Posts Tagged ‘Vampire’

  • 01 Feb

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    Cinecast Episode 244 – Of Muscles and Men

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    We’re going to spoil the shit out of Liam Neeson in The Grey this week. So I hope you’ve seen the film or don’t care about that sort of thing before listening. Right along with our “punch nature in the face” review, we’ve got a brand new top 5 list to go over that deals with manliness in cinema. Not entirely sure what that means to everyone out there, but Kurt and Andrew each give their take on the matter. A smaller watch list this week since we’re recording so close to last week’s episode, but there a bit in here to chew on for sure – including Kurt finally hitting up Joe Wright and his heavy melodrama, Atonement. That should be worth your price of admission right there. We’ve also brought back the homework assignment segment to the show and there may be rewards for those who complete their coursework, so be sure to listen for that. So sit back and enjoy the spirited festivities.

    As always, please join the conversation by leaving your own thoughts in the comment section below and again, thanks for listening!

     
     

    Cinecast Episode 244 [ 2:14:05 | 92.07 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup

     

    To download the show directly, paste the following URL into your favorite downloader:
    http://rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_12/episode_244.mp3

     
     
    Full show notes are under the seats…
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  • 24 Oct

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    Toronto After Dark 2011: Midnight Son Review

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    The vampire mythology continues to retain its hold on our collective imaginations as it works its way through film, TV shows, literature and, as many North American doorsteps will undoubtedly encounter in about a week’s time, fashion and costume design. There’s good reason – it taps into some deep seated fears of death reaching out to you anywhere, the intimate turning into the violent and your own life’s blood be drained away. Not to mention the promise of eternal life. It also comes with a whole variety of different aspects to the myth that can be added or modified to the same basic premise to allow for countless possibilities of stories to be told. Whether you like your vampires with wings, fangs or sparkles, the legend remains and the stories keep spawning from it. The latest example is Scott Leberecht’s many-years-in-the-making Midnight Son which takes yet another approach – strip the myth down to its basic elements and drop it into the real world. Akin to George Romero’s best film (IMO) Martin, but with superior acting and even more sympathetic characters, Midnight Son succeeds on just about every level as a storytelling vehicle: a genre exercise, a different spin on a well-worn legend, an examination of several themes (loneliness, self-realization) and a simple love story. It is easily the best told tale of the festival so far.

    Jacob is a 24 year-old nighttime security guard at an office building. He’s pale, skinny and a fairly blank slate. His “skin condition” has forced him out of the sun since he was quite young and his apartment is sealed tightly from any external shafts of light. However, he seems to be undergoing even more health issues of late – though he eats everything in sight, he simply can no longer satiate his hunger. His sallow complexion is of concern to his doctor until one day Jacob stumbles on draining the juice from a raw meat package. He immediately notices how his system reacts to the red liquid and starts making regular visits to a local butcher for containers of animal blood (which he sneaks into work inside his coffee thermos). It’s yet another stumbling block on the road of life for Jacob and things become even more complicated when he meets Mary. She has her own problems (dead-end jobs and a blossoming coke habit), but the two have an easy rapport upon their first meeting. On their first date, they don’t even leave the apartment as Mary jumps him after stealing a rather large snort in the bathroom. This results in a nasty nose bleed that trickles into Jacob’s mouth and an even more intense realization from his body about what he really needs – human blood. Now the real challenge begins for Jacob.

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  • 21 Oct

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    Toronto After Dark 2011: Monster Brawl Review

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    This review for the first Toronto After Dark Movie, Monster Brawl will likely be a fairly short review as I was not a fan of the movie and I feel that it really plays less like a movie and more like a pay per view event – the entire film is told in the language of character profiles, sports statistics and eventual the actual tournament matches with play by play commentary. I know this was what director Jesse T. Cook was going for, the film is an experiment as much as anything else, but I really felt the result was a tad hollow as a movie. We have announcers, Dave Foley and Art Hindle who are the high point for the film introducing and commentating each match. Prior to each match we get a short clip that details a bit of history about each of the monsters and that is it.

    Lets first look at some of the good points of the movie. The costume design is extremely well done. Each of the monsters look perfect. The costumes are all done with practical effects and everyone from The Mummy to Frankenstein act, move and look like they should. Secondly, there are a few good jokes and puns throughout the movie. Most of these come from Hindle and Foley but there are a few jokes from the introduction clips and also the smack-down hyperbolic speeches that the monsters give that are quite funny, particularly if you grew up on the cartoonish rhetoric of the WWF. Third, there are a few good kills and having Lance Henrikson doing the Mortal Kombat FATAL-VICTORY voice was more amusing than it ought to be and puts Monster Brawl in as much territory as a Arcade up-right fighting game as it is mired in sports language. Somehow without being actually present on-screen Henrikson (in all his gravelly glory) is one of the films chief assets. Finally, while I have my complaints about the lack of an audience at the pay per view the wrestling set the graveyard is quite well done.

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  • 24 Apr

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    Sunday Bookmarks (April 18-23)

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    • “Film Critic Elvis Mitchell axed from Movieline
      Nikki Finke, who works for Jay Penske, who publishes Deadline and Movieline and hired Mitchell, posted one explanation for why he was fired. For cause, apparently, for an error in his Source Code review. She infers that Mitchell may not have seen the movie, and slipped a reference to something from its screenplay into the review. Several people report seeing Mitchell at a Source Code screening. Sloppy is more Mitchell’s style. More than one of his editors complain about what a pain it was to edit him, especially at The New York Times. He was a much better fit at the LA Weekly.”

    • Ayn Rand’s New Religion for the Righteous
      “John Kenneth Galbraith famously said that “the modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” That exercise may have reached its limits with the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which has become the bible of conservative economic “wisdom” in our time. How did the work of a pro-abortion atheist become so popular with the culture warriors of the right? How do you get people who want to strip Darwin from the classroom to enforce Darwin on the unemployed? How does a book that inspired Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible wind up on the lips of evangelical Christians waiting in line at the box office?”

    • Blade Runner and Following The Rules
      Rule-following is an extremely powerful technique for manipulating things. Psychology is a form of science that identifies the rules in obedience to which human beings act. Those rules are identified by watching human beings and noting the constancy with which some effect follows some other cause. A human being who experiences something unpleasant will try to avoid it. That is a simple rule. These rules can be applied in reverse. An example is found in movies. An unpleasant or frightening situation can be created by forcing a human being to avoid something. This is why the image of a closed door is frightening in a horror movie. The door obstructs the human being’s view of what is beyond it, and this forced avoidance creates an unpleasant experience of anxiety. By exploiting a simple rule, the person making a film can create an experience in the human being who watches it.” (Thanks Matt Brown for the heads up on this one)

    • Is the video-on-demand business bad for Hollywood?
      “Make no mistake: History has shown that price points cannot be maintained in the home video window. What sells for $30-a-viewing today could be blown out for $9.99 within a few years. If wiser heads do not prevail, the cannibalization of theatrical revenue in favor of a faulty, premature home video window could lead to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Some theaters will close. The competition for those screens that remain will become that much more intense, foreclosing all but the most commercial movies from theatrical release. Specialty films whose success depends on platform releases that slowly build in awareness would be severely threatened under this new model. Careers that are built on the risks that can be taken with lower budget films may never have the chance to blossom under this cut-throat new model. Further, releasing a pristine, digital copy of new movies early to the home will only increase the piracy problem—not solve it.”

    • Filmmaker Jim Mickle Offers a New Take on Vampires
      “Perhaps it is this unusual collection of sources that gives the film its unique flavor, but it’s no accident that “Stake Land” approaches traditional components of vampire and post-apocalyptic films in a new way. Mickle and Damici made a point to focus on humanity over the unhuman.”

     
     

    You can now take a look at RowThree’s bookmarks at any time of your choosing simply by clicking the “delicious” button in the upper right of the page. It looks remarkably similar to this:

     

  • 14 Apr

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    Trailer: Stake Land

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    Jim Mickle, you put Zombies in my Vampire movie, wait, you put Vampires in my Zombie movie. Stake Land (Kurt’s Review) was well deserving of the TIFF Midnight Madness Audience Choice Award in 2010. The film is a thoughtful and intense post-apocalyptic road-movie, which begs the question on who should really be getting the gig writing and directing The Walking Dead if they wish things to improve in that series in subsequent seasons. The film has a great John Carpenter vibe leavened with a hint of the higher production values afforded the likes of John Hillcoat and Terrence Malick. It is nice to see that this trailer makes a bold announcement of Stake Land’s visceral tone and sense of humour within the genre. Like the director and his co-writer (and lead actor) Nick Damici’s low-budget debut film, Mulberry Street, there is no bones about being an unabashed genre effort, but they know how to inject a lot of wit, style, brains and heart in the proceedings.

    Trailer (and initial teaser) are tucked under the seat.
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 17 Oct

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    Sitges Review: Stake Land

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    At one point in fabulously envisioned Stake Land, the loner-hero takes a brief snatch of down time from kicking up road dust and vampire killing to relax on an outdoor recliner chaise. It is the moment that you realize that the film has far more in common with a classic American Western than the current craze of Vampire movies. But this is only one of the revelatory delights that the film is stacked with chock-a-block to the point where you sit back and smile that genre films can be made so well. In a year where John Carpenter has a new film that is as unsatisfying and generic as oatmeal, it is nice to see that others have taken up the mantle to resurrect the no-nonsense, bad-ass, Snake Plissken type (here named simply “Mister”) and drop him into an interesting and wide open space – a post-Apocalyptic america that has returned to its frontier roots in the wake of a Vampire epidemic. But these are not your Bram Stoker, Anne Rice or Stephenie Meyer Vampires. A stake through the heart will finish them off, assuredly, but there isn’t much going on upstairs beyond the extreme feeding instinct. They are sort of a hybrid of rage-zombies and rabid (foaming) nocturnal pack-animals, not far off the were-rat creatures featured in the director-writer-star combo’s (Jim Mickle and Nick Damici) first film Mulberry Street. Certainly, this peculiar (and quite gross) brand of vampire is something something you do not want to be caught surrounded with on a moon-less prairie night after being robbed and dumped by religious fanatics with a vindictive sense of road-justice. This is, more or less, taken in stride by Mister – one more speed-bump on the road out of a sadly compromised and brutally over-stretched America that has seen the final monster sized Katrina-disaster which has pushed it back to the 19th century.

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  • 10 May

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    Thoughts on the LET THE RIGHT ONE IN Remake

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    You go on vacation and it is a relatively slow movie and news week, but my interest perked up upon glancing at the two released stills from Matt “Cloverfield” Reeves’ english language remake of Let The Right One in. First off, if you average out the Row Three contributors’ picks on 2008 films, Låt den rätte komma in was probably the most loved, so most people writing for the site have some sort of emotional stake in seeing it redone for a North American Audience. You know the part where they polish off the rough edges, take out the emotional depth and thematic resonance, and make it a thrill ride (for any or all of the above, see: The Vanishing, Bangkok Dangerous, Nine Queens, [REC], La Femme Nikita, etc. etc.)

    But, oddly enough, I am rather interested in such an immediate do-over in spite of the high water mark set by the Swedish version of the film. There is the casting of the two leads, Chloe Moretz who kicked ass in, well, you know, and Kodi Smit-McPhee who give stellar performances in two dark films, The Road and Romulus My Father. Also, the producers are being rather clever in using the title of the first edition translation of the Novel, Let Me In, which at least tells me they took the time to do a bit of looking into how the book and film have been processed over here, and are not slapping it with the same title (causing some confusion due to the proximity of the releases) or giving it some focus-group moniker. Furthermore, I thought Cloverfield was a fairly solid both in the writing department and the directing department, and Reeves is doing both the remake (albeit Reeves did not write Cloverfield). Lastly, the novel has a number of twists and turns that were polished out of the original movie. The author of the novel, John Ajvide Lindqvist, wrote the screenplay and I’m sure he knows his own material, but having an outsiders interpretation, particularly at some of the more graphic elements in the novel, if the producers are willing to go there, would be enough to get me in the cinema.

    Really, there is bound to be some disappointment with the remake, due to how familiar I am with the source material and the original movie, but at this point I am not flat out against an English Language production. After all, there have been some good remakes done out there, Gore Verbinski’s The Ring has that knock-out addition with the horse on the ferry, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was entertaining and added a gritty Boston atmosphere to the story, and lest we forget that both The Thing, The Fly and Invasion of the Body Snatchers all got it right on the second whirl around.

  • 23 Apr

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    David Slade rocks my morning: Eclipse trailer is badass

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    Twilight Saga Eclipse PosterI was so caught up with work this morning that I completely forgot about the new The Twilight Saga: Eclipse trailer which was premiering on Oprah today. And then someone sent me a link and it threw the rest of my day into a tailspin.

    One viewing later and I was convinced that David Slade was indeed the right guy for the job (as if my praising of the selection even before it was official wasn’t enough of a clue). Movie Moxie said it best: the first trailer was girl friendly focusing on the relationship and the love triangle, barely hinting at the darkness that lures in this story and there was little sight of the visuals I expected from Slade. Enter trailer two which is very much guy friendly, ditching most of the relationship drama and the colour to focus on the impending doom.

    Is it awesome? Yes. Yes it is. I’m not convinced it will turn the tide and change the minds of everyone but it certainly drowns away any concerns fans may have had with recent news surrounding editing and re-shoots.

    Those opening night tickets can’t go on sale soon enough.

    The Twilight Saga: Eclipse opens June 30th.

    Trailer after the break.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 30 Nov

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    In The Mood for Blood?

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    Though the Twlight Saga is the reigning champion in the public popularity contest, I’m curious who might have caught Canadian director, Rob Stefaniuk’s musical vampire flick, Suck which premiered at this years TIFF? I was lucky to get a spot at the cast and crew screening before the start of the festival…

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 20 Nov

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    Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

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    NewMoonPoster

    Director: Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, About a Boy, American Pie)
    Screenplay: Melissa Rosenberg, Stephenie Meyer (novel)
    Producer: Wyck Godfrey
    Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Edi Gathegi, Rachelle Lafevre, Billy Burke, Charlie Bewley, Jamie Campbell Bower, Daniel Cudmore, Christopher Heyerdahl, Dakota Fanning, Cameron Bright, Noot Seer, Michael Sheen, Graham Greene, Tinsel Korey
    MPAA Rating: PG13
    Running time: 130 min.

    (3/5)

    For months the anticipation has been building. After the success of Twilight (our review), it’s not too much of a surprise. The first film in the saga captured fans and non-fans alike and in a whirlwind year, everyone seems to have caught “Twilight Fever” in one way or another. Fans love to share their love and haters their hate but nothing will take down the building monsoon. From the beginning, The Twilight Saga: New Moon was fighting an uphill battle. The change of directors caused a wave of panic and anger amongst fans. There’s also the little fact that Edward, one of (if not the) franchise’s biggest draw, is missing from most of the source material. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for director Chris Weitz to come on board with so many obstacles laid out before him but the burning question is: did he succeed? Does the film live up to expectation? In a single word no, but not for lack of trying.

    NewMoonMovieStillNew Moon picks up where Twilight left off. Bella and Edward are together and happy but it doesn’t last long. The story starts, in essence, on Bella’s birthday and while at the Cullen’s celebrating the event (an event Bella is not at all happy about), she cuts her finger, causing Jasper, one of Edward’s brothers, to come flying across the room in a blood frenzy. Edward, upset that he can’t keep Bella safe even from his family, leaves Forks throwing the young woman into a catatonic state from which she eventually breaks only out of pity for what it’s doing to her father. She finds solace in her friendship with Jacob and the two form a bond that borders on romance but never quite crosses the line. But all is not well as well as it seems on the surface for Victoria, one of the rogue vampires from the first film, is on the hunt for Bella. The closeness of threat has stirred a long dormant gene in some of the boys in Jacob’s tribe, including himself, turning them into wolves in order to protect their people. A number of events snowball into a final climax which has Bella traveling to Italy to save Edward from death at the hands of the Volturi, a coven which guards the laws that keep vampires secret from humans.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Oct

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    From Sin Nombre to En Amor

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    JaneEyreBookCoverCary Fukunaga is on a roll; his feature debut Sin Nombre (our review) (a film I have yet to see) was extremely well received and he caught my attention with his recent Levi’s commercials. He seems the type of guy to try his hand at whatever comes his way and news that he’s working on an adaptation of a classic novel certainly suggests exactly that.

    Variety reports that Fukunaga is in “advanced negotiations” to adapt one of the most notable (and adapted) works in the English language, Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” with a focus on the story’s gothic elements. We previously noted that Canadian starlet Ellen Page was attached to the project but she has moved on leaving the titular role open (wonder if she’s kicking herself for the missed opportunity?).

    Aside from Fukunaga’s attachment, there seems to be a lot of buzz generating around the woman writing the adaptation. Moira Buffini is an acclaimed playwright who recently adapted Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel “Tamara Drewe” for director Stephen Frears. All fine and well but what really caught my attention about Buffini is the tidbit of information that her stage play “A Vampire Story” is being reworked for the big screen under the new title of Byzantium. A little reading uncovered an entry at /Film which provides more information on the project, one I’m very keen on following (for obvious reasons).

    I’m not sure another interpretation of Eyre is really necessary but as long as the directors provide a new take on the material, I’m on board and Fukunaga’s work certainly suggests this won’t be your typical BBC spin-off. As for Buffini’s Byzantium…more vampires? Yes please.

  • 24 Sep

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    Bookmarks for September 8th through September 24th

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    What we’ve been reading – September 8th through September 24th:

    • David Lynch art installation: "Machines, Abstraction and Women"
      Hmmmm, who came up with the idea of having David Lynch speak out for Violence against women? "Shut up! It's Daddy, you shithead! Where's my bourbon? Can't you fucking remember anything?"
    • When have we not been in the midst of a vampire craze?
      Slate thinks it is better to look at the few periods of Vampire droughts as there is almost always a Vampire craze going on
    • Joe Dante on Roger Corman’s Lifetime Achievement Oscar
      “It’s about time,” says Dante, whose 3-D horror film The Hole is debuting at TIFF. “But it’s the one year they decided not to include that award in the telecast. He and (legendary cinematographer) Gordon Willis and Lauren Bacall. Three of the most interesting people, and they’re not going to be on the show. And all because they want to nominate 10 movies for Best Picture. “Why? So Transformers can get a nomination? This is an attempt to try to keep this fairly moribund idea of the Oscars alive, but it’s staid and it’s serious and it’s competing with 100 other awards shows where people get drunk and say interesting things.”
    • How to Sell a Guilty Pleasure: The CW and Its Posters | MediaCommons
      A look at CW's poster campaigns for its crop of guilty-pleasure teens-behaving-badly shows, from Gossip Girl to the Melrose Place reboot.
    • The 50 Greatest Directorial Debuts of All Time? – Cinematical
      Cinematical looks at, and generally approves of, London Time Out's recent list of the 50 Greatest Directorial Debuts of all time.
    • Charlie Kaufman talks Charlie Kaufman
    • Let’s Dance like it was 1989!
      Last Toronto After Dark 2009 Item. An interview with Romanian vampire black comedy, Strigoi, director Faye Jackson. Check out the radically new Twitch while you are at it.
    • Sadly, Tetsuo: The Bullet Man Stinks
      Reviews from around the blogosphere are not kind for Shinya Tsukamoto's third Tetsuo film. Sad, but hopefully the director will lay the franchise to rest and make more films like Vital and A Snake of June
    • The TIFF Tel Aviv Controversy
      A nice starting point to the Grayson protest on the Toronto International Film Festivals " City to City: Tel Aviv" Spotlight this year. Protests to follow.

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