Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2008 March.

The pickin’s are a tad slim when it comes to horror, science-fiction, and fantasy titles released on home video this week, but quality more then compensates for quantity - and a little variety doesn’t hurt, either. There’s a musical-comedy-horror film, a computer-generated anime sci-fi adventure, some talking-singing chipmunks, an ersatz superhero movie based on an old [...]

The Fangoria Weekend of Horrors is coming to the Los Angeles Convnetion Center next month. Guests include: George Romero, Clive Barker, Angus Scrimm, Sid Haig, Ray Wise, Ken Foree, Michael Pare, Corbin Bernsen, and over 70 other horror celebrities. There will be a 40th anniversary cast-and-crew reunion screening of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (like [...]

This disappointing follow-up to THE SIXTH SENSE reteams star (Bruce Willis) and writer-director (M. Night Shyamalan), but the old magic fails to re-materialize, thanks to overwrought melodrama and contrived plot developments. The premise (of a man who miraculously survives a train wreck that kills everyone else on board) initially seems intriguing, setting up a mystery that the audience is [...]

Raimi’s Horror Reality Series Wants You: Shock Till You Drop has some information on the casting calls for Sam Raimi’s new TV series, 13, which take place March 31 and April 3 in Los Angeles, and on April 13 and 15 in Philadelphia. “Casting directors are looking for men and women between the ages of [...]

The weekend’s big genre release, SUPERHERO MOVIE, failed to perform heroically at the box office. The spoof of costumed crime-fighter battled its way to to distant third place. Making its debut in 2,960 theatres. SUPERHERO MOVIE earned an estimated $9.51-million, well behind 21 and HORTON HEARS A WHO.
As for holdover sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles…
DR. SEUSS’ [...]

Scary Movie: Ma Xu Weibang and Song at Midnight (1937): At Kung Fu Cinema, Jean Lukitsh takes a fond look back at “China’s first true horror film,” an adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera.
Horror Icon Richard Widmark, 93, Dies: At Cinematical, Peter Martin makes an unconvincing attempt to paint the Hollywood actor [...]

By Steve Biodrowski
This is a considerable improvement over last year’s EPIC MOVIE – which is not to say that SUPERHERO MOVIE is very good, just that it has a few jokes that are designed to make you laugh because they are funny, not just because you are recognizing a recreation of a familiar scene from [...]

By Steve Biodrowski
This is an almost unimaginably unfunny piece of drek that makes even the wan SCARY MOVIE 4 look like a comic gem in comparison. With its shotgun-style approach, firing off scatter-shot rounds at anything and everything in its path, it’s absolutely amazing that, just through sheer luck, the film does not hit the [...]

This fourth entry in the franchise comes nowhere near matching the gross-out of the original SCARY MOVIE, but that doesn’t mean the series has moved toward sophisticated satire – just that the crude sex and scatology jokes are filmed in a way that will earn a PG-13 rating. Despite an infusion of talent once associated [...]

After the SCREAM trilogy ran its course, this spoof was a way to keep the money rolling in at the box office. Since the SCREAM movies, contained a healthy dose of self-referential humor, SCARY MOVIE seemed a bit redundant (it’s easier to make fun of movies that take themselves too seriously), yet it turned out [...]

MyFoxAtlanta.com has some details on the upcoming X-FILES feature film, courtesy of franchise creator Chris Carter and writer Frank Spotnitz:
While this is not a mythology movie, it’s true to everything that’s come before,” Spotnitz said at the William S. Paley Television Festival. “It’s true to Mulder and Scully, who they are and where they would [...]

SUPERHERO MOVIE – the latest in too long a line of obviously named spoofs – opens today without benefit of critics screenings. We will refrain from pointing out the obvious inference, leaving you to draw your own conclusions. The listing for the film at Rotten Tomatoes reveals only one review, posted by Luke Y. Thompson [...]

Looking for blockbuster hits released on home video this week? Better look elsewhere, buster, for there are none to be had. However, if your interest lies more towards the esoteric and the unusual, or if you enjoy sifting through the DTV detritus looking for the occasional dusty gem, however flawed, then there are riches aplenty [...]