Archive for February 2009
You are browsing the archives of 2009 February.
The Score: Rorschach Test – Who’s Scoring the Watchmen?
Tyler Bates’ Music for Doctor Manhattan & Friends
With his pulsating and edgy score for Scott Derrickson’s revisualization of the science fiction classic THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL behind him, composer Tyler Bates now reunites with Zach Snyder, his director on both the 2004 DAWN OF THE DEAD remake and the graphically-intense 300 to compose [...]
Supernal Dreams: Jean-Claude Carriere on Luis Bunuel’s Sublime Fantasy, “The Milky Way”
Mystery is the essential element in every work of art. I will never grow tired of repeating this.
–Luis Bunuel to Elena Powinatowska, 1961
“Luis Bunuel’s The Milky Way has the form of a lovely fantasy … a livelier fantasy than The Wizard of Oz. ”
–Vincent Canby, The New York Times
A Mysterious Traveller on the Milky Way
In [...]
Laserblast: Last House, Bird with Crystal Plumage, Four Flies, Akira
It’s a busy week for DVD and Bluray releases, with titles from such classic and cult genre names as Wes Craven, Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Barbara Steele and Tod Slaughter arriving in stores.
click to purchase
Last House on the Left (MGM/UA DVD)
Wes Craven’s landmark 1972 shocker gets a second DVD go-around with a much more comprehensive [...]
Last House on the Left (1972) – Film & DVD Review
Wes Craven’s landmark 1972 shocker gets a second DVD go-around with a much more comprehensive set of extras, but the recent UK DVD release easily trumps all previous entries. Last House on the Left is as important a step in the growth of the modern horror film as either Night of the Living Dead or [...]
Akira (1989) – Blu-ray Review
Japanese Anime was the one video store section that never failed to leave us dizzy. It’s a world that we’re totally unfamiliar with and the hundreds upon hundreds of titles make us sympathize with the people that never leave the safety of the ‘New Release’ wall. Anime always looked cheap and unattractive to us and [...]
Four Flies on Grey Velvet – DVD Review
Having just released an international smash with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970, Argento must have felt the usual pressure to follow it up with something similar (an issue that his occasional stylistic mentor, Hitchcock himself, had to deal with often). His subsequent two efforts would form a so-called “animal trilogy” – films [...]
Bird with the Crystal Plumage – Blu-ray Review
Though its antecedents stretch back to the early ’60s output of Mario Bava, Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is almost universally acknowledged as ground zero for both the Italian “Giallo” thriller (so named for the yellow coloring used on the wonderfully lurid covers of the Italian crime novels that inspired them) and [...]
Bird with the Crystal Plumage – A Retrospective Review
EDITOR’S NOTE: As Cole, the reluctant time traveller played by Bruce Willis in TWELVE MONKEYS notes, time changes our perception of movies. When you re-view a film, it seems different, but it is the viewer, not the film, that has actually changed. This observation prompts our posting of this review. Dario Argento’s directorial debut, The [...]
Sense of Wonder: Ledger & Wall-E win Oscars
Last week, Cinefantastique Online posted its winners for the Wonder Awards, honoring the best in science fiction, fantasy, and horror films from 2008. Now it’s time to take a look how well the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did with their 81st annual awards show. Judging by the low bar the Academy has [...]
Robert Quarry Remembered: The Deathmaster Knocks at the Madhouse of Dr. Phibes
During the past year, I have been following the online the trials and tribulations of actor Robert Quarry, from being victimized by a con artist poising as a fan to being rescued by caring admirers into the safety of the Motion picture home. Thanks to the personal generosity of men like producer Fred Olen Ray (whose [...]
Box Office: Coraline back in 3rd, Jason in 6th
This was one of those rare weekends during which no new science fiction, fantasy, or horror movies opened. The only two holdovers still in the Top Ten were CORALINE and FRIDAY THE 13, which saw somewhat divergent results.
CORALINE, in its third weekend of release, bounced back from #5 to #3, which is where it made [...]
Sense of Wonder: Robert Quarry – The Horror Star Who Never Was
The recently deceased actor deserves a place alongside the icons of the genre
I will always think of Robert Quarry as the Greatest Horror Star Who Never Was. The actor – who recently passed away, according to this post at the Classic Horror Move Message Board - earned a small measure of cult stardom from appearing in a handful of [...]
The Vampire Effect – Horror Film Review
Like UNDERWORLD, this is an attempt to take vampire mythology and turn it into an excuse for a slick and exciting action thriller. The martial arts action is frequently fun to watch, and the cast is not without its appeal, but these good bits and pieces are stitched together by means of a screenplay that [...]
