The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) started on Friday. Due to my work schedule I am not going to see as many as I did last year, but there are a few screenings on the weekend I am pretty excited about. The first of those was The Butcher which I saw yesterday. I knew I could only see movies Fridays and Saturdays because of my day job, so I just looked at the schedule for today and yesterday. The first thing that jumped out at me was an image of a man holding a chain saw wearing a pig mask. I watched the trailer and could not have been more fucked up.

The movie is about a man, who with his wife and two other people, has been captured to be tortured and killed in a snuff film. He wakes up in an abandoned factory farm to find himself tied up with a video camera mounted to his head. The entire film is made up of shots from his helmet cam, and the torturers cameras. The cinema vertias style is more effective here than I think it is in Cloverfield for example, but there are times where it doesn’t exactly make sense. The film is very gruesome and would be probably terrifying if I could manage to be scared of movies. I used to be, I am not sure what happened. But my friend that I was with told me that she did not think she would be able to sleep for a week. One of the main points in the film is how casual the tortures are about the whole thing. They laugh and joke with each other and talk about their art. The thing is, I think it would have been a bit more scary if they were obscured a bit, but I guess it would have changed the whole context of the film. That being said, the film was super fucked up and if you ever get the chance to see it, I would. It screens one more time, next Saturday at the IFC at 950PM.

Do yourself a favor and watch this fucking trailer, but only if you think you can handle it. Holy fuck.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5JfIxtTS3c[/youtube]

This is going to ruin my life.  And of course he is played by John Cusack the celebrity I get compared to the most.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa70_kbS3oU[/youtube]

So I am a die hard Troma fan.  At least I was until they didn’t put out a single in house in the last 6 years.  (Note: Tales From The Crapper does not count).  In those 6 years I think I have matured a bit.  I am not sure that I enjoy decapitations and gratuitous nudity and projectile excretions as much as I once did.  These days I am mostly into musicals.  Luckily for me the new Troma film combines both my love of musicals and my former love of extreme sex and violence.  If you have ever enjoyed at Troma film, you should see this movie.  For those not familiar with Troma, you have been warned.  This film is not for everyone.  Lloyd Kaufman is a hero of mine, and he directed this zombie/Indian/chicken masterpiece.  The film is racist, sexist and homophobic while at the same time fighting for these same issues.  If you did not think this to be possible, I suggest you watch a Troma film. Troma’s War made light of AIDS while shining a light on the AIDS situation in America.  Citizen Toxie lampooned school shootings in what might have been considered “too soon” by most.  Troma is a independent (for 34 years!) studio fighting for the little guy while making fun of all the little guys in their way… the big guys too.  Troma constantly goes after corporate greed and corruption in film, government and the world.  This film specifically deals with how the fast food industry is turning us into zombies.. and in this film it is quite literal.  Seriously, everyone becomes Indian zombie chickens.  And they sing and dance, and show a lot of tits and girls making out and explosive diarrhea. Don’t have any idea what the hell I am talking about?  Just watch the trailer.

And here is a quote for the DVD box:  “Pultrygiest is by far my favorite Indian Zombie Chicken Musical by an independent studio so far this year… I would go so far as to put it in my top 10 Indian Zombie Chicken Musicals of all time!”

Um… This trailer is extremely not safe for work.  The movie opens May 9th in New York.

PS. NEVER build a chicken restaurant on an Indian burial ground.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWGKWkpC6ng[/youtube]

A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

So Charlton Heston died yesterday. This is tragic. I know most of you probably think of him as this crazy right wing gun nut, but I love him. He is honestly one of my favorite actors. Yes, he was amazing in his historic and bible epics, and yes he played a convincing Mexican in the second best Orson Wells movie, but I love him for his SciFi. I am not normally a science fiction fan. I own about 1000 movies on DVD, but my science fiction section has only about a dozen movies… of those five have Charlton Heston movies… and three more of them are Planet Of The Apes 3-5 which while do not have Heston in them, could not exist with him. So today, in honor of the man I am going to break down my three favorite SciFi movies starring Mr. Heston, which coincidentally also happen to be my three favorite Heston movies in general. Keep reading after the break.
(Read the article)

Of all the sponsors of the SXSW event my favorite had to be Sukiyaki Western: Django. It is the new movie from one of my all time favorite directors Takashi Miike. It is a Japanese remake of Django which is an Italian remake of Yojimbo which is ironically a Japanese film. Yojimbo is a bad ass Akira Kurosawa film that has been remade into a bunch of bad ass movies including Fist Full Of Dollars and the highly underrated Bruce Willis film Last Man Standing. Also Django was directed by one of my other favorite directors Sergio Corbucci who is one of the most brutal directors ever. The scene in Reservoir Dogs where they cut the cops ear of is taken directly from the original Django. Anyway, I could not be more excited about this movies existence.

Anyway, the point is, this movie sponsored the event, and what they did was bring in like 100 squirt guns and it seemed like a great idea until the whole Elk Lodge where they were holding the event got covered in water and everyone started running around slipping on everything and crashing into everyone and then the cops had to come because the injury liabilities would be out of control and then people wouldn’t give up the guns and then people got kicked out and Lisa D’Amato filled up the gun with vodka and was squirting everyone in the eyes and it was amazing and madness and great. Anyway, I think the best pictures I took the whole time I was in Austin was of this squirt gun fight so I saved them for last. Check them out.

Now that I uploaded a bunch of my photos to Wikimedia Commons people have taken it upon themselves add my photos to Wikipedia pages.  I had blogged about how I had taken the official photos for Agyness Deyn and Takeru Kobayashi.  But now, in a matter of two days I have taken the official Wikipedia photo for the following:

• Tracy Morgan
• Simon Rex
• Richie Rich
• Brodie Dalle Of The Distillers
• Pauly Shore!!
• Moby
• The Gaskets
• Lisa D’Amato
• Lady Sovereign
  
• Faune A. Chambers
• Delaney Williams
• David Blue
• Cisco Adler
• Anwan Glover

I also even have photos on the pages of Lance Bass and Ron Jeremy though not the main ones…  I think it is just a matter of time before I get someone to write a Wikipedia entry for Driven By Boredom.  I am now Wikifamous. Ph33r m3.

Diablo Cody won the Oscar for best screenplay.  Everyone seems so excited about the fact that she used to be a stripper.  Like it was so amazing that a former stripper could write a screen play.  I sort of feel like I need to come to the defense of sex workers everywhere.  Just because you are sexy for money, does not mean you are a waste of life.  That being said, I thought Juno had some of the worst, most unrealistic, corn ball dialogue I have ever heard.  And the idea that she would be even nominated for an award is fucking astounding.  Well, at least now she’s famous and I have a reason to post these naked photos of her.

A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Since I just wrote up Be Kind Rewind I decided it would be a good time to do a Favorite Things about one of my favorite directors, Michel Gondry. The first time I saw Eternal Sunshine I became obsessed with Gondry. I started trying to track down all his music videos. I got a big help when PALM released their Directors Label series which featured Gondry. It had a pretty good collection of his videos. When comparing it to the Spike Jonze DVD I realized that I was not as into the musicians Gondry worked with. I loved the videos though and I found myself watching Bjork videos despite hating her music. His videos got me into several bands and complete inspired me. I couldn’t come up with just three favorites, but I tried to do my best… so keep reading to see three of my favorite Michel Gondry videos.

(Read the article)

Be Kind Rewind is the new film from Michel Gondry. It is about a video store clerk (Mos Def) who has a moronic friend (Jack Black) who accidentally erases all the movies. So they start making new movies themselves based on the erased movies. For those who insanely don’t know who Michel Gondry he is the man who directed Eternal Sunshine On The Spotless Mind. He is probably the most brilliant living film director who’s name is not Werner Herzog. That being said, Be Kind Rewind meanders. It drops some random plot points and a number of things don’t make sense. (For example, the movies they make are called Sweded versions, but no reason what so ever is given for that.) It is not exactly the best story telling on earth. Gondry is probably a much stronger director than he is a writer (this is the second film he has written, his last film, Science Of Sleep he also wrote, while his first two films were written by Charlie Kaufman. Anyway, the amazingness of the film more than makes up for it. It is extremely funny, completely inventive and overwhelmingly touching. Mos Def is sort of incredible playing a roll that is not only very out of character for him, but very different from any character I have seen anyone play. I had read some slightly negative reviews of it so I went in with slightly lowered expectations, but I have to say it blew me away and I was almost in tears at some points. Also, Danny Glover played the store owner and while I was not overwhelmed by his performance or anything, I did meet him and he was extremely nice.

Check out these two trailers. The first is the actual trailer, and the second is Michel Gondry’s Sweded version of the trailer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62CZL9Rhz8Y[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dJQ35rDs[/youtube]