Category Archives: Film

Saturday Matinee: Duck Soup

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“Duck Soup” (1933) reportedly opened to lukewarm reviews upon release but is now widely considered by critics to be one of the greatest Marx Brothers films. The film’s plot revolves around Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) who, after being appointed the leader of Freedonia by wealthy heiress Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), must defend his country from neighboring Sylvania whose ambassador (and romantic rival) Trentino seeks to conquer Freedonia through espionage, destabilization and war. Duck Soup is an enduringly hilarious anti-war satire with classic scenes full of non-stop wordplay and physical gags that have been imitated or referenced countless times since.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3fcmpl

Saturday Matinee: Megaplex

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Megaplex-Spectacle

Source: Smash TV

Megaplex is the most insane double feature the world has ever seen. With a running time of 80 minutes and thousands of cuts from more than 80 movies, Smash TV has spent the past year and a half cramming the most entertainment possible into every second. It’s dense enough to pressurize these diamonds in the rough into gleaming treasures.

Megaplex is the long awaited followup to the critically acclaimed Skinemax, much more fully realized, utilizing myriad editing and layering tricks picked up over the past five years. Deeper, darker, and definitely more bizarre.

Borrowing from the Grindhouse tradition and from Tarantino’s more recent tribute, Megaplex is a double feature that both members of Smash TV worked on independently.

As a palette cleanser in between, Smash TV is proud to present Coming Attractions, a 15 minute collection of vignettes editing together previously unexplored genres and styles.

Please support the original works, these are film makers and musicians that have upheld the values of originality and creativity.

This video is protected under fair use copyright law. It is presented for the purposes of entertainment, education, and criticism/commentary only. No infringement is intended.

TURBO

STARRING MICHAEL JACKSON

Edited by Ben Craw

Rated R

Turbo, Side A of Smash TV’s Megaplex, is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen if you were a late-night-movie-brainwashed 8 year old in 1990. It is the ultimate in-your-face, balls to the wall, no holds barred, over the top, end of the world electric boogaloo dance party, fueled by neon, spandex, ooze, and steroids. So many steroids.

It’s the movie you and your best friends stumble across at the end of the night after frying your brain with nine straight hours of Sonic 2, Streets of Rage 2, and ToeJam & Earl on your Sega Genesis. Or is the whole thing just a Pepsi-induced sugar coma fever dream? It’s impossible to say. But you probably shouldn’t have drunk that fifth two-liter bottle.

Turbo is utterly shameless in its love for the most ridiculous and awesome movies that the 1980s and early 90s had to offer. It’s what would happen if Cannon Films and New Line Cinema got a little crazy at the club and ended up boning in the bathroom. It’s the nights from your childhood that you’ll never forget. Those nights are gone. But Turbo lives on in your dreams forever…and Beyond…

Tracklist
Download Mix: bit.ly/1TSe1sQ

HBO 1983 Intro
Mr. Oizo – Hun
Actress – Image
Stephen Farris – Pepper
Jean Michel Jarre – Zoolookologie
VHS Head – Camera Eyes
Phono Ghosts – Suntan Spies
Harold Faltermeyer – Fletch Theme
Oliver – Light Years Away
Tiger & Woods – Gin Nation
Solar Bears – A Sky Darkly

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Edited by Brendan Shields

Coming Attractions is a collection of vignettes exploring different genres and themes. Comprised of fake trailers, genre retrospectives, and tributes to luminary actors and directors, it acts as a palette cleanser in between the two halves and provides an opportunity to experiment on a smaller scale.

Tracklist:

Intermission
Music: Midnight Television – Commercial Dreams

American Hunk
Music: Sparkles_161244545 – IDEALISMム

Atari Summer
Music: Suzanne Ciani – Atari Summer

Safari Ice
Music: Miki Matsubara – Safari Eyes

Miyazaki
Music: Suzanne Ciani – The First Wave: Birth Of Venus

Sunday Will Never Be The Same
Music: Spanky And Our Gang – Sunday Will Never Be The Same

Odyssey
Music: Autechre – d-sho qub

Inside Story
Music: Suzanne Ciani – Inside Story

BEYOND

STARRING SKELETOR

Edited by Brendan Shields

Rated R

Beyond, Side B of Megaplex, is a psychedelic vision quest for B-movie lovers. Comprised of some of the strangest imagery from the 80s and early 90s, Beyond is a hallucinatory experience designed to amaze, bewilder, and terrify.

Highlighting choice cuts from a strange time in the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres, Beyond harkens back to late nights of channel surfing, catching out of context glimpses of the bizarre and fascinating. Something unlike anything you’d ever seen before…something you weren’t supposed to see…

Combining the darkest moments of Skinemax with the layering experiments of Memorex, Beyond is a descent into euphoric madness as reality begins to unravel.

It’s the unmarked tape lying in wait at an abandoned Blockbuster, anticipating its next victim.

An Ayahuasca trip at 24 frames per second.

Fantasia meets Videodrome.

Beyond the limits of good taste

Beyond the subconscious

Beyond the stars

Beyond…

Tracklist
Download Mix: bit.ly/1X7AOGU

Franco Micalizzi – Stridulum Theme
VHS Head – Farewell Africa
Gatekeeper – Serpent
VHS Head – Angels Never Sleep
Madlib – Gentle Pilz
ADR – Sidewinder
Public Image Ltd. – The Order Of Death
Fluorescent Grey – Gnoble Door Moo Rig Rig
VHS Head – Frozen
Trust – Bulbform
iamamiwhoami – Goods

https://vimeo.com/167795970

Saturday Matinee: The Straight Story

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“The Straight Story” (1999) is a road film directed by David Lynch depicting elderly disabled veteran Alvin Straight’s multi-state journey by lawnmower to make amends with his estranged brother who suffered a stroke. Based on an actual journey which made headlines in 1994, the film is one of Lynch’s most overlooked films because as his only G-rated feature and having been distributed by Disney, many Lynch fans never gave it a chance. Though not as intense or unsettling as other David Lynch films, there’s nevertheless periodic dark and surreal undercurrents throughout the narrative. What elevates the film (in addition to Lynch’s idiosyncratic touches and fine soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti) are great performances by Richard Farnsworth as Alvin, Sissy Spacek as his daughter and Harry Dean Stanton as his brother. The Straight Story is also notable for its beautiful cinematography from Freddie Francis, which ended up being his final project before his death in 2007 due to complications resulting from a stroke.

Saturday Matinee: Once Upon a Time in the West

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“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) is one of Sergio Leone’s most beloved epics for good reason. It tells a powerful tale of a widow landowner’s struggle against a railroad tycoon intertwined with a conflict between men with an archaic code of honor. The film is well known for arguably the greatest soundtrack of Ennio Morricone’s career and iconic performances from Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards and a memorable cameo by Woody Strode.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2c770m_1968-once-upon-a-time-in-the-west-henry-fonda-claudia-cardinale-jack-elam-charles-bronson-jason-roba_shortfilms

Saturday Matinee: A Bullet for the General

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“A Bullet for the General” (1966) was directed by Damiano Damiani and tells the story of a group of bandits who form an alliance with an American mercenary until their differing motives prove to be incompatible. It’s a notable cult film among the subgenre of spaghetti westerns with more overt political themes known as Zapata Westerns and features a soundtrack supervised by Ennio Morricone.

Saturday Matinee: A Letter to Momo

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momo

“A Letter to Momo” (2011) is an animated supernatural comedy/drama written and directed by Hiroyuki Okiura (Jin-Roh). The story focuses on adolescent Momo and her mother Ikuko who, after a death in the family, move to a rural island to be closer to relatives. Momo, who preferred her previous life in the big city, has difficulty adjusting  but learns to overcome her grief and repair her relationship with her mother with the help of three goblins (known as Yokai) and her new community.

Watch the full English-subtitled film here.

Saturday Matinee: The Nostalgist

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From TheNostalgistFilm.com :

SYNOPSIS

With properly tuned ImmerSyst eyes™ & ears™ the futuristic city of Vanille can look and sound like a paradise. But the life of a father and his son threatens to disintegrate when the father’s Immersyst begins to fail. Desperate to avoid facing his own traumatic reality, the man must venture into a city where violence and danger brew beneath a veneer of beautiful illusion.

THE PROJECT

The Nostalgist is a science fiction short film project based on Daniel H Wilson‘s short story of the same name. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 2009 Finalist, the story was first published on Tor.com in July 2009 and is also available for download from major e-book retailers.

The short film version was developed by Wonder Room Productions, a London-based film production company formed by writer/director/producer Giacomo Cimini (City in the Sky) and producers Tommaso Colognese and Pietro Greppi. The team assembled a crew of highly skilled professionals and a cast led by Lambert Wilson (Of Gods and Men, The Matrix Reloaded) and Samuel Joslin (Paddington, The Impossible), and shot a short film version in early 2013, adapted and directed by Cimini.

The short was completed in May 2014 after an extensive period of VFX and post-production, headed by Milan and London-based post-production and VFX house Inky Mind, with key expertise in CG character creation provided by Barcelona-based MinimoVFX, and extensive compositing work provided by London based NOSEAMS VFX.

VFX artist Giacomo Bargellesi additionally joined Wonder Room as a partner and co-producer and provided further overall VFX supervision for the company, heading up the 2D compositing work.

The substantial post-production costs were covered thanks to the participation of Wonder Room’s VFX partners as well as the completion of a successful Kickstarter campaign, which raised a total of £32,800 from 460 backers.

The Nostalgist received its festival premiere at the Palm Springs Short Fest in June 2014, where it was awarded the runner-up prize for live-action short above 15 minutes, and it has since screened at a number of festivals, including the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy, where it was awarded the first prize as Best Short Film in the Generator 18+ (fiction) section.