Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2009 January.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – an early favorite with voters
Looking for an alternative to the Academy Awards? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, who reveal their annual Oscar nominations this morning, are notorious for overlooking fantasy films, horror movies, and science fiction cinema. Therefore, Cinefantastique Online has decided to presents its nominations [...]

Here is a complete list of the nominations for the best achievements in fantasy films, horror movies, and science fiction cinema released last year.
BEST FILM

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Let the Right One In
Wall-E

BEST DIRECTOR

David Fincher for BENJAMIN BUTTON
Christopher Nolan for DARK KNIGHT
Jon Favreau for IRON MAN
Tomas Alfredson for LET THE RIGHT ONE [...]

Writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s low-budget horror film is a demented spoof of teen sex, abstinence only programs, and especially male fear of women. The not-so-subtle joke is that women are traditionally the victims in horror movies, but TEETH turns the tables by bringing men’s worst paranoid Freudian nightmare – vagina dentata – to life. The result [...]

Bob May, the actor and stunt man who played the Robot in Irwin Allen’s 1960s’ television series LOST IN SPACE, has died from congestive heart failure, at the age of 69. After the nefarious Dr. Smith, the Robot may be the show’s most enduring character, thanks to its distinctive design and signature cry of “Warning! [...]

Eclipsed by the dynamic duo of WALL-E and KUNG FU PANDA, BOLT is the other great computer-animated film of 2008 - an overlooked  effort that is quite worthy in its own right – an exciting and action-packed film filled with drama, pathos, and laughs that will satisfy the whole family. In the manner of CG family-oriented families, it [...]

Topless Robot offers a couple of amusing posts on the deficiencies spotted in two shows by J. J. Abrams:

10 Clues the Writers of Lost are Making It UP as They Go Along
5 Reasons Why the Fringe Team is the Worst Department in the FBI

Unlike choosing from the year’s theatrical releases, when we’re bound to new product, going for DVD and Bluray releases allows us to reach as far back as 75 years for Criterion’s Vampyr, or just a single turn of the calendar for Paramount’s Zodiac. The criteria varies from selection to selection, with some (like Criterion’s White [...]

What’s new on DVD and Blura this week? A few theatrical releases, a couple DTV titles, and a cancelled television series…
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Saw V
Back in 2004, Saw was something of a novelty, introducing a relatively unique twist on the stale serial killer genre with a genuinely uncomfortable conceit – the placing of characters in the center [...]

One of the more undeserving complete box office failures of last year was a little thing called CITY OF EMBER. And by failure, I mean that it literally crashed & burned… badly. In fact, at a domestic box-office gross of a paltry $7,873,007 (and only about 1 million more than that overseas), it was easily [...]

Grim suspense undermined by pathetic plot twists
It might be a bit of an over-reaction to state that this film is all buzz and no blade, but this is definitely a case where “the Phenomenon outweighs The Film.” SAW is a movie of relatively modest (though admittedly undeniable) achievement, but it’s impact was blown out of all [...]

Peter Jackson’s remake of the 1933 classic is a loving homage that recreates and updates many of the familiar sequences, enhancing them with color widescreen photography and contemporary computer graphics. Unfortunately, the recreation leaves one wondering what, exactly, the point of the film is, other than indulging the director’s wish to remake a film he [...]

[ September 9, 2009; 11:00 am; ] Here is the trailer for 9, the new animated feature film produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, and directed by Shane Acker. Not to get too carried away, it looks absolutely awesome, immediately jumping to the top of the “Must See” list for 2009  (although, curiously, the look of the characters is less suggestive [...]

Two days ago, we took a look at the slate of horror-thrillers scheduled for release in 2009. Now turning from the darkness to the light, we round up a list of fantasy films and science fiction cinema for the year. With over forty titles on view, we can hardly complain about a dearth of quantity; [...]