Interview By Jonathan Marlow

"I think that I always wanted to have a brother."

In 1979, a 21-year-old filmmaker warped countless young minds with a terrifying bit of surreality called Phantasm. A quarter of a century later, he's entertaining us with a tale of Elvis and JFK, both alive (yet feeling their age), as crime-fighters. Jonathan Marlow finally caught up with the director on the eve of Bubba Ho-tep's release, long after Don Coscarelli appeared with Bruce Campbell at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival in 2003...

Phantasm has been reissued on DVD.

Continue Reading Elvis, JFK and the Tall Man: a Talk with Don Coscarelli

Interview By Jonathan Marlow

"The mood of making my kind of films is getting stronger here."

The Pacific Film Archive will be screening two of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films; Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, this Friday and Saturday. You can Purchase tickets here. Jonathan Marlow had a chance to speak with Weerasethakul, you can read the transcript of that interview after the jump.

Continue Reading Blissfully Ours: A Talk With Apichatpong Weerasethakul

NPR's Fresh Air had a piece on the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour group, which is comprised of comedians Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader (of Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian descent, respectively). Their special, in which the comics muse on how life changed for them since Sept. 11 with amusement, bewilderment and a touch of self-deprecation (they enter the stage through metal detectors), premiered on Comedy Central last month and is out on DVD this week. [Official site.]

"They are doing for Middle-Easterners what Richard Pryor did for African Americans - Carrying their culture to the mainstream... Very funny and timely." -Newsweek

See: The New York Times piece.

The DVD.

Continue Reading Axis of Evil Comedy Tour: Homeland insecurity

By Sean Axmaker

Mario Bava is a horror original. A painter and cinematographer turned director, a craftsman turned celluloid dreamer, an industry veteran who created, almost single-handedly, the uniquely Italian genre of baroque horror known as giallo, he directed the most graceful and deliriously mad horror films of the 1960s and early 1970s. Always better at imagery than explanation, at set piece than story, Bava's films are at their best dream worlds and nightmare visions. Check your logic at the door.

Continue Reading Mario Bava: Master Choreographer of the Giallo's Dance of Death

By Adam Hartzell

The cinema of Hong Sang-soo "is very much a walking cinema in its pace, in its space for reflection, and in its elliptical nature, each ending leading us into the next film, or returning us to a film, or scene, that preceded it," writes Adam Hartzell, who explains why his recent talk with the Korean director, on the occasion of the release of Woman is the Future of Man on DVD, is not an interview - per se.

Continue Reading Walking with Hong Sang-soo

Backstage: "Emmanuelle Bercot has crafted one of the most self-assured debut features that I've seen in years," declared Jonathan Marlow in May. "The cast is remarkable. Emmanuelle Seigner is quite exceptional as the troubled singer and Isild Le Besco's performance as an adoring fan is believably overwrought." Adds J. Hoberman: "An enjoyably overwrought meditation on the consequences of celebrity and the vicissitudes of fandom."

In September, Marlow also got a chance to grab a quick chat with Le Besco about the film and more at the Toronto International Film Festival. [Read article >>]

Continue Reading Backstage: Fan and star

Volver: Almodóvar's latest, for which Penélope Cruz garned a well deserved Oscar nod for Best Actress, is "The great Spanish director's fourth triumph in a row--following All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Bad Education," wrote David Ansen in Newsweek. "Volver (which means 'coming back') flows effortlessly between peril and poignancy, the real and the surreal, even life and death."

Adds Michael Guillen in his essay on the film for GreenCine: The film is "as much a return to form as to former concerns and, fortunately, the process has been fruitful and not one of diminishing returns."

Continue Reading Volver: Penelope and Pedro make magic

From the dark and sinister world of the CIA, the assassination of the president, and the bizarro town of Twin Peaks (in the state of David Lynch's mind) to antic British comedy, talking spiders and angry moth(ra)s, this week's got it all for you.

Read on for all new and coming releases:

Continue Reading New on DVD: April 3, 2007

Interview By David D'Arcy

"Like his previous hits The White Balloon and The Circle, [Jafar] Panahi's soccer movie Offside is blatantly metaphoric and powerfully concrete, deceptively simple and highly sophisticated in its formal intelligence," writes J Hoberman in the Village Voice.

And as David D'Arcy notes, prefacing his interview with the Iranian director, "this time Panahi has added humor to the tenderness and poignancy of his earlier films."

Continue Reading Jafar Panahi and the Rules of the Game

By John Kovacevich

San Francisco actor and comedian John Kovacevich took some time from his busy schedule to give us a glimpse of what it's like working on the set of a Will Smith film -- Including the pitfalls faced while eating chips in slow-mo.

Continue Reading John Kovacevich: Behind-the-Scenes on The Pursuit of Happyness