Feb 9 2012
Studio 4C have released their animated film Berserk Golden Age Arc I: Egg of the Supreme Ruler (Berserk Ougon Jidaihen I: Hao no Tamago) in Japanese theaters this weekend and are promoting it by way of putting the opening ten minutes online. More
Jan 16 2012
Seth Grahame-Smith’s ‘Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer’ is a reasonably funny and charming tale in book form. It’s an unusually compelling portrait of the 16th president if you can set aside the wacky bits about him being a killer of the undead. Oh wait, that’s the hook of the entire thing, isn’t it? No matter, it’s a fun and deliciously silly read that does go to lengths to keep Lincoln a relatively grounded character. More
Jan 16 2012
As time has passed, I’ve found my interest in Josh Trank‘s upcoming “found footage” superhero thriller, Chronicle, growing. Releasing in theaters on February 3rd courtesy of Fox Pictures, Chronicle tells the story of three high-school kids who discover miraculous powers and then go on to mismanage and abuse them. More
Jan 16 2012
He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as hewiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.‘I will give you a name,’ he said to it, ‘and I shall call you Sting.’” More
Jan 16 2012
“The movie is definitely epic in its scope. One of the filmmakers that we ended up talking about to a fair degree of redundancy was David Lean, who directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia. We wanted to make the movie feel big by having the characters be small in big spaces. That connected to the larger themes we were talking about — that we’re all just these little gnats crawling around on our little planet.”
–Damon Lindelof in an interview with The L.A. Times. More
Jan 16 2012
The 69th Golden Globe Awards were held last night in Los Angeles, hosted again by Ricky Gervais, despite the silly upheaval over his performance last year . Although they have become increasingly shabby as a form of predicting the Oscars, the ceremony is still noted as one of the landmarks of the awards season. More
Jan 15 2012
The new crime thriller “Contraband”, starring Mark Wahlberg in typical tough guy action mode, pulled off a heist this weekend, stealing the box-office top spot from the re-release of Disney’s ’Beauty and the Beast-3D’ and the Dolly Parton/Queen Latifah comedy vehicle ‘Joyful Noise’. More
Jul 17 2011
Ahh, the return of ‘The Howling’ series. It was only a matter of time. This trailer looks like what one would expect to see after the success of the ‘Twilight’ franchise. More ‘Scream’ than ‘The Howling’, this entry has the gall to trash the Meyer’s series at the same time it’s slavishly referencing it in a near reverant way.
What can one expect though? The Howling is one of the dodgiest collection of films to ever bear the same moniker (ok, maybe Silent Night, Deadly Night or Curse might take that cake). The first movie, directed by Joe Dante, is a mostly fun little piece of work that boasts good werewolves and some welcome black humor. It’s not a homerun however, and the follow-ups were increasingly bizarre and finally pathetic.
Howling II had Christopher Lee and almost always nude Sybil Danning. I don’t rememeber anymore. Howling III: The Marsupials is the best of the sequels by virtue of its complete insanity and the presence of unwashed Aussie bushbillies. Howling IV: The Original Nightmare was neither original nor nightmarish, Howling V: The Rebirth was like Clue with a werewolf. Howling VI: The Freaks was the first of the series to present vampire fx that were even worse than the wolf fx. Howling: New Moon Rising was ambitiously bad in the way it tried to tie the last few movies into what appeared to be a country line-dancing tutorial.
And now, there’s this. Werewolves who wish they were glittery vampires or buff Native American dudes. For shame.
Jul 15 2011
So, if you aren’t familiar with the source material, would you know this shortened title is actually referencing John Carter…of Mars? Right now looks sort of like John Cater of Utah.
Still, this is directed by Andrew Stanton and mounted by the Pixar folks, and I’m mostly liking the design and the Peter Gabriel Cash cover, while strange, helps give it that sort of swashbuckler meets western feel.
Looks promising, and if they stay true to Edgar Rice Burrough’s books, this will be a great pulp adventure. Not yet sold on those martians though.
Jul 15 2011
Although it’s initially startling (or is it disheartening?) to see Martin Scorsese’s name plastered on a 3D holiday flick aimed at kids, there’s a good chance ‘Hugo’ will be worth seeing.
Although the trailer itself is a pretty standard cut-and-paste job, it hides the secrets and wonder that went into Brian Selznick’s Caldecott winning book ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ , about a young boy hiding in a Parisian railway station and trying to unlock the mysteries of his father’s work. Why Scorsese? The trailer has pratfalls and Sacha Baron Cohen running around like he’s escaped from Tintin.
Well, what the trailers don’t hint at as much is that Hugo’s storyline revolves around the silent film wizard Georges Méliès, who loved developing automata–mechanical puppets of a sort–for his film work. The book itself took a historical fiction slant, and then moved into fantasy.
I can’t say I’m sold on these trailers, but I do know that Scorsese–for the first time in several years–has some wonderful source material. I’m personally intrigued. The design of the film looks right-on.
Jul 14 2011
Steven Soderbergh, who recently announced his retirement, has a new film on the horizon, and according to this trailer, it just might be a doozy. Working with the ideas of viral contamination, government quarantine, and societal disintegration, the director looks to have crafted a multi-faceted view of a modern plague. Think Traffic, but trade up the war on drugs to a war on a lethal outbreak set to wipeout a good portion of the United States.
There are echoes of several other films here–particularly that recent spat of zombie movies we got–but Soderbergh is versatile enough to pull this off and give us something new and potentially, terrifying.
What do you think? Caught the bug yet?
Jul 14 2011
For a brief moment yesterday, it seemed like the unthinkable would happen. Might we get an Evil Dead 4, some 18 years after the last film? Bruce Campbell was confirming a new Evil Dead on via his twitter account. And then, Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures issued a press release revealing what was happening.
The long rumored–er, threatened–remake of The Evil Dead, Raimi’s 1981 horror classic, is finally happening. The director and writer is Fede Alvarez, who was chosen by Tapert and Raimi based upon his short film’Panic Attack!’. I’ve put the shot below so you can see it, but I’ll warn you–while, it’s impressive, it’s not a short film. It’s just a demo FX reel. There’s nothing in that to suggest Alvarez could direct actors, or create suspenseful scenes,or build atmosphere. I’m sure the Brothers Strausse (those guys behind Skyline) had ‘short films’ this impressive laying around before they got their big movie gigs.
In the end though, this just doesn’t seem like a well thought-out idea. Evil Deads 1 and 2 and Army of Darkness were cult hits, fun because they were counter-culture at the time, and felt edgy, cheap and imaginative. Bruce Campbell’s daffyAsh was a breath of fresh air for the horror genre. Every thing that makes the originals unique or special, will be , by default, destroyed here. The fact Cody is coming in to polish up the screenplay isn’t good news either.
Sure, maybe Alvarez is going a different direction with the film, and maybe there won’t be a corresponding Ash character, but if that’s the case, and Raimi and company actually believe in this guy’s ability to turn out a horror movie, why not make it something original?
I’ll play the waiting game here, but this, more than most recent remake news, seems truly destined for failure.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
GHOST HOUSE PICTURES WILL RESURRECT THE DEAD
Original Producing Team – Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert & Bruce Campbell –
Remaking Horror Classic ‘The Evil Dead’
To be Written and Directed by Fede Alvarez
Los Angeles (July 13, 2011) – Sam Raimi and original producing partners Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell (who also starred in the original franchise) are gearing up to remake their cult sensation THE EVIL DEAD through their long standing Ghost House Pictures partnership. Raimi and Tapert were such instant fans of Fede Alvarez’s short film “Panic Attack” that they set up a blind deal with the filmmaker and through that process have attached Fede Alvarez to write and direct the film. Alvarez wrote the script with Rodo Sayagues. Academy Award® winning screenwriter Diablo Cody is currently doing revisions on the draft. Ghost House is committed to renewing the franchise and has the film on the fast track.
Raimi, Tapert and Campbell will serve as producers. Ghost House Pictures partners Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane will executive produce. Nicole Brown and J.R. Young will oversee the project for Ghost House. Lionsgate will handle international sales on the film.
The three producing partners commented, “We are committed to making this movie and are inspired by the enduring popularity and enthusiasm for the ‘Evil Dead’ series. We can’t wait to scare a new generation of moviegoers using filmmaking techniques that were not available to us thirty years ago as well as Fede bringing a fresh eye to the film’s original elements.”
Raimi wrote, directed and, along with Tapert and Campbell, produced the original horror classic THE EVIL DEAD that tells the story of five twenty-something friends who become holed up in a remote cabin where they discover a Book Of The Dead. An archaeologist’s tape recording reveals that the ancient text was discovered among the Khandarian ruins of a Sumerian civilization. Playing the taped incantations, the youths unwittingly summon up dormant demons living in the nearby woods, which possess the youngsters in succession until only one is left intact to fight for survival. THE EVIL DEAD spawned a franchise with the equally successful installments EVIL DEAD II and ARMY OF DARKNESS.
Fede Alvarez is represented by CAA, Anonymous Content and attorney Karl Austen. Diablo Cody is represented by Sarah Self at WME, Mason Novick, and attorney Jeff Frankel of McKuin Frankel Whitehead LLP.
Jul 10 2011
If you are a genre fan, and if you are here at PCN you probably are, there is no bigger or better cinema event than Canada’s FanTasia Film Festival. Since 1996( halting only once in 2002 when the fest was canceled), over 70,000 festival attendees travel every summer to FanTasia to take in the latest and greatest of independent, irreverent, and imaginative cinema from all over the world. As the title suggests, the festival’s original roots were in programming little-seen asian films, showing mostly Hong Kong actioners, martial arts pics and Japanese giant monster movies in their first year.
Since then, FanTasia has grown in scale and infamy to the point where it’s one of the biggest and most exciting events on the cinematic calendar. The multi-cultural sampling of all things genre typically features work from countries and continents as diverse as Japan, Spain, South Korea, Italy, Hong Kong, Germany, Thailand, Denmark, France, Russia, India, New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, Australia, Holland, Scotland, Belgium, Sweden, Great Britain, the US and of course, Quebec and Canada.
This year, the genre onslaught is varied, diverse and tantalizing to geek eyes. Robin Hardy will debut ‘The Wicker Tree’, his darkly satirical follow-up to the horror classic ‘The Wicker Man’. The remake of the T.V. spook-fest ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ will help close the fest, while genre fave Richard Stanley, the exiled director of Dust Devil and Hardware, will make an appearance, sharing a live conference with Hardy and presenting a film he’s actually a part of, the horror anthology ‘Theatre of the Bizarre.’ Other works like Mike Cahill’s ‘Another Earth’, Jim Mickle’s ‘Stakeland’, Takashi Miike’s ‘Ninja Kids’, and Todd Rohal’s Catechism Cataclysm are amongst the tasty nuggets awaiting attendees.
Are you looking forward to the festival? Can’t attend this year, though? PCN will provide daily reviews and coverage of the films playing, so stay tuned. C0me the 14th, we’ll be up to our ears in exotic films.
Click here for the list of films and the schedule for Fantasia Fest 2011.
Jul 10 2011
Although I’m a bigger fan of the current BBC upgrade of Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbach and Martin Freeman, I did enjoy Ritchie’s more action-oriented take that was still relatively true to the source material.
