As is tradition with our Twitch-o-Meter installments, this baby will stay on top for the next 24 hours.

When I was handed a guest spot in this ToM thingy, the first thought coming to mind was rather scary, I might say. That is, some bell among that ocean of neurons (all three of them), sharing space in that big thing over my eyes, telling me “but, but… you hate lists.” I don’t hate the idea of making lists per se, and I even enjoy reading other people’s lists profoundly (you are what you watch, after all). Problem is, if I make a list, about 3 milliseconds after completion it’s very likely I’ll change my mind, at least when it comes to details (first place is always first place). That is why, if you ask me my list of Top 10 Korean films of all time, I’d probably give you about 200 titles or ten slightly different lists in a two week span; and why even the mere thought of listing my favorite 10 dramas would be akin to asking Uncle Bill what his favorite dead president is. On paper. The dead president, that is.

Nominations started flowing: “craziest Korean films with the longest (Korean) titles,” in which case 대학로에서 매춘하다가 토막살해 당한 여고생 아직 대학로에 있다 (Teenager Hooker Becomes Killing Machine)‘s madness could have prevailed. Or, how about “best 60s Korean film that you’ve never heard of?” Then again, it would be like a cook reminiscing of his best filet mignon dishes to a vegetarian. But then I accidentally popped the wrong DVD inside my DVD player, and something gave me an idea. It was the opening of an historical drama, a pretty bad ass one at that. So, how about it, The Asian Games of Sageuk (of course sageuk is only the Korean spelling of the genre) openings? On your marks…

Continue Reading "The Asian Games of Historical Drama Openings"...

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Recent computer troubles had me buying a new one, and as always I was amazed at the huge leaps in (affordable) information technology which happened in the past few years. My old model had a single CPU with a speed I could fathom (or at least judge), the internal memory was less than a ten-year-old hard disc, and the videocard didn’t eerily glow yet. But the new one… woohoo!

Of course I tried some visually impressive games from a few years back, to see if they still ran as ‘choppy’ as I remembered. Two of the games that still managed to enthrall me (and ran silky smooth on the new machine!) were actually movie licensed games. Normally a movie license would mean certified damnation, cursing a videogame with a not-to-be-missed deadline and making sure the end result was buggy coupled with bad gameplay.

But not so with these: the ”The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay” game was very good and looks impressive to this day, and the same goes for “Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game Of The Movie”.

Maybe insanely long titles lift the movie licensing jinx on videogames? Nah, even before those, “Goldeneye” on the N64 proved that a license didn’t need to be the kiss of death.

Anyway, this got me thinking a bit. What sort of game based on a movie would I like to see but hasn’t been released yet?
Hmmmm....

Read on for five of my silly ponderings on this subject…

Continue Reading "This Film’s Got a Game in It"...

[Abiding by the Twitch-O-Meter rules of conduct and fair play this post will remain up top for one day. Further posts about far more interesting things are below this. Scroll down!]

Well, Day 5 of the Olympics came and went and my country still hasn’t won a freaking medal. While other sport powerhouses like Togo and Tajikstan have managed to get at least one medal our Canadian athletes are failing to bring home the hardware.

The Olympics are funny in a way when it comes to their Dream Teams. Since 1992 every Summer Olympics the focus is on the USA Men’s basketball team – though it is interesting to note that the Toronto Raptors up here in Canada have the most players from any NBA team on Olympic teams! Then starting in 1998, when the cold winds of winter come whipping through our lands, everyone in Canada pretty much goes mental when the Canadian Men’s Hockey team plays.

So is it any coincidence that I am reading Douglas Adams’ The Salmon of Doubt this week and there is a section of that book called The Dream Team. The first selection is his Dream Film Cast: Sean Connery as God, John Cleese as the Angel Gabriel, and Goldie Hawn as Mother Theresa’s younger sister, Trudie. With a guest appearance by Bob Hoskins as Detective Inspector Phil Makepiece. I’ve been reading a lot of Adams lately. That’s damn funny. I don’t get some of it, but it is damn funny.

So what about film? What if you had a movie and you could hire whomever you wanted to fill any role in your production? Who do you want to direct? Who do you want to do the special effects? Who would create kick-ass stunts for your movie? If you were to name your cinema Dream Team who would be in your starting five? As the great philosopher Dane Cook once said, ‘It can be anything you want dreamers… Dream it you fucking dreamers’. 

Continue Reading "Time to put together your ‘Dream Team’"...

Per usual, this Twitch-o-Meter will remain at the top of the site for 24 hours.  New stories will appear below.

The seemingly never-ending stream of remakes continues rushing down Hollywood’s pike in the coming weeks – Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race (eviscerated by Todd here) and Alexandre Aja’s Mirrors premier in August, while September brings another tragic Nic Cage hairpiece to screens in Bangkok Dangerous.  When a film is judged as suitable remake fodder, it’s likely there was something to the original – maybe a kernel of transcendent storytelling or an exciting spin on something shopworn – which marked it as special.  That something tends to be lost in translation, but every so often a remake gets things right, parlaying what made the original special into something intriguing in its own right.  This ToM will look at a few remakes which do just that – managing a fresh take on revered material.

Continue Reading "Remakes Done Right"...

Tony Leung has not been in the news a lot lately, in fact the one thing that keeps popping up is his role in “Red Cliff”. Always the gentleman, he helped director John Woo out of a prickly situation when star Chow Yun Fat suddenly left. And now some people say he doesn’t really shine in this role. Hm...pity, if that’s true.

When I saw Wong Kar Wai’s “2046” at the 2005 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the impressions I got was that Tony Leung must be one of the smoothest actors in the world. And a handsome devil too…
His rogue-with-a-lost-soul just oozed charm, and his performance worked on so many levels (not to mention layers) that I was instantly won over.

Discussing this with friends afterwards I said that I couldn’t recall having seen him before, and of course I was immediately pummeled by them with titles of movies which I had indeed seen. Classics even, like…

...well, lets not mention too many titles, shall we?

Anyway, the reason why I hadn’t recognized him was that the role he played in “2046” was so very different to what I had seen him do before. Yet in every role, he seems to actually BE what he’s playing, either fading in the background or supporting the other actors.

(I’d make a joke about how he was almost unrecognizable in Johnny To’s “Election” but that might just confuse the hell out of too many people. For those not in the know, there are several Tony Leungs in the Chinese entertainment industry and the one in “Election” is someone else entirely, whose name is Tony Leung Ka-Fai. The one that features in this quiz is Tony Leung Chiu-Wai.)

So here is some much needed love towards Tony Leung: a quiz!
Which means that once again, I’m going to use a turn in the Twitch-O-Meter to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of one of my favorite thespians.
Guess which 5 movies they’re from. The “Red Cliff” pic on the top-left doesn’t count.

No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.

And I’ll post the answers Friday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).
Good luck!

Continue Reading "Tony Leung is ready for his extreme close-up, Mr. deMille!"...

Martial arts film is at a crossroads.  Yes, the fan base is still worldwide and massive but the supply of talent is in crisis and has been for years.  Pretty much right from the beginning we have looked to China and Hong Kong for our screen fighters but the golden days of the Shaw Brothers grooming young talent, the Yuen Clan cherry picking the best youngsters and the Beijing Opera turning out performers by the boat load have long since passed.  Look at what’s happening in Hong Kong film right now:  Jet Li and Jackie Chan are both losing ground to age and talking retirement, leaving only Donnie Yen as a prime, top of his game fighter.  The next generation?  With the exception of Wu Jing it’s simply not there, or if it is nobody has recognized it yet.  If you’re looking for fresh fists of fury turn your attention to foreign lands folks because the chances of an unknown savior appearing to save the game in Hong Kong are looking bleak.  So the time has come, friends, to look to other nations.

Thailand has already become a leader with Tony Jaa and Dan Chupong filling the roles of a Thai Jet Li and Thai Jackie Chan respectively - the former the pure fighter, the second the stunt man / performer - and Chocolate has surely brought a fresh new face on to the scene in Jija Yanin.  But who else is out there?  Well here you go:  from five different countries I present five different fighters with the potential to - if you’ll pardon the bad pun - kick start the industry once again.

Continue Reading "Will The Next Great Screen Fighter Please Stand Up?"...

Welcome to the ‘green edition’ of the Twitch-O-Meter.  From Al Gore to Wall•E, the environment is on peoples minds and it has been a common theme in all genres and types of movies over the past few years.  Heck, even Hellboy is faced with the choice to kill a Forest god, (shades of Mononoke Hime) in the latest Guillermo Del Toro blockbuster, resulting in a gorgeous fusion of city and fauna that will take your breath away, in a melancholy fashion.  Sometimes a simple plea of a few documentarians, activists and politicos is not enough though, and filmmakers have to show a little of the nasty side of nature.  That is to say in the films below, the environment sees fit to reduce, reuse and recycle the protagonists in some-times gory, but more often then not, in mysteriously indifferent ways. Jeff Goldblum had it right when he cautioned a certain dinosaur theme-park owner to respect the awesome power of nature.  Well that and the little known fact of Mother Gaia occasionally holding a grudge.

Continue Reading "The Implacable Lightness of Being - 5 Eco-Horror Films for Our Times."...

With gasoline prices soaring past $4.00 per gallon in the US, it may be time to kiss all those gorgeous, big-engined, gas-guzzling, supercharged automobile movies goodbye.

Starting in the late 60s with a certain motorcycle movie, American filmmakers began to jam out on the highways. Gas was cheap and spirits (and other things) were high, and nothing was more freeing than the idea of getting in your car, getting out of town, and getting back to nature.

In celebration of those road flicks, and with a sad nod to the reality of insanely expensive fill-ups, we wave “So long, and thanks for the gasoline-scented memories.”

After the jump: my top 5 gas-guzzling supercharged car movies ... and be sure to tell us your faves in the comments section.

Continue Reading "Elegy for Gas-Guzzling Supercharged Car Movies"...

I have a rather menial job. My day basically revolves around me staring at a computer screen all day, taking a few smoke breaks, flirt with the big titted receptionist or the big titted graphic designer sitting behind me and then go home. There are how ever, unlike many other lines of work, legendary figures out there in the design world that we look up to and admire. Some might call them geniuses or even “extreme” in some cases but that’s because the commercial business is very much in the public’s eye, though the general public might not know who the hell Stefan Sagmeister is or Neill Blomkamp. To us they are geniuses that got it made but I doubt that because they make great looking and innovative commercials they’d be asked to save the world from an on coming asteroid, rid a small town of a crime boss or get chased around by Dinosaurs.

If we were to believe Hollywood, every God forsaken job out there is just full of adventures and danger, filled with bad ass characters that are ready to save the day when called for. I call these types of movies “Career action films”, action films that make a shitty or pretty dull job look like the coolest shit on the planed, filled with one liners, hot women and throat ripping action. So below are a few of my favorite Career Action films that take just about the crappiest jobs I can think of and turn them in to a rollercoaster ride of excitement.

Continue Reading "If only my design could save the world"...

I had a visit from my brother the other week. This was kind of a big deal since he lives on the West Coast of Canada and the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a plane ticket and too many hours in an airplane just to see him is just silly- even if he is family. So, I usually only see him once a year during the Christmas holidays when I make the trek home. So these random visits are extra special and it served as inspiration for my turn at the ToM. This week I’m going with the brother theme. My criteria? If it’s got brother in the title or it is a story about brothers or brotherhood then it qualifies. Here are some of my favorites from recent years…

Continue Reading "Am I my brothers keeper?"...

“The only constant is change.” Like most clichés there’s truth behind that rather rote sentiment, and nowhere is that truth more evident than within the realm of technology - specifically for Twitch folk in the subsets of film-going and production.  While sea changes like sound, CGI, and home video are few and far between, a robust volley of incremental shifts are fired out each year.  Some stick, some don’t.  Of course there are ways to gauge what might work and what might not, but you wouldn’t have so many people rolling million-dollar dice if they didn’t think they were on to the next truly big thing.  With all that in mind, this ToM will veer slightly from the pack to address not specific films or filmmakers, but a few shifts in technology that might mean big things… or might end up the next Divx (not the codec, but the hair-brained disposable DVDs).

Continue Reading "The Shape of Things to Come"...

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Double-dipping, the DVD release practice we all love to hate: just when you finally bought the disc of a movie you love, a better version gets released. It has all existing cuts of the movie, it features a commentary with the director and the actor who got fired, and they fixed that annoying orange tint which plagued the version you just bought.

The term is used to describe the releasing of several versions, unannounced beforehand, with only a few months in between. As in: the company knew a better version was around the corner, but deliberately chose NOT to tell you.
Strangely enough, buying a better version of a movie you already own is ALSO called double-dipping, even though “upgrading” would probably be a better word.

If your DVD collection has a couple of hundreds of titles in it, there are probably a few you have bought twice. Or three times. Or…

Now I hardly ever double-dip. Or at least I tell myself I haven’t made it a habit. Yet not only do I own several films twice, there is one I actually own 5 times, and I’m looking at a current sixth version as if it’s inevitable that it’ll be mine one day…

That movie is called “Ghost in the Shell” by Mamoru Oshii. And I only mean the first film. Not “Innocence” nor the “Stand Alone Complex” series, I really mean just the first film.
And funnily enough when I planned writing this article weeks ago I had no clue about the upcoming “version 2.0” that will be released later this year. When I heard about that I really thought someone was doing this to spite me or something…


Anyway, my list this month: the 5 versions of “Ghost in the Shell” I own. Check if yours is amongst them after the break…

Continue Reading "“Ghost i/t Wallet”, or the Five-fold Dip"...

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Welcome to the foodie edition of the regular ‘free-form-top-five’ column around these parts.  Well not quite.  Let’s start at the beginning shall we.  A couple of weeks ago the cinematic world at large seemed to be all about a certain archeologist-adventurer and people tend to crap on The Temple of Doom for its moments of goofy hilarity.  But lo, the tasty gross out moments involving food in that movie could fail but to delight a certain impressible 10 year old who went again and again to the theatre for that very gross and gory tone!  First there is a Dr. Jones imbibing a quick acting poison, then in quick succession, a Chinese enforcer killed by a gigantic flaming kebab. Not long after, in a small village in India, city gal singer Willie had trouble choking down the fly-covered local cuisine of a town dying of starvation.  This is immediately followed by the famous over-the-top dinner sequence involving baby snakes cut from their mothers womb right to the dinner plate, gigantic beatles with mealy guts, lambs-eye soup and a desert of “chilled. monkey. brains.” If that was not enough, the creepiest scene in the film involves the drinking of the black blood of death and the trance-like-zombie state it induces.  No wonder Dr. Jones comping down on a simple apple is a perhaps the most sensual and erotic moment in the entire trilogy (now quadrilogy) of films.  Fast forward a couple years to Rob Reiner‘s Stand By Me in which a pre-Star Trek Wil Wheaton tells the story of ‘lard-ass’ who incites a ‘barf-O-rama’ at a pie eating contest as the ultimate form of revenge for years of teasing.  The scene is played out over the top, garden hoses of blueberry vomit capture the imagination of how to do a gross out scene.  Somewhere in there is the famous ‘wafer thin’ vignette in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, another one-man ‘barf-O-rama.’ A few more years, on a much smaller scale, Tom Hanks demonstrated exactly the most painful way to eat a sardine in Joe Dante‘s The ‘Burbs before awkwardly choking it back up (in an already awkward social situation) into a crumpled out page of a newspaper (to which he explains, ‘packing dust’).  Then in the early late eighties and early 1990s, along comes Peter Jackson, first with the community vomit soup in Bad Taste, then with the ear custard in Dead Alive.  Or a personal favorite, in Jim Jarmusch‘s Dead Man, when bounty hunter Lance Henrikson has some trouble dealing putting up with a companion.  His solution, simply eat the bastard.  Relatively recently, there was a South Korean animated film, Aachi & Ssipak which had the basic set-up of a society that is completely run on feces and everyone eats laxative popsicles to do their part.  Yum.  Yum.

Nothing quite gets a reaction like a scene of disgusting eating.  There is a gut instinct that kicks in when you know what is actually being consumed on screen, its primordial and effective.  So here we have this weeks Twitch-O-Meter.  While the above couple paragraphs mention films where a scene of two happen to involve grotesque consumption, the 5 films below, are completely about disgusting eating.  And while we will perhaps save zombies (vast consumers of intestines in the George Romero flicks, Brains in the parodies and imitations) or cannibalism for another day and another column. (Admittedly, I cheated just a bit here.) Let us have a look a few of the films over the past twenty odd years that get the most out of their meal ticket.

Continue Reading "Eat to live. Don’t live to eat. Bon appétit."...

Ah, the theme tune.  Bad ones are blotted out forever but good ones can hang around forever, always there to pull back memories of whatever it was they were attached to.  The lady-friend suggested doing a Twitch-o-Meter around theme songs which seemed like a great idea not to mention an easy one (which makes it even greater) until we actually started brainstorming ideas and trying to figure out what made a theme song a theme song.  There are lots of movies with instantly memorable music cues – take Psycho or Jaws as prime examples – but those certainly aren’t proper theme tunes so they must be put off for some future list.  Cue versus song is easy enough to differentiate but song versus score is a good bit tougher and as much as I love the music for Star Wars and Indiana Jones that stuff just feels slightly more like score than song to me and so both were arbitrarily dropped and after much unscientific whittling I’ve arrived at what I feel are the Top Five Theme Songs of all time.  Or at least today.

Continue Reading "When Theme Songs Attack!"...

This probably should be entitled: “Top 5 Bad-Ass Blockbuster Babes Who Created the Mold That All Others Should Follow,” but that sounded a little wordy. And besides, best bad-ass blockbuster babes are rebellious: they don’t follow the rules.

It helps when we’re treated to unexpected touches, the hidden resources that an actress draws upon to makes her opponent blink in surprise as his head goes flying through the air.

For the purposes of this article, I’ve genuflected to the season and limited my selections to actresses who’ve appeared in modern summer blockbusters (July 1975 onward, movie released between May 1 and August 31). And then, because I’m a little bit of a rebel too, I’ve cheated on my own rules and included two women who would have been truly awesome, if only ...

Continue Reading "Top 5 Bad-Ass Blockbuster Babes"...