At least with the remade "Funny Games," Mr. Haneke shows a certain kinship with someone like Eli Roth, whose "Hostel" movies have brought nothing but scorn from responsible critics.
They've rallied support from HOPEmalawiUK, a charity that sets up community projects, and Paul Norrish from Njaya Lodge, where they stayed in 1999, whose hostel first inspired the couple.
But there's no arguing with their first signing: a 22-year-old multi-instrumentalist, originally from Bournemouth, called William Doyle who operates as East India Youth because that's the Docklands area where he lives, and whose Hostel EP offers a remarkable combination or distillation of electronica, krautrock, techno, singer-songwriter, synth-pop and systems music styles.
In the novel's key coincidence, Lucan is recommended to Hildegard by Brother Heinrich, in whose "prayer-hostel" he lodged.
Tarantino himself plays small roles in both segments of Grindhouse, and director Eli Roth, who contributed the fake trailer Thanksgiving and whose film Hostel was produced by Tarantino, has a cameo in Death Proof.
Hong Kong, an address practically synonymous with high-prices, has hostels such as the Day Hostel, whose per-person rates start at $9.69 means you can use your hard-earned dollars to enjoy one of of the world's most colorful cities, rather than have it all sucked up into a hotel that you may, really, not spend a lot of time in.
In this context, B&Bs tend not to be places that budget tourists having a mini-break in England would want to end up in, but are hostels whose business model is built on housing the homeless.
On my first night in Norway I paid 259 kroner, or $45, to stay in a rundown Oslo hostel whose online user reviews prominently mention bedbugs.
Since last May, some 350,000 people have fled their homes, according to the UN.Last month Boko Haram committed one of its worst atrocities by killing 40-odd pupils in a pre-dawn attack on a school in the state of Yobe, setting ablaze a hostel whose doors were locked, then shooting or slitting the throats of those who tried to escape.
But Audition is a genuine political satire, brilliantly constructed and with a level of imagination, psychological acuity and hardcore provocation that goes way beyond Hostel, whose attempts at black comedy fall with a dull thud, like one of the many dismembered limbs.
