Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Jen and Sylv Pick Up American Mary on North American Release Day!
Jen and I went to Future Shop and Walmart to pick up American Mary yesterday!
-Sylv
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
American Mary Canadian Theatrical Premiere Q & A w/ Katharine Isabelle & The Twisted Twins by Jovanka Vuckovic
This is the ***WARNING: SPOILERS*** Q & A by Jovanka Vuckovic following the Sinister Cinema screening of American Mary at the Yonge and Dundas theatre in Toronto which was the Canadian theatrical premiere with Katie, Jen (middle), and me (Sylv - right). Please enjoy and thank you for filming this!
-Sylv
The Twisted Twins Return to the Rue Morgue Podcast, Video!!
"Jen & Sylvia Soska interviewed by Stuart F. Andrews on the Rue Morgue Podcast to promote the home video release of their latest feature AMERICAN MARY."
-Sylv
Monday, June 17, 2013
Alien Bee Talks to the Twisted Twins
"The Twisted Twins aka Jen and Sylvia Soska‘s sophomore horror offering AMERICAN MARY is primed and ready to drop on Blu-ray and DVD on June 18th and this modern day Frankenstein story is a can’t miss!
Jen and Sylvia took a break from their uber busy schedule to let me pick their talented brains for a while. This is actually our second interview, the first being several years ago when they were promoting their first film Dead Hooker in a Trunk. This time we talk in depth about American Mary and how they came up with this story, we talk about what’s up next for them and much more. Head inside for my latest Versus with Jen and Sylvia Soska aka The Twisted Twins, two girls that we’l be seeing a lot out of for years to come!"
Read the full interview here!
-Sylv
Twisted Twins Talk to Yahoo
"In a society where people are constantly struggling to make ends meet, even if they have a high drive and ambition to succeed, they're often forced to ruthlessly fight for the life they desperately seek. The struggle to also maintain an outward appearance that their lives are fine can push them over their limit. That's certainly the case with the title character in the new independent horror thriller 'American Mary,' which was written and directed by twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska. The story intriguingly balances the ideal world of modern medicine and top notch surgeons, with the underground world of extreme body modification enthusiasts. 'American Mary' follows a medical student, Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle), who is growing increasingly broke and disenchanted with medical school and the established doctors she once idolized. The allure of easy money sends a desperate Mary through the world of underground surgeries, which leaves more marks on her than her so-called freakish clientele.
The Soska sisters generously took the time recently to talk about writing, directing and filming 'American Mary,' which is now available on VOD and is playing in select theaters, and will be released on DVD on June 18, over the phone. Among other things, Jen and Sylvia discussed how finding information about body modification online convinced them to pen and helm the horror thriller; how they used their creativity to overcome the struggles of shooting an independent film in 15 days; and why they felt using practical effects instead of CGI would give the film's body modification elements and scenes a more authentic feeling."
Read the full interview HERE!
-Sylv
June 21st, Tweet Along American Mary Screening w/ Cast & Crew!
"The Soska sisters have sent out an invite for all of their fans to gather at one time and have a Twitter meet to watch their movie, American Mary. People associated with the film will be in attendance to answer questions. These people include actors Nelson Wong, Clay St. Thomas, Tristan Risk, and Paula Lindberg; producer Angel Morgan LeFay Towle, soundtrack artist Kevvy Mental, plus the directors Sylvia and Jen Soska! You can see all of the details below (from their official event page) plus I added in a pic and a trailer. The question remains: who’s going to join me in watching this movie? I can’t wait!"
Also, costume designer Enigma Arcana, the actress who plays Nana, Brenda Anderson, casting director, Ann Forry, co-producer, Robyn Wiener, and Billy Barker himself, Antonio Cupo.
Hashtag #AmericanMary - let's trend this shit!!
-Sylv
The Twisted Twins Are Coming to the Festival of Fear!
"We’re excited to announce the first batch of panels for the upcoming Festival of Fear, going down August 22-25 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto!
A TWISTED HOUR WITH THE TWISTED TWINS Filmmakers JEN and SYLVIA SOSKA discuss movies, body horror and the inspiration for their groundbreaking films Dead Hooker in a Trunk and American Mary, as well as their segment in the upcoming ABCs of Death 2."
Read the full first wave here!
-Sylv
Blu-Ray.com Digs American Mary
"One can quibble with American Mary on numerous points, and it's easy to imagine studio executives "noting" the film to death. Mary's backstory remains opaque; the character of Billy hovers somewhere between thug and white knight; and it's hard to believe that the underground culture of "body modification" manages to flourish without a frightening number of casualties from post-surgical complications. But all this is beside the point. Effective horror movies aren't about realism, but about establishing an alternate dreamworld that feels real while it lasts. The Soskas have done that with American Mary in a manner that stands favorable comparison with acknowledged masters such as Clive Barker and David Cronenberg. Highly recommended."Read full review here!
-Sylv
American Mary Hits Stores in North America TOMORROW!!!
Tomorrow, American Mary hits North America. This one of the most surreal and coolest experiences for the team that made it possible. Please show your support that films like this do have an audience and that you will be bringing Mary home with you tomorrow!
Let's flood the internet with pics of y'all with your shiny new copies when you go to the store and pic them up. FB, tweet, tumblr, & instagram that shit!!! And please help get the word out - I would love to see an indie character piece like this kick some major ass on our home turf!
Get it at:
Also Future Shop, HMV, and many others!!
-Sylv
Huffington Post Talks to Mary
"Mary, on the other hand, was a very physically easy role for me. And I gained two best friends in the Soska sisters out of it. We just had a blast. I know some of the material, some of the subject matter, is a bit intense and horrific, but we had so much fun with it."
The fact that she's in almost every scene of the low-budget production didn't make it any less enjoyable, Isabelle insisted. "Oh, it was easy," she added. "We didn't have enough money to ever go over time, to do overtime. So it was like, 'Oh well, 12 hours, that's it, go home.' " (laughs)
Read the whole rad interview HERE!
-Sylv
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Take AMERICAN MARY Home North America
Take her home at long last, boys and grrls.
PLEASE choose a banner from below and show your awesome ass support for AMERICAN MARY. Choose from 6 with major thanks to Christy LeCain, Claire Bourdoulous, Jon Dickinson, Paul Oostergo, and Victor Moreno for the GORE~geous banners!!
Available across North America June 18th, including Future Shop and Walmart. Get yours today!! Or pre~order here:
Here's the DVD link: http://amzn.to/14Vu6nx
Here's the Blu Ray link: http://amzn.to/1buI4R7
PLEASE share this absolutely everywhere. If you're reading this, please repost this with links. And thank you VERY fucking much!! Bring MARY home ;)
Thursday, June 13, 2013
American Mary to Screening at the 59th Taormina Film Festival
"ROME — U.S. studios will be out in force at the upcoming 59th Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where a wide range of genre pics will unspool, sandwiched in-between Warner Bros.’ “Man of Steel” and Disney’s “The Lone Ranger.”
As previously announced, Zack Snyder’s “Superman” reboot will have its continental European bow in Taormina’s 8,000-seat ancient Greek theater on June 15 with Snyder and main cast in tow, including Russell Crowe, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams and Michael Shannon.
Fox’s gender-bender “Trance” and also family comedy “Parental Guidance”; indie actioner “Java Heat”; Italo helmer Marco Risi’s Rome-set murder mystery “Cha Cha Cha”; Argentinian wife swap comedy “Dos mas dos” by Diego Kaplan; body-modification horror pic “American Mary” by Canada’s twin directorial duo Jen and Sylvia Soska; and gory chiller “The Collection,” by U.S. horror-meister Marcus Dunstan, are among other titles testifying the diversity of mostly mainstream fare that will launch internationally from Taormina into summer release slots."
Read the whole piece HERE.
-Sylv
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The North American American Mary Reviews
"‘American Mary’ (R, 1:43) This compelling horror film about manipulated appearances and revenge concerns a medical student (a fine Katharine Isabelle) who proves popular with her gangster boss and her city’s “body mod” (body modification) subculture. Do not get on her bad side. Directed by the talented sisters Sylvia and Jen Soska, the film combines gore, quiet dread, feminist conviction and a visual classicism with impressive, unbelabored dexterity. Yes, like many horror films it’s unsettling; but like the best of its genre, it makes you think." - Andy Webster, New York Times (full piece)
"The scalpel enters a full, fleshy breast and delicately, almost sensually circles the areola's entirety whilst blood oozes out, the surgeon's fingers gently tracing her handiwork.
Both nipples are eventually removed.
The next procedure involves surgically removing all physical receptors of pubic ecstasy and stitching shut the vagina of the aforementioned nipple-bereft body, save, of course, for the smallest allowable opening for the expulsion of urine.
The surgeon is spent, stunned, but satisfied - secure in the knowledge that her first stab (so to speak) at body modification is a success. The client eventually expresses sheer joy over her all-new sexually adhedonic state; how perfectly she's been able to fulfil her own personal essence of womanhood via the excision of those physical extremities which alternately offer enticement and pleasure. Whatever you say, babe. In the words of Marlo Thomas: "Free to be you and me."
Can movies possibly get any better than this?
No." - Greg Klymkiw, Klymkiw Film Corner (full piece)
"It's scary how well "American Mary" is made. But the real horror in the film comes in some unexpected places. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the story does turn into a revenge film and part of what’s scary is the darkness Mary finds inside herself. That’s what makes the Soskas so good. They do not go for the knee-jerk scare of something jumping out of the dark or for gross-out gore. They deliver carefully calibrated horror that looks to the darkness that lies within each of us. And they are really smart about how they use gore effects; they know when to show blood and when to leave it to our imaginations. They prove that all horror needs is a woman’s touch to refresh it." - Beth Accomando, KPBS (full piece)
"American Mary, a new horror movie directed and written by twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska that opens on Friday, takes on such hoary conservatism. If the horror movie is typically about punishing women, this one is the opposite: it's about restoring robbed power. It centers on the titular surgeon-in-training (Katharine Isabelle) who falls into an extreme black-market body-modification subculture. The problem of cinematic objectification is addressed with characters who are literally objectified and thus desexualized: Mary's first procedure in a non-traditional OR involves cutting off a woman's breasts and sewing (mostly) closed her vagina, completing the patient's transformation into a doll not in the Runyon sense but the Mattel one. The filmmakers posit that it's not fair that God gets to decide what kind of body we have, and thus bestow that divine power upon the women themselves. They're in total control of their bodies." - Henry Stewart, The L Magazine (full piece)
"Their names are Jen and Sylvia Soska and they’re the future of horror filmmaking.
I say this not as a piece of hyperbole that the sisters can put on a Blu-Ray case (though feel free, ladies), but simply because, with their new film, American Mary, they managed to create a fantastic piece of horror cinema that literally left me in disbelief of what I was watching. The film freaked me out. It made me edgy. It made me squirm. It made me turn it off when my wife walked in the room.
But, most importantly, American Mary kept me engrossed. And to think, I almost didn’t watch the film." - Andy Burns, Biff Bam Pop (full piece)
"What’s truly horrifying is how much our leading lady, Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle), is forced to endure. From financial woes, to vicious tongue lashings and blows to the ego from med school professors, to a very crude and humiliating incident involving said professor. It’s enough to make a person snap—and Mary is able to do just that in the most elegant and sophisticated manner possible. There are so many outstanding, noteworthy elements of American Mary that could easily justify a lengthier review. The special FX, the brilliantly complementing score, the cinematography, the exquisite lighting… I absolutely loved everything about this movie. But I think what I love most is how great of an achievement American Mary is for the Soska Sisters, and the Canadian horror community in general. And also the fact that, as a female horror film fan, I now have a new admirably bad ass female horror icon to write about… and maybe even dress up as for Halloween." - Lacey Paige, Cinesploitation (full piece)
"In horror films, women are often seen and not heard. While the genre has long had a place for strong female characters that best the Bad Guy as the film’s “final girl,” they are rarely depicted as powerful killers, with a voice that screams evil. That genre convention is turned on its ear in American Mary, the sophomore feature from Jen and Sylvia Soska (Dead Hooker in a Trunk), twin female filmmakers with a penchant for horror. American Mary is a provocative feminist body horror film that stars Ginger Snaps’ Katharine Isabelle as a disenfranchised medical student who begins performing illegal operations for the body modification community and eventually escalates to exacting sadistic surgical revenge on those who have wronged her." - Jovanka Vuckovic, Revolver (full piece)
"So last night I FINALLY got to see Jen and Sylvia Soska’s American Mary, because like the good little (slightly snobby) film student/projectionist I am, I wanted to see it on the big screen first. Here is my (long as fuck, a bit biased, and gushy as hell) review, under a cut because there are massive spoilers!
I’ve been super disillusioned with cinema lately. To the point of not wanting to sit down and watch things that I’ve never seen before because I’m so very tired of wasting my time and energy watching films that are unoriginal, boring, and have horrible representations of women/people of color/queer people/any other marginalized community. If I have to watch another sequel or remake, or see another Hollywood movie that millions of dollars were shoved into only to have it come out as some soulless piece of garbage, I swear to God I will become Aspiring Filmmaker Hulk. Thankfully, I found American Mary to be spectacular and I left the cinema with a giant goofy smile on my face and drove too fast with the windows down and music cranked on the way home." - Danielle Wright, Bendovercasanova (full piece)
-Sylv
American Mary in USA Today
"Jen and Sylvia Soska are arguably the best identical twins to happen to horror since those creepy girls from The Shining.
The 30-year-old Canadian sisters have spent nearly a decade making influential friends and plying their bloody trade on screen as indie filmmakers, and their latest, American Mary (on video on demand now and in theaters Friday), showcases a scare-fest full of modern sensibilities but also one that's personal for the sibling writer-directors."Read the whole piece HERE.
-Sylv
American Mary in the New York Times
"Lots of siblings make movies. The brothers Coen (“No Country for Old Men”) are Oscar winners. Andy and Lana Wachowski (“Cloud Atlas”) are a prominent brother-sister team (although Lana was once Larry). But sister directors? And not just sisters, but identical twins?
Into this void step Jen and Sylvia Soska, the identical twins who wrote and directed the horror film “American Mary,” which opened in New York and other cities on Friday. The movie is about a medical student, Mary (Katharine Isabelle), who pays the bills by taking her skills into the world of underground surgery, where people modify their bodies — faces, breasts, limbs — in unusual ways as a means of self-expression. The film is the twins’ second feature; their first was the 2009 low-budget comic thriller with the self-explanatory title “Dead Hooker in a Trunk.”"
READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.
-Sylv
The Twisted Twins Return to the Rue Morgue Podcast
"Jen & Sylvia Soska a.k.a. The Twisted Twins dropped into Toronto recently for the Sinister Cinema screening of their latest feature American Mary and to promote the film’s upcoming home video release.
I caught up with them at Nocturne at 550 Queen Street West to conduct another full scale interrogation.
http://www.nocturneclub.com/
Generally speaking, interviewing the Soska Sisters is a piece of cake. You just press record, stand back and duck for cover before they EXPLODE!"http://www.nocturneclub.com/
Listen to Part One HERE!
"It’s the death defying conclusion of our interview with Jen & Sylvia Soska a.k.a. The Twisted Twins."
Listen to Part Two HERE!
-Sylv
Bring American Mary Home, North America!
June 18th is the release date for AMERICAN MARY across North America, if you're not picking it up in Future Shop or HMV, pre-order it here - HERE FOR DVD - and HERE FOR BD - and bring Dr. Mason for a permanent house call.
-Sylv
We Shall Judge You
"We're pleased to announce our 2013 Bumper Competition - Shoot a twisted 30-second film and 13 lucky filmmakers will get their work screened at the festival and judged by the Soska sisters (directors of American Mary)"
Sign up here!
-Sylv