I saw an example of the transgressive cinema called the New French Extremity last Wednesday, 10 November: Enter the Void (2009), directed and co-written by Argentinian-born Gaspar Noé (writer-director of the infamous 2002 movie Irréversible). Since Enter the Void only played one week at a metro-Detroit arthouse theatre, I think it's safe to say ( Read more... )

And now, because even total feebs, geeks, nerds, dweebs, social retards and LOSERS need to laugh at someone, I call your attention to Lisa Katayama's article in yesterday's (Sunday, 26 July) New York Times Magazine, "Love in 2-D," which tells about the fad sweeping Japan's largely male otaku (often translated as "fanboy") population: body pillows ( Read more... )

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Stumbled across this while browsing in The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion by I. Fischer-Schreiber, F.K. Ehrhard, K. Friedrichs, and M.S. Diener (NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 1999; reprint of a 1989 English translation of a 1986 book published in [West] Germany by Otto Wilhelm-Barth Verlag [English translation copyright 1989 by ( Read more... )

Last Friday, 5 August, I saw a midnight showing of Ichi the Killer (2001), one of the more infamous offerings of a notorious director, Takashi Miike. Oddly enough, I saw it at a free screening: though this particular branch (if that's the correct term) of a Loews Theatre had advertised a $5.00 admission for its "midnight cult movies," when I ( Read more... )

Managed to catch the latest Katsuhiro Ôtomo anime, Steamboy, when it played a local arthouse theatre in the last half of March; this was the English-dubbed version, which featured the voices of Anna Paquin as the title character, Ray Steam, Alfred Molina as Ray's father, Eddie Steam, and Patrick Stewart as Ray's grandfather, Lord Steam. Ôtomo also ( Read more... )

In the interest of not clogging up one of ezrael's LJ posts any further, I thought I'd mention this example of "Speak of the Devil, and he appears:"

I mentioned in one of my replies to his "Identity" post of 12 August that I didn't know of any chambara movie that even alluded to homosexuality (as opposed to homoeroticism), much less the pedophiliac ( Read more... )

From the Summer 2004 issue of G-Fan (Vol. 1, No. 68),  a  fanzine edited  and published by J.D. Lees of Manitoba, Canada, devoted largely to Godzilla and related  matters:

"A  very strange thing happened at U.S. theater box offices on the weekend of May 7, 2004.  The top grossing movie on a per theater basis was not the newly-opened Van Helsing,  ( Read more... )