Julie Adams & the Creature

The embedded video is from Universal preview of the show for the press, which took place yesterday, with a staged event depicting the Creature’s arrival (he broke free to menace the crowd, natch). The cast of the show spoke to the press, and - best of all - actress Julie Adams, who starred in the 1954 film, made a personal appearance, expressing amazement at the little B-movie she mad over 50 years ago had inspired a new incarnation.

You can see it all in the video, or check out a review of the show and the event at Hollywood Gothique.

Related posts:

1. Hollywood Gothique: Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood
2. Hollywood Gothique: Universal Studios reopens after fire
3. New: Universal Studios fire destroyed prints of classic horror movies

INKHEART is a film you may not have heard much about because it was rather unceremoniously released into theaters in January, 2009.  Even if you’ve heard about it, the odds are mighty high that you missed its brief theatrical engagement—which managed to eke out only $17,303,424 at the domestic box-office.  Well, you wouldn’t be alone; we originally missed it too.  But we did take the opportunity of its DVD release on June 22, 2009 to catch up with it.

INKHEART, based on Cornelia Funke’s New York Times bestselling children’s book by the same name, is in a similar category as films like BEDTIME STORIES and IMAGINE THAT; however, though it is certainly flawed, it has more going for it in terms of ambition and imagination.  It is a film I wanted to like more as I watched it, yet I simply could not, due to its weaknesses in the telling of its tale and some of its rather uninspired characterizations.

INKHEART involves a father named Mo (Brendan Fraser) and his young daughter Meggie (newcomer, Eliza Bennett) who are gifted with “Silvertongues,” meaning that when they read aloud, the characters they read about come alive within the real world.  The main catch is that when one comes over from the world of the written page someone from our world is automatically transported to theirs.  This is what happens to Mo’s beloved wife (Sienna Guillory).  Now, this is a big issue and I couldn’t help wondering how Mo didn’t learn of his ability and its consequences before reaching the age of adulthood—though I suspect we’re supposed to believe that he never read out loud until he fathered a child.

Unfortunately, the novel that Mo read is purloined by a baddie named Capricorn (Andy Serkis, the man behind the movements of Gollum and King Kong), whom Mo read into our world. Copies of the book quickly become very rare because Capricorn likes the new world in which he finds himself and sees it as ripe for the picking.  The task at hand for Mo is to get his hands on a copy of the book, so he can attempt to read his wife out and those who don’t belong here back in.  But Capricorn has reading plans of his own for Mo.  He wants him to read out a dark creature known as the Shadow to help him in his plans for conquest.  This, of course, creates a bit of a sticky wicket for our hero and his daughter, not to mention the whole of the known world.

It is a bit of a sad experience viewing INKHEART on one hand, because one can sense the lost possibilities in it. As filmed, the screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire (ROBOTS, the upcoming SPIDER-MAN 4) lacks any true spicy punch and is generally too lackluster, given the subject matter.

Then there are the characters.  Andy Serkis had the potential to shine as the villain, but he was saddled with what chiefly amounted to underdevelopment and throw-away lines.  Unfortunately, the same can generally be said for Helen Mirren (NATIONAL TREASURE 2, THE QUEEN) as Maggie’s aunt.  She is a very stalwart actress and should have been given more than she received.

And there are several flaws in logic, such as Mo (who is a well-known ‘book doctor’) seeming to have never thought about seeking out the author—or the Internet, for that matter—in order to acquire a copy of the illusive book until Meggie suggests it to him.  There is also Kasim (yes, he gets read out of Arabian Nights), who hides in the trunk of a car (how did he learn about car trunks so quickly?), so that he can tag along with his new-found friends instead of staying with the author as he was asked to because ‘the old man is mean.’  But, in his next breath he claims he’s not afraid of Capricorn or the Shadow because he was raised by murderers and thieves.  Why does he not simply come out and speak his piece?  There are plenty of little things like these to grate on one’s sense of believability.

Yet at the same time there are positive elements that one is able to enjoy.  For instance, Eliza Bennett is a new, young talent who grasped her part and delivered on it.  Like little Yara Shahidi in IMAGINE THAT, her character traits are pleasant and her relationship with her father is a loving, positive one.  Too, Brendan Fraser, whom I don’t usually take to, was more subdued and in control than I am accustomed to seeing him (GODS AND MONSTER’S not withstanding).  So, though I wondered what someone like Johnny Depp (with a better script) would have done with the part, I wasn’t really irritated by what Frasier spun into the piece.  Still, he really blew a couple of important moments in my opinion.  Fortunately, Paul Bettany (the upcoming IRON MAN 2, A BEAUTIFUL MIND and the magnificent MASTER AND COMMANDER) is always a grounded performer, and he delivers with what he has to work with here as well.  Jim Broadbent (HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, INDIANA JONES AND THE KNGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL) does satisfactory work as the author who is absorbed in his own little world.

However, what I may have been drawn to most was the fact that the film was largely shot in older sections of Europe, and this treated us to some very interesting and picturesque locations.  Roger Pratt’s (HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, SHADOWLANDS) cinematography, in another big plus, was lush and quite effective in flushing out the historic quality of the locations—he illuminated them as if they were each aching to tell of their own colorful pasts.  He also captured affectively the fantasy element of the film.  The visuals and set design were handled nicely too.  It all led to a sense that the film should have been grander.

Having said that, it still needs to be pointed out that Director Iain Softley (K-PAX, THE SKELETON KEY) didn’t project a sense of having a solid handle on the story, the adventure within it, or an appropriate pace and mood for it.  In the end I was left wondering what might have been, given a better script, another lead actor and a director more along the lines of David Fincher.  One thing’s for sure – it would have been less a simplistic, normal children’s film and more like a Grimm’s fairy tale.  And thus, preferable, to my way of thinking.

DVD AND BLU-RAY FEATURES

The single-disc DVD has only one special feature: Young Eliza Bennett reading her favorite passage from Cornelia Funke’s book.

The film is also available as a two-disc combo pack: Disc One offers the film on Blu-ray; Disc Two provides a DVD copy and a down-loadable digital copy. The Blu-ray disc is BD Live-enabled, with the following features:

The Story with the Cast & Crew is  a short HD video that has those involved with the film riffing on a fairy tale, everyone contributing a line to the story.

• From Imagination to the Pageis an HD featurette on Cornelia Funke, author of the book on which the film is based.
• Eliza Reads to Us (HD) features actress Eliza Hope Bennett (who plays Maggie in the film) reading an excerpt from the source novel.
• 9 Deleted Scenes offers 14 minutes of footage in Standard Definition.

INKHEART (New Line Cinema, 2009; 103 min.) Directed by Iain Softley.  Screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire’s.  Based on the book by Cornelia Funke.  Produced by Iain Softley, Diana Pokorny, and Cornelia Funke.  Executive Produced by Toby Emmerich, Mark Ordesky, Ileen Maisel, and Andy Licht.  Cinematography by Roger Pratt.  Production Design by John Beard.  Costumes by Verity Hawkes.  Special Effects Supervision by Paul Corbould.  Visual Effects Supervision by Angus Bickerton, Ryan Cook, John Paul DochertyAdam Gascoyne, and Richard Higham.  Edited By Martin Walsh.  Music by Javier Navarrete.  Cast: Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Eliza Hope Bennett, Helen Mirren, Andy Serkis, Sienna Guillory, Matt King, Steve Spears, Rafi Gavron, Jim Broadbent, Jamie Foreman, Stephen Graham, John Thomson, Lesley Sharp, Jennifer Connelly (in a cameo), and Roger Allam (the Narrator).  MPAA Rating: PG for fantasy adventure action, some scary moments and brief language.

Related posts:

1. Laserblast DVD & Blu-ray: Inkheart; Last Year at Marienbad - Criterion Collection
2. Cybersurfing: Inkheart, Bloody Valentine Restored, Spirit
3. Fraser discusses Inkheart

The film starts off with Sara (Ane Dahl Torp) being pursued through the snow by some shadowy shapes that eventually overtake her. We then see her friends driving to an isolated cabin owned by Sara, where they anticipate a weekend of snowboarding. The pristine photography (by Matthew Weston) and the likable performances cue us to expect something really exceptional as DEAD SNOW slowly builds up a head of steam, but instead of creating tension, the long first act gives the audience a chance to slip into its comfort zone.

Not that things get boring. There interaction of the characters is intially engaging: ne is a film buff who notes the number of horror films that begin with a group of friends heading out to an isolated cabin (including THE EVIL DEAD and EVIL DEAD II). Unfortunately, hints of sloppy writing emerge: it takes way too long for anyone to worry about Sara’s absence. If you’re going to spend a half-hour making viewers like the characters before they get killed, it’s not a good idea to make them so indifferent to the fate of one of their own.

When the zombies do show up (after a walking mouthpiece - who should have been named Basil Exposition - wanders in just long enough to deliver a brief history lesson of the Nazi occupation of the area), they deliver some entertaining kills, but DEAD SNOW still does not hit its stride until late in the third act, when the gross-out gore turns more overtly comical, and a pair of survivors (including a med student whose afraid of blood) engage the enemy in a bloody battle that leaves many heads, arms, and legs severed - and one penis badly damaged.

In the frenzy of the fight, the fact that our queasy med student has overcome his fear is little more than a throw-away, never overtly stated, just left for the audience to observe. This is probably smarter than spelling the point out melodramatically, but it’s symptomatic of a weakness in the script, which shoe-horns in various plot elements without bothering to make them fully pay off.

We never learn how long Sara has owned the cabin without encountering the undead Nazis, nor do we definitely learn what keeps the German soldiers walking around. The script introduces small box of gold objects (stolen by the soldiers from the locals during the war) as if it is the key, but the script is vague on details. A dream sequence implies that Sara found the box recently, but it’s not clear whether the Nazis target anyone who touched the contents or merely know about the box. This vagueness undermines the twist ending: a character thinks he has gotten away until he realizes he has a gold coin in his pocket. But the audience had little reason to think he was safe after seeing at least one previous victim die without ever laying eyes on the box, let alone purloining any of its contents. After all, are we really to assume that zombie Nazis cause trouble only when treasure they stole is in turn stolen back from them?

As confusing as this plot device is, it is interesting that DEAD SNOW bothers to use it to motivate its zombies. Most movie zombies don’t need motivation; they just want to eat you out of blind instinct. But rather like the Knights Templar in Amando de Ossorio’s BLIND DEAD movies, these zombies are not mindless; they still maintain military organization, the soldiers obeying the orders from Colonel Herzog (Ørjan Garnst), who communicates usually with gestures but but bellows out a one-word order late in the film.

This makes DEAD SNOW’s approach to its zombies relatively unique - instead of mindless eating machines, we have undead evil - but director and co-writer Tommy Wirkola does little with the concept. More than in any ordinary zombie movie, you really want to see the heroes put the dead back in their graves. The walking corpses are not just unfortunate victims of a plague or a bite; they are almost literal embodiments of evil, and seeing them mowed down by machine gun, chainsaw, hammer, and any other short implement offers a brief cathartic highlight - until the film takes a wrong turn with one of those “you thought it was over, but it’s not” moments, refusing to deliver the image promised in its poster. This last-minute descent into mechanical genre cliches (dramatically satisfying conclusions are verboten; mechanical twist endings rule) robs DEAD SNOW of the much greater impact it could have achieved, had it fully exploited the potential inherent in zombie Nazis.

As a director, Tommy Wirkola proves he knows how to draw his audience into the movie’s world. Even though this is an unapologetic horror film, he avoids falling back on the “it’s only a movie” attitude (”Hey, it’s about zombie Nazis - what more do you expect?”), instead presenting the early events as believably as possible. When it comes to the horror, he’s a little uneven. The early suspense moments (before the zombies are fully revealed) should fray a few nerves, but the later pursuit scenes don’t generate as many thrills as they should. (He slightly bungles the punchline for one scene: after two women decide to stick together rather than separate, a zombie runs into frame, scaring them into opposite directions, but the camera angle doesn’t fully capture the visual irony; it simply loks as if they are running out of frame.)

Fortunately, Wirkola delivers as much gross-out as any hardcore fan could want (including a head ripped apart and not one but two examples of trailing entrails). And he’s really great at going over-the-top with his action, which includes not only gore but such amusing sights as a snow-mobile mounted with a machine gun that takes out a platoon’s worth of zombies.*

Perhaps I’m being too hard on DEAD SNOW - which, all nitpicking aside, is an entertaining horror film - not to mention, hands down, the best zombie Nazi movie ever. If the finished film is disappointing, it is only because it had the potential to be even better than it is. As part of the recent wave of Scandinavian horror films like ROOM 205 and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, DEAD SNOW initially looks as if it will rise above its genre trappings, offering something scary and sophisticated. But when you stop and think about it, a movie about zombie Nazis could have easily been nothing more than a piece of dumb exploitation; the fact that it could raise expectations high enough to allow for any level of disappointment at all is, in and of itself, quite an achievement.

Pristine photography lends a layer of atmosphere to the high-concept horror.

DEAD SNOW (Død Sno, 2009). Directed by Tommy Wirkola. Written by Stig Frode Henriksen & Tommy Wirkola. Cast: Charlotte Frogner, Ørjan Garnst, Stig Frode Henriksen, Vegar Hoel, Jeope Laursen, Evy Kasseth Rosten, Jenny Skavlan, Bjorn Sundquist, Ane Dahl Torp, Lasse Valdal, Tommy Wirkola.

FOOTNOTE:

• I do wish, however, that the script had bothered to explain exactly what it takes to kill off these zombies. I am getting tired of horror films in which supernatural beings appear to be destroyed with little more than bullets or swordplay. You see the same thing in UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS and the upcoming BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE.

Related posts:

1. Tommy Wirkola on DEAD SNOW - Horror Movie Podcast Interview
2. NPR reviews Dead Snow
3. Dead Snow - Trailer

As for holdover horror, fantasy, and science fiction films…

• Up was in fourth place with $13,046,000. Five-week total: $250,218,000
• Year One was in sixth place, down from fourth with $5,800,000. Two-week total: $32,207,000
• Star Trek warped from #7 to #8 with $3,606,000. Eight-week total: $246,225,000
• Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian petrified at ninth place, down from sixth, with $3,500,000. Six-week total: $163,248,000
• 11 8 Land of the Lost dropped out of the Top Ten, dropping from #8 to #11 with $1,143,000. Four-week total: $46,763,000
• Terminator Salvation also left the Top Ten, going from tenth place to twelfth with $1,085,000. Six-week total: $121,922,000

Related posts:

1. Box Office: Imagine That opens in 6th; Moon rises in limted release
2. Box Office: Year One bows at #4
3. “Up” stays up at the box office

“Moon,” a sci-fi thriller directed by Brit rookie Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell, was arguably the fest’s biggest success. Arriving with Internet buzz from its Sundance premiere, it was the first film in the program to sell out, and also ended up second in the voting for the audience award.

If “Moon” can now use this springboard to become a cult hit at the U.K. box office, it will go some way to validating Edinburgh’s claim to be a “festival of discovery.”

Related posts:

1. Cybersurfing: Moon & Grace at Sundance
2. Duncan Jones on Moon - Science Fiction Film Podcast Interview
3. Director Duncan Jones takes viewers to the far side of the “Moon” - Interview, Part 1

Related posts:

1. Sorority Row - Watch the Trailer
2. Hollywood Gothique: Universal’s Halloween Horror Sweepstakes
3. Orphan - Horror Movie Trailer

This unlikely-on-paper, underwhelming-in-execution collaboration between Oscar winner Brody and legendary horror-suspense director Dario Argento doesn’t rank anywhere near the finest work by either man. And though “Giallo,” like Argento’s 2007 “Mother of Tears,” has been picked up for North American distribution by the Weinstein Co., it will be lucky to obtain even the most fleeting of big-screen releases before heading to ancillary afterlife.

“Mother of Tears” had a kind of gruesome, berserk brio that if nothing else commanded attention. But in “Giallo,” flashes of inspiration are few and far between. It’s no surprise that this is the first time in his long career that Argento has served as director-for-hire on a screenplay devised by others. The director reportedly has distanced himself from the project and was conspicuous by his absence at Edinburgh.

UPDATE: Keith Brown of Giallo Fever weighs in with a first impression and a second opinion.

In combination with Seigner’s involvement, the film thus emerges as something akin to Argento’s version of Polanski’s Bitter Moon, as something to be both taken seriously at times and as a self-parody at others in its commentary on past glories.

How less sympathetic audiences will get the joke is another matter entirely…

Related posts:

1. Giallo Trailer
2. Cybersurfing: Dario dearest
3. Mother of Tears hits big in Europe

Related posts:

1. Lindsay Lohan journeys to Other Side
2. Dead Snow - Trailer
3. Halloween 2 (2009) - Watch the Trailer