The idea of creating family friendly horror has been around for years. The 90’s saw one of its biggest emergence with the highly popular Goosebumps and Fear Street book series and television series such as “Are You Afraid of the Dark” and the short lived “The Nightmare Room.” However, it was rare to see horror …
“Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz and his co-executive producer James Vallely are working on a screenplay for the long-debated feature version of their short-lived Fox series…Hurwitz would also direct the Fox Searchlight feature.” The groundbreaking series launched the career of future Juno star Michael Cera (a newcomer at that point) as well as making a …
Variety recently reported that Quentin Tarantino boasted about an upcoming project at the recent Morelia Film Festival in Mexico. This comes on the heels of his announcement of an upcoming Kill Bill sequel that Tarantino made while on Italian television. Quentin now claims that he is open to the thought of “re-imagining a 1920s to …
The House of the Devil is at heart an exercise in tension, and West and Donahue deserve serious credit for stringing the audience along while revealing little of the horror to come. House Of The Devil Directed by Ti West I can’t yet speak to Ti West’s 21st century output, but with The House of …
This year’s festival collection of horror shorts was generally above-average mixed bag. There are four, in particular, that simply astounded me, and the seven remaining films varied from decent fun to pointless exercises in horror standards. Following are my brief takes on all the films shown. Dara: Dir. Timo Tjahjanto & Kimo Tjahjanto, Indonesia, 2009, …
They played songs that set a new land speed record and remained together through 18 years of drugs, dysfunction and failed record sales. Now the Ramones, traditionally dubbed “the godfathers of punk”, are to receive the big-screen Hollywood treatment in a biopic entitled I Slept With Joey Ramone. Fox Searchlight is in negotiations to board …
Survival of the Dead Directed by George A. Romero George A. Romero. the undisputed king of socially relevant zombiedom. delivers his sixth entry into his Dead series with Survival of the Dead. Unlike Land of the Dead. set several years after the dead first began to rise up and eat the living, Survival opens a …
On Nov. 20th, a familiar face will be seen during daytime TV (and thank God, It’s not Rosie O’Donnell). James Franco, best known for his role on the cult television show Freak and Geeks and as Harry Osborne in the Spider-Man series, will be appearing as the newest member to popular soap opera General Hospital. …
Whip It 2009, USA Directed by Drew Barrymore Written by Shauna Cross (also novel) Starring Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig Whip It is not for me. And I mean that literally: it wasn’t made for me. The producers of the film probably couldn’t care less what a 20-something male thinks of …
Looks like we might be saved further trauma, at least for the time being, as the production of Halloween 3D has been temporarily shut down. The omnipresent Weinstein Company was rumoured to be rushing production to get the film out by summer 2010, but director Patrick Lussier’s (My Bloody Valentine 2009) busy schedule is said …
Reported by THR’s Risky Biz earlier today, Warner Bros. is in the works to bring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the Broadway stage. The spectacle is set to be produced by American Beauty director Sam Mendes’ production company Neal Street Productions, with Mendes also rumored to direct. Popular Scottish playwrite David Grieg is set …
Famed horror film director, Sam Raimi, announced that he was creating Spooky Picture, an extension of the Ghost House Underground production company, with the intention of creating “scary movies for a family audience.” Similarly, Guillermo del Toro announced he was creating Disney Double Dare You, a division of Disney geared to making scary animated films …
Over on his official blog, Bay has announced the go ahead on Transformer 3 claiming they have a “great story” and that he’s currently en route to Rhode Island with screenwriter Ehren Kruger to chat up Hasbro and figure out which new robots will make their way into the third installment. He said on his …
Quentin Tarantino who recently appeared on the Italian Television show “Bad Taste” confirmed that he is indeed making Kill Vol. 3. According to Tarantino, fans will have to wait a few years before he begins production saying, “I gotta wait a couple of years, but I want ten years to pass from the second one …
Tonight, Canadian viewers will have a chance to watch a two-minute, ‘cliffhanger’ scene from director Roland Emmerich’s upcoming disaster epic 2012. The scene will be broadcast between 22:50 and 23:00 on pretty much every channel we get up here, and its five-minute conclusion will be posted online. I’m actually kind of curious about the film, …
Take Out 2004, USA Directed by Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou Written by Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou Starring Charles Jang, Jeng-Hua Yu, Wang-Thye Lee, Justin Wan English/Mandarin In the context of film reviews, ‘hypnotic’ often means the critic fell asleep, but got the DVD for free and is trying to be nice. This is why Jean …
Undertones: Volume 6 The classic science fiction film emerged during a period of great societal paranoia in the US in the early 1950s. The post-WW2 environment saw an increased concern with nuclear armament and a fear of the infiltration of communism on the American way of life. Essentially, the sci-fi film was Hollywood’s great metaphor …
The Stepfather 2 Directed by Jeff Burr The Stepfather, one of the most effective psychological thrillers made in the early 80’s, may have been a flop in theaters, but it found a second life on cable and videocassette, gaining enough of a cult following to result in a sequel. The original Stepfather was a complex …
Claireece Precious Jones endures unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother, raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed. So what better way to learn about her than through her own, halting dialect. Winner of the Sundance Jury Prize and the audience award at this …
< Delivering on the promise he showed with his 2005 feature Kinetta, Yorgos Lanthimos deals a masterful blow below the belt. In his latest triumph, sex is everywhere, tucked away in the David Hockneyesque set pieces, sabotaging the actors’ speech patterns and hiding behind the director’s undisclosed intentions. One of the best pieces of cinema …
Gyorgy Palfi, the auteur of the highly polished, offbeat festival darlings Hukkle and Taxidermia, returns with the intimate, improvised and low-budget I Am Not Your Friend. A provocative little package held together by a single concept: the determination to sustain individuality. Every choice made, every kiss exchanged is a statement of absolute liberty. Shot over …
After four long years out of the movie industry, Toshiaki Toyoda director of “Blue Spring” and “9 Souls” is finally coming out with a new movie called The Blood of Rebirth (Yomigaeri no Chi), a hallucinatory samurai film in the tradition of Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Mother Directed by Bong Joon-ho Following the smash success of his previous films, Memories of Murder and The Host, Korean sensation Bong Joon-ho returns with a stylish thriller that is both detective story and psychological horror After an asocial loser is framed as the perpetrator of a horrific murder, his hard-headed mother goes on the …