Ariel Winter, Roger Bart, Malcolm McDowell,

Marlee Matlin & John Waters

BEVERLY HILLS, CA  –  Anchor Bay Films announced today the acquisition of all North American distribution rights to director/writer Richard Bates, Jr.’s debut feature film, EXCISION, which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month.  Produced by Dylan Hale Lewis, the horror film features an all-star cast including: AnnaLynne McCord (“90210”), Traci Lords (Cry Baby), Ariel Winter (“Modern Family”), Roger Bart (“Desperate Housewives”), Jeremy Sumpter (Soul Surfer), Malcolm McDowell, Matthew Gray Gubler (“Criminal Minds”), Academy Award^® winner Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God), Ray Wise (Good Night, and Good Luck) and John Waters.  The deal was announced by Bill Clark, President of Anchor Bay Entertainment. 

“We are pleased to be adding EXCISION to our slate this year,” commented Kevin Kasha, Executive Vice President, Acquisitions and Co-Productions for Anchor Bay Films.  “It has an amazing cast and we know Anchor Bay fans will love it!” 

“I have been influenced my entire life by the films which Anchor Bay has brought to audiences.  I could not be more excited that they have chosen to take my film out in North America,” said Bates.

EXCISIONis the story of Pauline (McCord), a delusional teenage outcast.  Pauline picks scabs.  Pauline dissects road kill.  Pauline fantasizes about performing surgery on strangers.  Her fascinations disturb her schoolmates and her parents, Phyllis (Lords) and Bob (Bart).  No one understands Pauline except for Grace (Winter), her younger sister who suffers from cystic fibrosis. An outcast at school and at home, Pauline is convinced that the best way to repair her estranged relationship with her family is to perform a risky operation to save her sister’s life.  A BXR Productions film, EXCISION is Richard Bates, Jr.’s directorial debut adapted from his award-winning short film, also called Excision.

The deal was negotiated by Kevin Kasha, Josh Thomashow and Marc Barson for Anchor Bay Films; Kevin Iwashina and Christine D’Souza of Preferred Content, Cassian Elwes, and Elsa Ramo of The Law Offices of Elsa Ramo negotiated the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.

About Anchor Bay Films

Anchor Bay Films is unique in that it offers the creative community a fully integrated distribution capability on all platforms and an international solution extending beyond the U.S.  Anchor Bay Films is a division of Anchor Bay Entertainment and is on the ground providing quality distribution with operations in the U.S., United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, as well as distribution capabilities in other key territories. The company focuses on a platform release strategy for its films with an eye toward maximizing their potential across all ancillary distribution platforms. Films in its library include the critically-acclaimed comedy City Island starring Andy Garcia and Solitary Man starring Michael Douglas as well as the 2011 releases of Kill the Irishman starring Ray Stevenson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer and Christopher Walken, Toronto Film Festival award-winner Beautiful Boy with Maria Bello and Michael Sheen and Cannes 2011 premiere Corman’s World.  Anchor Bay Entertainment is a subsidiary of Starz Media, LLC (www.starzmedia.com) which is an operating unit of Starz, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation.

CH=Chris Hill

BW= Ben Wheatley

CH: How are you doing?

BW: I am doing good man, how are you doing?

CH: Good thanks for asking, Thanks for taking time to speak with me. I watched Kill list last night for the second time, I was really hoping you could shed some light  on some of the film for me, first off how did you come up with the story and the concept?

BW: It had been something we had been thinking of developing, we’ve been thinking about a couple of other movies that didn’t come off. It had come about from kind of a weird place. The film has come through from ideas about casting first, rather than actual plot, With Neil Maskell and MyAnna, and I wanted to work with Michael Smiley. I wanted to see how those guys fit together and what kind of shape that would make. I developed a film that was going to be with Neil, it was kind of  a fish out of water thing, it was going to be a criminal who has gone to a foreign country to rescue his friend who has gone missing on a camping holiday or something. It was going to be where a bad person gets involved with worse people. Kind of an H.P. Lovecraft style of thing, And a lot of elements from that got turned into Kill List. Like the hand being slashed and got infected that kind of stuff. And then for some reason or another it didn’t happen. And then we were developing a short film where Neil and MyAnna played a couple called “NO” which is about a hidden recession. They both work and then get laid off, they got all this debt and they don’t know what to do and they can’t get another job so they turn to crime, again that didn’t happen. And then I worked with Michael Smiley on “Down Terrace” and I really wanted to work with him again. And I thought it would be interesting to team him up with Neil. And then out of that all those elements swirling together was kind of how Kill List came from that.

CH: It said on the credits that additional dialogue by the cast. How much was improvised and how much was written out in the script.

BW: The additional dialogue credit is slightly misleading. What it means is that, a lot of the time we used paraphrasing. So we take the script and instead of improvising they will put it in their own words. what we tend to do is do a take that is exactly as the script, then do a take that is paraphrased and then a take back on the script again and you get this, It’s kind of good, it makes each take different from the next one.  And it helps keeping it alive so the actor’s don’t settle in. So it doesn’t become slightly repetitive or wrote. we did kind of start the scene a minute or two before the dialogue so they would have to build up into the dialogue and then the actual scripted dialogue would happen, then I wouldn’t call cut until a minute or so after that to see if they had anything else to add to the sequences. And then we did other stuff. The dinner party scene was a real dinner party with the food being served and then it ran for the full 50 minutes of the dinner party and we shot it documentary and then we picked the bits out that we liked. There a lot of different strategies to keep the film as alive as possible.

CH: In the beginning there is an extensive amount of arguing that is not typical of a standard film, typically they shy away from having the protagonist not really get along with his wife, it was a bold move there.

BW: I don’t know if you see Cassavetes films they don’t usually shy away from that. They usually start with a load of shouting. For my life, my only experience is that arguing isn’t as unhealthy as might be seen in movies. Movies existed where it rarified moralistic worlds. Good or bad are pretty binary. If people are having arguments they usually split up, but that’s not what life is like people argue all the time. Relationships are a negotiation the whole time I think, they are not completely on the level. in a way what we wanted to make sure was that the film was populated with living breathing contradictory people and you don’t get that when you use that kind of slightly anodyne mainstream view of what  human relationships are like. Smooth arcs of characters are nothing what life is like.

CH: In the movie there are multiple points that could be described as ambiguous, whether it’s the carving on the back of the picture, the issue with the priest smiling, the librarian thanking. Were those specifically meant to be ambiguous to create conversation or was there something I should have picked up that would have made them more..

BW: I don’t know? Why were they smiling? That’s the thing. There is probably a pretty reasonable reason behind that, I know there is, when I think about it. It’s not ambiguous, in a way it’s kind of, there is an answer to it. No one character says, you don’t get a scene where Jay goes “why the hell are they smiling” and gal says “I think they were smiling for this that the other” and its spelled out. But as you have that conversation and you watch on the screen you are coming up with an idea as to why. And I feel when I read online and the various theories as to what they are coming up with they tend to be pretty much on the money, Which makes me feel the readings that people are getting from this movie are pretty universal and therefore not quite ambiguous. I think for me a lot of the stuff is straightforward. All the information is there, what’s missing is just a summary at the end, no one would thank me for putting a summary at the end.

CH: One of the things I liked was. A lot of times you see movies that connect all the dots for you. It’s just pure escapism and once it’s done you don’t think about the movie at all, While with Kill List that is not the case, when you’re done, your thinking back onto it.

CH: I heard there are a lot of comparisons to the Wicker Man, does that bother you?

BW: No, what can you do, there are some things that are undeniable such as setting a trap. The protagonist is in a trap which he doesn’t know about which is Wicker Man-ish, I would be childish to deny that. But equally I like to think of like the Manchurian Candidate which is probably more on the money. Both are about assassination and large organizations controlling people. It’s an easy association like there are cults in one so it’s like the other. There not totally off beam. It makes a nice hash tag. WTF #Wickerman, #Bullshit. But it doesn’t really matter.

CH: In the beginning when they are playing with the foam swords was that intended to be a bit of foreshadowing to the end?

BW: What, that I coincidentally shot it.

CH: No I meant, how you said that you continue to film without cutting. I didn’t know if they were just having a bit of play.

BW: No, Its intentional, it’s inevitable. Its what’s going to happen to this guy. He is a fly in a web. Since the beginning he’s got no chance. It’s also got to do with the structure of the film. On the surface it’s structured with kind of 3 acts. The dinner party act, the hits, and the final confrontation with the cults act.  Equally the film is structure symmetrically where you can fold the film in half and see that the scenes cross over. So the hunchback kill matches the beginning and end. Finding and killing of rabbits is in there, jay and gal rolling on the floor fighting is in there. On one reading of the movie I think of as a curse and it starts with the mark with the beginning of the film and ends with the mark at the end and everything in between is a curse on the audience.

CH: When coming up with the concept it sounds like you had bits and pieces from different projects, how does that come about in terms of being able to take different aspects of different films where it can come together to become a circular film.

BW: I think you can’t help but think of things and thematic ideas all the time, trying to get in your own head how to work out feelings that are going on in your life. In one project I might tackle it one way and in another project tackle it another. A lot of themes in Kill List are in “Down Terrace” as well. The Karl character is not dissimilar to the Jay character. There are strong women in charge of the organization. You can’t help that, having themes in your work, working through your concerns in different ways. when you have a couple of projects that get smashed up they are all the same building blocks your just building a different model with the same pieces.

CH: Did you have any idea that it would be such a polarizing film. The response I have seen is people either love it or they really, really don’t.

BW: I was happy that people liked it. People that don’t, nothing I can do about that. I sympathize with them. It’s one of those things. I often don’t like lots of stuff. I just don’t find myself twittering about it to be fair, But maybe that’s just me. You won’t be finding me calling people idiots on line in print forever. That’s the modern world though isn’t it?

If you make stuff that specifically doesn’t run the risk of upsetting loads of people, you become more and more restricted in the way you can work. Some has to do with money. If you have taken a 100 million off someone you better get it back. and you’re not necessarily going to get it back off the five friends that have the same taste as you in films. So therefore you might have to be a bit broader in how you make your movies. But if you’re making something like “Kill List” which doesn’t cost that much money, you can afford to be a little more true to your own voice.

CH: I appreciated that you went for it and you didn’t create a vanilla film. I like a movie that I am going to think about afterwards and have repeat viewings. And have an opinion. There is nothing worse than a movie that doesn’t strike a nerve.

BW: Yeah, Yeah, don’t get me wrong I am a big fan of Rambo 4 there is no ambiguity in that, that’s for sure but equally I am a fan of Tarkovskiy’s stalker so Different strokes for different folks.

Starring: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, and Michael Smiley

Director: Ben Wheatley

Rated: R

A year after a botched job in Kiev a hit man takes a new assignment for a quick pay day to get his family back above water. Soon he realizes he is in for far more than he signed up  for.

Kill List is the sophomore film from writer/director Ben Wheatley. Although Wheatley delivers a film with a trim running time of 95 minutes, Kill List is far from a cohesive and straightforward film. Opening up we meet Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel ( MyAnna Buring) two former veterans who are now married with a young son, Jay had a job in Kiev that went really bad, (thought No details are ever given as to what actually took place) Now unemployed, Jay’s hot tub isn’t working and his financial problems are the result of his phantom “Bad Back” which a working Hot tub would hopefully help, soon the tension between Jay and Shel reaches explosive heights during a dinner party. Jay soon teams up with an old military buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) to complete a series of hits, (At this point the film starts to become enjoyable and hits its stride) with each successive hit completed, Jay starts to lose it a little more and raises the violence factor. The chemistry between Jay and Gal is solid and provides some amusing dialogue. When the hits are completed the film takes a huge swerve into what most are referring to as Wicker Man territory

The third act is where people are either going to love or hate the film, the tone shifts and while Wheatley tries to craft a film that will stir controversy and dialogue amongst viewers. In hindsight, he created a lot of red herrings strictly to create dialogue without any real purpose or explanation. He was so concerned with trying to craft a movie that will get people talking, that he failed to concern himself with what they would be talking about.  I don’t need every loose end tide up but to leave every possible motive up to the viewers imagination is sloppy at best.

Anyone, that hasn’t seen the highly entertaining and yet completely and utterly disturbing “A Serbian Film”
(easily the most messed up movie ever made) might find the ending a bit on the shocking side. For those that have, you will think Wheatley gave it a nice try, but still has a thing or two to learn about what shocking truly is.

Grade-81

Update:  I think I had unrealistic expectations on the “shocking ending” due to word of mouth so I decided to give it another go. After a second viewing and expectations in check, I quite enjoyed it. The scene where Jay goes to work on the librarian with the business end of a hammer was awesome.

Updated Grade – 86

I would like to announce that CinemaAssassin.com has partnered up with ArcLight to bringing Q&A’s to your attention. Enjoy as Kenneth Branagh discusses “My weekend with Marilyn”.

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The film will open in theaters on Friday, April 20th, launching day and date with all VOD and digital platforms.

VH1 has come onboard to license the first TV Window of the film as part of their Emmy-Award winning VH1 Rock Doc franchise and will work with Magnolia and the filmmakers to promote the film across their music lover channel.

Made with the unprecedented support of the Marley family, MARLEY is the first film to tell the definitive life story of the musician, revolutionary, and legend, from his earliest days to his rise to international superstardom. Along with an incredible soundtrack, the film features rare footage, archival photos, and incredible performances and interviews with his family, friends, and bandmates – the people that knew him best. The film is sure to be a revelation to Bob Marley fans, of which there are many (the triple-platinum artist has nearly 35 million fans on his Facebook page alone), and newcomers alike.

“Bob Marley is a fascinating, towering figure in musical history, and MARLEY is the biography that he deserves,” said Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles. “Kevin Macdonald has once again shown himself to be a master documentarian with this eye-opening, entertaining, beautifully crafted film.”

“This documentary is the ultimate revelation of my father’s life,” said Executive Producer Ziggy Marley. “The family is proud to be able to have the world finally experience this emotional journey.”

The deal was negotiated for Magnolia by SVP of Acquisitions Dori Begley and Head of Business Affairs Chris Matson and for VH1 by Ben Zurier and Brad Abramson with Liesl Copland of WME Global on behalf of the filmmakers.

About Magnolia Pictures Magnolia Pictures (www.magpictures.com) is the theatrical and home entertainment distribution arm of the Wagner/Cuban Companies, a vertically-integrated group of media properties co-owned by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban. Recent releases include Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, Page One: Inside the New York Times, French thriller Point Blank, Blackthorn, starring Sam Shepard as Butch Cassidy, Andrew Jarecki’s All Good Things, and Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love. Magnolia’s upcoming releases include Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles, Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, Fernando Meirelles’360, The Hunter, starring Willem Dafoe, David Gelb’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters, Bradley Rust Gray’s Jack & Diane, and many more.

About Shangri-La Entertainment Shangri-La Entertainment has produced films including THE POLAR EXPRESS, SHINE A LIGHT, BEOWULF, LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, HEART OF GOLD and CSNY:DÉJÀ VU and has also co-produced the Jerry lee Lewis CDs, “Mean Old Man (2010) and “Last Man Standing” (2006.) In addition to Shangri-La Entertainment, Shangri-La Industries includes a sister company Shangri-La Construction which is a sustainable green construction business focused on LEED-Certified commercial properties.

About Tuff Gong Pictures Tuff Gong Pictures first gained fame for producing reggae videos for artists such as Damian Marley, Bounty Killer, Sugar Minott, and Everton Blender. In 2001, Tuff Gong Pictures released the Stephanie Black-helmed LIFE AND DEBT, a documentary which addressed the impact of international monetary policies on developing countries such as Jamaica. In 2005, Tuff Gong Pictures released their second thought provoking documentary also directed by Stephanie Black, AFRICA UNITE, which is described as a concert tribute, Marley Family travelogue and humanitarian documentary all in one.

Cowboy Films produced Kevin MacDonald’s THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, which won an Oscar for Best Actor and a BAFTA for Best British Film. Other feature films include Beeban Kidron’s AMY FOSTER (aka Swept From the Sea) and Nick Love’s debut GOODBYE CHARLIE BRIGHT. TV productions include POPPY SHAKESPEARE which won the BAFTA for Best Actress and TOP BOY, a four-part thriller written by Ronan Bennett currently in production. Cowboy also produces short films including the Oscar winning WASP (Andrea Arnold) and the BAFTA winning I-DO-AIR (Martina Amati).To be released in May 2011 is Cowboy’s first feature documentary FIRE IN BABYLON, which premiered at the London Film Festival.

About VH1 VH1 connects viewers to the music, artists and pop culture that matter to them most with TV series, specials, live events, exclusive online content and public affairs initiatives. VH1 is available in 99 million households in the U.S. VH1 also has an array of digital channels and services including VH1Classic, VH1 Soul, VH1 Mobile, and extensive video on VH1.com. Connect with VH1 at VH1.com.