It’s another episode of “Filmonsters!” and while I appreciate the inherent idea behind Full Moon composing hour long movies with broadly written monsters that vaguely resembled Universal’s staples, this second movie isn’t good. In fact it’s almost the exact same movie as “Frankenstein Reborn!” To evoke emotions in the vein of RL Stine’s “Goosebumps” the producers make a young girl the star of their story. I think if it took off, every “Filmonsters!” would have had young teenagers who realize something about themselves or their families while fighting monsters. I wonder if there would have been a “Gillman Reborn!” with a young girl realizing she’s from a family of ancient lizard people or something.
An Interview with Filmmaker Maude Michaud [WiHM 2017]
Maude Michaud is a multi-talented French-Canadian director, writer, producer, actress, etc. She creates horror films from scratch and that can hit close to home for some. Her films have shocked some and enthralled others; she has a style quite of her own.
The Bootleg Files: Une Femme Coquette
BOOTLEG FILES 578: “Une Femme Coquette” (1955 short directed by Jean-Luc Godard).
LAST SEEN: A possible unauthorized video dupe is on YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: The filmmaker never made it available for home entertainment release.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely at this time.
Over the past week, cinephiles on the Internet were in a lather over the news that a long-unseen Jean-Luc Godard film mysteriously turned up on YouTube. Since I am not a Godard fan, my initial reaction was one of mild indifference. But because the film’s arrival online came through what appears to be a bootleg copy, and since it only runs a mere nine minutes, I felt duty bound to give it a viewing.
An Interview with Staci Layne Wilson [WiHM 2017]
Staci Layne Wilson is well known for her film reviews, interviews (on camera and in writing), her writing, and now producing and directing. Her interests are varied, but she clearly has a preference for horror as seen in her films such as the trippy triptych The Key to Annabel Lee, the sexy Fetish Factory, etc. Her knowledge of the genre and Hollywood’s inner workings is wide and she uses it well in her creations.
Her trivia on IMDB is rather telling: “Has worn Freddy Krueger’s hero claw, George Romero’s glasses, and the original Hannibal Lecter mask.”
Joe’s Violin (2016)
Kahane Cooperman’s Academy Award-nominated documentary short offers a simultaneous pull on the heartstrings and a classical meditation on violin strings. The eponymous instrument is a violin donated by Joseph Feingold, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, to an instrument donation drive conducted by a radio station to help music students in cash-strapped schools in New York. The violin went to an all-girls academy in the Bronx, where it was presented to 12-year-old Brianna Perez, a gifted student from a broken home who aspires to become a music teacher.
Working Class (2011) [San Diego Film Week 2017]
Using A Tale of Two Cities, this documentary tells the story of Mike Giant in San Francisco and Mike Maxwell in San Diego who are both artists and friends who connected through tattoos the first put on the second. Throughout the film, their lives are paralleled and compared until it eventually brings them together.
Country: Portraits of an American Sound (2015)
This documentary made in 2015 and released in early 2017 explores how the image of country singer is developed through photography and has been since the very start of the music genre. Through interviews with photographers, artists, singers, and musicians, the history of country music is explored and the emphasis on how image can help make or break an artist’s popularity are explained as well as the process behind some memorable photographs done by various photographers, some specializing in country portraits and other specialized in portraits.