Month: September 2009

Roger Avary Sentenced to One Year in Jail

roger avary

Academy Award screenwriter Roger Avary was sentenced on Tuesday to one year in jail for a fatal traffic accident in Southern California that occurred 2008.   Avary plead guilty in August to the charges of gross vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving.   He also faces five years of probation.   Authorities claim Avary was driving in excess of 110 miles per hour when he slammed into a telephone pole killing one of the passengers in the vehicle Avary was driving.

Avary was gearing up to write ‘Silent Hill 2,’ the sequel to the 2006 film which he also wrote.   Avary collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction,’ the latter of which Avary won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay along with Tarantino.   He also co-wrote the 2007, Robert Zemeckis adaptation of ‘Beowulf.’   Avary also directed the 1994 film, ‘Killing Zoe,’ and the 2002 adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel,   ‘The Rules of Attraction.’

There is no word yet on whether this will effect pre-production on ‘Silent Hill 2,’ or if producer Samuel Hadida will switch screenwriters to get production moving.

Weinsteins Stop Pre-Production on HALLOWEEN 3D

halloween 2

Just a week after Bob Weinstein announced he was “going back to do what he does best,” the Weinstein Company has made the announcement that ‘Halloween 3’ has been put on hold.   According to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, the first draft of the screenplay came in last Friday with Weinstein rushing to get production begun by November.   This had to be done by January so that director Patrick Lussier could make the switch to the Nicolas Cage vehicle, ‘Drive Angry.’   This, evidently, caused Bob to rethink how quickly the project was rushing, and, thus, he made the call to postpone production until after ‘Drive Angry’ wrapped so that Lussier could take his time with it.   This was also confirmed by Shock Till You Drop.

All in all, this is a good decision, as work on this project seemed to be coming down at a break-neck pace, something that shouldn’t be happening with any project, let alone a 3D production.

According to STYD, Lussier says they had a small window of opportunity to begin production, and everyone agreed that it would be better to hold off and work through it after ‘Drive Angry’ rather than pushing to get it done before.

No new start date has been set for ‘Halloween 3,’ but that isn’t stopping the Weinsteins from trying to make money off the franchise.   Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II,’ while not a rousing success at the box office, did manage to pull in $32 million against a $15-million budget.   This total will grow even more, as they are re-releasing the film to select theaters for midnight showings beginning on Halloween.

Fantastic Fest 2009: SALVAGE Review

salvage

Talk about a disappointing film. Salvage is the story of a girl being dropped off at her mom’s house on Christmas eve against her will. Her father is going on to his mother’s house and they’ll all meet back up on “boxing day”. BUT THEN out of no where the girl finds her mother having sex with a random guy and leaves, going across the street dropping her character almost completely. We spend a large portion of the movie with a character only to have the entire movie shift to her mom’s perspective and it ruins all of the set up.

But that’s not the plot. The plot is that just a mile from a small British town a unmarked cargo container has washed up on shore and brought something dangerous with it. When a random military group shows up telling everyone to get in their house after shooting the local doctor single mother Beth must find her daughter and save her from what’s outside their house.

The premise actually isn’t bad, but the execution is so poor and the characters are so bad that there’s nobody worth rooting for. Beth is a selfish bitch, her daughter is an annoying snot, and Beth’s lover Kieran is even worse because he’s a father and cheating on his wife.

The scares in the film are few and far between, and when you finally see what the container has brought it’s the most underwhelming thing I’ve seen in a movie in a long time, very disappointing.

Fantastic Fest 2009: ‘Cropsey’ Review

cropsey

Cropsey is an urban legend from Staten Island NY. The villain changes from wielding hooks to knives to axes but the outcome always ends with children getting cut up into tiny pieces and buried in the woods. The legend spread and documentary film makers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio both thought that maybe the legend is there for a reason… maybe it’s real.

Cropsey dives into this mystery by questioning whether or not a series of missing kids over the course of 20 years is what spawned the legend. The possible perpetrator of these kidnappings and murders is Adrian Rand, a man who used to work in an insane asylum for children in Staten Island. After a really big news expose’ by Giraldo Rivera in the 1980s the asylum closed and Rand was  left without a job, roaming the woods around the “school”.

Sadly the film doesn’t really stick with the legend of Cropsey much more than saying they all grew up with it. Instead the film boils down into whether or not Rand is really this murdering sociopath. We meet the parents of the kids, families that looked for the bodies of the kids, and more. It’s a truly creepy and disturbing story and you will get sucked in.

Without the initial premise though, this film is really just a documentary that could be on any crime channel. It doesn’t elevate itself beyond a tv doc level.

In Conversation On James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game

AVTR_SCREEN_NG_RDA_VS_Banshee

MakingOf.com is hosting an awesome discussion with Kevin Shortt, Lead Scriptwriter and Story Developer from Ubisoft Montreal who worked extensively with James Cameron on Avatar: The Game the story that takes place two years prior to the events of the 3D film due out in December.

Shortt touches on the 900 page script he wrote with two other writes that involves two separate narratives as well as the voice acting process. It’s interesting to note that James Cameron approached Ubisoft at the beginning of pre-production on the 3D film to insure that the game would live and breathe the world that he was creating on screen. The best bit of the video is that the game will be a completely different story from the film that takes place two years prior in the world of Pandora.

So are you going to pick up this game or just see the 3D film?

Trejo Will be in ‘Predators’

danny trejo machete

You knew it was only a matter of time, really, before we heard rumblings of Robert Rodriguez casting some of his go-to guys for the upcoming ‘Predators’ movie.   Those rumblings begin today, as, according to an interview Danny Trejo conducted with the guys at Punch Drunk Critics, he is going to be appearing in the film.

But, don’t just take our word for it.   Listen to the news straight from the man’s machete-wielding lips.   His lips don’t actually wield the machete.   He wields the machete and…forget it.   Just watch the clip.

Of course, between this clip and the Q&A answer Rodriguez gave recently for the Creative Screenwriting crew, it’s not looking like ‘Sin City 2’ is going to be happening any time soon.   Nonetheless, everything coming from ‘Predators’ makes it sound like this is going to be a geek-boys dream, and could completely redeem the ‘Predator’ franchise after two abysmal tries at the ‘Alien Vs. Predator’ storyline.

‘Predators’ is currently in pre-production.   Nimrod Antal is attached to direct.

Fantastic Fest 2009: ‘[Rec] 2’ Review

rec2

WARNING: since this is a direct sequel to [rec], there will be spoilers for [rec] in this review.

[rec] is one of the scariest horror films of the past ten years and my personal favorite horror film of all time. For those who don’t know, [rec] tells the story of a news lady and her camera crew as they are doing a late night feature on firefighters. Of course, this quickly turns into a disaster when the firefighters are called to a building which just happens to have an outbreak of what seem like zombies. [rec] 2 picks up just seconds after the first film ends, as a swat team comes to the same building to take care of the mess that was made in the first movie. Or, at least that’s what they think. The real plot of the movie isn’t revealed until later, but suffice to say it gets a little deeper than typical “zombies” and quite a bit more interesting.

While the entirety of [rec] was shot from the perspective of a single news camera, [rec] 2 puts you primarily inside the helmets of the swat team. The majority of the movie takes place from the team videographer, since the mission is deemed so important that they need archival footage from it. This swat member is, for the most part, weaponless, and sticks back behind the main force of the team. However, any time they need to send a single member off on his own, for example: to crawl into a tight space where only one person will fit, the video taps into that members helmet, giving us a grainier and more ‘first person shooter-ish’ point of view. This helps spice things up visually, and keeps us from thinking, “why are they still filming?”

If you don’t like to be scared, this is not the movie for you. It’s creepy, atmospheric, and dives right into the horror within the first five minutes. Making the main characters of the movie part of a military operation means that they get right up in the creatures’ faces, unlike [rec] where the news crew tended to stay back as much as possible. A lot of the creepyness stems from the creatures jumping right at the camera, which is a great scare tactic that obviously isn’t possible in a more typical horror film. There are very few moments in this movie where you feel safe, and luckily directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza manage to keep the tension from getting stale throughout.

Aside from the perspective of the swat team, [rec] 2 takes us into the views of several other cameras which show us the same parts of the story from different vantage points. On paper, this is a good idea, and for the most part, it is. However, the first time we cut away from the swat team is such a jarring difference, that it ends up being the weakest part of the movie. For a this portion of the movie, we follow around a group of people who are filming with a camcorder, and for a good part of this there are no creatures present and the group of people are completely unaware of any supernatural  occurrences. There is a bit of a jarring contrast between this and the swat team, since we leave a group of characters that are very interesting and taking on creatures on a regular basis to follow a regular group of people that act stupid and are very annoying. As I watched this segment, I really wanted these people to die as soon as possible. Luckily, after a boring ten minutes or so, we kick back into the greatness of the beginning of the film, which continues on until the end.

Although the entire film is shot digitally and is meant to have an amateur sort of look, the cinematography is fantastic, and the long takes in the movie are very impressive. Unlike films such as Cloverfield, which put some people off due to the shakyness of the camera work, at least 90 percent of [rec] 2 is very smooth and realistic with the concept that they’re going for. The acting, as well, is top notch, and I really believed that these people were the characters they were portraying and not actors.

I’ve been telling people to see [rec] ever since I saw it, and I feel the same way about [rec] 2. It’s a great sequel, and manages to stay fresh, despite taking place in the exact same place as the original.

First Shots of Mel Gibson and His Beaver

Mel Gibson The Beaver

Yes, that is a stuffed beaver puppet Mel Gibson is cuddling in the shot you see above.   It comes to us today courtesy of Splash News who has a whole series of images from the early filming on ‘The Beaver.’

Directed by Jodie Foster, the film centers on a depressed CEO of a toy company who finds a ratty, old beaver puppet.   He begins using the puppet as a sort of avatar, wearing it constantly and communicating through it.

While the premise and the shots of the early filming would make you think this is going to be a slapstick-lovers dream, evidently the screenplay is very endearing.   This could be a return to form for Gibson, who hasn’t been in a starring since 2002’s ‘Signs.’

‘The Beaver’ is set for release in 2011.

‘The Crazies’ Scares Up a Teaser Poster

the crazies poster

Not really sure how this one is going to play out.   The original, George Romero film, in my opinion, is a hidden gem.   Breck Eisner isn’t exactly the second coming of horror directors.   It’s hard to get the taste of ‘Sahara’ out of our mouths, but his entry into the “Fear Itself” anthology, “The Sacrifice,” was atmospheric and offered a few scares.   That’s saying alot for that show.   You also can’t really go on the Olyphant factor, who always gives decent performances but his hit-and-miss record for good movies is pretty much down the line.

This new poster courtesy of Shock Till You Drop doesn’t really do much service to the film.   It’s not your typical, Photoshop job of actors’ heads over a black background, so, for that, it gets points.   On the other hand, there really isn’t much in terms of the style of the film that can be garnered from it.

We’ll all find out on February 26th, 2010 when ‘The Crazies’ comes out.

Fantastic Fest 2009 ‘Antichrist’ One-Sheet

antichrist fantastic fest poster

Among the badass things about Fantastic Fest (movies, red carpets, boxing matches, etc.) are the awesome posters and t-shirts that can be found at the infamous Drafthouse.   As you can see, one of this year’s awesome posters is for Lars Von Trier’s controversial film, ‘Antichrist.’   The image you see above comes to us today courtesy of Shock Till You Drop, and the artwork is courtesy of David D’Andrea.

‘Antichrist’ hits theaters on October 23rd.