Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2009 November.

So you go into this room at New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s Tim Burton exhibit, and it’s like striking gold: the Jack Skellington figure is there, along with a choice selection of the replacement heads that were used to animate dialogue; there’s the creepy, completely covered baby Penguin wicker stroller from BATMAN RETURNS; you [...]

Edward Woodward (left) confronted by Christopher Lee (background) in THE WICKER MAN
79-year-old actor Edward Woodward – best known to genre fans for starring in the 1973 cult film THE WICKER MAN – died from pneumonia today at his home in Cornwall. He played a variety of roles in his career, earning good notices for a [...]

Director Paul Wendkos, who helmed several stylish made-for-television horror movies, died on Thursday from a lung infection, at the age of 84. The Reuters obituary being reprinted at various outlets (including ABC News) identifies Wendkos as the director of GIDGET (1959), starring Sandra Dee, but barely mentions his fine genre work.

One of many films screening at the 12-hour zombie-fest.
Wow! This one very nearly slipped through my net! DAY OF THE UNDEAD scheduled for 28th November 2009 in Phoenix Square, Leicester, England is a 12-hour Zombie-fest,  now in its third year. It promises Zombie films, make-up artists, computer games (with great prize for whoever kills the most virtual [...]

MONSTERS, INC. is the 6th Pixar film to be released on Blu-Ray, and from the disc we were sent, the wait has been worth it. Following the example of UP, the film comes in a four-disc set, including the feature and the extras from the previous DVD special edition housed on 2 BD discs, a third standard-def DVD of the film, and a fourth disc housing the digital copy.

Continuing the unassailable winning streak for animation studio Pixar, last summer’s UP (2009) arrives on Blu-Ray this week in a package that makes an adjective like ‘comprehensive’ seem inadequate. Those fortunate to have BD capability will be laid out flat by the image quality of this release.

We managed to survive our trip to Wales for the Abertoir Festival in spite of the all-consuming fog that threatened to swallow us up on what turned out to be a quite perilous journey home in the wee hours of Monday morning. As delighted as we were to return from Aberystwyth, and leave behind the [...]

At the age of 83, Roger Corman will finally receive his long overdue reward from Hollywood: A golden Oscar statuette. Here are some of Corman’s thoughts about finally receiving an Oscar, as well as his comments on the many Oscar winning people he first discovered.

Not Yet Thomson (or is that Thompson?): Nick Frost in PIRATE RADIO
Okay, you could look at PIRATE RADIO (aka THE BOAT THAT ROCKED) as something of a fantasy, seeing as it deals with an historical phenomenon — how in the sixties U.K. broadcasters parked in boats outside the three mile limit gave rock-starved Britishers their [...]

ASTRO BOY – the brainchild of respected artist and animator Osamu Tezuka – first appeared in Japanese manga (comic books) way back in 1951. Later, he found his way onto the television screens of at least forty different countries, in both black & white and color incarnations. It was these cartoons that helped lead the way for [...]

Master of Disaster Roland Emmerich outdoes himself with his new special effects extravaganza.

It is safe to assume that most people going to see Roland Emmerich’s spectacular new disaster movie, 2012, won’t be expecting a beautifully crafted script, nor will they be overly upset to find there is no great nuance to the performances from its [...]

This 1938 production is probably the first good film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Although slightly corn-ball and even treacly, it features lovely black-and-white photography and solid production values – artificial but appropriate for the story – all in the service of good-natured, uplifting entertainment, which should appeal to fans of old-fashioned Hollywood-style film-making.

This early sound adaptation of Charles Dickens’ immortal A Christmas Carol (1843) is slow in pace and static in execution, of interest to film historians and completists.