Howl was nominated for two awards on it’s festival run, the one at Sundance being the Grand Jury Prize and the nomination at Berlin being the Golden Berlin Bear.

It’s San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society’s reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

Kondracki recently wrote along with Nadia Benamara and directed the 2009 film “Viko”. Weisz is set to appear in the Peter Jackson directed film “The Lovely Bones” which is opening in theaters on January 15, 2010.

The Flick

I feel sorry for Max Handelman. Who’s that, you ask? Why that’s Elizabeth Banks’ husband, and I say that because he never sees her. Elizabeth Banks has been in eight films in the last year (for those keeping track at home: Comanche Moon miniseries, Definitely, Maybe, Lovely Still, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, W., Role Models, Meet Dave, and this), eight films! Crazy, huh? Actually on second thought, I’m not feeling sorry for Max, because I’ve seen her more than him!

Joking aside, The Uninvited lets Banks play a villain and while she might be fatigued, it’s okay; it’s the script that doesn’t get her much to chew on. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll recognize how it will play out when you do see the film. It’s generic, played-out, reusing well-worn ghost story ideas, and it is a remake. Not that it really matters that it is an American version of The Tale of Two Sisters, a South Korean film that put Korean cinema on the map, because it follows every American ghost film cliché you can think of. We got red herrings everywhere, ghosts warning the protagonist, odd imagery, random noises, you know, the typical stuff we see in these types of films.

So I didn’t like it huh? Well, to play Devil’s Advocate here for a second, the film is paced extremely well, we are rarely bored, and they surrounded Banks with a good cast. David Strathairn is decent but it’s the young Emily Browning and Arielle Kebbel that make it all worth watching. Like I said, Banks is a bit bland as the villain, so to make up for it, Kebbel (sexy for sure) and Browning offer up good chemistry and milk the suspense for all it’s worth. They’re good, and hopefully, we’ll see more of them (actually we are for Kebbel). Now I’m done playing the Devil’s Advocate.

The Guard Brothers are the directors and while they don’t offer up anything visually interesting, they’re capable of telling the story with a professional eye. I think the film would be better if they didn’t offer us so much of the ghost angles. By taking out the supernatural elements, I think the film would’ve been more interesting as a paranoid tale of who is dad’s new girlfriend. But that’s just me. Well, apparently others thought the same too because at my screening there was no one there. Yes, literally no one was there. That’s sad actually, because the film isn’t so bad it needs to be avoided, it’s just not good enough to fully recommend seeing.

I guess the economy has gotten to everyone. Everyone’s too broke to see rich kids get terrorized. I joke, but the film’s idea was strong enough to be interesting, the script just never pushed it far enough to work. As is, it’s a mediocre film. I guess now Max can see his wife.

The Blu-Ray

Unlocking the Uninvited:  Clocking in at around 20 minutes this is an interesting account of how the producers decided to make the flick based on a Korean flick.  There are interviews with the cast and crew and overall is a pretty solid feature that looks great in HD.  

Deleted Scenes: This is a pretty weak feature with very little content, and pretty much all of these scenes were deleted for a reason.  

Alternate Ending: Like the deleted scenes, the filmmakers were wise to cut this one out.  

Overall the Blu-Ray looks amazing, and the flick isn’t bad, but as far as features go this disc is pretty weak.