On shelves in comic book stores today is Guy Ritchie’s Gamekeeper, the latest series on Virgin Comics “Director’s Cut” label – comic book created by filmmakers – which has already released titles such as John Woo’s Seven Brothers (Woo was a defining force in the highly influential Hong Kong action cinema with film’s like Hard Boiled and The Killer) and Shekhar Kapur’s Snake Woman (Kapur directed The Four Feathers and the upcoming The Golden Age).
Opening in select New York City theaters today is director Alexandra Lipsitz’s debut feature-length documentary Air Guitar Nation. The film tells the story of how competitive air guitar came to the United States, which up until 2003, had never sent an official contender to the World Air Guitar Championships held annually in Finland.
Director Bong Joon-ho’s The Host begins
in the year 2000, when a morgue assistant in Korea is ordered to empty bottles of hazardous waste down a drain, even though he the boss who gives the order both know the chemicals will end up in the Han River. Two years later, fishermen are finding small mutated creatures. By 2006, a leviathan sea beast is hanging from the Han River Bridge. Among the people gathering to watch the creature is Gang-du, a good-hearted but lazy slacker who works in a food stand along the bank of the Han. Mayhem erupts moments later when the creature rushes onto land and begins to kill and devour everyone in sight. In the ensuing pandemonium, Gang-su’s young daughter Hyun-seo is grabbed by the creature and carried into the depths of the Han River.
Iconic director Ken Russell was in town to receive a lifetime achievement award from Fantasia for his 50-plus years in the business, a career that has spawned many genre classics including Altered States, Gothic, and The Lair of the White Worm. But it was the little-seen and hard to find The Devils from 1971 that proved to be Russell's most controversial work, and Fantasia managed to snag a copy to be screened on Russell's big night. In the video, Russell discusses the true story behind the film and receives his award with the grace befitting one of the great filmmakers of all time.