The Screengrab : guillermo del toro

Morning Deal Report: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Reeves

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Star Trek warped its way to the top of the box office, beaming up $76.5 million since its debut Thursday night. X-Men Origins: Wolverine took an expected hit, dropping to second place with $27 million, a 68% dropoff from its opening weekend take. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Obsessed and 17 Again rounded out the top five, while the only other new wide release, Next Day Air, didn't find many takers - it finished sixth with $4 million.

Keanu Reeves will attempt to convey a split personality in a new retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This will be a modern version called Jekyll, per The Hollywood Reporter. "Universal clearly is enamored with the tale as it also has been developing a take on it with Guillermo del Toro, though the two couldn't be more different. Del Toro, who has an affinity for gothic horror as well as creature features, aims to stick more closely to the Stevenson tale. Also, del Toro's project is on the slow track as the filmmaker works on The Hobbit for New Line and MGM, which is expected to take up the next five years. Even when he comes back, he likely will tackle one or two other Universal projects before his version, so a good amount of time will exist between the projects."

Here's a timely announcement: Darren Lynn Bousman, director of three Saw movies, will helm a remake of the Troma classic Mother's Day. "The original Mother's Day revolved around three female friends who, while camping, run afoul of two brothers who engage in murder and rape to impress their deranged mother." Me, I just sent flowers.

Morning Deal Report: Katie Holmes in the Dark

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins have scripted the thriller Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a thriller that will star Katie Holmes. The movie “is based on a 1973 ABC telepic about a young girl who moves in with her father and his girlfriend and discovers they are sharing the house with devilish creatures,” Variety reports.

The Irishmen are coming! “Ray Stevenson, Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer will play the leads in The Irishman, a crime story that Jonathan Hensleigh will direct,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Stevenson will play Danny Greene, “a violent Irish-American gangster who competed with the Italian mob in 1970s Cleveland and ended up provoking a countrywide turf war that crippled the mafia. Walken will play the loan shark and nightclub owner Shondor Birns, and Kilmer is a Cleveland police detective who befriends Greene.”

Robert De Niro and Edward Norton will reunite for the psychological thriller Stone. “Story centers on a correctional officer (De Niro) who is seduced by the wife of a convicted arsonist (Norton) up for parole.” De Niro and Norton previously appeared together in The Score.

Screengrab Review: "Rudo y Cursi"

Nick Schager — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

A flagrantly contrived piece of Hollywood-style hokum masquerading as serious drama, Rudo y Cursi gets the producing careers of the “three amigos” – Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñarritu and Guillermo del Toro, working under the banner “Cha Cha Cha” – off to a very inauspicious start. Written and directed by Cuarón’s younger brother Carlos, who co-wrote Y Tu Mamá También and who reunites that hit’s two headliners, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, for his behind-the-camera debut, the film attempts to mask its story’s creakiness with local flavor, exhibiting a comfortable, intimate familiarity with both its rural Mexico and Mexico City settings. Anyone who’s seen a cautionary tale about the dangers of fame and fortune, however, will likely groan their way through this saga about two banana-harvesting brothers, Luna’s hard-headed Beto, nicknamed “Rudo” (i.e. “tough), and Bernal’s wannabe singer Tato, aka “Cursi ” (i.e. “corny”), who both discover the pleasures and perils of having their superstardom dreams come true after they fortuitously meet, and then are signed to athletic contracts by, soccer agent Batuta (Guillermo Francella).

Cuarón’s relaxed, unhurried direction creates a convivial atmosphere, even if his conspicuous avoidance of showing actual game footage (instead, only depicting on-field incidents during stoppages in play) seems curious given the material’s passionate interest in the sport. And boy oh boy, is it ever interested, as evidenced by the clog-your-ears-incessant narration by Batuta, which is so rife with soccer metaphors (sample: “Loving a woman and a ball is the same”) that one comes to think Cuarón must be subtly mocking the entire notion of narration. Alas, he’s not, since when Batuta isn’t comparing his beloved pastime to life, he’s simply offering up overcooked stand-alone platitudes (“Pity, nowadays games are mistaken for wars and wars for games”) in an effort to spell out every single obvious point Rudo y Cursi has already, or is about to, make. Batuto’s verbal diarrhea epitomizes tell-don’t-show storytelling and Cuarón never lets up, piling on endless third-person blather in an apparent effort to give his storybook parable some profundity. Instead, however, it merely serves as insult to injury, rubbing in our faces the fact that, for all its attention to crafting a realistic sense of time and place, the film is the type of formulaic careful-what-you-wish-for jibber-jabber that domestic cinema has been churning out, to generally awful results, for decades.

Bernal and Luna’s collaborative history lends a modicum of weight to their depiction of squabbling, yet devoted, brothers. Still, although they attempt to downplay their characters’ schematic relationship, Cuarón’s script puts them through such hackneyed paces that any glimmers of authenticity found in their performances are overwhelmed by the narrative’s excessively melodramatic developments. Cursi becomes a soccer superstar but squanders his potential by pursuing a misguided music career and shacking up with a stunning gold-digger TV celeb. Rudo chases a soccer-goalie record but puts his life in jeopardy by gambling himself into deep debt. The two, having first embarked on their pro athlete paths thanks to a single penalty kick in which Rudo’s instructions to Cursi were misinterpreted, eventually wend their way to another monumental penalty kick at film’s conclusion, their personal and professional futures once again hinging on their ability to effectively communicate. They’re plot developments straight out of an Afterschool Special, yet treated by Cuarón with an undeserved level of self-satisfied import, the director oblivious to the fact that just as his protagonists don’t quite know “right” from “left,” his film doesn’t know novelty from banal clichés.

Dance with a Ranger; Johnny Depp and "Donnie Brasco" Director Break Out the Silver Bullets

Phil Nugent — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

It's been reported that director Mike Newell is in talks to direct a new movie about the Lone Ranger for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. This news confuses us. We go far enough with Newell that we will always think of him as a specialist in dark-toned, downbeat British films such as Dance with a Stranger, The Good Father, and An Awfully Big Adventure. That last one has a title that sounds kind of fun until you remember that it's Peter Pan's description of what death must be; even Newell's big romantic comedy hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral, had a funeral in it. It's not the kind of resume that one associates with high-spirited Western action, but Newell was allowed to direct a Harry Potter movie that Guillermo del Toro couldn't fit into his busy schedule, so apparently that makes him Howard Hawks. The big casting news about this picture concerns not who's playing the Ranger, but Johnny Depp's eagerness to play his faithful Native American sidekick, Tonto. Leaving aside the question of whether Depp intends to go traditional with the "Me Tonto, you kemo sabe" business or attempt something more multiculturally cutting-edge, there's the fact that his previous collaboration with Newell, Donnie Brasco, was a gangster movie that nobody has ever described as frolicsome.

The thing is, we've been here before. 1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger was a heavily touted fiasco that, in attempting to revive the character, succeeded only in dumping mountain load of dirt on the heads of his resuscitators. It was directed for maximum pomposity by William Fraker, an artist best known as a cinematographer, though he had already directed Monte Walsh, a grotesquely depressive Western that seemed to run for half the lifetime of it dazed star, Lee Marvin, and that was lit with a 30-watt bulb. Fraker's Lone Ranger movie was most notable for the tsunami of bad publicity that hit it when the Wrather Corporation, which owned the rights to the character, sicced its lawyers on Clayton Moore, the actor who had played the Ranger on television, and who the company wanted to prevent from showing up at any grocery store openings in his die mask and cowboy hat. The company won in court, but in the process reaped more bad karma than Caligula. Some of it hit the new Lone Ranger, a fellow named Klinton Spilsbury, whose performance so dazzled the suits that they had his entire performance re-dubbed by the uncredited James Keach. Lone Ranger was Spilsbury's acting debut, and since he never got work again, he has the special distinction of being the rare star of a major motion picture of the talking era who seems likely to leave no evidence of what he sounded like behind for posterity. Spilsbury subsequently won Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor and Worst New Star of the year, which means that he has twice as many Golden Raspberry Awards as he has movie credits.

On the plus side, the new Lone Ranger movie is being written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who wrote the ferociously whimsical Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so maybe their surfeit of jolliness will balance out Newell's natural dolor. That still leaves the question of how Depp will approach his role. In the Fraker movie, Tonto was played by Michael Horse, later of Twin Peaks, who went into the project with some trepidation and who seems to have wound up basically taking the attitude that he was just out there enjoying the scenery while some idiots shot a Lone Ranger movie around him. In an interview, Horse recalled telling the fillmakers "that in this day and age, if you portray Tonto with disrespect, there will be more Indians on your lawn than Custer saw." (Horse also recalled being bothered late one night because Spilsbury had gotten into a brawl, possibly with someone who made fun of whatever his voice sounded like: "Some guard called me at three in the morning to come and get him. I said, ‘whoa, that faithful companion stuff is only in the movies.'") As we've all been well-informed by now, Depp modeled his performance in the Pirates movies on his good buddy Keith Richards. Maybe he can model his Tonto on Jimmy Carl Black.

He Died, but Then He Got Younger: The Prequel Perplex

Phil Nugent — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Ryan Gilbey suggests that, now that it's barely even fun anymore to complain about sequels and remakes, we should shift gears and reserve our disgust for the concept of prequels. By some accounts, the term "prequel" was coined by George Lucas to describe the young-Don-Vito sections of Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 The Godfather, Part II. However, the first time the term was widely used in the press to label a feature film which had no other discernible reason for being may well have been in 1979, when Tom Berenger and William Katt starred in Richard Lester's Butch and Sundance: The Early Years.

This was not the first time that somebody had built a new work around a speculative history of what happened to the characters in an earlier work before they reached the point in their history where they made the audience's acquaintance in the first place. Even before The Godfather, Part II, this approach actually had a tony literary pedigree. Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea (filmed by John Duigan in 1993) filled in the pre-history to Jane Eyre, and the 1971 movie The Nightcomers, with Marlon Brando, attempted to lay the groundwork for Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. But Butch and Sundance established the basis for regarding prequels as a singularly uninspired and parasitic form. Apparently it was made because some genius noticed that the tenth anniversary of the money-making Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was approaching, and it seemed a shame to waste such a ripe excuse to try to cash in again. There was just one problem: the first movie ended, famously, with Butch and Sundance being turned into Swiss cheese by the Bolivian army. So a sequel was out of the question, but it might be possible to go backwards. And since there was this new actor in town whose major qualification for stardom seemed to be that he looked a lot like a young Robert Redford...

In the end, Butch and Sundance tanked, William Katt transitioned from starring in movies to appearing on TV each week in The Greatest American Hero and looking as if he was praying to take a bullet between line readings, and it looked as if prequels might turn out to be one of those momentary fancies of the movie industry, like disaster epics or Steven Seagal. A few more prequels did trickle out in later years, ranging from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Amityville II: The Possession. But the concept wasn't revived big time until, yes, George Lucas decided to jump-start his fantasy of actually making another Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1999 with The Phantom Menace. Even now, though, prequels, which are much more commonly found in the ranks of the straight-to-video than among actual theatrical releases, tend to occur only when a franchise has been tapped to pitiful death (see Hannibal Rising) or when the producers are desperate for a gimmick that might help to compensate for the fact that the original stars want nothing to do with it (see Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd).

We might also want to define our terms a little. Gilbey, anticipating the day when movie prequels themselves become "respectable", cites Guillermo del Toro's forthcoming The Hobbit, as a prequel to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, but J. R. R. Tolkien wrote the book that del Toro is adapting before he wrote the Rings books; surely that matters more than the fact that the books have somehow managed to get themselves filmed in the wrong order. On the other hand, J. J. Abrams's Star Trek straddles the line between "reboot" and prequel: it means to reinvent the old franchise, but in the process of doing so, it introduces the audience to James T. Kirk and his merry band at an earlier stage of their development than Gene Roddenberry dared, or cared, to go. Ideally, this kind of thing might be done with a little humor, teasing the audience with the shared knowledge we have of what these characters are fated to become. At worst, it might give us the chance to see what it looks like when fan fiction is perpetrated with a $150 million budget.

Of the high-profile releases about to come barging through the door, Wolverine is closest to the dreaded prequel prototype. The signs are pretty much there, except in reverse: the X-Men franchise has been pronounced dead, or at least mothballed, but everybody's favorite moody mutant is indestructibly immortal, and Hugh Jackman is still at an age where he can pull off the role. So maybe the best way to try to squeeze a little more money out of the character, minus his familiar supporting cast, is to zap back to before most of them were born and fill in some of the bad boy's back story, which apparently goes back for fucking ever. Wolverine's director, Gavin Hood, who readily acknowledges that "Prequels are usually bad," adds that, since "most of the audience knows what's coming... the excitement should be not 'what?' but 'how?' It changes the emphasis. Usually a movie is about what will happen. Here it's 'How will what we know will happen, happen?'" That sounds about right. And it's true that even when you think you know exactly what's going to happen, the movies can still surprise you. For instance, I saw Gavin Hood's previous films, Tsotsi and Rendition, and now, people who may well have seen them too have hired him to direct a big-budget summer movie. Boy, am I surprised.

Trailer Review: Rudo y Cursi

Paul Clark — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Having collaborated on several films with his brother Carlos, the talented Alfonso Cuaron has returned the favor by producing (with his fellow filmmakers Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu) Carlos’ debut feature. In fact, Rudo y Cursi represents something of a reunion, as the brothers Cuaron have once again cast their Y Tu Mama Tambien leading men, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, as the title characters in this film. While Rudo y Cursi looks decidedly lighter than Y Tu Mama, the easy chemistry the actors had in that movie is just as apparent here, enough to make them perfectly convincing as brothers, especially when they’re fighting. And while I’m not quite sure about the more fanciful touches in the trailer, I’m hoping some of Alfonso’s prodigious filmmaking skills will rub off on his brother. And if nothing else, this should tide me over until Alfonso decides to make a new film.

Morning Deal Report: Scarlett Johansson, Amazon Warrior

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Are we ready for Scarlett Johansson, action hero? Ready or not, here she comes in her new dark red hairdo. Johansson is set to star in Amazon Warrior, set in the year 200 B.C. “I think I'm supposed to be a gladiatrix,” Johansson tells Variety. “These film guys are crazy about gladiatrixes. But do I fit into the Amazon mold? I'm a Danish/Jewish girl from New York. I've done weapons training. I've fired all kinds of guns: 9 mm, semi-automatics, machine-guns, shotguns. I've jumped off a 60-foot building. I learned to ride for The Horse Whisperer. But I've never done a full-on action role. I guess I'm still waiting for my Cirque du Soleil moment. It would be fun.”

The third Twilight movie may have found its director. “Sources indicate that horror wunderkind -- and Guillermo Del Toro protege -- Juan Antonio Bayona has emerged as one of the finalists to direct Eclipse,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Bayona's name has come up in recent months, though generally in a group of other directors -- an eclectic list that's ranged from Paul Weitz to Drew Barrymore to James Mangold.” Any movie that could just as easily be directed by any of those people is surely one to look forward to.

Chariots of the Gods is returning to the big screen, but sadly it’s not a Sunn Classics documentary this time. Paradox Entertainment has acquired the rights to “Erich von Daniken's 1968 bestselling book that pressed the case that Earth was visited by aliens. The premise will be turned into a science fiction film that will be produced by Paradox's Fredrik Malmberg and Amber Entertainment's Mark Ordesky.”

Related:
Scarlett Johansson Blows. Her Nose! Blows Her Nose!
Your Thursday Afternoon "Twilight" Roundup

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The Best:

THE SPECIALS (2000)

Okay, I’ll admit, this one might be cheating since there’s never really been a Specials comic book...but there’s no question Craig Mazin’s criminally underseen comedy is, indeed, a comic book classic. The film (starring national treasure Thomas Haden Church as The Strobe, Judy Greer as best-Goth-girlfriend-ever Deadly Girl and Rob Lowe’s finest hour and a half as The Weevil) hit theaters for about five minutes in L.A. before sinking into undeserved obscurity, and I only saw it because The New Times and the L.A. Weekly raved about it. They were both right for once, and so now I'm spreading the love in case you ever spot this in a video store (or trust me enough to add it to your Netflix queue). The premise is similar to Mystery Men (if, as one IMDb commenter quipped, Mystery Men had been directed by Eric Rohmer) -- i.e., an ensemble comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes -- but The Specials is less a genre parody than a look at the group dynamics of co-workers who only HAPPEN to be superheroes (although for most of the movie, they could just as easily be doctors, musicians or real estate salesmen). Kitchen-sink indie filmmaking at its best, the movie features sharp, funny dialogue, about 90 seconds of special effects and a terrible coming attractions trailer that makes it look like a “wacky” Hollywood yuk-fest instead of the endearingly goofy gem that it really is...which is why I included the (admittedly censored) scene above instead.

SIN CITY (2005)

All green screens and no sets make Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City a deliriously hyper-stylized cinematic interpretation of Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel series. Generating virtually every non-human element of his film noir with a computer, Rodriguez creates an adaptation nearly identical, in visual terms, to its source material. Fidelity, however, only gets one so far. And what makes the sumptuously black-and-white Sin City truly thrum with grungy, brutal life is not only its all-star cast’s fittingly outrageous, archetypes-on-mescaline performances (notably those by Rosario Dawson and Benicio Del Toro) and Rodriguez’s expert reproduction of Miller’s hand-drawn comic panels, but the director’s approximation of the brisk movement implied by those illustrations. Rodriguez brings Miller’s images to life with dynamic verve, a feat almost as thrilling as the performance of Mickey Rourke as battle-scarred tough guy Marv, a granite bulldozer whom the actor – even under pounds of facial prosthetics – embodies with a burning-red heart and soul.

BLADE 2 (2002)

After several stuttering attempts to follow DC in leasing its characters to the big screen, Marvel Comics had its first real success with the 1998 Blade, a horror-action hybrid based on one of the lesser supporting characters from its back pages: Blade, the African-American vampire hunter who himself possesses the advantages of vampirism (super strength, extended lifespan) and none of the disadvantages (can withstand sunlight, is not Eurotrashy), was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula during the blaxploitation movie era. (Artist Gene Colan based his look partly on that of Jim Brown.) The first Blade movie, directed by Stephen Norrington (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and written by David S. Goyer, was unapologetic cheeseball fun, with a choice selection of bits from the comic and energetic, unhinged performances by Wesley Snipes in the title role and Stephen Dorff at his man-you-love-to-hate best as the villainous Deacon Frost. The sequel, though, is real gourmet trash, with the sensationally gifted director Guillermo del Toro brought in to take Goyer's nonsense about warring vampire tribes, give it a high polish, and set it all to a thumping hip-hop-meets-electronica score. The result is one of the most improbably gorgeous mindless thrill rides of the last several years, though the franchise keepers erred badly in permitting Goyer to not only write but direct the subsequent Blade Trinity, which plowed into a wall with all hands lost.

HELLBOY (2004)

Coming off Blade 2, Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to get himself an annuity by taking over the Harry Potter franchise in favor of hatching a movie around writer-artist Mike Mignola's unlikely hero -- a gargoyle-shaped paranormal investigator with a back story related to World War II who operates in an environment that calls up memories of H. P. Lovecraft's squishy horror fantasies. Del Toro captures the look and feel of Hellboy's world to a degree that marks the film as clearly a labor of love, and Ron Perlman, who plays the title character, reaches through the layers of makeup to give the enterprise some soul. He's more skittishly adolescent than the gruff loner of the comics, which pays off major comic dividends in the scenes involving the poor red bastard's crush on a moody firestarter played by Selma Blair: she'd make King Kong look down and shuffle his feet awkwardly.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Though often dismissed as merely an early, cheesy vehicle for then-fledgling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius’ swords-and-sandals saga Conan the Barbarian is pure mythic pulp, its epic action and fantasy proving faithful to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s violent legends. Milius’ macho persona forcefully informs this testosterone-laced Conan tale, in which an orphaned child becomes a slave, then becomes a warrior, and then finally a king, a path paved with equal measures of bloodshed, sly humor and pseudo-profound pronouncements about honor and glory. Still something of an amateurish actor, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger is nonetheless an ideal Conan, and despite the proceedings’ one-dimensionality, the director’s majestic widescreen compositions lend the film a striking classicism. It’s the opening centerpiece, however, that’s truly unforgettable, in which Milius’ camera lingers, for what seems like an eternity, on the cold, motionless face of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) just before the evil warlord beheads Conan’s mother in front of the lad’s eyes.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: A Double Shot of McQuarrie

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Thanks primarily to last week’s publicity boost from the Screengrab, Quantum of Solace opened at the top spot on the box office charts. (That’s our theory, anyway.) Raking in $70.4 million over the weekend, Quantum crushed the previous Bond best of $47.1 million held by 2002’s Die Another Day and proved that American audiences can live with a weird title as long as there are plenty of chase scenes. Madascar: Escape 2 Africa slipped to second place with a $36.1 million haul, followed by Role Models with $11.7 million.

Not long ago we were wondering whatever happened to Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie. Now he’s inescapable. McQuarrie is signed to write and produce two projects for UA, per The Hollywood Reporter. The Champions “is derived from a late-'60s British television series about a group of government agents who encounter a hidden civilization that grants them superhuman talents.” The Monster of Florence “tells the strange-but-true tale of popular author Douglas Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi, who began investigating a series of unsolved murders in Italy and wound up implicated in the case.”

Guillermo del Toro and the Jim Henson Co. are teaming up for a “darker” take on Pinocchio. (Let me guess: “It’s not just his nose that grows.”) The stop-motion feature is on the back-burner while del Toro makes two Hobbit movies. But that’s not all! Per Variety, “He also has a three-year first-look deal with Universal, where he’s setting up remakes of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Slaughterhouse-Five, an adaptation of Dan Simmons novel Drood and several other projects.” I’d say del Toro is spreading himself too thin, but I’ve seen pictures of him.

Related:
Vanishing Act: Christopher McQuarrie
Del Toro on the Hobbit Trail

DVD Digest for November 11, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

You can always tell when it’s the holiday season, because the studios begin to clear out their coffers to release titles both new and classic, no matter whether they’ve already been released on DVD.

DVD of the Week: With thousands of titles (both theirs, MGM’s, and other studios’) in their library, no studio has more classic movies to draw from than Warner Bros. This week brings a goldmine of classic WB titles, but none of these is more appealing than the new box set Warner Bros. and the Homefront. Just in time for Veteran’s Day, the box set contains three of the studio’s best-known flag-waving entertainments, all of which are new to DVD. The most notable of the bunch was the 1943 hit Irving Berlin’s This Is The Army, starring future president Ronald Reagan along with the titular composer. The other films in the set are a pair of star-studded patriotic musicals, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Hollywood Canteen. In addition, Warner Bros. has dug into their massive collection of archival material in order to pair vintage short films, newsreels, trailers and cartoons with each of the films, including the semi-notorious Herr Meets Hare. So while some might claim that the films in the Homefront collection are disposable, the box set is anything but.

Warner will also be releasing two box sets for the holidays, Warner Bros. Holiday Collection Volume 1 and Volume 2. Volume 1 includes previously-released DVDs of Boys Town, A Christmas Carol, and Christmas in Connecticut, plus a bonus DVD of The Singing Nun. Volume 2 contains the new-to-DVD titles All Mine to Give, Holiday Affair, and It Happened on 5th Avenue (each sold separately), plus Blossoms in the Dust, available only in the box set. Paramount will be rereleasing three of their most beloved classics- Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Sunset Blvd- in special “Centennial Editions” just in time for the studio’s 100th anniversary. Other classics coming to DVD this week include: JFK 3-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Quo Vadis (Warner), and The Director’s Series: Roberto Rossellini (Lionsgate), which includes Escape By Night and Where Is Freedom?.

The highest-profile recent releases coming to DVD this week are Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django (First Look, also Blu-Ray); the holiday-themed This Christmas (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Christophe Honore’s Love Songs (Genius Productions); the breakdancing doc Planet B-Boy (Arts Alliance America); and two titles who will have almost no audience members in common, Toby Keith in Beer For My Horses (Lionsgate) and the Flaming Lips in Christmas on Mars (WEA).

This week’s big TV on DVD news is the release of the massive The Sopranos: The Complete Series (HBO) box set. In addition, there’s also The Cosby Show: The Complete Series (First Look), as well as Scrubs Season 7 (Disney). And finally, the Blu-Ray only titles for this week are exclusively TV shows: Band of Brothers (Warner), Chuck Season 1 (Warner), Firefly: The Complete Series (Warner), and Supernatural Season 3 (Warner). So that’s cool, I guess.

Morning Deal Report: A Hobbit, a Gnome and a Poltergeist Walk Into a Bar…

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The Good Idea Fairy is apparently still on vacation, so what the hell, let’s just go ahead and remake Poltergeist! Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, screenwriters of 2005’s Boogeyman and a thankfully stalled remake of The Birds, have signed on to script the remake of the 1982 horror classic. “The original Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper from a script co-written by Steven Spielberg, miraculously skirted an R rating despite its children-in-constant-peril, toy clown-strangling, face-peeling, skeleton-swimming medley of horrors,” the Hollywood Reporter gleefully notes, before going on to mention that the original film “earned further cult status when two of the child actors in the movie died after the film's release. Two nerve-jangling sequels were produced.” Nerve-jangling? I think they mean ass-numbing.

Elsewhere in the land of fantastical critters, Guillermo del Toro’s The Hobbit finally has a screenwriting team aboard, and surprise, surprise, it’s Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. In case you’ve forgotten, Variety reminds: “Jackson, Walsh and Boyens teamed on penning the three screenplay adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. The third pic, The Return of the King, won an Oscar for adapted screenplay.” The Hobbit is due in 2011, so don’t get in line just yet.

Yesterday we told you about Julius, the modern urban crime version of Julius Caesar. Today we regret to inform you of Gnomeo and Juliet, the…garden gnome version of Romeo and Juliet? Yes. That’s what it says here. The “loose and edgy” CGI Shakespeare adaptation will feature songs by Elton John. I’ve really got to get to work on that Morning Deal Report drinking game.

Related:
Del Toro on the Hobbit Trail
Nothing But Dark Skys From Now On

Morning Deal Report: Marvin the Martian Movie Star

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Bugs Bunny’s nemesis from our neighboring planet is getting a promotion. Elmer Fudd never got his own movie, but Marvin the Martian won’t be playing second fiddle to the carrot-chomping wise-rabbit when he headlines a live-action/CGI feature for Warner Bros. According to Variety, former Warner exec Steve Crystal “developed the pitch as a Christmas story, with Marvin coming to Earth to destroy Christmas but being prevented from doing so when he’s trapped in a gift box.” Gee, that sounds interesting, but we’ve already seen Santa Claus vs. the Martians.

The horror remake well must be running dry if Guillermo del Toro and Miramax are turning to a 1973 TV-movie for inspiration. Yet that is the case, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Del Toro is producing and co-writing Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, to be directed by comic book artist Troy Nixey. If you were out at a fondue party that evening in 1973, the story “centers on a young girl, sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend, who discovers sinister creatures that live underneath the stairs.”

Finally, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards may have found a home. Variety reports that Univeral “is in negotiations to partner with the Weinstein Co. to bring the World War II drama to the bigscreen. Although deal points are still being ironed out, insiders say a pact is imminent.” Potential star Brad Pitt has yet to sign on the line that is dotted.

Related:
Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" Unleashed
Del Toro on the Hobbit Trail

Hellboy: The Letting Go

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As more and more movies are made from comic books, the issues of creator's rights will increasingly pick at the film industry. With Marvel and DC products, it's generally not an issue -- not only are most of the creators long dead, but the characters themselves are corporate properties, held by two huge companies and not beholden to any single artist or writer. With independent comics, however, the issue grows much more complex. Some creators will be happy simply to sell the rights to their characters and stories for the kind of huge paycheck that only Hollywood can write; others will insist on being involved, to one degree or another, in the production of any film based on the characters they created. Frank Miller represents one extreme; displeased at the prospect of what liberties the movies would take with his characters, he decided to learn the film business himself so as to be able to exert maximum control over his properties in 300 and Sin City. (Although he didn't create the Spirit, he's taking a similarly proprietary approach in the creation of that movie.) Mike Mignola represents perhaps the oppisite end of the spectrum: always fiercely protective of the Hellboy character from the time it first appeared in Dark Horse Comics, he has learned when it's proper to let go of his creation in order to see it succeed on the big screen.

In an interview with Comics2Film regarding the new Hellboy 2: The Golden Army movie, which opens in wide release this weekend, Mignola discusses the differences between the comics and the film, the trust he came to develop with director Guillermo Del Toro when it came to creating the look of the movie, and how he had to learn when to let go of his own beliefs about what the movie should be and how it shouldn't be necessary for there to be major divergence between the two. "The first film was a loose adaptation, but it was coming off my work, and it was basically taking the Hellboy universe that I had created and translating it into del Toro's world. The second film, we chucked that idea after about eight hours because even in the first film, that character is already veering away from the world I created in the comic," says Mignola. "I know in the first film, he was making conscious decisions to try to suggest certain things that I do in the artwork...I'd love to think that he got some of that from studying my comic, but I think he's just a very careful craftsman."

(Of course, on the other other extreme, there's Alan Moore, who still refuses to take a dime from any movies based on his stories, on the theory that, since he had nothing to do with them, they're not his...)

Watching "The Watchman": An Interview with Kent M. Beeson

Paul Clark — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In case you’ve slept through this past weekend, the summer movie season got off to a roaring start with the big-budget adaptation of Iron Man. With many more comic book movies in store this summer, and even more after that, I figured it was about time to catch up with former Screengrab contributor and all around good dude Kent M. Beeson. As a comic-book fan and movie buff of long standing, Kent recently secured a position with the Web site comiXology, writing a bi-weekly column entitled The Watchman. Kent was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule- which also includes numerous freelance jobs as well as a wife and 14-month-old daughter- to conduct this interview via e-Mail.

How did you get your position with Comixology?

Dumb luck, if you ask me! Peter Jaffe, the Online Content Editor for Comixology, asked former ScreenGrab editor Bilge Ebiri to recommend someone to cover film and TV for Comixology, and he named me. I'd done some writing for ScreenGrab, including several on comic books, so I suppose that's why name came up. if I had to guess, I'd say that my ScreenGrab posts on the Watchmen and Shazam! movies had something to do with it, but really, I have no idea.

Why do you suppose Hollywood has made so many comic book movies in the past few years?

I suppose the standard reasons are that the executives greenlighting these movies are the ones that grew up in the 70s and 80s, and grew up reading these comics, coupled with CGI that lets filmmakers show just about anything they can imagine. When those two moments in history coincided, it was bound to be a fertile period. What's really interesting to me, though, isn't that so many comic book movies are being made, but just how important fidelity to the source material has become. It still boggles my mind that Zack Snyder is keeping Watchmen in the 80s -- that never would have happened just a few years ago. We've come a long way from the aborted Tim Burton Superman with Nicolas Cage in a freaky black suit. But even this is a bit of a quirk of history -- I don't think we'd be seeing so many faithful adaptations if it weren't for Bryan Singer's X-Men showing it could be done and Raimi's Spider-Man showing just how friggin' huge it could be.

What are your favorite comic books?

Watchmen is my favorite book of all time, comic or otherwise. Paul Smith's run on X-Men -- I think I might prefer it to Byrne's, actually. Ambush Bug was way ahead of its time. One I loved back in the day, that seems to have been forgotten, was an horror anthology called Wasteland. It was written by John Ostrander and, of all people, improv pioneer Del Close. Some really twisted shit -- I can still remember one story called "R.Ab" that is just... soul-crushingly dark. Like Idiocracy without the safety of the comedy. I always thought this is what reading the E.C. comics back in the day must've been like.

Favorite comic book movies?

The stupidly-titled X2 is, fortunately, stupidly awesome. Spider-Man, I can watch over and over. Akira is great, but it's animated, so maybe that shouldn't count. I have a soft spot for Batman Returns, but the unfortunate practice of overloading a film with villains can be laid squarely at its feet.

Best adaptation?

Spider-Man is the best, I think, but it's adapting a character and his world and not so much a single story (other than the origin), so if you eliminate those, I guess that leaves me with Sin City. Visually, it's breath-taking and kind of addictive -- it's hard to look away from it when it's on. More importantly, though, it turned a series of borderline-unreadable books into something pleasing.

Most underappreciated/overappreciated comic book movies?

Let me go ahead and catch hell from two different camps. The first Superman movie is pretty terrific for about forty minutes when dealing with his origin, but once Luthor enters the picture, it gets too jokey and lame. Reeve and Kidder are impeccable, however. And Ghost World is pretty much ruined by Zwigoff's cheap misanthropy. I mean, Clowes isn't exactly Mr. Positive, but it's clear from the book that he's trying to find some kind of hope. Zwigoff buries it under shots of pregnant women smoking and Blockbuster gags that would never have made it past the Mad TV writing room. There's a reason Bad Santa works -- it's all misanthropy.

I think Hellboy is a bit underappreciated. Considering that the comic isn't very well-written and has one of the most non-sensical origin stories ever -- Mignola came up with the look of the character first and made up everything after, and it shows -- it holds together pretty well. Del Toro's really coming into his own, he's starting to find just what he's capable of, so I'm looking forward to Hellboy II.

When a comic book movie doesn't remain true to its source, how difficult is it for you to turn off your comic book side and simply appreciate it as a movie?

Well, my attack plan for the stuff I'm unfamiliar with -- like Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier, or the upcoming Wanted -- is to watch the movie first. I want to be able to enjoy the movie -- or not -- as a movie first, without any baggage, which is how most viewers are going to see these things anyway. And then I go back to the comic. The comic is usually going to have more information anyway, and I don't need to bring that into the movie. I actually started watching Persepolis after reading the first 20 pages or so of the comic, and it totally fucked it up for me -- I had to go back and see it again to fully appreciate how well the filmmakers were able to streamline the story for the movie. Luckily, most comic movies are adapting characters and not specific stories, so it's pretty easy to turn off the preconceptions.

Obviously, with something like Watchmen, that's not going to be possible. I'm not sure how that's going to work. I might have to conk myself on the head and induce amnesia just before I walk into the theater.

What big-screen comic book adaptations have actually improved on their sources?

I just finished the original A History of Violence, and wow, what a stinker. The movie pretty much repudiates the source, which, admittedly, is an interesting way to go about adapting something. Sin City -- well, my loathing of Frank Miller runs pretty deep, so it was great to see such a tiring and self-important comic turned into high camp by simply giving the thing motion. Whenever I see Clive Owen float down to the street in his red shoes, I crack up.

In your opinion, what are the keys to making a successful comic book adaptation?

Jesus, I really have no idea. The first thing that comes to mind is balance -- knowing when to be faithful to the source, and when to realize, hey, this has to work as a movie first and foremost, and just go off. A History of Violence is pretty faithful for the first 1/3 of the book, then it jettisons the rest, to its credit. I don't think the adaptation of The New Frontier went far enough -- there were small changes here and there that indicated that they knew the story wasn't going to work as is, but they really should have rethought the whole thing from top to bottom. But, saying that, I bet we'll see (if we haven't already) a movie that either is completely faithful or totally throws everything out but the title and works perfectly well.

Now that Watchmen is being made, what are some of your other dream adaptations?

I want to say FLCL, but the comic came later. Does Cowboy Bebop count? It was a serialized manga first. I could totally see an adaptation with, say, Ryan Gosling as Spike, Selma Blair as Faye and The Rock as Jet. I think The Rock is underrated as a performer -- for someone who was supposed to be Schwarzenegger's heir apparent, he displays more genuine warmth and a sense of humor about himself than Arnold ever did. While Jet is a badass, he's still essentially the mother of the group, and it'd be interesting to see him in a movie where his physicality is in strict contrast to his role. Matthew Vaughn is doing Thor, but I'd kill for a Gilliam version -- nobody does giants better, and I'd love to see them get their ass kicked by a blonde dude with a hammer.

The Watchman runs every other Wednesday on comiXology. Kent’s piece on Iron Man will run this week.

Del Toro on the Hobbit Trail

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

By now me and you and everyone we know is aware that Guillermo del Toro has been tapped to direct not one but two new hobbit movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. (Initial reports indicated that the second film would span the period between the end of the book and the beginning of Lord of the Rings, but now that appears not to be the case.) Now that years of accounting disputes between New Line and Peter Jackson are finally resolved, the AP reports that del Toro “will move to New Zealand for four years to make the films back-to-back with executive producer Peter Jackson.”

Seems like a perfect match, right? If Jackson himself can’t direct them, why not substitute another hobbit-looking fantasy filmmaker? But Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir smells a rat. O’Hehir interviewed del Toro at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and asked him about Tolkien’s influence on his work. “I was never into heroic fantasy,” del Toro replied. “At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits -- I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff.”

I suppose you could make the argument that hiring a hobbit-hater to direct The Hobbit could spark some creative tension, but O’Hehir isn’t having it, especially since the whole process will consume four years out of del Toro’s career. “I'm riding a major bummer if del Toro is shelving 3993 (the third of his Spanish history-fantasy trilogy, after Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone), his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness or his Doctor Strange blockbuster. All three of those projects are vastly better fits than the hairy-footed little guys and dragons.”

Meanwhile, Defamer has been hard at work coming up with more suitable nominations for the Hobbit director’s chair. We particularly enjoy the suggestion of David Lynch: “A natural short-lister for any film involving midgets. Plus we all know how well his previous would-be fantasy franchise went.” Yes, that would be Dune.

Cannes 2008: Meet the Jury!

Paul Clark — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, The Screengrab was the 152nd blog on the web to post the Competition slate for next month's Cannes Film Festival. But before you start predicting the winners sight unseen, we suggest you get to know the members of the Competition jury. That way you'll know whose names to curse when your favorite filmmaker gets smoked by some little-known furriner whose name you can't pronounce.

This year's Cannes Competition Jury:

Sean Penn (Jury President) is a filmmaker of some note, directing four films since his 1990 debut, The Indian Runner. His most recent film is the memorably Oscar-snubbed Into the Wild. When not behind the camera, Penn is also known for his political and charitable work, which has taken him to Iran and to the post-Katrina New Orleans. Penn has also been known to act on occasion.

Sergio Castellitto has appeared in several films in Competition, including 2001's Va Savoir and 2002's The Religion Hour (My Mother's Smile). Once referred to by Screengrab favorite Mike D'Angelo as "maybe the most underrated thesp alive," he also starred in the popular Mostly Martha, better known as No Reservations, Except Good. Castellitto has also directed two features, including the 2004 film Don't Move, in which he exercised his director's clout in order to give himself several love scenes with Penelope Cruz.

Natalie Hershlag, alternately known as Natalie Portman, made her big-screen debut at age 13 in Luc Besson's The Professional, sometimes referred to as Léon by various talkbackers on Ain't It Cool News. Since that time, she has become one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation, particularly among horny fanboys who despair that she will never get completely naked onscreen. Hershlag is set to make her directorial debut in this year's omnibus film New York, I Love You, where her short film will appear alongside new works by such acclaimed filmmakers as Brett Ratner and Scarlett Johansson. She also wants you to know that the Shins will totally change your life.

Alfonso Cuaron first gained international critical attention with his 1995 film A Little Princess, and subsequent films like Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men have proven him a formidable talent (he also allegedly made a low-budget adaptation of a little-known English fantasy novel, but no one knows what became of this). In 2006, his high-profile friendship with fellow Mexican filmmakers Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu let to the trio briefly becoming known as "The Three Amigos" for several months before they were sued by Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has such a long name that I run the risk of hitting my character limit simply by typing it. Luckily for me, he prefers to simply be called "Joe." Joe has garnered widespread critical acclaim for his whimsical, magical-realist films, which include Mysterious Object at Noon, Blissfully Yours, and Syndromes and a Century. His 2004 film Tropical Malady won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and Roger Ebert called the film "a meditation on portentous but incoherent themes." By which we're guessing he meant "awesome."

Alexandra Maria Lara, a ravishing Romanian who moved to Germany at age 4, made her movie debut at 16. However, the role that brought her international acclaim came in 2004's Downfall, in which she portrayed Hitler's personal secretary Traudl Junge. Since then, she costarred in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth and in last year's Ian Curtis biopic Control, where she met current boyfriend Sam Riley (isn't that cute?). Lara will next appear in Stephen Daldry's The Reader, as well as taking a supporting role in Spike Lee's WWII drama Miracle at St. Anna, a role you won't find out about by looking her up on IMDb.

Rachid Bouchareb is a French director-producer who last appeared at Cannes with his 2006 drama Days of Glory. In addition to his own films, he has also produced the work of numerous other filmmakers, including all four features to date by Bruno Dumont. Sorry, I have nothing humorous to say about this guy.

So there you have it. Seven jury members, down from nine last year. How will they vote? Will Penn insist on a political bent, or at least something appeals to his artier side? Will Cuaron stump for his fellow Latin Americans? Which Bouchareb will show up- the one who directed the rousing WW2 or the guy who produces Bruno Dumont movies? Will Joe gravitate to fellow talking-primate lover Charlie Kaufman? Will the paparazzi devote most of their attention to Portman and Lara (yes, they will)? Let the blind prognosticating commence in 5, 4, 3...

All Hurt and Bothered: Sexy John Talks About "Hellboy 2", "Indiana Jones 4", and "The Oxford Murders"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:30:00 GMT

"I think there is something that has brought maths to the fore...I think probably because we live in a world with so many lies, and so much lack of truth, that it has become quite sexy to think of the one thing we have which is the only language that is truthful. There's no way of disproving that two plus two equals four, and therefore, take that to the ultimate, much more complicated areas, and you're dealing with something which is truthful." That's one of the world's greatet character actors, John Hurt, talking to the BBC about his role in the new "mathematical detective story" The Oxford Murders (in an interview that the Beeb headlined, "John Hurt Explains Why Math Is Sexy"), and if you had no excuse for linking to it besides the chance to show the words "math", "sexy", and "John Hurt" in the same tight space, you'd jump at it too. Actually there are other reasons to bring Hurt's name up, now that he has three high-profile films on the horizon. His role is most prominent in Oxford Murders, in which he plays a math professor involved in solving a string of murders. Hurt prepared for the role by being the real-life son of a mathematician and, just to balance things out, being so "hopeless" at the subject himself that "If I got into double figures I patted myself on the back."

Hurt has smaller roles in two of the most anticipated summer blcokbusters of the year, Hellboy 2, which, like the first, was directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hurt, whose character was killed off in the first movie, appears briefly in the new one, which he says has "more of Pan's Labyrinth" to it than its predecessor. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I did just drool on my keyboard. As for the Indiana Jones movie, Hurt is of course sworn to secrecy regarding its details, but it's a testament to how badly the filmmakers wanted him on board that he's in it at all, considering that he demanded on seeing the script before saying yes. In the end, he says, "They sent me a script - but they sent it with a courier who delivered it to me at three in the afternoon, collected it at eight that evening, and flew back to Los Angeles the next day - which is the most expensive script read ever."

Paste Magazine's Art House 100

Phil Nugent — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Paste magazine has published its "Art House Powerhouse 100", devoted to listing "the people behind the movies we love." The feature is self-consciously designed to serve as an alternative to the other "power lists" that such magazines as Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly get such a thrill out of assembling, with Paste's list striving to determine, "Who are the power players in the world of quality cinema? What individuals and organizations make intelligent, well-crafted movies and have the profile, financial resources and/or critical esteem to attract discerning audiences? In short, we looked for those at the intersection of art and commerce who make independent film the viable and sustainable industry that we’ve come to enjoy." After that buildup, the magazine proceeds to serve up a list of names that for the most part will not be unfamiliar to many people with a passing interest in high-profile moviemaking a little further off the beaten track than say. Transformers. But if few of them have been starving for media attention, most of them are certainly deserving of a pat on the back. The lists of directors (which includes Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Todd Haynes, Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro, Michael Winterbottom, Stephen Frears, and comeback kid Sidney Lumet) and actors (among them Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Laura Linney, Forest Whitaker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Don Cheadle, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cillian Murphy, Ryan Gosling, Johnny Depp, and Javier Bardem), can be found at the website. The hard copy, available at your local newstand, also tots up noteworthy cinematographers (such as Roger Deakins, the hard-working D.P. on No Country for Old Men, In the Valley of Elah, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and producers, as well as listing the magazine's favorite film festivals.

S-Horror?

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

As we gear up for another spring full of rampaging monsters and psychopathic serial killers, Desson Thompson in the Washington Post wonders if something elemental to the whole concept of the horror movie isn't missing: the victim.

After the usual handwringing over the 'torture porn' generation, the artist formerly known as Howe goes on to make some pretty compelling points: the horror films of today — even the stylized, artsy ones influenced by or coming from the J-horror movement — tend to focus entirely on the means by which the victims are dispatched: intricate traps, complex schemes, gruesome tortures, gigantic monsters. Very little attention, on the other hand, is given to providing the audience with an identification figure: while in previous horror films we were at least able to identify with the person going through such terrifying treatment (as in Rosemary's Baby) or with the person doing the terrorizing (as in Psycho), the modern-day horror film has lost its focus, one way or another, on humanity and gives us precious little to care about beyond the novelty of learning how the next victim will snuff it. "When we think of the horror classics", says Thomson, "we don't recall the gruesome acts so much as the people who weathered them. Think of Rosemary Woodhouse, the determined mother in Rosemary's Baby, who faces the prospect her baby has been fathered by the Devil. Remember Regan MacNeil, the sweet pre-teen of The Exorcist, whose satanic transformation forces heroics from two soft-spoken priests. Even Jack Torrance, the demented murderer at the heart of The Shining, affects us because he's a husband and father gone horribly awry, not some abstract ax wielder."

Providing a much-needed antidote for this alienating inhumanity in the horror genre, he claims, are a new wave of Spanish horror directors, presaged by Guillermo del Toro in the disturbing Pan's Labyrinth and followed up by two of his proteges, director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez, whose dark, moody The Orphanage is enjoying limited release in the U.S. They both cite the Spanish cultural heritage of the Day of the Dead (which is "not something that you look upon as horrifying or sad or terrible but as a way to conciliate with death; you bring death home instead of trying not to think about it", according to Sanchez) and the country's all-too-recent emergence from the shadows of fascism as reasons why this brand of non-gory, emotionally powerful, human-centered horror is hitting home with their audiences.

Whether or not The Orphanage will trigger a string of "S-horror" hits in the U.S., they're doing quite well at home; the movie was last year's highest-grossing film in Spain, outstripping even the blockbuster foreign imports like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Trailer Roundup: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Paul Clark — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I enjoyed the original Hellboy movie well enough, but I wasn't exactly clamoring for a second installment, even with the return of director Guillermo Del Toro. However, seeing the trailer I've got to say- Hellboy II looks pretty darn cool. Not incidentally, it also looks more like a Del Toro film than the original film, with more creepy-crawlies and dreamlike imagery. And I find it sort of amazing that Universal is actually playing up the Pan's Labyrinth connection- who would have guessed that a studio would be using a subtitled movie to sell one of their big summer blockbusters? Also, if this trailer is any indication, the boring-ass agent from the original won't be returning for the sequel, which would be an improvement. Not sure if it's actually true, but I can hope, can't I?

Geekfare

Leonard Pierce — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:30:00 GMT

When you're a comics nerd, it's Christmas every day, and over at Comics2Film -- rapidly becoming the indispensible site for those of us who can't get enough of men in tights on screen, "Strip Club" blogger Supernaut lays out the case that as great a year as it was for movies in general, it was an even better year for comic book, fantasy, and "geekfare" movies in general. Elsewhere on the site, we're treated to the first stills from The Incredible Hulk, the debut trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and, via Wizard magazine, an interview with Christopher Nolan about The Dark Knight, in which he discusses Heath Ledger's interpretation of the Joker as "the most extreme form of anarchist" and his own plans, or lack thereof, for a third Batman picture: "Every film I’m working on, to me. is the last film I’m ever going to make."

Morning Deal Report: Adapt or Die

Peter Smith — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Guillermo Del Toro will adapt The Champions, a late-'60s BBC series too goofy to summarize here.

Roman Polanski will adapt Robert Harris's thriller The Ghost.

Mike Newell will adapt Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, from the legendary videogame series. If he were adapting my experience with Prince of Persia, it'd have to be ten hours of the Prince getting killed over and over again, possibly with a twelve-year-old screaming curses in the background. That game ruled.

— Peter Smith

Trailer Roundup: The Eye, One Missed Call, The Orphanage

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

The Eye

One Missed Call

The original Pang Brothers’ version of The Eye was a cheesy mix of the forgettable Madeleine Stowe thriller Blink and the early, funny films of M. Night Shyamalan. But the film nonetheless got solid reviews, so it was only a matter of time before a studio decided to mount an English-language remake. It’s hard to imagine someone out-hacking the Pangs, but David Moreau and Xavier Palud, making their English-language debut following the middling French home-invasion chiller Ils, look to be giving it the old college try. And as shoddy as most of the Asian horror remakes have been thusfar, at least some have been cast with interesting actors. That this one stars Jessica Alba doesn’t inspire confidence. But why should Lionsgate do any different? The formula of hot chick + semi-proven commodity + February release worked for When a Stranger Calls, right?

No less dire-looking is the remake of One Missed Call. The original film was one of roughly forty-seven movies Takashi Miike made in 2003, and was a decent movie that fit comfortably in an era of J-horror gimmickry. By comparison, the Hollywood version looks like another long-overdue nail in the coffin of J-horror remakes, bearing a closer resemblance to the spate of Ring knockoffs than the original version and starring the hottest cast of fall 2001 (Shannyn Sossamon, Ed Burns, etc.) You’d think audiences would start objecting to lousy horror movies, but then, we’re already on the fourth Saw.

The Orphanage

I saw this movie in Toronto, and I recommend it. But genre movies are a tough sell, so instead of accurately portraying The Orphanage as an atmospheric thriller in the vein of Guillermo Del Toro (who produced the film and gets his name prominently featured in the trailer), this trailer makes it look like a schlocky Asian-horror wannabe, complete with lots of flash cuts and horrified reaction shots and absolutely no dialogue. It’s a shame, since the audience that embraced Pan’s Labyrinth might avoid this on the basis of the lousy trailer, while the rest will probably be pissed at having to read subtitles. Still, it’s nice to see a horror movie with a heroine over forty who isn’t a spiteful old biddy.

— Paul Clark