July 6th: Five Element Ninjas/The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Roxie Theatre)

Nope, not missing the chance to see one of my favorite villains of all time, Ghostface Killer, on a theatre screen in the Shaw Brothers‘ martial arts classic, The Mystery of Chess Boxing.  Nobody – especially fans of fist-to-face action flicks – will want to miss this chance to see a vicious head-snatching baddie sling about his flying guillotine.  As for Five Element Ninjas, don’t know how I missed this one when going through my kung-fu phase a few years back, but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.

July 6th: Beasts of The Southern Wild (Embarcadero)

Newcomer Benh Zeitlin‘s feature-length debut has quickly moved into my most anticipated films of the year radar.  It has already snatched up 4 major awards at Cannes and 2 from Sundance, including the Grand Jury prize.  The plot as IMDB describes it is about a girl who faced with her father’s fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs, leaves her Delta-community home in search of her mother.  Not to take anything away from the plot, because it does sound intriguing, but I’m more interested in seeing what all the hype is about surrounding the cinematography and acting that have been buzzing around this film.

July 6th: Savages (Major)

Olive Stone‘s return to fast-paced genre filmmaking like U-Turn and Natural Born Killers?  Let’s just say it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been anticipating a new Oliver Stone picture.

July 7th – 11th: The Man From London/The Turin Horse (Roxie Theatre)

I still haven’t seen anything by film auteur, Bela Tarr, but with two of them coming to the Roxie hopefully now I can at long last become acquainted with a piece of this man’s filmography, if for no other reason than to have some of my film snobby friends stop harassing me; “How can you call yourself a film buff, yet you still haven’t seen anything by Bela Tarr?”

Here’s what the Roxie has to say about this upcoming week-long program “Béla Tarr, the Hungarian master of the measured-pace, real-time dramas that penetrate the murk of human existence has announced he has finished with film. Bad news for us who have already clocked in countless hours shadowing the desperate lives of his proletariat protagonists as they negotiate their beautifully bleak, black & white environs. As we incredulously bid Béla bye-bye, the Roxie proposes two, little-seen titles from this titan of long-form minimalism and his longtime collaborator, the novelist László Krasznahorkai, both presented in 35mm.” Read More…

In preparation of Christopher Nolan‘s third and final installment of the Dark Knight series, The Dark Knight Rises, many theatres will be showing his two previous films leading up to their midnight premier on Thursday, July 19th.  The Balboa Theatre however, will be the only theatre showing all three of these films on actual film, imagine that.

Tickets to see all three films are $25 (that’s 8 bucks and some change for each movie).  Sounds like a good opportunity for me to revisit the world of Gotham.  Trailers, showtimes, and ticket info, after the jump Read More…

With Christopher Nolan’s newest film Inception making such a stir we wanted to know what our fans thought of the director by asking: What is the best Christopher Nolan film?  We have a feeling The Dark Knight will take the top spot followed by Inception but The Prestige has a big folliwing as does Memento.

So you just finished watching Christopher Nolan‘s Inception and are still a little confused as to the timeline of events.  Maybe you’re asking yourself questions along the lines of, “if this happened during this time, how could that be happening then?”

Whether you completely understood the film, were entirely confused and lost by it, or were somewhere in between the two, matters not.  What matters now is that you check out this extremely well-done chart by the artist dehahs.

Handled with great care in its attention to detail, the chart outlines all the characters along with all the different levels in which the story takes place.  And oh yeah, in case you didn’t figure it out by now, the chart is one very big spoiler, so I recommend checking out the diagram after the jump only if you have already seen the film.

Read More…

For those of you who have not seen the film, relax, there are no spoilers in this post.

I have to admit that after seeing the film my dreams have not been the same.  Frequently I’ll wake up in the morning and find the first thought to my day being one from Christopher Nolan‘s Inception.  It doesn’t help the fact that I have always been a lucid dreamer, now I have this film invading my subconscious on a daily basis.

Heck, though I thought the movie was really good, I wouldn’t label it a masterpiece or compare to any of the works of Stanley Kubrick, like so many critics are already doing.  Then again, there is something to be said for a film I saw over a week ago that is still in my head.

Why, just this morning after waking up and shuffling into the living room still half asleep I turned on the computer only to find an official online comic book called  Inception: The Cobol Job.  My immediate thought after reading the short 33 page prequel was, “Wow, not only is this is pretty cool, but it doesn’t contain any significant spoilers to the film”.  But then my paranoia began to kick in and my thoughts were something along the lines of ” Wow, this book was cool, but how did I wind up in my living room.  Funny, I don’t remember how I got here.  Perhaps this is all a dream.”  Luckily I was able to quickly dismiss my paranoid suspicions with one squeeze of my custom-made and oddly weighted teddy bear.

Whether you have or haven’t seen the movie, you can still view the comic book  for free here (Inception: The Cobol Job).  There are no spoilers from the movie in the comic book but there are some reveals on certain key plot elements, mainly the world of Inception.

If you are like me and avoid trailers and interviews of the actors before you see a film then I recommend you do not click on the link.  If, however, you do not mind a little extra information of what the film is about before seeing it, then by all means click away and enjoy.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception almost shows what modern science fiction is truly capable of. An slightly human story combined with amazing special effects take us to a place where  our deepest secrets can be stolen from our dreams and our deepest thoughts might not be out own.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the dream invader who sneaks inside your mind while you  sleep to obtain your deepest secrets. When a rich business owner, Saito (Ken Watanabe) wants to eliminate the competition he hires Cobb to implant thoughts in his competitions mind.  Cobb’s payment, if he succeeds, is a clean slate in the United States where he is wanted for the murder of his wife.

The plot is simple enough, but it is in the final product that Nolan’s skill as a director shines. With time perception being different, depending on the level of consciousness, the film could have been a complete mess. Nolan handles this in such a way that anyone can understand it.  That’s not saying that all your questions will be answered. The brilliance of Nolan is that he manages to make films that will appeal to both the Hollywood crowd and the independent crowd. Inception, unlike The Dark Knight, is a film that asks some deep questions. In an age where privacy is invaded more than ever, where are our secrets safe?

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” A line straight from Nolan’s film must have been his philosophy while crafting this near masterpiece. While films such as The Matrix dazzled audiences with their concept and breakthrough effects, they failed to connect on a human level, making them fun but empty films. Then there are films such as Solaris that have incredibly deep messages, but don’t have the excitement for a main stream audience. Inception does not quite reach the same level of breakthrough FX as The Matrix or the thoughtfulness of Solaris but, by capturing what it needs from both, it becomes a Sci-Fi movie that will go down as one of the biggest box office successes of the genre.