I’m intrigued by this trailer for Day Night Dy Night by first-time director Julia Loktev.

The film follows a young, ethnically unidentifiable suicide bomber as she prepares for an attack on Times Square. With no obvious history, context or motive, the woman dutifully carries out orders delivered by two equally nondescript men, and the audience is left to wonder who she is and why she’s doing it.

Slant Magazine’s Nick Schager (posting at Cinematical) criticizes the film for its lack of perspective or insight, while J. Hoberman at the Village Voice praises it for exactly the same reason.

Here’s a trailer for the new Werner Herzog film, Rescue Dawn. I’m sort of surprised that I hadn’t heard more about it until recently–it had a limited release yesterday, and will apparently hit more screens on July 20th. It’s a narrative feature based on Herzog’s 1998 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, the story of an American pilot who was shot down and captured in Laos during the Vietnam war.

Looks good. I’m admittedly late to the “loving Christian Bale” party–I guess I should have joined in immediately after Newsies, what with all the heel-clicking and unionizing and whatnot–but I’m a full-on Herzog fan. The only part that worries me about Rescue Dawn is that Steve Zahn has a lead role. What the hell?

Oh hey, here’s a video of Herzog being randomly shot by a passerby during an interview in Los Angeles.

[Official Movie Website]

One of my biggest regrets at SXSW this year was missing Seth Gordon’s “classic video gamer” doc King of Kong. But it all worked out, because it’ll be hitting theatres on August 17th.

Tell me this thing doesn’t look fantastic.

[Official Website]

Robosaurus!!!

To cap off a week of absolute nuttiness, I went to see Transformers tonight for the second time. Only this time, the movie was followed by a car-eating, fire-breathing session of robot mayhem as Robosaurus took over the parking lot at the Alamo South Lamar. My throat is raw from screaming, “eat the car! eeeaaattt it!” over and over, but it was worth it.

As for the movie–it has its issues. It could lose at least thirty minutes of completely useless characters and cheap, pandering jokes. But let’s face it… this is a movie about alien robots, based on a cartoon that was, at its heart, an elaborate toy commercial–so you can’t be too hard on it without seeming like a jackass.

I’ll say this though– if you were ever into the Transformers as a kid, you’ll love every second that those corny, absurd, heroic robots are on the screen. The visual effects are some of the best in movie history, and the robot battle scenes are absolute dynamite. All in all, it’s probably the best we could have hoped for in a live-action Transfomers adaptation. Not brilliant, but good.

[More Robosaurus Photos On My Flickr Page]

This Saturday I drove up to Dallas for part of the Texas Frightmare Weekend, a (now) annual three-day horror convention that featured George Romero, Doug Bradley, Tom Savini and Clint Howard, among a whole bunch of other horror-type folks.

The show was a bit smaller than I’d expected–it basically occupied a large hallway and two mid-size conference rooms at the Omni hotel–but overall it was good. Listening to Doug Bradley talk about Hellraiser was a lot of fun; I’m a huge Clive Barker fan, and this show finally gave me a chance to gather some more autographs on my Hellraiser box set (nerdy…I know). Doug also confirmed something that I’d read earlier: that he hasn’t been asked to participate in the Hellraiser remake, and that Clive has pretty much only agreed to write it to prevent anybody else from screwing it up–which sort of makes it okay, I guess. But not really.

Clint Howard’s “Inside the B-Actor’s Studio” was surprisingly good too (and it added the most to my Netflix queue), but by far the most popular panel was the “Creepshow 25th Anniversary” featuring George Romero and Adrienne Barbeau. But of course, most of the audience questions were about Romero’s zombie films–including his upcoming Diary of the Dead, which he says is pretty much finished. Sure, Land of the Dead wasn’t very good, but it’s still hard not to be excited about a new Romero film.

Ahyhoo, I’ve got a few photos I’ll post as soon as I find my USB cable.

[Texas Frightmare Website]
[Fangoria Podcast Interviews Clint Howard]

Tonight’s program at the Alamo, “Why We’re Fat”, was a collection of hilarious old educational and promotional films focusing on food and nutrition–one of which was presented by the “International Potato Chip Council” and extolled the virtues of a chip-heavy diet (news I’ve been waiting to hear for years. Who knew I was so healthy?).

The show was presented by “A/V Geeks”, the brainchild of North Carolinan film aficionado Skip Elsheimer. Skip is an avid collector of educational films, and since the early 90s he’s amassed a personal library of more than 19,000 16mm films (!!). So now, he tours around the country exhibiting them as themed shows like this one–and they’re wicked fun.

The best part is, he’s put a decent cross-section of his collection up on Youtube, so you can check ’em out whenever you like. Head on over there, and say goodbye to the next couple hours.

[A/V Geeks Website]
[A/V Geeks Youtube Page]

According to the folks at Cinematical, Paul Reubens (er, Pee-Wee Herman, I mean) will appear in the new Todd Solondz film Life During Wartime, a follow-up to his ultra-dark 1998 comedy Happiness. In some weird way, this seems to make a lot of sense to me–not because Reubens is a “controversial” or bizarre figure, but because I think he’s been handed a bit of a raw deal since his original obscenity arrest more than 15 years ago. And I think that Solondz has been similarly misread by a lot of people (even some people who like him).

I personally can’t wait to see this, even though I may have to go alone since pretty much nobody I know even liked his last film Palindromes (which I thought was great in a lot of ways).

I think a lot of people get Solondz all wrong. I know the popular conception is that he’s a sadistic misanthrope, out to humiliate his “freakish” characters–but I just don’t think that’s true. If anything, I think most people react negatively to his films because of guilt over their own cruel inner-dialog. In other words, when he includes a scene with disabled children performing Christian rap songs, it’s not intended as a joke; the joke is that we think it’s a joke. The truly dark, sad comedy is that deep down in the back corners of our brains, we think that these people can’t exist but as some kind of pitiable mistake or ironic punchline, despite the fact that they’re some of the sweetest characters in the film. And we hate Solondz for revealing our own cruelties and preconceptions in that way, so we project that hate right back at him.

The more obvious, intentional comedy is along those lines as well. What’s supposed to be funny (I think, at least) is the relationship between the “freaks” and the so-called normal world–it’s satire about social norms. To me, that seems so obvious. I mean, if you’ve ever read an interview with Solondz (or even seen a photo of him), you can’t escape the feeling that most of his work comes from decades of personal experience with cruelty and insecurity. His characters aren’t cheap stereotypes; they’re living, breathing reflections of his own difficulties in life, and I always feel like his approach is much more compassionate and curious and realistic than it is exploitive. That’s not to say that his films don’t contain any intentional irony or pessimism–because they most certainly do–but I don’t think it’s aimed in the direction most people assume.

But, of course, not everyone agrees with me. Which is the great thing about a guy like Solondz; he’s one of the few current filmmakers who’s work inspires passionate, relevant debate. You know… something more significant than “should Optimus Prime have lips?” (which he most certainly should NOT, by the way.)

[Todd Solondz on Wikipedia]
[Todd Solondz Interviewed by The Believer]