I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the Alien is my favorite movie monster of all time, and I’ll go see the insectoid, double-jawed acid-for-blood chestbursting spawn of H.R. Giger in any incarnation — even this budget-bin junk, which wasn’t screened for critics and cost me $11 at the Queens midnight screening. I thought [...]
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"A fast, complex, exhilarating roadster ride through history and time.... Kino is an intoxicating Euro-brew, written with enormous skill and dedication." — Frederick Barthelme
"Jürgen Fauth's deft mashup of genre and historical period is both a full-throttle literary thriller of ideas and a contemplative examination of film and fascism. Kino is a debut of great intellectual force."– Teddy Wayne
"A surprising alternative history. Kino brings the golden age of German cinema to light with loving, sometimes gritty, detail and great precision." – Neal Pollack, author of Jewball.
"A delirious melange of conspiracy, magic, sex, history, bad behavior, and cinema, Kino is a stellar entertainment, and Jürgen Fauth is a writer of rare, sinister imagination." – Owen King, author of Reenactment
"A light-hearted romp that leads straight into darkness and back through the shadows on the wall."– Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
"Movie nuts arise! A happy and felicitous debut."– Terese Svoboda
All posts tagged monsters
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
Posted by Jürgen on December 30, 2007
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/12/30/aliens-vs-predator-requiem/
Beowulf
Robert Zemeckis’ high-tech “performance capture” adaptation of the Old English poem turns actors–Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie–into rubbery action figures. Only Crispin Glover, covered in a disgusting, festering texture, manages to infuse some sort of twisted soul into his Grendel. I saw this in 3-D, which is sorta groovy [...]
Posted by Jürgen on November 14, 2007
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/11/14/beowulf/
Alien vs. Predator
Two faltering eighties franchises are being remaindered for the price of one, but the H.R. Giger-designed Alien will always have a place in my heart as the greatest movie monster ever. AVP is shameless B movie fare without any of the polish and auteurist pretensions of the other installments, but at least it moves fast [...]
Posted by Jürgen on March 26, 2007
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/03/26/alien-vs-predator-2/
The Golem: How He Came Into the World
Before he made this 1920 version, director Paul Wegener, who also stars as the monster, had already adapted the Jewish folk tale about the Golem in 1915 and 1917. Individual moments of this third incarnation are great, but in a decade filled with fantastic movies, they’re somewhat few and far between. You know the story: [...]
Posted by Jürgen on March 24, 2007
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/03/24/the-golem-how-he-came-into-the-world/
Bong Joon-ho
With The Host about to be released in the US, I finally uploaded my footage of the NYFF press conference from October. With the help of a very enthusiastic translator, Bong talks about designing the monster, balancing satire, humor, and horror, and having made the highest-grossing movie in Korean film history. Just off-screen, Richard Peña [...]
Posted by Jürgen on March 1, 2007
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/03/01/bong-joon-ho/
Slither
What’s better than Snakes on a Plane? Of course: worms in the brain. Another gleeful B-picture, a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers, either Blob, and any number of zombie movies. There are the usual wisecracks (most of them delivered by Firefly’s Nathan Fillion), a cursing mayor, a teenage girl whose painted fingernails come [...]
Posted by Jürgen on February 13, 2007
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/02/13/slither/
Tulpendiebe
Pan’s Labyrinth – Director’s Commentary
Plenty of DVD commentaries are happy to dispense self-aggrandizing anecdotes or reveal information that permanently damages the viewing experience (I’m looking at you, Peter Jackson.) Instead, Guillermo del Toro talks about storytelling concerns, structure, framing, staging, color choices, sound design, edits, references and symbolism — in other words, the where and why of creative decisions [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2007/07/31/pans-labyrinth-directors-commentary/