Hostel Special Edition DVD Special Features

Here's a little about the video-based features on the Hostel special edition DVD - or at least the ones I know about so far.

The main attraction is probably the 30 minute retrospective called Hostel Dismembered, but another menu holds five further options: five minutes on set design; 11 minutes of KNB's FX; 3 minutes on a meal in Iceland (no, really); an almost 10 minute interview with Takashi Miike; and over 12 minutes on the film's music and sound effects. So that's around 70 minutes of new stuff so far.

Sounds good.

Nikki Had A Little Lamb

Remember the scene in Heathers where Winona Ryder's character places her fingers in her ears and sings Mary Had a Little Lamb so loud that she can't hear what is being said to her? So she won't have to face the reality she's being confronted with?

This story will probably remind you of that.

It started when Nikki Finke called Hostel 2 disgusting without ever having seeing it. This blatant display of prejudice stoked my ire, so I posted the following:

Why not be outraged and e-mail her a challenge? Such a venomous spitball of reactionary hate deserves some kind of rebuttal.

She then e-mailed me, and I replied - both parts of which can be read in a previous post.

And of course, the conversation went on from there. She e-mailed me saying:

[EDIT: I have deleted the content of her e-mail as it was offending some readers that I had included it (they'd rather her replies be deleted and replaced only by my comments on them. Weird). Suffice to say, she accused me of failing any mature dialogue between the two of us and remarked that she was amazed by my inability to believe people are offended by torture porn. Of course - her mistake there is twofold: one, I can most definitely believe it; two: she has categorised Hostel 2 as torture porn. Which is a daft label for any mainstream horror film at best, innacurate at worst and - definitely - applied without her even having seen the film. You can infer the rest of what she said from my reply e-mail which follows in a few lines]

And as far as I'm aware, I can reproduce the above as I please because, frankly, relevent excerpts are valid reportage. [EDIT: So I did reproduce her e-mail until people wanted it gone, so I removed it rather than offend readers]

I replied to her e-mail with the following:

As far as I can see it, Nikki, you are most definitely free to do the following:

a) be offended by torture porn
b) urge people to not reward that kind of disgusting moviemaking

What you have done, and have (here at least) damaged your reputation by doing, is

a) declared a film 'disgusting' and insinuated it is without merit, without even seeing it first

b) attempted to prejudice other people similarly

Go see Hostel 2, then review it however you wish. That simply won't be the same thing as slurring a film you haven't even bothered to watch before slamming it with a very serious label.

And some (many? most?) would say, slamming it with this label most innacurately.

The end to this I would recommend is your actual review of Hostel 2 based upon a viewing of the film and an admission that all of your previous comments were not based upon the film at all, but rather your prejudiced assumptions.

Meanwhile, one reader of this site sent her the following:

Dear Nikki Finke

I'd like to submit my future review of the last ever Harry Potter film. It's not yet finished, but it is disgustingly magical. Almost magic porn. I've not seen it, but it is amazing. It puts me in mind of Hostel 2 save the violence is swapped with fluffy owls, the blood with magic dust and the boobies with pulsating long wands. I hope Warner don't mind my advance review, but it seems that you don't mind reviewing films before they've been seen. You've lost all credibility in our eyes.

The final e-mail - so far at least - has come from Ms. Finke. Here's the important bit:

[EDIT: Of course - I deleted this also. She said it was shameful that I reproduced her e-mail - seems that she too would simply like me to report her opinions without actually allowing her a quote. Then she said that her reputation was 'fine' - well, not (as I said) with me. I don't presume to speak for anybody else. And then she announced that she'd filtered my e-mail address so that anything I sent her would go staright to her trash folder. And... er... as far as any of you know she could have called me a motherf*cker, threatened death to Muslims/Christians/Hindus everywhere (delete as appropriate) or implied that anybody with homosexual urges should be gutted, turned inside out and worn as a hat - but you'll never know exactly what she said, only my version of it, because the world has voted and that was their preference. Anyway... the key bit was her trashing any correspondance from me, ensuring my e-mail went straight to her trash]

But, readers, your e-mails will not. You can drown out Mary Had a Little Lamb. But please, please don't spam her or send her anything thoughtless. This is only worth doing if you argue your case logically and sensibly.

The point has been made now and Nikki Finke has had her prejudice exposed. She is a woman with a platform from which her opinions of films and filmmakers are broadcast far and wide and, as far as she's concerned, it's okay for those opinions to be nothing more than unsubstantiated attacks. Her perjurious rants can spread and discolour public opinion of a film and, sure, most people won't see anything wrong with that but I'm afraid I do.

If Ms. Finke requests, I think I will remove all of the content of this post that comes from her e-mails. Instead, I'll just paraphrase her comments and print my recounting of her points instead. Maybe she'll go that way and sacrifice her own voice in this debate, let me substitute a second-hand version of her reactionism. Perhaps she thinks that will in some way undermine my argument.

Back to the real issue: readers, why not go see Hostel 2 when it opens next weekend and form your own opinion after you've actually seen it? According to those that have seen it, it's really very good. I've seen the first one and, as I'm sure you know, I found it to be one of the best films of 2006.

Hostel 2 Hits A Nerve With The NY Times

The NY Times are making all sorts of spurious connections between Hostel 2 and the Virginia Tech shootings, and pretending Lionsgate are in some way exploiting the tragedy by sticking to Hostel 2's previously announced release date. Tiresome stuff and really very desperate with it.

If part two is anything like part one, this new Hostel is going to provide some much needed commentary on violence, America's attitudes to violence, and the kind of ingrained cultural prejudices that lead to such sickening, blinkered, ignorant nonsense as Old Boy being held up as a catalyst for mass muder. While Hostel is confronting issues head-on, critics of such violent films are hiding from the truth and scapegoating cinema. In certain circles, films like Hostel provoke interesting and informed debate, and in others... The NY Times, Nikki Finke and their ilk trot out the same reactionary wails of foaming hysteria.

The NY Times piece also includes comments for Roy Lee, the producer of proposed American Old Boy and Battle Royale remakes. In this section, the journalist, Michael Cieply, spuriously claims that Battle Royale is a Japanese videogame, not a film - why is this person even allowed to write about films? Was he even listening to his interview subjects?

Cieply has been a film producer himself, in the past - though Alleycats Strike is his only credit on IMDB. At the very least we can be relieved that period is over.

Hostel Special Edition DVD Announced

The first Hostel Special Edition DVD has been unveiled, and sadly, it is just the same as the first release with a second disc of bolt-on material. No new transfer? No new commentaries? No alternative cut?

The second disc will include: a Takashi Miike interview; featurettes on the music and sound, set design and special effects; two more featurettes called Hostel Dismembered and An Icelandic Meal.

Where are the deleted scenes Roth mentioned recently? Surely not exclusive to the as-yet-unannounced R1 release?

Captivity Cornered

The Hollywood Reporter have detailed the MPAA's punishments for the Captivity billboard 'incident'.

Apparently, they've placed a month long freeze on any ratings action associated with the film itself. Essentially, this means the film can't be seen by the MPAA for a rating before May 1st - not long before the release date of May 18th.

Should the MPAA then demand cuts, it seems unlikely a new version of the film could be submitted and passed in time.

Something tells me the MPAA are going to demand cuts.

This all strikes me as somewhat draconian. Inhibiting advertising on the film makes more sense - these billboards were clearly irresponsible, and I can see that the MPAA have some grounds for action there - but cornering the filmmakers in this way and jeopardising the film's release date is, at best, somewhat extreme.

Some might even see this as an utterly unnecessary intervention.

Of course, the MPAA are always being framed as the bad guys when all they're trying to do is protect the young and innocent from seeing harmful material, right?

Wrong. No country that operates something like the R rating could ever make this claim. In America, I could legitimately take a fve year old child to see Hostel. I couldn't, however, go alone to see a film like Where the Truth Lies without quite some effort - it was awarded an NC-17 rating and the big chains therefore passed on booking it, I'd have to find a smaller place that took the risk. In some counties, if not states, that can prove to be very tricky.

The MPAA are pandering to some very disturbing moral and ethical biases that, thankfully, aren't shared by the majority of the American public.

The solution is quite clear to me, though: adopt a model closer to the BBFC's system in the UK. The equivalent of the R here, or more or less at least, is the 18 certificate. This means that nobody under 18 can see the film at all. We also have a 15 certificate - nobody under 15 admitted - and the more lenient 12A, PG and U, all of which allow children to attend screenings, with basic the basic proviso that an under 12 needs to be accompanied by an adult to a 12A screening.

That way, adults can see (more or less) what they wish, and the delicate little eyes of the kiddy-winkies don't get sullied by, for example, the incarceration and humiliation of Elisha Cuthbert.

(Oh, and by the way, no punishment like this was prescribed after the Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare shenanigans. A perverse moral bias, as I said)