Death Proof posterI have it on good author­i­ty that Quentin Taran­ti­no gave his per­son­al per­mis­sion for the Film Fes­ti­val to screen the com­plete Grind­house exploita­tion dou­ble-fea­ture as he and Robert Rodriguez intend­ed, despite it being yanked ear­ly from Amer­i­can cin­e­mas due to dis­mal box office: how­ev­er Road­show inter­vened to pre­vent the screen­ing and the only way NZ audi­ences can see Grind­house will be on DVD at some future time. That big screen expe­ri­ence has been replaced by an expand­ed ver­sion of Taran­ti­no’s Death Proof, open­ing today at Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate. The tale of a crazed stunt­man (Kurt Rus­sell) stalk­ing two sets of beau­ti­ful women includ­ing kiwi stun­tie Zoe Bell and Syd­ney Poiti­er, Death Proof looks like more of that patent­ed Taran­ti­no-like fun.

The rest of this week’s new releas­es after the jump…

We’re Here To Help is a lit­tle kiwi movie based on the true sto­ry of Dave Hen­der­son, the Christchurch busi­ness­man who took on the might of the IRD, lost, and then won. The film stars ex-pat kiwi Erik Thom­son as Hen­der­son with Michael Hurst as Rod­ney Hide. Empire Island Bay, Rial­to and the mighty Embassy.

Robert Red­ford returns to the direc­tor’s chair for the first time since The Leg­end of Bag­ger Vance in 2000 with Lions for Lambs, a heavy-hit­ting dra­ma about US pol­i­tics and the type of manip­u­la­tions that took them to war in Iraq. Described as “an ethics lec­ture” by one IMDb com­menter it stars Red­ford him­self, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise and plays at Read­ings, Rial­to, Pent­house and Sky City Queens­gate.

The Joy Divi­sion movie that is actu­al­ly about the band Joy Divi­sion opens today at Rial­to and Para­mount. Con­trol is the first film direct­ed by famed rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anton Cor­bi­jn and has been acclaimed as the best british film of the year by many crit­ics. Arriv­ing unher­ald­ed this week is a film called The Last Trap­per, a doc­u­men­tary about a year in the life of 50 year old trap­per Nor­man Win­ter, who lives in the wilds of Cana­da. He lives a sim­ple life hunt­ing and fish­ing, with Nebas­ka, a Nahan­ni Indi­an and that’s all I know, except its a Pent­house exclu­sive.

Final­ly, the third annu­al DOCNZ doc­u­men­tary fes­ti­val gets under way at both Regent-on-Man­ners and the Para­mount today — the offi­cial web site is here and there should be some­thing for every­one despite the idi­ot­ic mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al.

The usu­al sto­ry applies: all these apart from DOCNZ which I don’t have time for will be reviewed at Funer­als & Snakes next Wednes­day (and in print at the Cap­i­tal Times).