Archive for August 2009
You are browsing the archives of 2009 August.
Dee Snider’s Strangeland (1998) Film Review
Dee Snider’s STRANGELAND 2: DISCIPLE is scheduled for production later this year, some eleven years after the first STRANGELAND was released on DVD. Dee Snider has been fighting the courts to claim back his creative rights over the movie, after the original production company Shooting Gallery had all of its material seized by the government. [...]
Surrogates Opens September 25
[ September 25, 2009 to September 27, 2009. ] Walt Disney offers up this big-budget science fiction action adventure, in which people vicariously live out their fantasies by having their conscioussness inhabit artificial bodies. Sounds like an interesting premise for exploring how technology can changes our lives, but you just know Hollywood needs some kind of generic plot device to drive the story – and [...]
Sense of Wonder: Fall Fantasy Film Forecast on Chronic Rift
I’m back on The Chronic Rift podcast, for their Fall Fantasy Film Forecast. Host John S. Drew and I prognosticate on upcoming genre titles while also taking time to reflect on smaller indie sleepers that crept quietly in and out of theatres this summer, their high quality overshadowed by the low-brow appeal of more popular mainstream entertainment.
Astro-Boy opens September 23
[ September 23, 2009 to September 27, 2009. ] Summit Entertainment releases this big-budget update of Osamu Tezuka’s classic 1960s animation series, which set the standards for anime for decades to come. Freddie Highmore provides the voice of the titular robot, created by a grieving scientist (voiced by Nicolas Cage) in the image of his dead son. Former Aardman Animations director David Bowers was [...]
Supernal Dreams: Orson Welles’s unfilmed Edgar Allan Poe script for SPIRITS OF THE DEAD
In June 1967, the professional film journals announced that Orson Welles would direct an episode of the omnibus film Histoires Extraordinaires or Spirits of the Dead as it came to be known in America. By September, it was made public that Welles’s episode would be replaced by one directed by Federico Fellini. The final film [...]
The Score: All This and Halloween II – Interview with composer Tyler Bates
In his last few scores, composer Tyler Bates has watched the WATCHMEN and observed THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, spent a DAY OF THE DEAD and survived DOOMSDAY, but as potent – and as diverse – as those scores were, it’s been his work for Rob Zombie that continue to be his edgiest, evincing [...]
Dexter: The Third Season – Blu-ray Review
Though controversial among fans, Season Three once again demonstrates the writers’ tight control of the subject matter.
WARNING: The following contains Season 2 spoilers.
When last we left Dexter Morgan, not only had he narrowly escaped being exposed as the Bay Harbor Butcher (after his long-time dump site was discovered by divers), but he managed to set up [...]
London After Midnight: British Horror Festivals, So Good They’re Scary!
One of the organisers of THE MAYHEM HORROR FESTIVAL has very kindly given me a few updates. Firstly, and most importantly for anyone wishing to attend, the website to purchase tickets is www.broadway.org.uk (not “co.uk” as previously stated), and tickets will be on sale in the very near future. The festival’s official site, where you can [...]
The Wolfman in 2010 – Watch the Trailer
Originally scheduled for release in November of this year, THE WOLFMAN has been pushed back to February 10, 2010. This remake of the 1941 classic – which turned Lon Chaney Jr into a horror star, features Benicio Del Toro in the title role, with Anthony Hopkins as his father (a father-son relationship almost as unlikely [...]
Ponyo – Animation Film Review
Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, PONYO (“Gake no ue no Ponyo” or “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea”), could be nicely summed up as charmingly innocent. I wasn’t even sure they still made films like it. It’s just a simple slice of pleasant storytelling. And you know what – audiences very much enjoy it. You [...]
Nevermore: Artwork from Roger Corman’s Poe Films – Video
Starting in 1960 with THE HOUSE OF USHER, producer-director Roger Corman crafted a series of stylish horror films inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Although the screenplays (usually by Richard Matheson or Charles Beaumont) had to embellish the short stories in order to fill out the feature length running time, the production design and [...]
District 9 – Science Fiction Film Review
Something new and unexpected has landed in theaters this summer – a film dealing with apartheid, internment camps, abortion, cruel experimentation, and empathy for those completely different from us. It’s called DISTRICT 9. But none of that’s so new, you say? Well, that’s true as far as it goes, but here’s the kicker: the party [...]
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Another View
THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE is a wildly romantic love story that can easily be seen as an exercise in the old surrealist concept of L’ Amour Fou, the kind of mad love that defies all the conventions of society. In this film, it is made even more surrealistic by the additional twist of two lovers [...]
