#Ken Kelsch

[scenesandscreens]

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Director - Abel Ferrera, Cinematography - Ken Kelsch

"Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there's nothing left but appetite. We give, and give and give crazy. Cause a gift that makes sense ain't worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why, why you did it. They'll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it."

[cappedinamber]

The Addiction (1995)

Directed by Abel Ferrara

Cinematography by Ken Kelsch

[brokehorrorfan]

Bad Lieutenant will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on May 21 via Kino Lorber. Harvey Keitel stars in the 1992 neo-noir crime film.

Abel Ferrara (King of New York, Body Snatchers) directs from a script he co-wrote with Ms. 45 actress Zoë Lund. Victor Argo, Paul Calderón, and Lund are among the supporting cast.

Bad Lieutenant has been newly restored in 4K from the original camera negative with Dolby Vision/HDR. Special features are listed below.

Disc 1 - 4K UHD:

Audio commentary by director Abel Ferrera and cinematographer Ken Kelsch

Disc 2 - Blu-ray:

Audio commentary by director Abel Ferrera and cinematographer Ken Kelsch

Interview with cinematographer Ken Kelsch (new)

Bad Neighborhoods: The Locations of Bad Lieutenant (new)

Retrospective Documentary - 2009 featurette with cast and crew

Theatrical trailer

He has survived on the streets for 20 years. He's a gambler, a thief, a junkie, a killer, a cop. Now he's investigating the most shocking case of his life, and as he moves closer to the truth, his self-destructive past is closing in.

Pre-order Bad Lieutenant.

[walkcineroad]

Pyromaniac [Don't Go in the House]

Release date : 1979

Director : Joseph Ellison

Country : United States 🇺🇸

Donny Kohler is sick. Very sick. As a child, he was abused by his mother. He is now twenty-seven years old and his mother is dead. Furthermore, his mother's death changed him profoundly, bringing a buried psychosis to the surface. So, methodically, he prepares his revenge. He first kidnaps a young woman and sets her on fire. This is just the beginning...

Donald "Donny" Kohler is a real psychopath, the fault of his mother who burned the forearms of her little wanker to consume the evil that was in him ! The poor man never recovered and when one of his colleagues was badly burned in a workplace accident, something clicked. But it is the death of his mother that will truly set the fire : freed from parental oppression, the poor man will finally be able to free everything his hatred and resentment towards women, the only representative of whom he knew was his mother. The first victim will be a pretty florist, then a broken down motorist. What surprises at first is the ease with which he manages to convince and bring the young girls home : The florist is an obvious example because without any physical or verbal violence, the killer manages to attract him. The boutique where she works at home, great art ! This sequence lasts several minutes, which allows the viewer to sympathize with the poor women's who will suffer the ultimate punishment in a particularly spectacular and unbearable sequence... The result is so extreme for the viewer that the other executions will be filmed off camera. And we will have to wait until the finale to find such frenzy again.

[lentecreativo]

[byneddiedingo]

Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992)

Cast: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Paul Calderón, Eddie Daniels, Bianca Hunter, Zoë Lund, Vincent Laresca, Frankie Thorn, Fernando Véléz, Joseph Michael Cruz, Paul Hipp. Screenplay: Zoë Lund, Abel Ferrara. Cinematography: Ken Kelsch. Production design: Charles M. Lagola. Film editing: Anthony Redman. Music: Joe Delia. 

Harvey Keitel's lacerating performance and Abel Ferrara's narrative skill, using a baseball playoff series as a thread to hang his story on, almost made me think that Bad Lieutenant was some kind of good film. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me a tired reworking of the old motif of Catholic guilt, a kind of feint at creating a Dostoevskyan moral fable undermined by vulgarity. Was it necessary, for example, to cast a nubile young blond as the nun who gets raped, and to provide so many glimpses of her naked? 

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

The Addiction

Abel Ferrara uses the vampire genre to explore philosophical concepts in THE ADDICTION (1995, Shudder, YouTube). He crams more ideas into the film than it can hope to handle, yet it’s a fascinating variation on the genre. He’s called it an allegory for addiction, but it seems deeper than that, raising questions about the nature of evil and the debate over existence vs. essence. And it also questions assumptions about race and gender. Philosophy grad student Lili Taylor walks home through an urban jungle of addicts, homelessness and toxic black men ogling her just for being a woman. Yet it’s a chicly dressed white woman (Annabella Sciorra, in a fascinating performance) who drags her into a dark alley, bites her in the neck and starts her transformation. Before biting her, Sciorra says, “Look at me and tell me to go away. Don’t ask, tell me.”. Taylor later echoes that when she looks for new victims, at one point deciding her prey hasn’t told her forcefully enough. It’s a strong comment on sexual predation and the nature of consent. And it ties into the overarching look at evil. Taylor’s classes discuss the My Lai massacre and the Bosnia genocide, and she visits an exhibit on the Holocaust. Ferrara cuts back to these images at times, suggesting an inherent evil within human nature, which Sciorra brings up by referencing R.C. Sproul’s questioning of whether we are evil because we do evil things or we do evil things because we are inherently evil. The vampire/addicts treat their victims as potential vampire/addicts who are asking for the attack that will change them. This probably makes the film sound rather sterile, and there are places when Taylor’s philosophical musings start sounding a tad precious, but it all comes together. And Ferrara keeps livening things up with the attacks and a climax that will seem like justice if you’re a discontented academic. Taylor does very good work. Her physical commitment is amazing. And though she only has a small role, Edie Falco is also quite impressive. The whole thing is beautifully shot in black and white by frequent Ferrara collaborator Ken Kelsch. His use of light and shadow echoes film noir, another genre questioning the nature of evil.

[absencesrepetees]

the blackout (abel ferrara, 1997)

[sesiondemadrugada]

New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrara, 1998).

[adscinema]

Bad Lieutenant - Abel Ferrara (1992)

Trailer

[stillsmybeatingheart]

[romdocitizen]

Welcome to New York (2014) dir. Abel Ferrara, cinematography by Ken Kelsch

[brokehorrorfan]

The Addiction will be released on 4K Ultra HD on December via Arrow Video. Peter Strain designed the new cover for the 1995 vampire film; the original artwork is on the reverse side.

Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, King of New York) directs from a script by frequent collaborator Nicholas St. John. Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco, Paul Calderón, Fredro Starr, Kathryn Erbe, and Michael Imperioli star.

The film has been newly restored in 4K from the original camera negative with Dolby Vision. Special features and limited edition contents are listed below, where you can also see more of the packaging.

Special features:

Audio commentary by director Abel Ferrara, moderated by Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision author Brad Stevens

Talking with the Vampires - 2018 documentary with actors Christopher Walken and Lili Taylor, composer Joe Delia, cinematographer Ken Kelsch, and director Abel Ferrara

Interview with director Abel Ferrara

Interview with Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision author Brad Stevens

Abel Ferrara Edits The Addiction

Original trailer

Image gallery

Also included:

Booklet with writing on the film by critic Michael Ewins and an archival interview with Abel Ferrara by Paul Duane

Philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is dragged into an alleyway on her way home from class by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra) and bitten on the neck. She quickly falls ill but realizes this isn’t any ordinary disease when she develops an aversion to daylight and a thirst for human blood…

Pre-order The Addiction.

[esqueletosgays]

RETURN TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP (2008)

Director: Robert Hiltzik Cinematography: Ken Kelsch & Brian Pryzpek

[superangrycollection]

The Funeral (1996)

by Abel Ferrara Nos funérailles

Policier / Drame

1996 - 95 mn - USA

1996: Venice : Best Supporting actor (Chris Penn)

[byneddiedingo]

Asia Argento and Willem Dafoe in New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrara, 1998)

Cast: Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento, Annabella Sciorra, John Lurie, Kimmy Suzuki, Miou, Yoshitaka Amano, Gretchen Mol, Phil Neilson, Ken Kelsch, Ryuiki Sakamoto. Screenplay: Abel Ferrara, Christ Zois, based on a story by William Gibson. Cinematography: Ken Kelsch. Production design: Frank DeCurtis. Film editing: Jim Mol, Anthony Redman. Music: Schoolly D. 

Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel is more an exercise in style than a satisfactory movie. The plot is simple: Fox (Christopher Walken) and X (Willem Dafoe) are agents for a Japanese technology firm plot tasked with raiding a top scientist from a German company. They do so by hiring a beautiful prostitute called Sandii (Asia Argento) to seduce the scientist, whom they will set up in a laboratory in Marrakech. The plot goes awry when one of the agents falls in love with Sandii and overlooks some evidence that she may be working for the German company, putting the agents in danger. Padding this plot into a 93-minute movie means a lot of filler, including an extended opening scene set in a kinky nightclub where some lugubrious songs get sung and the necessary exposition gets spilled. Then there are some irrelevant sex scenes while the scheme is being set up, and after it fails there are extended flashbacks that add little to our understanding of what has happened. The three leads are capable and watchable, but the film leaves us with no revelations about corporate rivalry in the age of technology that we haven't seen in better movies.