The Films of 2008

[Ruby]

I was really keen to see this at Christmas but found myself a little disappointed. True, it looked good but the docudrama framework seemed imposed to dilute any potential discomfort as much as possible. For example, I found the British rulers V Irish prisoners & virtuous priest V brutalised sinner set-ups distracting rather than revealing. Still, the show was only an hour long and Proposition style violence was unlikely to make it onto the TV screen.
Is Dying Breed feature length? There's definitely a great film to be made out of this subject.

[Tribe]

A NY Times review gave this a thumbs up, noting: "'I Can See You” heralds a splendid new filmmaker with one eye on genre mechanics, one eye on avant-garde conceits and a third eye for transcendental weirdness." The trailer is likewise interesting.

Anyone know anything about this? Comments..pro or con?

[domino harvey]

When did filmmakers decide that hiring professional actors was a bad thing? I know from first hand experience that you can hire Law and Order-caliber TV actors in NY for little more than the cost of lunch and the going day rate. Based on that trailer, for any good aspects this may contain, it's still going to be dragged down by awkward line readings and dialog pacing issues resulting from the hiring of someone's friends and not actors. And if those are professional actors, shame on them.

[Tribe]

For whatever its worth, based on DVD Aficionado's listing, Kino will be releasing this in October.

[puxzkkx]

Anyone else excited for this? Liechti's one of my favourites, and this looks excellent.
It recently won the Documentary award at the European Film Awards

Here's some beautiful stills from the film, which is a video essay adapted from both a real world suicide and a Japanese novella about a man who starved himself to death in a forest while meticulously recording the process of his death

[manicsounds]

Shot in 2007, was to be released in October 2007, ended up being released straight-to-DVD in October 2009 by Warner, but the IMDB says 2008, so....

Trailer

I seriously don't know what Warner was thinking, about shelving this film for so long. I just watched it today, perfect timing, getting it in the mail on Halloween Day. Incredibly fun film with 4 intertwined stories during 1 Halloween night.

The US DVD has only 1 short film extra, while the US Bluray has much more including a making-of, commentary, and more.

I personally got the UK DVD, which has all the US Bluray extras, except for the audio commentary.

Watch it if you dare...

[mfunk9786]

I thought this was horribly boring. The Dylan Baker story was humorous but had some glaring inconsistencies, but everything after that was poorly staged and written beyond anything I could have expected for a film that has gotten so much praise. Ick.

[royalton]

I thought this was a nice, fun little trifle, but not much more. Dredging up the ancient Marilyn Manson "Sweet Dreams" cover which has played over a thousand horror films in the last ten years for the Anna Paquin sequence was tired as hell. Though it is to be applauded for resurrecting the horror anthology film format; more films like this need to be made, with this obvious level of skill and care. I thought they took a wrong turn with the nature of little "Sam" - that was lame.

All in all, just so-so, not even a resounding, baffling 'meh' like Antichrist, a film I found underwhelming but which somehow makes me want to immediately revisit it.

Forgot to add - my MOH intake is limited but many were crap. I did, however, love Dance Of The Dead and Homecoming. Fair-Haired Child was solid. Cigarette Burns was a dreadful waste of a good concept, though, and let's not even get into the embarrassment of Pro-Life.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

For Athenians of the north Liechti is doing a talk and screening at ECA this friday 22nd .