Oldboy Remake with Josh Brolin, not sure how I feel about this.

Oldboy is a cult Korean film about a man who is imprisoned for 15 years and doesn't know why or by who. When he gets out he goes looking for revenge. It's one of the coolest and most violent films I've seen. Now word comes that Hollywood is remaking it with Josh Brolin in the lead. I don't see how that could possibly turn out well, maybe for people who haven't seen the original. The Korean version is very violent in a way that's probably too much even for American audiences. It's also got a couple twists that deal with subjects Americans are very touchy about.

Do yourself a favour and watch the original , even if you do have to read it. It's got one of the neatest fight scenes ever, all in one hallway, shot from outside, and all one shot if I remember correctly.
I might even play it for the Midnight Series.

Trailer for Korean version.



The Fight scene, although you may not want to view if you plan to see the film. Hard to imagine Hollywood could improve on this.

Midnight Movies Return.

The Midnight Movies will return as of Sept 16th. The series last year did quite well and turned a profit. If anyone is actually reading this and has any suggestions please e-mail them to wfilm@uwo.ca . A lot of the films will be the same ones we played last year but I want to try some new ones, especially to replace the movies that bombed last year.

The Room aftermath.

I kicked myself that I forgot to bring my camera to the screening of The Room this previous friday. I wanted to take pics of the mess the theatre was in after the screening. The Room is a very very bad movie that got the Rocky Horror Picture thing going. There's actions done at certain times and lines spoken at certain points. It's not as regimented as Rocky Horror but also not as messy.

When I restarted the Midnight series I had several people ask for this movie The Room that I had never heard of. I decided not to play it and when I e-mailed one of the guys who suggested the film he sent back a link to a newspaper article about how monthly shows at a theatre in Toronto were selling out. I mentioned it at the next couple midnight shows and got quite the audicence reaction.

I decided to book it for Nov 12th and see what happned.

We had 295 people show up, one of the biggest crowds we've had in years. We sold $800 worth of snack foods. Most of the patrons were drunk or stoned so they all had the munchies I guess.

The screening went over okay, the crowd was a bit loud but everyone had a good time, except for the few people who left becuase they were expecting to watch the actual movie.

I booked it again this previous Friday. We had about 30 fewer people but it was bloody cold that night. We sold about the same amount of food. I know this becuase again it took me about 40 minutes just to pick up the garbage?!

One of the elements of the audience participation is the throwing of plastic spoons at certain places. There must have been at least a couple thousand spoons all over the floor.

I didn't have a Midnight film scheduled for April 1, for some reason I thought it was easter weekend when I initially did the schedule. I decided to book The Room in for one more screening this year. It's just before classes end so it will be a good way for the students to blow off some steam.

The image below I found on the net. Imagine a floor with about 20 times as many spoons and you'll see what Western Film looked like.

The clip below gives a good idea about what to expect from the film.

Midnight Movies return.

We used to run a series of cult films Fridays at Midnight. It was quite popular however most of the films people wanted to see were no longer available on 35mm film for various reasons, mostly age and worn out and not replaced. I couldn't do the series on video because the video projector in the room generated a small, dim picture I would have been embarrassed to try to charge money for.
That's not the case any more.
The USC has invested in a new, high end video projector for the McKellar room for Western Film to use as well as other users of the room. It isn't a Digital Projector like some theatres use, those are still about $100,000. One of the main reasons I listed in my business case for buying the projector was the possibility of bringing back Midnight movies and playing them on video. People still ask about midnight movies all the time.
So now we can play the films off a DVD or Bluray. The new projector makes an image almost as good as the film projector and fills most of the screen.
Now we can play anything available that we can get the rights for. We can also play some movies that were never available on film in Canada such as Donnie Darko.
There's still some movies we can't play. Fox and George Lucas have all the Star Wars films out of service which means we aren't allowed to play them.
The most requested film is Rocky Horror but it's too messy to play in our nicely renovated theatre.
I've booked the first few films, however as of this writing only Holy Grail is confirmed so the list may change. I'm having trouble finding who owns the Canadian theatrical rights to Evil Dead, it's not the same as who owns the DVD rights which is unusual.
Now hopefully people show up. I'll be quite embarrassed if I've talked this series up to get them to invest in the new projector and not many people show up.
In the previous series we had more than 100 people show up for a few of the movies, however almost all of them were the movies with horrible prints. (Shining, Clockwork Orange)
If anyone has any suggestions please e-mail or leave them in the comments. However, take note, I reserve the right to ignore suggestions. I kept track of the movies suggested before, one of the most requested films, Taxi Driver, has one of the lowest attendances. I've had 4 people suggest a movie called The Room which I had never heard of. Since three of those requests arrived in one day I suspect one person had his or her friends request it as well. I'll embed the trailer below. Anyone think I should play it?

Death Race

The movie Death Race opens this weekend. I want to see it as it looks fun and stars Jason Statham. However I'm not impressed with it being called a remake of the cult film from 1975. It has little to do with it except for it's a race. The fun of the 1975 one was aspects such as getting points for hitting pedestrians. The drivers were basically nasty Nascar drivers rather than prisoners trying to win their freedom as in the new one. The orig is also a cross country race. The new one looks like it may all take place in the prison.

The new film has more in common with The Running Man than the original Death race.

Below is a clip of the part of the original that made the most impression on me. It cuts off a little too quick. If I remember correctly he gets fewer points for his little surprise than he would have if done what was expected.