NOIR CITY X: THREE STRANGERS (1946)—Introduction by Eddie Muller

It seems like only yesterday that Noir City's shadow lengthened across the continental United States to include an edition in Chicago, Illinois, alongside its already successful traveling road shows in Hollywood, Seattle and Washington, D.C. When Eddie Muller and I first discussed the trial run in Chicago, he framed it in exactly those terms. "Quite honestly, Michael," Muller admitted to me at the time, "repertory cinema these days is not only a year-by-year thing; it's a month-by-month thing it seems. The economy of the festival circuit is such that you can't really count on anything at t

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FANTASIA 2012: CITADEL (2012)—Q&A With Director Ciarán Foy and Producer Brian Coffey

In recent years, the tendency of horror films to hybrid with comedy has gained a huge fan base but I can't claim to be one of them or, rather, my initial amusement has dissipated as the horror comedy hybrid has become way too much the norm and an obvious low-budget (if not downright lazy) strategy at genre filmmaking. As much as I enjoy genre hybrids—and the complex if conflicted emotions they purposely induce—I sometimes hunger for pure fear and dread from a film that doesn't shy away from its thirsty roots in terror. For me, I especially prefer terror that arises from an encounter with so

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FANTASIA 2012: CRAVE (2012)—The Evening Class Interview With Raleigh Stewart

Charles de Lauzirika has anointed Raleigh Stewart the "hero" of his directorial debut Crave, not only for being the film's associate producer and digital effects supervisor but also the designer of the film's imaginative end titles. Following the Q&A session at Crave's Fantasia sold-out world premiere, Stewart and I took a moment in the lobby of the Salle J.A. de Sève to discuss his work on the end credits.[This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!]* * *Michael Guillén: Raleigh, can you talk a bit about how you came up with the concept for your end titles and then linked them into t

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FANTASIA 2012: CRAVE (2012)—Q&A With Director Charles de Lauzirika, producer Raleigh Stewart, production designer David L. Snyder and Actor Josh Lawson

Crave [IMDb / Facebook]—the sold-out SRO Fantasia world premiere of the long anticipated feature directorial debut from regular Ridley Scott collaborator Charles de Lauzirika—stylishly depicts Aiden, an alienated crime scene photographer (Josh Lawson), teetering on the verge of vigilantism. Described by Lauzirika as a mix between Walter Mitty and Travis Bickle, Aiden spends a lot of time in his own head entertaining violent and sexual fantasies that counter an otherwise disempowered existence. Sound familiar? When Aiden becomes attracted to Virginia (Emma Lung), the thin line between love

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Albert Kahn, Charles de Lauzirika, David L. Snyder, Edward Furlong, Emma Lung, Fantasia 2012, Josh Lawson, Justin Caine Burnett, Mitch Davis, Raleigh Stewart, Robert Lawton, Ron Perlman, William Eubank,

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