tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70579330704097255482024-02-21T10:37:05.007+00:00AFRAID OF THE DARKAOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-75971177939349385742015-10-28T17:16:00.003+00:002015-10-28T20:58:18.973+00:0024 Hours of Terror: A Halloween Horrorthon<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Halloween is every horror nerd's favourite holiday. It's a great excuse for us all to spend a day indulging in horror movies. With this post I thought I would take the concept of a day of horror to its (il)logical conclusion and suggest a full 24 hours (1440 minutes) of horror movies you can watch in order to entirely devote your day to the darkest corners of cinema.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've got it down to the minute, so you'll either want to have a kettle set up and sandwiches on standby or, perhaps a better idea, split the films over a couple of days, which you can do this year given that Halloween itself falls on a Saturday.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fight For Your Life</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The films I've chosen here aren't all easy to get hold of, but I want you to be able to see them, so I've gone for the underseen, the underrated... and one modern classic, rather than total obscurities. I've also stuck entirely to films that I have seen, so I can know that each of the 16 films I'm suggesting is one that I would recommend as, at the very least, a good film (nothing less than 7/10 on our blood droplet scale). That doesn't mean they're all masterpieces, but the ones that aren't are certainly great entertainments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not going to suggest an order. The list encompasses slasher flicks, serial killers, ghosts, zombies, home invasion, giallo, vampires and more besides. I'll leave you to decide how you wish to order them should you want to watch the whole programme (let me know if you do, I'd be intrigued to find out how it works for you). So, without further ado, let's look very briefly</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">at each of the films, in alphabetical order.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Black Panther</b> (1977, 98 Mins)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Extremely realistic and utterly chilling serial killer film from the UK. Based on a real case, it charts how Donald Neilson progressed from burglary to spur of the moments murders, to a meticulously planned and brutal kidnapping. I wonder whether the makers of <i>Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer</i> and <i>Roberto Succo</i> saw it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Closet Land</b> (1991, 92 Mins)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Set entirely in a single room, this two hander is an escalating interrogation by government official Alan Rickman of Madeline Stowe, who plays a children's author suspected of inserting seditious material into her latest story. A tense and deeply uncomfortable film with great performances from Rickman and the often underrated Stowe.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Closet Land</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Cold Comfort</b> (1989, 90 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Skip the recently released <i>Awaiting</i> and see this, which deals in many of the same ideas, instead. Maury Chaykin plays a trucker who takes an unconscious accident victim (Paul Gross) home. Initially Chaykin and his daughter (Margaret Langrick) take care of him, but it soon becomes clear that he is a prisoner, intended as a gift for the daughter. An intense and convincing piece of psychological horror, with great performances.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Don't Torture a Duckling</b> (1975, 105 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's only relatively recently that Lucio Fulci has been given his dues as a filmmaker. This, for me, might be his very best film. It's a disquieting Giallo that sees an entire town become suspicious and fearful when children begin to be murdered. The mystery is reasonably well told, but the mood is what's striking, be it in the mob violence that results in a brutal chain whipping scene or Barbara Bouchet's unsettlingly sexualised performance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Fight For Your Life</b> (1977, 85 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Home invasion films were something of a staple of the Video Nasties list, this may not be the most violent, but it's certainly the most difficult to watch. A gang of escaped convicts, led by virulently racist Jesse Lee Cain (William Sanderson) take a middle class black family hostage and proceed to intimidate and torture them, until they fight back. The narrative is standard stuff, but it's strikingly acted and the politics still resonate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Killer's Moon</b> (1978, 92 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A very odd British proto-slasher finds a group of teenage girls stranded at a hotel closed for the winter, on what happens to be the night that a group of murderers on a new drug therapy that asks them to indulge their every fantasy escapes a local asylum. It doesn't end prettily. There are some great ideas here and the actors playing the killers are fantastic. This ought to be a cult classic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Lair of the White Worm</b> (1989, 93 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the 'worst' film I'm recommending. It's an outrageously camp Bram Stoker adaptation with Amanda Donohoe as a seductive woman who turns out to be some sort of snake/vampire/monster. Director Ken Russell, typically, turns everything up to 11. By any usual standards it's rubbish, but it's also tremendous fun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Lake Mungo</b> (2008, 87 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm no fan of either ghost movies or found footage, but this Australian film manages to do both effectively. By framing itself as a TV documentary, <i>Lake Mungo</i> lends an extra layer of verisimilitude to its question of whether or not probable murder victim Alice has been haunting her family home. The acting maintains the real world illusion and the chills up your spine work even on multiple viewings. By the way, stay for the end credits.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Martyrs</b> (2008, 99 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The modern classic. I can't imagine programming a day of horror (for adults) without this film. It hits so many buttons for me, as well as being one of the great examples of several different horror subgenres, the way it invites us to reevaluate the genre and our relationship to its characters continues to fascinate. It's also fucking terrifying.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Popcorn</b> (1991, 86 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jill Schoelen is a sadly underrated scream queen and, outside of <i>The Stepfather</i> ('87), this is her best horror role. She plays one of a student film society who screen a rare horror film to raise money, of course it turns out that the killer from the film isn't dead, is at the screening and is after Schoelen. It's hokey stuff, but a lot of fun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Requiem</b> (2006, 88 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Exorcism films are another subgenre I'm pretty tired of, but this German example, based rather more closely on the same case that inspired <i>The Exorcism of Emily Rose</i>, is one of the best. The fear is all the more intense for the fact that the film remains totally grounded in the real. Everything here could be seen as a natural illness just easily as it could be framed as possession. Sandra Hüller's extraordinary and entirely sympathetic performance grounds it perfectly, and makes it scarier, because horror is always more unnerving when it happens to someone we care about.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>See The Sea</b> (1997, 52 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This may skirt closer to a psychological thriller, but throughout Francois Ozon's breakthrough short there is something worryingly off about Marina DeVan, as a drifter that new mother Sasha Hails allows to camp outside her house. It's a slow build, but the performances more than carry the film, and the shocking denouement is pure horror.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2</b> (1986, 101 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It seems that this much maligned and belated sequel is finally being reclaimed for the tremendous entertainment it is. While other Chainsaw sequels have tried (read 'failed') to recapture the grinding terror of the original, Tobe Hooper knew better, throwing it out for a gory parody. The effects are fantastic, Caroline Williams makes for a strong and feisty final girl and the off the wall tone and performances are often hilarious. As long as you don't expect this to be like the first film, it's great. And hey, how can you dislike a film with Dennis Hopper using two chainsaws to fight Leatherface?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Ugly</b> (1997, 90 Mins)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This New Zealand film has shades of <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i> in its framing device, as a psychiatrist interviews a serial killer in prison, a little <i>Henry</i> in its flashbacks of him growing up and becoming a killer and a stylised eye to draw them together. It's not the most original of films and the supporting performances can be a little too winkingly OTT, but the excellent leads, the clean design, the use of colour and the black blood that is so strikingly used all make it stand out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Wasting Away</b> (2007, 96 Mins)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An overlooked zombie comedy that approaches the zombie film from the perspective of the undead. When a group of friends are turned, they don't realise it. We see both how they perceive things (as if the world has gone crazy and they are the only normal people left) and the reality that they are now shambling corpses with a thirst for brains. The conceit seems thin, but it holds together and the jokes stay fresh, even if the cast don't.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, there you have it, 24 hours of recommended horror. I hope at least a few are new to you. If you decide to include any or all of these in your Halloween weekend then please let us know how you get on, either in the comments or on Twitter <b>@AOTDBlog</b> or <b>@24FPSUK</b>.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-15800436491780123152015-09-01T20:25:00.001+01:002015-09-01T20:25:56.747+01:00Frightfest London 2015: Awaiting Review<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dir: Mark Murphy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For some time now, horror fans have been awaiting that serial killer film that will take the genre somewhere new, somewhere beyond the era of torture porn. The punchline to this setup is, sadly, not “and here it is”. <i>Awaiting</i> would like to be a tricky, twisty, little beast, but the direction of the story feels obvious from the get go. The individual beats are just as predictable as they unfold, largely because they are mostly taken from other, better, films.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the film opens, Morris (Tony Curran) returns home and tells his 20 year old daughter Lauren (Diana Vickers) that the unconscious passenger in the front seat of his car is someone he found in a crashed car. They take Jake (Rupert Hill) into the house and when he comes round, insist he stay the night. As time wears on it becomes clear that the relationship between father and daughter is unusual at best, that Morris is not well balanced, and that Jake isn't going to be allowed to leave.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Awaiting</i> starts reasonably promisingly. The first act has a low key menace thanks to the queasily too close relationship between Morris and Lauren, and both Tony Curran and Diana Vickers (a former X Factor star in only her second feature) play that dynamic well. The way Morris has infantilised Lauren in order to control her is hardly a new idea, but it is effectively executed. An even more chilling version of this dynamic comes into play in a scene set at 'Christmas' (which Morris and Lauren celebrate in September). Lauren comes down in her late Mother's dress, dolled up, and acts the part of her deceased parent, even kissing her father. It's the film's best scene, hinting at a perversity that could be interestingly built on, especially given how good Curran and Vickers are in the moment. Sadly, Mark Murphy throws this moment away. It's frustrating, because done right (as in Josephine Decker's <i>Thou Wast Mild and Lovely</i>), this dynamic can be intensely creepy and provocative, here it's a loose end, an abandoned idea to facilitate the plot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even in the decent first act, problems are apparent. Rupert Hill isn't especially well served by a screenplay that gives him little in the way of personality and some rather clunky and cliché dialogue, but where Curran and Vickers sometimes overcome the same issues, Hill's monotone performance can't. This is a problem because he is, in many ways, the film's 'final girl' figure, and the fact he's so dull makes him hard to root for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the second and third acts, Awaiting becomes ever less distinctive, setting in motion the wheels of the plot-o-matic, allowing it to clunk through its default torture porn setting. Murphy plunders other movies like a magpie on a shoplifting spree. You'll recognise bits of <i>Mum and Dad</i>, <i>Saw</i>, <i>We Are What We Are</i> and just about every backwoods and torture porn slasher of the past few years. There's nothing inherently wrong with being generic, genre exists because it works, but if you are going to be generic after so many films have gone before you, then your take on the genre had better either have something to add or stand alongside the absolute best of its kind. Neither of these things are true of <i>Awaiting</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wrote the above paragraphs a day or so after viewing <i>Awaiting</i>, and I stand by them, but they merely scratch the surface of how depressingly unoriginal this film really is. About a week after seeing <i>Awaiting</i> I stumbled on a 1989 Canadian film called <i>Cold Comfort</i>. To say that Mark Murphy has drawn inspiration from the film (which he has told us he may have done, unconsciously, having seen it when he was younger) is, in my view, to dramatically understate the issue. For its first two acts the setting, the plot, the characters and their relationships to each other and even a clutch of scenes seem to be extremely closely influenced by equivalent moments in <i>Cold Comfort</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the problem were merely that one or two scenes echoed <i>Cold Comfort </i>then I would have added it to the list of films mentioned above and moved on. The problem seems to run much deeper. For example <i>Awaiting</i>'s best scene, the queasy Christmas meal, is echoed almost beat for beat from <i>Cold Comfort</i>. In <i>Awaiting</i> the scene is set at an inappropriately timed Christmas, in <i>Cold Comfort</i> the celebration is of the 'Lauren' character's birthday, with the film introducing a lot of ambiguity about exactly how old she is. In both films the young woman comes downstairs dolled up, wearing clothes that belonged to her deceased mother, and puts on a sexual performance (a striptease in <i>Cold Comfort </i>as opposed to<i> Awaiting'</i>s<i> </i>kiss) for the benefit of her Father and the man he has kidnapped and is holding hostage. The way the story proceeds immediately after this scene is also only minimally different in <i>Awaiting</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is just one of many examples in the opening twenty minutes alone of scenes that seem to astonishingly closely echo <i>Cold Comfort</i>. The extreme closeness of both the narrative beats and the images of the two films continues through the second act, before they drift further apart as <i>Awaiting</i> moves into a much more visceral third act. Even here though, there are still scenes that resemble each other very closely. This is problematic not only because it accentuates <i>Awaiting</i>'s myriad flaws, but because it makes it very hard to credit Mark Murphy with its few successes, as most of them come in the portions of the film most closely echoing <i>Cold Comfort</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Awaiting</i>'s third act brings it's own problems though. In its final half hour it becomes a series of scenes that you imagine must surely be the film's nadir, yet they aren't. In one especially cliché moment, Curran wrecks his serial killer lair in a fit of slow motion rage. This is such a hackneyed device that for it to be effective you must do something very different (look at Philiip Seymour Hoffman's slow, deliberate, destruction of all the stuff that surrounds him in <i>Before the Devil Knows You're Dead</i>), and simply shooting in slo mo doesn't really cut it. The character development, especially of Lauren, feels rather disjointed and there is one twist that, while a little bit surprising, is still ripped from yet several more better films. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film has two climactic sequences, both howlingly awful. First comes the exact ending you'd expect; a slow motion chase through the woods, complete with music that is desperate to convey some kind of epic gravitas on to the final conflict between our ineffectual hero and his ever less convincing antagonist. The clichés in the dialogue reach their ne-plus-ultra here, when Lauren actually says to Jake, in all seriousness, ”don't quit on me now”. My compliments to Diana Vickers for successfully keeping a straight face in that moment. Murphy manages to find an even less appropriate piece of music for what seems like the film's final coup de grace, then deliver a final confrontational beat so telegraphed and so hackneyed I was amazed that he didn't bother to in some way subvert it. And yet, the worst is still to come, in a coda that draws on <i>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre </i>and <i>We Are What We Are</i> (nope, not setting yourself up to fail there at all) and provides one character with another instant personality transplant. It is terrible, and loses the film a grade point all by itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whether you see <i>Awaiting</i> or not – and frankly I can't suggest that you do – the one thing I would recommend that you do is seek out <i>Cold Comfort</i>, which is a considerably better and more original film, with outstanding performances from Margaret Langrick and Maury Chaykin. Ultimately the best thing about <i>Awaiting</i> is that it gives me a chance to recommend a much better film that you've probably never seen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sam's score:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Steve's second opinion:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My initial reaction to </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Awaiting </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was somewhat more enthusiastic
than that of my Afraid of the Dark colleague Sam Inglis. My tolerance for hackneyed plots is stronger
than his and as a result I often find myself inclined to be a lot more
forgiving than he is of horror movies, a genre that is , after all, replete with over familiar
concepts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I settled down to watch Mark Murphy's sophomore horror effort and, being a fan of Tony
Curran, found myself caught up in this tale of backwoods madness. Curran makes for a serviceable maniac and,
surprisingly, I found myself more than a little impressed by the performance of
ex-X-Factor contestant Diana Vickers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was settling on a score of 6 out of 10. <i>Awaiting </i>was no masterpiece but it made for a
mostly entertaining, moderately engaging slice of psycho cinema even taking
into consideration the timeworn plot, the various script issues
and a truly awful ending. Like I said…I’m
forgiving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But forgiveness is not limitless and as soon as I saw <i>Cold
Comfort</i> it would be a bit of an understatement to say that I was surprised by the extent to which the similarities between the two movies stack up. <i>Awaiting </i>mirrors huge parts of Vic
Sarin’s 1989 chiller to such a degree that it’s impossible to avoid decrying it
as an act of, at times, slavish mimicry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost everything I enjoyed about <i>Awaiting </i>before I watched
the superior <i>Cold Comfort</i> has been sullied by the extraordinary parallels between the former and the latter.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be clear…I'm not talking about inspiration.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There
are scenes here that follow almost beat for beat scenes from <i>Cold Comfort</i> to such a degree that is very difficult to accept that it could be down to some kind of unconscious influence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Examples abound and besides the scene mentioned by Sam in his review (the 'birthday' celebration) there's another where the protagonist attempts an escape only to suffer a leg injury when he steps into an animal trap. This scene does not simply echo its counterpart in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cold Comfort</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> but in terms of pacing, dialogue and camera angles is practically its twin. But it's not only the big moments that feel familiar there are many smaller echoes scattered throughout. Watching </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cold Comfort</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in the wake of Sam suggesting I do so often felt like an episode of deja vu.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've racked my brain in an effort to think of another movie that has lifted quite so much of its plot and script uncredited from another film and while there are certainly many examples of films that draw inspiration from works that have gone before I've failed entirely to think of any that do so quite as blatantly or with such regularity. There's so much of <i>Cold Comfort's</i> DNA in Mark Murphy's movie that if they married each other it would qualify as incest. As a result I've downgraded my score to a 3 out of 10. <i>Awaiting </i>is a movie that is creatively bankrupt and like Sam I recommend tracking down <i>Cold Comfort</i> which is a real under the radar gem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve's Score:</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-91080040046589264342015-08-31T12:44:00.000+01:002015-08-31T12:44:18.202+01:00Frightfest London 2015: Landmine Goes Click review<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dir: Levan Bakhia</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Landmine Goes Click</i> is one of those films that I am torn on reviewing. On the one hand, I want to spread the word and hopefully get more of you than might otherwise do so to watch it. On the other hand, I can't talk about the things that most make me want to recommend it, because you absolutely mustn't know about them going in, or the film will be robbed of at least some of its desired and powerfully delivered effect.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film opens with three friends – Chris (Sterling Knight), Alicia (Spencer Locke) and Daniel (Dean Geyer) – on a walking holiday in Georgia. Alicia and Daniel are getting married, and Chris is acting as best man, but Chris and Alicia are debating whether they should tell Daniel that, once, some time back, they slept together. The point turns out to be moot. When Chris steps on a landmine it seems to be an accident, but in fact it is Daniel's revenge. He leaves Alicia and Chris to try to save themselves. Eventually, potential help arrives in the form of Ilya (Kote Tolordava), but he increasingly treats his offers of assistance as a sick game.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That summary only takes us up to the second act, which plays out Ilya's games. Initially it seems that the drama is abbreviated, reaching a crescendo about 70 minutes in, but it's thereafter that <i>Landmine Goes Click</i> becomes a somewhat different film, going from being from a solid and engaging genre workout to become something more disturbing and more impactful. And I can't talk about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For much of its running time, <i>Landmine Goes Click</i> trades on stillness. Chris can't move, if he shifts his weight incorrectly he might detonate the landmine, killing or maiming himself and most likely Alicia in the process. This necessity is frightening on its own for a while, but Levan Bakhia knows that he can't trade on the same threat without variation for long, and he manages to explore more elements of the film's enforced stillness as it goes on. Once Ilya arrives there is the constant and growing threat that something he does – starting out by insulting him and Alicia before moving on to assaulting Alicia in escalating ways – will make Chris move. More remarkably, given that the film's first hour is set entirely in open spaces, this stillness allows Bakhia to find a claustrophobia that only increases the tension.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The series of events starts out extreme and only becomes more so as the first two acts run on, so it's surprising, and largely thanks to strong performances from the three central actors, that the main thing that strains credulity here is the extremity and imagination of Daniel's vengeance. Once you accept that, the rest of the film flows with a nightmarish logic from point A to B. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The performances all have to evolve, but none more so than Sterling Knight's. Chris starts off as a pretty typical guy in his mid-twenties. He fucked up royally with his friend's girlfriend, but he wants to come clean, to do the most right thing left to him. Once he's trapped on that landmine, Knight's performance coils like a spring, but that energy can't be released or it will destroy him and, perhaps more importantly, the person he loves. The annoyance he feels with Ilya may even start out a little rude (if understandable in the stress of the moment), but the invective he spits at the man who is supposed to 'help' them not only becomes more appropriate, the impotence of it becomes ever more upsetting. This builds to an horrendous moment when you can't help but place yourself in Chris' shoes, watching, helpless to do anything, as the worst of Ilya's assaults on Alicia plays out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spencer Locke has the film's weakest part, and one of its most problematic. At times, <i>Landmine Goes Click</i> seems to want to visit the worst punishment on women for things that were either partly or entirely the fault of men. This doesn't entirely take away from the film's other qualities, but I did find it a queasy reality at times, whether it's an intended message or not. This said, Locke is excellent as Alicia, desperate to help her friend, to the point that she will degrade herself in painful ways for the chance of a chance to give Chris better odds. What she and Knight bring most powerfully to the film is a sense of their characters responding naturally to being stuck in a nightmarish moment, an effective contrast against Kote Tolordava's broader performance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tolordava is also very good, if a little too nakedly menacing a little too early in the day. However, you get a sense, later confirmed, that there is a reason for this. In a performance that goes to progressively nastier places, Tolordava makes Ilya's progression from cruel joker to something much more lastingly damaging one that is credible step by step.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's difficult to talk about much of <i>Landmine Goes Click</i> beyond the basic setup and shape of the first two acts, which is a shame, because it is the third act that shifts it from a solidly effective, sometimes nasty, genre piece to something that punches much harder and will leave you sitting slack-jawed at the end of the film. Suffice to say that the film shifts locations and genres. It remains in a single space - this one naturally, rather than artificially, enclosed - but shifts both the power dynamics and the performances. Sterling Knight, suddenly more playful, is exceptional in this section, and the film's final shot rests disturbingly on him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'd like to tell you more, but trust me, you'll thank me for not doing so. Let's talk about it in the comments after you've seen the film.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-35411301955824789682015-08-30T22:24:00.001+01:002015-08-30T22:24:41.515+01:00Frightfest London2015: AfterDeath Review<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dir: Gez Medinger, Robin Schmidt</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ask most people and they'll tell you that the most profound question asked by a typical horror film is 'how's the next character going to die?' Sometimes they're right, but it would do the genre a major disservice to think that was all it ever had on its mind. <i>AfterDeath</i>, as you might imagine from the title, deals in some pretty big ideas, but it does so in a small scale way that pulls you in to the situation as much as it does the films questions and proposed answers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the film opens Robyn (Miranda Raison) washes up on a deserted beach. Written in the sand are the words “Even the good are damned” and all she can see is a lighthouse and a small cabin. In the cabin Robyn finds Seb (Sam Keeley), Patricia (Elarica Gallacher), Livvy (Lorna Nickson Brown) and Onie (Daniella Kertesz). The others inform Robyn that she, like them, is dead. Stuck in a limbo of sorts, Robyn tries to get the group to figure out why they are trapped together and how they can escape, potentially through Onie, who keeps vanishing and reappearing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AfterDeath</i> sets its pieces quickly. Characters are drawn in short order, if a little sketchily - Seb's a Jack the lad type, Robyn the constant manager, etc - but the film does find time to deepen these characterisations (with one exception) as events begin to unfold. To begin with things seem a little by the numbers; characters trapped in a room, having to figure out how they're connected between occasional attacks by something that seems, initially, like a pretty standard issue movie ghost. Once the characters begin to figure out what's going on though, things get interesting fast.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film engages with ideas of heaven and hell, of sin and exactly what that might mean. We first see this through a game of truth or dare in which the cabin's occupants reveal bad things they have done that might have sent them to what they have come to believe is hell. For a while the film threatens to go off the rails here, as it begins to paint Seb as a pretty black and white bastard, but the contrast between his sin and that of the women in the cabin is thrown into sharp relief by this choice. It's not the film at its most subtle, but it does work. From here, the characters' world begins to shrink ever further, but as it does the questions and ideas expand, up to a truly haunting idea that, for a certain section of any audience, is among the most frightening concepts possible. It would be criminal to go into that idea here, but trust me that line, perhaps 15 minutes from the film's end, is worth the price of admission by itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the film's ideas become larger and wilder, the performances keep it grounded. Sam Keeley suffers in the second half of the film from having a more broadly drawn character than the women, but his horror at the last demon attack he has to endure is very well played and makes an horrific but outlandish moment land with real impact. The matter of fact way that the characters deal with their situation, even as it grows more extreme, draws you in to the cabin and invites you to examine yourself as the characters do themselves. There's little showy going on in the acting, instead the focus is put on making the emotions as solidly real as the situation is supernatural.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All four of the film's female leads deliver excellent performances, with each getting their own particularly resonant moments towards the end. Elarica Gallacher's performance as the outwardly confident Patricia is especially effective when she later reveals deep insecurity, in a scene that is emotional and echoes in the rest of the film. Another particularly strong moment comes right at the end as Livvy, who has seemed a rather unfocused character, finds purpose and resolve at the most important moment possible, it's an affecting moment from Lorna Nickson Brown, and one that builds on the emotion of her last scene with Onie. These last moments are also some of the best of Miranda Raison's performance, as a huge conflict (and a key twist) play out silently. None of this is to say that the performances aren't effective throughout, but they build, as the film does, to this crescendo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a slight <i>Cabin In The Woods</i> feel to <i>AfterDeath</i>, but with none of that film's winking, often rather smug, tone. Instead directors Gez Medinger and Robin Schmidt and writer Andrew Ellard keep the focus on the ideas. Medinger and Schmidt, for their part, keep the film visually interesting despite the limited settings they have to work with. They find some memorably nightmarish imagery too, especially when the light from the lighthouse illuminates the cabin. They have also managed to marshal, on what must have been a small budget, CGI that is effective, well used, and often genuinely creepy and unnerving.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AfterDeath</i>'s ideas aren't new as topics in horror, indeed a couple of films have, over the past few years, even more successfully explored some similar metaphysical concepts, but Ellard's screenplay separates itself and discusses and engages with these ideas from a different angle. It's a refreshingly intelligent piece of writing, matched by strong performances and direction. Oh and it has the best last line I've heard for some time.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-78339220649280983282015-08-30T12:02:00.000+01:002015-08-30T12:02:13.024+01:00Frightfest London 2015: Sun Choke Review<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dir: Ben Cresciman</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Sun Choke</i> is a film as striking as its title (which may be the most evocative of this year's Frightfest). It plays its twists close to the chest, never quite giving up all of its mysteries. Some of the rabbits that director Ben Cresciman pulls from his hat are not unexpected, but it's hard to mind all that much as he pulls together stylish visuals and two outstanding central performances.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We first meet Janie (Sarah Hagan, who you'll likely recognise as one of the 'Potentials' from season seven of <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i>, and should seek out in the outstanding <i>Jess + Moss</i>) as she is going through, apparently for the umpteenth time, a series of psychological tests administered by Irma (legendary scream queen Barbara Crampton), who seems to be part unconventional therapist, part stepmother. Janie appears to be recovering from a trauma that resulted in violence, but is doing well, so well that she is allowed out of the house for the first time in a year. On her first trip out Janie sees Savannah (Sarah Malakul Lane), and becomes obsessed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cresciman never lets us see clearly what Janie did little to land herself under apparent house arrest. There are flashes of a violent scene, but whether we can even be sure that it was real, either in detail or in broader terms, is very much up for debate, even given where the film goes in its third act. It would be easy to see Janie as an equivalent of the 'children' in <i>Dogtooth</i>; imprisoned in a world partly of their making, partly moulded for them from the outside, in this case the battle for us as an audience seems to be unpicking which aspects of Jamie's world are driven by her problems, perhaps even her psychosis, and which have been drummed in to her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These ideas and questions come through strongly in the performances of Sarah Hagan and Barbara Crampton. Crampton's icily withdrawn nurse/surrogate parent is different from anything I've seen her do before. Irma insists to Janie that she loves and is trying to do the best for her, but she never seems more detached, more passionless, than in these moments. The question of why this is always remains fraught; answers perhaps glimpsed in brief, often overexposed, flashbacks, but when we see Janie essentially being tortured for staying out past her curfew, it's easy to imagine that these flashbacks are not real, or at least not the full story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course Janie is hardly blameless. Hagan is also detached in her performance, but she strikes a different register than Crampton; not icy but longing. Janie clearly longs to be less detached, something we see in the way she fixates on what appears to be an entirely random woman, among the first people she sees on her first trip outside the house in a year. These sequences become increasingly tense as Janie seems to become ever more fixated and unhinged. Most chilling is a sequence in which Janie breaks in to Savannah's house and takes a shower, allowing Savannah to realise someone has been there. Little happens, but it's fingernails down the blackboard tense. Hagan is remarkable in these scenes, even in their most extreme and calculated moments of violence, she puts Janie's sadness front and centre, making us feel a perverse level of sympathy for her, even as the film enters its third act.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third act is where Sara Malakul Lane's Savannah becomes more than a beautiful prop for Janie to desire, in ways that are perhaps not what you would first assume unless, like me, you are a fan of a certain tawdry but well acted early 90's thriller. Savannah's lack of development in the early part of the film is one of its weaker aspects, but Lane makes for an effective and sympathetic damsel in distress and, with her doll like prettiness, a credible object of Janie's instant desire. Beyond the role's exposing nature though, she's not especially stretched. On the other hand, Hagan's shift from a withdrawn but sympathetic character to a silently steely one (perhaps taking on some of Irma's attributes) is well handled by the actress and only makes her performance more intensely creepy. With the build and the payoff, Cresciman manages to achieve an intriguing mix of the scary and the sad, which gives <i>Sun Choke</i> a tone that sets it apart from its influences.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The film marks out Sarah Hagan as a fearless performer of great promise, hers is one of the best performances by a lead actress this year. <i>Sun Choke</i> also proves again that Barbara Crampton always had more to offer than being the decorative scream queen. I'm glad she's getting to show that now. This<i> </i>isn't a flawless film, but it is never less than gripping and the central performances transcend its few weaker moments. It will be interesting to see where Ben Cresciman goes from here.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-44309959526892308562015-08-09T19:13:00.000+01:002015-08-09T19:13:04.614+01:00Frightfest London 2015: Levan Bakhia Interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Landmine Goes Click pretty much sums up why festivals are important. It's the discovery of movies like this that makes sitting through the occasional dreary, unoriginal snorefest worth it. I'm going to say very little about this movie except that if you saw director Levan Bakhia's last feature, the enjoyable 247°F, you could be forgiven for expecting something of similar quality here. You would be very wrong. Landmine Goes Click for most of it's runtime delivers an excruciating exercise in escalating tension before delivering one of the most powerful final acts I've seen in recent years. Just in case I've not been clear. DO NOT MISS THIS MOVIE. Without further ado...here's the interview.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Tell us a little bit about your experience shooting
'Landmine Goes Click'. How many days did you shoot for? Did the script change
at all during the shoot? Were there any unexpected challenges or did it all go
smoothly?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: Best way to describe the experience of shooting our film
is to check the playlist on my personal youtube channel, where we made episodes at every stage (<a href="http://bit.ly/1Hyi2kb">link</a>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the most interesting and different aspect of this
production was that we were pulling off very long takes. 70% of the shots are more than 5-6 minutes,
and sometimes we had to do it 5-6 times.
And it was not rehearsed, we were improvising.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Actors knew what their objectives were, and they were free
to do what they wanted. I did not block
their movement, I gave them total freedom.
But in order for this to work, there was a very unique experience of me
working with cinematographer, Vigen Vartanov.
I worked with him as with an actor.
Instead of blocking the camera move, I would give the same kind of
objective to him as well. So basically,
he was performing together with actor, he did not know what would happen, he
had to reflect on what was happening. He
would have objectives like to be interested, or insulting, or sometime he would
even have an objective to lead actors movement.
It's complicated to explain, filmmakers can take this approach and see
for themselves how it works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love working with actors, that is my favorite part of
directing. So combining cinematography
with acting was very special experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for the script, well, biggest part of it was improvised. I mean, we had a script, and I would ask
actors that we are running certain pages, but I wanted them not to stop until I
would say so, and then I would push them to the parts where they did not memorise
the text, and approximately 50% of the takes in final edit are those
parts. Some lasted for minutes of
unprepared improvisation. I like
improvisation. But of course the script
was always there as an outline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD. It saddened me to read that Kote Tolordava, who
delivers an astonishing performance in the role of the villain of the piece,
passed away recently. He was a mostly terrifying, sometimes hilarious and
utterly unpredictable presence in the movie. I also understand that he was a
great friend of yours. What made you think of him for Ilya and were there any
qualities he brought to the role that surprised you?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: I met him on audition of Landmine Goes Click, and we
became very close friends. You see, when
an actor has to perform what he had to perform, you really need to open up with
them, he really needed to have full trust in what was he about to do. He was very realistic in everything he did,
he was "in the moment" all the time.
You see, even if your question started about him passing away, I avoid
thinking about it. This is a tragedy, I
planned to have him in many films, he wanted to show himself to hollywood as
well. He was very famous in Georgia, but
his talents are far bigger than that. I
think he had a chance to come to Hollywood and give himself to better
project. I'm sure he would surprise
everyone on auditions. Ehh, it's sad
that I have to talk about him as someone who has passed away. God bless him wherever he is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know what made me think about him as Ilya. I think it just clicked when I saw him on
audition. He was just right. I knew it.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AOTD: Sterling Knight and Spencer Locke both give excellent
performances that evolve over the course of the film. Can you tell us a bit
about how you cast the American parts in the movie, and what work you did with
them in preparation?</i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: Casting happened over skype, long distance. It really makes it harder, but you see, you
know when the actor is right by just speaking to them. I wish I was there in person, but today's
technologies give you all the tools you need. The fact that the actors perform
so well confirms that theory. I think
both are great, I think Dean Geyer is great as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for preparation, I had the actors arrive to Georgia only a
week before the shoot, and we did rehearsals.
I realised that we did not have time to prepare for the role more, so I
trusted the instinct of all of us. The
situation helped, because in the story they are tourists and they really were
tourists in Georgia. So then we followed
the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Shooting the rape scene in the movie surely must have
been an uncomfortable, emotional, possibly traumatic experience not only for
Spencer but also for Kote as her assailant. What was the vibe like on the set
that day and did it impact on your directorial approach with the actors?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: It was much more than I could have imagined. I will never forget, when we did the first
take, as Ilya's character did not even start the rape, he was dragging Alicia
and screaming and yelling, being violent preparing for his act. It was as uncomfortable as real assault. We see violence in the movies, we don't even
consider what it can be in real life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you are present at that moment, your body responds to
it in a very stressful way. I can't even
imagine what actors can feel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for my approach, nothing changes. I did the rape scenes exactly the same way I
approached other scenes. I think that
should not matter, you aim for realistic results. It's just that, you need to show actors that
you are there for them. You need to show
that on any scene, but this kind of scene require more attention. Actors need to know how it works out. They can become cautious, if you don't show
support, and if they lose trust in you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Your screenwriter is Adrian Colussi whose previous
work has been in lightweight TV comedy. It would be a massive understatement to
say Landmine Goes Click represents a departure. Can you tell us a little bit
about how the script landed in your hands and what input, if any, you had?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: I met Adrian at workshop with Judith Weston in LA. We became friends. He is a very special guy, a great
collaborator and high class professional.
We write together. I mean he does
the writing, but we come up with the story together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adrian is Canadian.
I live in Georgia. The country
Georgia, not the state. And my company
has invited Adrian to Georgia to write scripts for our projects. He has arrived for 3 months, but stayed in
Georgia for over a year. He even got
married to a Georgian girl. That's how
we wrote the script for Landmine Goes Click.
We teach each other a lot, I think we are a great team. I think I am not going to do anything without
him, if he will feel like this too of course.
We do the story together, and then he does the screenplay. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: You have chosen to go down the route of
self-distribution. What prompted that decision and how is it working out for
you?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: That really is a long story. But I started a <a href="http://www.landminegoesclick.com/">blog</a> which is where your readers can see the whole story. I think filmmakers will benefit from joining
the conversation there. But the simple
idea is that, indie filmmakers I think need to convert into indie distributors,
because that is the era that we are entering.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AOTD: Sounds like something worth encouraging. 'Landmine Goes Click' played the Fantasporto Festival
earlier this year with you in attendance where it won the Audience Jury Award
and was nominated for best film. What was that experience like and, other than
the accolades, did you gain anything valuable from attending he festival as a
film-maker?</i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: Fantasporto was the first festival Landmine Goes Click played. Actually, it was first
festival that i have attended as a filmmaker in selection. I did not know what to expect, especially the
award. Later our film was awarded on
second festival, Fantafestival as well, and now I hope for more wins, it feels
good, but at Fantasporto I did not know what would it feel like to be
awarded. And it felt great.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I met other filmmakers, that was the most important
part. I became friends with some of
them. I think being part of something is
important, not the win, despite of how it feels, that is not a goal. Sharing with other filmmakers is what it is
all about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: The final act of the movie and especially the closing
scene really shook me up. Without spoilers can you explain to what extent was
the ending instrumental in your wanting to make this movie and what kind of
reaction did it get from the audience at Fantasporto?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: The closing scene is what this film is about for me. You see, Landmine Goes Click falls under the
genre of rape & revenge. This is
exploitation genre. It exploits the
desire of the audience to punish the villain for the sin he has committed. The audience is so drawn to this revenge, in
movies like "I spit on your grave",
they enjoy horrible tortures performed on the screen. And I think this is not right. I wanted to slap the audience for that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's how the audience at Fantasporto, and any other
audience reacts to it. They don't like
to be slapped, but I think it reminds them, that they are human. I hope it does. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: I noticed that your name is attached to an upcoming
movie called 'She, Who Killed Us All' which will see you work again with your
'247°F' co-director Beqa Jguburia. The poster and the tagline alone have me
interested. Can you tell us a little bit about this project?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: I don't know if that project is still happening to be
honest. And at the same time, I think I
will have something much more interesting to offer the audience. I recently had anxiety issues, it opened up
whole new world to me. World of stress
and recovery, world of fear and calm, world of wisdom and ignorance. Hence, my upcoming project is going to be
about that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Are there any directors whose work you particularly
respect and who have had an influence on your approach to film-making?</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: I respect all great films, and don't like to admire
particular filmmakers. I like to have my
mind free from authorities, in filmmaking and in life. I want to have myself free even from my own
"past self", who was fascinated by a certain film in past. I want it to leave that impression right
there, in past as I watched it and then let it go. I think that is the only way to lead your
creativity, and actually live your life.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Birdman was the film I could not get out of my head
since I watched it. Can't wait for the
new film coming from Iñárritu, but I don't think this is forever. I will not call that influence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Landmine Goes Click is screening at Frightfest in
London next month. Do you have a message for the audience? </i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LB: Yes.
I want to hear your opinion, please be active, vote, review on your
favorite site. That's how you can support
us, the filmmakers. And thanks for
watching my film. Hope to be there with
you.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Just want to finish by thanking you for taking the time to answer my questions. Hope you enjoy Frightfest if you make it. I know that Frightfest is going to enjoy Landmine Goes Click.</i></b></span></span><br />
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-5122563155891242412015-08-02T17:49:00.000+01:002015-08-02T17:49:02.717+01:00List of Shame: A Project<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <b><i>List of Shame</i></b> project serves two purposes. 1. It forces me to make an effort to see a selection of horror movies that I have thus far, somehow, avoided. 2. It hopefully ensures that I get at least a couple of new reviews up on this blog a month because, let's face it, I've been somewhat lazy of late.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The criteria I adopted in making this list was fairly flexible and I do intend to add to the list over time. Suggestions of any under the radar gems would be very welcome. The films currently listed are horror movies which are considered classics or in some way are infamous
and which, given my love of this particular genre of cinema, I really should
have seen by now. It is my intention to, on a weekly or fortnightly basis, select at random
one move from my <b><i>List of Shame</i></b> to review.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The inclusion of any movie on this particular list should be
considered less a commentary on how good the movie is likely to be but should
instead be taken as an indication of some degree of importance in the history of horror
cinema. Some I have included for personal reasons, some because they were targeted
by the BBFC in the UK during the video nasties debacle and some because they
have been recommended by others. Many have deliberately been included simply
because of their controversial nature. I'm setting out to challenge myself and
hoping that I will be surprised, entertained and sometimes shocked along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I should also mention that I have shamelessly stolen this idea from Sam Inglis who is the guy behind the 24 Frames Per Second movie review blog. If you are unfamiliar with his writing I would strongly recommend heading over to http://www.24fps.org.uk/</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and checking it out immediately. He's one of the reasons I ever started writing about movies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My <b><i>List of Shame</i></b> can be found over at Letterboxd by following this <span style="color: red;"><b><a href="http://letterboxd.com/aotdblog/list/list-of-shame-horror/by/name/"><span style="color: red;">link</span></a> </b></span>or by casting your eyes over the lurid image below.</span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-56398474317221390412015-07-28T19:38:00.002+01:002015-07-28T19:43:34.537+01:00Frightfest London 2015: Pavel Khvaleev Interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Imagine if Andrei Tartovsky had invented a time machine, travelled from the 1970's to the mid-Noughties and directed Silent Hill. That accurately sums up the thoughts that were going through my head as I settled into Russian director Pavel Khvaleev's visually haunting, dreamlike directorial debut III. I'll say no more about the movie as I will be publishing a review after the dust settles on this year's Frightfest. What I will say though is that it will look stunning on the big screen. Pavel was kind enough to not only arrange access to a screener but also agreed to answer some questions. Here's how that went.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Tell us a little bit about your experience shooting
III. How many days did you shoot for? Were there any obstacles or did it all go
smoothly?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PK: For me, shooting film III was a kind of experiment.
First of all, I used only my personal money resources and finances, without any
involvement of outside investors. Secondly, our entire team, including actors,
made a feature film debut. The most difficult and memorable day of shooting we
spent in the caves of Ichalkovsky Bor (pinewood), where the temperature didn’t
exceed 0 degrees Celsius, while above the ground it was 27 °C.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for pre-production, the storyboard is one of the most
difficult stages for me, as you have to recreate and replay every second of the
whole movie in your head. You need to play the role of each character yourself
to feel maximum emotionality and space of the scene imagined in your head,
before arranging and sketching it out on paper. The storyboard is a must if you
work in a team. It allows you to stick to a clear shooting plan, but at the
same time you can take the liberty of improvising, bearing in mind the key
plans.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The shooting itself was divided into three parts. The first
part started in Russia in July 2013, where more than half of the film was shot
during the two months, including all the complicated scenes with monsters. By
the way, for one of the scenes we had to wake up every morning at 5am hoping to
catch the morning fog and have time to take a long shot of the forest from the
bridge. The second part was in winter and lasted only for a couple of days, as
we needed a lot of snow and a thick layer of ice to recreate the endless white
expanse, where the heroine was walking. The third and, probably, the funniest
for our crew filming part took place in Germany in May 2014, where we were
shooting for about two weeks, following a very busy shooting schedule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: The movie was shot on a very low budget of 15,000
Euros. How did you go about gathering the finances to make the movie and what
challenges did the micro-budget present to you as a film-maker?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PK: Due to the limited budget, we were constantly forced to
check with the cost estimate and, probably, make some sacrifices to the
shooting process. But even this did not prevent us from going to Germany with
the whole crew to continue exterior shooting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, the costs were saved since all postproduction,
including scoring and music writing, was made by me. Thus, it reduced possible
expenses from the film budget by additional 2-3 salaries. Although, every
member of our crew was working out of pure enthusiasm, without any
remunerations. Together with my brother, we spent about 3 months of studio time
on writing film soundtracks. With more than a 10-year experience in creating
and releasing dance electronic music under the name of Moonbeam, the
soundtracks for film III became a real styles experiment for us. We used a lot
of live instruments together with electronic analog synthesizers. The only
pre-written track was Reptile’s Head by Loolacoma project, which can be heard
during the end credits. The second stage of working on sound brought us some
difficulties, as after film editing and colour correction we had 80 minutes of
absolutely silent film. We didn’t record clear sound during the shooting, so we
had to sound every rustle, step, or noise – in short, everything that happens
on the screen for 80 minutes. By the way, just after the film’s launch we are
planning to release a special album of soundtracks III by Moonbeam.</span></div>
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prior acting experience. Tell us a little about how you went about casting the
movie.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PK: There is not a single professional among the cast. With
our budget we were not ready to invite professional actors. On the other hand,
this particular circumstance played in our favour, allowing us to capture
natural emotions on camera. As our actors, being not used to work on camera,
played themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Polina Davydova is a striking onscreen presence and
has the most challenging role in the movie. Did she bring anything to her
performance that you didn't anticipate?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PV: We did not expect much, as we knew it would be difficult
for Polina, since she did not have any acting education and experience. But, of
course, she has talent which we’ve tried to reveal on the set. Both girls,
Polina and Lyuba, proved to be very hardy, as some scenes of the film were shot
in winter at −28 °C, in the forest with hungry mosquitoes, or in the rain.
Everyone behaved themselves very professionally and endured all the hardships
of nature and the script.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: There were quite a few people involved in writing the
story. Can you tell us something about the gestation of the script? Did it
change at all during the course of filming or arrive on screen mostly intact?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PV: The synopsis was developed by three people: Evgenia Mustafina,
Oleg Mustafin, and Alexandra Khvaleeva. During discussions of the future film,
they exchanged ideas, rejecting unnecessary stories and events, and keeping
only the most interesting stuff. When the overall picture began to emerge,
Alexandra proceeded with the main narrative part.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Up to the end of work on the film, we’ve been correcting the
script, for example, adjusting Polina’s voiceover.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: III was shot partly in your home country of Russia and
partly in Germany. The locations you chose in both countries are very striking
and lend much to the movie’s atmosphere. How did you go about scouting/choosing
the locations and why did you decide to shoot part of the movie in another
country?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PV: Thank you. Well, the producer of “III” Frank Ellrich is
a good friend of mine and he lives in Germany. During a visit in Frankfurt,
where he lives, he took me and my wife Sasha to Marburg, the city where he was
born.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We instantly loved the dark and historical atmosphere of
that old place. That day it was foggy and rainy and Frank always apologized
about the bad weather. But I only smiled and said: “Do you know what? This
place is the perfect place to shoot parts of the movie III down here.” After
this Frank stopped apologizing haha. In April last year we went there with a
film crew of 10 people and Frank took us to several places he scouted due to
the description of my storyboard. In ten days we caught all scenes we had
especially prepared for that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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and if so why?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Answer 7: It’s hard to say, because in general I am
interested in many various genres, such as Thrillers, Science Fiction or
Fantasy. But my music and especially my videos I created for my music project
Moonbean contained very often horror or mystic elements. I feel somehow very
connected to it. So all this experience I gathered at my work for the music
videos finally lead me to the idea of a full horror movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: III is your debut as a director. Are there any past
masters of horror cinema, or just cinema in general, whose work particularly
inspired you?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PV: At the current moment I’m inspired, probably, just like
other viewers around the world, by new strikingly good TV series, such as Black
Mirror, Les Revenants (The Returned), True Detective…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: I’m not aware of many Russian horror movies appearing
of late. What is the current state of horror cinema and film-making in general
in your home country?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PV: Russian horror
cinema market is very poor, there are only few movies, and they are all the
same. That’s why we decided not to make a clichéd copy of such Hollywood
bestsellers as Insidious, Mirrors, and Paranormal Activity. We decided to
choose a more complex narrative model that would involve not only people, but
also the history. For example, just a few people in our country know that
Siberian shamanism was linked to Orthodoxy, as well as to Catholicism in
Europe. Thus, it is more than a typical horror movie. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We also want to say that touching religion in our country is
not particularly welcomed by the Orthodox Church, which in its turn caused some
difficulties at this stage. Namely, at Movement festival in Russia, our film
was included into the non-competition program and, what’s more, the film could
be shown only after 12pm. Other festival films as a rule are only socially
oriented.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: III is screening at Frightfest in London next month.
Do you have a message for the audience?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PV: Dear sophisticated viewers of Frightfest Festival, you
may find our film not so bloody or dynamic. But that was not our purpose. The
main thing is to feel the atmosphere and melancholy of Russian people and their
environment. And most importantly, to believe that something bigger and deeper
is hidden beyond the existing knowledge about diseases.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: I just want to finish by thanking Pavel for taking the time to provide such thoughtful and interesting answers to our questions. Here's the official trailer for III.</i></b></span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-16376638441211276992015-07-15T20:30:00.002+01:002015-07-15T20:34:34.202+01:00Frightfest London 2015: John Fallon Interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>John Fallon is better known as the dude responsible for the Arrow in the Head website which, with its focus on horror movies including daily news updates, reviews, and commentary, was a direct and significant inspiration in my decision to write about genre cinema. This fact alone galvanised my interest in The Shelter while at the same time making me a tiny bit nervous about watching it. At the end of the day I needn't have been worried. It's a fine debut and more than a bit surprising in terms of the particular corner of horror it occupies. Although it fits comfortably within the boundaries of the genre it is as much a drama, which examines one man's battle with the sins of the past, as it is a fright flick. Which is not a bad thing as it turns out. It's a strong debut, full of atmosphere and featuring a career best performance by Michael Pare, with a lot to offer horror freaks and geeks. I'm grateful to John for letting me view the movie and also for agreeing to answer some questions. And without any further ado...here's the interview.</i></b></span></div>
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<b><i>AOTD: Tell us about your experience with 'The Shelter'. How many days did you shoot for? Did the script change at all during the shoot? Were there any unexpected challenges or did it all go smoothly?</i></b></div>
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JF: The 15 day shoot was one of the smoothest I had ever experienced and trust me I was as surprised as anybody else about that. But I was well surrounded for the most part and although we had a small crew; we were a well oiled machine. Looking back; we had some struggles with continuity that took some time/energy to resolve and we wound up shooting an exterior scene on the coldest night Louisiana had in like 25 years; the crew was freezing hence I had to cut the night short and shoot the rest on another night.<br />
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But the obstacle that left the biggest impression on me came the day before we started shooting. There were snow storms in North America at the time and Michael Pare’s flight got cancelled. So co-producer Donny Broussard and I were on the phones for hours trying to get Pare another flight and get him down in Louisiana on time for the first day of shooting being that I couldn’t financially afford to push the shoot back. It was a fiasco. In a way that potent sucker punch just before shooting was a good thing, because once FINALLY resolved, all of the stress that I could’ve felt in terms of the start of production had been purged out of me. So I stepped on set come the first day feeling very relaxed; which was a good thing. Story wise; although our varied environments resulted in new minor story elements and that I had to consolidate some scenes here and there in the name of time/money – the script didn’t change much from page to screen. </div>
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<b><i>AOTD: I understand that you and Michael Pare have been friends for a number of years. When you were writing the script for 'The Shelter' was it with him in mind as the central character and what were the qualities you saw in him as an actor that made you cast him in the role?</i></b></div>
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JF: Mike and I met through our mutual friend Eric Red and spent time together in Budapest during the shooting for Red’s 100 Feet. When I wrote the script, the character of Thomas looked like Mike in my mind but to be honest I didn’t think we’d get him. He’s a busy guy. So, I was looking for somebody like Michael Pare, until co producer Donny Broussard convinced me to just send Mike the script and see what happens.</div>
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Mike loved it, wanted in, we made an agreement and that was that on that. The role of Thomas required an actor that had raw magnetism, somebody the audience wanted to watch being that A- The role was fairly un-sympathetic on paper and B- Thomas was pretty much in every frame of the film. And Michael Pare had all that we needed for the role and then some.</div>
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<b><i>AOTD: What lessons did you learn as a film-maker during the writing, filming and post-production of 'The Shelter' that you feel you will benefit from when it comes time to direct your next feature?</i></b></div>
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JF: Ha! I could write a novel in terms of what I learned and am still learning throughout every stage of making this film. Hence, I’ll just say that although I didn’t expect my work on The Shelter to end with Post Production; nothing could have prepared me for the battle that lay ahead. Every step forward has and still demands much effort and most of them also cost money. Let me put it this way; The Shelter has been my full time job since January 2014 and I’m still waiting for my first paycheck. And I won’t even get into the emotional roller coaster ride this endeavor has been for me thus far. I’m definitely stronger and wiser for it. With that said; if I had to do it all over again...I would in a split second.</div>
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<b><i>AOTD: 'The Shelter' is more of a drama than the kind of full on horror movie experience people may have anticipated given your background. Was this as much of a surprise to you as it may be to the movie's audience or did you set out to subvert expectations?</i></b></div>
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JF: I had no strategy when I decided to make The Shelter; I didn’t want or even think of subverting anything and I wasn’t trying to appeal or not appeal to anybody. It was a very pure project. The easiest way I can explain it is: for better and for worse it’s the movie that wanted to get made.</div>
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<b><i>AOTD: You have had acting roles in quite a few movies over the course of the last 15 years. Which performances are you most proud of and did you take the opportunity to pick up skills that would serve you well when it came time to step behind the camera yourself?</i></b></div>
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JF: I’m very proud of my performance in Dead Shadows and I had a lot of fun doing American Muscle. I’ve picked up knowledge on every set that I have been on and I doubt that will ever change. There’s always something new to learn! I feel that having an acting background and understanding actors and their process did help me when directing The Shelter and will be a valuable asset moving forward.</div>
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<b><i>AOTD: The indie horror scene has been spitting out a lot of great movies for the last several years. What movies have particularly impressed you and why?</i></b></div>
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JF: Adam Wingard’s THE GUEST with Dan Stevens floored me. It sported a stellar cast, an intriguing mystery; stand out 80's like music/score, bleak humor and potent moments of extreme violence! I loved every second of that film!</div>
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<b><i>AOTD: I too loved THE GUEST. Dan Stevens was inspired casting and the soundtrack was one of the best of 2014. What do you think of the current state of mainstream horror?</i></b></div>
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JF: For every five Paranormal Activity-like flick I have to endure, there’s one Sinister I can relish. I have mixed feelings about current Studio horror and find more fulfillments within the Indie scene.</div>
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<b><i>AOTD: I've yet to see SINISTER. I really need to fix that. Are there any established directors whose work you particularly respect and who have had an influence on your approach to film-making?</i></b></div>
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JF: Mel Gibson, David Lynch, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski would all be influences of mine. I REALLY want to work with or for Mel Gibson in the near future. I actually sent him a copy of The Shelter. You don’t get if you don’t try! </div>
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<b><i>AOTD: Some very fine choices there. Moving forward do you intend to juggle directing with acting and what does your immediate future hold in regard to both?</i></b></div>
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JF: If a solid acting role falls in my lap, I’ll take it, but right now I am not pursing that, my energy is focused on directing. I am already in the process of setting up my next film. Something with a bigger budget and that is much more mainstream. We’re moving in the right direction but I will keep details to myself until the money is locked. </div>
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<b><i>AOTD: 'The Shelter' is screening at Frightfest in London next month. Do you have a message for the audience? </i></b></div>
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JF: What you get out of The Shelter will have a lot to do with who you are, how you were raised and the nature of your spirituality... or lack of. I hope you enjoy it, and if you don’t, that’s okay too. It’s not a film for everybody, but it may be for you...</div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-54060087844508788882015-07-12T18:08:00.000+01:002015-07-12T19:33:40.130+01:00Bad Moon - Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Bad Moon</i></b> kicks off in Nepal where photo-journalist Ted (Michael Pare) and his girlfriend Marjorie (Johanna Marlowe) are attacked by a werewolf. Although he is injured during the assault Ted manages to get his hands on a shotgun which he uses to blow he beast’s head to smithereens but not before it mauls Marjorie to death. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story then picks up a few months later. Tom has been home for some time and has been living in a mobile home by a lake surrounded by a dense forest. In the wake of several mutilated and partially eaten bodies having been discovered in the area, victims of a wild animal attack it is supposed, he contacts his lawyer sister Janet (Mariel Hemingway) and takes her up on her offer to stay at her place for a while.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Janet and her son Brett (Mason Gamble) own a German Shepherd called Thor and it’s the presence of the latter as the hero of the movie that makes this somewhat unique in the annals of werewolf cinema. Once Ted arrives at his Sister's house it isn't long before thing get very hairy indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The werewolf sub-genre is one that has held enormous appeal for me ever since at age twelve I saw <b><i>An American Werewolf in London</i></b> and <b><i>The Howling</i></b> within months of each other. My tiny Hammer Horror loving mind was blown. Add to this the fact that I’ve enjoyed every movie Eric Red has been involved in whether as director or scriptwriter and it’s therefore hard to fathom why I'm only now getting around to watching <b><i>Bad Moon</i></b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <b><i>Bad Moon</i></b> script was adapted by Red from the
novel Thor by Wayne Smith. I haven’t read the novel so can't comment on how
faithfully it made the transition from book to script then to screen. Given that the movie only runs to eighty minutes I can
only guess that a lot of the story didn't make the journey. The film’s
brevity is both a good and bad thing. It doesn't outstay its welcome and
rattles along at a lightning pace. At the same time, however, the movie is good enough
that I would have welcomed it spending a little more time with the characters
to develop who they are and their relationships to each other. The werewolf genre is somewhat unique in that the victim of the curse is very much an atypical villain. Those who die at the hands of a werewolf are often no less tragic figures than the human being in the grip of the curse who is apt to feel a crushing remorse in the face of the nocturnal carnage he has wrought. What character development exists is enough to make the viewer care about the characters and their ever worsening plight. But they could definitely have been more fully developed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A crucial aspect of any werewolf movie and one that is often poorly realised is the design of the creature itself. Some
movies get it right and some movies get it so wrong that it can derail the
viewer’s enjoyment of the entire movie. <b><i>Bad Moon</i></b> gets some things very right
and other things tragically wrong. The werewolf here is of the bipedal variety,
the suit being topped off by a head c/w very effective animatronic features
which make this particular beast one of the baddest, scariest looking motherfuckers ever to howl at the moon. In action it’s terrific and serves to highlight the benefits of having a monster that is physically present in the
scene over the ongoing trend for rubbish CGI (<b><i>An American Werewolf In Paris</i></b> I am looking at you). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s a caveat though…and it’s a substantial one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The transformation, which Eric Red
holds back from showing until the final act of the movie, is a crushing disappointment. It would have been
far more effective had they gone full practical as with <b><i>An American Werewolf in
London</i></b> but I guess the budget wouldn't stretch to that or the special effects team didn’t have Rick Baker’s mad skills with prosthetics. The transformation is realised via a combination of make-up effects alongside some very, very cheap looking CGI. However, the effectiveness of the final, fully transformed wolf man more than makes up for this and I enjoyed the fact that the creature
continued to talk throughout the first half of the change, the voice growing
more and more bestial and terrifying as the transformation took hold. Very effective.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The performances from all of the
cast range from good to excellent but the stars of <b><i>Bad Moon</i></b> are undoubtedly
Michael Pare and Primo, the German Shepherd who plays Thor. Pare succeeds in bringing some real pathos to the role of Tom which is remarkable given the economy of the actual script and the mostly perfunctory character development. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He manages to make the character of Tom both sympathetic and ultimately
terrifying as the moon gets fuller and the curse sinks it’s claws deeper into his soul. Primo is a revelation, delivering a nuanced, subtle performance which places him amongst the most talented canine thesps I've ever seen. There's an intelligence and sadness in his eyes and he really works as the hero of the movie out to protect his owners even if it costs him his life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall <b><i>Bad Moon</i></b> is an above average mid-Nineties horror flick and I would recommend it to anyone who is already a fan of the werewolf sub-genre. It's neither the equal of any of Eric Red's other movies (including the batshit crazy <b><i>Body Parts</i></b>) nor anywhere near as bad as the critical reception at the time of its release would suggest it to be (it got a kicking). It's an easy movie to enjoy with the performances by Pare and Primo plus the outstanding werewolf design buying it at least an extra mark. Definitely worth tracking down.</span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-55352915609132129872015-07-08T23:18:00.001+01:002015-07-08T23:44:25.869+01:00Frightfest London 2015: Mark Murphy Interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Here we go with the start of our Frightfest 2015 coverage. We're kicking off in fine style with an interview with Mark Murphy, director of Awaiting, a claustrophobic tale of terror set in the remote English countryside. The movie stars mega-talented Scottish character actor Tony Curran who delivers a chilling performance in the role of Morris. He's joined by ex-X-Factor contestant Diana Vickers and Rupert Hill who popped up in 2012's Entity. I'll be running a review of Awaiting after its Frightfest screening and would like to thank Mark for taking the time to answer my questions.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Tell us a little bit about your experience shooting Awaiting. How many days did you shoot for? Did the script change at all during the shoot? Were there any disasters or did it all go smoothly? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: We shot for four weeks up in Yorkshire, in the summer, 2 weeks on location, 2 weeks in the studio. Shooting in the studio allowed us to fly through the scenes, but shooting in the forest, in the pleasant weather was great fun. Usually, if it’s a happy shoot there’s aways a great comradery amongst film crews, and this is was exactly that, we had a lot of fun, and a lot beers in the evening. No major disasters, apart from nearly losing the main location a few days before shooting was due to begin, but after I sent a few saucy photos of myself, everyone was happy, and we were back on track. I think we were fairly lucky, the Gods must have been smiling upon us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Awaiting is for much of its runtime a chamber piece. Did you write the script with what was presumably a very low budget in mind? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: A couple of reasons really, it definitely helped with the budget by keeping the locations minimal, although that being said we had several sets built, which became an expense, but also the heart of the film is about isolation, for all three of the characters, Morris, being a social outcast, Lauren not having anyone in her life beyond Morris, and Jake who gets taken from the life he knows and trapped in the grisly world of Morris and Lauren. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Tony Curran is a well-established character actor while Diana Vickers is obviously better known as a pop singer. It’s an interesting mix. Tell us a little bit about the casting process. What were you looking for and did the cast you ended up with mirror your expectations? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: We’ve got three different generations/sources of actors for sure, and all brought unique and valuable elements to the film. Tony, as you say, is an established Hollywood actor, having worked with Spielberg, Scott, Mann, etc. etc. and he brings a wealth of experience and talent, film is in his blood, and he brought Morris to life as a fantastically charming yet nightmarish character. Rupert has years of TV experience, having been in Coronation Street for six years, and his approach was slightly different to Tony’s, more analytical of the character, and worked hard to get under the skin of Jake. Diana, of course was in X Factor, and had her music career, but she also starred on stage in the West End in Little Voice, so had the acting chops on her. When she auditioned, I wasn’t aware of her singing career, not being an X Factor fan, but my mum was delighted when she found out. All three made the characters their own, and I’m delighted with what they brought to the party. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: There’s a particular scene of self-mutilation in Awaiting that I don't want to spoil. I'm sure you'll know which scene I'm referring to. Did you research whether the method used by the character to achieve his grisly goal would actually work or did you simply think, “Fuck it…it’ll look cool.” </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: Honestly, a bit of both. I wrote it because I felt it was an imaginative, and original plot twist, but when it came to the prosthetics, we did have to research how and if it would work. I wouldn’t suggest anyone giving it a go, to try and prove me wrong.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AOTD: Tony Curran handles the accent very well and is a truly terrifying and convincing psychopath. Did he bring any of his own ideas to the table?</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: Well it helped that Tony’s a terrifying and convincing psychopath in real life, so he was able to bring that personal experience to the table… I jest, but Tony did ring me up out of the blue from Los Angeles, a week or two before shooting started. I didn’t recognise the number and he was testing out his Morris persona, it scared the shit out of me, it took a few moments to realise that it was Tony, and not some guy called Morris who I owed money to and wanted to kill me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Did you ever consider allowing him to keep his native accent? Because surely there’s nothing scarier than a Scottish madman.</i></b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: I didn’t want the film to be that scary to be honest, so thought I’d make it less terrifying by keeping him south of the border, seriously, the scariest film character of all time has to be Begbie from Trainspotting. We did play around with the accent, but I wanted it to feel like this is where Tony had grown up, and if we kept it Scottish, then Diana would have to go with it as well, now that would have been scary, a Blackburn girl trying on the Scottish accent. Actually my mother’s family is Scottish, so there were definitely a few inspiring relatives I could base Morris on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Awaiting isn't your first foray into the horror genre. Is it a genre you feel particularly drawn to and if so why? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: I don’t think so, to be honest, I feel I let the side down with my first film, The Crypt, I’m definitely very proud of this one though, I’m not genre-centric, the film I’m shooting this summer is a comedy. The one after that, hopefully, a war drama, but who knows, I’ve still got a couple of interesting horror scripts on the table, so may try tackling it again soon. For me I’m more led by the story, if it’s engaging with interesting characters, less so by the genre.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Are there any past masters of horror cinema, or just cinema in general, whose work you particularly respect and who have had an influence on your approach to film-making? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: For sure, I’d say my favourite director is David Fincher, and Seven was hugely influential for me making this film. Silence of the Lambs of course is another one, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want Morris to be as chilling as Hannibal Lector, and probably my favourite film of all time is Jaws. I once met David Fincher when Girl With the Dragon Tattoo came out. I told him that Seven was one of my favourite films, he replied; “I hope the police know where you are at all times.” Happy times :) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Are you going to stick with horror or are there other genres you would like to try and would you be comfortable directing from someone else’s script should the opportunity present itself? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: As with the earlier response, I love horror films, but wouldn’t pin myself down to one specific genre, I love films and I love film making, and if I can get to experiment with as many genres as possible I’ll be a hugely happy and lucky guy. Maybe not musicals though. For sure I’d be happy to work on other people’s scripts, although I’d definitely ending up re-stirring the pot to try and put my signature on it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Awaiting is screening at Frightfest in London next month. Do you have a message for the audience? </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MM: Love me. No, just that I hope you enjoy the film and that it rattles around in your head for a day or two after. If you don’t like it, I apologise profusely and promise my next one will be better.</span><br />
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-70808809246411070832015-07-05T18:52:00.003+01:002015-07-05T18:52:52.797+01:00The House at the End of Time - Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><b>The </b></i><b><i>House at the End of Time (aka La casa La casa del fin de los tiemposis) </i></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">is the
type of movie that is infuriatingly difficult to review. It’s impossible to explore without spoilers so be warned that this review will touch on certain
areas that will shine a light on the nature of the mystery that is threaded
throughout this cleverly structured film and holds the narrative together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ll start by bluntly stating that this
is not a horror movie. It comes dressed as a horror movie and often feels like
a horror movie with many of the trappings of the haunted house sub-genre on display. But it
is NOT a horror movie. What we have here is a story with a sci-fi/time travel
concept at its core </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">masquerading as a fright flick</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not to suggest that horror movie fans won’t find much to enjoy from a genre lovers perspective.
The movie does contain a satisfying number of scares most of which are, admittedly, of the sudden loud noises variety. However, instead of being a hoary and tired method of making the viewer jump these moments serve an incremental purpose as
the story unfolds and provide exclamation marks that support the gradually accumulating evidence that reveals what is truly going on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The one thing that makes me a
little more comfortable in revealing the temporal nature of the mystery is that
I can’t honestly imagine anyone not arriving at a suspicion of the direction the movie is going to take within the
opening half hour of director Alejandro Hidalgo’s otherwise impressive debut. Besides some moderately clunky but sufferable sub-Spielbergian scenes with child actors this is the only real failure. It’s an area where I
feel something could have been done to ensure that the story unfolded with a little more
caution and less transparency. Being the work of a first time director/scriptwriter and in the face of everything that does work this is easy to forgive.</span></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The </b></i><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>House at the End of Time</i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> remains enjoyable despite how predictable it is and the way in which past, present and future events collide in an expertly staged tumult during
the closing half hour is a joy to behold. Try as I might I could not detect any
part of the chronological confluence that forms the well crafted </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">dénouement </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that felt misplaced or ill judged. Given how easy it is to mismanage a story such as this and end up with an inexplicable paradox I came away impressed by the skill with which Hidalgo weaved the various elements together to form a solid, watertight whole. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of the performances are solid throughout (the exception being some of the children) with most of the focus being on the female protagonist Dulce who spends 30
years in prison after being found guilty of the murder of both her husband Juan
José and her child Leopoldo the latter of whom’s body was never found.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Ruddy Rodriguez delivers an assured
performance both as the middle aged Dulce and as the post-prison, older, more cynical
version. She succeeds in the latter despite some underwhelming old age make-up
which does a fairly poor job of transforming her convincingly into a septuagenarian. Movies with a far larger budget have stumbled harder in this respect so it is easy to excuse here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall <b><i>The House at the End of
Time</i></b> wears its influences on its sleeve but nonetheless presents an entertaining and well-constructed
assemblage of ideas that carry more than a faint whiff of The Twilight
Zone.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s an impressive debut and counts
as my first taste of Venezuelan film-making. I would also urge anyone reading this review to please ignore the cover of the hideous UK DVD release (see above). It misrepresents the film to a degree that is insulting. Hidalgo's debut is far more interesting than the artwork suggest and classier too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve's score:</span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-27739251038062403892014-08-24T16:51:00.000+01:002014-08-24T16:53:04.211+01:00Frightfest London 2014 - Housebound<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I feel an explanation is due. Yesterday we published a review of Housebound as part of our Frightfest coverage which was written by Sam Inglis who is responsible for the brilliant <a href="http://www.24fps.org.uk/"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">24 Frames Per Second</span></a><span style="color: #cc0000;"> </span>movie blog (seriously...check it out it's fantastic). Here he occupies the role of my wing man and sometimes, inevitably, we disagree on the quality of a movie. I decided that in the event of my opinion of Housebound being significantly more positive than his I would put up my own counterpoint review. And so it came to pass that I enjoyed the movie approx twice as much as Sam did. We would appreciate you sharing your opinion. Did you enjoy Housebound or do you share Sam's opinion that its critical success is entirely bewildering? Feedback can be provided either by leaving a comment here or letting us know via our Twitter feed (</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>https://twitter.com/AOTDBlog). Without further ado he's my 8 out of 10 review. Enjoy.</i></b></span></div>
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The story opens with a badly botched attempt to break into a cash point which results in wild child Kylie being sentenced to home detention for eight months. So it is that she finds herself a prisoner in her childhood home with only her motormouth mother and taciturn stepfather to keep her company. The house itself appears to be haunted and it soon becomes apparent that it comes complete with one of those pesky violent histories with a young girl having been brutally murdered during its previous existence as a halfway house for disturbed adolescents. With the scene set thusly writer/director Johnstone takes the audience on a twisty-turny, relentlessly fun journey from spookfest to murder mystery with energetic, always entertaining results.</div>
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Chief amongst the many things Johnstone gets right with Housebound is the casting. Ex-Neighbours actress Morgana O'Reilly hits precisely the right note as the errant daughter and makes Kylie's transformation from disrespectful wastrel to heroine completely believable. There's also quite a lot of physical stunt-work in the last half hour of the movie and she really throws herself into it. Her long-suffering and slightly dippy mother Miriam is brought to wonderful life by Rima Te Wiata, another veteran of Aussie soap, and the back and forth between parent and daughter is consistently entertaining thanks to an often amusing script. Glen Paul-Waru, who plays Amos, the security guard charged with overseeing Kylie's detention and who also happens to have a keen interest in all things paranormal is less effective but not disastrously so. Perhaps this is a result of his having less acting experience. He has some off moments but overall he's decent and his character is so amiable that it's easy to forgive his momentary shortcomings.</div>
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The other star of the movie is the house itself. Full of strange noises and lights that tend to switch off at the least opportune moment it provides a wonderfully atmospheric backdrop and as its various secrets are revealed becomes only more effective as Housebound spirals towards its action packed conclusion. It helps that in Simon Riera the movie is gifted with a cinematographer who delivers some fine hand held camerawork, full of clever fast-cuts, without ever straying into the intolerable realms of shakey-cam where, more often than not, it becomes impossible to follow the flow of the action from one moment to the next. Overall it's a handsomely lensed movie.</div>
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The only problem I had with Housebound is less to do with the quality of the movie and more an issue with it being marketed as a horror comedy. The humour here is largely derived from the characters and the dialogue rather than from the situation and, with the exception of one scene near the end, I found myself smiling along with it rather than laughing. If you go in expecting it to be uproariously funny in the style of Braindead you might be a bit disappointed. It's not that kind of movie.</div>
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There's much I'm unable to say about this wonderful addition to New Zealand's sadly limited history of horror cinema. There are twists and turns that are so intrinsic to the movie's effectiveness that to go into any more detail than I already have would be to insult the film-makers and deprive its future audience of much of the fun it has to offer. Housebound is an exciting ride, packed with ghoulish surprises, that despite being close to two hours long hurtles along at such a pace that it feels so much shorter. Highly recommended.</div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-56734223078384271442014-08-24T10:12:00.000+01:002014-08-24T16:54:14.407+01:00Frightfest London 2014: Truth or Dare<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dir: Jessica Cameron</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Truth or Dare has a strong, simple concept: a group of friends who call themselves the Truth or Dare Devils and have become popular through uploading dare videos to youtube are kidnapped by Derik (Ryan Kiser), their biggest fan and forced into a deadly version of the eponymous game, all of which is being filmed and uploaded to their channel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jessica Cameron's feature directorial début does work on a level of commentary; it has things to say about obsessive fandom and the way fans increasingly are able to feel like they know their idols, thanks to social media. Happily, Truth or Dare is no po-faced examination of these issues, nor is it a moral panic film about the perceived dangers of the net, rather Cameron and co-writer Jonathan Scott Higgins use their theme as a hook on which to hang a fun, funny and increasingly extreme 80 minutes of horror.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their are two great advantages to basing the entirety of a film around a game of Truth or Dare: it imposes a structure, with the characters each taking their turns, and the dramatic stakes are built in, as either option is likely to lead to something unpleasant, be it a secret being revealed or dare that is difficult to stomach or achieve. Cameron takes full advantage of both of these virtues, building the horror and the stakes turn by turn as the games becomes ever more extreme. This also allows the film to deal in different kinds of horror; from the shock of the opening to the psychological horror of early revelations to the visceral, painful, gore of the last 15 minutes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The biggest directorial choice here is that of the shooting style and, thankfully, Cameron opts not to shoot the whole film as found footage (though she does make use of the camcorder that the group's captor is using during the game). The great virtue of this choice is that it means that we can focus on the story, rather than on the mechanics of the film's style. The screenplay isn't always completely plausible, especially the amount of dark secrets in this one room and the idea that the videos being uploaded by Derik are getting 400,000 hits within about 20 minutes. That said, the screenplay builds effectively and delivers a lot of nice shock moments, particularly a cool one for Cameron herself, responding nonchalantly and unexpectedly to an extreme dare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The performances are a mixed bag, but there are some real highlights. Ryan Kiser's twitchy mania lends an unpredictability to Derik that sets the film effectively on edge right from his first appearance and Jessica Cameron and Heather Dorff are increasingly effective as the film ratchets up the punishment being doled out and reveals more and more about their characters. The other performances have their moments, but don't, overall, match up to the three leads, it's here that you can sense a little time and budget pressure on the film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Truth or Dare isn't the most visually interesting of films, but that's more down to the single setting and the turn based structure, which, effective as it can be from a story point of view, also lays down a visual template for the film that doesn't always work to its advantage. However, the film is never dull and, when it comes to what horror fans are likely to care most about; the gore effects, acquits itself very well. There are, again, a couple of glimpses of possible time pressure in the visuals, especially in one glaring (if brief) continuity error, which really should have resulted in another take.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Overall, Truth or Dare isn't a masterpiece. Its origins as a project conceived and made by a group of friends are clear in the sometimes scrappy feel of the project, but Jessica Cameron and crew largely turn this to their advantage. The somewhat frenzied atmosphere after the group are kidnapped papers over some of the film's rougher edges, and throws us right in with the characters. It's a fun, engaging, nasty little film and promises interesting things to come from this team.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-5036304702390976182014-08-23T08:55:00.000+01:002014-08-24T16:55:10.701+01:00Frightfest London 2014: Housebound<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Housebound, if the critical reaction so far is anything to go by, appears to be on track to be one of the big hits of Frightfest, but it left me extremely disappointed, and not a little baffled as to why it's had such a great reception so far.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly) is in her mid-twenties and after a botched cashpoint robbery she is sentenced to eight months house arrest at her estranged Mother's (Rima Te Wiata) home. Kylie's mother has long believed the house is haunted, which Kylie dismisses until she begins to hear noises. After one incident Kylie's probation officer Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), who is interested in the paranormal, begins investigating the history of the house, eventually drawing Kylie in to what seems to be developing into a murder mystery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Housebound is essentially a film of two halves, neither of them especially original or notably brilliantly executed. In its first half it develops into a very standard issue noises off haunted house movie; creaking pipes, creepy props and the odd boo scare. The second half switches focus slightly, becoming a murder mystery (but not a terribly well developed or interesting one) with horror undertones. I've also seen reviews allege that Housebound is meant to be a horror comedy. I'm not sure where anyone gets that impression, but I can only recall one thing I'd call a joke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Morgana O'Reilly is okay as Kylie, but she's not an especially interesting or enjoyable character to follow. Kylie treats everyone around her (Mum, Stepfather, probation officer, psychiatrist) with contempt and evolves only minimally as the film goes on. You can't blame O'Reilly for turning in a one note performance when that appears to be what was on the page, but one note it is. The only character you can really root for here is Amos, (and Glen-Paul Waru does a nice job in the part) but the film does less and less with him as it goes on and he stops fulfilling its exposition needs by motivating Kylie (a bit). By the end, Housebound seems to be chucking things at the wall to see if they'll stick, and for me they seldom do, especially in the case of a character introduced late in the day to no story purpose but to be a red herring (also, where does he get his make up?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a murder mystery there is often a balancing act between seeding your solution so that it doesn't arrive out of the blue and tipping your hand too early. Housebound doesn't strike this balance well, instead it simply seems to run out of characters who could have been responsible, before surrendering to a very rote stalk and slash ending.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a few nice ideas in Housebound, but several are poorly used. The fact that Kylie is tied to the house by the ankle bracelet that enforces her house arrest is an idea that promises much drama, but it's only used once and the twist with Amos' character, while a fun moment, means it can't pay off a second time. Only a couple of scenes stand out as being truly effective. First is the one joke I recall, which starts by playing on a typical shower scene and has a neat payoff. Secondly there's a decent suspense scene as Kylie searches the house of her leading suspect in the murder. These moments are fine, but they hardly add up to much when combined with the rest of the film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Housebound isn't terrible, if it were I actually might have had more fun with it, instead it's a rather dull exercise that walks two well traveled paths and isn't especially interesting company on either journey.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-9854519701393699762014-08-22T17:54:00.000+01:002014-08-24T15:00:00.056+01:00Frightfest London 2014 - Jessica Cameron Interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>When I approached Jessica Cameron to request access to a screener of Truth & Dare I honestly didn't know what to expect of the movie. Female horror director's are few and far between and female horror directors who are willing to give the guys a run for the money in terms of bringing the nasty are in even shorter supply. So it was with dark delight that I discovered that Truth or Dare doesn't just deliver in terms of shocks but at times surpasses most of its peers without breaking a sweat. This is a movie that doesn't break taboos so much as it tears them into a bloody, ruptured mess, sets fire to the remains then pisses on the ashes while all the time laughing like a maniac. Oh...and it's a lot of fun at the same time. Anyway...here's how the interview went.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Did you see Truth or Dare as an opportunity to prove that female horror directors can go toe to toe with the gents when it comes to shock factor?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: I did. I actually didn't intend to direct this when my co-writer Jon Higgins and I drafted the script. We originally went out to 6 indie directors and I was surprised that it was the male directors who had the biggest problems with the content. I didn't want to change the story or "water it down" (cause I hate that) and Devanny Pinn was actually the first to tell me that I should direct it. After I thought about it I realized that I was the only one who WANTED to tell this story as it was written in all its glorious, violent detail.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: You co-wrote the script with Jonathan Scott Higgins and you're working with him again on Mania. How does the collaborative process work for you guys?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: With Truth Or Dare we actually worked a lot closer to each other. With Mania I have given notes but its been a very different process. Jon and I have both been working on so many other projects this year that he really took to the general concept and went nuts with it. He's a great writer and I am much more of an idea kinda gal. I have these cool concepts and ideas but without Jon to connect the dots I would be lost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Tell us a little bit about the casting process. How did you guys go about filling the roles and what were you looking for in your actors besides the ability to convincingly deliver agonising screams?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: When Jon and I were writing it we wrote it with a few people in mind. Luckily for us they all loved the script and wanted to do the film.The few remaining roles we cast via auditions. We intentionally tried to write a script with as few actors as possible. When your making a low budget feature film keeping the cast small is crucial. We held in person auditions as well as accepting video ones. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I get asked by actors all the time how they can submit to my films but the reality is I cast who I know, who I think is talented, will be a joy on set and promote the film afterwards. The best thing an actor can do is politely email me their headshot and resume, with all their links and then stay involved in my film world. Every time an actor likes the status on my films facebook page its a reminder that they are engaged and involved, its the polite way to remind me that you are still there.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AOTD: How comfortable (or uncomfortable) were they with some of the more extreme moments?</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: I tried to be very honest and upfront so that everyone knew what they were getting into from the start. I think that helped a lot. It's important that everyone from the actors to the crew know what to expect as far as what you are filming. Some of the actors were definitely more comfortable then others but all were very professional about it which is key when filming such delicate scenes. We tried to work at each actors comfort level, work at their speed. I was really smart about casting actors whose personalities would mesh which helped a lot too so that they could bond and as a result like and trust each other in those delicate scenes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: What were the main challenges you faced bringing your original vision to the screen intact on what must have been a very tight budget? Did the shoot go smoothly?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: The shoot went pretty smoothly. I am a huge fan of having a plan B and plan C for EVERYTHING and there were certainly times when this was needed. But overall it was pretty smooth. I really focused on getting the best team and one that I felt would work well together. I think that this is crucial when it comes to having a successful shoot. One bad apple really can spoil the whole bunch, so aligning the right team for the right project is crucial!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The biggest challenge was getting the best technical quality without a budget and limited crew. We shot long hours, worked hard and really just focused on getting the best quality that we could.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Truth or Dare has been hitting the festival circuit pretty hard. How critical do you feel this is to independent film-makers and do you enjoy sitting in a room full of horror geeks and gauging whether they are digging your movie or is it a bit of an ordeal?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: I think film festivals are wonderful for creating "noise" for your project and also getting film makers to connect with the horror fans directly. For me its been really encouraging to see their reactions face to face. When you give your everything to a project, and then you get to see people really appreciate it, it warms your heart.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is very hectic though to be doing it ALL yourself (or in my case with my producer Jon Higgins). There is just so much to do when it comes to the festival circuit - submitting and filling out all the forms, promoting, attending, marketing, etc. Its a full time job all by itself!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Truth or Dare is your feature debut. What do you think you’ve learned from the experience?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: I learned so much. First of all the importance of post production - your post team is so important. As an actor you like to believe that you create the character, and though this is true I really got to see how characters and the story line can be adjusted through the magic of editing. I also leaned about when to push back and stick to your guns and when to compromise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: The indie horror scene has been jumping for the last several years. What movies have particularly impressed you and why?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC - There are so many great indie genre films in the last few years. Some of my favorites include:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">American Mary - The Soska's really made a powerful and beautiful film, with strong subtext. Their ability to create these strong female characters who are unlike any we have seen before is impressive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Excision - Ricky Bates really was able to pull amazing performances out of his cast, and its such a unique story with an ending that even I did not see coming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You're Next - Adam Wingard and Simon Barret really worked to tell an original take on the classic "home invasion" story line. They characters were all unique and I liked how they incorporated so much into this tight script.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AOTD: Three great choices there. I love them all but especially Excision. What do you think of the current state of mainstream horror?</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: I think mainstream horror is pretty boring and generic, over all at least. For me the indie horror scene is producing much more original and interesting content. So much of the studio produced films are generic, or repetitive these last few years. The studios are so much more afraid to take a chance with an original story/ cast/ sub-genre/ etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I love that the indie scene is where the directors and producers seem to be taking more risks and creating original content.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am honored to be a part of it!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Moving forward do you intend to juggle directing with acting and what does your immediate future hold in regard to both?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: You know after "Truth or Dare" I honestly did not think that I would direct again. Its just so much more work, you have to spend years on the same film, etc. Acting is so much easier and quite frankly you get so many more accolades. However I am a sucker for a great story, and as a horror fan I feel that there are stories that are not being told currently in the genre world. So I want to help bring them to life in whatever capacity I can, be it as an actor, producer or director. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have announced my next directing gig, "Mania" which is a "Fucked up Lesbian Love Story". I just fell in love with this twisted tale and knew that I was not right to act in it. So I opted to get behind the camera again. Its much more of a character piece, its a cross between two of my favorite films "Thelma and Louise" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Truth or Dare is screening at Frightfest in London this week. Do you guys have a message for the audience?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JC: One of the most important messages I try to get out there is if I can make a movie, anyone with the passion and desire can too. Just get off your ass and do it : ) I mean I did not go to school for film, or acting for that matter and just put all my time/effort and energy into it and its been an amazing experience. Everyone should follow their dreams, you only get to live this life once!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And of course - beware Youtube stars and their crazed fans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: I just want to finish up by saying thanks for taking the time to do this. I think Truth or Dare is going to kick ass at Frightfest and I hope you have a really awesome time there.</i></b></span><br />
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-91062888452760975702014-08-21T17:57:00.003+01:002014-08-24T15:00:45.359+01:00Frightfest London 2014 - Lucky McKee/Chris Sivertson Interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson, co-creators of All Cheerleaders Die (review coming next week) were kind enough to agree to answer some questions as part of our series of pieces on this year's Frightfest event which kicks off today in London. Here's how that went.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Can you guys tell us a little bit about the original version of All Cheerleaders Die and what led to that becoming something of a lost movie?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: The original ACD was us having our first go at a feature length film fresh out of college. We came up with a simple, aggressive idea and just went for it, teaching ourselves how to make a movie from soup to nuts. It was an incredible learning experience and made all the better by the fact that we were working as a team, learning how to collaborate, learning from each other's discoveries along the way. Once we finished the film we didn't really push trying to get it distributed and before we knew it we were on to our solo professional careers, so the movie just sat and aged like wine over time. It's a nice little time capsule for us and we are very interested in releasing a special edition of it sometime down the road for those curious about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Any chance of it turning up as an extra on the DVD/Blu-ray release of the 2014 version when it hits or is it something you're both happy to leave buried?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: No. We definitely want it out there, but we want it to be something special, so we're going to take the time to put together something that's really worth the audiences while.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Following on from the previous questions can you tell us a little bit about the gestation of this new version? How much DNA does it share with the 2001 version?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Christ: There are similarities in the base idea and a few strange connections here and there, but for the most part, this new version is it's own animal. We're different people now, and the new film reflects that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: How does the collaborative process work for you guys? Does having a partner during the writing and directing process make things easier or does it present its own set of challenges?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: It's pretty fluid. We've been helping each other on our individual works over the years, writing scripts together, you name it. We've been collaborating since we were in our late teens, so it's a special thing. We have a unique dialect and sense of humor between us and that comes out when we work together. This film isn't much like our own personal films. It's a different deal entirely. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: The tone of All Cheerleaders Die is quite erratic; at times shifting suddenly to jolting effect. Are there any movies that influenced the tone of the movie?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris:We were very excited about exploring tone shifts…or "mood swings"…within this story. Our influences are films that play outside the box structurally. Films that unfold in a different way than the standard hero's journey. We were also determined to not have this movie explain itself too much. We just let it be what it is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: It looks like it was a fun movie to make. How did the casting process go? Was it a smooth shoot? What was the on-set dynamic among the actors like?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: The casting was extensive and is one of the great and exciting parts of putting together a film. A good actor makes us look like better writers and directors. We were on the lookout for people that would give the story more dimension and…most especially…give us more ideas to play with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: Both of you guys have separately adapted Jack Ketchum novels. What is it that attracted you both to his work and are there any novelists other than Ketchum either of you would like to adapt?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: Sure. There's a bunch of great books out there. Many I would love to adapt, but as time goes on, it seems those opportunities are rare. It costs money to get the rights to a book and unless you pay for it yourself, you can end up losing control over things a bit which isn't very attractive. Personally, I've been trying to concentrate on material that I create and/or create with people I know and trust deeply.</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>AOTD: What do you guys think of the current state of the horror genre?</i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: It's as fine as it's ever been. There's good new horror films every year. It's one of the more consistent genres, I think.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: What's next for both of you guys both? Is a sequel to All Cheerleaders Die a possibility?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: It's definitely a possibility. We'd very much like to get into it, but we'd like to see how this one does first. Enough people need to want it, y'know? Otherwise, I'm just working on new stories, trying to build up a bunch of options for myself over the next couple years. Lot's of new exciting stuff to share before the year is out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: All Cheerleaders Die is screening at Frightfest in London this week. Do you guys have a message for the audience?</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lucky/Chris: The last time I was at Frightfest it was one of the best audience experiences I've ever had with one of my films. It was pretty hard to beat. And the presentation was phenomenal. I'm hoping lightning strikes twice with this new film, which is made with one of my oldest and dearest friends. This is not a Lucky McKee film…it's not a Chris Sivertson film…it's a McKee/Sivertson film and it's a whole new thing. One we're very proud of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>AOTD: I just want to finish off by saying thank you for allowing us to ask you guys some questions and wish you both all the best for Frightfest.</i></b></span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-39400002704820290932014-08-18T20:24:00.003+01:002014-08-24T15:01:37.544+01:00Frightfest London 2014 Preview - Main Screen Part Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Here's another trio of recommendation from this year's packed Frightfest main screen line-up. More main screen action to come tomorrow night plus we'll be diving into the Discovery Screen line-up.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>The Babadook</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Jennifer Kent</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>REPULSION meets ‘The Gruffalo’ in writer/director Jennifer Kent’s Sundance acclaimed debut feature as the unresolved traumas of a conflicted mother and disturbed son manifest as a malevolent entity threatening to consume them both. Amelia (Essie Davis in a stunning performance) and her son, Sam, have had a raw deal in life. Her husband Oskar died six years prior while driving her to the hospital pregnant with Sam, and his birthday is a particularly painful reminder. But this year things worsen dramatically. Samuel’s been having nightmares, and when a mysterious pop-up children’s book appears on his shelf titled ‘Mister Babadook’, he is finally able to put a name to the terror. Amelia tries to handle Sam with patience, understanding and sedatives, but his increasing feral aggression and her growing lack of sleep lead them inexorably towards the darkness. Prepare for horrific chills fuelled by grief, madness and monsters in the closet.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember when The Babadook intially appeared on my radar. The title of the movie alone filled me with curiosity. Such an unusal name. Then I saw the trailer and that initial interest caught fire and Jennifer Kent's debut became one of my most anticipated movies of 2014. There's something about the monster in the closet or under the bed that has never quite left me even though I'm now an adult of 44. I still find myself sometimes startled awake by a noise in the night only to find myself staring, hypnotised at that patch of darkness that seems just that little bit more dense than it ought to be. I even find myself closing the wardrobe door in the bedroom I share with my wife rather than leave it ajar. An overactive imagination some would call it and they'd probably be right. But always that tiny little voice in the back of my mind whispering, "what if". Garnish that with the fact that I have step children today complete with the multitude of worries and concerns that come with that and this movie taps into both distant childhood terrors never forgotten and adult concerns for the safety of your loved ones. That's a potent brew right there and the success of The Babadook on the festival circuit with both fans and critics alike suggests it gets the mix just right. This is one not to miss. (Oh...and how cool is that poster?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Eli Roth</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>From genre guru Eli Roth comes a post-modern celebration of the notoriously lurid and savage Italian cannibal genre as popularised by director Ruggero Deodato, his HOSTEL 2 star. Roth’s long-awaited return to the director’s chair after this six-year absence finds politically attuned, if naïve, NYC university student Justine roped into a campus activist group’s idealistic plan to travel to Peru to halt the annihilation of an endangered tribe by a corrupt construction company. But after a horrific plane crash that leaves half the radicals dead, the survivors are drugged, taken hostage and caged by the very tribe they were trying to help. Worse the mountain clan are cannibals and they are ravenous. Tapping into dark fears of man’s inhumanity to man with grisly humour and brutally matter-of-fact style violence, this jungle holocaust delves into bleak and thought-provoking horror with the disturbing aplomb Roth fans have come to recognise and appreciate.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eli Roth is one of the most devisive figures currently working in the field of horror cinema. Although I distance myself from the opinions of horror fans who think he's an overrated hack who is 100% ego to 0% talent I'm also not entirely comfortable with the idea that he was ever, or ever will be, the future of horror. Cabin Fever and the first Hostel movie were fun but flawed. I am, however, a huge fan of Hostel II and consider it to be a subversive gem of a genre movie that's far cleverer than most people give it credit for. The Green Inferno represents Roth's homage to a genre I'm widly unfamiliar with. The Italian cannibal movie. My lack of knowledge results from my not having the stomach for unsimulated scenes of animal cruelty (something that will change soon when I finaly work up the nerve to watch Cannibal Holocaust). At least that won't be an issue here but I have no doubt The Green Inferno will prove as polarising as his previous movies and for that reason alone this is a must see just so you can join in the debate afterwards.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Starry Eyes</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>In the city of dreams, a desperate actress will do whatever it takes for the role of a lifetime, no matter what the cost. Determined to make it in Hollywood, reluctant waitress Sarah Walker (superb Alex Essoe) goes on countless casting calls in hope of getting her big break. After a series of weird auditions at the mysterious Astraeus Pictures, she lands her dream part. But with this opportunity comes bizarre ramifications that will transform her both mentally and physically into something beautiful… and altogether more terrifying. From Travis Stevens, producer of CHEAP THRILLS, an occult tale of ambition, possession and the true cost of fame and fortune. Skilfully and scarily showing the ways in which tarnished Tinsel Town can turn a sweet starlet into an ego-maniacal monster, this nightmarish tragedy reveals for all to see what it means when actors talk about putting their soul on the screen.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I really like the look of this. Starry Eyes exudes a real Lynchian vibe that's obvious even from the trailer with echoes of both Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire coming through. I'm a big fan of occult horror, an obsession I can trace back to a Saturday night screening on BBC2 of the Hammer adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's brilliant The Devil Rides Out. Of particular note is a reportedly startling central performance courtesy of Elex Essoe as a fame hungry wannabe who sells her soul in exchange for success. Add to this the production sass of Travis Stevens who has been involved in some truly striking genre movies over the course of the last several years including previous Frightfest hit Cheap Thrills and Starry Eyes starts to look like something that could potentially be one of the hits of this year's festival.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>A subversive, psychologically disturbing back comedy marking the feature film debut of director/writer Riley Stearns, who cleverly employs the considerable talents of his wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead to play Claire – a young woman who appears to be under the grip of a mysterious new cult called ‘Faults’. After a rough divorce that has left him without any money, foremost cult expert Ansel (Leland Orser) is on tour giving seminars about such brainwashing. Approached by Claire’s distraught parents, he agrees to help them, and their daughter’s de-programming seems to run smoothly enough. However, the more Ansel spends with Claire the more he starts to doubt she’s actually brainwashed. Maybe there is something to ‘Faults’ after all? From this point on an unpredictable battle of wills begins; the question being raised, just who is being deprogrammed? Bizarre, unsettling and gripping, this proved a sleeper hit when shown at SXSW.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can't say too much about Riley Stearns' debut feature Faults without running the risk of spoiling the various surprises it has in store for the lucky Frightfest audience. What I can say is that it's excellent and there's no doubt in my mind that what we have here is one of the highlights of this year's festival. Featuring a couple of remarkably controlled performances courtesy of Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Leland Orser (both outstanding) and gifting them with a tight, character driven script, this is a slow burn indie gem that I'm already itching to see again. Considering he only had a few shorts to his name before now I'm truly impressed by Stearns' direction here. Faults delivers a beautifully orchestrated battle of wills, unfolding with uncommon subtlety and restraint for an utterly absorbing 90 minutes. Do not miss this and look out for our full review sometime next week.</span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-76811944616891944252014-08-17T17:24:00.004+01:002014-08-24T15:02:30.419+01:00Frightfest London 2014 Preview - Main Screen Part One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>It's Frightfest time again and I'm gong to waste no time with waffle and get straight into my recommendations. Here are the movies that I think horror fans should be checking out starting with what the main screen has to offer. If you're attending the festival please let us know either via the comments section below or via our Twitter account what movies you're most looking forward to this year.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>The Guest</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Adam Wingard</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Hold on tight for a slick, fast, fun, killer thriller. A brilliant homage to 1980s action flicks and slasher horror given a sharp twist by YOU’RE NEXT director Adam Wingard, it showcases ex-‘Downton Abbey’ actor Dan Stevens in an inspired star-making turn. He plays David, a soldier arriving on the bereaved Peterson family’s doorstep, claiming to be the best friend of their son who died in action. Inviting him to stay, at first the charming veteran seems the perfect guest, always happy to help out. But then the random killing starts and when suspicious daughter Anna investigates army records she learns that no one called David even existed. What's going on and can the family stop the cold-blooded lethal weapon in their home committing even worse atrocities? Giddily violent, superbly directed. Join THE GUEST list for an absolute nerve-shredding blast.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You're Next was one of the most memorable horror movies of last year and found a well earned place in my year end Top 10. It provided a brutal shot in the arm for the home invasion sub-genre of fright flicks which have been popping up with some regularity over the course of the last ten years and, in Sharni Vinson's Erin, delivered one of the best final girls in recent years. That was my first experence of Adam Wingard as a director and it put him firmly into the top tier of fresh new masters of horror alongside Ti West, Jim Mickle and Mike Flanagan (to name only a few). I'm always up for a new twist on the slasher genre and The Guest certainly sounds like it's going to deliver on that front. Plus I'm intrigued at the prospect of a Downton Abbey ulumnus being front and centre as the villain in a movie that I have no doubt deliver on the mayhem front if Wingard's last movie is anything to go by. The comparison to 1980s action flicks is likewise intriguing. I've little doubt The Guest is going to be one of the highlights of Frightfest 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Tommy Wirkola</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>HANSEL & GRETEL WITCH HUNTERS director Tommy Wirkola does the impossible with this sequel to one of FrightFest’s most popular 2009 attractions. He improves on his Nazi zombie original in clever ways that do not betray the core conceit of witty non-stop action, heartfelt emotion or crowd-pleasing carnage in this stoked up to the gore max continuation. After a quick précis of DEAD SNOW, sole survivor Martin crashes his getaway car in the mountains after fighting SS officer Herzog for control of the vehicle. Waking up in hospital Martin discovers he's blamed by police for all his friends' murders, he's had Herzog's severed arm attached to his shoulder by mistake and he now has the zombie creating power. Something he needs when Herzog's dead army advance towards the small town of Tarvik and he must resurrect the Nazi leader's most hated Russian adversaries for the deadliest and bloodiest combat.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given my love for most things zombie it's truly remarkable that I hadn't watched Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow until the inclusion of this sequel as part of this year's Frightfest line-up was announced. The first movie is a tour-de-force of undead Nazi mayhem that lovingly pays homage to the cabin in the woods genre with a lot of style and no small amount of blood and entrails. It was hugely entertaining and stuffed full of the sort of practical gore effects that seemed custom built to make me grin like a madman for 90 minutes. Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead is reportedly bigger, more inventive and delivers that all to uncommon thing: a sequel that is better than it's predecessor in every way. Given how good Dead Snow was the prospect of a bigger, gorier, more wildly entertaining sequel has me very excited indeed. This is exactly the kind of movie that demands to be seen in a packed hall full of ravening horror freaks. I practically guarantee this is going to be one of the highlights of this year's festival.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Housebound</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Gerard Johnstone</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Like THE LOVED ONES? Then this one’s for you. Gore, guffaws and a scary whole lot more lie in wait for permanently pissed-off Kylie Bucknell, forced to return to the family house when the court places her on home detention. Her punishment for a botched ATM raid is made all the more intolerable by the fact she has to live with her over-bearing motor-mouth mother Miriam who's convinced the house is haunted. But after dismissing Miriam's superstitions, rebellious Kylie too starts hearing unsettling whispers in the dark, creaking floorboards and strange bumps in the night. Has she inherited her mother’s overactive imagination or is there indeed evil afoot between the windows and doors? Find out in this TALES OF THE CRYPT-style Kiwi comedy chiller sporting a great sense of local humour, pitch-perfect cast chemistry, a fiercely fun tone, a very creepy atmosphere and a good deal of splatter mayhem.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know very little about Housebound but mention of The Loved Ones hooked my attention immediately. New Zealand is, of course, home to Peter Jackson who has given this movie his blessing, describing it as "bloody hilarious". Now...if the director of Braindead, which to my mind is neck and neck with Evil Dead II as the best horror/comedy ever to spring forth from the sick, demented imagination of a human being, is talking this up as something special...well...any horror fan would do well to sit up and take notice. The trailer certainly seems to evoke something of the energy and humour that Jackson so expertly harnessed in his early, more ardently blood-soaked endeavours. If the movie succeeds (and reportedly it does) in maintaining the off-kilter thrills and humour that are evident in the trailer I think we could be looking at another Antipodean classic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>From the director of PENUMBRA, COLD SWEAT and HERE COMES THE DEVIL, a freshly horrifying take on the werewolf genre. Crescent Bay is not the best place to live out one’s golden years. Once an idyllic retirement community, the gated hamlet has been beset by mysterious deadly attacks. So when blind, cranky war veteran Ambrose McKinley (superb Nick Damici from STAKE LAND, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE and COLD IN JULY) moves in, the residents are put off by his abrasive personality, especially when his guide dog is mortally wounded on his very first night. But it’s his grizzled take-no-prisoners attitude that’s needed to survive the sinister secret the secluded tight-knit neighbourhood is harbouring. For beasts that are neither animal nor man roam every full moon and with the local priest in complete denial over what is truly going on, Ambrose cannot wait until dark before the howling begins.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why are there not more great werewolf movies? If you trawl the last decade of horror cinema you'd be hard pushed to find a single shining example (feel free to correct me). For my money you'd have to go back to 2002 and Dog Soldiers for anything that could be labelled a classic example of this much maligned sub-genre. Could Late Phases be a contender for the first great werewolf movie since Neil Marshall's low budget marvel? It has a fine pedigree. Director Adrian Garcia Bogliano is an interesting talent who's 2012 Mexican shocker Here Comes the Devil played successfully at festivals the world over and was met with a mostly positive reaction from critics. Here too we have Nick Damici who via his frequent collaborations with Jim Mickle, most notably on the outstanding Stake Land, is fast becoming one of my favourite genre regulars. I have a good feeling about this one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Among the Living (Aux Yeux Des Vivants)</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Directed by Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>First they gave us INSIDE, then LIVID and now French fear directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo offer their most intense nightmare to date. It's the last day of school before summer break and 14 year-old troublemakers Victor, Tom and Dan leave early to explore the countryside and commit petty crime. Ending up on the scenery-strewn back-lot at the abandoned film studio, they witness a masked figure dragging a kidnapped woman into an underground lair. Running home and getting punished for their truancy, no one believes their crazy story. But the mysterious maniac has followed them and plans to silence them forever, even if their parents get in the way. Let the twisted terror begin in a deft combo of Stephen Spielberg, Stephen King and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE that features gorgeous cinematography, unpredictable thrills and pulse-pounding horror that manages to fire on all chilling cylinders.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's a true story. My wife isn't the biggest fan of horror cinema but this does't stop me relentlessly subjecting her to movies that I consider classics of the genre. So it came to pass that on a Friday night approx two years ago I suggested that we sit down to watch Inside, Julian Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's astonishingly visceral, relentlessly intense, taboo-incinerating debut. I have no idea what perverse notion possesses me and makes me constantly subject my long suffering wife to these kind of no-holds barred shock-fests (Martyrs and Irreversible are in her near future) but to her credit she hasn't divorced me yet. As the end credits rolled on Inside I looked at her and asked her her opinion. She looked at me, eyes wet, physically shaken and said, "I hate you!" I knew right there and then that I was correct in considering Inside to be a genre movie of considerable power and effectiveness. Maury and Bustillo delivered again with their sophomore effort Livide and I have no reason to believe that with Among the Living they will do anything other than complete a hat trick of modern horror classic.</span></div>
AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-76839781921995687832014-08-09T11:06:00.000+01:002014-08-24T15:03:20.206+01:00And Then Emily Was Gone - An Interview with John Lees and Iain Laurie<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span class="null"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I'm going to refrain from saying much about And Then Emily Was Gone as I've already delivered a five star review of the first three issues in the current issue of Scream Magazine and I fully intend to review the complete saga for Afraid of the Dark when all five issues are in the bag. What I will say is that it's the kind of comic that comes along only once in a blue moon. When I cast my eyes over the self published issue #1 some months ago with its wonderfully macabre artwork courtesy of Iain Laurie filtered through the dark imagination of writer John Lees I knew instantly that I was witnessing the birth of something special. Publisher Comix Tribe evidently agreed and jumped at the opportunity to publish And Then Emily Was Gone. Issue #1 is now on the shelves (BUY IT!!!) and having been met with universal critical praise and stellar sales I felt it was a good time to approach the creative minds behind this compelling work with some questions. Here's how that went:</i></span></b></span><br />
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<span class="null"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AOTD: Tell us a little bit about how AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE came about? Did the idea
arrive fully formed or was it something that grew from a small seed into the
masterpiece of the macabre I consider it to be? <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>A masterpiece of the macabre! I like
that! Ideas for stories are weird, as
one they are fully formed it does kinda feel like they were always that way,
and it's hard to go back and unpick how it all came together. I'd say the first small seeds came when an
anthology project Iain and I had been working on fell through, and we decided
to do something together on our own.
Iain sent me a bunch of comic ideas, and I took elements from all of
them, mixed and matched them, and jumbled them all into this combined pitch for
AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE. And the story
as it is quickly took shape from there as Iain and I riffed off one another and
threw ideas back and forth. It helps
that the two of us have similar interests and so draw our inspiration from
similar sources. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD: This question goes out to both of you. I'm
curious about what inspired EMILY both in terms of story and also in terms of
the overall aesthetic.</b> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>IAIN:</b>
So much... Danish cop shows, TWIN PEAKS, KILL LIST, THE WICKER MAN, European
animation. All thrown in the mix. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>Yeah, the stuff Iain brings up definitely all plays into the influences for
the project. But there are so many
influences, I almost feel like I can give a different answer every time someone
asks me this question. You're a fan of
horror, Stephen, you'll perhaps remember that "History of Horror"
documentary series that aired the BBC a couple of years ago, hosted by Mark
Gatiss. The middle episode - my
favourite one, which I've rewatched several times - was called "Home
Counties Horror," talking about Hammer Horror and the distinct brand of
British horror cinema that sprang up around it, from NIGHT OF THE DEMON to
BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW to the aforementioned THE WICKER MAN. That show touched on a very striking notion,
that the horror of these films were given more power in their understated
Britishness, how everything felt more grounded and closer to the real world
than it might in a polished Hollywood production, giving it a more unsettlingly
eerie quality. I definitely imagine AND
THEN EMILY WAS GONE sitting comfortably within that brand of "Home
Counties Horror."</span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD: Question for Iain. The artwork in EMILY was originally B&W. How did Megan
come on board and what was your initial reaction when you first saw some
coloured pages?</b></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>IAIN:</b>
Originally this was just an experiment for me to see if i could draw a comic
book with a proper narrative that was more accessible than my usual stuff. I
never expected it to be anything more than a small run small press book. Nick
Pitarra, who draws THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS, has been a big supporter of mine so
I sent him the pages and he got really excited and hooked us up with Megan and
she came on board and that's when things started changing. Her contribution has
been epic. She's made my stuff look really professional. She's a wee genius and I owe her loads.</span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AOTD: At what point did you guys realise that you had something special with EMILY
and tell us a little bit about how ComixTribe came on board?<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <b>IAIN:</b> For me it was when people like
Nick Pitarra and Riley Rossmo (who drew the amazing #1 cover) said how much
they liked it as they are proper comics people.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b> JOHN: </b>For me it was much earlier in the
process.... it was when Iain Laurie's pages started hitting my inbox. I immediately knew this was going to be
something very special right from then.
As for ComixTribe coming onboard, I already had a good relationship with
them based on them publishing my debut comic, THE STANDARD. I knew they were dedicated, stand-up guys,
and that they produced quality comics. I
believe the germ of the idea that they could publish AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE
was first planted at New York Comic Con last year, when publisher Tyler James kindly offered to let
me put some copies of my black-and-white small press edition of AND THEN EMILY
WAS GONE #1 on the ComixTribe table, and it ended up being one of the
hottest-selling items at the table. I
think that showed that ComixTribe's existing readership was interested in a
weird little comic like EMILY, and that something so starkly different from the
rest of their output could also perhaps attract a different demographic. And I knew from my past dealings with them
that ComixTribe are an absolute pleasure to work with, so the deal came
together quite quickly from there.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AOTD: There's a dark and twisted imagination at work in EMILY both in terms of the
narrative and the visuals. It feels like a very singular, cohesive vision. How
does the collaborative process work for you guys? <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>Our collaborative process has been pretty interesting. At the earliest stages of the comic's
development, Iain and I talked to each other at length about the story as a
whole, hitting the broad strokes of the beginning, middle and end and honing in
on who the major characters would be. As
such, AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE is very much both our creation in terms of this
world and its narrative. But from there,
once I got to actually writing the script and developing out the plot beats in
detail, Iain didn't want to read ahead.
He'd only read the scripts as he was drawing them, I believe so that it
felt fresh and he could be more "in the moment" with the scene he was
drawing rather than thinking too far ahead.
On my end, with my scripting I tried to tailor my writing to Iain more
than I've tailored to any other artist before, trying to work in motifs and
imagery that recurs in Iain's work and consciously attempting to create a piece
of work which could read as an "Iain Laurie's Greatest Hits"
collection for those familiar with his work, while also stretching him and
letting him try stuff he's not had the chance to do explore before. We have a very symbiotic collaborative
relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Johns the screenwriter and I'm the director. I like that as it lets me change
things and stuff but I always run it past John. We're lucky in that we have
very similar tastes and references. There's a character who when i read it I
went 'Laura's mum from TWIN PEAKS and that's how John had seen it in his head.
So were very much on the same page. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AOTD: Do either of you ever get something down on the page and take a step back to
think, "What the fuck is going on in my head?"<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>Periodically, yes. There's one
sequence in issue #4 in particular that I read back after I'd written it and
thought, "What is wrong with me!?"
And the story certainly goes to some dark, horrifying places. But generally speaking, if I write something
so vile that I have this gut instinct to pull back from it, that weirdly tells
me I'm going in the right direction and I go ahead with it. Because if I'm creeping myself out, then
hopefully it'll terrify readers! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b> IAIN:</b> I think if I tipped that domino over
I'd be in trouble. But I get asked that a lot and it's just that I've always
been drawn to the dark and the weird. David Lynch is my hero but people like
Francis Bacon, Stephen King, Chris Morris, Reeves and Mortimer are all in the
mix in my head and they are all do odd stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD: Is your creative relationship something that's likely to bear further fruit?
What's next for each of you ether collaboratively or otherwise?</b> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>IAIN:</b>
After EMILY finishes I'm doing a wee strip with Sam Read(EXIT GENERATION) and
then I'll see if there’s anything out there. There are a few writers who've
approached me so I might give John peace for a bit but we have two pretty solid
projects lined up and one that's a bit sketchier. But I will do more with John
definitely. The next thing we're talking about is so much weirder than EMILY. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>Oh yes, I've started tentatively plotting out my next collaboration with
Iain, and I'm very excited indeed about how it's shaping up! But before that, I have OXYMORON: THE
LOVELIEST NIGHTMARE for ComixTribe, a 4-issue miniseries taking a serial killer
thriller/crime procedural type spin on The Oxymoron, the popular supervillain
from THE RED TEN. The incredible Alex
Cormack is the artist on that book, and I can tell you now that will be going
to some really dark places. And I also
have a couple of other things in various stages of development and
production. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD: Question for both of you. Are there any other writers/artists with whom you
guys would like to work?</b> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>Nick Pitarra is an answer that jumps to mind. He's one of my favourite artists working
today as it is, and on top of that his support for EMILY has shown him to be a
true gentleman and a sound, decent guy.
He's doing the variant cover for AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE #2, out at the
end of this month, and it feels great having the two of us even share a title
credits page. I'd love the chance to
work with him on something in future.
Another guy I'd love to work with is Will Robson. He's a really gifted up-and-coming artist who
stepped in as co-artist with Jonathan Rector for the final two issues of THE
STANDARD. He did a fantastic job and
crafted some beautiful pages, but obviously the visuals of THE STANDARD are
always going to be thought of as Jon Rector's baby. So I'd love the chance to work with Will on
something that was our own, that he could really put his own visual stamp
on. Finally, my dream comics project (aside
from working with Iain on BATMAN!) is working with the great Ramon Marcus
Villilabos on a GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY comic for Marvel one day, so I need to
start gathering blackmail material to make that happen!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>IAIN:</b>
Political answer but..me! I haven't written anything since a project i wrote
for Garry Brown(IRON PATRIOT,CATWOMAN) ages ago that didn't happen. I'd like to
try writing some more HORROR MOUNTAIN-y stuff. But there are a few writers
who've approached me and all of them are doing really interesting stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD: Comic book movies are big news these days. If you were in a position to choose
any director to bring EMILY to life on the big (or small) screen who would you
choose and why?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <b>IAIN:</b> Well since everything I do is a
tribute to David Lynch he'd be ideal but there are a few-Denis Villeneuve,
Jonathan Glazer and Ben Wheatley would be great. Tim Burton 'Sleepy Hollow' era
was a big influence so him at that time would be ideal if he was still that
good. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>I'll echo Ben Wheatley, I think he'd absolutely knock it out of the
park. Another couple of suggestions is
Marc Munden, director of most episodes of TV's UTOPIA. That show has a really weird, off-kilter
aesthetic which I think would work really well with AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD: What do you guys think of digital comics? Are they the future of the industry
and, if so, does this cause you some dismay?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <b>IAIN:</b> I'm ok with them. I don't really
care so long as people are reading them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>I'm with Iain on this one. Plenty of
people were proclaiming digital comics as the death of print comics, but people
have been proclaiming the death of print comics for one reason or another for
over half a century now. And yet,
looking at recent trends, the print market has actually grown over the past
year or so, as has ComiXology, suggesting that both markets are finding new fans,
and one needn't necessarily impede on the other. I'm a fan of print. I go to the comic shop and dutifully buy my
new releases every week. But I love
browsing the ComiXology offers, and use it to buy older comics I've always
wanted to try but might not have splashed out the cash to have in a print
edition. ComiXology is where I house my
ever-growing Marvel Cosmic collection!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AOTD: Afraid of the Dark is, predominantly, a blog that focuses on horror films. What
do you guys think of the state of horror cinema today? Is there a particular
decade you consider to be the golden age?<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>JOHN:
</b>I'd say the golden age of horror is the 1970s. <i>Halloween,
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, The Wicker Man,
Alien, </i>we could probably squeeze in <i>The
Shining </i>from 1980. So many of the
greatest horror movies of all time fell within that decade. And while there are still some quality horror
movies being made today, and there are some talented filmmakers like Scott
Derrickson and Ti West working in the genre, largely it feels like horror
cinema is in a bit of a slump these days.
Putting my finger on just why that might be the case is quite difficult
to describe, but I think it could even be right down to their aesthetic. Historically, some of the most inventive,
influential horror has been low budget fare, and these pictures had this
grainy, murky film stock that to this day gives them a kind of strange
gravitas. But when you look at the low
budget horror market these days, it's all done on digital cameras that make
everything feel pristine and bloodless, like you're watching a soap opera on
TV. For me, some of the most exciting
horror is happening outside of cinema these days, with a whole wave of horror
comics making a big impression on readers.
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<span class="null"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>IAIN:</b>
This is a John question, I think. I don't keep up with horror as much as I used
to. I hate the whole torture porn arena and shock horror HUMAN CENTIPEDE stuff.
My favourite horror films are stuff like THE SHINING, THE MIST, THE THING, 30
DAYS OF NIGHT, KILL LIST, DEAD OF NIGHT, DAWN OF THE DEAD. I still think MULHOLLAND
DRIVE is one of the scariest films I've seen.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="null"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>AOTD</b>: I'd just like to finish up by thanking John and Iain for taking the times to provide such entertaining and well considered answers to my questions. I wish you both continued (and well deserved) success with Emily.</span></span></span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-2157404308401981232014-08-08T20:52:00.003+01:002014-08-09T16:34:02.578+01:00My Top 5 Horror Movies by Penny Dreadful (SFX Magazine Horror Columnist)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>I've been reading SFX Magazine since issue #1 and was delighted when they added a column devoted to all things horror. The only thing wrong with Penny Dreadful's monthly contribution is that there's not enough of it. That being the case I figured she would be a perfect choice to contribute a My Top 5 Horror Movies piece to Afraid of the Dark; partly it was because I thought it would be cool to have a respected horror columnist do a piece for us but mostly it was just because I was interested in finding out what horror movies float her boat above all others. So without (much) further ado I will leave you in the hands of Penny Dreadful but not before I thank her. Her's is a damn cool list that contains a fistful of horror classics that are close to my heart also. So cheers.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like most horror fans I’m often asked what I love about the
genre, with a mixture of fascination and disgust. My answer varies from day to
day: the survivalist mentality; the possibilities of the unfettered
imagination; a safe place to explore the dark side; a love of stories, myths,
legends. For today though, my answer is diversity. The sheer range of tropes,
themes, styles, tones and subgenres that exist under the horror umbrella (the
horror umbrella is like a normal umbrella only it’s made of, err, human skin.
Keeps you dry but kind of stinky and disgusting…). I’ve tried to pick a
range. The choice is endless.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre </b>- T</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he best horror film ever made – whether Tobe Hooper knew it
at the time or not. Opening shots into direct sunlight, the last half hour
scored with relentless screaming, it's an ordeal to watch. Not fun, not
frivolous, not glib, but horrible and important. This is true horror, a
reaction to Vietnam that presents real characters and strips them of their
humanity – a slasher, perhaps, an exploitation movie in more than one sense,
but miles from modern torture porn. Leatherface isn't interested in ritual
humiliation – that would be to see the Hardestys and their friends as
individuals. A slaughterhouse reject – Leatherface kills people as he would
cattle. Mallet to the head, door slams, the end. I came to this film late – age
19 or 20. It disturbed me and fascinated me. The production design alone is
incredible and it's the detail that makes this movie so perfect for me. The
dead armadillo, the drunk screaming 'I've seen things!', the teeming spiders
web. Hideous. Brilliant.</span><br />
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<a href="http://imageshack.com/a/img537/3686/9X4THX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageshack.com/a/img537/3686/9X4THX.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2. The Omen </b>- </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Exorcist is perhaps technically a better film –
something of a horror masterpiece and a film</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I adore – but The Omen, which
arrived on the coat tails of The Exorcist, is part of me. When I was furious
about being too young to watch Batman and Beetlejuice at the cinema, The Omen
Trilogy was shown on terrestrial TV and my brother recorded them into VHS tapes
which I watched over and over and over again. It's a brilliant story – full of
twists and shocks. It's got an emotional core – even after the evidence is
incontrovertible and his wife and friends are dead, Gregory Peck's tortured
American diplomat still turns adopted son Damien's head away before attempting
to stab him: he can't resolve that this sweet looking kid could be the devil.
The cast, not least Peck, is impeccable – fragile, brittle Lee Remick,
terrifying, snarling Billy Whitelaw, sort of weirdly sexy David Warner. The
music is nothing less than iconic (riffing on, but not, in fact from Latin
Opera Carmina Burana, which of course, I am now also mildly obsessed with). And
then there's the kills. Inventive, gruesome, expertly foreshadowed, and playing
on our fears of the accidental, the incidental – 'the luck of the devil’, if
you like, the Final Destination franchise absolutely owes The Omen a living. I
never get tired of watching this film (I also love The Omen 2 – The Omen 3 not
so much), it was part of my initiation as a horror fan and I'm pretty sure it's
the reason I was frightened of dogs till my early 20s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>3. Ringu</b> - </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without exception the film that scared me more than any
other. It was on telly. I'd never seen an Asian horror movie before, (that
whole wave hadn't yet hit the UK). I knew nothing about it other than it was
horror. I thought I was going to die for a week after. The genius of Ringu (not
true of the remake) is its incredible sense of the uncanny. Take the haunted
videotape itself, which of course it forces the audience to watch start to
finish before we even know what it really is thus making us complicit. Flies. A
woman with a cloth on her head. Some writing. An eye. Who knows what it is
we're looking at – there's no true explanation it's just wrong, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wrong</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in
a primal, instinctive way. Same with the now oft-ripped-off way Sadako moves,
in the final, unbearable shock scene that I still can't watch without feeling
uncomfortable. It's weird. It's wrong. It's uncanny. The other thing that of
course makes Ringu a work of bloody genius is that it breaks the glass screen.
There's a piece of learned wisdom first world viewers accept without thinking
about it – the glass screen of the TV or the cinema separates real from not
real. We don't think about it, but it's there. It's why we scream at horror
houses, but rarely out loud in movies. But Ringu, the scary little bastard, not
only forces you to watch the haunted tape, uses TV as it's means of 'getting
you' (and who doesn't have a TV somewhere in the house?) but also
subconsciously makes it very clear: the glass screen does not protect you.
Sadako is coming through that glass screen, and she's going to literally scare
you to death. It was my obsession with this movie and the need to 'normalise'
it – prove to myself it was just a film – that is directly responsible for my
career.</span><br />
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really help you to put a finger on exactly what it is you love about the
original film. So it was with Kimberly Peirce's stultifyingly average take on
Stephen King's first novel, which painted over all the things I love most about
De Palma's movie. For a start Sissy Spacek – while Chloe Grace Moretz is a fine
actress she's too self possessed for this part. Spacek is perfect. Paper-thin.
Translucent skinned. Probably smells weird. Carrie is the victim's victim,
fucked up so monumentally by her mother you know she's not going to be ok.
Lost, confused, overwhelmed by the late onset of puberty and her burgeoning
power, bullied by the other kids, unable to just be normal, she's so unbearably
tragic. Most heartbreaking scene: the spinning dance sequence before a bucket
of pig’s blood ruins everything. For once, for perhaps the only time ever,
she's beautiful, happy and Tommy's dancing with her because he genuinely wants
to. I also love this movie because of its very strong female focus – mothers
and daughters, the horrors of adolescence and the particular kinds of cruelty
young women are capable of, topped off with the wonderful/terrible finale,
showcasing the uncontrollable vengeful power of a female, without, crucially,
make it anything to do with rape.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>5. Dead Ringers </b>- T</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here needed to be a Cronenberg. This is my favourite
Cronenberg. It's not as strongly identified as horror as, say, The Fly,
Shivers, Rabid, Scanners etc, which are all excellent movies, but this is the
one I love the most. Another 'taped off the telly' special from my teenage
years, there's something about Ringers I find weirdly seductive – which I know
sounds a bit messed up, but I stand by it. I think it's fitting that
Cronenberg's psycho-sexual nightmare should break taboos and cross lines,
inside and outside the narrative. Without the gynaecological instruments for
mutant women, drug addiction and psychosis, there's a romance, a melodrama and
a family tragedy somewhere in Dead Ringers. It's a bravura performance – or
rather TWO bravura performances - from Jeremy Irons as co-dependent twin
gynaecologists Beverley and Elliot Mantel, and while Dead Ringers isn't scary
in the way other entries on this list are, it's certainly disturbing and
unsettling, and ultimately just really sad. I love this kind of heavily
character- and narrative-driven horror, where you're dying to know how the film
will end. Darkly fascinating. </span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-73867465327160000362014-06-27T17:55:00.000+01:002014-08-09T16:34:21.744+01:00My Top 6 Horror Movies by John Connolly<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>John Connolly has been responsible for some of the most terrifying novels I've read in the last ten years. His series of novels featuring private detective <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=charlie+parker+john+connolly&rh=n%3A266239%2Ck%3Acharlie+parker+john+connolly"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">Charlie Parker</span></a> are some of the most chilling explorations of evil, both supernatural and human, I've ever had the pleasure of reading. But for my money his dark fairytale <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Lost-Things-John-Connolly/dp/0340899484/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1403886089&sr=8-1"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">The Book of Lost Things</span></a> is his finest achievement as a writer. A truly remarkable and incredibly powerful book that moved me to tears at the end. When I approached John with the idea of him doing a piece on his top five horror movies I anticipated that he would be far too busy writing another masterpiece to take the time to do something for a wee horror blog. I was wrong and he actually gave us his Top 6. I'd just like to finish up by thanking John for taking the time to do this.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The notion of what constitutes “horror” is
pretty fluid, I think. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I speak as
someone whose mystery novels include more than a dash of the supernatural –
which, of course, doesn’t necessarily equate to horror.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like beauty, horror is generally in the eye of
the beholder: what horrifies one viewer may elicit barely a flicker of reaction
in another.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve often thought, though,
that “horror” is an unfortunate label to apply to the genre.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s the only genre named after a visceral
reaction, and a reaction that most of us have no great desire to experience in
a real, profound sense. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For me, horror
is often linked to the body, and degrees of suffering.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is the recognition, as John Donne put it,
that “The concavities of my body are like another Hell for their
capacity”.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless,
in compiling this list I’ve taken a wider view as, curiously enough, I have no
particular fondness for body horror. I accept, therefore, that not every film
listed below will necessarily conform to everyone else’s precise definition of
horror, if only because – as I said above - that definition is so personal to
each of us. I should also add that this
is just today’s list. Ask me next week
and, depending on my mood, it might be entirely different.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE THING (John Carpenter, 1982)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m not a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft, whose
imaginative reach always seemed to exceed his literary grasp, although I remain
sorry that Guillermo del Toro has not yet realized his ambition to film
Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”, if only because I’m curious to see
what he might make of it. Still, it’s
always seemed to me that “At the Moutnains…” was a very significant influence
on “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, which was adapted for both 1951’s The
Thing from Another World and Carpenter’s superior remake. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Actually, I wasn’t very keen on “Who Goes
There?” when I eventually read it. Like
Lovecraft, Campbell was more interesting for his ideas and scenarios than his
actual prose and storytelling, and “Who Goes There?” hasn’t weathered the years
well. (Campbell also strikes me as an
unpleasant piece of work, a natural controversialist who didn’t understand that
irony, and arguing against prevailing doctrines, do not excuse one from being a
bigot or an idiot.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Carpenter’s film takes the best ideas from
Campbell’s story – the Antarctic setting, the all-male research theme (diluted
by a single damsel-in-distress in the 1951 version), the blood test with the
heated wire and, most importantly of all, the creature’s shape-shifting
capacities – and runs with them to the point of absolute bleakness, aided by
Rob Bottin’s brilliant creature effects, perhaps the last great gasp of
model-making and stop-motion animation in the genre. It’s science fiction in concept, but horror
in its Donne-like understanding of the body’s capacity for suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I saw this film shortly after delivering my
seventh novel, The Book of Lost Things, and realized that del Toro was
approaching similar subject matter – grief, loss, fairy tales, war - but in a
different medium. The director’s
English-language films have always disappointed me slightly, for they seem to
be less than the sum of their parts.
With Pan’s Labyrinth, he achieved a perfect mix of storytelling and
imagery, and there is little about the film that I would change. And, in the sequence concerning Ofelia’s
encounter with the Pale Man, he created one of the finest five minutes of any
film in this century. Ivana Baquero, who
played Ofelia, went on to star in the film of one of my short stories, The New
Daughter, for which I’m very grateful to her. Incidentally, I also love The
Devil’s Backbone, del Toro’s 2001 Spanish Civil War-era ghost story which can
be seen as dry run for Pan’s Labyrinth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s little that one can say about this
that hasn’t already been said. So much
of what we conceive about the Frankenstein mythos is due to Whale and Karloff,
and this film is one of the rare instances when a sequel improves upon an
original. Elsa Lanchester’s “bride” is
by now almost as iconic as Karloff’s Monster, and the film’s influence
continues to reverberate down the years, most recently in a lovely moment in
Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie when the poodle next door is transformed into a
Lanchester lookalike. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://imageshack.com/a/img829/1357/op68.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageshack.com/a/img829/1357/op68.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DON’T LOOK NOW (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Permeated by grief and loss, and filmed in
a Venice that manages to look both beautiful and haunted, this remains, for me,
Roeg’s finest moment. It’s an adult
horror film in the sense that it explores a particularly adult fear – the death
of a child – and attempts to find a visual corollary for it. It also manages the difficult feat of
including a shock ending that doesn’t overwhelm what came before it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://imageshack.com/a/img842/8508/kmksy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageshack.com/a/img842/8508/kmksy.jpg" height="200" width="142" /></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another film that explores the body’s
capacity for suffering, but with a sexual component that makes it quite unlike
anything seen on screen before. Watching
it again, what strikes the viewer is just how slow it is, how painstakingly it
works to convey monotony without being monotonous while also giving us time to
care about the crew. And, in Ripley, it
throws aside the screaming female sci-fi victims of the past, as well as any
Barbarella-esque sex totty, and gives us a third way: a science fiction heroine
who just happens to be a woman, which is a lot more revolutionary than it
sounds. James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens
(1986), played interesting games with ideas of motherhood, but it’s overlong
and too much in love with macho weaponry.
Alien is the real deal.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<a href="http://imageshack.com/a/img849/5225/6z3l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageshack.com/a/img849/5225/6z3l.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">JAWS (Steven Spielberg, 1975)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okay, so I could have included Audition, or
Psycho, or The Birds, or Rosemary’s Baby, or The Innocents, or Bob Hope in The
Cat and the Canary, The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, or An American Werewolf in
London, or either great version (1956, 1978) of Invasion of the Body Snatchers
– and even by writing out their titles I’m kind of cheating a bit - but I’ll go
with Jaws because it’s one of those films – along with, say, Zulu or The
Magificent Seven for me – in front of which I can sit down if I catch it on TV,
telling myself that I’ll only watch a few minutes of it, and I will still be
watching at the end. Cast, director,
story, music – all come together in near-perfect harmony. Okay, so Bruce the Shark remains a bit
clunky, but who really cares? Think of
the fear of being consumed, the blackness of the shark’s eyes, Quint’s tale of
survival and predation, “We’re going to need a bigger boat”, the floating head…</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-14262778815451983272014-06-26T20:44:00.001+01:002014-06-26T20:44:20.301+01:00The Pit and the Pendulum (Arrow Video) - Review<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="http://imageshack.com/a/img829/8967/jzs1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageshack.com/a/img829/8967/jzs1.jpg" height="320" width="252" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Roger Corman’s <i><b>The Pit and the Pendulum</b></i> (1961) followed hot
on the heels of his first foray into Edgar Allan Poe territory, <b><i>The Fall of the
House of Usher</i></b> (1960). The success of
that movie and even greater success of its successor ushered in a five year
long exploration of the works of Poe which would ultimately deliver eight
movies all of which with the exception of one (The Premature Burial) would
feature the unique talents of horror thespian extraordinaire Vincent Price.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given that <b><i>The Pit and the Pendulum’s</i></b> source material is a
slight, if masterful, story it presents any screenwriter striving to adapt it
into a feature length movie with an obvious problem. Fortunately Richard Matheson was the man
tasked with delivering the script and with customary skill he managed to not
only expand upon the original material but also ensure that the lead up to the
third act (which is the only part derived from Poe’s story) is
entertaining and feels entirely in keeping with the spirit of the author’s
work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s obvious that Matheson looked
beyond <b><i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i></b> to Poe’s other works with ideas being pulled
most directly, and very effectively, from The Premature Burial and The Cask of Amontillado.
The fact that the movie feels very much of a piece and not at all disjointed
despite the magpie fashion in which its story was built is testament not only
to the richness of the source materials but also to Matheson’s skill as a
master storyteller. The overall
atmosphere here is redolent of themes that were commonplace across the
breadth of Poe’s body of work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although it’s easy to forget given the quality of most of
Corman’s output these days, he was, back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, a film-maker
of great talent and wonderfully dark vision.
He had the unerring ability of taking a meagre budget and via a feat of
directorial alchemy fashioning an end product that looked like it cost
considerably more. The fact that <b><i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i></b> is almost entirely a chamber piece with only the opening scene and a handful of
shots of waves crashing on rocks occurring beyond the confines of Medina’s
castle undoubtedly kept the budget in check but despite this it is, nonetheless,
a striking movie which can be comfortably compared to Hammer’s output of the
time and the best of Italian horror cinema such as the works of Mario Bava. The interior of the castle is dressed to
perfection by production designer Daniel Haller who was a Corman regular for
most of his career and provides a wonderfully atmospheric backdrop to the
unfolding tale. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In terms of performances the movie is something of a mixed
bag.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vincent Price is, of course, eminently
watchable.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the role of grieving
husband Nicholas Medina he delivers a typically theatrical performance that
manages to stay just the right side of camp.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barbara Steele, a truly unique beauty, is, despite her voice being
dubbed to disguise her working class English accent, quite remarkable in the
few scenes where she appears.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
remaining cast deliver mostly effective performances with the sole exception of
John Kerr who seems mostly unengaged and as a result delivers a performance
that could be charitably described as uncharismatic.</span></div>
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<a href="http://imageshack.com/a/img850/1647/4prj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://imageshack.com/a/img850/1647/4prj.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i></b> is not going to appeal to
everyone. Although the scale of the
production is greater than that of House of Usher it is nonetheless very much a
chamber piece and it’s not difficult to imagine it being performed on stage and
losing almost none of its power. It’s also
a horror movie that requires some effort on the part of the contemporary viewer
to feel even the slightest chill. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Approached with the mind-set of the modern horror fan, like many
pre-Seventies horror movies it simply fails to send anything but the weakest of
shivers up the spine. It’s an
entertaining movie but requires a feat of mental agility to put yourself into
the shoes of someone experiencing the movie back in 1961. But put yourself in those shoes you should
because <b><i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i></b> is, along with Corman’s other Poe adaptations,
essential viewing for any self-respecting horror fan and Arrow's release is a real treasure. Highly recommended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Video</u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As is common with Arrow releases the visual identity of the
movie has been maintained with exactly the right amount of grain present. The crisp 1080p image was adapted from the original
film stock by MGM and great care has been taken to deliver an optimum
presentation. Nothing has been
artificially enhanced to the extent that the visual experience has been marred. Corman’s movies were full of colour and the
Blu-ray delivers this in a manner that’s best described as eye-popping. I doubt <b><i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i></b> has ever
looked this good and can’t imagine it will ever look better. A very fine transfer that is sure to please
fans of the movie. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Audio</u></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The original uncompressed mono PCM soundtrack sounds quite
wonderful and there’s an option to listen to an isolated music and effects
track.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Extras</u></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As is often the case with Arrow releases there’s a
retrospective documentary (Behind the Swinging Blade) that provides an
entertaining and informative overview of the making of <b><i>The Pit and the
Pendulum</i></b>. It’s pretty comprehensive and
it was nice to see Brian Yuzna popping up to discuss the influence Corman’s Poe
had on him as a film-maker plus the inclusion of Vincent Price’s daughter Mary
was a nice touch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are two audio commentary tracks. The first of these is a solo affair featuring
director Corman and surprisingly it’s a fairly lacklustre affair with many
moments of silence scattered throughout and very little that wasn’t already
covered in the documentary. Plus I felt
his insistence that the movie contains a subtext full of Freudian symbolism is
reaching a bit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second commentary comes courtesy of film critic Tim
Lucas and it’s both erudite and entertaining.
Packed with interesting information relating to every aspect of the
movie this is exactly what a commentary should be and secured my full attention
from start to finish. If anything it’s
more comprehensive than the documentary. A wonderful listen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition to the above there’s a sequence that was filmed
in 1968 to pad the movie out for television. It doesn’t add much but its inclusion is
welcome.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last but by no means least we have <b><i>An Evening of Edgar Allan
Poe</i></b> with Vincent Price [52 mins]. This
1970 TV special features Price reading a selection of Poe’s classic stories
before a live audience. The stories
included are The Tell-Tale Heart, The Sphinx, The Cask of Amontillado and The
Pit and the Pendulum. This is an
astonishing addition to an already wonderful package of extras which on its own
is practically worth the cost of this release.
Anyone who has ever considered Price to be an actor of little talent
will be eating their words after experiencing his masterful performances here. Just brilliant.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve's Score:</span></div>
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AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-17533417708265711222014-05-25T11:28:00.000+01:002014-05-25T11:28:00.883+01:00Lost Horrors: Mikey [1992]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s29.postimg.org/zbuhfq1h3/Mikey_Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s29.postimg.org/zbuhfq1h3/Mikey_Poster.jpg" height="320" width="216" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To understand why, beyond its not being especially good, <i>Mikey </i>has become the forgotten piece of horror history that it is you need to know a little bit of recent UK history, so please bear with me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In February 1993 a two year old boy named James Bulger was taken from a shopping centre in Merseyside. Following this, Bulger was tortured and murdered by the side of a railway line. This would have been a shocking crime anyway, but it was made all the more so when it became clear that it had been perpetrated by two ten year old boys; Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The British tabloid media, looking for easy answers as to why this tragedy had occurred, settled on pinning the blame on movies, and on <i>Child's Play 3 </i>in particular. I've written in other places about the fact that this narrative, which, 20 years later, remains the one thing most Brits know about<i> Child's Play 3</i> was based on nothing, but that didn't stop it from having an effect.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The British tabloids mounted a campaign to ban 'video nasties' and there was a bill introduced in the House of Commons that would have required any film "unsuitable for home viewing" to be banned on video, effectively outlawing any film not suitable for children. The bill didn't pass, but there was a censorious climate and both distributors and the British Board of Film Classification seemed nervous. <i>Child's Play 3</i> was withdrawn by its distributor. Warner Brothers delayed the video release of <i>Natural Born Killers</i> and certificates for films like <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>, <i>True Romance</i> and <i>Bad Lieutenant</i> were delayed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Mikey</i> shouldn't have been caught up in this controversy. It had received an uncut 18 certificate in November 1992, but by the time of the Bulger murder and the surrounding moral panic it had still not been screened in the UK. In a move that, as far as I can tell, was completely without precedent, the BBFC director James Ferman, in direct response to a story in the Daily Mail, demanded the return of <i>Mikey</i>'s certificate, retroactively banning it in the wake of the Bulger murder. Having never been resubmitted to the board <i>Mikey </i>remains, in effect, banned. So let's take a look at the film behind this strange case of censorship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Honestly, it's hard not to be disappointed. <i>Mikey </i>is very much a bog standard slasher movie, with little to distinguish it beyond its very silly plot, which is riddled with holes you could drive a truck through. The film opens with nine year old Mikey (Brian Bonsall) killing his parents. The stupid starts pretty early. Mikey kills his mother by turning on her hairdryer and throwing it in the bath, except he doesn't throw it IN the bath, she catches it... and still gets electrocuted. I'm not sure how that works. Then Mikey makes his father fall through a glass door by having him slip on marbles he's left on the floor before bashing his head in with a baseball bat. It's a pretty grim sequence, but hard to take seriously because the mechanics aren't especially credible in either death. This is also where, both in its structure and in the motives of its leading character (Mikey accuses his parents of not loving him any more) the film's main influence becomes clear: it's The Stepfather, with a nine year old instead of Terry O'Quinn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following this opening the film settles into its main plot, with Mikey being adopted by a couple of nice, white, middle class people (Mimi Craven and John Diehl). How this happens without them ever having met him before is never addressed, nor is the fact that they're not given the full facts on Mikey's past (his adoption records are sealed, because, sure, that's a good way to start addressing psychological trauma). Anyway, Mikey's a perfect angel; he loves his new parents, does well at school, getting on with his teacher Miss Gilder (Ashley Laurence, mis-credited in the titles as Ashley Lawrence). He makes friends with Ben, the kid next door (Whitby Hertford) and develops a crush on Ben's older sister Jessie (Josie Bisset).</span></div>
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<a href="http://s14.postimg.org/4puhx1ek1/Mikey_Still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s14.postimg.org/4puhx1ek1/Mikey_Still.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Obviously things start to seem off, but nothing extreme enough to raise any concerns unless you've seen the opening of the film (or, I don't know, been told the details before you adopted the kid). It takes nearly an hour for the film to ramp up again, and when it does... it's kind of stupid. Okay, so when he kicks a radio into a jacuzzi to electrocute Jessie's boyfriend there's probably not much the victim could do, but the other victims often have nobody to blame but themselves. HE'S NINE. Okay, he hits his adoptive mother's hand with a hammer, which, surely, is her cue to slap him with the other hand and then take the hammer from him. He's nine, she's surely going to be able to overpower him. This goes on and on. Ashley Laurence's death is also pretty funny, because all she has to do is take a side step, but no, the idiot plot is in full swing by this point. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's something of a pity that the film all but collapses under the weight of its own ridiculousness, because there are things to recommend it. Brian Bonsall doesn't have an easy job here, but actually he does pretty well as Mikey. He's convincing in the early scenes when we're supposed to sense something under the surface when Mikey is playing nice and he's got a few chilling moments ("I'm watching Mikey's funniest home videos") before the ending sees him having to resort to nonsensical pre-kill one liners ("Miss Gilder you're the best teacher I've ever had, but there is one thing you never taught me... How to die!")</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The adults also do pretty well, given the kind of film this is. Diehl and Craven both come off as almost negligently unaware when it comes to some of Mikey's disturbing behavior, but that's the fault of the writing. Acting wise, they do their job well enough, and Craven at least seems to be enjoying some of the silliness of her part. Josie Bisset also has to battle some cringemaking dialogue, especially in her first scene, in which Mikey and Ben dupe her into giving Mikey mouth to mouth, but again, she's fine in her part, and more than capable of being the crush-worthy girl next door. What the film really misses is a formidable final girl, probably because, since Mikey is nine, she'd kill him without any fuss. It seems, for a while, that Ashley Laurence is being set up for this role, but it never pays off in the way you'd like it to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can see why, in the wake of the Bulger murder, this film would have given the UK censors pause. Silly as it is, the fact that the central theme of a child murdering people would have meant that the contentious elements of the film could never have been cut around. Today it looks quaint. The violence isn't all that graphic, and is surprisingly infrequent until the last half hour. Today the theme would be unlikely to trouble the BBFC as much as imitable techniques (the electrocutions) and a shot that clearly shows Bonsall in the same frame as a topless Mimi Craven.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ultimately, <i>Mikey </i>is little more than a forgettable slasher, and it would likely have fallen even further into obscurity but for its unfortunate timing. It has some interesting elements, but even Bonsall's solid performance does little to make a great case for lifting this one out of the basement in which it has spent the past 20 years.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7057933070409725548.post-16024707361300799092014-04-28T17:56:00.003+01:002014-04-28T18:20:16.699+01:00Competition: Child Of God (R2 DVD)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have three copies of James Franco's chilling adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Child-God-DVD-James-Franco/dp/B00I80NVIC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398703799&sr=8-1&keywords=child+of+god"><b><span style="color: #eeeeee;">Child of God</span></b></a> on R2 DVD up for grabs courtesy of <a href="http://www.signature-entertainment.co.uk/"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b>Signature Entertainment</b></span></a>. We reviewed this delightful tale of mountain-dwelling, necrophile serial-killer Lester Ballard yesterday and awarded it a hefty 9 out of 10. It's one of the most unapologetically difficult movies I've seen in some time but also one that will undoubtedly stick in my mind for the foreseeable future. With a fiercely dedicated central performance in the role of the considerably less than sane antagonist, Scott Haze delivers one of the most ferocious displays of acting you're likely to see this year or any other year for that matter. He is truly astonishing. The competition is open for entries until Midnight on Sunday 4th May. All you need to do to win this bad boy is answer the following questions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Coen Bros brought what Cormac McCarthy novel to the big screen in 2007?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a) The Road</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">b) No Country for Old Men</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">c) All the Pretty Horses</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please email your answer to aotd.glasgow@gmail.com and include your name and address. We will select the three lucky winners at random.</span></div>
AOTDBloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05254174348877443507noreply@blogger.com0