Thank God scientists finally found the missing link (aka Darwinius masillae, aka “Ida”). Now we can at last prove Charles Darwin right and be done with films like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, as well as all the seemingly pro-science movies that inadvertently ruined the theory of evolution. We now look forward to the “Ida” biopic, or at least a movie detailing the 26 years (give or take 47 million) it took for the discovery of her fossil to become a mainstream media sensation. Never mind that this is hardly the missing link between apes and humans. With almost 50 years passed since the release of Inherit the Wind, film-loving Darwinists need some kind of missing link story to grab onto.
It is true that cinema has not been so kind to Darwinism, giving us such mockeries as Evolution, Howard the Duck and Creature from the Black Lagoon. But filmmakers have consistently shown a special love for the concept of the missing link, at least. Although many movies depict the idea with little seriousness, and some feature negative portrayals of primitive monsters, there are a number of truly lovable creatures that represent the concept of the missing link on film. Check them out after the jump. …Read more
The new action film sequel Crank: High Voltage is being advertised with the tagline “He was dead…But he got better.” Aside from sort of ruining the ending to the first Crank for those of us who haven’t seen it, this copy from the posters has been receiving a lot of attention for how ridiculous it sounds. Fans of the original have to disagree with the tagline, because they know Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) was not dead; in fact it is clear from the final scene that he miraculously survived that fall from the helicopter. Meanwhile, people less familiar with the movie simply find the idea of a dead character being resurrected for the benefit of a sequel to be laughably unacceptable, as if such an idea is unheard of in Hollywood.
But even if Chelios had been officially declared dead at the end of Crank, the sequel certainly wouldn’t be the first to revive a main character for a follow-up. Obviously horror films do it all the time, and it’s not exactly uncommon in sci-fi, fantasy, action and comic book genres, either. Even while ignoring the invincibility convention of contemporary slasher films, we were able to select six sequels in which a deceased (or presumed deceased) character returns.
Warning: Spoilers may be found after the jump. …Read more
Need help cutting down your Christmas tree? Jason Vorhees can help. Want someone to cook holiday dinner? Hannibal Lecter’s got you. Even the Mummy is here to bandage your kid’s leg after a see-saw accident involving Chucky. It’s a horror villain family Christmas, featuring Darth Vader looking beautiful walking through the snow, Freddie Krueger snipping a bouquet of flowers with his glove, and Samara popping out of the television to deliver presents.
Yes, that present is a DirecTV dish, and this is a commercial. But it’s old, it’s foreign and it’s one of the more enjoyable DirecTV ads ever made. My only criticism: shouldn’t Leatherface have been in charge of the tree cutting? Jason could have just wandered around with no significant duty, like Dracula. Also, I would have loved an appearance from Tony Todd, preferably holding some candy canes. Otherwise, this clip is perfect. I’d love to see it become an actual video e-card for the holidays, along with the old SNL Season’s Greetings skits (for those wondering where Frankenstein’s monster is, he’s over with Tonto and Tarzan singing “Away in a Manger”).
Many have wondered how it’s possible to have so many irons in the fire. Is he going to shoot Frankenstein on his cell phone during the 14-hour flight from New Zealand after meeting with Peter Jackson? Is the Heavy Metal segment just going to be a deleted scene from Hellboy III? No, the truth is much more exciting. Del Toro recently lost one of his legendary sketchbooks, in which he constantly records his many ideas. We have obtained that sketchbook. Amid the detailed sketches of demons, faeries, and man-eating toads, we found the secret to his insane schedule: All thirteen aforementioned projects are actually a single film. A fantastic eight-hour epic the likes of which cinema has never seen!
The following is the pitch Mr. del Toro delivered to the executives of Universal Studios, as transcribed in his sketchbook:
The leaves are turning, the air is crisp, it could only mean one thing: the time is now for the best Simpsons episode of the year, The Treehouse of Horror Halloween Special. They’ve done a good job this year of building buzz, especially around the portion of the episode that spoofs Mad Men. The episode airs Sunday, November 2, and 8 pm on Fox.
In the above video we get a glimpse of the segment’s title, How to Get Ahead in Dead-Vertising. This is fantastic news: it means that the piece will be properly ghoulish, and it also means that it may not be only an homage to Mad Men, but also to the classic 1989 advertising satire How to Get Ahead in Advertising. In that film, a successful ad executive suffers from a horrible boil on his neck. One day he wakes to find that the boil has developed into a face, which becomes his evil alter-ego. I would love to see that scenario played out with Homer on the Madison Avenue of the 1960’s.
This also gets to the point of why The Simpsons Halloween episodes are always the best: there are way more movie references than usual. I was an obsessive Simpsons fan as a kid, and the Halloween episodes alone upped my pop culture literacy by several notches. The segment based on The Shining is a favorite of mine, and the Frankenstein spoof where Mr. Burns’ head ends up grafted on Homer’s shoulder gave me nightmares for weeks.
For city-dwelling adults without kids, Halloween can be truly frightening. With the pressure on to outdo ones friends, frenemies and total strangers with a costume that strikes the perfect balance between creative, alluring and topical, the average October 31st night out can be a lot like sixth grade, except with the added toxic influence of alcohol and biological clocks. Plus, this year the streets are expected to be full of Sexy and/or Ironic and/or Demonic Sarah Palins. Scary! So why not stay home and watch movies instead? If you’re gonna convince anyone to abandon their plans and spend the night on your couch instead, you’ve got to have a theme and a plan, so we’ve put together an outline for a full night of films, all of which are available on DVD and/or online, based around one of the ultimate icons of classic horror: Frankenstein. We lay it all out after the jump.
Anticipating the worst from Diane English’s new remake of The Women is not just typical low expectations regarding remakes in general. My dread is specifically based on dissatisfaction with remakes and updates of films from the 1930s, arguably the best decade in cinema (it is certainly my favorite). While I may recognize and appreciate some favorable redos, such as DePalma’s Scarface (of which I’ve never really been a fan), Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills and the multiple repeats from Hitchcock, I am more often disappointed with attempts to recreate ‘30s classics, even when I approach them with already low standards.
Worst, for me, doesn’t necessarily have to do with the quality of the film alone, especially when related to remakes and updates. The titles and versions I’ve selected are hardly the worst in terms of craft or production value — you’ll note there are no Dracula movies on this list — and a few would almost be acceptable if they were more unique or solitary works.
Following his five-year commitment to the two-partHobbit movies, Guillermo Del Toro already has enough projects lined up to keep him busy and us entertained through the end of the next decade. In his pipeline are new, more faithful versions of “Frankenstein,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “Slaughterhouse-Five,” as well as an adaptation of Dan Simmons’ upcoming novel “Drood,” about Charles Dickens. Oh, and there’s always that chance of him making another Hellboysequel, too. Apparently he’ll be able to keep all productions alive simultaneously by maintaining a split personality and an uncontrollable ability to become unstuck in time.
Remember that TV series that involved five individuals who came together to make one bigger superpower? I mean Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but if you were thinking of Voltron, you were kinda close. Mark Makowski, whose biggest credit is for directing episodes of Queer Eye, is in talks to helm the bigscreen, live-action version of Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
Unsurprisingly, Disney’s direct-to-video Little Mermaidprequel, Ariel’s Beginning, sold like hotcakes last week. Now I can still hope for DTV spin-offs and sequels like Caterpillar’s Hookah-Induced Adventures and Song of the South II: Intolerance.
Cory Doctrow at BoingBoing points to this scanned article from a 1933 issue of Modern Mechanix, which goes inside the Hollywood makeup studio of the era. Much of the story concentrates on how Boris Karloff (as you know, my classic horror movie hearthrob) was made up to look like Frankenstein and The Mummy, but my favorite part is the headline screencapped above.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon recently gave a lengthy interview to the GeeksOn podcast, and half the blogs in my Google Reader are talking about it (yes, the mostly the nerdy ones). You’d assume that the geeks would be most excited about what Whedon had to say about future movie projects, or maybe the his new TV series, which stars Buffy/Angel vet Eliza Dushku. Wrong. All anyone is talking about is a throwaway diss from Whedon on the subject of John Hughes’ Weird Science:
I hate Weird Science not a little. I find it offensive. The boy fantasy of building a girl. Obviously, we were doing the nasty version of it, because I find it grotesque.
When Whedon says “we”, he’s talking about a storyline on a late season of Buffy, in which ancillary character Warren built a robot version of Buffy for the sexual gratification of Spike. Warren eventually got flayed by Buffy’s lesbian witch friend Willow, and the Buffybot was destroyed by demons, so I guess everyone got their comeupance for engaging in the “grotesquerie” of the robot girlfriend game. Except for Spike, who moved to LA and partnered with Buffy’s other vampire ex-boyfriend to fight evil lawyers. But whatever. Back to Weird Science…
Let’s talk about my insatiable appetite for pre-postmodern horror. I don’t care about sorority girls getting slaughtered because they ran the wrong way up the stairs; I basically don’t care about anything that’s not in black and white. I like stuff that takes place in creepy laboratories, where some desperate soul is trying to violate the natural boundaries between life and death. The Universal monster movies of the 30s, the Val Lewton stuff of the 40s, the nuclear panic stuff of the late 50s/early 60s. So it’s a given that my favorite part about the weeks leading up to Halloween is that Turner Classic Movies floods their schedule with ancient, half-forgotten horror films. Halloween itself is kind of a letdown, because it means the well of stuff I love is about to dry up.
But as usual, YouTube makes it all better. As a child of the 80s, I think I always had some awareness of of the Boris Karloff films, particularly Bride of Frankenstein, but it was filtered through Young Frankenstein, Elvira and “Weird Science” (the Oingo Boingo song, which I definitely heard years before I saw the movie). Above, you’ll find a clip of the creation of the bride from the 1935 sequel to Frankenstein; below the jump, the various cultural detritus that led me to it. Happy Halloween!
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Need help cutting down your Christmas tree? Jason Vorhees can help. Want someone to cook holiday dinner? Hannibal Lecter’s got you. Even the Mummy is here to bandage your kid’s leg after a see-saw accident involving Chucky. It’s a horror villain family Christmas, featuring Darth Vader looking beautiful walking through the snow, Freddie Krueger snipping a bouquet of flowers with his glove, and Samara popping out of the television to deliver presents.
