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4 items from 2011

29 October 2011 2:30 PM, PDT | SoundOnSight | See recent SoundOnSight news »

Choosing my favourite horror films of all time is like choosing between my children – not that I have children, but if I did, I am sure I would categorize them quite like my DVD collection. As with all lists, this is personal and nobody will agree with every choice – and if you do, that would be incredibly disturbing. Also, it was almost impossible for me to rank them in order, but I tried. I based my list taking into consideration three points:

1- Technical accomplishments / artistry and their influence on the genre.

2- How many times I’ve revisited the films and how easily it makes for a repeated viewings.

3- Its story, atmosphere and how much it affected me when I first watched them.

Finally, there are many great films such as The Witchfinder General, The Wickerman and even Hour Of The Wolf that won’t appear here. I »

- Ricky

25 October 2011 5:12 AM, PDT | HollywoodChicago.com | See recent HollywoodChicago.com news »

Chicago – Halloween just isn’t the same without an Onryō. Thanks to America’s tireless remakes of Japanese horror films, the materialization of Onryōs in pop culture has become as much of a seasonal tradition as witches and goblins. They’re often characterized by long black hair, white robes, bodily contortions, tragic backstories and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance beyond the grave.

In short, Onryōs unnervingly embody the old adage that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…even a dead one.” It’s easy to see how spine-tingling modern classics like “Ringu” and “Ju-on: The Grudge” followed in the ghostly footsteps of Kaneto Shindô’s overlooked 1968 masterwork, “Kuroneko” (“Black Cat”). Though the film is more hypnotic than scary, it still manages to creep under the skin as it spins a tale of real emotional and erotic power.

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

As in Shindô’s better-known 1964 classic, “Onibaba,” this film »

- adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)

25 April 2011 7:00 AM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

[Never before seen in the Us, Kaneto Shindo's Children of Hiroshima, a searing anti-nuclear war film gets a theatrical release in a new 35mm print for a week (April 22nd through 28th), as a part of the traveling retrospective- The Urge for Survival: Kaneto Shindo, at the Brooklyn Academy of the Music (Bam). The retrospective will continue with Shindo's 11 other films until May 5th.]Takako (Nobuko Otowa, director Shindo's muse and wife, seen in Naked Island, Kuroneko, Onibaba) is an elementry school teacher on a small island. She decides to visit her home town, Hiroshima, during the Summer school recess to pay respect for her family who perished when the atom bomb fell four years ago. She is also looking for surviving children from »

23 April 2011 6:59 AM, PDT | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

Updated through 4/23.

"A movie that has waited nearly 60 years for a Us theatrical premiere and could hardly be more timely, Kaneto Shindo's Children of Hiroshima is a somber melodrama about the aftereffects of atomic radiation, shot on location in the half-rebuilt site of the world's first nuclear catastrophe." J Hoberman in the Voice: "Showing for a week at Bam in advance of an 11-film Shindo retrospective (The Urge for Survival, which includes a feature the 99-year-old director completed this year), Hiroshima is a priori heartrending."

The L's Mark Asch notes that "opening night is now a benefit screening, acknowledging the layers of relevance accrued since the film was programmed. This 1952 atomic-fallout drama, where news-value location footage and statistics-quoting supporting cast coexist with social-issue-movie score and serious voiceover, stars moonfaced Nobuko Otowa, Shindo's wife and a star of all the films in the series save his most recent (she died in »

4 items from 2011