25 times a second

Is QT gonna put his money where his mouth is and buy an old LA cinema in Chinatown called the King Hing? It looks like it, and he might even be planning to show all kinds of cult once the place is back up and running. Good news for those in Tinseltown.


Joe Bob Briggs had an extensive Texas Chainsaw Massacre piece published in Texas Monthly, and now it's been put online. It's more than you ever wanted to know about Tobe Hooper's classic.


Since it's Halloween and all, be sure to check out the new Kinoeye, which has four spiffy intellectual type articles on Italian horror films. Oooooooh, scary.

What a lame example of journalism at CNN. The headline is "Looney Tunes DVD ticks off buyers" and the story purports to tell about how fans are disappointed with the selection of cartoons on the new Golden Collection box. It then goes on to quote a single person who wrote a disparaging review on Amazon.com. Guys: a single data point in itself doesn't mean much. Me, I can't wait for my box of these to show up, and I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that Warners would be foolish to put all of their greatest cartoons into the first set. The old cliche says you don't put all your eggs in one basket, and there's a world of truth to that.


A media report in the BBC purports that file sharing and piracy will have a limited impact on the film industry. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.


Given the incredibly disappearing Lizard in a Woman's Skin and Zombi 2, there's been some web scuttlebutt that Shriek Show/Media Blasters were in some sort of trouble. At MHVF, John Sirabella appears to put those rumors to rest. I'm not sure why people were so worried anyhow. I'm a bit frustrated as I've pre-ordered LIAWS twice only to see it postponed, but with the recent releases from their Guilty Pleasures line (Sappho '68, Brigitta, etc) it seemed like they were still pretty active. Chat room people are weird, sometimes.

Fangoria news has a couple of really nice bits, one on Kiyoshi Kurosawa and a couple of his films finally getting a domestic release, and another on Blue Underground with news on their 2004 release sked.


In yet another move towards global day-and-date simultaneous film releases, the new Matrix film will debut in China on the same day as it premieres in the US.


Is 2-D animation really not dead? Can it be saved by something that looks as lame to me as Brother Bear? USA Today weighs in on the debate.
And while we're on the animation front, Ghost in the Shell and Howl's Moving Castle now have release dates. But not Steamboy, dammit.

It's Halloween week, so check out the review at Hong Kong Digital on the Shaw Brothers' Killer Snakes.


The big Hollywood business news yesterday was Canadian company Lion's Gate Entertainment purchasing Artisan for $160 millon. It sort of pales next to the BankAmerica takeover of Fleet (how damn big can banks get, anyhow?) but its an interesting deal nonetheless.


More in the All Hallows Eve vein: an interview with the man behind the Canadian horror rag Rue Morgue.

Happy birthday to Golden Age XXX star Veronica Hart, a towering presence who continues to both act (though, um, not like she used to) and direct right up to the present day. She even turns up in Boogie Nights, as a family court judge--and with wrenching irony, the Amber Waves custodial battle over which she presides is more or less based on her life. One of the true greats.


Tomorrow's a big DVD day for me, what with Space Is the Place and Tokyo X Erotica shipping. But the real plum is the Looney Tunes Golden Collection , the first in what will hopefully be a whole series of extras laden assemblages of the great Warner Brothers cartoons.


There's a factual error or two in the Elvis Mitchell Grey Lady piece on the music in Kill Bill, but it's still worth a read.

Is a fourth Dead movie still alive from master George Romero? You'd think so, given this interview over at Fangoria. Who knows if this'll ever actually get made. But we can dream (though perhaps they're nightmares), can't we?


If you live in the USA, and you've been waiting for Infernal Affairs to show up, I've got some bad news for you. Miramax bought the rights, so you're probably shit out of luck on it ever coming out. But you might be able to import the DVD, if you scout around. And while we're on Miramax, there's also more news today that the Memoirs of a Geisha project continues to flounder. (both of these stories were found at Hong Kong Entertainment News In Review your best site for aggregating web info on the HK industry. Check it out.

A little more Tarantino in The Malaysia Straits Times. Much raving about Cleopatra Wong, a film I'd just love to see finally released to DVD.


Asiandvdguide has a great selection of pictures from my most anticipated Shaw Brothers release of the year, The Super-Inframan. Can't wait for this to become available, and from the pics it looks just great.

Do you live on Sunset Strip? Then hike yourself over to Amoeba Records tomorrow for their fantabulous Beyond the Valley of the Dolls party. Just please don't make the "it's my happening, and it freaks me out" joke. Let Z-man handle that one, OK?


More Monkeypeaches work on the lost and mysterious 2046, all put together on one page. There's some recent shots form the shoot, so we can all imagine that really at some point this movie will be completed. No, I swear, honest, it will.


Don't miss this great collection of Golden Age X Rated film posters. The gallery has only a selection from the 150 that will make up a book, but it's a nice batch. Very cool.


Honestly, I haven't paid much attention to the upcoming Jane Campion film In the Cut, but after browsing through this article over at FilmStew, I might actually need to check it out. Even if it does have Meg Ryan in it. *Shudder*.


Lastly for today, check out the Japan Times opining about the Pusan International Film Festival from earlier in the month. There's all kinds of tidbits here, notably big praise for the new Moon So Ri film.

I believe in the past in this blog that I've gone and pointed out the amazing beauty of Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai. And if I haven't, any excuse is a good excuse to post links to pics of this screen queen. But all that aside, TimeAsia has posted a nice lengthy article that talks about that exceptional starlet and Bollywood's new global outlook. Worth a look.


With the release of the next Matrix movie imminent, over at Wired there's a piece on the reclusive Wachowski Brothers. Of course the reclusiveness is probably just reverse marketing where the boys drum up interest by providing no details and thus preserving the mystery, but hey--it's a good schtick.

It's an expose on how low Carina Lau's pants are.....but where are the pics??? In this same Taipei Times piece, word that Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 shoot has been postponed yet again. Sigh. Is this movie ever gonna get finished?


Jameson Brewer, prolific movie and TV writer (he wrote the original "Fantasia" script), has unfortunately
passed on. What a career this guy had.


Scan the boards over at the Hellboy site if you want to see some posts from the director himself about his recent projects. Cool stuff from a cool guy.

I've been neglecting the classic porn star birthdays segment of this blog of late, so how about a happy 42nd (albeit a bit belatedly) to Rene Summers. She's a bit more post Golden Age than I usually pay tribute to, but it's a slow day here in blogland and I need an excuse to post something sleazy.


How gullible are you feeling today? MonkeyPeaches reports that Variety has given release dates for three long awaited movies:

Shaolin Soccer March 26 2004
Hero April 16 2004
Infernal Affairs Aug. 20 2004

My advice is: don't buy your tickets just yet.

There's a fairly recent Mondo Erotico update that has a few tidbits in it over here. There's the official word from Blue Underground on the defective Circus of Fear disks, as well as some DVD release info below that. I ran right out and bought Tokyo X Erotica by Takahisa Zeze once I saw that it had a ship date. Though of course I bought mine at Deep Discount.

Since I haven't seen Kill Bill yet (matinee today, I think) I won't be reading this interview until later on. But those in the know say that it's a great read, so I thought I'd pass it along.


MonkeyPeaches has a couple of updates on Wong Kar-Wai's endless 2046 shoot....this movie is beginning to give me "I've waited so long that I'm beginning to pretend not to care" syndrome, but damn--I just want to see this movie. Though I'd settle for anything with Maggie Cheung--I just finally got the chance to see he performance in Centre Stage (though it was unfortunately the shorter international cut of Kwan's film) and all it did was cement my belief that this is one of the great actresses of our time. People who only know her as May in the Police Story films of Jackie Chan are really missing out. There are few actresses working today that can even come close.

The winners have been announced at the Chicago Film Festival. Jafer Pahani fares well.


The strange tale of Cecilia Cheung gets somewhat stranger with the press reports of a news conference with Andy Lau. Hmmmmm.


Why is Wes Craven having so much trouble getting his stuff made? I'm already pissed they scuttled the Kairo remake, and now even more bad news. Bah.

It's a holiday and all, so you should be out celebrating. All I'm going to do today is swipe a couple of links from Scrubbles. Have a look at some Italian movie posters and some Egyptian ones. Enjoy.

If you live in NY or LA, be sure to watch out for the re-release of Georges Franju's Eyes Without A Face that's coming your way on Halloween. It's been restored by the stellar hands of Rialto Pictures, which is always, always, always the mark of quality.


Midnight Eye has a piffy little interview with Japanese animator ) Kitaro Kosaka. They also have a review of his 47 minute film, Nasu: Summer in Andalusia, the first Japanese animated film to ever be selected to be shown at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.


Marty McKee has an interview with the other notorious B.I.G., noted big beast moviemaker Bert I. Gordon over at MHVF.

Hmmmmmm. pics from the Chainsaw remake. I'm still heavily skeptical about this one, but I suppose I should be even-handed enough to reserve judgement until I see it.


It's a slow day here in blogland, I'm not finding too many exciting tidbits to sling. You could read a review of Wes Craven's People Under the Stairs, I guess. Or check out this bizarre bit on the Farrelly Brothers, the Three Stooges and Benicio del Toro. And there's a couple newish reviews of the HK stuff at The Canton Kid. Also, these might be slightly long in the tooth but I just stumbled on Kinoeye's wrapups of the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy, Thriller and Science-Fiction Film and the Edinburgh "Dead By Dawn" horror film festival. That all should keep you busy for today.

Right after the New Year, MGM will be streeting some killer blaxploitation flicks. Check DVD Drive-In for the details and cover art. And you might as well read about the Image December releases while you're there.


I was just reading about Aishwarya Rai, which seems as good an excuse as any to link to these pictures of the beautiful Bollywood starlet. Any number of today's leading ladies from India are just stunning--take Rani Mukerjee, Sonali Bendre or Preity Zinta.


A cool Ronnie Yu interview at Creature Corner rounds out today's action. Check out the Hong Kong expat and what he has to say about Freddy vs Jason et al.

In today's exciting news, Wong Kar-Wai has signed a three picture deal with Fox Searchlight. Now, if he could only get 2046 finished and into theaters, I'd be happy.


Brand new bunch of articles over at one of my favorite free sites, Senses of Cinema. This is one place whose update I anxiously await every two months, and so should you. A great selection of pieces on a wide variety of film subjects every single time. Essential.


In other nice site news, plenty of HK reviews are back at A View From the Brooklyn Bridge. When this site went dormant for a couple months I thought for sure it was dead, but I'm glad to see that I was wrong about that.

There's been some rumors that MGM has pulled the great Countess Dracula/The Vampire Lovers disc due to some complaints over the content, but supposedly all they've done is yank some cases so that they could be reprinted. Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas has the scoop oiver here. It seems that the case doesn't make clear that one of the features is rated R due to some Ingrid Pitt nekkidness.


I'm sort of intrigued by this Johnnie To romancer, Turn Left, Turn Right. SIgh. I guess I'm really just a big ol' romantic at heart.


Hmmmm, a comic book movie directed by Christopher Nolan? I don't know much about The Exec as serial art, but I'll sure go see the flick.


Here's a great freebie from The American Cinematographer: a lengthy article by the excellent dp Christopher Doyle, detailing his work on Hero. Don't forget to import this movie, since if you live in North America you'll probably never get to see it otherwise.

It's been a while since there was anything new over at Blue Underground, but there's a news update from this week that has a couple of nice tidbits. Personally, I can't wait for Deathdream, a piece of Seventies horror that I somehow managed to miss to this point.


Some cool details on the upcoming Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde release next March over at Creepy Classics. Scroll down a bit for the item.


And be sure to check out this piece on Takeshi Kaneshiro on Time Asia's website. These pages are a great place for English language pieces on Asian film stuff, so if you're interested in that sort of thing you ought to keep your eye on the entertainment news here.

Hmmmmmm. Jennifer Connelly in a remake of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water? Wil it be as good as Creepers (aka Phenomena) was?

Business brief: Mark Cuban's HD film production company (2929 Entertainment) bought Landmark Theaters. We've got those around these parts (and I like 'em) so I hope he doesn't mess 'em up. But he seems like a fairly decent owner, so perhaps it's going to be OK.


The Korean film Memories of Murder (a huge hit this year in that country) has cleaned up at the San Sebastien Film Festival, taking three awards. Memories of Murder will make its American premiere tomorrow night at the San Diego Asian Film Festival Check out the schedule for that one--if you're in the San Diego area, there's some great stuff playing. And a final San Sebastien note: the audience prize went to Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring, this years Oscar entry from South Korea.