This year marks the 75th anniversary for the Edina Cinema and to commemorate it Landmark Theaters will have a special double feature presentation of It Happened One Night and Bride of Frankenstein on Sunday, August 30th, one day before the theater officially turns 75 years old. Over the years the theater has gone through many changes, originally starting out as a one screen before twice being split into multiple theaters but it has become a staple of the community and one of the best places to watch Independent and foreign films in the Twin Cities.

While there are no more specific details as of yet on the event, I’ll be sure to post updates as I find out about them. But there is strong backing from both Landmark and the community, so it should be a fantastic event once all is said and done.

It Happened One Night trailer

Bride of Frankenstein trailer

One of the real treats of this site is trying to find obscure and weird foreign films to watch. I’ve been watching movies long enough that finding obscure American and English language films is a relatively easy proposition, and on the Internet it has become a bit of a cottage industry unto itself. But finding obscure foreign films? Therein lies a challenge.

Now there is a catch to that as well. If someone wants to know about foreign films soon to be sent over the pond, all one needs to do is read Twitch on a daily basis to find the most up to date films and your work is done. Sure they lean a little heavy to genre films, but nobody covers new foreign releases better then Twitch, and it really isn’t even close.

But I didn’t start Where the Long Tail Ends to compete with Twitch. Myself or anyone else would be a fool to try. Rather, I wanted to find films that were bizarre enough that they never much registered with the majority of film goers when they were initially released. There is a wealth of great films out there just waiting to be found, and while I may not have enjoyed Tierische Liebe or Lunacy all that much, I’m quite glad that I watched them. Of course, then there is Schramm.

I have known about Schramm for about two years. As far as German horror goes it is rather infamous for how disturbing it is which, considering the notoriety of German underground cinema, is rather impressive. Schramm was one of a handful of films that were the initial inspiration for me to start this site. Films that caught my eye but I was reluctant to take a chance on. Schramm is not particularly hard to track down, but until recently wasn’t easy to find without buying a brand new copy either. It would take effort, and considering the pay off meant that one would most likely be revolted and disturbed out of their skull, meant that I wouldn’t be putting much effort into finding Schramm any time soon.

So, of course, it found me.

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While mainstream theaters are being deluged with mediocre films, here in Minneapolis we have a few Independent films being released that look very interesting. First off is Frederico Fellini’s Amarcord, which is getting an exclusive re-release at the Lagoon. And while I’ve heard it is fantastic, the film I am even more interested in viewing is Everlasting Moments, the Swedish film perhaps best known for being submitted for Oscar consideration over Let the Right One In.

DVD releases are a bit drier as the mainstream films are almost universally awful, so the weight of the week falls upon the foreign film releases. Of course the big name release is Slumdog Millionaire, but make sure to keep an eye out for the French thriller Tell No One and the Spanish time travelling genre film TimeCrimes.

As always trailers are after the break!

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While it has been a wasteland for new releases in recent weeks, a slow trickle of decent fair has begun to emerge. And while their is nothing really all that interesting at the multiplex, Gomorrah is getting released at places that show foreign films. It looks like a much darker and less glamorous take on the romantic mafioso film that most US theater goers would expect, but that certainly isn’t a bad thing.

DVD releases are pretty weak as well this week, which makes me wonder why some of the titles that were released last week weren’t pushed to this one so they wouldn’t have as much competition. The only recommendation I have is for Punisher: War Zone, which is by no means a good movie, but is a totally ridiculous movie that is worth a rental. Keep on the lookout for when the Punisher punches someone’s face off!

As always trailers are after the break!

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I bet you think running this site is all fun and games. Oh sure, I have an unhealthy addiction for Mahjong that I have been trying to pass off on Anna, but that is besides the point. I don’t get to just lay around all day, watching whatever I want whenever I want. I have, like, a system. A rigorous, temperamental system.

When I first started this column it was meant to be an excuse for me to finally watch certain films I had always wanted to watch when I was younger, but for whatever reason, had simply never gotten around to doing so. But while that selfishly worked well as an initial idea, that wasn’t going to be enough to fuel a column, let alone an entire site. So thus my initial idea inevitably began to expand.

Soon I began to look for films that would push me out of my comfort zone, as well as those that would have appealed to me when I was a youth. From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump to include reviews of true independent films and hard to find foreign films as well. Finally, I began to track down movies that were out of print or simply never released in the US. And as I added on each new group of films, the list of movies I planned to watch and review grew increasingly larger and more daunting.

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