Films with time-traveling bears tend to defy easy description.  So do movies where a teenager has alien fly mutant blood and was forced to wear a TV set on his hand as a child.  It’s also tough to describe a flick where a Ghostface-like slash wanders into the picture and isn’t the focal point.  Director Joseph Kahn has swirled all these elements and more into the delightful, abrasive lunacy of his new film, Detention.  The movie is a rapid-fire assault on the senses, and while it plucks at your neural pathways like an inbred hillbilly armed with a banjo and amphetamines, Kahn’s picture has sharp mind, a charming wit, and a scathing critique on nostalgia and the narcissism of teenagers both past and present.

Detention, opening in theaters on April 13^th, is a wild and crazy hipster, teen horror-comedy that mixes in science fiction, body-swapping, time-travelling, 1990′s throwback, date flick and a murdering psycho, in only the way that director/co-writer Joseph Kahn (Torque) can. Cinderhella is a slasher-movie killer who has seemingly come to life and is preying on the local students of Grizzly Lake, who are just trying to survive their final year of high school. As the bodies pile up, Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell) and Clapton Davis (The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson) are in a deadly and outrageous race against time to save the world.

At the film’s press day, filmmaker Joseph Kahn (who is known for his music videos for such artists as Eminem, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, U2, and Muse, among others) talked about wanting to make a high school movie that’s relevant for kids today, how he stays in touch with pop culture, all the films he referenced, creating the Cinderhella character, how closely they stuck to the dialogue in the script but continuously worked with the interpretation of it, and the bonus features that he’s working on for the Blu-ray release.  Check out what he had to say after the jump:

You probably best known director Joseph Kahn as the man behind the delightfully terrible Torque, a movie even Kahn mocks in his new picture Detention.  The trailer for Detention is bizarre enough to make the film worth a look as it seems to be dancing in between Scream, The Breakfast Club, and Disney Channel made-for-TV movies.  Even the synopsis doesn’t make much sense:

Detention, is a teen horror-comedy where the local students of Grizzly Lake must survive their final year of high school. Standing in their way is a slasher movie killer who has seemingly come to life. It becomes a race against time to stop the killer and save the world – if only they can get out of detention. The Detention cuts through prom. Most of them don’t have dates anyway.

We’ve been sent the poster for the film and it features a drawing of a bear with a skull for a mouth.  Works for me.  Hit the jump to check out the poster and the trailer.  Detention premieres on Sunday, March 13th at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival.

A trailer has gone online for Joseph Kahn’s bizarre-looking new film Detention.  While the trailer cracks a joke at the expense of Kahn’s previous film, Torque, it’s an odd mish-mash that recalls gooey high-school comedies, Scream, and The Breakfast Club.  I don’t know what to make of this movie and that’s exciting.  The film will be making its premiere at this year’s SXSW Film Festival and I’ll be interested to hear the response.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Detention stars Josh Hutcherson, Dane Cook, Shanley Caswell, Spencer Locke, Aaron David Johnson, Walter Perez, Erica Shaffer, Parker Bagley, and Alison Woods.

Director Vincenzo Natali (Splice) has signed on to helm Fire Development Inc.’s adaptation of William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.  THR provides a nice one sentence plot synopsis for the book: “a washed-up computer hacker hired by a mysterious employer to work on the ultimate hack.”   Joseph Kahn (Torque) had been attached since early 2008 and as recently as Monday was telling the /Filmcast how he was still committed to the film and his plans for it.  Not sure what happened in the last five days, but I’d listen to this week’s episode of /Filmcast After Dark to find out.

I think the best news is that if Natali’s been brought on board, it shows that the film may be moving out of development hell and it may get out even faster should Splice turn out to be a hit when it opens on June 4th.

Hit the jump for the Amazon review of the book.