"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television" - Videodrome
Marketing
controversial, cult, bizzare, dystopian, cyberpunk, propaganda, surreal, avant-gard, exploitation, underground, noir, neo-noir, acid western and many more subgenres only at Videodrome
The movies marked with the label BMI thay are find at Black Market International. A (ex)site specialized for extra rare movies. In near future i will try to find and post all movies.
La Bête is the most notorious work from controversial Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, who came to fame as an animator in the 1960s, but who ended up directing tacky softcore porn films in the 1980s (including the utterly diabolical Emmanuelle 5). Before his sorry decline into mediocrity, Borowczyk established himself as the master of a new brand of surreal eroticism, where pornography meets fine art to create a unique and utterly bizarre cinematic experience.
La Bête is perhaps the prime example of this. It combines anti-bourgeois black comedy (very reminiscent of the work of French film director Luis Buñuel) with camp gothic horror and softcore porn. The result ought to be a pretentious, unwatchable mess, but it isn’t. Although it is far from being a great work of cinema, La Bête has an indefinable quality of artistic flair about it, constantly surprising its audience with its originality and daring. It is also probably the most explicit depiction of female sexuality in cinema, something which will either delight or shock anyone watching the film.
The film’s pièce de résistance is a flashback sequence which offers a pornographic re-working of the Beauty and the Beast tale. Here, a man in an unconvincing bear costume chases a beautiful young maiden through a sunny glade before confronting her with a comic phallus of truly monstrous proportions. With its overly explicit depiction of male and female orgasm, perhaps in the worst possible taste, this sequence ends up appearing far more like a cheap comical sketch than a serious piece of erotica. Like most of this film, it really only works if it is seen from a comic perspective. This is not a film about the horror of bestiality – it is much more about the grotesque absurdity of human sexuality.
Not surprisingly, the film suffered at the hand of the censors for its graphic depiction of sex when it was distributed outside of France. In the UK the film was subjected to substantial cuts, and was soon banned. The film was only released uncut 25 years after its initial release in France. Even today, the film is still able to surprise its audience with its daring and sometimes disturbing portrayal of female sexuality.
Rokugatsu no hebi is a japanese movie directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. His seventh film, it is notable for its striking monochrome blue cinematography tinted in post production. It won the Kinematrix Film Award and the San Marco Special Jury Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Shinya Tsukamoto's films have always focused on the family unit, or more precisely on the unity between couples. Most of the attention for his work has concentrated understandably but somewhat disproportionately on the sci-fi / cyberpunk elements, the theme of bodily mutation, and the similarities with the works of Davids Cronenberg and Lynch. Although these are certainly major factors, at heart Tsukamoto's films consistently deal with relationships and the influences that threaten them.
Rarely was this more apparent than in A Snake of June, which recycles the love triangle premise of his earlier films Gemini and Tokyo Fist, but dispenses with the horror/fantasy overtones of the former and the bloodspurting brutality of the latter. This is the story of a couple first and foremost, not a genre film that happens to have a couple as its subject.
The couple in question are Rinko (stage actress Asuka Kurosawa) and Shigehiko (novelist Yuji Kotari), whose physical mismatch (she a lithe beauty, he an overweight, balding, obsessive-compulsive neurotic) is reflected in the complete lack of intimacy between them. They connect as human beings, but they live more like friends than as lovers and lead nearly independent lives. Both seem comfortable with this coexistence, but the desires that lurk beneath its surface are brought out with the introduction of a third element into the equation. When Rinko receives a package of candid photographs of herself masturbating and the sender (played by Tsukamoto himself) contacts her with the threat of exposing them to her husband, she submits herself to the anonymous voyeur's sexual games. If she wishes to get hold of all the negatives and prints, Rinko is to comply with a set of assignments that place her constantly on the borderline between humiliation and pleasure - the voyeur knows exactly what Rinko's personal erotic fantasies are and makes her act them out one by one.
Despite doing away with the genre-based surface that has been the most eye-catching element of the director's previous work, stylistically this is instantly recognisable as a Tsukamoto film. Shot in blue-tinted monochrome, the images are as beautiful and the photography and editing as intense as any of his earlier efforts. Although he places more emphasis than ever on the human form as is - untainted by mutation or mutilation - the director does occasionally add some of his beloved biomechanical imagery. Though seemingly at odds with the realistic tone of the film, these moments this time round have a more symbolic function, serving as the visualisation of the characters' emotions. These fantasy scenes, only two in number, are both experienced by Shigehiko, whose obsession allows for such delusions: his discovery of a huge glob of filth in the sink (an exaggerated, almost mutant version of what most of us hesitantly scrape from the drain on occasion) is what forms the catalyst for these nightmarish visions.
With its focus on human beings and organic life (also present in the incessant downpour that forms the backdrop to Rinko's sexual reawakening - see our interview with the director for more on the function of rain in the film), rather than machinery and physical deformations, A Snake of June might well be the thematic culmination of all of Tsukamoto's past work. For the same reason it might also prove to be the most accessible point of entry for the uninitiated, illustrating that an artist doesn't necessarily have to compromise his message in order to communicate with a larger audience.
Made at a time when the British were coming (alledgedly), the intervening years have not been kind to Company Of Wolves. It still looks gorgeous, and has a worryingly attractive young female lead in Sarah Patterson, but the idea of taking old fairy tales and goreing them up seems... well... a bit passe, really.
The story (such that it is - the film is really an excuse for a series of setpieces loosely based on the short stories of Angela Carter) concerns a girl who has shut herself in her bedroom, put on her sister's make-up and fallen asleep. She then dreams that her annoying sister has been killed by wolves in a Grimm Fairy Tales forest setting, and the rest of the film shows the results of the not-real tragedy.
All very odd, made odder by of having the girl wake up and fall asleep again, making things change and jarring the plot into dream-like incoherence.
"So if you should spy on a naked man in the wood, run as if the Devil himself were after you! Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet!" At points she's listening to granny (Angela Lansbury) telling fairy stories and warning of men who are "hairy on the inside" and whose eyebrows meet in the middle, then she's telling tales of her own to her mourning mother. Meanwhile dad (the always-confused David "From Beyond The Grave" Warner) is busy hoping to hunt down the guilty wolf.
Unfortunately, for a film which glories in its werewolf transformations, the effects aren't really up to much. They're not a patch on American Werewolf In London (which predates it by a good three years) and they look distinctly plasticky.
One man rips his face off to bring the wolf out, another has the wolf in him burst out through his mouth. And in the most famous sequence, a bunch of Regency revellers have their party cut short when a pregnant redhead turns them all into confused-looking Alsations (hairy knockers ahoy!).
We're also denied the pleasure of seeing Angela Lansbury getting torn to shreds by a wolf - when it's her turn to bite the dust, she turns into a porcelain doll, T'pau video-style. Well, it was the mid 80s, I suppose.
The sexual imagery is also layed on with a trowel - Rosaleen (Patterson) experiments with make-up (much like Anna in the similar but better Paperhouse) as she turns into a woman, and of course she paints her lips big and red. The giant mushrooms peppered about the set are ridiculously phallic, and despite granny's warnings not to "stray from the path", she does so - with devastating results. That'll teach her.
Everyone concerned with making Company Of Wolves seemed to think they were making high art, but to modern audiences it's just not that clever.
A bag full of symbolic folklore about werewolves, or, rather, their sexual connotation. Granny tells her granddaughter Rosaleen strange, disturbing tales about innocent maidens falling in love with handsome, heavily eyebrowed strangers with a smoldering look in their eyes; about sudden disappearances of spouses when the moon is round & the wolves are howling in the woods; about babies found inside stork eggs, in a stork nest high up a tree; etc., etc. Of course the story of Little Red Ridinghood is also present, with a very handsome he-wolf! (And of course this he-wolf consumes Grandmother, but 'consumes' Little Red Ridinghood). All the stories are somehow reducible to loss of innocence, and fear of/hunger for (a newly acquired sense of) sexuality; their Freudian character is mirrored in their dreamlike shapes. This movie is not really a horror movie; it's more a multiple tale about growing up into adolescence.
Persona is a film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Bergman held this film to be one of his most important; in his book Images, he writes: "Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." He also said that
At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life—that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. One significant point: for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success...
Bergman wrote Persona during nine weeks while recovering from pneumonia. During filming Bergman wanted to call the film A Bit of Cinematography. His producer suggested something more accessible and the title of the film was changed. Persona is a minimalist film: although five actors appear onscreen, Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann are the only ones to appear for more than a minute, and Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann's character) speaks only fourteen words in the film. There are no dressing-props; only items the characters use are shown onscreen. The imagery is dominated by extreme contrast, with the cottage scenes being drenched by intense sunlight that washes the image out in a white glare, and the actors wearing solid black costumes, simple hairstyles, and no make-up.
Persona is considered one of the major works of the 20th century by essayists and critics such as Susan Sontag, who referred to it as Bergman's masterpiece. Other critics have described it as "one of this century’s great works of art". In Sight and Sound’s 1972 poll of the ten greatest films of all time, Persona was ranked at number five.
“Taxidermia” is Hungarian director Gyorgy Palfi’s follow up to his acclaimed “Hukkle”, and is another film obsessed with the act of eating and consumption, here taken to disgustingly literal extremes. Inspired by the short stories of Lajos Parti Nagy, the film is a non-stop assault on the senses and stomach which has invited comparisons with the works of Luis Bunuel, mainly due to the director’s use of repellently surreal imagery.
The film follows three generations of men, beginning with an unfortunate soldier called Vendel serving a cruel lieutenant at a remote military outpost in Hungary during the Second World War. Forced to live in a freezing shack, he develops an unhealthy sexual obsession for his superior’s wife and daughter which leads to tragic and revolting consequences. The result is the birth of his son Kalman, who grows up to become one of the country’s top speed eaters, entering competitions organised by the communist regime. Although hugely overweight, he finds love with an equally large lady, though has to contend for her affections with an ambitious fellow ‘athlete’. The final section follows his son Lajos, a thin wiry man who looks after his now morbidly obese father while carrying out his trade as a taxidermist and raising monstrously large cats.
Dark Side of the Rainbow (also known as Dark Side of Oz or The Wizard of Floyd) refers to the pairing of the 1973 Pink Floyd music album The Dark Side of the Moon with the visual portion of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. This produces moments where the film and the album appear to correspond with each other. The title of the music video-like experience comes from a combination of the album title and the film's song "Over the Rainbow". Band members and others involved in the making of the album state that any relationship between the two works of art is merely a coincidence.
In August 1995, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette published the first mainstream media article about the "synchronicity", citing alt.music.pink-floyd. Soon afterward, several fans began creating websites in which they touted the experience and tried to comprehensively catalogue the corresponding moments. A second wave of awareness began in April 1997 when Boston radio DJ George Taylor Morris discussed Dark Side of the Rainbow on the air, leading to further mainstream media articles and a segment on MTV news.
In July 2000, the cable channel Turner Classic Movies aired a version of Oz with the Dark Side album as an alternate soundtrack. Turner Entertainment has owned the rights to the film since 1986.
Fans have compiled more than one hundred moments of perceived interplay between the film and album, including further links that occur if the album is repeated through the entire film. Examples include music changes at dramatic moments, and thematic alignment such as the scarecrow dance during "Brain Damage". This synergy effect has been described as an example of synchronicity, defined by the psychologist Carl Jung as a phenomenon in which coincidental events "seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality."Detractors argue that the phenomenon is the result of the mind's tendency to think it recognizes patterns amid disorder by discarding data that do not fit. Psychologists refer to this tendency as apophenia. Under this theory, a Dark Side of the Rainbow enthusiast will focus on matching moments while ignoring the greater number of instances where the film and the album do not correspond. Another theory suggests the correspondence may have been assisted by the synaesthetic effects of narcotics taken by those who then chose to enjoy the album and the film together (that is to say, the only reason they think the two match is because they're under the influence of drugs).
Street of Crocodiles is a 21-minute-long stop-motion animation short subject directed and produced by the Brothers Quay and released in 1986.
The Street of Crocodiles was originally a short novel written by Bruno Schulz, from a story collection published under that title in English translation. Rather than literally representing the childhood memoirs of Schulz, the animators used the story's mood and psychological undertones as inspiration for their own creation.
A man closes up a lecture hall; he reaches into a box and snips the string holding a gaunt puppet. Released, the puppet warily explores the darkened rooms about him. The desolate ambiance and haunting musical score convey a sense of isolation and futility, forcing the viewer into immediate identification with the mute protagonist as he explores a realm of mechanical realities and manufactured pleasures. As the protagonist tries to conform, or is forced into assimilation, the film slowly reveals how unfulfilling the surroundings actually are. Life and vitality are gradually stripped away to reveal the passionless cycle of existence.
Although heavily metaphorical, the piece also exemplifies the experimental and curious nature of the Quays' work. Rather than examining the potential symbolism of such props as screws, dust, string, and wind-up monkeys, many shots seem to focus on the movements and inherent characteristics of the materials. Like most of their films, the Brothers Quay employ a more musically-grounded structure in place of a straight-forward literal narrative in Street of Crocodiles.
Grzegorz Cisiecki’s 2007 short film DYM is a surreal, ambiguous 7 minutes of experimental and ambitious cinematography. Interpret as you will, with no dialogue to help us along, it is left to our own imagination to decipher. Flitting from one beautiful scene to the next, there is no doubt huge talent behind DYM. With a startling musical score and superb lighting, this short is a masterpiece of creativity.
The story of the person who became the captive of surrealistic madness. Film by Grzegorz Cisiecki Photography: Dawid Rymar Editing: Cecylia Pacura, Grzegorz Cisiecki Original score: Rashid Brocca, Aleksandr Poroch Cast: Marta Szumiel, Grzegorz Golaszewski, Oriana Soika, Bartlomej Nowosielski PWSFTViT, Poland, 2008
More is an english language film directed by Barbet Schroeder, released in 1969. Starring Mimsy Farmer and Klaus Grünberg, it deals with heroin addiction on the island of Ibiza. It features a soundtrack written and performed by Pink Floyd, released as the album Soundtrack from the Film More.
A German student, Stefan, who has finished his studies, decides to have an adventure, get out of his conservative skin and to burn his bridges. After hitch-hiking to Paris, he commits burglary to get money and meets a free-spirited American girl, Estelle, following her to Ibiza. He discovers she is in trouble with a man named Dr. Wolf. Stefan saves Estelle from Dr. Wolf only to find she does not really want to be saved, and she introduces him to heroin (referred to by the old street name, "horse") which she has stolen from Dr. Wolf. The inevitable spiral into drug abuse and denial leads him down a dark road.
This story is modeled on the myth of Daedalus and Icarus with Estelle as the Sun.
The French film Censorship Board in 1969 insisted that some of the dialog be censored around the 81 minute mark before the film could be released. In the film, as the couple mix up a hallucinogenic concoction in the kitchen, the ingredients "benzedrine" and "banana peel" are deleted from the audio track. On the DVD, the words have been re-added as subtitles.
Most of the movie was shot on the island of Ibiza. The castle of Ibiza, which dominates the harbour and the town, is the scene for the final act. The location of Stefan's death, a tunnel near the castle, has since become a place of pilgrimage for addicts.
Ballet Mécanique was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmmaker/artist Fernand Léger. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history.
In concert performance, the "ballet" is not a show of human dancers but of mechanical instruments. Among these, player pianos, airplane propellers, and electric bells stand prominently onstage, moving as machines do, and providing the visual side of the ballet. As the bizarre instrumentation may suggest, this was no ordinary piece of music. It was loud and percussive –- a medley of noises, much as the Italian Futurists envisioned new music of the 20th century. To explore a fascinating artifact of modernist music like Ballet Mécanique, it is worth understanding its history and also its musical qualities.
In its original release, the film's French title was "Charlot présente le ballet mécanique" (as seen on the original print), referring to showman André Charlot, who financed this film's French distribution. In France, Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character was also known as Charlot; the combination of the producer's name and Chaplin's screen image, represented by a Cubist-style paper puppet, is only the first of many visual puns in the film -- a seeming display of the film's sheer visual modernity, as intended by its creators from the get-go.
Rabbit’s Moon is an avant-garde short film created by American filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Originally filmed in 1950, Anger only finished and released it in 1972, before re-releasing it in a second edition with a new soundtrack and other alterations in 1979.
Filmed under a blue filter and set within a wooded glade during the night, the plot revolves around a clown, Pierrot, who longs for the moon, in which lives a rabbit (a concept found in both Japanese and Aztec mythology) and his futile attempts to jump up and catch it. Subsequently another clown, Harlequin appears, and teases Pierrot, showing him Columbina, with whom he appears to fall in love.
The 1972 version features a soundtrack made up of a series of pop songs; "There’s A Moon Out Tonight" by The Capris, "Oh, What a Night" by The Dells, "Bye Bye Baby" by Mary Wells, "I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos and "Tears On My Pillow" by The El Dorados. The 1979 version, which is speeded up, instead features the song "It Came in the Night" by the band A Raincoat played on a loop.
The movie is credited by the electronic music act Rabbit in the Moon as the inspiration for their name.
This film is presented in original Turkish language and has no subtitles. There is not a copy of this film available with subtitles anywhere. This is the only way to get it. Besides, you hardly need subtitles to figure out what is going on. Badi (aka Turkish E.T.) Director: Zafer Par Starring: Cengiz Sayhan, Tolga Sonmez, Orhan Cagman, Tuncer Sevi, Ani Ippekkaya Language: Turkish/ No Subtitles Ratio: Full Screen Originally titled "Badi", this film pretty much follows the story of the American version of "E.T." The Turkish translation of the extra-terrestrial is very comical but loveable, (looking like at times a strange claymation creation from another planet and other scenes a grown person in brown pajamas with a potato sack head.) The kids aren't afraid of E.T., though. Instead of being hidden away at the house of the little boy that finds him for most of the movie where it can get loaded on beer and dress up in drag, this E.T. is rather quick to get out in public. In one scene, E.T. just strolls right into the little boy's classroom for all to see. Upon seeing it, the classroom teacher has a heart attack and slumps over at his desk. Using his alien detector, a nice old man finds E.T. out in the middle of nowhere, sick. He brings the creature back home to the little boy and they throw it in bed. Not long after, a crowd of people gather outside of the home, some offering their prayers to the creature while others are threatened by him. Healing rather quickly, E.T. levitates himself, the little boy and a select group of kids on a bike, basket contraption where they fly over Turkey, evading an impending hassling by the police and they touch down in a forest where a spaceship awaits to take the creature home. The little Turkish actors are very impressive, in fact, much more so than the former cast in terms of emotional levels of acting in the scenes. This is a heartwarming, funny and original take on a classic "American" alien.
Kanashimi no Belladonna also known as "The Tragedy of Belladonna" is an art house animation feature animated film produced in 1973 by Mushi Production. Directed and co-written by Eiichi Yamamoto and inspired by Jules Michelet's non-fiction book Satanism and Witchcraft, it is the third and final film in the Animerama trilogy and the only one to be neither written nor directed by Osamu Tezuka (he left Mushi Production during the film's early stages to concentrate on his comics and his conceptual-stage contribution is uncredited).
It was unusual on several counts: First off, it was an X-rated erotic Fantasia-esque feature length animation produced by by Mushi Production. Mushi Pro is the studio responsible for classic childrens fare like Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion. It’s easy to make the case that Osamu Tezuka, the company’s founder, should be regarded as the Walt Disney of Japan. In fact, it was Tezuka’s wide-eyed way of drawing characters that influenced Anime profoundly. Although Tezuka had already stepped down from the company three years earlier, it’s still not easy to imagine Disney producing soft porn cartoons just a few years after Uncle Walt’s passing…
Based kinda/sorta/somewhat on the Joan D’Arc story, Belladonna of Sadness also incorporates vampires and orgies into her tale (?!?!). Butterflies that take flight in the shape of a vagina and other things. As I have never seen a copy with English subtitles, it is rather difficult for me to say exactly what is going on in Belladonna of Sadness, although I can report that that Kuni Fukai’s stunning visuals (reminiscent of the work of Gustav Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley) are quite incredible eye candy and unlike anything else I’ve seen.
The last few years Tsukamoto has been experiencing a slight decline towards (relatively) more commercial cinema. His latest (Nightmare Detective 2) is the ultimate proof of this change of style. Some might have you believe this new Tetsuo film is continuing the downward spiral, I clearly saw a completely different film. Tsukamoto returns back to his optima forma and delivers a film filled with more insanity than his age would ever betray.
You'll be hard-pressed to find a positive Tetsuo: The Bullet Man online. And while most negative feedback is definitely grounded, it seems to be missing the point entirely. This third Tetsuo film is in every way more of a sequel to the first film, somewhat ignoring the style and direction of the second one. It's in part an update of Tsuka's first Tetsuo film, but also somewhat of a rehash. I can only guess of course, but I'm not sure everyone was hoping to see the limitations of the first Tetsuo resurface after 20 years.
The Bullet Man was produced by an American company, somewhat explaining the switch to an American male lead (English dialogues included). Luckily these English dialogues makes sense within setting of the film (American boy living in Tokyo) and Tsukamoto is not pulling a Miike here. Still, I admit I too would've preferred an all-Japanese cast and native Japanese language track. The English feels awkward and static and even though it's probably how Tsuka wanted it to be, as someone who doesn't speak Japanese it would've been less of a hurdle if the film had been written in Japanese.
There's also a bit more background story to the Tetsuo saga. Many have faulted the additional story elements and complained the film is less vague and open than the first Tetsuo. This is definitely the case (though there really isn't that much extra plot to work through) but hardly something to worry about. Tetsuo was never about interpretation or a good story in the first place. The additional information here isn't really adding anything but it's not as if it's terribly in the way of the rest of the film either. Tetsuo is about dudes turning into metal and that's what you'll be getting.
Visually there's a big change between the gritty black and white of the first film and the moody, colored digital look of this third installment. It's a good thing Tsukamoto has had some prior experience with digital filming which is definitely paying off now. Everything looks lush, atmospheric yet gritty and smoky, only in a different way. The visual effects are spot on too, the same goes for Tetsuo's transformation designs. I really don't understand the bad press here. It's not as if the first Tetsuo didn't look as if he was made from anything other than paper mache. The third Tetsuo doesn't quite look like he's made from iron (which would make him quite expressionless by the way), but I didn't really see the rubber either. In the end, he just looked pretty bad-ass, which is all that mattered.
As for the editing, Tsukamoto still has it. Hyperactive, frantic, insane yet controlled and razor sharp. It masks some of the technical imperfections and heightens the atmosphere and pacing, making the action scenes all the more brutal. It also works wonderfully well with Chu Ichikawa (the man's back!) his soundtrack. Lovely metallic sounds, crunchy effects and pounding industrial tracks. A shame I couldn't see this film in theaters, I'm sure it would've sounded even better.
As for the acting, Tsukamoto's typical Kaijyu Theatre-style is back once again. It might clash a little with the American actors (we might be used to frantically screaming Japanese men by now, it still looks a little strange if an American does it) but overall the acting isn't even all that bad. Bossick does a pretty job, comparing him to Taguchi would be a little unfair though. The rest of the cast is not bad either, with the nice addition of Tsukamoto himself picking up the role of bad guy once again.
Tetsuo 3 is a pretty short film (80 minutes tops) but considering the frantic visual style and pounding soundtrack that's not necessarily a bad thing. There is no filler, no needless drama, any explaining that needed to be in here is short and to the point. In an ideal world another 10 minutes could've been cut to erase some of the obsolete story elements, but they never really interfere with the important parts: audiovisual transformation mayhem.
So while negative feedback on the dialogues and script is hard to contradict, it doesn't really differ all that much from the original Tetsuo. A film with a pretty long list of defects, all of them eclipsed by the uniqueness and positive points the film is bearing. Tsukamoto's third film is just like that. It's an audiovisual assault that knows little to no equal, staying close to the spirit of the original. As a fan of everything the first Tetsuo represents (still one of my top 10 films), I simply loved this sequel.
Usually negative feedback lowers people's expectations (which is a good thing), in this case many potential viewers seemed to dismiss this film completely without even giving it a fair chance. Don't be one of these people. Tetsuo: The Bullet Man is a worthy sequel to Tsukamoto's first feature film. It bears the same charm and defects as the first Tetsuo and some very minor extra glitches, but the core is still there. An assault to the senses in pretty much every way possible. So make sure to make up your own mind, just don't expect a true "upgrade" (ie a film influenced by 20 years of modern film making).
Alice's Restaurant is a american film adapted from a song by Arlo Guthrie. The song is Guthrie's most famous work, a talking blues based on a true story that began on Thanksgiving Day 1965. The movie reproduces the events of the song, in addition to other scenes.
The movie is directed and co-written by Arthur Penn and stars Guthrie as himself, Pat Quinn as Alice Brock and James Broderick as Ray Brock, with the real Alice Brock making a cameo appearance. In the scene where Ray and friends are installing insulation, she is wearing a brown turtleneck top and has her hair pulled into a ponytail. In the Thanksgiving dinner scene, she is wearing a bright pink blouse. In the wedding scene, she is wearing a Western-style dress.
Stockbridge police chief William Obanhein ("Officer Obie") played himself in the film version, explaining to Newsweek magazine that making himself look like a fool was preferable to having somebody else make him look like a fool.
The film also features the first credited film appearance of character actor M. Emmet Walsh, playing the Group W sergeant. (Walsh had previously appeared as an uncredited extra in Midnight Cowboy, released three months prior.) The film also features cameo appearances by American folksingers/songwriters Lee Hays (playing a reverend at an evangelical meeting) and Pete Seeger (playing himself).
The movie version of "Alice's Restaurant" was released on August 19, 1969, a few days after Guthrie appeared at the Woodstock Festival.
..... a ten minute Opus, which commentates Mommartz in such a way: "a girl communicates with the spectator." More indeed does not happen: .... but the it desireful face gives the viewer a hint, that this is not obligation exercise, but love. Mommartz is among the German film producers the purist. His scenes concentrate on the basic elements of movement and peace, of strain and slackening. He forces the spectator with the suggestiv power of repeated banality into the rhythm of its cinematic action.
Vincent is a stop-motion short film written, designed and directed by Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs. At approximately six minutes in length, there is currently no individual release of the film. It can be found on the Special Edition and Collector's Edition DVDs of The Nightmare Before Christmas as a bonus feature and on the Cinema16 DVD American Short Films.
The film is narrated by actor Vincent Price, a life-long idol and inspiration for Burton. From this relationship, Price would go on to appear in Burton's Edward Scissorhands. Vincent Price later said that the film was "the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality — better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard."
Vincent is the story of a young boy, Vincent Malloy, who pretends to be like the actor Vincent Price (who narrates the film). He is obsessed with the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and it is his detachment from reality when reading them that leads to his delusions that he is in fact a tortured artist, deprived of the woman he loves, mirroring certain parts of Poe's "The Raven". The film ends with Vincent being tortured by the goings-on of his make-believe world, quoting "The Raven" as he falls to the floor in frailty, believing himself to be dead.
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a British science fiction film directed by Nicolas Roeg, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, about an extraterrestrial who crash lands on Earth seeking a way to ship water to his planet, which is suffering from a severe drought. The film maintains a strong cult following for its use of surreal imagery and its performances by David Bowie (in his first starring film role), Candy Clark, and Hollywood veteran Rip Torn. The same novel was later remade as a less-successful 1987 television adaptation.
Thomas Jerome Newton (David Bowie) is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth from a distant planet seeking a way to bring water back to his home planet, Anthea, which is experiencing a terrible drought.
Newton uses the advanced technology of his home planet to patent many inventions on Earth, and rises to incredible wealth as the head of a technology-based conglomerate, World Enterprises Corporation, aided by leading patent attorney Oliver V. Farnsworth (Buck Henry). Secretly, this wealth is needed to construct his own space vehicle program in order to ship water back to his planet...
Ōdishon is a japanese horror film directed by Takashi Miike and starring Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina. It is based on a Ryu Murakami novel of the same title. Over the years, the film has developed a cult following.
Shigeharu Aoyama, a middle-aged widower who lost his wife to an illness seven years prior, is urged by his 17-year-old son, Shigehiko, to begin dating women again. Shigehiko is somewhat doubtful of his father's love life, but plans to move out when he finishes school and does not want his father to be alone. Aoyama's friend and colleague, Yoshikawa, a film producer, devises a plan to hold a mock-audition, in which young, beautiful women would audition for the "part" of Aoyama's new wife, under the impression that they are auditioning for a new film, but actually so Aoyama can marry one of the finalist contestants...
La Bête is the most notorious work from controversial Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, who came to fame as an animator in the 1960s, but who ended up directing tacky softcore porn films in the 1980s (including the utterly diabolical Emmanuelle 5). Before his sorry decline into mediocrity, Borowczyk established himself as the master of a new brand of surreal eroticism, where pornography meets fine art to create a unique and utterly bizarre cinematic experience.
La Bête is perhaps the prime example of this. It combines anti-bourgeois black comedy (very reminiscent of the work of French film director Luis Buñuel) with camp gothic horror and softcore porn. The result ought to be a pretentious, unwatchable mess, but it isn’t. Although it is far from being a great work of cinema, La Bête has an indefinable quality of artistic flair about it, constantly surprising its audience with its originality and daring. It is also probably the most explicit depiction of female sexuality in cinema, something which will either delight or shock anyone watching the film.
The film’s pièce de résistance is a flashback sequence which offers a pornographic re-working of the Beauty and the Beast tale. Here, a man in an unconvincing bear costume chases a beautiful young maiden through a sunny glade before confronting her with a comic phallus of truly monstrous proportions. With its overly explicit depiction of male and female orgasm, perhaps in the worst possible taste, this sequence ends up appearing far more like a cheap comical sketch than a serious piece of erotica. Like most of this film, it really only works if it is seen from a comic perspective. This is not a film about the horror of bestiality – it is much more about the grotesque absurdity of human sexuality.
Not surprisingly, the film suffered at the hand of the censors for its graphic depiction of sex when it was distributed outside of France. In the UK the film was subjected to substantial cuts, and was soon banned. The film was only released uncut 25 years after its initial release in France. Even today, the film is still able to surprise its audience with its daring and sometimes disturbing portrayal of female sexuality.
