Update: Hotel Noir is now (as of 10/9) available on VOD. Sebastian Gutierrez is that rare director who can make a sleek-looking film while getting actors to say the strangest things in the most sincere ways. His work on Women in Trouble and Elektra Luxx proved as much, elevating B-movies into the A+ range, and now his ensemble sensibilities return with a 1958 detective story flair in Hotel Noir. In the film, the detective (Rufus Sewell) hides away in a hotel waiting for killers to find him, and it looks like he has plenty to hold his attention. Malin Ackerman is dancing and taking showers; Carla Gugino is speaking easy and being smokey; and Mandy Moore is…seducing Danny DeVito. Naturally. Plus, genre legend Robert Forster gets a nice T-bone steak of a role to chew on. Not bad at all. Check out the trailer for yourself:

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we talk with a master Japanese filmmaker, a rising non-Japanese directing talent, discuss the legacy of Scream, and ask why there isn’t a modern-day Roger Corman. Takashi Miike is an incredible filmmaker, and as it turns out, a fascinating interview. Hopefully you speak Japanese, but if you don’t, the entire interview is in English. Now a staple of SXSW, Sebastian Gutierrez makes funny, sexy films that (gasp) focus on dialogue, character and cleavage. He joins me to talk about his new movie Girl Walks Into a Bar, and why making it the first film specifically made for internet distribution was the correct, crazy choice. Even though we keep hearing about a filmmaking revolution in the hands of the people, it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. Eric Vespe from Aint It Cool and Aaron Morgan from Austin join me to ask why a new workhorse/creative force hasn’t emerged with all the inexpensive cameras just lying around for the taking. Plus, Eric Vespe  continues our streak of guests named Eric (and our one-show streak of guests named Eric Vespe) by going blade to blade against Movie News Pop Quiz Champion and FSR associate editor Rob Hunter. Who will come out alive? Will it be Wes Craven‘s career? Loosen up your tie and stay a while. Listen Here: Download This Episode

When three girls as gorgeous as this have something to say, I listen, no matter what the topic of conversation is. This time what they’re discussing is the sequel to Sebastian Gutierrez’s Women in Trouble, which is titled Elektra Luxx in an interview over at Coming Soon. The film tells the continued story of the title character who. after becoming pregnant, leaves her life of being a porn actress and struggles with her place in the world and what it means to be a person of substance. Carla Gugino, who plays Luxx, says of the porn industry, “Porn is a… that profession obviously has a lot of different sides to it. And there was the version where we were to go so much sort of darker and where we were to go into the underbelly of that and the challenges of what it is to choose that as a profession. And then there was the lighter, more harkening to the 40s screwball, melodrama element. And that was more the direction obviously that we’ve gone in.”

The antidote for your boring day (at least your boring day today) is this new trailer for Girl Walks Into a Bar which might seem like another sequel in the sequence of Sebastian Gutierrez’s Vagina Dialogues (aka Women in Trouble and Elektra Luxx), but even though a lot of the actors are the same, this one seems to take place in a new universe altogether. This trailer is a hell of a lot of fun, which is why I love Gutierrez’s movies. They’re smart, wacky, ridiculous and heartfelt. Plus, there are multitudes of remarkably beautiful women in various states of undress showing off their acting chops like there’s no tomorrow. Write a strongly worded letter to Congress, because there just isn’t anything wrong with that. Check out the trailer for yourself:

I know what you’re thinking: “That’s not what the regulation Sex Scouts uniform looks like! Couldn’t this production have done any research?!” And you’d be right, but you’d be missing the point. In Elektra Luxx, Carla Gugino reprises her role as the titular porn star who has given up the business for baby. And, yes, it’s hers. The funny, sexy, strange, soap-y comedy was written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez as the meat of a Women in Trouble and Women in Ecstasy trilogy. It’s got the same heart, ovaries and potty mouth as the first, and it now has more Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a sex blogger. Check out the surprisingly not-red-band trailer for yourself:

Women can be smart, strong and sexy all at the same time. It’s true. They can also add to that pile a bit of insecurity, sensitivity and compassion. And about two dozen other emotions and states of mind that men don’t even have words for yet. It is that dynamic nature of women that Carla Gugino and the rest of the cast of Women In Trouble and its sequel, Elektra Luxx, attempt to capture alongside a healthy bit of soap operatics and sexual comedy. Gugino plays a porn star who finds out that she’s pregnant and stands as the center piece of several other stories that intertwine directly and thematically. Both movies are great, and now Elektra Luxx is seeing the light of day and so are these images:

As the only literate Reject, it’s my duty to find the latest, the greatest and the untouched classics that would make great source material for film adaptations. I read so you don’t have to. This week, Print to Projector presents: American Virgin by Steven T. Seagle Art by Becky Cloonan and Frank Quitely “I’m a virgin.” Synopsis Young Christian author and evangelist Adam Chamberlain extols the beauty of abstinence on speaking tours but has his faith and humanity tested when he learns that his girlfriend Cassie has been beheaded while doing missionary work in Africa. He joins up with his sexually liberal step-sister to go find out what happened, leaving his Neocon mother and delinquent brother behind to spin further down a rabbit hole of cross-dressing, pornography and God.

Elektra Luxx picks up where Women in Trouble, the sensational first part of this trilogy to be, left off. We meet Elektra (Carla Gugino), a porn star whose career has just ended with her newfound pregnancy and the untimely death of her rock star lover, Nick Chapel (Josh Brolin).

It is not often that you have a chance to sit opposite of true beauty. Even when you have the chance, it is easy to clam up and lose your thoughts. So needless to say, I had to keep it cool while opposite Elektra Luxx director Sebastian Gutierrez. On a side note, I also interviewed Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman.

When director Sebastian Gutierrez woke up this morning, he probably saw it ending a little differently. Just a little, I’m sure. He was likely nervous. His film, Elektra Luxx — the much anticipated sequel to 2009′s Women in Trouble — was due to make its world premiere at the Paramount theater in Austin in the prime slot of SXSW 2010′s opening night. That is, until something unfortunate happened.

After a delayed start to this week due to some illness on my part, we’re back in the saddle and ready to rock on down the home-stretch of our SXSW 2010 preview. And we begin this week with an exclusive poster debut for one of my own most anticipated films.

Hopefully they’ll all happen at once. But something tells me we’ll have to experience them separately. And in movie form.

Adrianne Palicki spells trouble. And she does it while looking pretty hot, if you ask us. Once again we’ve got an awesome little exclusive to support one of our favorite films of the year, Sebastian Gutierrez’s Women in Trouble.

My love affair with Women In Trouble continues with a slightly mainstreamed-up trailer that gives just a taste of the mayhem. And a taste of the porn stars. And a taste of mild auto accidents.

The marketing team behind Women in Trouble have realized their strong suits are women in lingerie and 1970s-style text.

We’ve been beating the Women in Trouble drum quite loudly lately, haven’t we? And for good reason, as it was by and large one of our favorite SXSW ’09 films.

We wanted to get inside the mind of director Sebastian Gutierrez by finding out his Top 5 films, and he somehow managed do so while naming over a dozen other films. From Bunuel to Gilliam, find out who inspires one of the weirder writer/directors out there.

A very cool new advertisement for Women In Trouble has popped on the internet on our site. Did I mention it involves Carla Gugino looking sexy as always? I have now. So check it out.

Sebastian Gutierrez’s interwoven story of ten women on the craziest day of their lives is emerging from the festival circuit and coming to a theater near you. Fair warning – Carla Gugino plays a porn star.

One of our favorite films from this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival was undoubtedly Sebastian Gutierrez’s Women in Trouble. Therefore we’ve scored two clips from two of our favorite scenes and we’d like to share them with you.