What the River Takes

Today I got an
email from “The Raider Kids” that officially announces their
next film project via Vanity Fair:

http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/blogs/daily/2008/05/michael-hogan-1.html

Ever since we showed Raiders of the Lost Ark: The
Adaptation at my film series I’ve been getting email
updates from the filmmakers, Eric Zala and Chris
Strompolos. Extensive coverage on that years-in-the-making Betamax
re-enactment by young kids going through puberty (whose work would,
decades later, be discovered by Eli Roth and Steven
Spielberg) can be found here at TCM at:

http://www.tcm.com/movienews/index/?cid=187428

I had the privilege of hosting Eric Zala at my
house for a few days and remember being impressed by his work ethic.
Instead of spending his time carousing about town, he donned his
noise-canceling headphones and hunkered down at his laptop to work on
his Southern Gothic feature. Here’s a guy who knows to strike
while the iron is hot, and all the hoopla being generated by the latest
Indiana Jones film is sure to help – and it
couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. These filmmakers definitely
deserve a tip of the Fedora.

The Imaginarium of Doctor
Parnassus

As a Terry Gilliam fan, I was
excited about this since first reading about it in Variety (December,
2007). It’s to be the directors “first wholly original
screenplay, and his most personal statement, since Brazil
in 1985.” I was just reminded of this film by a friend
today when he forwarded me a link (see below) featuring an interview
with Tom Waits, who is to play “not a devil (but
rather)… The Devil.”

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50806-tom-waits-plays-the-devil-in-new-terry-gilliam-flick

My Son, My Son /
Bad Lieutenant remake / King Shot

My attention was called to this link a few days ago by an alert
Cinemaster and all I could think while reading it was:
“no way!” Werner Herzog and David Lynch
“teaming up for a horror-tinged murder drama based on a true
story”? And what’s this about Herzog directing
Nicolas Cage in a remake of Abel Ferrara’s
Bad Lieutenant? And within this same article an update
on the latest film by Alejandro Jodorowsky starring Asia
Argento, Udo Kier, Nick Nolte, and Marilyn
Manson? The weirdness quotient contained in this brief article is
just off the charts:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i4e5304fe515555feba071ab74787867d

The Turin Horse

This one I came
across in an old Film Comment from December of 2007 and regards another
art-house giant: Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Fans of
Sátántangó and
Werckmeister Harmonies will be happy to see him
collaborating again with writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
“The title refers to the famous Piedmontese animal that is said to
have triggered Nietzche’s mental breakdown one fateful
day in 1889. That’s not to say the movie will ever give us
Nietzsche himself; it apparently follows a poor coach driver,
his daughter, and the horse in question, and naturally – this is
Tarr/Krasznahorkai – the film’s conclusion in some
sense augers ‘the end of the world.’”

Enter the Void

Anyone
familiar with (or subjected to, as the case may be) the films of
Gaspar Noé (ie: I Stand Alone,
Irreversible) already knows that this guy is a
provocateur who will stop at nothing and show indelible and
transgressive images that will certainly haunt you and, maybe, even
traumatize you. I met him at Telluride and remember the soft-spoken
director telling me how Shinya Tsukamoto’s sci-fi and
Cronenbergesque debut, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, was a big
influence on him. With that in mind, it is perhaps not too surprising to
hear Noé describe his latest endeavor, five years in the
making, as “a cross between Altered States and
Jacob’s Ladder – with elements of
2001, Videodrome, Philip K.
Dick, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead tossed into
the mix.” (Film Comment, Jan/Feb 08.) Phew! It’s probably
safe to guess, especially given this guy’s track-record, that you
might not want to drag a date to this one.