If I could be anywhere else this week, I think it would be at Sitges, the seaside town near Barcelona where the Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia starts tomorrow (October 4) and continues for the next week. Think of it, sea, sangria and a whole host of fantasy, horror and sci-fi movies all on the one doorstep… Beats a wet week in Blackpool with a load of Tories, I can tell you.

Some of what I’m taking to be the highlights include:

Los Cronocrimenes (Time Crimes)
“A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences. ” (IMDB) This won the best film at Fantastic Fest and is reportedly very good.

El Ultimo de los Justos ( The Just )
“The Just” are a group chosen by God to maintain balance on earth. Someone has been knocking them off and now, with only the last few remaining, apocalypse beckons. Word is that this is better than the plot summary suggests, it had better be.

La Habitación De Fermat ( Fermat’s Room )
Sitges is hosting the world premiere of this film – which is described as a “ Cube -ish mathematician thriller” – which sounds good to me.

WAZ
Interestingly, another mathematics based thriller - Stellan Skargsgard and Melissa George must track a serial killer who is seeking to disprove the Price equation in a gruesome and decidedly unorthodox way.

Gun Chung ( Eye in the Sky )
A Hong Kong made thriller based on surveillance technologies.

I’m a Cyborg, but that’s okay
Come on, if the title didn’t get you, the fact that it’s directed by Park Chan-wook must.

Mushishi
Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Steamboy) makes a live action supernatural thriller. For me, this is a must-see, can’t-hardly-wait movie.

Slipstream
Anthony Hopkins writes and directs a, well, slipstream-ish comedy/drama as an aging writer experiencing his characters start escaping from the world of his imagination into his own life.. Fantastic cast includes Hopkins, Michael Clarke Duncan, Christian Slater, John Turturro and many more. Potentially very good.

The Nines
John August’s film is released here on November 30, and the more I hear about it, the more I’m looking forward to it. August last wrote and directed the superb Go and since then he’s written both Charlie’s Angels ( hey, they made me laugh ) but also the last three Tim Burton movies (the superb Big Fish , the good Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and the excellent Corpse Bride ).

Dainipponjin
Hitoshi Matsumo is a Japanese comedian. Dainipponjin is his first film – from what I can make out - and it sounds as if large parts of this film defy explanation – this is the story of a man who periodically turns into a 10 metre tall monster and defends Japan from attack by similar creatures, told in a mockumentary style. My heads already spinning.

There’s also new films by Stuart Gordon (the horror Stuck), Takashi Miike (taking on the spaghetti western with the brilliantly titled Sukiyaki Western Django ) and the new film by UK director of the promising Broken, Adam Mason (psychological horror The Devil’s Chair ).

As if that weren’t enough George A Romero is getting an award, Douglas Trumbull and Syd Mead are delivering sfx masterclasses AND they’re showing the Tarantino/Rodriquez Grindhouse double bill as it was originally intended. Bastards!

I’ve no idea how many of these will get a UK releases. As usual I’ll probably pick most up on DVD but I’ll be hoping that at least some of the most interesting will be making an appearance at our very own London SF Film Festival. Louis Savy, are you paying attention?

I still wish I was in Sitges.

ON THE SUBJECT OF OTHER FILMS
Here’s one you won’t be able to resist. Repo! The Genetic Opera

Horror/Musical filming in Toronto. A worldwide epidemic encourages a biotech company to launch an organ-financing program similar in nature to a standard car loan. The repossession clause is a killer, however. Paris Hilton, Alexa Vega, Sarah Brightman, Anthony Head, Paul Sorvino all feature and director Darren Lynn Bousman made the inferior Saws 2-4 – this is and extended version of a short film he made in 2006

AND FINALLY…
I don’t normally care much about cars and stuff, but I did notice this review of the Rolls Royce Phantom on Digg and couldn’t resist a little bit about how the other half live. My favourite bit? The fact that the Rolls Royce has cameras in its bumper so the driver can look both ways down a road it’s turning onto because the driver is usually sitting so far back (that bonnet is enormous) that they can’t see into the road. Genius. Turning the hopeless design flaw of a barge-like plutocrat-mobile into an it-makes-my-palms-itch-with-desire gadget is truly modern capitalism at its most fiendish!