Simeon's Postcard From Cannes!

I just found the postcard I sent from The Cannes Film Festival back in May, behind the radiator. It reminded me of some of the great movies and gossip we picked up there and so, I thought I should share some of it with you. The truth is - I really don't know how I managed to fit so much text onto one little piece of card!

The sun is shining (intermittently) and the beach is wrecked, must have been some storm! Been doing my bit for GRIMM UP NORTH, but God its hard work - watching all those movies, attending so many exclusive parties, after a while it's tough to keep up! But I've also been doing my fair share of research, checking out the trade mags, looking at reviews and finding market screenings on a whole bunch of horror and associated movies. Can't always get into screenings - as I don't have an expensive Cannes Market badge - but have managed to sneak into most! So what's hot? Well, I have seen a whole bunch of films from all over the world and all, as yet, are unreleased in the UK.

Pick of the bunch - CHATROOM. Hideo Nakata, famous for RINGU (RINGU not PINGU), tries his hand at a British movie. Not really horror, more thriller as the movie blends the beautifully visualised virtual world of the internet chat room with the real world, following a band of friends seamlessly from one plane to the other. Aaron Johnson (fresh from his success in KICK ASS and still only 19) plays the messed up lead, who's hatred of his own life leads him to destroy others through the virtual world. Nice concept!

THE SILENT HOUSE is definitely worth looking out for. An 83 minute one take wonder from Uruguay. You have to see it to believe it and its stylish and scary too! Plot logic leads a little to be desired but putting that aside, it's a hell of an achievement on a real low budget.

KABOOM, the latest crazy conspiracy filled bi-sexual romp from prolific US director Gregg Arraki caught my eye. It's quirky and really quite enjoyable, even scary at times. Definitely worth a watch.

BEDEVILLED, seemed to just call out to me from the trade mags and when I charmed my way into a private screening, I wasn't disappointed. A very dark Korean movie about a city girl going home to an insular isolated island society and finding her sister's husband is the most abusive, twisted man you could imagine. Needless to say the film ends in VERY bloody revenge. The film builds and builds and when the inevitable violent retribution (don't underestimate the graphic nature of this, either) finally comes, you find yourself empathising with every visceral murder. Extreme!

GOSSIP. Seems everyone was talking about A SERBIAN FILM and I was warned by its sales company, that it wasn't for the squeamish, it's apparently very extreme in its content. Haven't yet seen it but its reputation goes before it. I'm guessing it might well screen at FRIGHTFEST this August (Turns out our Simeon was right, clever boy - Noel).

SHADOW. A Italian horror from rock star Frederico Zampaglione. A real mix of sub genres in this piece, verging from psychological twists of the JACOB'S LADDER variety, through to clear homage's to the grand guignol of classic Argento - really quite fun, but a little schizoid in tone.

PROWL, is one of the '8 films to die for' strand, which you may well of heard of. We screened DREAD and THE GRAVES from last year's lineup. This year they are actually producing their own movies, rather than just picking up existing movies and PROWL is one of them. I was particularly interested in this film, as it was edited by Celia Haining, who also cut my own movie SPLINTERED. As the second film from MANHUNT director Patrik Syversen, PROWL isn't bad but is a little slow to build. Set in the states and shot, I think, in Eastern Europe, it kinda shows! Still, it holds some great action scenes as our heroin finds herself at the mercy of a pack of wild vampires holed up in a disused factory. Nicely edited, I might add, but then I'm biased!

Sooooo… what else, what else? Well, I missed THE PACK, French zombie movie, which was due to be screened on the outdoor beach screen but didn't happen. But caught Greek Zombie movie EVIL IN THE TIME OF HEROES, which has been picked up for Edinburgh, it's kinda crazy, funny and scary at the same time. If a Zombie film can be camp, then, I think this is it. It's even got Billy Zane in it! Overall, this has some nice action scenes, pretty high production values and nasty deaths to keep you entertained - along with unfathomable logic and mystifying plot. Could just become a cult classic!

I've got a feeling I posted a second card from Cannes, but not entirely sure. The combination of being drunk or hung over tends to blur the mind. But if I find it folks, you'll be the first to know.

That's it for now.

Simeon halligan
Festival Director

You Really Don’t Want To See That! - The Unfilmable Novels of Jim Thompson

This year, at Grimm Up North, we will be looking directly at the transition from page to screen, with a series of discussions, seminars and screenings in association with the Manchester Literature Festival. We’ll be seeing how accurately that transition can be made, what is lost and what is gained in the process. We’ll be looking at genre writers who have made the move onto the big screen, considering why some have had more success there than others, looking at what translates well, and what doesn’t.

It might seem a strange observation for a film programmer to make, but there are certain things which really do defy the art of film. There are books that are genuinely unfilmable. There are images which should remain on the printed page.

Fear not, Grimmfans, I am not getting all morally self-righteous here. I am not advocating censorship, nor would I ever. The first rule of cinema is Show Not Tell. And this goes double for horror cinema, where the purpose is to expose an audience to its fears - to everything that sickens, appals and traumatises.

And yet there are some horrors best left to the written word - not because they are too much to bear, but because they simply do not translate to the screen. I found myself thinking this during a recent viewing of Michael Winterbottom’s film version of Jim Thompson’s classic hardboiled noir novel THE KILLER INSIDE ME.

James Myers Thompson (1906 - 1977), the “Dimestore Dostoyevsky”, is cited by Stephen King and Harlan Ellison as their favourite crime writer. Stanley Kubrick described this particular novel as “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered”. But significantly, though Kubrick collaborated with Thompson on a couple of screenplays, he never even attempted to film any of his books. He knew better than to try. Nevertheless there have been various noble efforts to capture Thompson‘s worldview on screen, most notably Sam Peckinpah in THE GETAWAY, and Stephen Frears in THE GRIFTERS. But none really comes close to the original books.

And now there is Winterbottom’s KILLER INSIDE ME. The film of course generated acres of press controversy over its graphic depiction of violence against women, with defenders claiming this was true to the book, and detractors claiming the director was glamourising the violence. This is a very minor illustration of the difficulty of translating words on the page into images onscreen. It is one thing for Thompson to talk of a woman’s face being pounded to “stew meat, hamburger”. It is another to show it. But, hell, we’re hardened horror fans, here, right? We can cope with a few shocking images of violence? Of course we can.

But this is not my bone of contention. Where I think the film actually falls down is in failing to understand how dependent the novel’s success is on its entirely interior perspective of events. THE KILLER INSIDE ME is a first person narrative by a paranoid schizophrenic, and it is the worldview of this narrator, Sherriff Lou Ford that unifies what is actually a rather ramshackle and rambling plot. So dominant is Ford’s voice in the book, that I was convinced that the film had added all of the messy unconvincing scenes towards the end. It was a real shock to go back to the original text and discover that the film was following the book verbatim. The narrative failings were Thompson’s, not Winterbottom’s. And yet the novel succeeds where the film does not, because the narrative is less important to Thompson than the narrator. This is a study of Lou Ford’s gradual exposure and mental collapse. Once events are exteriorised, objectified, separated from the perspective of Ford himself, all we are left with is a series of loosely connected events and a melodramatic conclusion. What works on the page does not work onscreen.

And this is one of Thompson’s more straightforward, least grotesque novels. His is a world of political and social corruption, dominated entirely by baser instincts and emotions, and peopled by psychotics, sociopaths, paranoids, hysterics, self-loathing neurotics and oedipal wrecks. The only half-way decent human being in this world is the huckster-lawyer, Isidore Kossmeyer, one of Thompson’s very few recurring characters, who for all of his liberal values and championing of the underdog is more than half-charlatan. Written quickly, even carelessly at times, Thompson’s novels start in a recognisable hardboiled pulp-exploitation world of randy bellboys, womanising travelling salesmen, bank robbers on the run and hitmen on a job, and end up somewhere truly nightmarish. Functional, meat-and-potatoes pulp prose suddenly grows floridly poetic, wryly satiric, or startlingly experimental. Narratives break down just as effectively as their narrators. The novels eat themselves alive, perform their own literary deconstruction. They implode or explode as messily and spectacularly as their protagonists and narrators. Thus, Frank Dillon’s account of events in A HELL OF A WOMAN becomes ever more unreliable, and self-deceiving, until it finally splits right down the middle. In SAVAGE NIGHT, Charlie Bigger, the undersized hitman, increasingly beset by feelings of inadequacy and his own shrinking influence, ends by describing his own gory dismemberment as the thematic and metaphoric suddenly becomes horrifically literal. Thompson’s novels bleed into one another. A situation one character finds himself in at the close of one book may be a stepping off point for a whole new novel about an entirely different set of characters. Partly, this is the result of a pulp writer’s instinct for getting as much mileage as possible out of an idea, but more importantly it reflects Thompson’s seeming need to take every idea to its darkest, most troubling place. And then find a different approach in a different novel that will enable him to go even further with it.

Thompson has been an inspiration for several generations of literary extremists, in a variety of genres, as well as in supposedly more “serious” fiction, and whether it be through adaptation, or appropriation of theme, his influence dominates contemporary noir and crime cinema, from Quentin Tarantino to John Dahl. But nothing onscreen could ever come close to the horrors Thompson left between the pages of his 20-odd grubby paperback originals.

- STEVE BALSHAW,Film Programmer, GRIMM UP NORTH

Noel's Review: Frozen

Having had the chance to meet Frozen writer/director Adam Green (alongside his close friend, Wrong Turn 2 helm Joe Lynch), it's clear to see how the director has fashioned such a cult following with genre fans.

At last year's FrightFest, the pair were almost omnipotent and seemed to be reveling in getting down to some serious fun and frolics with everyone and anyone around. Their homage to An American Werewolf in London was a festival highlight and their presence was enough to make me - and probably many others - seek out their work when I got home.

Green will return to the Leicester Square event in August this year with the UK premier of his sequel to the 2006 rural hack-a-thon Hatchet that made his name - although I must admit that, having now seen the original, this isn't one I'm champing at the bit to catch. However, the premise of Frozen, which is set to be launched by Momentum in September, is one that is well capable of sparking curiosity.

Where Hatchet was set to the misty backdrop of a New Orleans swamp, Frozen uses a desolate ski resort to inflict terror on its trio of victims. Three teenagers - one of whom is bizarrely named Joe Lynch - manage to scam a late night trip down the mountain having bribed the chairlift operator. When a mix up at the controls sees them stranded in the chair, the gang must face the fact that due to the harsh conditions and real possibility they'll be stuck there for days, they are going to have to take action - or die.

It’s a great high concept premise that's backed by some pretty engaging performances and, for the most part, provides some pretty enjoyable fare. The relationship between the three leads, a young couple and a male best friend who feels he is being squeezed out, is enough to give the simple narrative a little extra drama. The introduction of an extra threat in the second act could be deemed unnecessary by those looking for a deeper, more contemplative piece of film. However, it's not really enough to derail what is a pretty entertaining 94 minutes.

Some slightly odd dramatic choices involving the female lead allow the music to swell to a score that is a little reminiscent of Michael Giachinno's work on Lost - which makes for some pretty strange moments. Here, I felt myself questioning whether I was witnessing a directorial misstep, but feel it may have more to do with Green's own sense of humour. But all in all, these are mild criticisms for a film that - while not achieving its full conceptual potential - is well worth your time.

Noel Mellor
Grimm Up North Online Marketing Co-ordinator

The Fear

(I only posted this picture to prove how hip I am because I know a song by Lilly Allen)

The beauty of horror films comes from throwing the audience into a world that is so vile and disgusting, so far removed from normal life that you can’t help but sit, stare, clench your teeth and stick it out.
This provides the basis for this blog post. I’ve picked out some choice moments from cinema (and video games) that have stuck with me for all the wrong reasons. These aren’t the scariest films or games ever to be produced but they have certainly had a lasting effect on me.

The first is The Fly (Cronenberg 1986). It’s worth pointing out that I feel physically sick even thinking about this film. I hate any kind of body transformation, mutilation, transmogrification or any combination of the previous. So it’s safe to say that the story of an eccentric scientist (have you ever met a scientist that wasn’t eccentric?) who, through a failed experiment, begins to morph into a fly.

I originally watched this a few years ago on TV, I knew a little about the film so I thought why not? Despite being repulsed from start to finish, I stuck it out and god was that a mistake.

The worst bit? Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) vomiting on his food so he can eat it.
I’m desperately struggling to think about sweets and kittens in order to get The Fly out of my head. Maybe my next pick will help.

Super Mario Bros. (1993) (according to Wikipedia, no less than three people directed this film so that goes some way to describing what a mess this is). Anyway you’re probably rolling around on the floor laughing (or whatever the kids are doing nowadays) but bear with me.

Bob Hoskins has publicly said that it’s the worst thing he’s done, not the worst film he’s done, but the worst thing he’s done. Hoskins stars opposite the ‘great’ John Leguizamo so you know you’re off to a winner. Anyway I could rant about this all day...

I saw this film as a sweet innocent child way back at Christmas, many years ago. I distinctly remember eating a bowl of spaghetti hoops while watching it. The scene that haunts me so much? When Princess Daisy’s Dad (at this point, a giant ball of snot) comes down a pipe. He’s just a ball of goo, he has bits flaking off him, it looks like sick, it reminds me of being sick and it makes me sick! It’s also safe to say that I’ve never actually eaten spaghetti hoops since.

And finally a video game. Resident Evil (the first one). I’ve never been a big Playstation guy and thus I’ve missed out on a lot of classics. A few years ago I got my hands on a PS2 and decided to catch up on what I’d missed. I borrowed the original Resident Evil from a friend and decided to play it. I’m good at games, I don’t like survival horror but I’m good at games, so what’s the problem?

Well I put in the game, watched the opening cutscenes, walked into the mansion (very slowly) and when the zombie dog jumped through the window... I turned it off and I haven’t touched it since.

JD Douglas-Walton

Writer & Networker for Grimm Up North

Review: The Inhabited Island

The Inhabited Island

2008 Directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk

This a sci-fi action adventure from Russia in two parts, set in the distant future where mankind has harnessed the abilities of the human body giving them superior strength and intellect. They use these abilities to travel vast distances throughout the galaxies. When a young space traveller named 'Maksim' crash lands on an unknown world he finds the local inhabitants at war with one another. Ignorant of Maksim's home world (Earth), the indigenous people are largely a more technically advanced race, but have yet to experience space travel themselves. Maksim's crash landing on the planet has destroyed his ship, leaving him stranded with no hope of rescue. In an attempt to integrate himself into this new society he chooses to join the army, propelling him on an epic adventure in which he must try to uncover the secrets the planet holds and attempt to overthrow the governing rulers known as 'The Unknown Fathers.'

This film is brilliant! It takes the form of two films - each roughly around two hours long - and reminds me of a cross between Riddick and Lord of the Rings. The budget of roughly $36 million seems to have been well spent with some impressively picturesque landscapes and equally impressive CGI. The Inhabited Island puts Night and Day Watch (the only other Russian films I remember enjoying) to shame. The sheer epic grandeur of this film coupled with it's beautiful cinematography makes it a must see.

4.5/5

Jez Blackmore

Noel's Movie Review: Slice

One of the glorious things about being involved in Grimm Up North is you can fully indulge all of your cinematic desires in films that you may otherwise have never gotten around to seeing. Often these movies will be deep within the horror genre, while others will toe the line with this and anything from sci-fi, comedy, drama and thriller.

Slice is a film that does just that, borrowing from both police procedural slashers like Seven and unrelenting coming of age tales like Slumdog Millionaire. Like Slumdog, director Kongkiat Khomsiri's story takes place in the present but recalls a past fraught with childish mischief and the cruelty of the adult world. But here, the modern day is unconcerned with romance and joy, but instead focuses on bringing a brutal serial killer to justice.

The story follows Tai, an incarcerated ex-cop who has been released and charged with the task of tracking down the murderer, who has taken to removing the genitals of his victims, cramming them where the sun don't shine and often disposing of them in a large red suitcase. It seems some of the behavior of the killer links to Tai's childhood friend Nut and when this link grows stronger it becomes clear he will have to look back at the troubled childhood they spent together if he is ever to see his criminal record wiped clean and be reunited with his wife.

Early on, Slice sets out its stall by appearing as traditional an eastern take on a western thriller as you would expect. Scenes are beautifully crafted and there is an element of suspense that hangs over a plot that, while certainly familiar, delivers plenty of shocks, kills and crime scene investigations.

However, at some point roughly halfway through, I became very aware that what I was watching was not the template for a US remake featuring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, but instead had shifted towards being an incredibly engaging coming of age drama. The story of Tai and Nut's background becomes such a huge part of the narrative that it threatens to run away with the film, only to be brought in to a spine-shattering climax that literally made me exclaim "No, fucking, way" at the top of my voice despite watching the movie alone.

Slice is an absolute gem of a movie that, while shifting slightly uncomfortably between genres occasionally, is nothing short of breathtaking. The beautiful golden locations of some of the flashbacks serve as a stark companion to the grittier neons of the modern street scenes. But this really just gives you more to watch.
Hailing from Thailand and without a release date in many countries, it's difficult to say when Slice will make it to cinemas or store shelves in the UK, but with a thoroughly absorbing story and a mind-blowing last act, you would do well to make a note of its name.

Noel Mellor

Grimm Up North is going to FrightFest!

The final line-up of films has been announced for this year's annual Frightfest horror movie festival in London and once again the team has put together a whole host of terrifying treats.

Of course, tickets and festival passes sold like hot cakes when they went onsale this weekend and your loveable Grimm Up North! blogger, podcaster and all-round gorehound (me) will be there once again to check out what sinister slices of cinematic filth have been lined up. I'll be reporting back here, writing on my own blog and reviewing on Eat Sleep Live Film over the course of the five-day festival. Plus, as I'll be attending with 35mm Heroes co-hosts Jordan McGrath and Ian Loring (Cinerama), you can expect plenty of audio and video coverage to boot.

So, the tickets are booked, the hotel sorted and the train taken care of and in just under eight weeks time I'll be heading to the Empire Cinema in London's Leicester Square. But what are the movies lined up this year that I'm most looking forward too? Well, read on and you'll see!

The festival kicks off proper on Thursday 26th August in the Main Empire screen at 6.30pm with the latest offering from Adam Green. As one half of the event's unofficial mascots (the other being Wrong Turn 2 helm Joe Lynch), it's hardly a surprise the slasher sequel gets its World Premiere here - but it should definitely get things kicked off with a bang. The rest of the evening promises typically rural terror in Primal and a modern take on Hammer in Dead Cert. The latter features Danny Dyer, but the synopsis sounds pretty interesting so hopefully that will cancel out my general disdain for the one-note mockney monkey. A cast list that also includes Jayson Fleming, Craig Fairbrass and Dexter Fletcher would suggest we can expect Buffy meets Lock Stock here - so this could be well worth a watch.

With the Discovery Screen open for business on Friday, there are some tempting options to be had. But with the day devoted to genre legend Tobe Hooper in the Main Screen it could well be an easy decision for many. First up is a screening of his lost debut Eggshells, a psychedelic sci-fi oddity that leads up to an interview with the man himself and a showing of his 1974 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The rest of the night has Brit crime thriller Isle of Dogs, the mysteriously titled F and an Aussie flick that promises to be somewhere between Halloween and No Country For Old Men - Red Hill. The last of the night's fun in the Main Screen is high-concept slash sockey fest Aliens Vs Ninja, which has to be better than the Paul WS Anderson film it sounds like an offshoot of. Meanwhile, during Eggshells, I plan to be over in Discovery checking out an odd little curio by the name of Burning Bright, the story of what happens when your house gets invaded by a Bengal Tiger.

Saturday pits The Cottage director Paul Andrew Williams' latest Cherry Tree Lane against Switchblade Romance cinematographer Maxime Alexandre's Christoipher Roth - with the latter just tweaking my interest that little bit more. But then my attention falls back to the Main where we have a few premieres, including a European one for the remake of I Spit On Your Grave, the latest remake of a 70s genre classic - which I will have my fingers (and legs) firmly crossed for. One other that seems of particular interest that night is Monsters, a post-apocalyptic feature that seems to take at least some cues from District 9.

An early start again with The Pack and Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island on the Sunday followed by a quiz and a Short Film Showcase and then we head for a triple whammy of film's I'm hugely excited for. First up is We Are What We Are, the story of modern day cannibalism in the context of a family drama, then slightly lighter fare in teen cult flick Kaboom and finally, the one that is set to have tongues seriously wagging should the Daily Mail ever find out about it - A Serbian Movie. If you don't already know about this, you should check out the early buzz. If it is as shocking as some would seem to suggest, it may be one not to miss.

As the last day of the festival, Monday brings with it my most eagerly anticipated film bar none. Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Video Tape documents what is, for me, one of the most fascinating periods in modern film history and one which I have read, watched and written a great deal about. Running at only 60 minutes, it may not be that long, but a celebrity panel discussion afterwards promises much interesting debate.

Elsewhere, the Discovery Screen will offer the opportunity to check out some of the films that have already been screened and perhaps missed, but it will really be a case of juggling these with the likes of The Dead, Bedevilled and Red White & Blue in the Main before settling in for the UK premiere of the Eli Roth produced The Last Excorcism, with the one and only 'Bear Jew' in attendance to take questions from the audience.

All in all, it promises to be a great finish to a fantastic five days of horror. Frightfest is now a well-established showcase event in the UK movie festival calendar and I am thrilled to be going for only the second time. Watch this space to get an exclusive insight into everything that goes down and which cinematic gems you'll need to keep those eyes peeled for!

Noel Mellor
Grimm Up North Online Marketing Co-ordinator