I was so busy organising a teen film festival last week that I completely forgot to mention what a bonkers clocks week it was for new teen movies. Young Adult, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Chronicle all more or less fit the profile, and two of them already feature in my Best Movies of 2012 list. Cinemas showing all three are few and far between, but if you happen to live near the West India Quay Cineworld then there’s a hell of a triple bill waiting for you one night this week.
Nerdfest Frightfest returns for it’s annual all-nighter and this year’s line-up looks like it might actually appeal to people other than just obsessive horror freaks. Amongst the six films showing are 5 UK premieres, including George Romero’s new Survival Of The Dead and current US ‘box office sensation’ Paranormal Activity. Just make sure you leave before Jennifer’s Body.
The Union Chapel in Islington provides the setting for this special screening of John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic, which is sponsored by Jameson Irish Whiskey. Tickets are free but available by ballot only so get in early ‘to avoid disappointment’. They’re also showing Dracula, American Werewolf and Colin in the days leading up to the 31st so why not keep going until you get that big complimentary bucket of Whiskey you’re hoping for?
GOREZONE WEEKENDER Prince Charles Cinema, 9am til midnight
Starting on Halloween and finishing the next day (at which point the whole thing must feel quite redundant) the Gorezone Weekender will showcase eight indie horror titles in front of an audience of even bigger losers than Frightfest. Organised by Gorezone Magazine (me neither) and now in its second year, the festival is still ignoring the fact that the Prince Charles seats are no way near comfortable enough to sit in for two days straight.
Calling all masochists, come enjoy 12 hours of grizzly torture porn in the comfort of London’s biggest auditorium. The weirdest thing about this one is that the one movie that the audience probably won’t have seen (Saw VI) will end up being on at like 9am when everyone’s fallen asleep.
If the audiences at Gorezone and Frightfest are full of geeks, then fuck knows what kind of mentally ill psychopaths are going to turn up to this. Tickets are £26 so at least they’ll probably be quite well spoken.
The last couple of days of this year’s festival have pretty much been dead weight: a bunch of British and/or arthouse movies to fill the gap until festival closer Nowhere Boy. There was, however, one high-profile film to look forward to: A Serious Man, the one wot is new from the Coen Brothers.
Here’s where it stands on the late-noughties Coen tonal scale:
Qualitatively, it’s pretty top notch, and probably deserves a second viewing. Michael Stuhlbarg is a great discovery, it’s both genuinely funny and genuinely thoughtful and, BEST OF ALL, it has a great aspect-ratio-shift about five minutes in.
Blessed was a late addition to the LFF programme, and is having only two screenings, so you might expect it to be something pretty special. Instead, it was the most irritating experience of the festival. For one reason in particular.
It wasn’t the terrible acting, crap dialogue and stick-thin characterisation. Nor the movie’s use of non-linear narrative in the most banal, gratuitous way imaginable. It wasn’t the moment when a character expressed his anger with the line ‘I’ll bloody hit you!’ or even the film’s total adherence to the most tired clichés of teenage life on screen (they made Thirteen look like a masterpiece of subtle filmmaking).
It wasn’t any of those things. It was the London Film Festival’s inexplicable decision to screen the film, without prior warning, with Spanish subtitles. This might not seem like a big deal. After all, it doesn’t prevent me from experiencing the film in its entirety, and it was presumably the only print available on such short notice. But it’s the same logic that allows a repertory cinema to project a Blu-ray of a film if they can’t get hold of a print, or a multiplex to assume that no-one will care if the projector screws up half-way through a movie and the audience misses a few minutes. Well I do care. RANT OVER.
Wednesday 28th October, 21:15, Vue West End, Screen 9, book here Thursday 29th October, 16:15, Vue West End, Screen 9, book here
Trash Humpers (they missed a trick by not going with TRASH HUMPERS or even TRASH HUMPERS!) is the new ‘film’ from perpetual weirdybucket Harmony Korine. It’s about a group of anti-social freakish outcasts who just hang out and film each other doing stuff. Including the titular waste fornication.
There’s a ‘trailer’ for the film on YouTube and it’s 47 seconds long. The film itself is 78 minutes long, or 99.6 times longer than the trailer.
Trust me, watching this trailer 99.6 times will be no more or less rewarding than watching the movie itself. This is not a criticism. Or a complement. It is merely a statement.
Don’t worry, this movie wouldn’t be so pathetically commercial as to shoot in 16:9. The actual film is in 4:3.
