just doesn’t feel right.
A short film called CONVICT (a film produced by Bronson Club actually) had it’s world’s premiere at the festival yesterday and it fit into the feel of Night Visions perfectly. It was violent and ruthless, just the way we like it! Some of the team attended the festival (pic below) and they also gave a quick Q&A after the screening. Good job guys!
The main event of the evening was HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. A Canadian splatter horror thriller exploitation film starring the amazing Rutger Hauer and directed by Jason Eisener. To those of you who don’t know this, the film is actually based on the winning trailer of the same name from Robert Rodriguez’sSouth by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest. Oh and by the way, there is still another screening of the film this Friday 28.10. at 17.30 in Maxim 1 if you missed it yesterday (the screening was totally sold out).
Here’s the winning “fake” trailer.
And the actual trailer for the movie.
TONIGHT’S UPCOMING HIGH POINTS
Today there’s a couple of very interesting screenings you don’t want to miss. First up is HIGH CRIME by Enzo G. Castellari, who will also be present at the screening! There’s luckily another screening on Saturday at 20.00 in Maxim 2 if you happen to miss this one (like me).
Another interesting event tonight is the screening of RABIES, the first horror movie ever to come out of Israel. The directors Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales are also attending the screening.
So great films and guests at Night Visions tonight!
Finland’s biggest genre film festival, Night Visions, starts today and it’s once again packed with a bone chilling catalogue of the best horror, fantasy, science fiction, action and cult cinema out there. In my opinion there is absolutely no better way to spend your Halloween than watching great (horror) films. The festival starts this Wednesday and continues all trough the sleepless weekend.
MOVIES TO DIE FOR
The 5 day long festival kicks off with a new version of the horror classic THE THING (dir: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, USA/Canada 2011). The film was originally made famous by the master of horror himself John Carpenter. Although it has been said that the movie is a not a re-make, but who are they kidding, right? Talking about Carpenter, he also has a film at the festival called THE WARD (USA 2010) starring Amber Heard. After almost a ten year break from film, the maestro is back and you don’t want to miss this!
The film I’m most exited about has to be Kevin Smith’s brand new RED STATE (dir: Kevin Smith, USA 2011). The film just recently snatched two of the most important awards at Sitges Film Festival in Spain; Best Motion Picture and Best Actor for Michael Parks. Another extremely interesting flick is HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (dir: Jason Eisener, Canada 2011). Oh and just a hint, in front of both of these features there will be short film screenings also.
Check out the full list of films and the schedule from here.
What would Night Visions be without the FINLANDIA-GAALA? I love it, because it’s a great and quite unique platform for older Finnish genre films to be seen on the big screen. This year the movie to be screened is MERKITTY (dir: Ismo Sajakorpi, Finland 1984).
GHANAVISION-EXHIBITION
Before the festival had even started, we had a chance to go see a great art exhibition called Ghanavision. It displays original hand painted movie poster art work from Ghana for the first time ever in Finland. The posters are also all for sale, the prize ranging around 600 to 1200 euros or so. This unique exhibition is held in Myymälä2-galleria (Uudenmaankatu 23) 12.–30.10.2011.
THE NIGHT OF TERROR
The high point of the festival is always the Saturday-night movie marathon when the movies continue until the morning light. This Halloween the program seems great like always.
Check out the full list for the films and schedule from here.
For more info visit the official site nightvisions.info and get your tickets from here.
The Imagine panelists (from left): Zachary Oberzan, Alexandré Philippe, Timo Vuorensola and Martin Koolhoven.
The moderators had prepared a bunch of bold statements, which they flashed on the screen as a discussion starters, igniting the panelists to venture from fan art to crowd sourcing, crowd funding and finally the future of the film industry. Although I was one of the panelists, I felt the discussion was quite thorough, and didn’t degrade into circlejerking or a flame war at any point, which unfortunately can’t be said of every panel I’ve attended to.
Flooding with Love for the Kid is quite an interesting project, of which I had not heard of before the festival, although the film’s been out there quite prominently – just one of those things right down my alley that I’ve managed to somehow miss. The idea behind the film that it was shot with $96 in one apartment in New York, by Zachary Oberzan, who’s playing all the roles himself. Zachary, a big First Blood fan (first, the movie – then, the book), realized his life-long dream to re-interpret the novel, on which Stallone‘s film by the same name is based on. Fact is, he never had any money, equipement or crew to do it, but being an unemployed filmmaker and an actor in New York, he decided to quite waiting around for other people’s permission to make the film, and went ahead and just did it. The trailer is here:
Zachary told interesting stories, as he had contacted the novelist David Morrell who wrote the book, to gain his permission for making the film – and although Morrell didn’t own the rights, he did give his blessing. But still, Stallone has the filming rights for First Blood, and if he wanted to play asshole, he could sue Zachary quite fast. But the discussion of whether it would be either a fan film, a parody or something in between is something the lawyers are not especially enthusiastic to start fighting for.
Right now, Zachary is working on a film/theater project where he’s re-making shot-by-shot his youth fan remakes of Van Damme‘s movie KickBoxer (1989), and he tours around the world on theater stages showing the films and playing Van Damme on the stage simultaneously. A very interesting project touring right now, and goes by the name Your Brother, Remember. Check out the amazing trailer below – if this doesn’t make you think about Samuli Torssonen back in the days when he was working on Andy Bones and Star Wrecks, then nothing:
Alexandré Philippe, a director of The People vs. George Lucas jumps even further down the fan’s mind with his documentary, trying to find out an answer to the question of how far does the rights of the author go, and does a fanbase that’s been feeding the filmmaker for decades have any say on what can be done with the franchise and what not. Although Star Wars is quite unique case, it’s a great subject to mess around the topic; there probably is no fan of the original Star Wars saga who really can say they think the prequels, started by The Phantom Menace (2001), get even close to the original trilogy.
And more interestingly, as Lucashas been tampering with even the original trilogy, releasing new versions loaded with heaps of terrible, already outdated CGI and completely retarded plot twists and needless changes, the question is even more interesting. What version of the original Star Wars trilogy is the version that’s “real”? Who can make the decision? Lucas – who says that the latest remake of the original trilogy, the one where Han Shot First, is the real one, and the original one is obsolete? Or the fans who’ve fell in love during the last 30+ years over and over again to the very original trilogy – they’ve been denied an access to that film, and re-sold time and time again a newer, even worse version every time.
Check out this trailer for the film, it should prove to be quite an exciting watch indeed:
The last guest was a Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven who made an extremely succesful Dutch film Winter In Wartime that’s been spreading on big screens all the way to the States. He was there because as a part of a competition, the fans of his film were asked to re-edit the film into 60 second segments. As it usually happens (he indicated it was especially a Dutch phenomenon), the people didn’t follow the rules and re-made the 60 second versions into a completely different stories that had nothing to do with the original film.
The winning piece was a very innovative 60 second short film where the main character rides a bicycle, and on his both sides jump on and off the characters of the film, thus telling in a very clever, cute and compressed form the story of the film. Instead of editing it, they shot the whole material, so they had really put an effort into making the film.
This led to a question I wasn’t able to give a clear answer to: why did I release Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (2005)under a license which allows anyone to further distribute it the way anyone wants to, but not to make derivate works of it.
Like Martin said, there’s no better way to promote a film than a fan re-make – or a spinoff – of it – which have happened already so many times in Star Wreck’s case, the biggest of those being Star Wreck 2pi that’s currently in production – so why didn’t I allow, and encourage it further?
I enjoyed taking part in the panel, and liked the way the discussion travelled from defining a fan film to legal issues, and then moving on to separation between crowd sourcing and crowd funding, and eventually asking what’s the business model of a laptop filmmaker using Internet as his or her’s main distribution and marketing channel. I assume there’s not one clear answer to that, but I believe it’s “motion”. It’s impeartive to be able to keep the product alive, keep it spreading in whatever form it most naturally takes, in whatever media it most naturally goes to – whether it’s fan art, merchandise, DVD sales or whatever – and constantly try new things.
And coming back to Hugh Hancock‘s extremely good point he made during a seminar in Singapore – the most important thing in the Internet is to fail fast. Try new things, see if they work – and if they don’t, kill them, move on and come up with another idea. The Internet is in constant motion – the key is to keep up to it.
Here’s a a video of the trip; it’s quite long, and maybe quite confusing, but I wanted to grasp a bit of Amsterdam and a bit of the panel to it. Enjoy:
Vuvuzelas in a movie theater isn’t normal, but in Amsterdam, it is.
The Night of Terror is a long-running tradition as a part of Imagine Film Festival, the Amsterdam’s own Fantastic Film Festival. The idea behind the event is simple: the organizers screen four horror films during one night, in the most beautiful film theater in Europe, Pathé Tuschinski.
The trick is, that the audience is expected to participate by shouting, commenting and screaming. In addition to this, people bring horns – vuvuzelas, among others – toilet paper rolls, light sticks and other loud and/or throwable items with them, to color the screenings even more.
The rules are simple: if there’s a man on the screen – any man – everyone shouts “HOMO!”. If there’s a woman on the screen – any woman – everyone shouts “HOER!” (Whore”). And whenever anything remarkable happens – like someone is killed, people scream and shout as loud as they can. And during the the rest of the times, commenting by the means of animalistic screaming is more than welcome.
I know we missed most of the content, given that commenting happens in Dutch, but the vibe was certainly there. I don’t think we’ve laughed more in a movie theater since we saw Dead Snow (Død Snø, 2009), but it’s good to know that the films are far from such quality acts. The film we saw (we only lasted through one film, to be honest) was called Husk (2011), which was a big steaming pile of mid-budget horror crap. But the film was brought suddenly alive, when there was a full house of screaming people around you. As a cherry on top, as Pulp Fiction has already taught you:
So I assume the party gets harder as the night progresses.
We slipped out of Tuschinski after the first film, no matter how much fun we had, we were completely beat, and I had a seminar the next morning and I didn’t want to be completely offline.
If you are in Amsterdam during Imagine Film Festival, don’t hesitate to get your tickets for the The Night of Terror. It’s definitely worth it, one-of-a-kind experience. But I do feel bad for the director who I heard wasn’t aware of the name of the game here, and left the Night of Terror screening extremely disappointed, because “people couldn’t hear his film”.
The hordes of people waiting for the second screening to begin.
I was checking out the ticket situation for tonight’s screening of Never Let Me Go and was very surprised that there were still many empty seats in the theatre. I do realize that Piranha 3D (that’s playing simultaneously) is probably the more popular choice. But maybe you just didn’t know that there even was a screening of the film. Either way you don’t want to miss the screening of Never Let Me Go.
Never Let Me Go is one of the most talked about scifi films of this year and now there is a rare opportunity to see the film way ahed of schedule. Never Let Me Go isn’t a basic scifi film with little green men from Mars, it’s more of a science drama with sociological undertones. The film is based on the 2005 novel of the same name written by Kazuo Ishiguro.
The leading ladies of the film, Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan, are already Oscar favorites. And if you are anything like me and really enjoyed Andrew Garfield’s performance in The Social Network, you will be as exited as me to see another great performance from the young actor.
Here’s the synopsis from imdb.com
As children, Ruth, Kathy and Tommy, spend their childhood at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school. As they grow into young adults, they find that they have to come to terms with the strength of the love they feel for each other, while preparing themselves for the haunting reality that awaits them.
NEVER LET ME GO
29.10.2010 / 21:45 / Maxim 1 (Kluuvikatu 1, Helsinki)
Here’s the direct link from where to buy tickets from.
More info on the film and the full schedule of Night Visions on the official site.
Fall is a time of heavy rain and gloomy darkness here in Finland, but for a movie nerd like me, it’s perhaps the best time of the year. It’s the time of the movie festivals! It all starts in August with Espoo Ciné, continuing to September with Helsinki International Movie Festival – Love & Anarchy and finally Night Visions in October. The latter is starting this week, so it’s time to go trough this years Night Visions Maximum Halloween 3010 lineup.
Night Visions will take place in Helsinki 27-31.10.2010. It is the only film festival in Finland to focus only on fantasy, horror, science fiction and cult cinema. This usually means that most of the films shown at NV, you won’t be able to see on a silver screen otherwise.
A Serbian Film is a Serbian horror film about a retired porn star who gets drafted into a snuff movie with child rape and necrophilic themes. The film has been causing a lot of commotion right after it’s first festival screening and for a good cause I imagine. Let me be the first to say that even though I’m extremely intrigued by this film, I’m still not 100% sure if I have the stomach to actually watch it. The stories I have heard about the film are mind boggling to say the least. For example raping a fetus isn’t something I particularly look forward to seeing. But when a film has this much controversy hanging over it, it’s almost impossible to resist. A Serbian Film is supposed to be the ultimate shocker film of the year, perhaps even the decade.
I guess this movie doesn’t need much of an intro. You all know Machete. It’s of course Robert Rodriguez’s highly-anticipated Grindhouse spin-off from his fake trailer a couple years back. Machete is also clearly the front runner in this years festival. The cast is out off this world, featuring Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro and even the uncrowned king of awesome, Mr. Steven Seagal himself. Unfortunately there is only a single screening and it’s naturally already sold out.
Piranha 3D is a horror film and the second remake of the 1978 film by the same name. I’m usually not very into re-makes and especially re-makes of a re-make, but for some reason I’m super exited about Piranha 3D. Maybe one reason is that I really thought the original film was pretty scary, although I did watch it when I was like 7 years old… In any case this film has a great sense of the good old days and it feels like a homage to the classic horror movie. I mean prehistoric killer fish, Richard Dreyfuss and Christopher Lloyd all in the same deadly package! And just to clarify that this is not just in my head, the film has gotten surprisingly positive reviews all over.
The first time we bumped into this film was back in 2008 in Cannes Film Festival, when me and Timo were just strolling around the market. La Horde instantly caught our eye with it’s awesome teaser poster at the time. I remember getting really exited about the film then, but up until now, I haven’ really heard anything about it. La Horde is a French zombie film, and personally that’s all I need to hear! If you’re not convinced, check out the cool trailer below.
Take notice of this film, because it is a late addition to the already great selection. Never Let Me Go is one interesting film you don’t want to miss. Just by looking at the trailer or any other marketing material for that matter, you might not know that Never Let Me Go is one of the most talked about sci-fi films of the year. And when I say sci-fi, I don’t mean flying saucers and little green men, I mean actual science, laboratories and human experiments. Critics have been raving over Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley for their performances and are even saying they are very strong candidates for this years Oscars. This is a rare opportunity to get to see the film way ahed of schedule, since the film is being distributed commercially in February 2011 the earliest.
Due Date is the new film from the director of Hangover. I don’t necessarily quite understand what business this film has in Night Visions, but never the less, I really want to see it. Hangover was hilarious and if Due Date has even half of it’s funniness, that’s good enough for me. Also how wrong can you really go on the road with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis?
Here’s a film I might regret even mentioning. I just saw the trailer yesterday for the first time and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. The movie might have some potential when taking the bad ass cast into consideration. But it wouldn’t be the first time when a great cast is ensembled and the end result is still a piece of shit. The line up includes Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. Oh, and if you were thinking what the RED stands for, it’s Retired Extremely Dangerous.
Finlandia-gala brings Finnish genre classics back to the silver screen, accompanied with prestige guests from the films. This year’s Finlandia-gala is proud to present Harmagedon (1986). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a trailer for Harmagedon, so you just have to go and see the film regardless. Last year the gala was a blast, so I wouldn’t miss it for the world!
Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) is a musical drama written and directed by Joann Sfar and it’s based on his graphic novel. It is a musical biopic film about the life of French singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.
The ark of the film is pretty basic, starting from the protagonist’s childhood and working it’s way to old age and decay. What happens in between wasn’t so basic. First I’m intrigued, since I don’t know too much about Gainsbourg’s youth years and for a moment I’m pretty amazed on what I’m seeing on the screen. The animated opening sequence, the fantastical imaginary characters and Gainsbourg himself give much promise on the rest of the two hours. So first I go along for the ride, although it’s totally obvious from very early on that you shouldn’t believe everything you see.
All trough the film Gainsboug is followed by imaginary characters, his alter ego in a sense. Even though they give much depht to the film, the use of these magical characters and elements were too overpowering in a sense that they became sort of one of the main characters, in stead of supporting our lead as they should have.
After the childhood sequence of being raised in Nazi-occupied France by a strict but a good father who insists that Serge plays the piano, the story dries up a bit. At least for a while. First Gainsbourg was portrayed as a child prodigy, someone bigger than life, but as he gets older and we follow his life trough his teen years at art collage, he has reduced to a regular Joe. It’s not until he discovering his true talent in music that the story finds wind under it’s wings again.
We seem to fast forward trough Gainsbourg life and it feels like a loop at times. The countless adventures with women, the marriages and having kids seem to be on repeat. I wouldn’t mind this but we never really get to know the women or anything else in Serge’s life for that matter. The film ends with Gainsbourg struggling with alcoholism and disease, and the high point I guess is the sequence in Jamaica and discraising of the French national anthem “La Marseillaise”. As interesting as that sound the whole thing is presented with so little explanation that it just flies by your head and you leave the theatre wondering what had just happened.
The film ends with a quote from the director, where he tells us that he was “more interested in Gainsbourg’s lies than his truths”. This to me seems a little bit apologetic and underlining the obvious. From the viewer’s point of view this is already old news, since after seeing the film it doesn’t feel like you’ve gotten much insight on Gainsbour’s life per se. It’s all just a fantasy. So if you want to learn about Gainsbourg, go see a documentary instead.
Never the less, one thing needs to be said. The cast of the film was absolutely perfect. Eric Elmosnino’s interpretation of Serge Gainsbourg is brilliant, not to mention Laetitia Casta as the sexy bomshell BB, Brigitte Bardot. There’s also a tragic incident with Lucy Gordon, who played the actress and singer Jane Birkin beautifully. She committed suicide before the film was released.
The conclusion is that there were a lot of great and unique ideas, but they got a bit scrambled in the overall result of the film. Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque) had a refreshing and unique approach to the worn out basic biopic, but it was also big mess.
Only an American can make a film that takes entirely place in a small wooden casket buried underground, and still have snakes, fire, explosions, terrorists, hostage plot and a love story, all in a same box (no pun intended). The irony of it is that Buried is not an American film. It just feels like one, down to the last detail. Guess one could call Buried “an American fan film”?
It’s a nice, sunny day somewhere in Ohio. The gentle wind is blowing, and the birds are chirping in the trees paving the streets of a friendly neighborhood. Kids playing outside, BBQ in the backyard. The problem is; we’re not there. We’re somewhere in Iraq, buried in a small wooden box few feet underground, armed with only a lighter and an Arabic language cellphone. The film opens to a pitch black screen, accompanied by heavy breathing. With such a concept – what could possibly go wrong?
Well, let’s see. The biggest problem is Ryan Reynolds, and the paper-thin truck driver character he’s portraying. So we end up having a douchebag – who’s not much of an actor himself – in a casket? Why should anybody want him to get *out* of there?
It’s interesting how close we are to the character, yet how completely irrelevant the guy remains all through the film. Then comes the plot, written possibly by an 8-year-old kid. There’s the evil government, stupid terrorists who don’t even know the currency of US, snakes in a casket, a fire, an air raid, explosions, a hostage plot and emotional moments the wife and the kids – it’s like a season of 24. Without Jack Bauer. In a wooden box.
Watching Buried makes me think if it’s a US remake of a much better European film. Unfortunately, it IS the European film, and we’re left waiting for the US remake.
Stars: 2 / 5
At least it has quite nice posters (apart from the official one):
The best serial killer stories are either very detailed explanations of the mind of the killer, or play around with the mystery of trying to figure it out. In the best of them, we follow the twisted logic of the murdering maniac, and the policeman who – usually fighting against the laziness of his or her’s colleagues – triest to figure the logic out. The Killer Inside Me is an ambitious film trying to combine the two elements together under one roof, but falls flat due to huge number of antagonists – or protagonists, depending what are the “good guys” called in a film where the main character is the “bad guy” – that appear and disappear randomly.
The story – based on a novel by Jim Thompson – kicks off strong, but begins to disintegrate as more and more characters start popping out of nowhere. Michael Winterbottom is doing a good job keeping the visual storytelling nice and clean, but the fight against a script that hasn’t been able to lose the weight of the novel’s complexity is a lost fight. Novel is a novel, film is a film and they go well together only when the filmmaker has enough bullets (and guts) to kill a bunch of darlings on the way.
Casey Affleck plays a fine young policeman somewhere in southern Texas, who meets a hooker (played by always unnaturally beautiful Jessica Alba) who has just settled down in his county. He’s sent out to tell the woman to get the hell out of the town, but accidentally falls into a violent sexual relationship that brings up memories of his childhood and sends him into a murdering spree. Casey is an interesting actor, much more talented and less annoying than his brother Ben, but in The Killer Inside Me the “creaky whining freak” -manner he’s done so well before have reached their limit. Let’s hope he’s able to step out of his comfort zone and reinvent himself in the next films; I know he has the skills for it.
Last, but not least – The Killer Inside Me is a violent film. First thing usually coming in mind from the term “violent” is blood, mayhem and gore, especially if it’s a serial killer flick. Winterbottom treats violence much more violently – by being honest to the camera. The most harrowing thing about violence is what happens in the last seconds of one’s life – the strangeness of the behavior as the brain shuts itself down. But another interesting thing about filmed violence is that if it’s not connected to anything, no matter how brutal, honest or merciless it is, the audience is remains unmoved. As the story keeps on fragmenting, the remains of the emotion that was created in the beginning keeps on fading. Finally, the what’s left is a tepid mess of wishful beginnings. Unfortunately so, since The Killer Inside Me is a film I’d loved to love.
