Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2008 July.

This is a heavy-duty week for home-video releases. As usual, there are only one or two new titles making their debut, but Hollywood has become so adept at recycling old material that they could serve as a useful model for the environmental movement: numerous golden oldies make return engagements this week, their resurrection justified by [...]

Alex Proyas’ sci-fi noir masterpiece broods long and hard on the nature of identity. 
“I think; therefore, I am,” said Rene Descartes, in his attempt to find a basic principal of complete certainty, an unshakable foundation on which to build his philosophy. No matter what else one may doubt about the universe—say, the evidence of our senses, [...]

You can say what you like about Los Angeles, but we have Hollywood, which means we have the movies – and lots of movie-lovers to go with it; consequently, there are actually a handful of theatres, even in this era of home video, that continue to offer repertory and revival programming. This results in wonderful [...]

In an isolated area of the American southwest desert, a small research station has been quickly set up to study some disturbing trends among the ant population. Ants of different species have not only stopped fighting against each other, they have begun to communicate and work together – building geometric ‘ant skyscrapers’ and driving out [...]

Anchor Bay is double-triple-quadruple-dipping back into a famous franchise for this October, offering up yet another special edition of HALLOWEEN, the 1978 sleeper hit from John Carpenter that launched launched not only a franchise but also established the modern sub-genre of the slasher film.
The new six-disc set will features an odd-ball mix: a restored version [...]

 
Columbia Pictures has announced a special 50th Anniversary DVD edition for Ray Harryhausen’s first Technicolor movie, the Arabian Nights fantasy, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD. It will street on October 7. 2008, well in advance of the movies actual anniversary, when it opened at New York City’s fabulous Roxy Theater (seating 5,800) in Rockefeller Center, [...]

 Some pictures have legs at the box office; THE DARK KNIGHT has wings. Christopher Nolan’s hard-boiled film noir reinterpretation of the Caped Crusader flew high above the competition, earning over $75-million – an incredibly impressive number for a film in its second weekend of release. That yielded a two-week total of $314.25-million – which is [...]

by Dan Persons

A couple of undertakers visit a groovy, Tim Burton Hell; a small dog has his dreams of firehouse Dalmatian glory dashed; and over in France, sinister, disco-backed experiments are being performed on hapless human beings. That can only mean one thing: It’s time for the fourth edition of THE ANIMATION SHOW. Programmed by [...]

Hey, Oprah, empower this!
You’ll be forgiven for getting that uncomfortable feeling during the first half of LATE BLOOMER. The lead, Masakiyo Sumida, is disabled — he employs a motorized wheelchair to get around (although he apparently can walk for limited distances), uses a digital speech machine to communicate, and seemingly is forced to keep a [...]

by Dan Persons

What I wanted to believe was that, despite conventional wisdom, one could go home again. What I wanted to believe was that a creative team, given six years to look back and rediscover the passion they once had for a project, would be able to channel that passion into something that would remind [...]

This is a misleadingly titled giallo thriller in the tradition of Dario Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, and CAT O’NINE TAILS. Director Antonio Bido also borrows several stylistic tropes from Argento, particularly from DEEP RED: harsh violence; point-of-view shots; a repetitive, insistent main theme performed with a pop music arrangement [...]

The American Cinematheque will soon be launching its eighth annual Festival of Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Horror, which will screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Special events will include the U.S. debut of RE-CYCLE (the new film from EYE-directors Danny & Oxide Pang), a colorized, digitally restored [...]

This week, everything old is new again, thanks to the magic of home video – in particular, the Blu-ray format. THE MUMMY and THE MUMMY RETURNS were released in two-disc DVD editions only two weeks ago; now they are back again on Blu-ray disc, along with the spin-off title THE SCORPION KING. Also out on [...]