Watch The Joy of Six - Director Google Hangout

For anybody who missed the The Joy of Six Director Google Hangout on Monday 29th April, New British Cinema Quarterly (NBCQ) in association with Shooting People, are pleased to present an edited package of the highly entertaining and informative discussion.

Talking about their experiences to host Ben Blaine are Directors Romola Garai, Douglas Hart, Dan Sully and Chris Foggin, with special guest David Jenkins from Little White Lies.

The Joy of Six Synopsis

NBCQ presents a perfect package of award-winning short films, showcasing the best of British screen and directing talent. This may be the only time you get to encounter Dame Judi Dench on Facebook, as a woman attempting to woo her local choirmaster through social media, see Peter Mullan give a screen masterclass on how to smoke a cigarette (without the ash falling), or watch the rather handsome Luke Treadaway, run...a lot.

The Joy Of Six includes the directorial debut of Romola Garai and the first short from Dan Sully while Matthew Holness brings the pulp fiction of Terry Finch to the big screen. The Joy Of Six full programme: Long Distance Information (Douglas Hart)Man in Fear (Will Jewell), A Gun for George (Matthew Holness), Scrubber (Romola Garai), The Ellington Kid (Dan Sully) and Friend Request Pending (Chris Foggin)

Watch the Q&A Here....

Joy Of Six Directors Q&A from Cinehouse_UK on Vimeo.

Buy: The Joy of Six On DVD

Want to watch the trailer again, here it is too...

BFI To Release Weird Adventures On DVD In June

The last feature made by the distinguished duo of Powell and Pressburger is one of three films featured on a new volume of Children's Film Foundation tales, Weird Adventures, released on DVD by the BFI on 17 June 2013.

This latest collection brings together Alberto Cavalcanti’s The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961), Powell and Pressburger’s The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972) and A Hitch in Time (Jan Darnley-Smith, 1978) which stars Patrick Troughton.

In The Monster of Highgate Ponds young David promises to guard a mysterious egg which his uncle brings back from Malaysia. But, when a baby monster hatches, mayhem ensues as David struggles to keep the unruly, but friendly, creature from falling into the clutches of two ruthless crooks. This enchanting tale, shot on location on Hampstead Heath, features brilliant animated sequences by the legendary Halas & Batchelor, who also produced the film, and was directed by the celebrated Ealing director Alberto Cavalcanti (Went the Day Well?).

The Boy Who Turned Yellow is the splendidly eccentric final collaboration from eminent filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes). London schoolboy John Saunders turns bright yellow after losing his pet mouse on a school trip. Is the mysterious colour change the result of an alien invasion or does the answer lie closer to home?

In A Hitch in Time, Patrick Troughton (Doctor Who) plays time-hopping inventor Professor Adam Wagstaff. Discovered working on his time machine by two curious kids, Wagstaff decides to send them back through the ages. But, with malfunctions a-plenty, will they be able to make it back? Featuring Jeff Rawle (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) as 'Sniffy' Kemp, the teacher out to spoil everybody's fun, A Hitch in Time is a riotous retelling of history.

For over 30 years the Children's Film Foundation produced quality entertainment for young audiences, employing the cream of British filmmaking talent. Newly transferred from the best available elements held in the BFI National Archive, these much-loved and fondly remembered films finally return to the screen after many years out of distribution in specially curated DVD releases from the BFI. The fourth volume of CFF films, Bumps in the Night, will be released in October 2013.



Special Features

• Brand new High Definition transfers of all films;
• Illustrated booklet with writing by Michael Powell, Lem Kitaj (who played Munro in The Boy Who Turned Yellow), Vivian Halas and BFI curator Vic Pratt

Pre-Order/Buy:Children's Film Foundation Collection: Weird Adventures (The Boy Who Turned Yellow | The Monster of Highgate Pond | A Hitch in Time) [DVD]

 

Terrence Malick's To The Wonder Wondering Onto DVD And Blu-Ray This June

Studiocanal have announced an June release of Terrence Malick's To The Wonder on DVD, BluRay on 17th June 2013.

TO THE WONDER is the beautiful and acclaimed latest offering from Terrence Malick, the legendary director of The Tree of Life, Badlands and Days of Heaven.

The film is centred on Neil (Ben Affleck, Argo), a man who is torn between two loves: Marina (Olga Kurylenko, Quantum of Solace), the European woman who comes to United States to be with him, and Jane (Rachel McAdams, Midnight in Paris), the old flame he reconnects with from his hometown. Neil’s doubts about his life and loves are reflected in the crisis of faith experienced by Father Quintana (Javier Bardem, Skyfall), who only sees pain and the loss of hope in the world.

Academy Award nominated Director, Terrence Malick is renowned for making brilliant and unique films using unconventional methods, and TO THE WONDER is no different. Here Malick explores how love and its many phases and seasons – passion, sympathy, obligation, sorrow, indecision – can transform, destroy and reinvent lives.

TO THE WONDER is the third collaboration between Terrence Malick and director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki, after The New World and The Tree of Life.



DVD & Blu-ray Extras: Making of, UK exclusive Interview with Olga Kurylenko

Pre-order/Buy To The Wonder: DVD / Blu-ray

David Cronenberg's Horror Masterpiece The Brood Getting The Blu-Ray Treatment This July

The Brood, one of David Cronenberg's most chilling and disturbing works finally gets its long-awaited UK Blu-ray debut thanks to Second Sight Films

This early masterpiece from the maestro of horror, stars Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar and is still as shocking today as it was on its original release. It comes to DVD and Blu-ray packed with brand new bonus features on 8 July 2013.

Frank Carveth (Art Hindle - Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is becoming increasingly concerned about his ex-wife Nola's (Eggar) secretive treatment at the sinister 'Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics'. Headed by cult figure Dr Raglan (Reed - The Devils), his controversial and extreme methods seek to unleash his patients rage, which take on physical manifestations. As Nola's increasingly psychotic anger is vented during her sessions, brutal murders befall those at whom it's directed. When Frank's daughter is abducted he is led to Raglan's Institute and a terrifying, repellent final confrontation, renowned as one of the most notorious scenes in horror cinema.

BONUS FEATURES:

• MEET THE CARVETHS - Art Hindle & Cindy Hinds interviewd by Fangoria Editor Chris Alexander
• THE LOOK OF RAGE - Interview with cinematographer Mark Irwin
• PRODUCING THE BROOD - Interview with producer Pierre David
• CHARACTER FOR CRONENBERG - Interview with actor Robert A. Silverman
• CRONENBERG: THE EARLY YEARS - Writer/Director David Cronenberg discusses how he broke into filmmaking

Pre-Order/Buy:The Brood On Blu Ray 

Eureka Entertainment acquire Sundance-winner Computer Chess

The groundbreaking, Alfred P. Sloan Prize-winning, and fiercely independent “artificially intelligent” comedy from Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation, Beeswax),Computer Chess which continues to collect raves on the festival circuit, is slated for a national UK theatrical release from Eureka! Entertainment and a home-video release as part of Eureka!’s The Masters of Cinema Series.

Eureka! Entertainment are thrilled to announce that they have acquired all UK/Eire rights to Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, which had its debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Computer Chess is the fourth feature film from the brilliant and maverick American filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, whose previous works include Funny Ha Ha (the early ‘00s film that arguably kicked-off the so-called “mumblecore” movement of American independent cinema), Mutual Appreciation (an acclaimed comic portrait of love and longing in the milieu of the Brooklyn indie music scene), and Beeswax (which among its principals starred Alex Karpovsky, the indie filmmaker and actor who has gone on to great renown for his role in Lena Dunham’s cultural-phenomenon and hit TV series Girls).

Prior to final completion of Computer Chess, Bujalski was awarded a Tribeca Film Institute Sloan grant in 2012. Directly following Bujalski’s newest and long-anticipated film’s Sundance premiere, Computer Chess was given the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Award, which honours a film based around the theme of science and/or technology. The film went on to have its International Premiere at the latest Berlin Film Festival, and will be presented as part of the distinguished BAMcinémafest this June in Brooklyn for its New York premiere, before moving on to a major UK festival debut in anticipation of a UK theatrical run coordinated by Eureka! Entertainment in late autumn, and an early-2014 Blu-ray and DVD release as part of the highly esteemed and awarded-winning Masters of Cinema Series.

A boldly intelligent ensemble comedy with a feel and atmosphere that surpass easy comparison, Computer Chess takes place in the early-1980s over the course of a weekend conference where a group of obsessive software programmers have convened to pit their latest refinements in machine-chess and the still-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI) against an assembly of human chess masters. Computer Chess is a portrait not only of the crazy and surreal relationships that come to pass between the abundance of characters who participate in the weekend event (and among whose ranks include Wiley Wiggins, the revered indie-game developer and star of Richard Linklater’s classic Dazed and Confused), but of the very era of early computing itself – and of the first, rudimentary video games – and (if that weren’t enough) of the hopes and insecurities that persisted through the film’s “retro” digital age into the present-day — that semi-virtual, hyper-social, maybe-kind-of-dehumanised landscape that, let’s face it, is our very own 2013. If that still weren’t enough: it’s also one of the wittiest, most shift-and-cringe-in-your-seat, and entirely LOL-hilarious movies of recent times.

“The UK has been great to me and my films in the past,” states Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski, “and I couldn’t be more delighted to be bringing Computer Chess there with the (intimidatingly named!) Masters of Cinema Series. I hope that means that THEY’VE mastered cinema — I’m still, uh, working on that... And my education certainly wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t try to make at least one bizarre, left-field, mindbender movie — Computer Chess is that. I’m eager to get it to British audiences.”

Ron Benson, Managing Director of Eureka! Entertainment, comments: “Computer Chess is an audacious, poignant, and entertaining movie. It’s a rare film indeed that has the capability of appealing not only to general audiences, but to hardcore film buffs, to video-game enthusiasts, to chess mavens, to science lovers, to folk who are mesmerised by ‘retro’ design in all its forms — and to anyone who’s interested in how we collectively made our way from that earliest 1980s ‘digital era’ all the way up to the period of the iPhone and of the iPad. Audiences who took interest in the smash-hit retro-gaming documentary The King of Kong — not to mention anyone who has a warm place in their heart for Robert Altman’s classic ensemble film Nashville — will fall head-over-heels with Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess.”

Craig Keller, producer of The Masters of Cinema Series, remarks: “It’s an immense pleasure to be able to include Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess in The Masters of Cinema Series. With the astonishing series of films that Bujalski has directed over the last several years, this director has made his mark as one of the most consistently thrilling, most intelligent filmmakers in American cinema — okay, let’s just say world cinema taken as a whole, never mind as an ‘indie filmmaker’ or otherwise. Seeing Bujalski’s debut feature Funny Ha Ha was literally a life-changing experience for me, and he has not only consistently ‘delivered’ with each subsequent film but, from Mutual Appreciation to Beeswax, has exceeded, and checkmated, expectations. His work should be, and indeed of late has been, an inspiration to an entire generation of young filmmakers; it’s a body of work that sets the bar very high indeed for anyone, in any country, to aspire toward. Computer Chess, with its radical retro video aesthetic and wry rumination on digitality and where-we-are-today, marks another breakthrough. It’s an awesome film that’s sure to attain cult status and expose his vision to an even wider audience. It’s even farther-reaching, more ambitious, than everything he’s done before. And so I would have to say, simply and without hyperbole, that this is one of the most exciting releases we’ve had the honour of releasing.”

The Masters of Cinema Series producer Craig Keller and Eureka! Entertainment’s Managing Director Ron Benson negotiated the deal for the film with Andrew Herwitz, head of The Film Sales Company on behalf of the producers.

Computer Chess stars Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James Curry, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary, and Wiley Wiggins. The film was produced by Houston King and Alex Lipschultz, and was directed by Andrew Bujalski.

check out the trailer...

Jeff Nichols' Mud Review

Jeff Nichols' Mud successfully presents a tale of broken romances and coming of age in a woozy Arkansas Summer, but falls victim to lashings of melodramatic clichés and an overstretched runtime.

The Take Shelter director's latest feature follows two teenage boys Elis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) who encounter Mud (Matthew McCougnahey), a fugitive who hopes to be reunited with his on-off girlfriend, Juniper (Reece Witherspoon).

Nichols' well-crafted sense of Americana and childhood nostalgia immediately suggest parallels to tales like Rob Reiner's Stand By Me - however, Mud feels slightly more contrived and dependent on manipulative melodramatic techniques than Reiner's film. Nichols' narrative is filled with Southern charm and sharply realistic characters, with the director capturing childhood hope and innocence in troubled surroundings. This core essence of Mud is relatively simple, but Nichols' screenplay has a tendency to dwell on elements that do not feel entirely relevant or pressing such as Neckbone's home life or the workings of Elis' parents relationship - resulting in the somewhat intimidating 135 minute run time. Nichols does provide a well-staged and dramatic conclusion to his Southern tale, however, this ultimately appears thirty minutes too late subsequently lessening its impact.

Cinematographer Adam Stone shoots Mud with a hazy gaze - capturing a modern America filled with Walmarts and fast-food places. This provides a modern  glance at youthful innocence in contemporary South - serving as somewhat of a 21st Century re-envisioning of the work of Mark Twain.  Stone has the ability to capture the sun-soaked beauty in anything from a grocery store parking  lot to Mud's island hideaway.  This sense of nostalgia and Americana is heightened by an impeccable soundtrack featuring the likes of The Beach Boy's Help Me Rhonda.

The real driving force behind Mud is the performances by the film's two young leads, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland - both of which feel utterly genuine. Sheridan in particular pours such natural heart and soul into the role of Elis that it would be a challenge not to be impressed.

McCoughnahey also excels as the smart, chip-toothed  titular character who enchants Elis and Neckbone. However, McCougnahey's performance really reaches its peak in Mud's conclusion when the boys realise Mud's life is not exactly perfect. It would have been nice had Reece Witherspoon been given slightly more to do than play the two-dimensional loose-lipped Southern girl.   Cult favourites Joe Don Baker and Sam Shepard also leave a lasting impact with two smaller roles, alongside magnificent American Horror Story star, Sarah Paulson.

Mud serves as a hazy slice of Americana - ably capturing a changing world seen through the lens of youthful innocence. The impact of the stellar performances and cinematography, however,  is weakened by a over-stretched runtime and melodramatic clichés.

★★★☆☆

Andrew McArthur

Stars: Matthew McCougnahey, Reece Witherspoon, Sam Shepard, Tye Sheridan
Director: Jeff Nichols
Release: 10th of May 2013
Rating: 12A

BBC Films' West Is West to premiere on BBC Two on Saturday 18th May

BBC Two will premiere West Is West, the sequel to internationally acclaimed and multi-award winning film East is East, on Saturday 18th May at 22:15.

West is Westis a coming of age story about confronting ones true desires and fears, no matter the age.

Thirteen year old Sajid (Aqib Khan) is struggling to meet his Pakistani father’s traditions in his home of Manchester, England. When Sajid finds himself in some trouble after ditching school his father George (Om Puri) decides to send him to Pakistan for a month to live with his first wife, whom he abandoned 30 years ago, to learn discipline and to grow-up. Upon arrival, Sajid finds that his father is not as highly regarded as he may have thought, and that Pakistan is not as idyllic as it was made to seem. George arrives at the end of the month to collect Sajid but is faced with his own self-image issue and realises that he himself has much to learn as well.

Directed by Andy De Emmony, West Is West stars Om Puri alongside Aqib Khan, Linda Bassett, Lesley Nicol, Ila Arun and Jimi Mistry.

Watch Trailer For J-Slasher It's A Beautiful Day (Kuso Subarashii Kono Sekai)

 A'World class slasher movie'  It's A Beautiful Day (Kuso Subarashii Kono Sekai) asks the question, is it really a beautiful day for all in this movie, watch the trailer!

Directed by Asakuro Kayoko It's A Beautiful Day apparently filmed in Los Angeles stars Korean actress Kim Khobbi (Breathess)as Ah-Joong a student who finds herself mixed up in a horrific incident. She gets invited by some Japanese students to a camp area just outside the city and despite the fact she's struggling with the language barrier she becomes even more alienated  when the others are more interested in sex, drugs and alcohol. Things go down hill even more when a group of malicious siblings decide to target the camp Ah-Joong and the students are living.

It's A Beautiful Day is set for a 8th June 2013 Japanese release, film stars Akihiro Kitamuro (Human Centipede), Nanako Ohata and Shijimi.

Synopsis

Korean international student A-Joong (Kim Kkobbi) takes part in a camp at a country village, located in the suburbs of Los Angeles. A-Joong isn't happy with the Japanese international students who seem to be addicted to alcohol, drugs or sex. At that time, some brothers, who make a living through murders and burglary, target the cottage where the international students stay.

source: Nipponcinema, AsianWiki

Watch UK trailer For Indie Horror Static

Milo Ventimiglia and Sara Paxton star in the critically acclaimed creepy horror Static which makes its debut on DVD thanks to Second Sight Films.

A young writer (Ventimiglia – Heroes, Rocky Balboa) and his wife (Sarah Shahi – Life) are struggling with the loss of their child but just as they are trying to get their lives back on track a hysterical young woman (Paxton – The Innkeepers, Last House on the Left), turns up at their secluded house in the middle of the night, claiming she is being chased by mysterious masked men. Letting her stay the night the couple are soon drawn into the horror when the unknown force starts to stalk them, a terrifying game of cat and mouse ensues, resulting in a shocking conclusion and one of the most chilling film finales of recent years.

Second Sight Films have sent us the UK trailer check it out



Static is written and directed by Todd Levin a music director making his feature film debut and will be premiering in the UK on DVD on 15 July 2013. No word on USA date however Cinedigm are confirmed they have the North American rights to the film, so an announcement on the date will be soon. We will be reviewing the film so stay tuned nearer the time to read that review

Pre-order/Buy:Static On DVD

Have Fun With Buckles In Short Film

 Clowns you sometimes wonder why people are terrified of them maybe Joe Ballarini has the answer in his short Buckle. Whilst waiting for his next studio project the Dance Of The Dead writer decided to keep his mind occupied by creating this horror short starring Signal star Justin Welborn. It's birthday time and Buckles has turned up to spread some birthday but as you'll see they get more than they bargained.

Great stuff here and thumbs up to Twitch for finding this little gem! Enjoy.

BUCKLES from Hidden Staircase on Vimeo.