20,000 Days on Earth, a documentary about singer and culture icon Nick Cave by the artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, will have its Belgian premiere at the 41st Film Fest Gent. The surprising and heartfelt film is the second title of the renewed music section Sound and Vision: presented by Spotify.
Nick Cave has long been one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures in the music and film world. 20,000 Days on Earth enhances his mystique. This innovative drama/documentary features Cave as both subject and coconspirator, intimately documenting his artistic process and combining it with a fictional staged narrative of his 20,000th day on Earth. As a result, the film also explores the creative spirit.
The film weaves two parallel narrative threads. The first is a cinematic portrait of Cave's 20,000th day, created through a series of staged, but not scripted, scenes and encounters. The second looks in depth at his creativity—from writing through recording and rehearsal to performance.
This unique blend of documentary essay and cinematic fiction demonstrates the connection between Cave and the filmmakers, visual artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard; all three are illuminating the search for truth through artifice and myth. Ultimately, 20,000 Days on Earth reaches beyond Cave to ask all of us how many days we've been alive and what use we've made of that time.
The film was awarded at Sundance and Sydney Film Festival and will be released in Belgium on 29 October. Shell Shock, the opera that Nick Cave wrote with Belgian composer Nicholas Lens, will have its world premiere on 24 October at De Munt in Brussels until 2 November.
Listen to the Sound and Vision playlist with music from the film on the Spotify account of Film Fest Gent.
"Live in Mexico City" is LACRIMOSA’s third official live album in their 20+ years career! When asked by a journalist, for which reason, there will be a new concert album, Tilo Wolff (singer and songwriter) replied: "There are four specific reasons for the release of LIVE IN MEXICO CITY:
First, the last live album is already 7 years old. Many of our listeners didn’t know us back then and the songs we played on this album are less close to them than the new ones, which are a large part of the new live album. Second, despite of the many new songs we play, of course, we again pull out many of LACRIMOSA’s ‘classics’ and it's just exciting to compare between the live albums, how older songs have evolved over the years.
One may mature more like a well-aged wine and develops new facets, others – to stay with this picture – might lose something if the individual storage was not really appropriate. Each listener must and can decide this for himself, but in any case it is exciting. Thirdly, I have visited in recent years, some concerts of beloved artists and when I got back home, I would have given much to be able to dive into this concert-mood once more and again and again. When LEONARD COHEN released even two live albums from his tour that I attended several times, it was pure magic listening to those albums. And that's what I wanted to offer our concert-visitors as well.
On this basis and with the awareness that our last live album was a compilation of tracks recorded in various lo- cations (which definitely also has its charm) I was missing this very compact and direct experience of an entire concert, with all of its tension, no cuts, pure and simply as the concerts of this tour did take place. Therefore, I asked our live sound engineer Nils Rieke, who stood every evening at the mixing desk, but never previously had mixed an album, to mix this one, in order to achieve exactly the sound like the concerts have sounded like. So, anyone expecting a perfect studio production with applause ingredients, leave your fingers off this – our personal tour souvenir – album! And fourth, never in the history of music there has been an album on which a Mexican audience sings German lyrics. That alone makes this album unique!
First all new material from Deine Lakaien in years! The new EP serves as first taster for the new album ‘Cyrstal Palace’, to be released in August. It features 4 tracks, including two exclusive versions of the album track ‘Farewell’, the album-version of ‘Where the Winds don’t blow’ and the exclusive ‘Into Chaos’.
THE SLASHER CLASSICS COLLECTION
A CELEBRATION OF TEEN-KILL CARNAGE – UNCUT, UNLEASHED AND UNHINGED!
Ask any self-respecting slasher buff about the genre’s ‘golden age’ and they will doubtlessly wax poetic about the plasma-packed pot-boilers of the 1980s – the decade of destruction that gave us Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and the transsexual teen-tormenter of the Sleepaway Camp series. Given the label’s name, what better way for 88 Films to celebrate this halcyon era of horror than with a series of numbered and collectible sanguine-splashed shockers from the period of VHS and video nasties?
Hence, 88 Films is proud to announce the launch of a new “SLASHER CLASSICS” line – kicking off with a digitally re-mastered DVD release of Don Gronquist’s notorious censor-baiting backwoods sickie Unhinged (1982). Further fearful fun will be delivered with Don’t Go in the Woods (1981) – the effortlessly enjoyable “hunt ‘em and kill ‘em” epic that once had British authorities outlawing its very exhibition! Directed by James Bryan, Don’t Go in the Woods is a catalogue of splatter-slapstick craziness which lines up a group of campers and crushes them in increasingly comical ways. Take it from us: this maddening mash-up of absurdity and arteries really does have to be seen to be believed!
Following on from this bout of bad-actor bludgeoning will be a new BluRay bow for Herb Freed’s student-filleting frightener Graduation Day (1981), in which high school pupils meet a sticky end from a mysterious stalker in a fencing mask. Adding to the onscreen allure of Graduation Day is a cast of cult veterans that includes Christopher George (City of the Living Dead, Pieces), beloved Scream Queen Linnea Quigley (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Return of the Living Dead) and future small screen celebrity, and Playboy cover girl, Vanna White.
Finally (at least for now) 88 Films is proud to present Charles Kaufman's Mother’s Day (1980) – a macabre movie so effective that Hollywood A-lister Brett Ratner (director of the Rush Hour series and this summer’s Hercules) produced a 2010 remake headlined by Rebecca De Mornay. As usual, though, it is the original which packs the biggest punch. Boasting a tone that is both sinister and satirical – Mother’s Day has three female friends accidentally stumble upon the land of the most dysfunctional family this side of Leatherface and his clan. What follows is not for the faint-hearted – indeed, in his original review the late, great Roger Ebert accused this controversial creeper of wallowing in “images of vile and depraved sadism”!!! You can make up your own minds when Mother’s Day arrives on UK BluRay in early 2015.
Each release in this very special collection will boast a numbered spine, additional features, a reversible sleeve and an informative new booklet, with writing on each respective film, from author Calum Waddell – the erstwhile producer of such documentaries as 88 Films’ own SLICE AND DICE: THE SLASHER FILM FOREVER. Most importantly, of course, we can promise uncut and uncensored prints – with each hack em’ up epic looking bloodier and better than ever before!
ABOUT 88 FILMS:
88 Films, named in homage to the Back to the Future franchise, was launched in 2012 and has become one of Britain’s leading boutique labels – dedicated to the loving presentation and restoration of both classic and marginal genre movies. Choice cuts from the 88 Films’ vaults include HD releases of several features from Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment including the Puppet Master and Subspecies series, Stuart Gordon’s crimson-caked creature feature Castle Freak (1995), Demonic Toys (1992) and the pint-sized superhero thriller Dollman (1991). In 2014, 88 Films debuted an uncut print of Alfred Sole’s masterpiece Alice Sweet Alice (1976), unleashed the controversial killer-kids chiller Bloody Birthday (1981) and gave a long-awaited UK BluRay bow to Maniac star Joe Spinell’s frequently misunderstood postmodern coup d'état The Last Horror Film (1982). Along with offerings from Ted V. Mikels (The Corpse Grinders/ The Doll Squad), the Sherilyn Fenn-starring softcore romance Two Moon Junction (1988) and the 42nd Street staple Bloodsucking Freaks (1976), 88 Films continues to brings an eclectic mix of movies to the UK home video market. The very first 88 Films’ BluRay steelbook also made an appearance this year thanks to a wonderfully presented pressing of the Troma terror-trademark The Toxic Avenger (1984), which has become the company’s best selling release to date. Forthcoming fright-flicks from 88 Films include the Sam Raimi-produced zombie nightmare The Dead Next Door (1989), directed by J.R. Bookwalter, all three sequels to The Toxic Avenger and some more stuff we would love to tell you about but, if we did, we just might have to kill you…
Ron Howard will direct a documentary on the Beatles as a live act, tracing their days from the clubs of Liverpool, England and Hamburg, Germany, to their final appearance at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966.
“What’s so intriguing to me is not only the subject, but the context we can bring to it now,” Howard says. “Not only can we do a study of these touring years, the narrative of an odyssey, we can look at the significance of the Beatles as individuals—as musical geniuses, as societal leaders and their effect on global culture. Dramatically it makes a lot of sense and cinematically, we have a chance to offer a unique experience.”
Producer Nigel Sinclair is hoping for a theatrical release for the film, which will focus on the band as a live act.
“The Beatles came at a time when people assumed ownership of their stars,” he says. “I think you can’t tell the story of popular music and its place in popular culture without looking at the live concert relationship between artist and audience. When the Beatles started, it was the job of artists is to tell people like me how we should live our lives. That was one of the massive changes that these four people wrought upon us.
“One of the things that interests Ron and I very much is the word exceptionalism. There is something utterly exceptional about the Beatles beyond any other musical group. I’m hoping, as we go on this journey together and piece together (this film), when it’s finished, you get an understanding of that.”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
