the last days of a 23 seat cinema

Branagh to jet in as tiny cinema closes

Feb 18 2008 Wales
Kenneth Branagh is to jet in to a tiny back garden cinema for a film premiere finale on the day the venue closes for good.
The actor and director flies into Wales at the weekend to take his place in a 23-seat former railway wagon in Gorseinon, near Swansea.
The unlikely cinema venue, known as La Charette, is closing after 55 years because its crumbling structure is too costly to maintain.
But the curtain goes down on the smallest cinema in Wales which regularly shows films with the highest-profile screening in its history. Alien Love Triangle, a science-fiction comedy directed by Danny Boyle, gets its first screening anywhere in the world on Saturday.

Read more about the cinema here and here.

primal sex therapy

2 Stabbed While Watching Horror Movie at California Theater

FULLERTON – Two men were stabbed and injured Sunday night while watching a horror film at the AMC Theater in Fullerton during what appears to be a random attack, police say.
Shortly before 7:30 p.m., officers were sent to the theater at 1000 S. Lemon St. after someone reported finding a bag with what appeared to be illegal substances, said Fullerton police Lt. Tom Basham.
While the officers were at the theater, people started running out of the theater showing "The Signal," including two men with blood on them, Basham said.
Just before people started running out in a panic, two men sitting in separate areas of the theater were randomly stabbed by an unknown man, Basham said.
"He started stabbing at the theater seat and then he stabbed the victim," Basham said. "As he fled, he stabbed another victim sitting near the exit."
Basham said the victims did not know each other or the attacker.
One man suffered a stab wound to the arm, which also punctured his chest, and was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange. The other man was also stabbed in the arm and was taken to St. Jude Medical Center. Both are expected to survive.
The attacker, who is believed to have been kicked out of the theater earlier, escaped.
No arrest has been made, but police are following some leads.
"The Signal," a horror-comedy, is told in three parts from three perspectives, in which a mysterious transmission invades every cell phone, radio and TV, turning people into killers. One character estimates that "one out of every two people" are impulsively murdering the other one, according to reviews of the film.
Basham said the film was paused while police conducted their investigation. When it was resumed, the first scene was a stabbing, he said.

Don't know what the fuss is all about. I stabbed THREE people when I first saw THE SIGNAL at the European Film Market last year in Berlin. No, I am not bragging about going to Berlin, I am bragging about stabbing people. Big difference.

a hole in my heart where a fire rages

Today I woke to the news that a 6 alarm fire had consumed the block on Queen Street that was the home to the Queen location of Suspect Video, a store where I worked for several years. I went on to manage at the Markham Street location, but started out at the Queen store and I fully credit it's owners, Luis Ceriz and Merrill Shapiro, for making me the person that I am today.

Luis and Merrill were supportive of everything I did - zines, screenings, poster + print collecting, film fest, travel, drinking, etc. Personally, I think that Luis Ceriz is an unsung hero of film culture in Toronto. Suspect is a vast resource forr film buffs offering up so many gems that you can't access from any other place. While there are other video stores that stock similar wares, Suspect also had books, magazines, toys, ephemera and sponsored events.

When I published my zine Asian Eye, Luis sold it for me on consignment, something he did for many other zinesters including Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu and the dearly missed Infiltration. When I cleaned out the basement of the old Chinatown cinema, the Golden Princess (now The Royal) of posters, Luis let me sell them in the store and even drove me to NYC in a cube van filled with posters to sell them at the Chiller Theatre Convention in New Jersey. He took out ads and sponsored my film screening events like Kung Fu Fridays. When I returned to the Princess and got possession of 200 Chinese 35mm film prints, he helped me store them in the basement of the Queen Suspect/Record Peddler. Now that collection is in the process of being donated to the University of Toronto. I can't do justice the amount of respect and praise that I have for Luis. That is why my heart goes out to him and his family right now.

Suspect was not the only loss as the block also housed one of the last and best stereo shops, National Sound and also Duke's Cycles where I just bought a bike tire pump from a few weeks ago. This fire will usher in a new, urbanized and sanitized Queen Street. A true loss.

Here is a story about Suspect on the CItyNews website that was posted just days ago. Here are reader submitted pics of the smoke and devastation of the fire

Garo and I trying to assemble mixed up single reels after our haul.

Dario and I in happier days before he called my endeavours "racist."

We met in the porn section.
Scott Reynolds, the director of one of my all time favourite films, HEAVEN.
(Where are you Scott? Email me or something! I miss you!)

Another chance meeting in the smut room - Gerald Martinez, author of
"What It Is, What It Was" and part of Tarantino's Rolling Thunder dream.
(And again - where are you?)

.

Sometimes the tightest bonds

To any non-Canadians (and other specific provinces, naturally) that may be reading here, I wish to inform you that a great deal of us are being lazy and accepting a new holiday here in the wonderful, toppermost parts of North America. It's fitting too because we're all starting to climb the walls, act snippy and we're going to shreik if it starts to snow again as it's never stopped, really. This joke is wearing thin again and winter can gladly pack up and head elsewhere (is Australia busy?) for all we care. I'm glad there's a new 'day off' and it makes me feel a little closer to our European friends and ancestors who seemingly never work and have all kinds of leisure time, damn them.

So, get out and try to enjoy the weather anyway. And happy Family Day to you all, regardless of how messed up your relatives actually are! I'm going to take a bunch of space and hopefully give you a little smile as I celebrate the dynamics of the domestic unit here in poster form.

Planet Der Affen

cause my love is a monster

english subtitled trailer for "Los Monstruos del Terror" aka:

Assignment Terror
Dracula Versus Frankenstein
Dracula jagt Frankenstein
Dracula vs. Frankenstein
Hombre que vino de Ummo
Operation Terror
Operazione terrore
The Man Who Came from Ummo
Dracula contre Frankenstein

She's Big! She's Beautiful!

Again, found over at the fabulous blog, The Manchester Morgue (you need the application Comical to view the zipped files of the scans). And as blog author phelpster sez:

"You know what they say, the only thing better than a big ass monkey wreaking havoc atop a building is a big ass naked woman wreaking havoc atop a building."

valentines pin-ups

Going through the great collection of Vampirella comics that have been posted up over at The Manchester Morgue (you need the application Comical to view them). Don't think these would have been my first choice posters back when I read Vampy...

Be glad and blissfully sated

May love (or a reasonable facsimile that you may actually prefer) touch each and every one of you in a special place and in a special way on this blessed day of deep sentimental value and uplifiting symbolism.

100 Proof

Richard Burton and Richard Harris are so clearly chain-drinking actual booze (or otherwise suffering from the DTs) in all their scenes in The Wild Geese you can get drunk just watching the movie. Burton leads a team of mercenaries (including ginger-mopped Harris, Hardy Kruger and Roger Moore) on a violent rescue mission in Africa (it was filmed in South Africa during Apartheid). This trailer won't get you trashed, unless you're running on an empty stomach.

Roy Scheider: 1932 - 2008

Blink And You'll Miss Gainsbourg

Bande-annonce du film Erotissimo (1968)!

Another Hole In My Education

What is wrong with me? There's a Michael Cimino film starring Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges and I haven't seen it? Shame on you, Me!

Trailer for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)!