Earlier this week we got our first look at Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, including character portraits of the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Matt Lucas). And like most people who saw the images, we believe that this version of the Lewis Carroll classic may end up being too creepy for moviegoers in general, let alone for children.
In response to the promotional pics, a number of people (and blogs) began discussions of disturbing and scarring kids’ movies. So, to join in the fun we’ve compiled a list of our own picks for creepiest flicks made for children. It took a lot for us to be freaked out by a film when we were young (most horror movies didn’t phase us), but each of these titles gives us nightmares still.
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The fanboys are so serious about The Dark Knight being the best film of 2008 that if the Academy snubs the comic-book adaptation for a Best Picture nomination, they’re liable to storm the Kodak Theatre on February 22 in protest. But why should anyone be worried that it won’t get the nomination? It wouldn’t be much of a coup for the year’s top-grossing blockbuster to be named one of the five Best Picture candidates. In fact, since the very first Academy Awards, the top award has often been handed out to films that were #1 at the box office in their respective year. And the last time it happened was as recent as 2003, with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Thanks to popular and talented filmmakers like D.W. Griffith, Walt Disney, David Lean and Steven Spielberg, it’s hardly uncommon for films to make money and earn critical respect. But this isn’t an opportunity to spotlight overrated top-grossing Best Pictures like Titanic, Rain Man and Rocky, which were decidedly not their year’s best films. Rather, this is a chance to ease the minds of fanboys just in case The Dark Knight doesn’t get the nod. Some of these blockbusters were indeed nominated for Best Picture, and a few even won the award, but some of them were both their year’s biggest moneymaker (in the U.S.) and best film (from the U.S.) without gaining proper Academy recognition.
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Nerds the world over have been juggling feelings of confusion and excitement over the laundry list of projects reportedly attached to their favored son, Guillermo del Toro. The list of films he is rumored (if not confirmed) to direct and/or produce are as follows: The Hobbit, Pinocchio, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Slaughterhouse-Five, At the Mountains of Madness, The Champions, Drood, Frankenstein, Hellboy III, Hater, Crimson Peak, Dr. Strange, and a segment of a new Heavy Metal film.
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:
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This is the first in what will be a series of posts examining the artistic life cycles of Oscar winners who failed to find continued mainstream success after taking home the statuette. If you have suggestions for stars or filmmakers that you’d like to see profiled, let us know in the comments.
Roberto Benigni swang from general obscurity in the United States to media darling following his Academy Award for Life Is Beautiful. But what’s happened to him since? He was only the second filmmaker since Sir Laurence Olivier to direct himself in an Oscar-winning performance. That’s a long way to go for someone who had only been seen here in Blake Edwards’ terrible Son of the Pink Panther and as a sex-obsessed cabbie in Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth. While we love the underdog success story, we also love the fall from grace, and we’re in search of the crater that Benigni must have left somewhere.
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