Get ready to clean up the streets, because Hobo with a Shotgun is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the movie poster or the title above to download our review of the film, featuring Daryl Surat of AnimeWorldOrder.
Review in a Nutshell: An anarchic Canadian film with a small budget but a huge heart, Hobo with a Shotgun has a twisted sense of humor and a great visual style.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
The other bad ass film release this year was Takeshi Miike’s 13 Assassins.
So glad I got to see this at a midnight screening back in March here in Toronto. It did pretty well up here from what I heard too, it’s too bad it didn’t get a wider theatrical run in the US.
Nice review there, always happy when Daryl chips in, especially on films like this. And yes Drive Angry was Da Bomb. Seeing that was the best Birthday gift in years. My local small cinema occasionally do special horror weekend showings, and to kick off their horror festival they showed Hobo With a Shotgun and that was such a fantastic experience. I’m pretty sure the whole crowd loved it, too bad I was probably the loudest person there with my constant cheering, but it was still so much fun with a lot of people. You missed out Paul I’m afraid.
Even at his Quentin Tarantino hatingist, who could avoid the dream-haunting tones of Daryl Surat?
Did River City ransom inspire Scott Pilgrim Vs. the world, or just the video game?
I think I will watch Hobo and Dirve Angry as a double feature.
vichussmith, Tarantino is a Seventies Film Student Pot&Speed jag made flesh, full of Wink Wink Nudge Nudge Ain’t I Clever? out of context movie references, a sense of pacing that is far too in love with the sound of his own voice – and a desire to dangle his sexual proclivities in front of his audience while he strips naked and dances the Lambada around them. I don’t feel like he’s ever lived outside of a movie theatre or video store and has no real-world experiences underlying his movie fantasies – and as somebody who really wanted to live that life when I was a Seventies Film Student myself, Tarantino’s movies show me how ultimately limited and hollow that makes you as a filmmaker. Say what you will about Robert Rodriguez, but his films feels like he’s filtering his pulp instincts through real life experiences (marriage, family, Tex-Latino culture, racism) – and he has a far better sense of pacing and a better directorial eye than Tarantino.
Paul/Darryl – I don’t begrudge Rodriguez his own studio and f/x house, because like Jason Eisener his first feature was done out of blood, sweat & tears for no money. EL MARIACHI had an initial production budget of seven thousand dollars (though Columbia paid more to transfer it to 35mm and distribute it) – so I’d guess his experiences taught him the value of having his own soup-to-nuts setup, and the PC and HD Video Revolutions made high-tech effects work cheap and easy. It seems disingenuous to beat up on Rodriguez for saying “I made my own F/X house” when there are thousands of kids with After Effects and an iMac doing faux GREEN LANTERN trailers which look better the actual one does (and not just b/c Nathan Fillion would have been a far better Hal Jordan than Ryan Reynolds is!).
Paul/Darryl – great discussion this week about content piracy, though unfortunately the best you can do is hope to minimize it. When Tammy wrote an audiobook-original novel (MELTING STONES, thank you for asking) for Bruce Coville’s Full Cast Audio, pirate versions of it were on the Internet within a week of release. Tammy was livid, but Bruce and I both shrugged and pointed out that it was going to happen, and you could either spend your life playing Whack-A-Mole trying to shut down pirate versions – or you could appeal to the fans (as Eisener did) not to pirate your work because you’re an indie producer and not part of the Big Media Greedhead Conspiracy To Crush Digital Innovation.
While it won’t stop all piracy, personal appeals like that actually work at getting a lot of casual pirates to purchase a version of your work to make up for the illicit freebie. Some content creators (Trent Renzor, Joss Whedon, Cory Doctorow) actually make an unemcumbered version of their work available for free, with a “If you like this, please purchase a higher-quality version” note attached – and that seems to work fairly well to get fans to purchase. It doesn’t work for everybody , but it looks to me like the crowd who claims “Giving it Away Doesn’t Work – We Need To Clamp Down on Piracy!” make it abundantly clear they’d rather bring down the jackboot and, are just doing this to “be fair” (which they do in a way to ensure it won’t work for them!).
Sorry, that should have been “une_n_cumbered” and the comma between “jackboot” and “and”.
For those who want to support Eiseman and “grindhouse” style indie filmmaking, Amazon is selling the Blu-Ray version of HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN for $17.99 at
http://www.amazon.com/Hobo-Shotgun-Collectors-Digital-Blu-ray/dp/B004XQO8PK/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1311532734&sr=1-2 .
So show your support by purchasing the Blu-Ray or DVD.
Timothy, thank you for the “lesson” and by “lesson” I mean a) Daryl Surat will always take the time to make what you said known, just more concisely, so I’ve heard this at least 1007 times and b) I honestly don’t care.
Also, I am not really of the camp who thinks that how broke you are is indicative of if you’re indie or not. I just go with “outside of the system”
Before this comments section descends into chaos, I will say Hobo With A Shotgun really is as good as Paul and Daryl say it is. It’s an unbeliveably entertaining splatterfest of an action film that anyone with a remote sense of fun in their lives will at least like.
Now if you will excuse me I shall now go back to watching Savage Streets, just because.
This movie demands to be on a late-night double bill with DEADBEAT AT DAWN, the movie that makes the town in HOBO seem quaint and charming.
And what is Deadbeat at Dawn? Is it another Canadian film?
Deadbeat at Dawn is an ultra low budget indy film made by a guy named Jim Van Bebber, about drug dealing gangs in Toledo, Ohio. It’s cheap, rough around the edges, ridiculously brutal, and honest to the spirit of exploitation films of the 1970s in that it’s not trying to self-consciously be an exploitation film from the 1970s.
It caused quite a stir when it was initially released to vhs, and a lot of people were looking forward to Van Bebber’s career. Then, he totally lost his mind for a while and seems to only just recently be getting himself back on track.
Like Hobo, the movie is a true independent — maybe even more so, since Hobo at least has the benefit of Rutger Hauer. Deadbeat features no real actors, and everyone is obviously learning the craft of film making as they go, but the raw potential on display is pretty impressive, if clumsy at times.
Nice, I was waiting for a movie like this. I think it is in the same league as “Emperor of the North Pole”. Seriously Paul, you should check that one out, it is on Netflix streaming 😛
Let me get this straight, We got “Hobo with a Shotgun” before a black dynamite review? c’mon its not that hard to get dave and joel to guest the review
The better amovie is, the less there is to say about it 😉
Though I haven’t seen the film yet, I was just informed the theme song heard over the end credits and elsewhere in the film comes from the cartoon show “The Raccoons” (also a Canadian classic). I think I’m sold on that!