John S. Rad's Dangerous Men explodes onto screens today!
Cancel your plans this weekend: this one's going to blow your mind.
Iranian ex-pat John S. Rad labored on Dangerous Men––his gutter epic of crime, retribution and pure, unadulterated cinema––for more than 20 years. His contribution to the film didn't stop simply as the director; Rad was also the film's writer, producer, executive producer, editor, composer, production designer, set decorator and managed to appear for an uncredited cameo for his passion project (as his IMDb page will attest). He did everything for the film except find it an audience: when it was released in 2005, it quickly disappeared with nary a ticket sold.
Now Dangerous Men is back. Opening at more than 25 theaters this weekend––some of which are presenting the film off of its original 35mm prints––Dangerous Men is ready to completely demolish your brain, leave you a gibbering mess, and––when you regain your sanity––leave you with a completely new appreciation for the word "Rad."
Need more Radness? The Daily Beast chronicled the film's genesis and original release, featuring words from the only known interview with the late Rad himself, and Birth.Movies.Death. ran three of the film's catchy original tunes, which you might find lodged in your inner ear for the next few days. You'll probably also need to consult this list of films that collect the best of a particular sub-genre of movies that author/programmer Zack Carlson has dubbed "Action Dad" classics (featuring Dangerous Men and Miami Connection).
Check out the list of this week's openings below! For the full list of playdates through the end of the year, head to dangerous-men.com, where you'll also be able to check out several jaw-dropping clips, as well as pre-order a digital copy of the film (arriving 12/11 worldwide).
The Look of Silence nominated for an Academy Award®!
Winner of over 50 international awards, featured on over 30 official top ten lists including New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Variety, and championed by critics including Indiewire, which calls the film “spellbinding... Oppenheimer's skill as a storyteller seems boundless” and Vanity Fair, which declares the film as "one of the best documentaries ever made,” Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence has one more cause for celebration: yesterday morning, it was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary. And with this nomination, both Oppenheimer's first and second features have been nominated for the same category. Absolutely huge.
Oppenheimer spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his goal for the nomination, which actually has very little to do with winning a statue, but taking advantage of an opportunity to catalyze very real change for a nation of over 200 million people: "The Act of Killing helped transform the way Indonesia talks about its past. The Look of Silence helped Indonesia express its yearning for truth, justice, and reconciliation. We hope this nomination makes this dream a reality.”
Earlier this week, the film won all three awards for which it was nominated at the prestigious Cinema Eye Honors – including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature, Outstanding Production and Outstanding Direction – and was finally released on Blu-ray and DVD featuring hours of must-see special features. Order your copy here, or watch the film on digital On Demand via iTunes (and here in a specially-priced bundle with The Act of Killing), VHX, Vimeo and more!
The Oscars® are on Sunday, February 28th – wish us luck! And keep an eye out for The Look of Silence heading back to the big screen in the next few weeks...
People are losing their minds over Roar
A couple of weeks ago, we announced our pending theatrical re-release of Noel Marshall's 1981 mindshreddingly irresponsible big-cat classic Roar, the most dangerous movie ever made. Starring Marshall (producer of The Exorcist, in his one and only role as an actor-director), then-wife Tippi Hedren (The Birds), step daughter Melanie Griffith (Working Girl), and 100+ exotic animals, it's an unforgettable but rarely-seen cult film that the Marshall family made, famously, while living with lions in their own home.
We're so excited about this film, and revealed our killer poster and trailer for Roar which promptly set the internet on fire. Buzzfeed called the film "a labor of love. An insane labor of love." Nerdist dubbed it "full-bore insanity." Movies.com says the film is "so filled with spectacularly bad ideas, it's insane that anyone made it yet alone survived it." The A.V. Club, Yahoo, and dozens of other outlets weighed in, including Entertainment Weekly who claimed it "may be the craziest thing you see all year," and they were only referring to the trailer.
The consensus: this film is absolute madness. Check out our poster and trailer below and GET READY TO ROAR!
Roar will hit theaters starting next month. Check out the current list of cities and dates, with more still to be added, right here!