Kaiju Shakedown - March 2008

First look at new Miike

Takashi Miike's summer 2008 release, GOD'S PUZZLE (or PUZZLE OF GOD), has released its pressbook and below you can find scans that show just enough to make it look somewhat interesting. The movie, set for a June 7 release, features Hayato Ichihara (NEGATIVE HAPPY CHAINSAW EDGE, ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU) playing twins who hook up with Mitsuki Tanimura (THE CHASING WORLD, CANARY) to unlock the secrets of the universe and to build their own universe. Who hasn't done the same thing [...]

Puppets! Puppets! Puppets!

Kihachiro Kawamoto is right up there with the Quay Brothers as one of the world's great stop motion animators. I've seen a few of his projects and while they don't get my blood pumping they're undeniably beautiful and technically exquisite. Jasper Sharp over at Midnight Eye has organized a massive, touring retrospective of his work that will crawl all over the United Kingdom from March 15 - May 15 of this year, starting off at the Watershed Media Center in Bristol. If you [...]

Linn Hayes RIP

Linn Haynes died a few days ago in a car accident. He was 32 years old. Linn was passionate about martial arts films and a constant presence in online fan communities where he brought a wealth of knowledge to the table and was generally a calm and sane voice of reason in the boiling scrum of shouting and flame wars that message boards can all-too-often become.

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Before WKW was WKW

One of the greatest untapped resources on the planet are the Hong Kong International Film Festival catalogues. Spanning the entire modern history of Hong Kong films they feature interviews with filmmakers, director's statements and assessments of the state of Hong Kong cinema by critics on the ground writing as it happened. Pick up a catalogue from the early 90's and you get to see Wong Kar-wai before he put on the sunglasses, when he was just a nerdy young man trying to find commer [...]

Little nuggets

There are two kinds of trailers for horror movies. There's the kind for Kelvin Tong's RULE #1 which stars Shawn Yue who seems to be in the Early Daniel Wu phase of his career (ie, appearing in every other movie coming out of Hong Kong). This is the kind of horror movie trailer that features some neat-o imagery, a lot of atmosphere and sets up some kind of mystery that you just know will have a twist ending where everything we think we know turns out to be wrong. Meh.

Or [...]