Pans Labyrinth Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A few months ago Cinematical was invited to visit the set of the new film written and produced by Guillermo del Toro – no, not that one. A remake of the 1973 Australian film of the same name, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark is a fantasy-horror film in the vein of Pan's Labyrinth, which certainly would make the Spanish auteur an obvious choice for its director as well, but del Toro turned the directing reins over to Troy Nixey, a first-time filmmaker who impressed him with a short film he made called Latchkey's Lament.

Last week Latchkey found its way onto Youtube, and having seen it on the set of Dark, we can attest it's just the kind of visual odyssey from which great directors are born. Meanwhile, the original Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark is now available on demand via Warner Archives if you need further incentive to check out the upcoming remake, but we suspect that after you watch both parts of Nixey's first opus you won't need any other reasons to be intrigued – or more likely, afraid of what's to come.

Check out Parts One and Two after the jump:

What is Ink? Ink is evidently an independent fantasy film from Denver-based filmmaker Jamin Winans, who made his feature debut with the little-seen but decently reviewed action flick 11:59 in 2005. It looks like an unholy marriage of Night Watch and Pan's Labyrinth. And frankly it looks awesome -- or at the very least it has one slick trailer, which you can watch above or over on YouTube in HD. The film's equally slick official site is here.

The story involves forces of good and evil that work on us through our dreams, and a young girl who gets trapped in the dream world and has to be rescued. If nothing else, the film looks to be bursting with visual ideas, from the incredibly creepy nightmare-bringers with the glass plates over their faces, to whoever those dudes with the glowing eyes are.

Ink premieres tonight, January 23rd, at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and will have more showings over the next week. It doesn't have a distributor yet, but I demand to see it. (Perhaps a midnight appearance at SXSW in March is in the cards?) Imaginative fantasy on a shoestring budget? Sign me up!

A tip of the hat to Film School Rejects for digging this up. I hadn't heard of it! If anyone catches Ink in Santa Barbara, drop us a line to say how it is.

In a world where Don LaFontaine will no longer lend his voice to any trailers, and where floating heads and Photoshop skills are what passes for the 'art' in 'poster art', the prospect of Drew Struzan's retirement is almost too much to bear. The guys over at Ain't It Cool News got the initial news from TheRaider.net, and they get the fact that this makes the sun shine just that much less in this industry of ours.

In a message posted there, Struzan said: "Having been working at not working has produced a guy who could never return to illustration again. It took a lot to attempt the idea of retiring from my 40 years of effort and sacrifice but now that I have, I am delighting in life as never before. I had forgotten how to rest, to smell the proverbial roses and to see the future as opportunity. I am grateful and honored to have had the opportunity to do all the work I did. I am well pleased to have been able to give a gift of beauty and peace through my artwork to so many throughout the world. Now I have laid down the burden and have peace and happiness as the reward for my day's labor."

AICN aptly directs readers to Struzan's official site, and even if they hadn't, I'd advise the same course of action in an attempt to appreciate what iconic images he crafted a career out of.

"While waiting in line for the screening of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I overhead someone say that Guillermo del Toro's latest is being seen as his audition tape for The Hobbit," observed Jonathan Pacheco in his review for The House Next Door. Of course, Del Toro already had the directing gigs for the two Hobbit films before Hellboy II hit theaters, but that won't stop audiences from evaluating the current parade of fairies, demons and evil elves with Del Toro's Middle-Earth-to-be in mind.
Needless to say, it's a narrow perspective.

It would make more sense to expect that these upcoming features will negotiate between the gothic horror of Pan's Labryinth and the blockbuster approach of Hellboy II. In the latter work, it's clear that Del Toro has more interest in placing these loony supernatural beings in relatively conventional action sequences, allowing the specificity of the characters to create a sense of ingenuity. Pan's Labryinth, on the other hand, offers a single package of storytelling: The art direction, special effects and even the violence directly relate to the drama. The best case scenario for the Hobbit films would be a happy medium: Glorious visuals that reflect Tolkien's deeply involving mythology.

In case you don't read Entertainment Weekly and didn't see this week's double issue on "The New Classics," or you didn't see my post last week about their list of the best movies from the last 25 years, here's a sad fact: only six foreign-language films made the list. They are: Wings of Desire (#28); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (#49); The Lives of Others (#56); All About My Mother (#69); Y Tu Mamá También (#86); and In the Mood for Love (#95). OK, so 6% is not terrible for a mainstream entertainment magazine, but EW had to add insult to injury with an accompanying map labeled "Movies: Breaking Down the List," which points to a number of locations around the globe in which some of these new classics are set. The only continent on the map without any love is South America (Antarctica was not included in the visual aid).

Now, before I get into my love letter to new Latin American cinema, I have to note that no film produced in Africa made the list either. However, on the map the continent was at least given some minuscule bit of love via the filming locations for Casino Royale and Gladiator. Yet despite the fact that South America was definitely used as a location in a few of the 100 films, it's shown no respect. And on top of that, Central America isn't even included on the map. For some strange reason there's just a gap between Mexico and South America. Meanwhile, Latin America's sole representative on EW's list, Mexico's Y Tu Mamá También, is left off the map so that no location from this area of the world, from the Mexican-U.S. border to Cape Horn, receives any recognition.

I've been fortunate enough to have been able to go to Cannes for the past four years now, and I'm getting ready for my fifth. And, as I often say when explaining film festivals to people who've never been to one, it's not just an adventure; it's a job. Cannes is a "get-away" the same way running from a burning building is "a tour of the grounds"; there are plenty of movies, plenty of work, and the overall emotional tone of the event is a mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. The heady moments of pure movie magic come fast and furious with the muck-and-money reality of international financing and distribution happening all about you.

Going to Cannes means seeing at least 40, maybe 50 or more movies in 10 days, never mind actually thinking and writing about them; you'd think that that kind of pace would soon turn into a blur, and it does, but it's a glorious one. Here's some of my favorite movie going moments (highly subjective, of course -- I've not included last year's ridiculously strong quartet of Persepolis, No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, as they're still so fresh in my mind) from the past four years of the Cannes Film Festival; think of these as the rushed recollections of a film critic who knows exactly how lucky he's been.

Aside from the short film categories, the hardest part of your Oscar pool will be guessing the winners of the artisan trophies. But thanks to guild awards, you can at least have an idea of who to pick on your ballot. This past weekend a number of these guild awards took place, and though none of the winners are sure bets, their chances are now narrowed down a lot.

• Children of Men (and its DP, Emmanuel Lubezki) won the top feature film honor at the American Society of Cinematographers' Outstanding Achievement Awards. A lot of people are rooting for Lubezki for the Oscar, so you can't feel wrong picking him for your pool.
  
• The American Cinema Editors Eddie Awards had a tie for its top award for dramatic film editing, which went to Babel editors Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise and The Departed editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The ACE also gives out a comedy/musical award, which this year went to Dreamgirls editor Virginia Katz and a documentary award, which this year went to An Inconvenient Truth editors Jay Lash Cassidy and Dan Swietlik. Both Babel and The Departed are nominated for editing Oscars, but since Schoonmaker has already won twice, Mirrione has won only once and Crise has never won, expect the award to go to Babel.
  
• The Costume Designer Guild splits their awards into three categories. The period film winner is Chung Man Yee for The Curse of the Golden Flower. The fantasy film winner is Lala Huete for Pan's Labyrinth. The contemporary film winner is Consolata Boyle for The Queen. Both Chung Man Yee and Consolata Boyle are nominated for Oscars, but the Academy will likely choose something from a period piece. Then again, my predictions for the guild awards were all wrong.
  
• The Art Directors Guild Awards are also split in the same manner, and the honored films were nearly identical to the costumers' honored (and nearly identical to my predictions). The period film winner is Tingxiao Huo for The Curse of the Golden Flower. The fantasy film winner is Eugenio Caballero for Pan's Labyrinth. The contemporary film winner is Peter Lamont for Casino Royale. Of these winners, only Caballero is nominated for an Oscar.

My love of cinema originally came about through my love of production design, particularly for science fiction and fantasy films. As I grew up, one of my dream careers was art director, and some my early heroes were Dante Ferretti and Bo Welch. Naturally, then, a lot of my favorite filmmakers have been those who display creative art direction in their movies. Terry Gilliam has always been at the top of my list.

Other fans of Gilliam will agree with me that no other living director is more deserving of recognition by the Art Directors Guild. In fact, I'm surprised that he wasn't the first choice to receive the guild's Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award when it was originally given in 1998 (to Norman Jewison instead). Other filmmakers that I expect to see honored in the future include Tim Burton, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro.

Gilliam will receive the award at the Art Director's Guild Awards on February 17, when the guild also names the winners of its prizes for excellence in production design for 2006. Like other guild awards, the ADG's honors recognize distinct categories for its field. Nominated films are separated into three groups: period piece; contemporary; and fantasy (you may remember these are the same categories for the Costume Designer Guild Awards).

Even if you consider Borat (full title not necessary) to be primarily a scripted work, it is still a film that works best in its unscripted sequences. This is debatable, sure, but I would like someone at the Writers Guild to tell me what was so great about the actual screenplay used. Personally, I think the scripted parts, as well as the adherence to the plot, are the weakest elements.

Nonetheless, Sacha Baron Cohen and his five collaborators are nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay. And despite my questioning of this recognition, I don't really prefer any of its competition. The other titles in the adapted category are Little Children, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking. If I had to choose, I'd go with the last of these, but I think the prize will go to the overrated Little Children.

I also don't think the Original Screenplay category is that great, either. The nominees for that award are Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, United 93, Stranger Than Fiction and The Queen. Again, I'd have to go with the last of these, but predict the overrated first.

Hopefully, unlike with other guild awards, the WGA's honors will not reflect the Oscar nominations, which may recognize foreign films Volver and Pan's Labyrinth, which were ineligible here.

I might have seen Guillermo del Toro's Cronos a whole lot later than the rest of my fellow horror-freaks did, but when it came to The Devil's Backbone, I was there on opening day ... and I just loved it. Sure, sure, Mimic has its moments, Blade 2 is bad-ass, and Hellboy rocks multiple dimensions -- but I think El Espinazo del Diablo is the Mexican flickmaker's finest piece of work by far.

And to say that the pre-release fest-buzz on Senor del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is "positive" would be kind of like saying Taco Bell makes you have to go to the bathroom "mildly." In a fourth quarter swollen with great-looking movies, Pan's Labyrinth stands up as one of my hardcore gimme-gimme titles, right up there with the new films from Christopher Guest, Martin Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky.

Del Toro fanatics have kept us abreast of the various teasers, clips and trailers that are careening through the interweb, but CHUD.com has scored a great little exclusive: The debut of the domestic trailer for Pan's Labyrinth. And it's pretty darn awesome. (You can tell the trailer was made for American audiences because there's no dialogue in it. If there's one thing that American moviegoers hate, it's when their movie characters speak in foreign languages.)

The movie is about a young girl who uses her (rather impressive) fantasy world to escape from the harsh realities of Spain circa 1944. I've been extremely vigilant about avoiding spoilers on this movie, so that's all the plot synopsis I can offer. But if this thing's even half as good as The Devil's Backbone, I may just have to write Guillermo an email full of love.