Oval Space Cinema Club presents: Berberian Sound Studio

Continuing with its monthly series of independent film screenings, Oval Space Cinema Club is delighted to announce its Halloween special: Berberian Sound Studio, the multiple award-winning 2012 psychological thriller by acclaimed director Peter Strickland.

Curated with dedication to the art and power of filmmaking, Oval Space Cinema Club covers everything from groundbreaking political documentaries to art house explorations from across the globe. Always geared to adding something extra to the cinematic experience, Oval Space aims to engage and inspire film fans with a carefully selected program of Q + As with directors, heated panel discussions, open debates and more.

Set in 1976, the film follows mild-mannered and introverted sound engineer Gilderoy (Toby Jones) as he leaves the comfort of the home he shares with his mother in Dorking for a film studio in Italy. Having previously specialised in providing the sounds of babbling brooks and birdcalls for British natural history films, Gilderoy finds himself at the centre of a production for ‘The Equestrian Vortex’, a gory horror film by exploitation maestro Giancarlo Santini, requiring him to design sounds for mutilation, torture and terror.

Soon, life begins to imitate art and Gilderoy finds himself lost in a downward spiral of on-screen witchcraft, off-screen sexual intrigue and psychological mayhem as realities shift.

An homage to the art of analogue sound and a brilliantly executed deconstruction of the Italian horror genre, Strickland’s masterpiece features an excellent soundtrack from Broadcast, a signature band of Warp Records and has won multiple awards, including Best Film at the Toronto Film Critics Association, Film of the Year at the Evening Standard London Film Awards and Best Actor nods for Toby Jones at the Evening Standard London Film Awards and the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA).

Cinema Review - Sunshine On Leith

Release:
04th October 2013
Cert:
PG
Director:
Dexter Fletcher
Stars:
Jane Horrocks, Peter Mullan , George McKay, Kevin Guthrie, Antonia Thomas, Freya Mavor,Paul Brannigan
Following the well-received Wild Bill, Dexter Fletcher is back behind the camera for Sunshine On Leith - a Scottish musical adaptation of Stephen Greenhorn's stage musical featuring the hits of The Proclaimers. Whilst there is some fun to be had the film's gooey sentimentality and Scottish soap-opera style narrative can be somewhat off-putting.

Sunshine On Leith centres around Davy (George McKay) and Ally (Kevin Guthrie), two soldiers returning from Afghanistan who are forced to readapt to civilian life. Here they discover new romances and old friends - Davy in particular learns of some new family secrets concerning his dad, Rab (Peter Mullan).

Fletcher directs this tale with bucket loads of energy and vibrancy, truly showcasing the beauty of Scotland's capital city, which doesn't get the big screen treatment nearly often enough. The majority of the musical sequences are brimming with fun - with standouts including Jason Fleyming's chirpy rendition of Should Have Been Loved and the riotously fun Over and Done With. However, the lack of this reviewer's personal favourite Proclaimer's hit, Lady Luck, is upsetting.

However, when we take a step back from the musical sequences Sunshine On Leith can feel a bit like a below-par soap opera - a big screen River City perhaps? Plot developments feel shoehorned in so as songs fit with slightly more ease with a narrative containing a variety of uninspired emotional subplots - most of which feel superficial and over-bearing. Every single character has some form of relationship problem, not to mention that there are heart-attacks, a multitude of break-ups, and amputee soldiers - most of which feel like an easy method of tugging at the old heartstrings.

However, these subplots, in particular Rab and wife Jean's (Jane Horrocks) marriage problems do result in some stand-out performances. Horrocks is downright loveable - showcasing a natural warmth and charisma - as well as a standout acting talent. Peter Mullan also delivers what feels like a raw and stripped back performance as Rab - a man whose current happiness is challenged by a past decision.

Sunshine On Leith delivers a lot of light-hearted fun in its chirpy musical moments. Fletcher directs this tale with a playful energy and showcases a real beauty in Edinburgh. However, the film's tendency to focus on cheap-melodrama results in a watch that feels like the unwanted lovechild of River City and Glee.

★★★☆☆

Andrew McArthur

Raindance Film Festival 2013 Review - Jake Squared

Rating:
15
Release Date:
27, 28th September 2013(Raindance)
Director:
Howard Goldberg
Cast:
Elias Koteas, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Virginia Madsen
With one of the most innovative set-ups on show at this years Raindance festival, Jake Squared comically questions the importance of certain life decisions, and the part they play in defining the self when all is said and done. The easiest reference point for the conceptual narrative of writer/director Howard Goldberg’s feature is Charlie Kaufman’s mind-melting Synecdoche, New York, casting as it does, the lead role within his own film portraying varying aspects of his own life. Fortunately tone is somewhat easier to determine, pitching itself somewhere between a meta-comedy and faux philosophical questioning.

The eponymous lead in question is a 50 year-old part-time film director and (slightly more than) part time real estate agent. A hopeless romantic at heart, Jake is at a loss as to how he has ended up alone bar the two teenage children resulting from his previous marriage. On a mission to make sense of everything he embarks on an ambitious film project casting himself as a hunky twenty-something as the host of a sprawling house party where guests will come and go and somewhere in amongst the endless rolls of footage will lie answers. Any answers will do.

The fourth wall not so much broken as well and truly obliterated, we float alongside actor Jake while being guided by real Jake as he interjects and interrupts various scenes offering his own direction and pieces to camera. Before long Jake’s film set spirals out of his control, gatecrashed by a host of uninvited guests. There’s 40 year-old Jake joining a drum circle, a perma-chilled bandana sporting Harley Davison fanatic; playboy Jake from his 30’s casually eyeing up female guests, and even a sprightly 17 year-old hippy Jake insistent on being called by his stage name Damien. To add to the disarray he is joined by girlfriends of the past mingling with family members long since passed in real life.

If this all sounds head-scratchingly difficult to work out then that may just be the point. Jake Squared attempts to take in a whole life to make sense of their place, and a whole life is a big sprawling, pattern-less maze which cannot be self-edited or escaped - there’s even a neat gag about the past catching up with you to prove just this.

Holding the film up and keeping it steady is a tight script acted with conviction by Elias Koleas who flitters between Jake through the ages bringing believability to each phrase of his life. It’s a clever trick making physical the psychological changes a person goes through in time, complete with lost loves, lost hair and lost ideals.

At times over-reaching and arguably naval-gazing (the many inserted quotes offer little to the overall film), Jake Squared is none-the-less an admirably ambitious film and a laudably inventive one.

★★★☆☆

Matthew Walsh

For Those In Peril Review

Rating: 18
Review Date:
4th October 2013 (UK)
Director:
Paul Wright
Cast:
Kate Dickie, Michael Smiley, George MacKay, Nichola Burley, Brian McCardie, Gavin Park, Jordan Young
British cinema is great at taking quaint environments and turning them into Hell. We also have a penchant for misery and wasted lives, both of which you’ll find abundantly in Paul Wright’s impressive feature debut For Those in Peril, a keyhole into the social mechanics of a small fishing community in Scotland.

After a tragic accident takes the lives of five young fishermen, Aaron (George MacKay), the sole survivor of the tragedy which also claimed his older brother, is left in a steadily growing state of social detachment as the town around focuses their grief on him.  Mackay shines as a social outcast, a loner before the tragedy and even more so after with little to live for in a town that sees survivors as a constant burning reminder of tragedy. Wright’s choice to include sound snippets of news coverage/interviews with locals helps explore the small town mentality and collective hatred for Aaron, who’s only crime is retaining a childish mind in a place that demands manhood sooner as opposed to later. As the film goes on and Aaron’s actions become slightly more elusive in the face of hatred, the audience starts to see that in treating someone like a monster, especially someone with serious trauma, you can end up making them one. Kate Dickie lends her talents as Aaron’s troubled mother, single-handedly providing a sort of normality bar with which to compare the rest of the town to, she’s also where most of the film’s heart comes from, hers being possibly the most heart-breaking story of all. The relationship between Dickie and Mackay is frankly one of the most impressive pairings in ages.

Aaron’s obsession with a fairy tale around a monster in the sea becomes more vivid as the film progresses, just as the town’s contempt for him does. Wright punctuates an otherwise muted cinematography with moments of vivid colour and crushing darkness to better convey the collapse of Aaron’s reality: as his guilt flares so does his anger at the “monster” and his alienation from family and friends comes full circle so that he descends into a sort of childish dream.

There’s a very honest quality to Wright’s camera and the performances of his stars, nothing out-there, nothing melodramatic, just a well worked story of people and their relationship to the world around them.  At some points the film can maintain a palate too drab and spend too much time following Aaron’s isolated wanderings to the point of angst, but by the end Wright proves he has the vision to deliver an emotionally charged whopper of a finale that allows this quant wee Scottish sea-side affair to rest on more breath-taking grounds.

Not just a run of the mill sombre British piece about rural environments, For Those in Peril is a heart-wrenching narrative of guilt and redemption with a daring final direction and stand-out performances from two of Scotland’s finest.

★★★★☆

Scott Clark

This is a repost of Edinburgh Film Festival post at Cinehouse

Anime Competition - Win Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works Double Play

Fate/Stay Night:Unlimited Blade Works is coming to Double Play and DVD on 30th September. Courtesy of Manga Entertainment UK, we have Double Play copies to give away.

Spells and swords clash in deadly combat in Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works, a feature-length adaptation of the hit television series that amps up the action and gives the popular tale plenty of new twists. Join teen mage Shirou and his companions, beautiful spirit knight Saber and powerful magic-wielding schoolgirl Rin, as they are plunged into an epic battle for the Holy Grail.

The Fifth Holy Grail War is upon us. Mighty magi contending for the wish-granting Grail summon the seven classes of Heroic Spirit - Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Berserker, Caster and Assassin - to do battle on their behalf. However, a wand is thrown into the works when good-natured but untalented teenage mage Shirou Emiya stumbles upon Archer and Lancer fighting, and is himself attacked.

Saved from death by the beautiful, blonde-haired Heroic Spirit Saber, who adopts him as her Master, Shirou finds himself dragged into an all-out magical war for the Holy Grail. He also gains a human ally in the shape of his popular schoolmate - and heir to the powerful Tohsaka magus family - Rin, whose own Servant is the sarcastic Archer. Drawn into a web of shifting alliances, spell-slinging sorcerers and deadly spirits, Shirou is going to need all the friends he can get…

To Win Fate/Stay Night:Unlimited Blade Works please answer the following question:

Q.What classic UK comedy team (which included Terry Gilliam) went on the search for the Holy Grail in a 1975 film?

You must be 18 years or older to enter.
Deadline for this competition is Sunday 20th October 2013 (23:59pm)

If you haven’t done already Like us and stay with us at our Facebook page (if you are already liking us just share this post)

Terms&Conditions: You Must be a UK or Irish resident aged 18 or older to enter. If your successful and win the competition then you will be asked for Postal address to arrange deliver of the prize.The competition is not opened to employees, family, friends of The Peoples Movies, Cinehouse,Network Releasing  who have the right to alter, change or offer alternative prize without any notice. The Peoples Movies, Cinehouse takes no responsibility for delayed, lost, stolen prizes.Prizes may take from days to a few months for delivery which is out of our control so please do not complain, we will tell you when prizes are sent to us, mostly all cops prizes come directly from the PR company representing the film distributor. Deadline Sunday 13th October 2013(23:59pm)..

UK Competitions and Prize Draws at UKwins
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TIFF 2013 Review - Gerontophilia

Rating:
15
Release Date:
9,11,13th September (TIFF)
Director:
Bruce Labruce
Cast:
Pier-Gabriel Lajoie, Walter Borden, Katie Boland, Marie-Hélène Thibault,

The Oxford dictionary of Psychology defines the rather ominous term Gerontophilia thus: ‘A paraphilia characterized by recurrent, intense sexual fantasies, urges, or behaviour involving sexual activity with old people’. Bruce La Bruce’s feature film makes certain attempts at uncovering the nature of this particular affliction and in-so-doing unveils a bizarre fusion of love, obsession, and impulse.

Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie) is a young attractive man with a beautiful girlfriend. However, after taking a job at a nursing home, he develops a romantic and sexual attraction towards senior citizen Mr Peabody (Walter Borden), which soon sees him at ends with a society that frowns upon such controversial relations.

La Bruce is no stranger to the subject of transgression from accepted behaviours, his repertoire flaunts a keen interest in the subject and continual exploration. Gerontophilia, whilst still engaging with transgression, is La Bruce’s tamer more palatable attempt at addressing taboo. The key to his success here lies in the beautifully reserved performances of Lajoie and Borden, particularly Borden who exudes a kind of charisma and class that makes the film charismatic to say the least. Though Mr Peabody’s reasoning never quite gets addressed, Lake’s is chopped and mixed so that the line between obsession and love is truly blurred. You’re never sure whether this is a faulted love story in the vein of Lost in Translation/Harold and Maude, or a darker story of incontestable carnal desire.

La Bruce spends far too much time wandering around Lake’s life, letting us live his bizarre fantasies and see his disgust at the retirement home’s desire to keep patients consistently catatonic. Attention meanders until finally Lake makes a definitive decision that opens the door to a hasty third act. Its this last act which plots the difficult covert relationship between the Peabody and Lake.

The issue is that there is much to be explored, too many things to see and so many questions about how this coupling works in, not physical but, emotional terms. The answer is a book too-soon closed once it is opened.  The tender heartfelt chemistry between the two is laced with a wry sense of humour, but just as we get into it, the door is slammed in our faces. La Bruce has perhaps best encapsulated the heart of such a relationship in this simple structuring; either that or he rushed the most enjoyable part of his film.

Arguably La Bruce has forsaken his usual outré stunts to get a shot at the big audience, but I would probably put this down to a tasteful regard of a personal choice deserved of as much compassion as the usual boy meets girl tripe dragged out of mainstream cinema year after year. That’s another point in Gerontophilia’s favour: its unpredictable as a romance or drama because it simply isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen.

Brave in an entirely different way, but far from perfect. La Bruce may have ditched the shock tactics of sexual coercion in favour of a more subdued character study, but here is a film suffering from long stretches of tedium, bad acting, and dull dialogue until its last half hour. However, good sound-tracking, Nicolas Canniccioni’s passive shooting, and a great performance from Walter Borden make this an ultimately charming venture.

★★★☆☆

Scott Clark

Blu-Ray Review - Convoy 35th Anniversary Special Edition

Rating:
12
Distributor:
StudioCanal UK
DVD/BD Release Date:
30th September 2013 (UK)
Director:
Sam Peckinpah
Cast:
Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, Ernest Borgnine , Walter Kelley
Buy Convoy:
DVD
Convoy is in the surprisingly in the very long lineage of films based on songs which seem to go back almost as film itself. The film is based on the trucker anthem Convoy by C. W. McCall. It’s also directed by one of the finest directors of the 60s and 70s Sam Peckinpah but this is by far one of his worse films but that doesn’t mean it does have some merits.

The film is kinda like a tamer and cheesier version of Vanishing Point without the amphetamines or existentialism. It’s about a bunch of truck drivers led by Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) who are driving though Arizona. They group together in a many mile long convoy to protest police corruption (it also starts due to Duck and 2 truck driver friends who are forced to pay Sherriff Dirty Lyle) and shady political dealings. Duck is however adamant they are just driving and there is nothing more to it. Ali MacGraw rides along with The Duck after she flirts with him in the opening scene but her car breaks down and she needs a ride.

The film is a mildly funny comedic romp but the film is sadly really the film that ended the career of one of the great autuers Sam Peckinpah. He also had a serious drink and coke problem by this point, which didn’t help matters. The film was a surprise hit and was most the successful film of his career ironically. It was also clearly made so Peckinpah could have a hit. Despite it’s success Sam had became too much like Bennie in his masterpiece Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and would sabotage anything that came his way. It’s also rumoured that Sam’s old buddy James Coburn directed a bulk of him because Sam was too messed up on booze and coke.

The film’s crowning achievement is this wonderful slow-motion fight in a dinner that is in the higher thresholds of cinematic food fights. Kris Kristofferson tries his best with the poor script he was given and he is always watchable. Ernest Borgnine who is also a great psychopath plays the evil Sheriff Dirty Lyle. Ali MacGraw is wasted but she was never that good of an actress in the first place. Seymour Cassel pops up as a the slimy governor who is only interested in how the public support for the convoy can help his own political career.

Overall it’s sad Peckinpah scooped this low but it’s perfectly watchable and I’ve seen much worst films by noted directors. It’s a mildly entertaining romp with a great food fight and good performance from Kristofferson who tries his best. It does however have a wonderful blu-ray with a documentary on the film that is over an hour along with some other features.

★★1/2☆☆

Ian Schultz

TIFF 2013 Review - Under the Skin

Rating:
15
Release Date:
9,10&15th September 2013 (TIFF) 13, 14th October (LIFF)
Director:
Jonathan Grazer
Cast:
Scarlett Johansson, Paul Brannigan, Jessica Mance
Directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) and filmed entirely on location across Scotland Under the Skin is a film flaunting incredible cinematography strung together by a predominantly performance-orientated narrative. Based on the Novel by Michael Faber, Under the Skin follows Laura (Scarlett Johansson), an alien from another world, as she travels across Scotland kidnapping young men.

Glazer’s latest is a sci-fi film akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey in that one of the film’s main components is its striking tone and total control over the presented image. Daniel Landin’s exquisite palette of subdued tones creates a grim atmospheric back-drop for the film’s often macabre visual style. The same gorgeous control over image translates the Scottish landscape into a strange muggy alien territory, foreboding and stirring in equal measure. Hundreds of directors have only seen fit to make such land a charming tourist spot, whilst Glazer has here crafted an environment that is as much a character as Laura herself.

  Under the Skin is a road movie of sorts, shot in a near-documentary style of lingering shots and snappy disjointed editing, which again expand on the notions of “alien” culture. We are presented time and time again with bizarre social situations; the crowds of Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, Neds rampant in the night, masses of colour-coordinated football fans, all of them overpowering and vast, a sensory overload. But even these shots can tire on the viewer in a film with little dialogue and even less narrative explanation. As a companion to the novel, the film is possibly at its best, but still entirely able as a stand-alone project. For true intrigue: Glazer executes some of the most haunting, striking, and unsettling images of extra-terrestrial life ever put to film.

Glazer keeps the mystery of his alien culture tightly wrapped and that pays off big time, rewarding the audience with a kind of abstract macabre that strays into the realm of the horrific. The aesthetic of this alien technology is the definition of minimalism ensuring nothing can be deduced until the last moment, and though the use of contrast lighting is indeed perfect thinking , it at times crowds scenes with far too much shadow, erasing any finer details. In the same setting Mica Levi’s jarring and genius screech-synth scoring is at its best in Laura’s black widow sequences where it plays out like some bizarre striptease music done in pulse-like percussion. The young Londoner is proving a major talent in sound engineering and someone to keep your eye on.

Apart from the stunning cinematography, the most enrapturing thing about this film is Johansson’s turn as alien provocateur-cum-abductor. Relying less on her lines - which she drones in an awful regional accent - the starlet exhibits an accomplished and often intimidating portrayal of the alien amongst us. This is Johansson’s best performance to date. Johansson, as per, is stunning, and her beauty plays an important part in the alien’s role both during the alien’s predatory ventures, and in the film’s powerful lingering and poignant climax.

Incredibly beautiful piece of sci-fi horror with a stellar performance from Johansson and a soundtrack to compliment, Under the Skin is not the gripping sort of hunter/hunted thriller some may expect. If you can look past its relatively reserved lack of narrative you’ll find a powerful and considerate meander through the life of an alien in an alien land.

★★★★☆

Scott Clark

Martin Scorsese World Cinema Foundation Volume 1 To Get A Masters Of Cinema Release

Rating:
PG
DVD/BD Release Date:
25th November 2013 (UK)
Distributor:
Eureka! Entertainment
Pre-Order/Buy:
Martin Scorsese Presents: World Cinema Foundation: Volume One - Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) [Masters of Cinema]
Eureka! Entertainment have announced the release of MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS: WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION: VOLUME ONE ( Three films preserved, restored, and re-presented by the efforts of the World Cinema Foundation: DRY SUMMER / TRANCES / REVENGE). This is the first release from the official partnership between Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation and The Masters of Cinema Series, and will be released in a Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) box set edition on 25 November 2013.

Founded in 2007 and overseen by Martin Scorsese, the World Cinema Foundation (WCF) has spearheaded efforts to preserve, restore, and annually re-present neglected masterpieces of world cinema, particularly those from areas of the globe that have not traditionally been highlighted in prevailing evaluations of film, or which have lacked the financial, technical, or governmental infrastructure to ensure their preservation.

As the WCF's mission statement announces: "Cinema is an international language, an international art, but, above all, it is a source of enlightenment. There are wonderful, remarkable films, past and present, from Mexico, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Asia that deserve to be known and seen. Composed of filmmakers from every continent, the World Cinema Foundation breathes life into the idea that when a cultural patrimony is lost, no matter how small or supposedly 'marginal' the country might be, we are all poorer for it."

The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to act as the official partner of the World Cinema Foundation for the UK region. In this first in a regular series of Blu-ray box sets, we present the WCF's restorations of masterpieces from Turkey (Erksan's Dry Summer), Morocco (El Maanouni's Trances), and Kazakhstan (Shinarbaev's Revenge), with exclusive introductions by Martin Scorsese for each film in this set.

DRY SUMMER [ SUSUZ YAZ ] | A film by Metin Erksan | 1964 | Turkey | 75 minutes | 1.37:1 original aspect ratio

A brutal naturalist melodrama, Metin Erksan's masterful Dry Summer [Susuz yaz], which won the Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin Film Festival, returns to the spotlight in a new restoration after decades of suppression by Turkish authorities: an arid fate for one of the most exciting films of the 1960s. Viscerally tactile, unsparing, and even on occasion outright lurid, Dry Summer has been described by filmmaker Fatih Akin as "one of the most important legacies of Turkish cinema."

During a particularly dry rural Turkish summer, a group of local workers enter into a dispute with a landowner when he decides the construction of new irrigation infrastructure must first and foremost service his own property. Wholly rapacious, the landowner foments a private war with his own kin after the brother takes a bewitching young wife. The battle between the factions plays out in stunning set-pieces: a pursuit with pistols amidst grass-stalks and dam-water before the setting sun evokes elements of Renoir (Toni), Ford (The World Moves On), Bergman (The Virgin Spring), and Shindô (Onibaba), while a scene set in a brush thicket wherein the landowner and his aggressors fight it out hatchet-and-club provides drama at least as exciting and gasp-inducing as the climax of Seven Samurai.

Dry Summer's sweat-dappled tone and baked images of promenade and labour recall Mexican-period Buñuel as much as aspects of mid-'50s Italian commercial melodrama and, via the film's backdrop of agrarian agitation and its low angles – which effect a figural relief against blazing, albeit greyish mid-contrast summer skies – post-montage Soviet agitprop. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the World Cinema Foundation's restoration of Metin Erksan's classic on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.



TRANCES [ TRANSES ] | A film by Ahmed El Maanouni | 1981 | Morocco | 87 minutes | 1.85:1 original aspect ratio

The inaugural film of the World Cinema Foundation's efforts, Trances [Transes] is a picture unlike any other: a poetic, roving documentary-portrait performance-film based around the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane.

In this rare, transformational work, Nass El Ghiwane perform their music at concerts at once fervidly rally-like and suffused with the spontaneity of a mass happening; recount their time working alongside the great chaâbi musician Boudjemaâ El Ankis in the 1970s; and generally philosophise and reflect upon life. As Martin Scorsese expressed at the time of the film's re-presentation in 2007: "I became passionate about this music that I heard and I saw also the way the film was made, the concert that was photographed and the effect of the music on the audience at the concert. I tracked down the music and eventually it became my inspiration for many of the designs and construction of my film The Last Temptation of Christ. [...] And I think the group was singing damnation: their people, their beliefs, their sufferings, and their prayers all came through their singing. And I think the film is beautifully made by Ahmed El Maanouni; it's been an obsession of mine since 1981."

True to its title, Trances is an hypnotic, exhilarating masterwork. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Ahmed El Maanouni's film, restored from the original 16mm camera and sound negatives, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.


REVENGE [ MEST' ] | A film by Ermek Shinarbaev | 1989 | Kazakhstan | 96 minutes | 1.37:1 original aspect ratio

Set largely in Korea and China, and spanning the 1910s to 1940s, Ermek Shinarbaev's epic masterpiece unites the resonant pictoriality of certain Far Eastern cinema with a mysticism rooted in the Russian tradition: a fitting and harmonic convergence for this collaboration (one of three) between the Kazakh director and Korean-Russian writer Anatoli Kim.

A rural schoolteacher, Jan, murders a pupil, the young daughter of a family under whom he had previously been a tenant. The father, Caj [pronounced "Tsaiya"], tracks him to China to exact revenge – but at at the moment of vengeance, Caj cannot act. He returns home only to take a concubine, who in turn bears him a son: Sungu, a prodigious composer of verse. At Caj's deathbed, the boy is informed he has been brought into the world purely for the sake of vengeance; he takes an oath to annihilate Jan.

Tonally, Revenge exhibits an extraordinary use of natural light that lends the figures an almost ethereal incandescence in the picture's first half; the second half of the film shifts into a no-less-impressive palate that is ally to late-Tarkovskyan naturalism. A narrative broken into seven chapters, and constructed in a full-circle that creates a visual and spoken summary of Sungu's poetic universe, Revenge is, to quote the critic Kent Jones, "a true odyssey, geographically and psychologically. One of the greatest films to emerge from the Kazakh New Wave, and also one of the toughest." The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Revenge, restored from the original camera negative with the involvement of Ermek Shinarbaev, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Glorious new restorations of three neglected masterworks of world cinema, all presented in 1080p HD
• Exclusive video introductions to each film by Martin Scorsese
• 80-page book featuring writing by Kent Jones on Revenge, Bilge Ebiri on Trances, archival documentation and imagery, and more to be announced
• Optional English subtitles on each film
• More features to be announced closer to release date

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon - TIFF 2013 Review

Rating:
15
Release Date:
7,8,14th September 2013 (TIFF)
Director:
Mike Myers
Cast:
Shep Gordon,Alice Cooper, Michael Douglas,Tom Arnold, Anne Murray, Sylvester Stallone
Mike Myers’ directorial debut is proof not only that he’s a skilled director and impressive documenter, but the subject of his film is probably one of the coolest men to ever live. Shep Gordon, manager extraordinaire, is a power house of productivity, a messiah of good times, and an all-round nice guy. He’s managed Alice Cooper since the beginning of his career, practically invented the concept of the celebrity chef, and has managed to intertwine his existence with the mint of Hollywood and rock royalty by being one of the world’s greatest hosts. So says Supermensch; The Legend of Shep Gordon.

The key to Myers’ film is that he has a genuine respect for Gordon, like the rest of the stars who pop up through this charming - often hilarious - exploration of Gordon’s career. Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, Myers himself, Alice Cooper, Willie Nelson, to name a few, all jump at the opportunity to give candid tales of Gordon’s frankly mindboggling life. From his humble, drug fuelled beginnings hanging out with the likes of Hendrix and Joplin, onwards through his fast-paced career in music and film. His legendary appetite for good times and women are here exceeded only by his love for seemingly everyone he meets.

Myers is an incredibly gifted filmmaker, fusing his zany wit and comic timing with Gordon’s own barmy life. His editing is sharp and gripping; snippets from movies and a great soundtrack make Supermensch nothing short of fascinating viewing. Perhaps Myers gets a bit caught up in his own love for the father-figure, at points making his documentary a kind of advertisement, but a keen sense of ‘the man’ Gordon as opposed to just ‘the legend’ maintains a suitably grounded and heartfelt film. The Alice Cooper chapter goes on a bit but Gordon’s input into Cooper’s vaudevillian act is vast and thus arguably important. Sure, near-ridiculous amount of good praise for Gordon gets silly at points, but only a cynical kind of tabloid gossip-craving would render this an actual fault. Take a page out of Gordon’s book and cheer the hell up.

No matter where your interests lie, Gordon’s life is at worst intriguing and at best mad. This is a highly impressive debut and a thrilling story of a loving friend, hedonist, innovator, and showman. The fifteen year old me wants another Austin Powers, whilst now I can’t help but hope Myers has another go in the director’s chair.

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is entirely watchable, vivid, and compulsive filmmaking punctuated by a host of celebrity guests, a great soundtrack, and some psychedelic editing. Myers’ debut film is an impressive exploration of a life well-lived: heart-warming, hilarious, but above all highly recommendable.

★★★★½

Scott Clark