timespace coordinates: 1970s and 1980s Washington.
!extreme violence!
The House That Jack Built is a 2018 psychological horrorart film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Matt Dillon in the title role of Jack. The story follows Jack, a serial killer, over the course of 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. state of Washington. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, marking von Trier’s return to the festival after more than six years. (wiki)
The shot of Jack and Verge standing in a boat strongly resembles the painting “La Barque de Dante” by Eugène Delacroix, which was in itself influenced by “The Raft of the Medusa” (Le Radeau de La Méduse) by Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault. (read more: trivia)
von Trier described the film as celebrating “the idea that life is evil and soulless”.
timespace coordinates: summer of 1981 > ChristmasEve 1991 Hutchinson, Kansas / New York City
Mysterious Skin is a 2004 Dutch-American drama film directed by American filmmaker Gregg Araki, who also wrote the screenplay based on Scott Heim‘s 1995 novel of the same name.
Mysterious Skin tells the story of two pre-adolescent boys who are sexually abused by their baseball coach, and how it affects their lives in different ways into their young adulthood. One boy becomes a reckless, sexually adventurous male prostitute, while the other retreats into a reclusive fantasy of alien abduction. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: winter of 1987, Minnesota / Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo is a 1996 black comedy-crime film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Frances McDormand stars as Marge Gunderson, a pregnant Minnesota police chief investigating roadside homicides that ensue after a desperate car salesman (William H. Macy) hires two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in order to extort a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell). the score to Fargo is by Carter Burwell
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a 2014 American drama film co-written and directed by David Zellner. The film stars Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, and Kanako Higashi. The story is based on the urban legend surrounding Takako Konishi in search of the fictional ransom money seen buried in the snow from the 1996 film Fargo. (wiki)
Fargo is an American black comedy–crime drama anthology television series created and primarily written by Noah Hawley. The show is inspired by the eponymous 1996 film written and directed by the Coen brothers, who serve as executive producers on the series alongside Hawley. The series premiered on April 15, 2014, on FX, and follows an anthology format, with each season set in a different era, and with a different story and mostly new characters and cast, although there is minor overlap. Each season shares a common chronology with the original film. (wiki)
Lord and Miller wanted the film to feel like “you walked inside a comic book”, and were excited to tell the story in a way that the live-action films could not. Persichetti concurred, feeling that animation was the best medium with which to honor the style of the comics, allowing the production team to adapt 70-year-old techniques seen in comic artwork into the film’s visual language. Completing the animation for the film required up to 140 animators, the largest crew ever used by Sony Pictures Animation for a film to date.
The CGI animation for the film was combined with “line work and painting and dots and all sorts of comic book techniques” to make it look like it was created by hand, which was described as “a living painting”. This was achieved by artists taking rendered frames from the CGI animators and working on top of them in 2D, with the goal of making every frame of the film “look like a comic panel”. Lord described this style of animation as “totally revolutionary”, and explained that the design combines the in-house style of Sony Pictures Animation with the “flavor” of comic artists such as Sara Pichelli (who co-created Miles Morales) and Robbi Rodriguez. To make it feel more like a comic book, it was animated without motion blur, and rather than using animation principles like squash and stretch they came up with substitute versions of them; “so that in texture and feel it felt different, but it still achieved the same goal — to either feel weight or anticipation or impact or things like that”.
The film’s directors all felt that the film would be one of the few that audiences actually “need” to watch in 3D due to the immersive nature of the animated world created, and the way that the hand-drawn animation elements created specifically for the film create a unique experience; Persichetti described this experience as a combination of the effects of an old-fashioned hand-drawn multiplane camera and a modern virtual reality environment. (read more)
The year is 1987. Calvin Barr (a too-great-for-words Sam Elliott) is not a violent man. But he is more than capable of violence if sufficiently provoked. What many don’t realize about the thoughtful, elderly bloke regularly seen at the neighbourhood tavern is that he’s a legendary WW2 veteran who many years ago assassinated Adolf Hitler, an incredible secret that he’s frustratingly unable to share. One day, just as he’s coming to terms with rounding out his life, Calvin gets a visit from the FBI and the RCMP. They know what he’s done, and what he can be capable of. They have a mission for him. After discovering that it harbours a disease capable of eradicating humanity… they need him to take out Bigfoot.
A wondrous feature debut from writer/director Robert D. Krzykowski, featuring visual effects by celebrated two-time Academy Award Winner Douglas Trumbull (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, BLADE RUNNER), who also co-produced alongside the great John Sayles and Lucky McKee, and a supporting cast that includes Aidan Turner(THE HOBBIT trilogy), Caitlin FitzGerald(ALWAYS SHINE), Ron Livingston (THE CONJURING), Sean Bridgers(ROOM) and Rizwan Manji(PATERSON), this is one special film. A fantastical discourse on the melancholia of old age and a singular blast of entertaining wit, THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT bubbles with imagination and poignancy. It’s a work that stands as staunchly alone as the weather-beaten hero at its core. It will bowl you over like a forgotten beast deep in the Northern wilderness. – Mitch Davis //fantasiafestival
The House That Jack Built is a 2018 psychological horror art film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Matt Dillon in the title role of Jack. The story follows Jack, a serial killer, over the course of 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. state of Washington. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, marking von Trier’s return to the festival after more than six years. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 