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Don't Go in the... Never Mind: Sarah Paxton (left) and Pat Healy probe where novice ghost hunters shouldn't probe in THE INNKEEPERS.

There are compelling reasons why, when traveling, one should skip the chain lodgings and stay at one of America’s classic hotels. There’s the friendly and courteous staff, the opportunity to experience a true piece of Americana, and the chance that you’ll encounter a spectral manifestation that wants to rip your immortal soul from your still-screaming body. (Disadvantage: no wi-fi.) In THE INNKEEPERS, a pair of slackers (Sarah Paxton and Pat Healy) are put in charge of an aging hotel in its last days and — when not attending to the needs of such guests as Kelly McGillis as a sympathetic psychic and George Riddle as Quiet Creepy Guy — decide to play GHOST HUNTERS by investigating the myriad tales of hauntings that the institution has acquired. To quote a classic, American aphorism: “Big mistake.”

With films such as THE ROOST and THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, director Ti West has managed to deliver old-school, atmospheric chills on a limited budget, and he’s pulled the same feat off with THE INNKEEPERS, creating a ghost tale that’s both witty and scary, with a valuable lesson for us all (i.e. continental breakfast shouldn’t be the only consideration when choosing a hotel). Click on the player to hear my interview with him.

THE INNKEEPERS
Trailer

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Official Website
www.magnetreleasing.com/theinnkeepers

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Descending Into the Depths: Neil Maskell (left) and Michael Smiley get in over their heads in KILL LIST.

What starts out as common, garden-variety crime thriller turns… bizarre, and then frightening, in director Ben Wheatley’s twisty new film, KILL LIST. The tale of middle class hit-man Jay (Neil Maskell), who with colleague Gal (Michael Smiley) goes out for one more job and discovers blood oaths, strange rites, and disturbingly grateful targets have been thrown into the bargain, the film allows Wheatley to hook the rough-edged shooting style he explored in his debut effort, DOWN TERRACE, to a world that has room for both examinations of a tempestuous home life and the graphic shocks of classic horror. Think IN BRUGES meets THE WICKER MAN, then forget about all that and prepare to get righteously freaked-out.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Wheatley.

UNFORTUNATE TECHNICAL NOTE: Our usual podcast host has started giving us agita, apparently because we are just that popular, so we’ve temporarily switched to another service and had to downgrade our audio quality as a result. We’ll get this snag patched up and be back to the rich, beautiful sound you expect from MMP as soon as possible.

KILL LIST
Trailer

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Facebook Page
www.facebook.com/KillList

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You Can't Go Home Again - Worst-Case Scenario: Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in YOUNG ADULT.

Bless screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman their twisted, little hearts. In a season rife with people bettering themselves through moody introspection, they introduce us to Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), author of young adult novels and a woman who looks within and comes away with all the wrong lessons.

YOUNG ADULT, isn’t season-specific, but it does serve as a healthy counterbalance to all that holiday growth and belonging. In it, Mavis — who generally lives on a diet of Diet Coke breakfasts and hard-liquor suppers — decides on a whim to go back to her hometown, to the bemusement of former high school nerd Matt (Patton Oswalt) and the befuddlement of her one-time sweetheart (Patrick Wilson), for whom she has returned to rekindle their romance, despite the fact that he’s now happily married and recently become a father. It’s going to take more than an Andy Williams holiday marathon to smooth out this homecoming.

Click on the player to hear the Jason Reitman press conference.

YOUNG ADULT
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.youngadultmovie.com

Continue reading »]]> 2011: Definitely a good year for aliens. They waylaid a couple of fanboys, staged a showdown with cowboys, wrecked a tween’s film project, invaded LA, twice (must be the universal lure of In-N-Out Burger) — yessir, if you had more than four limbs and a palate for human flesh, you had a home in theaters over the past twelve months.

But the extraterrestrial infestation wasn’t really the big news in genre film for 2011. With an open couple of weeks before the final onslaught of major science-fiction, fantasy, and horror releases, Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons decided to look back over the year and pick out their favorites in ten categories*, including Best Performance, Best Use of 3D, and Best Film, among others. The selection they’ve come up with may well surprise you. (Hint: A certain film featuring big-ass robots does better than expected.)

Click on the player to hear the show.

*And yes, we acknowledge that this is a provisional list, given that such titles as TINTIN, THE DARKEST HOUR, AND MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL have yet to screen.

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Dream Come True: Emily Browning enters a strange world of erotic desire in SLEEPING BEAUTY.

Award-winning novelist Julia Leigh makes a hell of a directorial debut with her quiet fantasia, SLEEPING BEAUTY, the story of a young college student (Emily Browning) who becomes immersed in a strange world of desire when she signs on as employee of a service that drugs women and allows men — frequently much older — to do whatever they wish with the inert bodies (with the strict proviso that there be no penetration or damage).

Dark, provocative, erotic, the film inspires a multitude of responses, frequently within the same second of footage. And once you get past the tale’s elegant mise en scene and sensuous atmosphere, don’t be surprised to discover Leigh has posed some intriguing questions on love, death, and all the impulses that drive our species. Sex is 99% brain, after all.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Leigh.

SLEEPING BEAUTY
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.ifcfilms.com/films/sleeping-beauty

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A double agent was pivotal in the success of D-Day in GARBO THE SPY

Of all the film clips director Edmon Roch uses to compose his WW II documentary, GARBO THE SPY — and they include such eclectic sources as documentaries, dramas, both Allied and Nazi propaganda, and cartoons — the ones that he seems to rely on most come from Carol Reed’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA, the film where Alec Guinness snookers the British Secret Service by fabricating a network of Cuban-based spies under his control. Turns out that the story’s original author, Graham Greene, didn’t come up with that idea from whole cloth — during the war, a mysterious Spaniard operating in Great Britain was able to convince the Nazis that the D-day landing at Normandy was just a diversion for the actual invasion, all thanks to information provided by his own network of equally fictional informants.

GARBO THE SPY explores both the history of that spy, Juan Pujol Garcia — known to the Germans as Alaric, “Man of Trust,” and to the British as Garbo for his skill at assuming a convincing role — and how the story of his pivotal role in the war was uncovered by a group of journalists, writers, and scholars. Roch brings a wry outlook to the story — fitting, given Pujol’s rather unusual background — that turns this into an entertaining tale of high-stakes deception.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Roch.

GARBO THE SPY
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
firstrunfeatures.com/garbothespy

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Strike a Pose Before Striking Your Enemy: Henry Cavill (right) wages decorous war in IMMORTALS.

It’s a good week for lush, exquisite cinematography and vividly stylized worlds; maybe not so good a week for compelling narratives. In IMMORTALS, director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar uses Greek mythology as the raw material upon which to invest his skill with staging beautiful, beautiful actors in elaborate tableaux, all in the service of the tale of a lowly peasant (Henry Cavil) who, with the blessings of the gods (including former Apollo Luke Evans), rallies the bedraggled forces of Greece against a sadistic warlord (Mickey Rourke, and are you surprised?). Come join Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they admire the scenery and debate whether anything exists past the pretty facade.

Then, Larry and Dan briefly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Lars von Trier’s elegant science fiction drama, MELANCHOLIA, in which a despondent Kirsten Dunst must cope with her own sense of inertia and the threat of a rogue planet on a collision course with Earth. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

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The Blank Generation Gets Filled In: NOFX's Fat Mike confronts the responsibilities of fatherhood in THE OTHER F WORD.

It’s a curious path that takes one from rock outcast to full fatherhood, yet many of the practitioners of that most confrontational of  musical forms, punk, find themselves following it. In THE OTHER F WORD, filmmakers Andrea Blaugrund Nevins and Cristan Reilly have tracked down the men who built lives upon artistic rebellion — prime amongst them their main subject, Pennywise’s Jim Lindberg, but also Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea, Everclear’s Art Alexakis, and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, among others — and explored the effort that goes into reconciling one’s creative soul with shopping for school supplies.

The final result is a fascinating and occasionally moving exploration of men who confront not only careers that demand increasing amounts of time away from home just when it’s least advantageous, but who also have to face how their own rebellious and sometimes tortured youths might affect how they approach their responsibilities as fathers.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Nevins and Reilly.

THE OTHER F WORD
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE
theotherfwordmovie.com

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Page to Page: Jim Henson's typewriter conjures a cinematic establishing shot in TALE OF SAND.

Lest we forget that Jim Henson was about more than Kermit and Big Bird (ahem, DARK CRYSTAL, THE STORYTELLER, and on, and on…), this year’s New York Comic Con staged a panel in which Henson archivist Karen Falk and Archaia Editor-in-Chief Stephen Christy exhibited footage from the Muppet-master’s experimental short films, commercials, and TV plays, and discussed the imminent publication of Tale of Sand, a wry, surreal, Kafkaesque graphic novel based on an unfilmed script co-written by Henson and frequent writing partner Jerry Juhl.

After the presentation, Falk and Christy granted us a few minutes to discuss Henson’s eclectic soul, how that translated into the furiously antic/ominous vision that became TALE OF SAND, and how Henson’s history is tied inextricably to that of CFQ. Click on the player to hear the interview.

Continue reading »]]> You never forget your first Roger Corman film. Mine was THE TERROR, which I admittedly was drawn to out of a combined curiosity over a film that was shot in two days on leftover sets, and that featured a young Jack Nicholson before he became THE Jack Nicholson. But whether it was the cheap-ass drive-in fare with unforgettable titles like ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS or the surprisingly trenchant horror-comedy cheapies like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS or the lush Poe adaptations that essentially defined Vincent Price for the balance of his career, or the first shots he gave to directors like Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich (TARGETS, yeah!) and Joe Dante, or BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, the STAR WARS knock-off that was more entertaining than any of the official prequels, the man has placed his indelible stamp in the minds of countless genre film fans.

Corman was at the con to sign autographs and promote the new, career-spanning documentary, CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL, and took a few minutes to talk with us.