Director Joe Dante is presenting an incredible film series entitled "Dante's Inferno" at the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood from now through April 22. Here's Joe talking us through the program:

I'm hosting a series of screenings at the recently renovated NEW BEVERLY CINEMA in Hollywood from April 9 thru 22. (I'm not there every night tho.) The first screening each night will start at 7:30 and the second at approximately 9:30 (depending on the running time of the first film). Come down and wallow if you're in the neighborhood. Here's the final rundown:

April 9 + 10 MONDO CANE and ZULU

It's hard to imagine today the impact this tawdry but fascinating Italian "shockumentary" had on the world in 1962, when the bizarre customs of people in other lands seemed both exotic and horrifying to Western eyes. Its smash success spawned a whole genre of mostly phony Mondo movies, each outdoing the other for pure sleaze, which lasted into the 80s and paved the way for something much more upsetting: Reality TV.

Cy Enfield's ZULU is simply one of the great historical epics ever--100 stuff-upper-lip British soldiers battle 4000 Zulu warriors in a beautifully staged reenactment of the 1879 Battle of Roarke's Drift. John Barry should have won (but didn't) an Oscar for his brilliant score. The cast, led by producer Stanley Baker, is terrific, but the great Nigel Green steals the show as the consummate side-whiskered, mustached Victorian Sergeant-Major. With Jack Hawkins, James Booth, Patrick Magee and a very young Michael Caine, whose work here got him THE IPCRESS FILE.

April 11 + 12 HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD and TRUCK TURNER

We called it "Day For Nothing" when we made it (shot in ten days around footage from 12 other movies on a bet with Roger Corman). One of the last of New World Pictures' popular "three girl" drive-in movies where pretty girls doff their duds and chase around non-permitted LA locations. The late great Candice Rialson plays a version of herself as a naive Indiana girl trying to make it in scuzzy 70s Hollywood. Pulled from 42nd Street after two days, it seems to have survived as a cult movie. It's certainly an accurate record of what it was like to make a New World Picture. Producer Jon Davison, co-director Allan Arkush and co-star Dick Miller are scheduled to appear.

TRUCK TURNER, which came out late in the blaxploitation game, got lost in the Hollywood shuffle but it's as dazzling a piece of action filmmaking as the 70s had to offer. Isaac Hayes is a bounty hunter on the trail of a big-time pimp whose vengeful, bitch-slapping squeeze is played by Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols! Along for the violent ride are Yaphet Kotto, Alan Weeks, Scatman Crothers, Sam Laws and Dick Miller. One of the overlooked gems of the decade from director Jonathan Kaplan (HEART LIKE A WHEEL), who will introduce the film.

April 13, 14, 15 THE SADIST and THE PRIVATE FILES OF J EDGAR HOOVER

Fairway-International was a tiny company specializing in grade-C drive-in movies like WILD GUITAR and EEGAH! But from such unlikely soil springs a chilling surprise! James Landis' intense 1963 drive-in classic is based on the same true crime story as BADLANDS-- the serial killing exploits of Charles Starkweather and his underage girlfriend. Brutally unfolding in Real Time over 94 taut minutes, mad killer Arch Hall Jr. terrorizes our small cast in a junkyard -- maybe the best-photographed junkyard ever, courtesy of the great Vilmos Zsigmond, who will appear in person on the 15th.

THE PRIVATE FILES OF J EDGAR HOOVER - Tabloid genius Larry Cohen brings his guerilla style Sam Fuller-lite approach to this 1977 ripped-from-the-headlines pop-culture AIP comic book about the near fifty-year reign of America's "top cop", who dug up the dirt on famous personalities through six turbulent administrations. It's gutsy and disreputable and Broderick Crawford 's finest hour. Eat your heart out, Oliver Stone!
Larry Cohen will be on hand to introduce.

April 16 + 17 THE SECRET INVASION and TOMB OF LIGEIA

This scenic WWII epic, shot in Yugoslavia in 1964, is one of Roger Corman's least-seen yet most accomplished films, with essentially the same plot as THE DIRTY DOZEN -- which wasn't made until three years later! Stewart Granger, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva and Raf Vallone are felons recruited for a mission to rescue an Italian general from behind enemy lines. Roger used this story idea in his first movie, FIVE GUNS WEST. I haven't seen this since it came out!

TOMB OF LIGEIA was the last of Corman's popular series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, but unlike the others it has many beautiful English countryside exteriors and mostly departs from the stylized stage-bound unreality of its forebears. Robert Towne (CHINATOWN) wrote the script in a more romantic vein, thinking Richard Chamberlain would play the lead--but AIP intervened and sure enough, Vincent Price took over.
Roger Corman will elucidate further in person, schedule permitting.

April 18 + 19 WRONG IS RIGHT and Mystery Movie

When Richard Brooks' star-studded adaptation of Charles McCarry's spy novel The Better Angels came out in 1982 it was roundly dismissed as a confused jumble. From the hindsight of 2008, it looks like the STRANGELOVE of its era. So many aspects of this film have come true, it's up there with NETWORK as a predictor of the future, our sorry present. Sean Connery stars as a globe-trotting tv reporter who's tracking a terrorist dealing nuclear weapons in the mideast. Along the way we meet a President who goes to war to boost his ratings, a (Condi-like) Vice President, CIA and FBI figures who are so broadly caricatured they seemed divorced from reality in 1982-- but who closely resemble figures we now see on the news every day! Suffice it to say the climax involves the World Trade Center. One of the all-star ensemble will join us--John Saxon!

Plus another movie in the same vein TBA with guest

April 20 + 21 BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW and HORROR EXPRESS

Piers Haggard's atmospheric and beautifully photographed (Dick Bush) entry in the burn-the-witches genre benefits from a prolonged sense of dread, literate dialog and an unusually convincing period flavor -- sort of a Masterpiece Theater horror film. When hairy patches of "satan's skin" start cropping up on the bodies of nubile 17th century teenagers, local judge Patrick Wymark gets to the bottom of things, starting with voluptuous teen temptress Linda Hayden's. Less well known than the same studio's earlier WITCHFINDER GENERAL, but equally effective, with more emphasis on the supernatural. Great score by Marc Wilkinson.

I love train movies. HORROR EXPRESS was made because the producers had access to the train models from NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA. One of my very favorite vehicles (get it?) for Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, this Spanish-made extravaganza (also known as Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express) has it all -- good characters, lots of wry humor, a mad monk, a mysterious countess, a prehistoric fossilized monster alien, eyeballs in a jar, Telly Savalas as a bellicose Cossack (it's 1906) and a surprisingly complex science fiction plot. And I left out the zombies! Seriously, this one of my top favorites of all time.

April 22 THE MOVIE ORGY

This the first, one nite only public showing in many years of my first project. In 1968 when "camp" was king, Jon Davison and I put together a counterculture compendium of 16mm bits and pieces (tv show openings, commercials, parts of features, old serials etc.), physically spliced them in ironic juxtapositions and ran the result at the Philadelphia College of Art interspersed with parts of a Bela Lugosi serial. The reaction was phenomenal. This led to The Movie Orgy, a 7-hour marathon of old movie clips and stuff with a crowd-pleasing anti-war, anti-military, anti-establishment slant that played the Fillmore East and on college campuses all over the country for years -- always the one print, viewed through a haze of beer and controlled substances. We called it a 2001-splice odyssey. We kept adding and subtracting material over time so this, alas, is not the original version-- it's the later cutdown, running a mere 4 hours and 19 minutes! But it's still a pop time capsule that will bring many a nostalgic chuckle from baby boomers and dazed expressions of WTF?! from anyone else.

The MOVIE ORGY is being presented free or charge, so buy plenty of concession stand items at that screening!

Filmmaker turned comic book writer Greg Pak has a new side project -- AsianAmericanComics.com, bringing you the latest news about Asian American comic books, comic book characters, and comic book creators.

Click here to view the site and click here to sign up for the newsletter.

This Saturday in New York City, the Asian American International Film Festival presents a panel of Asian American comic book creators, including industry legend Larry Hama and "World War Hulk" writer Greg Pak. The event is open to the public. Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/165.

SECRET IDENTITY: ASIAN AMERICANS IN COMICS
Saturday, July 21, 2:30 pm
The Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York, NY 10021
Tel: (212) 288-6400
Box Office 212-517-ASIA

Asian American comic book creators share their work while discussing Asian representation in comics, the creative process of making comics, and the links between comics and film. Panel includes legendary writer Larry Hama (Wolverine, G.I. Joe), indie sensation Christine Norrie (Hopeless Savages, Breaking Up), comics-editor-turned-film-editor Jennifer Lee, DC Comics editor Pornsak Pichetshote (Vertigo), filmmaker-turned-comics-writer Greg Pak (Incredible Hulk, World War Hulk), and Jeff Yang, editor of the new Asian American comics anthology, "Secret Identities."

Asian American filmmaker Eric Byler has made a television pilot called "My Life Disoriented" that airs on December 26th on PBS stations around the country. Please, please, please, watch the pilot! And tell your friends and family to watch it. Apparently, if enough people watch the show, it has a chance of being greenlit as the first Asian American television series since Margaret Cho's "All American Girl." Here's the good word from Byler's blog:

if enough people find out about the show, and enough people watch it on Tuesday -- we might post the kind of Nielson ratings that could earn us a seat on that bus for 2007, and earn the next band of insurgent TV pilot trouble-makers a spot on the bus with us.

Additionally, please watch the YouTube clips -- presumably, the more they're viewed, the better in terms of getting the show picked up for a full season:

High School Clip (with Karin Anna Cheung, Di Quon, Autumn Reeser, Amanda Fuller)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qk57L6LBPY

Family Clip (with Tamlyn Tomita, Dennis Dunn, Di Quon, Phil Young, and Karin Anna Cheung)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jftiJIqIOL8

"My Life Disoriented" may become the first Asian American television series since Magaret Cho's "All American Girl" over ten years ago. We need the APA community to make their voice heard, and get the kind of ratings that would earn us a full season of episodes either on PBS, or MTV or ABC Family all of whom have expressed interest.

"My Life Disoriented" has been gaining momentum in the last few days before the premiere, with MySpace and YouTube hits exploding (see below), and The Boston Globe, Washington Post, O.C. Register, and L.A. Times all doing stories. But if I could have picked one city we really need to reach it would have been yours.

The auction has closed.

The latest from Pakbuzz.com:

Sign up for the Pakbuzz Newsletter now and you’ll have a chance to win a “Robot Stories” DVD or a “Robot Stories” screenplay book. Six names will be chosen at random from the list at the end of July -- three copies of the DVD and three copies of the book will be given away. All prizes will be signed by writer and director Greg Pak. (Please note that the prizes can only be mailed to US addresses.) Visit the sign up page now and enter your email address to subscribe. Good luck!

Thanks to Visual Communications for the heads up about the June 30 deadline for the Fox Diversity Development program. From the official announcement:

The Fox Entertainment Group (hereinafter "Fox") announces a new chapter in its campaign to identify and support promising writers from diverse backgrounds. Since 2001, Fox has accepted submission of TV "spec" scripts towards the selection of aspiring writers for a six-week program at Writer's Boot Camp ("WBC") in Los Angeles. As a part of the Boot Camp experience the selected writers have written an additional "spec" script under the supervision of WBC instructors and Fox Diversity executives.

In the 2006 edition of Fox' writers outreach we do not wish to receive "spec" material based on series already on the air. In this new phase of our program, we are soliciting submission of original television pilot scripts.

This shift in focus represents our view that the television industry has at its disposal a large and growing population of diverse writers capable of assuming positions on series writing staffs. We will continue to seek and identify quality episodic writers through other outreach efforts and contact with talent representatives. But, in this new phase we hope to encourage more original thinking, and written product, by diverse writers and/or about diverse themes and characters.

Writers selected for this program will be enrolled in a concentrated course at Writer's Boot Camp where the writer will receive up to six months of instruction and personal guidance from instructors and Fox Diversity executives. During that time our hope will be to guide the writer through drafts of their original pilot towards the goal of a top-quality script that can be submitted to broadcast and cable networks for pilot consideration.

We encourage all diverse writers with a story to tell, or writers of any color with a diverse series lead character in mind, to submit their scripts per the guidelines described below.

This entry crossposted at AsianAmericanFilm.com.

From the official announcement from Asian CineVision:

Enter to win a flat screen plasma TV, ipod or a digital camera! And all you gotta do is send us your 15 second video.

V-Clip National Competition
Registration Deadline EXTENDED: June 23

Asian CineVision and Verizon announce the first ever V-Clip National Competition for the annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF). Filmmakers submit their 15-second video clip that highlights the Asian American film experience while creatively incorporating the Verizon logo, a sponsor of the 29th AAIFF. Submissions can be created in any format and can be live action, animation or motion graphics.

10 finalists will have their V-Clips screened at select programs during the festival.
Grand winner and two runner ups will be announced on AAIFF Closing Night.
Prizes for grand winner and runner ups may include flat screen plasma TV; digital camera or an iPod.

Visit http://www.asiancinevision.org/festival.html for complete entry rules and forms.

Another quick reminder -- today is the last day to register for the AAFilmLab's 72 Hour Film Shootout. For more information about the event, visit the AAFilmLab website and/or read the interview with AAFilmLab president Matte Chi.