STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS: CFQ Spotlight Podcast 4:20
STAR TREK is back, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) is still flouting the rules, director J.J. Abrams is still dividing the fan base, but amazingly, inconceivably, there’s no dissent within the Cinefantastique Online ranks this time: Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons all agree that STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is supreme, quintessential TREK adventure. Telling [...]
Star Trek Into Darkness: Review
Director J.J. Abrams is back in the captain’s chair, piloting the U.S.S. Enterprise through more explosions, more lens flare – in fact, more of just about everything that disenchanted Trekkies with STAR TREK (2009) – and this time all of it is enhanced with enough eye-popping 3D to make these angry fans switch their phasers [...]
MST3K’s Frank Conniff: The CFQ Interview
As MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000′S TV’s Frank, comedian and writer Frank Conniff became possibly the most cuddly mad scientist in history. From his debut television appearance that started with the show’s second season — for which he scripted and also pre-screened the “cheesy movies” that would torture host Joel Hodgson and crew — Conniff went [...]
Tribute to Ray Harryhausen: CFQ Spotlight Podcast 4:19
It is not an understatement to say that, for many who work within the industry of fantastic film and those who cover it, Ray Harryhausen was one of the key godfathers of the Sense of Wonder. In such films as EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, and [...]
SIGHTSEERS’ Ben Wheatley: The CFQ Interview
Welcome to the banality of evil, Ben Wheatley-style: In his horror comedy SIGHTSEERS, a couple (Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who also scripted) decides to take a caravan trip across the British Isles. But, really, who could enjoy such marvels as an antique tramway or the pencil museum when such distractions as litterers, rowdy Wiccans, [...]
From One Generation to the Next: Ray Harryhausen in the 21st Century
Editor’s Note: One recurring theme to emerge in the wake of Ray Harryhausen’s death yesterday was the tremendous influence his work continues to exert over today’s filmmakers, over three decades since his last film, CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981). With that in mind, we are publishing this 2006 article, which uses the occasion of Harryhausen’s [...]
Thank god – actually, Harryhausen – for my Sense of Wonder
Having spent the better part of the morning posting new articles about Ray Harryhausen, and digging up old ones from the CFQ archive, you would think I had nothing more to say about the revered cine-magician, who passed away today at the age of 92. Yet even after writing an obituary that attempted to asses [...]
Ray Harryhausen has passed on to “the land beyond beyond”
Ray Harryhausen, the special effects genius who used stop-motion effects to enchant a generation of film-goers, has passed away. According to The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page, Harryhausen died in London today, May 7 (less than two months short of what would have been his 93rd birthday).
Harryhausen caught the filmmaking bug after watching [...]
Laserblast 4-18.2: Netflix Purge, Star Trek and The Awakening on Blu-ray
Also: THE FRANKENSTEIN THEORY and more HELMLOCK GROVE
Take another tour of horror, fantasy, and science fiction on home video with this week’s edition of the Cinefantastique Laserblast Podcast. Lawrence French, Dan Persons, and Steve Biodrowski explore the over-hyped “purge” of classic titles from Netflix; review the new Blu-ray releases of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, [...]
IRON MAN 3: CFQ Spotlight Podcast 4:18.1
It’s felled the likes of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the X-Men. It’s a more daunting foe than Lex Luthor, Bane, and Magneto combined. It is, of course, the third installment of a superhero franchise, and now it’s time for comicdom’s snarkiest hero to face the figurative music in IRON MAN 3. With Robert Downey Jr, [...]
The Cast of YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING TO HELL: The CFQ Interview
Shooting a workplace comedy set in Hell may be challenging, tedious work, but at least you get to traumatize the hotel staff. That’s only one of the lessons to be gleaned from the cast of YOUR PRETTY FACE IS GOING TO HELL, a new Adult Swim comedy that takes the white-collar satire of OFFICE SPACE [...]
Laserblast 4-17: Hemlock Grove & Kiss of the Damned
This week, the Cinefantastique Laserblast podcast – devoted to horror, fantasy, and science fiction on home video – offers reviews of HEMLOCK GROVE (a new Netflix original series from Eli Roth); KISS OF THE DAMNED (a vampire film from Magnet Releasing, available on VOD before hitting theatres on May 3); ROBOT AND FRANK (on DVD [...]
Martin Landau: The CFQ Interview
Every now and then, we pause in awe of the people we’ve had the opportunity to spend time with. Doug Trumbull, John Kricfalusi, and Paul Verhoeven in earlier years, Armin Shimerman and Frank Oz more recently — now it’s Martin Landau’s turn, and we couldn’t be happier.
In an extended and wide-ranging interview, we got a [...]
