Over the years I have collected about 300 DVD movies. I have given each a rating from 1-10, where 1 is terrible and 10 is only given to my favorite movies. I try to make it a Gaussian distribution with a mean of 5.5. Today I compared my own ratings to the ratings on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) where a few tens to thousands of people have given their rating on the same scale. Here is the comparison for my top-10:

Movie title	Hans	IMDB	Comment
Se7en	10	8.6	Top-30 on IMDB
Taxi Driver	10	8.6	Top-38 on IMDB
The Shining	10	8.5	Top-54 on IMDB
Chinatown	10	8.5	Top-60 on IMDB
Blade Runner	10	8.3	Top-113 on IMDB
12 Monkeys	10	7.9	Top-188 on IMDB
Happiness	10	7.8
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas	10	7.6
Lost Highway	10	7.5	David Lynch
Alien 3 (director's cut)	10	6.2	Outlier?

From this list It seems I favor detective and sci-fi flicks and that my taste is pretty much main stream. The only clear outlier is Alien 3, which is an average movie according to the IMDB users. My guess is most people have only seen the theatrical release of David Fincher's debut film. In fact the director's cut is much better IMHO. Perhaps it's more interesting to have a look at the movies where I have given a low rating, but where IMDB users have given a relatively high rating. Below is a table with "Hans rating" at 4 or less and IMDB above 7:

Movie title	Hans	IMDB	Director or lead actor
Repulsion	4	7.8	Roman Polanski
Assault on Presinct 13 (1976)	4	7.4	John Carpenter
Manhunter	4	7.2	Michael Mann
Highlander	4	7.1	Starring Ch. Lambert
An American Werewolf in London	3	7.5	John Landis
Westworld (1973 version)	3	7.1	Michael Crichton
Legends of the Fall	2	7.1	Edward Zwick
Quiet Earth	2	7.1	Geoff Murphy
Ichi the Killer	1	7.2	Miike Takeshi
Sliding Doors	1	6.8	Peter Howitt

All of these movies are "pretty good" according to IMDB, but I didn't like them. Well, Westworld is kind of interesting, but only because it was the first sci-fi movie I saw back in 1984. How about Polanski's Repulsion and Takeshi's horror movie Ichi the Killer? They are completely overrated. To make a fair rating system one would to have to take the "nostalgia" factor into account. And what about the "this movie was groundbreaking at the time" factor? That would favor movies like Repulsion and perhaps Highlander. But then the whole rating system would become extremely complex.



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Roskildefestival 2007 var den vådeste nogen sinde. Trods regnen og de mudrede omstændigheder optog FoKing Films "Uhyret fra den brune lagune", der allerede har status som en kultklassiker. 

 

Filmen skildrer den klassiske kamp mellem kræfter, der ligger hensides menneskets fatteevne. Apokalypsen udslettede næsten alle mennesker på Jorden, men en lille gruppe af overlevende lever i mudderhuller og tilbeder "Den Sorte Ged fra Skovene" - afguden Shub-Niggurath. De har en naiv tro på et paradis på Jorden, men vanviddet er deres eneste frelse, da "det brune uhyre" rejser sig fra lagunen. Filmen har klare referencer til H. P. Lovecrafts Cthuhu-mythos, og kendere af horror genren vil finde mange morsomme referencer. FoKing Films afprøver med cinematografien og lyssætningen nye virkemidler og med deres special-effects overgår de deres mesterværk - en af sidste års bedste Nazi-Viking-Cyborg-Zombie-film - The Revenge of Ho-Chi Göbbels. Plottet er næsten komplekst, manuskriptet mangesiddet og flere af skuespillerne når højdepunktet af deres karriere i denne film. Se filmen i fuld længde på YouTube.

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George Romero, manden der har lavet nogen af de bedste zombiefilm gennem tiderne (startende med Night of the Living Dead fra 1968), har lavet en ny film: "Diary of the dead". I den forbindelse er der en konkurrence med bedste 3-minuters zombie-film! Jeg har indsendt en "MTV-version" af Roskilde-kult-hittet "Son of Odin III - the revenge of Ho-Chi Göbbels".

Se filmen, afgiv din stemme: BOOYAH! ... og kommentar. Saa vinder vi maaske, og filmen vil komme med som ekstra-materiale paa DVD udgaven af Romeros nye film.

Klik her for at se: The Revenge of Ho-Chi Göbbels.

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Happy Halloween!  The trailer for the new box office smash hit movie has just been released. FoKing Films present: Uhyret fra den Brune Lagune. The title is of course a hint to the classic horror movie "Creature from the Black Lagoon".

You can see it on YouTube. The producers of the film reckon it will be released around Christmas.



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Yesterday we went to Dendy's in Newtown to watch the sci-fi flick Sunshine from director Michael Collins -- the director of classics like Trainspotting, Waldhorn of Death and 28 Days Later. Sorry, it was Danny Boyle and not Michael Collins.
Lars A and I were excited, partly due to the suspense and partly due to having ordered grande Latte to go at Cinque.

A quick synopsis of Boyle's Sunshine: somehow the hydrogen fusion engine inside the Sun has started to fail. Eight scientists are aboard the spaceship Icarus II and headed towards the sun whose payload is "an atom bomb the size of Manhattan". It may sound like the usual macho sci-fi BS but the unique combination of two central themes, namely fertility (think Kubrick's 2001) and garbage planet (Carpenter's Escape from New York), make this a very interesting contribution to the genre. Less talk than in the aforementioned movies and with a lot of inexplicable but meaningful action taking place.

Malene thought it was fairly stupid. According to her the style was in line with commercials for Diesel jeans or iPod. I would like to point out that I bought my iPod before watching the movie. So all the subliminal stuff that Malene (paranoid or not) saw in the movie must've had its effect on me at another point in time.

Just being paranoid? That's a central theme in the movie. My favorite scene in Sunshine is when the psychologist on board the spaceship is analyzing images of himself. Basically he's doing a quick and dirty version of the Voigt-Kampff test from Scott's Blade Runner. The implications in this scene are not followed up later in the movie and that's happening a couple of times in other situations. The viewer is given hints that something is wrong with the psyche of the space travellers headed for the Sun.


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Last sunday we attended the tropfest which is the world's largest short film festival. Around 150.000 Sydney-siders showed up at the Domain in the botanical gardens. As seen in the picture we're enjoying a real Aussie meal: a sloppy hotdog with onions and a Copper's. Chris, Sally and Michael Bazot also came along to see the 16 top best movies (700+ were submitted). There were many interesting films, but no real surprises. Except perhaps for our favorites Bad Yoghurt and The Real Thing which can both be seen here.



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I found out recently that Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction 1994) and Robert Rodriguez (Desperado 1995, Sin City 2005) are making a film together. Grindhouse will be relased on April 6 2007 in the US. I looked into Tarantino's carrer a bit and came across a list of all the movies that has inspired him. In partifular, Tarantino's movie Jackie Brown interested me. The movie is a homage to the blaxploitation genre and of course features Pam Grier, who was a star back in the 70'ies and the lead actress in movies like Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974).  

The other day I rented one of the best blaxplotation movies of all time, Superfly (1972). While growing up in the squalid streets in the surburbs of Fredericia, I was of course a big fan of Ice T and (later on) Snoop Doggy Dogg, and I realize what a strong influence this movie, with its funky soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield, has been to them. You may argue that the characters portrayed in Superfly and other blaxploitation movies are archetypes and that they, at best, give a distorted view of life in the big city, and only serve to glamourise the life of dope fiends, pushers and drug lords. Anyway, I like these movies, and I am now mildly hooked. While waiting for Grindhouse to come out, I have compiled the unofficial blaxplitation top-10 based on the ratings at imdb.com:

On Friday we went to the obscure Mu-Meson Archives in Annandale where Jay Katz and Mrs Death hosted a very special night. Jay Katz had found the best trailers of films mainly from the 1950s, 60s and 70s and with a focus on sci-fi and horror movies. Most of these films would be quite impossible to watch, but it was great fun to just see the three minute trailers. The trailers were typically introduced by a deep male voice saying something like: "Experience the gut-wrenching terror, the blud-curdling horror and the nerve-numbing suspense as the true story of the nameless abomination from outer space will terrify your soul and paralyse your body". Some of them were a bit more specific: "No woman can watch this movie and walk home alone. Therefore no woman will be allowed to enter the theatre alone!".




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Tonight the concluding part in the trilogy "Son of Odin" will be shown to a select audience on Nørrebro in Copenhagen. Only 35 people have been invited due to security reasons. At the release party for the second part of "Son of Odin", held at the very same venue last year, many people in the audience went berzerk. They said out loud that they were screaming and that they would in fact run amok! Something similar is likely to happen tonight. It's just too bad if you are not invited. However, you can simply go and watch the movie at the foking films head quarters in high Zombie Vision quality.

If you're interested in the complex philosophy of total viking power!!! and life as a modern viking you should begin at the source at viking.virkelighed.dk.


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The last part in the best-stelling trilogy "Son of Odin" is now being edited. The poster for the movie was presented to a select audience this afternoon and is now available to all blog readers and total viking power!!! fans.


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Yesterday I watched Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's an excellent murder mystery from 1958 starring James Steward (John Ferguson) and Kim Novak (Madeline Elster) in the leading roles. An old friend asks detective Ferguson to investigate the disturbing wanderings of his wife Madeline. Apparently, she is possessed by her great grand-mother who took her own life about 100 years earlier. The pace of the film is quite slow at times, but the atmosphere and tension are the key elements. The camera work and settings are amazing for its time and Vertigo is filmed in glorious technicolour. The movie reminded me of spending my Thursdays watching B-rated movies with Søren Dideriksen and Lasse Skjalm in the underground cinema Slagtehal 3 in Aarhus. It is now clear to me where top-directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and (to much less extent) Shinya Tsukamoto got their inspiration from. Anyone who enjoyed watching Vertigo and Psycho should check out more recent films like Argento's Non Ho Sonno (Sleepless) and Tsukamoto's thriller Vital.


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At the Roskilde festival in 2006 the concluding chapter in the Odin's Son trilogy was filmed. Upcoming underground producer and director Hans Bruntt used a new cast and a very experimental method for preparing the manuscript. In the process several different draft manuscripts were combined to construct a so-called two-dimentional orthogonal story board. Also, a brand new green screen technique was developed on the spot. The editing of the film has now begun and a preview is expected at the Goodbye Copenhagen, Hello Sydney event that will take place on Friday September 29. The photo below is from the set of "Odin's Son 3 - the revenge of Ho-Chi Göbbels".



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