Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2008 June.

An OMEN Blu-ray box set is scheduled for September 9. According to Esplatter.com, this represents the ”first horror movie box set on Blu-ray.” The four-disc set will include the 1976 verison of THE OMEN, DAMEIN: THE OMEN II, THE FINAL CONFLICT, and the 2006 remake of THE OMEN. Not included is the 1990 TV movie THE OMEN IV: [...]

By Steve Biodrowski
This remake of the 1976 blockbuster THE OMEN - which introduced the world to the devilish little Damien, the Antichrist child born of a jackal and destined to precipitate Armageddon - is even more mechanical than the original thriller. In fact, one might even call it soulless: it’s as if someone took a [...]

By Steve Biodrowski
The gas had pretty much run out of the OMEN franchise by the time of this second sequel, and yet THE FINAL CONFLICT is quite an interesting film in spite of its obviously flaws. Sam Neill gives an excellent performance as the now adult Damien Thorne. Screenwriter Andrew Birkin makes at least a [...]

By Steve Biodrowski
This sequel is the worst of the original OMEN trilogy. Whereas the first film was a mystery building up to a terrifying revelation (all those “accidental” deaths were engineered by Satan to protect little Damien, his son on Earth), DAMIEN: THE OMEN II has few if any surprises to offer. The audience already knows all there [...]

By Steve Biodrowski
This film of the Antichrist’s appearance on Earth was part of the 1970s trend toward big-budget, studio-produced horror (e.g., JAWS) - a trend that effectively squashed the medium-budget genre efforts from Hammer Films and American International Pictures that had dominated drive-ins and local theatres throughout the 1950s and 1960s. THE OMEN is a slick, [...]

WALL-E cleaned up at the box office, easily taking the #1 position despite strong competition from WANTED. Pixar’s wonderful animated film - about a lonely robot cleaning up Earth after the human population has left - wowed both critics and audiences. Having earned a 96% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the film  opened in 3,992 American [...]

 
In anticipation of the Augst 15 theatrical release of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, New York Times offers a profile of George Lucas, who muses on returning to a galaxy far, far away. Although not overtly negative, Dave Itzkoff’s article expresses a certain skepticism about revisiting the STAR WARS franchise, in light of Lucas’s expressed [...]

Variety reports that Relativity Media and Warners Brothers are battling over who will be the first to reach the screen with a big-budget fantasy film based on Greek Myth. Relativity is backing a film called WAR OF THE GODS, which had Warner Brothers had considered backing until they signed Louis Leterrier (THE INCREDIBLE HULK) to direct [...]

The Spenborough Guardian offers up an interesting piece, “Horror Films for Parents? Be Very Afraid,” in which Adam Wolstenholme muses on his change in attitude toward horror films since growing up and becoming a parent.
If adolescence made body horror more powerful, parenthood does the same for horror films that deal with children.
The makers of scary [...]

 
9 X 9: When Andrew Stanton first joined Pixar he was only the fledgling company’s ninth employee. Now, 18 years on, Stanton has delivered us Pixar’s ninth movie, WALL•E (Short for: Waste Allocation Load Lifter•Earth-Class.) Not so surprisingly, given Pixar’s track record, WALL•E is already being hailed as another animation “masterpiece.”
Below the fold are [...]