5 Off My Head - What's Half of Eleven

.

July 1st marks the halfway point of the year, and so I figured I'd do what I usually do and take a quick look back at the five movies I've enjoyed the most so far this year. Looking at the movies that open between now and then that I'm most curious about all there seems to be is Super 8 and Green Lantern - it that really it for June? - and I don't foresee either of those topping any of these at this point. (Prove me wrong, JJ Abrams!) There are a few duking it out, I could want something else in five minutes, but let's just roll with this.

Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami) - Since seeing it back in March there kind of hasn't been a day that's passed where I haven't wanted to watch Certified Copy again. What baffles me looking back is I never wrote a proper review! I wrote a post telling y'all to remind me to write a review, and obviously you all failed me. Your fault! Anyway now I have a reason to watch it ASAP so I can write up some properish thoughts. There are visuals from this movie that accost me all the time. A slipping bra-strap or a boy following his mother or a sad bride.

Hanna (dir. Joe Wright) - my review - Okay okay so I've said enough about Eric Bana's wet longjohns at this point in the year, probably. There are other things! Wonderful things. Joe Wright making an action movie sort of feels like what would happen if one of those giant-headed bug-eyed aliens beamed down into your living-room and you told it to go and make you a peanut butter sandwich. This is that alien's peanut-butter sandwich. Strange and stranger.

13 Assassins (dir. Takashi Miike) - my review - I'm so glad to have another movie from Takashi to love - he makes more than it's possible to keep up with from this side of the world and the few that have trickled over have seemed more like emblems of his lack of concentration than, you know, coherent films. Not so with 13 Assassins, which is an astonishingly old-fashioned slow-burn to madness for the maestro of mayhem.
.

Jane Eyre (dir. Cary Fukunaga) - my review - It's all there in that scene in front of the fireplace with Rochester and Jane sizing each other up - Mia and Fassy scouring each other's faces and dragging us along for the ride.

Insidious (dir. James Wan) - my review - Lawd knows I have plenty of issues with plenty of Insidious, but at the same time I had such a hoot jumping out of my seat that I'm willing to overlook a lot of silliness. It packs enough bang for your buck. Good old fashioned spook-sanctioned fun.

So what've been your favorite movies of 2011 so far?

.

Time For NYAFF Again

.

The New York Asian Film Festival has just announced their line-up for 2011, and you can read through the list of films over here. It runs the first couple of weeks of July.

A few highlights - they've got Takashi Miike's latest, a swivel from the seriousness of 13 Assassins (serious awesomeness) called Ninja Kids!!! Yes, those are his exclamation points. It is about... okay, you know what it's about. They're also showing the director's cut of 13 Assassins which apparently has 17 more minutes of footage. 

They're showing several films by Tsui Hark, none of which I've seen but I've heard excellent things of, and he'll be there for all of them, it seems. Zu: Warriors From Magic Mountain sounds especially interesting.

The Yellow Sea is the new film from the director of the terrific (and terrifically underseen here) movie The Chaser, and sounds like more nail-biting suspense and action of that sort.

And speaking of The Chaser, they're showing that film and a bunch of the films that followed in its wake - it was a big hit in Korea and spawned all sorts of similarly twisty thrillers. One of them, The Man From Nowhere, is on Netflix and I just watched it a few weeks ago. Won Bin - who played the touched son in Mother - is a pleasure to stare at (especially when he strips down at one point, as seen above) but it was a little bit like a beefed-up Jean Claude Van Damme movie from 1993 (I know, I know, I say that as if its a bad thing?).

There's also a female version of Deliverance called Bedevilled which NYAFF is calling "the greatest women versus men movie ever made," although I've come to regard NYAFF's effusiveness with a very large grain of salt. They tend towards the ultra enthusiastic. Which, ya know, bless em for it. Anyway, "female version of Deliverance" kinda sells itself. Apparently the lead actress won some awards for her performance.

There's also gonna be 10 year anniversary screenings of Battle Royale and Versus, which are both such utter batshit insane delights. Looks like a great fest this year!

I Am Link

.

--- Strike A Pose - A few of the stories I'm shepherding into this post should probably get posts all their own, and this is one of them. Steven Soderbergh making a male stripper movie starring Channing Tatum, based on Channing's own well-documented g-stringed past? Uh... what? And I love the assertion that Soderbergh was totally gonna retire but this story was one he just couldn't not tell! The epic thrust of it! I love this crazy world sometimes. So that means SS is going from covering Michael Douglas in glitter for a Liberace bio-pic to stuffing Channing into a thong. Never leave us, Steven.

--- Slice N Dice - Slash has got the trailer for Takashi Miike's next film, which is apparently another samurai movie, called Hari-Kari: Death of a Samurai. It will be shown at Cannes.

--- Arrrgh? - I have no idea what the hell this Cobra: The Space Pirate movie is, but it's from Alexandre Aja so I'm immediately curious. But that poster is ridiculous. Ridiculous! (via) 

--- War Man - The terrific Anthony Mackie is up for a role in World War Z opposite Brad Pitt. I'm really curious to see how they managed to make a script from that book, which was just a series of stories told from the point of view of survivors of a zombie apocalypse. There wasn't a through-line to follow so much, no central characters. I guess they just pick one and follow him through the people's stories, probably. Not that hard.

--- The Pie King - Another story that'd deserve it's own post on a morning when I'm not too groggy for it is this: Lee Pace has joined the cast of The Hobbit! Kick-ass! Congrats, Lee! He'll be playing the Elven King Thranduil. I can already see the long flowing blond hair on him, can't you? He wore it so well in Soldier's Girl after all.

--- All Josses Eve - Rumors have it that Lionsgate intends to release Cabin in the Woods on October 28th. I am so glad the Saw movies are finished so we can have horror movies come out at Halloween again! Hooray!

--- Rape Me - The first couple of images from the so-unnecessary-it's-painful Straw Dogs remake, starring James Marsden and Alexander Skarsgård and some bland skinny blond woman, are over at BD, and just look at Alex there and tell me you wouldn't want to get raped by that. It's not rape if it's Alexander Skarsgård! Okay I'll stop that now. Sorry. I got carried away.

--- Chain Gang - And yet a third story deserving it's own post - Tarantino's next film has a title - Django Unchained - and a bit of plot. You can read about it over at DH. Sounds like it deals heavily with slavery and racism, in a Spaghetti Western sort of context. Instead of a Western he's calling it a Southern. Sounds like there's a kick-ass lead role in store for a lucky black actor.

--- Nerd Porn - There were some pictures taken from the NYC set of the next Spider-Man movie over the weekend and they included that adorable one of Andy there. how could I not share that? Collective awww. He looks so cute in glasses! Awww.

.

Paul Walker is a Pussy...

.

... cat. Awww, Paul Walker really does seem as harmless as a lil' kitten all tangled up in nonsense, doesn't he? Poor dear. Trapped with Vin Diesel's company for the rest of your days... shudder. I suppose he can comfort himself with all the hookers and blow the millions of dollars he's made from the undying Fast Now Sans Furious franchise will buy him.

Speaking of! I speak of that movie and several others that have today as their release date as the only thing they share in common over in my weekly Friday write-up at Celebrity Beehive. The big movies coming out this weekend make me want to pluck out my eyeballs with salad tongs and serve them on a bed of fresh greens, but there are two, count them two, smaller films out that I can definitely recommend.
.

Anyway they be Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (my review), which I found a little too long but transfixing all the same, and Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins (my review), which I blathered on about just yesterday so go read that if you need convincing. Of course, and correct me if I'm wrong, I do believe both of these are only available on big screens here in NYC, so if you're in one of the billion other places on Earth, well, too bad for you!
.

It's 13 O'Clock

.

Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins is easily one of the best movies I've seen so far this year. (Here's a few thoughts I wrote down when I saw it.) Classic and modern all at once, it's a pip.  I bet you a hundred bucks it'll be one of the best action movies out this Summer, and made for one percent the cost of a Transformers. You should see it! It's been On Demand for a few weeks now so maybe you have, but it's out in some movie theaters tomorrow and I'd recommend seeing it that way. It's a film that deserves a large screen to take it in. You can find out what cities and theaters it's coming to at this link. And I'll post the trailer again below, if you need convincing more than my vague words of encouragement stir in ya. And And you can read a fairly brief but enlightening interview with Takashi over at AICN today.

.

.

I Am Link

.

--- Gimme Gods - It took a couple of weeks since we last heard about something happening with Neil Gaiman's American Gods, but now Deadline's got an update: HBO has optioned a series based off the book, to be shepherded by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson. Let's hope Game of Thrones does well then, so HBO feels good about making more fantasy series! Because this'd rule.

--- Wright's Stuff - Now that he's made a movie I unabashedly adore, I've found myself clicking on links having to do with Hanna's director Joe Wright. Which led me to this interview with him at AICN and it's totally delightful. It starts out like this:

AICN: I suppose we should start with your mother. Or do you have something else on your mind?

Joe Wright: Breasts. My wife has recently had a child, and suddenly you realize that breasts are all about milk and bounty. They're not really for us. It's a rather sad revelation.

AICN: It hasn't ruined breasts for you, has it?

Wright: Well, at the moment I can't really get close to them. (Laughs)

AICN: How horrible.

Wright: They're so big and beautiful, and they're no longer mine.

LOL. And it only gets better from there. He speaks upon tyrannical wig-makers! I kinda love him today. Let's hope the Atonements are in the past!

--- Speaking of, Joe Reid had a few words to share on both Hanna and Insidious over at Low Resolution. Including calling me an asshole. Why I never! Okay, once in awhile.

--- Ursa Two - There's going to be a lady villain in Zach Snyder's Superman movie, which is called The Man of Steel. She will be based off of the comic-book character Faora, which is apparently who the kick-ass Ursa in Superman II was based off of too. So I imagine she'll be a side-kick to Michael Shannon's General Zod. Anyway they better cast well, because the spectre of Sarah Douglas looms large. And fabulous.

--- And finally, Slash has got the word on what'll be showing at Cannes this year, and as always, it just makes me so fucking depressed. Von Trier, Miike, Malick, Almodóvar! Somebody send me to Cannes! I will fuck that shit up. In, like, a good way.

.