io9: dante 01

Your Future SF Is All About Evil Teachers, Psychotic Asylum Inmates And Mutated Viruses

Meredith Woerner — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:00:17 PDT

Welcome to Cult Scifi Worship, our new weekly round-up where I'll be collecting and posting the indie, foreign or just plain unknown scifi films we didn't get a chance to show you earlier in the week. These movies may be small, but each should be worshipped like the golden calves of scifi goodness that they are. This week, I'll be showing you evil alien substitute teachers, trouble in a futuristic space prison, what happens when a paralysis epidemic sweeps Berlin, and a new kind of pink eye that can mutate and kill you. Trailers and stills for each after the jump.

Dante 01
A new prisoner arrives in a maximum security space prison and is being processed in the prison psych ward, called Dante 01. This newest addition to the gang is the sole survivor of an alien attack, and apparently that turned him bad - so bad, in fact, that he starts a space prison riot. But is it his will being done, or some alien evilness? The cult French movie, the first solo directing job for Delicatessen's Marc Caro, will be released on January 2, 2009.

Abel
A deadly outbreak sweeps through Berlin slowly paralyzing the masses; infected inhabitants are quarantined in their homes while the virus slowly takes hold of their bodies for three days. As the disease spreads, some survivors lock themselves in their own homes while others go door-to-door preying upon the helplessly immobile. Abel looks terrifying and promises to contain all kinds of different end of the world human psyches. Trailer and stills NSFW.

The Substitute (Vikaren)
This Danish film features a chicken-eating sixth grade teacher, and we're not talking roasted with some nice root vegetables on the side, here. Her students aren't fooled by her niceness at all and, convinced that she's an alien, organize an assault on the creature. The Substitute will be released onto DVD October 14th.

Pink Eye
Patients in an New York insane asylum are being used as lab rats for a mysterious drug test. When one of the mutated psychotics escapes, he unleashes a whole new kind of hell on the closest town. Watch the trailer below to see the patients go crazy and claw at their eyes when exposed to the asylum's drugs. Pink Eye will be out on DVD Sept. 30th.

It's Raining Big Metal Heads In Cloverfield

charliejane — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:00:00 PST

A new viral video for Cloverfield shows nothing new, except the Statue of Liberty's head rolls down the street in a cool way.[Slashfilm]
The hero of Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth becomes a quasi-immortal genius and then splits into two personalities, who debate the future of humanity. [MoviesOnline]

Heavier spoilers for Battlestar, Dark Knight and more below the fold. Watch out!

In The Dark Knight, Batman steps up his campaign to crush the last mob families with the help of Commissioner Gordon and D.A. Harvey Dent... until the Joker shows up. [IESB]
On Battlestar Galactica, a more assertive Cylon Six (named Natalie) butts heads with Cabell, while Starbuck gets stuck on the Das Boot-esque ship Demetrius. [SciFiPulse]
A new Mark Caro film, Dante 01, stars a "mysterious survivor" who disturbs a prison at the end of the universe. [Cinematical]
Sam Jones will be back as Pete Ross in Smallville. [MovieHole]
You can watch the entire Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot online at this link. [CC2K]
And you can see the first three minutes of I Am Legend online too. [AICN]

A Mutant, A Failed Utopian Experiment, and French People

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:30:19 PST

The trailer for the French scifi film Eden Log shows you something that looks like H.R. Giger creation crossed with the Crystalline Entity from Star Trek: The Next Generation. We aren't sure what that thing is supposed to be, but we hope this dark holiday release doesn't devolve into a creature chase. Director Franck Vestiel worked as the assistant director on Marc Caro's french scifi film Dante 01, which also involves some sort of zombie/virus/mutant terrorizing spacefarers, so this might be the start of a très formidable French science fiction trend. More images after the jump.

From a translation of the Eden Log website:

"A man regains consciousness at the bottom of a cave. Tolbiac has not got the slightest idea what events brought him there, nor what has happened to the man whose corpse he discovers next to him. The only way to escape the creature that pursues him: climb to the surface through a series of paths with the atmosphere of a graveyard, abandoned by a mysterious organization: Eden Log."

No mention of that funky root-system thing, unless that's the series of paths. Eden Log opens on December 26th in France, and if we're lucky it might make it to the States by the end of 2008 on DVD. Then we can find out what the hell that thing actually is.

Psychedelic Dante 01 Trailer — Gorgeous But Familiar

Kevin Kelly — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:10:51 PST

Marc Caro, probably best known from his collaborative directing with Jean Pierre Jeunet on such films like The City Of Lost Children and Delicatessen, has a new scifi film coming out called Dante 01. It combines the visual look of THX 1138, Aliens (especially the third entry in that series), and even Danny Boyle's underrated Sunshine into a package that might give you some deja vu.

"Deep space, at the edge of the galaxy. The future. A new prisoner arrives on top security prison ship and psychiatric research unit Dante 01. Sole survivor of an encounter with an alien force beyond imagining, Saint Georges is a man possessed by inner demons, caught up in the battle to control the monstrous power within him."

Translation: sounds like your standard "holy crap, we're on the edge of space and sanity, and this alien thing has really screwed us" scenario.

The Weinstein Company has bought the U.S. distribution rights, which hopefully means we'll be seeing it on our shores not too long after the January 2nd premiere in France. While the premise might sound tired, Caro's other films make great eye candy.