splitedit

by Tony Nigro
Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu is my favorite cult film that I’ve never seen.  Recently, the indispensable Janus Films has been touring it theatrically and I’ve managed to miss every L.A. screening.  I can only hope the tour means a Criterion DVD or Blu-Ray release is imminent.  The newly subtitled trailer Janus posted today only [...]

by Tony Nigro

I’m going to be honest here.  I don’t care about boxing.  I do, however, care about aspiring politicians and superheroes because they are the people who make this world go ’round.  Manny Pacquiao happens to be both, with the latter aspiration on display in Wapakman.  So here’s to Pacquiao being the next Dwayne [...]

by Tony Nigro

I live a short subway ride away from the site of one of the most interesting neighborhoods in Los Angeles.  (Yes, we have a subway.  Stop asking.)  The architecture ranges from Victorian mansions to Spanish-style hotels to straight up urban tenements.  Some call it a slum, but the people are a diverse group [...]

by Lewis Manalo
This Friday the 13th, check out Häxan, the freakiest silent film to ever crawl out of Scandinavia. I stupid, but as far as I can tell the film is a documentary about witchcraft. There’s a whole lotta cool-looking devils and ugly Scandinavian ladies, equally freaky monks and cute Scandinavian witches kissing [...]

by Tony Nigro

A cult favorite that influenced the likes of Kurt Cobain, Richard Linklater and (I suspect) everyone involved in Freaks and Geeks, Over the Edge (1979) balances its ripped-from-the-headlines teen exploitation with healthy doses of humanism that only 1970s Hollywood could dish out: on-the-nose monologues defending aimless teens; earnest, fleeting glances that tear through [...]

by Lewis Manalo
It seem like every ethnic group, sub-group, and subset needs to have its WWII movie, and the only problem there is that some groups get lost in the mix. The WWII movies for Japanese Americans are based on the 442 Regimental Combat Team, and their story is too phenomenal to be missed. [...]

Koji Wakamatsu has been on our radar for some time, but we haven’t yet taken the time to explore his sensational stabs at cinema.  So it’s a good thing that L.A.’s own Cinefamily is dedicating some screenings to him, including this weekend’s double feature of Shinjuku Mad and Ecstasy of the Angels.  Cinefamily’s website indicates [...]

by Lewis Manalo
Yes, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is out on DVD today. No, we are not excited, and yes, nostalgia is half the battle. The other half is ninjas.
Here are three trailers for better movies now out on DVD that you could rent instead of G.I. Joe.



And don’t forget that there [...]

by Lewis Manalo
This might be your kind of thing, but LEGS‘ short “I Wanna Be Your Dog” pretty succinctly illustrates why I stopped working as a talent agent’s assistant.

One wonders what Laura Mulvey would make of the masochistic exhibitionism that these actresses “portray”; however, if you’re familiar with Iggy Pop, the context [...]

by Tony Nigro

A brilliantly realized zombie primer by Matthew Zoller Seitz that astutely included George Romero’s The Crazies as a bridge to 28 Days Later and what he dubs “zombie-by-proxy” stories.
Along with Kevin Lee, Seitz is taking online film criticism in the right direction, using online video to elevate criticism above the print vs. blog [...]

by Lewis Manalo

I've been waiting for months for this to drop on DVD, and if I'm a week late with this post, I blame my cluttered Netflix queue.

Not Quite Hollywood tells the story of Ozploitation, the roaring wave of exploitation films that Australia gave a wet, groaning birth to in the 1970's and 80's. You'll recognize some saints of exploitation films such as Quentin Tarantino and Jamie Lee Curtis in the trailer, but the film includes quite a few people who are not ashamed of their involvement. See the trailer, and resist the temptation to make a killer kangaroo flick of your own.

by Lewis Manalo

Sure, you might be excited that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen may be out on DVD, but let's be honest. You already made your lady suffer through Michael Bay's dizzying orgy of robotic mayhem in the theater. Why not seduce that lady into a orgy of the flesh and rent Fados tonight?

Newly released on DVD here in the States, Fados is the third and final film in Spaniard Carlos Saura's musical trilogy. A Goya winner, Saura is bit more subtle than his fellow musical directors such as Baz Luhrmann, so you can be sure that you won't feel flamboyantly girly for watching this film.

Not only will you be treating yourself to some truly original filmmaking, you might get some out of it, too.

Sure, this one has been circulating for a while, but we're deep into the Halloween preseason and feeling a little randy.  Besides, we love chimps.

by Tony Nigro



There's something about Italian genre films of the 1960s and '70s that aren't quite right. They appear to be cobbled together all too quickly for the basest international markets. They're corny. They're derivative. They often don't make sense or, even worse, almost make sense. Their post-synch dialogue is unnerving and poorly mixed. Yet these films do have their occasionally spectacular visual displays, and so film nerds everywhere find joy in them.

Admittedly, I am one of those nerds.

by Tony Nigro



Via VICE via Boing Boing, the first Nollywood horror flick that I really need to see but probably don't have the stamina to finish.  Produced by a pastor and replete with all sorts of "special effects" (as in "special education"), 666 promises a lot by offering very little.  The trailer reminds me of a cross between the Troma-distributed Fatty Drives the Bus and a mondo psychotronic Elvis-meets-Frankenstein piece of crap I dug out of the back of Jerry's Video Rerun in the '90s.

by Lewis Manalo

Why in God's name are audiences so into seeing sociopaths and murderers on TV and in film? It doesn't take a cultural critic to think up popular, award-winning TV shows where you cheer for the wacko doling out all the mayhem. My short answer is that sociopaths and murderers are so beautifully muthahfucking dynamic.

Bronson hits American shores this week, and it clearly builds on the tradition of films liks A Clockwork Orange and Chopper. Based on the life of career British prisoner Charles Bronson, played like a true dynamo by Tom Hardy, Bronson has been earning the kind of polarized reviews that tell me I have to see it for myself.

Be warned: I think it might be a violent film.

DVD: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains

by Lewis Manalo

The DVD for Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains came out about a year ago, and I'm appalled that I managed to go through my teenage years without having seen it. Haiku review:

Diane Lane, Laura
Dern, your punk band sucks, but you
are still really cool.

It nearly has the punk texture of Smithereens starring Richard Hell, but with a big budget, a screenplay by Nancy Dowd and a studio like Paramount backing it, the film is more likely one of the last babies of a lingering 70's Hollywood. Apparently, unless you had the misfortune of growing up in L.A. and had the good fortune of having Z Channel, you never got to see this movie as a kid. I have yet to speak with anyone (on the East Coast) who was a teen in the 1980s who's seen it.

See it. (And keep an eye out for a baby version of Ray Winstone.)

Ideally, our Freak of the Week feature is related to a face-melting movie and tied to an upcoming screening.  But the Internets are a fascinating series of tubes with their own brand of freakish videos too good to pass up.  And often these come from Japanese television.

A Japanese riff on Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie, Banana Street has made the viral video rounds at least once or twice before, but its creepiness is timeless.  It's also further proof that Bert is evil.

by Tony Nigro



Something beyond zombies keeps bringing me back to George Romero.  Perhaps it's his comfortable balance. A Romero film consistently balances DIY ethic with a vision that rarely compromises integrity, and low budgets with Hollywood high concepts despite the consequence of being branded "B," "drive-in," "grindhouse" or "straight to video." Perhaps it's his storytelling. The most solid Romero films can be either self-contained chamber set-ups (Night of the Living Dead) or epics covering several parallel stories in various locations (The Crazies, the whole zombie series). Perhaps it's his editing. The few films he's edited himself display a flair for creative, rapid-fire visual transitions and staccato dialogue cuts, the kind of cinematic tricks that I associate with the long gone days of editing on film. Or perhaps I'm just another nerd who's afraid to admit it.

In any event, I just watched two non-zombie Romeros: that (other) progenitor of 28 Days Later, The Crazies and the post-something vampire movie Martin.