The Afghanistan Witch Project, Coming to Tribeca (Flix99.com)
The Afghanistan Witch Project, Coming to Tribeca
BLAIR WITCH director Daniel Myrick resurfaces at Tribeca with a horror film set in Afghanistan right after 9/11.
Probably in part thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival’s new pre-fest review embargo, it’s been extremely difficult thus far to get a sense of which of the festivals many, many titles are actually worth seeking out and seeing. I’m sure the embargo has a purpose, but the fact remains that we’re now five days away from opening night, and we’re starring down a festival devoid of buzz. As someone trying to figure out how to cover the thing, I’m in the odd position of reevaluating givens: I don’t know what to do with the rest of the lineup, but I know Tom Hall’s last blog post makes me think Speed Racer looks fucking awesome.
So spelunking the catalog, all I really have to go on is keywords. And, my my, what keywords do we have for the Encounters selection, The Objective: A horror film. Set in Afghanistan, beginning three days after 9/11. About a Special Ops mission in search of an Al Qaeda nukes stash, gone horribly wrong. Directed by Daniel Myrick, best known as the co-director of The Blair Witch Project. Are our jaws dropping in unison?
It’s the kind of film everyone would be talking about, if only Tribeca would let us review it before it premieres. But, they didn’t put an embargo on reviewing the trailer…
Based on the trailer embedded above, it looks like Myrick has dropped the shaky-cam, subjects-as-spectactors-as-hunted faux-documentary thing in favor of stable cameras and polished HD. But otherwise, the plot of the Objective seems to be an exact makeover of The Blair Witch Project, except transposed to Taliban-controlled, just-pre-US-invasion Afghanistan. A bunch of young people venture out into unchartered territory on a mission; they wake up to find that their shit has been fucked with; things get progressively spookier until people start dying, turning around and heading home is “not an option”; everything goes night vision and then black, and someone screams into the darkness, “What the fuck is going on?!?” Instead of a mystical, unseen villain, there’s a mystical, visible villain that, based on the last shot of the trailer, looks something like a cross between two images from Ghostbusters: the ghost from the library meets proton-gunned Slimer. The synopsis indicated this apparition has something to do with a “Middle Eastern ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of ancient evil.” Terrorists, ghosts…same thing, right?
I’m not even going to try to parse the political implications of this thing until I’ve seen it, but obviously there’s a lot of potential charge in the idea of setting a film about American guys at the mercy of a mystical, unknowable, “ancient evil” in the place and time where the War on Terror began, never mind the fact that it’s coming from the mind behind one of the greatest marketing-over-substance cinematic victories of all time. Take a look at the trailer and the Tribeca synopsis, and let me know what you think. I’ll weigh in as soon as the handcuffs are off.
Source: feeds.feedburner.com
Uwe Boll Strikes Back With Fan Support
Be warned: this hilarious video featuring a foulmouthed Uwe Boll is completely NSFW.
I’m a bit late in posting this awesome video featuring Uwe Boll responding to the online petition against him, which I argued against last week. But since a new pro-Boll petition has shown up online, I’m glad to be posting it late rather than having to bring you daily coverage of the most hated filmmaker in the world. Even if each update is more hilarious than the last.
Boll himself called for the second petition, which he seems sure will have just as much chance of being signed by a million people. The self-proclaimed “only fucking genius in the business” may need to wait awhile, though, as the number of current anti-Boll signatures is nearly 200,000 while the number of pro-Bollers is only at 4. The issue may be that none of us have yet seen Boll’s new film, Postal, which he says is “way better than all that social-critic George Clooney bullshit that you get every fucking weekend.”
I’m a bit torn, unfortunately, with supporting the new petition any more than I support the first one. Based on the request by Boll and the words on the petition, this is a petition to affirm your appreciation of his films. Well, since I’ve never seen any, I can’t rightly sign. Though one of the four signatures is from a person claiming to be merely supporting Boll’s freedom to make movies, and that is also my position, I would rather not be confused for one of his fans.
Source: feeds.feedburner.com
Moving Image Institute: The Guessing Game
Today marks the final day of the Moving Image Institute (see my previous coverage here and here), and though I’ve been taking copious notes, I’ve been too busy actually participating to do much writing. I hope to get caught up posting takeaways by the end of this week. In the meantime, I’m going to throw […]
Today marks the final day of the Moving Image Institute (see my previous coverage here and here), and though I’ve been taking copious notes, I’ve been too busy actually participating to do much writing. I hope to get caught up posting takeaways by the end of this week. In the meantime, I’m going to throw out three random quotes from my notes from the past four days. Take a look at the list of speakers here, and see if you can guess who said what.
1) “There are certain people who only exist to show up on websites in order to tell you what an idiot you are.”
2) “I don’t see it as a queer movie, other than that a sodomite made it.”
3) “I’m a great Dumbo enthusiast. I think it’s the greatest animated film I’ve ever seen. I like elephants.”
Source: feeds.feedburner.com
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