Chainsaw Maid: The Interview

We, at Blog of the Living Dead, have managed to track down the creator of the wonderful short Youtube claymation sensation, Chainsaw Maid. That very inspired film maker is Takena Nagao, from Japan. What follows is our interview!

>What do you do for a living right now?
I'm still a student. I'm studying physics at graduate school.

>What are your aspirations -- what do you want to be doing in 5 years?
I just want to be keeping making animations and earning a living by that!

>How/why did you get started doing clay-animation?
I had been interested in clay(or stop-motion)-aniamtion since my childhood. At highschool,the teacher of art club brought a video-camera and clay, and let me try making one. After that, I realized that I liked making animation very much, so I kept making more.

>What equipment/software/hardware do you use to create these animations/movies?
For shooting, I use an ordinary digital-camera. For editing,I use a Japanese free gif animation software, called Giam, and Ulead Videostudio. Next time I'll try Adobe After Effects.

>How long did it take to do Chainsaw Maid?
It took about three months. The two months of them were whole summer vacation.

>Do you have any producers/directors/writers etc. who have inspired you?
I've been inspired by many movies made by legendary great filmmakers, Romero, Argento, Carpenter, Lynch, Raimi, Tarantino, etc.

>I noticed that the main heroine of Chainsaw Maid is a woman (and more specifically a servant), who rises to the occasion. Is this movie perhaps a statement regarding women in Japan?
Well, I didn't mean to state anything about women in Japan. I was just thinking "I want to have a faithful and tough maid like her..." Also, female characters in costume of servant are often seen in Japanese comics and animations. They are very popular in Japan. I want my movie to represent today's Japanese culture. In addition , I wanted to make a super heroine movie like Alien2, Planet Terror, High Tension, etc. These are the reasons why I chose a female servant as a heroine.

>Do you have any new projects in the works you can tell us about?
I don't have new projects in progress right now, but there are many ideas in my mind.
I'm thinking of a gothic horror movie about vampires or witches,and a sci-fi horror about a prison-spaceship attacked by aliens, and a splatter gang movie. I'm also interested in featuring the life of Elizabeth Bathory. This will be like a gothic slasher! I'm also thinking of CHAINSAW MAID 2. This time it will be set in medieval times, where the maid is serving a princess. This will be a homage to Army of Darkness!

READ OUR SECOND INTERVIEW WITH TAKENA AND WHAT HE THINKS ABOUT LEE HARDCASTLE'S "CHAINSAW MAID 2"

Shock and Awe presents best of B-movie thrills

Written by Chris Alexander
for Metro Canada

Toronto:

Gone are the days of the grindhouse, those urban-centric celluloid spitting fleapits where miscreants of every persuasion gathered to watch films that gleefully defied both the mainstream and good taste, offering more daring and depraved viewers the sweetest of big screen, B-movie shocks.

That art of exhibiting these sorts of sleazy counterculture gems is still championed by a select few, among them is Toronto film collector Dion Conflict. Together with the folks behind Toronto’s legendary Fox Theatre in the Beach, Conflict is presenting the third installment of his popular Shock and Awe all night film festival.

Starting at 11:30 p.m. Saturday night (June 13th) and running ceaselessly until 10 a.m. Sunday morning, Shock and Awe contains a mind blowing array of vintage sexploitation, exploitation and horror cult favorites, screened in all their 16 and 35mm projected glory, including such mouth-watering fare as the ’70s softcore gem Mona and the classic ’80s shocker Return of the Living Dead.

But as Conflict reveals, the films themselves aren’t Shock and Awe’s only draw.

“When I came up with the idea I though it would be like a party.” says the unabashed weird movie buff.

“This is not only a film screening. It’s an event, with prize giveaways and an in-theatre marketplace. People think they can get everything on DVD or just download it but some of this stuff is not available at all. In fact, some of these prints are the last ones in existence.”

In the best tradition of the grindhouse, Shock and Awe’s prints (whose titles also include the early Jack Nicholson biker flick Hells Angels on Wheels) are suitably battered, having seen the spin of hundreds of projectors over the years. But in the context of these kinds of films, the splicier they are, the more hairs stuck to the frame, the more trippy and otherworldly they are.
“I have no shame when it comes to the presentation.” Says Conflict.

Basically, if it has sprockets I’m going to run it. It’s all part of the experience.”

Online
• For more information on Shock and Awe go to www.foxtheatre.ca

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) - A Book Review

Review by: Kimblebee

Plot
An expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.

Review
From the age of 14 I spent many a geography lesson daydreaming about the smouldering Mr Darcy, and how he might perhaps see sense and ditch Lizzy Bennett, leave Pemberley on his trusty steed, and rescue me from my dragon of a geography teacher, whose idea of fun was to memorise a ridiculous rhyme defining what a 'contour line' is.

Needless to say, Darcy never showed and I failed Geography. But I always kept a fondness for Austen's timeless love story, which is why I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that someone was going to rework the classic novel to include zombies! LA TV comedy writer Seth Grahame-Smith was able to rewrite Austen's novel was because is it out of copyright – fair play, I say – why didn't I think of doing anything like that?!

After reading the opening line,"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains", I could tell this was going to be one of those 'marmite' novels that you will either love or hate. The story opens with a zombie attack on the quaint village of Meryton where the Bennett family lives. Set in the same time as Austen's tale, the novel explores all the trials and tribulations of the young Bennett sisters' quests to find suitable husbands, with some much needed zombie action thrown into the mix for good measure.

According to Writer Grahame-Smith, around 85% of his version is the original text, which sounds rather a lot, but once you read it you'll realise just how mammoth his task of editing an reworking was, because the finished result is so completely different from Austen's original!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies uses some clever genre plot devices to spice up the original novel, including the Bennett sisters substituting reading and playing music for sparring with martial arts experts in the far east and becoming trained assassins, with the sole purpose of defeating the zombie army waiting to attack.

There are quite a few bloody, graphic zombie confrontations throughout the novel (some complete with illustrations!), however, as an avid gore fan, these much needed zombie attacks seemed too frequently interrupted by lengthy dialogue and plot developments that were almost redundant, given the zombie context version of the tale. I felt I was constantly counting down the pages until the next eye-gouging, beheading or gutting which were too seldom to make Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a great triumph.

To say that I was expecting a lot more, blood, guts and suitably gross adjectives is an understatement, and in that respect I was left feeling a little unsatisfied by the end. Maybe as a hardcore horror fan, I was expecting a little too much. If you are a horror fan and have yet to read Austen's Pride and Prejudice, or an Austen fan and have yet to see a zombie film, then Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the perfect halfway house.

Also, look out soon for the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on the big screen - it is rumoured that Hollywood is currently engaging in a massive bidding war over the film rights!

Read more great reviews (and much much more) at Eat My Brains.