Ahard-hitting, glossy trailer condemning the practice of “waterboarding” as a means of torture is to be launched in British cinemas next month, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
Amnesty’s film, called Stuff of Life, will be shown in some 50 cinemas in the UK from May 9.
Its “shock value” is enhanced, according to Amnesty, by the fact that the film is effectively “disguised” as a bottled water or vodka advert, and presented in the “glossy” style known from consumer goods advertising.
“Our film shows you what the CIA doesn’t want you to see — the disgusting reality of half-drowning a person then calling it “enhanced interrogation,” Amnesty director Kate Allen said.
“Everyone who sees this terrifying film ought to take action to stop it happening in the real world.”
Meanehilr Eli Roth, the director of the relentlessly gruesome Hostel movies, is turning down the horror with his next project.
Roth told reporters on Wednesday he is two weeks away from finishing a script for a science-fiction action film inspired by the mainstream hits Cloverfield and Transformers.
“This will be my first big-budget, PG-13, mass-destruction movie,” he said backstage at the music industry’s NME Awards in Los Angeles. “I went total chaos and pandemonium.”
He declined to detail the plot ahead of a “big announcement” next month.
Films rated PG-13 in the US strongly caution parents that some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. But they are easier to market than R-rated films, which require viewers under 17 to be accompanied by an adult.
“I feel like I pushed the violence in R movies about as far as I can push it. I feel like I’m bled out. I wanna switch it up,” said the 36-year-old protege of Quentin Tarantino.
“Everyone I know has been saying ‘When are you gonna do a movie my kids can see?’ And finally, I’m gonna make a movie that 13-year-old kids can see.”
Roth was in theaters last year with Hostel: Part II, the latest in a string of films belonging to the so-called “torture porn” genre. As with its 2005 predecessor, it revolved around hapless backpackers who are killed for sport by paying customers in Slovakia.
Critics were appalled and audiences did not exactly rush to see it. Still, it was profitable even before its DVD release, Roth said.
The shooting of the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace is proving dangerous for stuntmen after a second crash Wednesday in just five days left one daredevil in intensive care.
The accident happened when the car used by two stuntmen rammed into a filming lorry and then into a wall on set near the picturesque Lake Garda in northern Italy, ANSA news agency reported.
One of the two men, a Greek national, ended up in intensive care in a hospital in the nearby town of Verona.
This was not the first accident to befall the crew in recent days after a Bond stunt driver crashed 007’s famous Aston Martin DBS into Lake Garda ahead of filming on Saturday.
Quantum of Solace, the second Bond film to feature 40-year-old British actor Daniel Craig as the suave secret agent is set to be released later this year. The film picks up where the last installment Casino Royale left off.
Cannes Critics Week, which runs in parallel with the film festival next month, is placing this year’s spotlight on budding talent from across Europe, in contrast with last year’s South American flavor.
“We were struck this year by the power and diversity of young European film-makers, while last year we were flooded by offers from Latin America,” the head of the May 15 to May 23 event, Jean-Christophe Berjon said.
Of the seven films selected yesterday to compete for the Critics Week award for a best first or second feature, one is from Argentina while the others are from Britain, Bosnia, Belgium, Germany, France and Russia.
Following is the list of films chosen:
● The Stranger in Me by Emily Atef, Germany.
● Moscow, Belgium by Christophe van Rompaey, Belgium.
● Better Things by Duane Hopkins, UK.
● La sangre brota by Pablo Fendrik, Argentina.
● Les grandes personnes by Anna Novion, France.
● Snow by Aida Begic, Bosnia/France.
● Everybody Dies But Me by Valeria Gaia Germanica, Russia.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,
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