Earlier this month, Sarah Ball at Newsweek’s Pop Vox blog took to dispelling the idea that zombies are the new vampires, arguing that they’ll never be as popular — basically because they’re not as sexually appealing. Jessica Barnes at Cinematical later responded with favor towards the living dead over the undead. But zombies are not a trend; they’ll always be around, at least in the background via low-budget horror cinema. The real question lately should be whether or not werewolves are the new vampires.
Werewolves do have some level of sex appeal, at least to those people who like hairy men (and/or women). And the fact that Twilight fans are divided over preference for bloodsucker Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) or lupine Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) proves there’s a debate to be had about which creature is better. More importantly, though, is the presence of cinematic werewolves on the web this week, first with a much-derided clip from the Twilight installment New Moon, followed by a new trailer for Universal’s new version of The Wolfman (which features part of Marilyn Manson’s “If I Was Your Vampire,” interestingly enough) — Ryan Adams at Awards Daily posts them side by side for comparison.
I’d even like to somehow qualify the trailer for Serious Moonlight, which in addition to having a werewolf-friendly title features Meg Ryan displaying plastic surgery that looks like something applied by make-up artist Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London; Wolf; Cursed; The Wolfman) for the transition effects used in werewolf movies.
S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline has already claimed this “Werewolf Week” as a result of all the lycanthropy. But here’s hoping the trend appropriately lasts at least a full lunar cycle. So come on MTV, you’ve got a month to get us at least some set photos ffrom your upcoming Teen Wolf TV series.
Check out what the other film blogs are saying about the werewolf invasion after the jump:
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Should special effects only be used to service a film’s story, or is it perfectly fine for movies to feature extraneous spectacle? That’s a debate that comes up often among cineastes, but ultimately there’s room for both functions. Sometimes, in cases like Jurassic Park and The Matrix, both categories of effects may even faultlessly coexist in the same film. Yet there is one kind of effects employment that’s intolerable to all film-loving parties: the gratuitous exploitation for the sole purpose of brazen gimmickry. It’s this kind of effects work that goes beyond spectacle. It’s not so much a show as a show off.
For one example of this cinematic sin check out Karina’s review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which she references a scene featuring an inessential and irrelevant rocket launch in the background of an otherwise intimate moment between two lovers on a sailboat. Actually, that’s apparently only a minor citation in a “a film about the feat of its own whiz-bang, Frankensteinian digital imagery, drunk on its own accomplishment to an extent that feels quasi-ethical.” Hardly the first movie to commit such a crime, sure, but Benjamin Button seems to be the most thoroughly guilty exploiter since Forrest Gump (both films, incidentally, were scripted by Eric Roth).
So, in (dis)honor of Roth’s repeat offense, let’s take a short look at the worst exploitations of special effects in the last 15 years:
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Legendary six-time-Oscar-winning make-up artist Rick Baker joined stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt to bring us the first footage of Universal’s new version of The Wolfman. And it’s a period piece.
Highlights:
- The origins of the remake stem from Del Toro’s Lon Chaney Jr. fandom.
- It looks like “Francis Ford Coppola’s The Wolfman”
- Of course, Anthony Hopkins would be more welcome as Van Helsing again
- At least it will likely be R-rated, as it looks quite bloody
- Baker honors Stan Winston by labeling his death “the end of an era”
- Blunt is apparently into two-headed dudes
Check out the full liveblog transcript after the jump.
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