Kathleen Murphy writes: "Dutch filmmaker Tom Six's The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2010) accumulated disgust, death threats and lots of video-on-demand dough. It was hard for most people to hear the film's premise, let alone watch the thing. Framing this almost documentary-style nightmare about a deranged doctor's experiment to surgically join three human guinea pigs mouth to anus, Six betrayed no horror or compassion. The chilling result was an artful picture of outrageous physiological violation, the kind a Dr. Mengele might perform out of sheer scientific curiosity. What's on view in HC is beyond revolting; even worse is the film's oppressive nihilism, as God's noblest creations are reduced to tripartite intestine. "Now Mr. Six has dumped a sequel on the slavering horror-fan market. Your consumer reporter must warn you that The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) outdoes the first film in repulsiveness. It revels in blood and excrement, vicious cruelty and atrocity, and the casualties are more numerous, including a pregnant woman. "OK, that's blunt enough to warn most of you off this repellent movie. But if anyone's still reading, I'd like to share some observations about Six's cinematic descent into dreck."......Read on at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-human-centipede-2-full-sequence/#Review_0
By Kat MurphyAfter getting up early and driving for three hours, perhaps the first film you watch in the Vancouver International Film Festival should not be Chantal Akerman's Almayer's Folly, all two-plus hours of it. Akerman is not the liveliest of directors; her style is lengthy staring, to frame a scene and contemplate it with lacerating intensity, as though seeing clearly could be an acid test for truth. Tired as I was, this provocative director's exploration of cultural, ethnic and gender powerplays held me captive for much of its long running time.
In connection with the vintage reviews of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers being posted here, we offer a biographical sketch of their director.
SIFF Cinema is set for the Grand Opening of its new screening facility at Seattle Center as well as the reopening of the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood triplex, the Uptown. Various events are for SIFF donors and members only, but the general public is welcome to scope out the new film center near Republican & Warren on Sunday, October 23, 12 noon to 5 p.m........
Like many owners of dogs in Seattle, Steve Nesbitt got Boomer through a rescue outfit. Boomer, a 5-year-old Australian shepherd, was dismissed by a family who couldn't deal with his rambunctious attitude and demand for love.
The Pacific Northwest Ballet presents All Tharp, the world premier of two original works, Opus 111 and Afternoon Ball, plus the Frank Sinatra inspired "Nine Sinatra Songs," through Sunday, Oct 5. $25-$155. 301 Mercer St. Visit www.pnb.org for information and tickets.
Two years ago, Suzi LeVine of Queen Anne was lamenting the lack of Jewish activities in her neighborhood and all of Seattle. And the services she had been to in the Puget Sound region had been the rigid, traditional services wrapped in guilt, and she was tired of its lack of inspiration and joy.
Kathleen Murphy writes: "A huge hit at Sundance, Martha Marcy May Marlene has continued to wow festival audiences at Cannes, New York and Toronto. Wide release should extend first-time feature director Sean Durkin's winning streak: This psychological suspenser cum horror movie fairly pulses with cumulative dread, teasing our nerve endings with scrabbling spider feet of unease until we lose any sense of existential equilibrium. But it's the searing intensity of Elizabeth Olsen's performance, as a bruised young woman with many names and a dearth of identity, that assures Martha Marcy May Marlene standing among the best films of 2011." Continue the search for identity at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/martha-marcy-may-marlene/#Review_0
Since Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century is about to be shown twice as part of the new/old Uptown Cinemas reawakening (noon Sunday, Oct. 23 and 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26), we're supplying both incentive and context by posting some notes Kathleen Murphy wrote for a 2003 Los Angeles County Museum of Art series. And if you're curious to see more of the Hawks pictures mentioned, drop in at Video Isle or Scarecrow Video....
Sound Transit officials are hoping the second time is the charm for Proposition 1, a transit ballot measure that went down to a stinging defeat at the polls last year.
They keep dropping like flies.Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Washington Mutual Bank and on Monday, Wachovia, the fourth largest investment bank in the nation with holdings across the country and its name stamped on Philadelphia's sporting centers, met its fate and is poised to be sold to Wells Fargo and Citigroup. All of this while the nation's lawmakers work out the details of a generally accepted $700 billion bailout plan aimed at righting the nation's listing economy.
Lucio Fulci's best-known title Zombie has been having midnight shows at the Egyptian this weekend, in anticipation of the movie's release on Blu-ray. In 1979, under the movie's influence at a south-of-Seattle drive-in, we tore a Styrofoam ice chest to pieces ... but that's another story. Kathleen Murphy wrote a bit about the goremeister in a "Zombie Jamboree" feature a few years ago. Click "Read More" to partake of that. And if you simply must have the disc, here's a commercial contact:http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-2-Disc-Ultimate-Blu-ray-Farrow/dp/B005CU5OEU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318925855&sr=8-1
Kathleen Murphy: "As long as I can remember, I’ve loved horror movies, delighted in stories about monsters getting loose in the dark, scaring complacent squares to death. Scared me, too, but deep down I confess I've always been primally tickled when vampires, blobs, giant bugs, werewolves, and aliens broke all the rules. What liberating joy when some long-faced mayor/military officer/scientist/minister, confronted by nightmare, had to eat his platitudes!" And further remarks to put you in a Halloween mood......
The 2008 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival felt a mite shrunken. That, I hasten to add, applied only from the selfish perspective of the film press corps. The citizenry of Toronto still had a gloriously abundant and amazingly well-run festival to experience for 10 days in September, with upwards of 300 astutely chosen movies from every corner of the globe, every imaginable genre and budgetary level - in other words, still the most comprehensive and valuable film festival in North America.
It's one thing to break a leg during a theatrical performance, it's quite another to have it gnawed off by limpy, discolored zombies running amok in Anytown, USA.Yet that is what awaits Reginald Andre Jackson, a veteran Seattle actor who plays Ben, the hero of "Night of the Living Dead," a ghoulish stage