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I’m well aware that Uwe Boll has a reputation for being one of the worst filmmakers of our generation, but I have to admit that I’ve never seen any of his films (in part because distributors like to withhold pictures like Bloodrayne from critics).

I did, however, get a huge kick out of reading about (and watching — see above) the boxing matches to which Boll challenged the internet film critics who had been the most vocal opponents of his work. Boll easily won all four fights, with each of his opponents, as WIRED’s Chris Baker phrased it, “crash[ing] faster than an overloaded server.” The night of the fight, Boll allegedly made the following victory speech: “The lesson is: So bad prepared are the critics in the rings, they are also at writing. Fucking critics!” I can’t speak on the subject of his movies, but in terms of sheer quotability, this guy is clearly the new Werner Herzog.

Now Michael Guillen has an extremely entertaining interview with Boll, cross-posted at Twitch and The Evening Class. In it, Boll makes grand pronouncements on topics as varied as 9/11, Oliver Stone, his upcoming partnership with South Park, and why he was sued by the New York Post. You’ll find those and other highlights after the jump.

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Under discussion:

Masters of Horror [TV Series]  (2005)

Hannah Takes the Stairs  (2007)

Last night, I was reading a story on Twitch, and I noticed a banner ad trumpeting the DVD release of something called Valerie On the Stairs. My instant reaction was, “Uh-oh. That’s going to be really confusing, what with Hannah Takes The Stairs opening next week.”  Upon further research, I discovered that Valerie was directed by Mick Garris, for Showtime’s Masters of Horror series. In the interest of obliterating any further confusion, I made the following side-by-side comparison of the two films:

Valerie: About spooky goings-on at “a large apartment filled with unsuccessful writers where they can live rent-free until they make their first publication.”
Hannah: Director Joe Swanberg and his actors/co-writers shared an apartment for a month in Chicago while filming.

Hannah: “A sexy slacker tale.” — Gerald Peary
Valerie: “A sexually-charged tale of terror.” — Some guy on Wikipedia

Hannah: Not literally about stairs.
Valerie: Literally about stairs. Ghost stairs.

I assume you’ve figured out by now that this post is just another excuse to plug the upcoming New Talkies festival, which begins a week from tomorrow with the premiere of Hannah, and continues at the IFC Center through Labor Day weekend. My associated coverage will begin on SpoutBlog later this week. In the meantime, if you’re going to be in New York during the festival, you can and should buy tickets now via IFC’s website.

Under discussion:

War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death  (2007)

• Dennis Harvery reviews a documentary narrated by Sean Penn called War Made Easy, based on pundit Norman Solomon’s book of the same name, about how media institutions collude with governments to shape public opinion on war. “Escalation in ground-level harm has, per Solomon, been deliberately obscured from public knowledge. Instead, attention is refocused on dubious feel-good reconstruction stories and fodder from embedded journalists selected by military intelligence to fly and bond with troops on select missions. Fox News is predictably bashed here, but supposedly neutral CNN gets it even harder.” The film opens next week in San Francisco only.
• Ice Cube and his producing partner Matt Alvarez are allegedly trying to produce a big screen adaptation of the graphic novel 10 at Dimension. Oddly, Variety says The Weinstein Company “declined comment.”
• Sarah Polley’s directorial debut, Away From Her, received five nominations from the Director’s Guild of Canada yesterday — more than any other film.