Sunday, October 18th, 2009 (Short Film Sunday: Halloween Extravaganza)

This is the last Short Film Sunday I'll be posting before Halloween, seeing that next Sunday I will be hoarding nerdy memorabilia from The Grand AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. So, with the aforementioned information, I figure I should do a bit of a Halloween extravaganza, and put together three decent shorts that embody the spirit of the Halloween season.

First up, is the original short that inspired the feature length version that we are all a little more familiar with, Saw. The short, which was directed by James Wan and was written by and starred Leigh Whannell, the team behind the big screen version that would come out a year later, was actually made as nothing more than a pitch from Wan and Whannell in an attempt to be picked up from a movie studio and acquire actors. Of course, this short and the original film are actually good entries into American horror, so don't let the overkill of Saw VI, due out this coming weekend, or the announcement of an upcoming 3-D Saw VII, or even the VH-1 reality series Scream Queens ruin this for you. The short can now be viewed by the uncut edition of the Saw DVD.

Second, we get a little more child friendly with a 1929 short directed by the one and only Walt Disney and animated by the brilliant Ub Iwerks, The Skeleton Dance. The short was actually made just a year after Mickey Mouse's debut screen appearance, via the short Plane Crazy. The little film, part of the Disney Silly Symphonies series of shorts, has became a Halloween staple over the years, being named among the 50 greatest cartoons of all time in a survey of a thousand animation professionals, compiled by historian Jerry Buck, and Carl W. Stalling's score pops up on Disney Halloween CD's all over the place. A nice little fact, just nineteen days ago was the eightieth anniversary for this short.

Finally, if there is one short that embodies Halloween more than any other, it has to be Michael Jackson's Thriller. Some people may consider it a music video more so than a short film, but Wikipedia and IMDb are among the sites that count this as a film, albeit a TV film according to the latter. The video was definitely the first time filmmaking and music video would merge, and possibly the only time it would on such a magnificent level. The short is directed by John Landis, just fresh off of doing An American Werewolf in London, and co-stars Ola Ray (who, incidently will be one of the guests at the aforementioned AdventureCon) and the voice of horror icon Vincent Price. The short, which tells the story to the tune of Jackson's eponymous track off of one of the greatest albums of all time, Thriller, of a couple that leaves the showing of a horror flick due to the young girl being frightened, only to end up in a nightmare of walking, dancing undead. Of course, the short/music video will be bigger this year than ever after the passing of Jackson a few months ago. Adding to the hysteria of Wacko Jacko's October legacy is the fact that Thrill the World is expecting its biggest turn-out ever, which will attempt to break the Guinness World Record of most people dancing in sync to Thriller simultaneously the world over. Also, This is It, the documentary on the finals days of Jackson's life is set to come out just a few days before Halloween. Enjoy.

Thriller - Michael Jackson

Monday, September 14th, 2009

After reading about two years of depressing tabloids, I thought I would be more prepared for Patrick Swayze's eventual passing at the hands of pancreatic cancer. Instead, I'm a grown heterosexual man eating ice cream, near the stage of weeping, watching the 80's icon stand up to stodgy old Jerry Orbach. Swayze leaves behind a memorable body of work including Dirty Dancing, Next of Kin, Road House, Ghost, Point Break, Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Black Dog, Donnie Darko and one of the better Saturday Night Live sketches of all time alongside Chris Farley among others. Swayze had the uncommon ability to balance carrying the Fabio complex of being manly to the point of comedy, self-parody and actual acting skills in a classy and memorable fashion. Rest in peace.

In an attempt to tear myself away from the proverbial tear-stained pottery wheel, a few decent news stories in the land of cinema to bring the spirits up comes our way... First, Access Hollywood interviewed Bruce Campbell recently in which the cult film icon spoke of the upcoming Spider-Man 4, which supposed to begin shooting early 2010. When asked about his role in this film, he responds that director Sam Raimi has a much bigger role in mind. The rumor mills have all been salivating at how plausible and obvious of a decision it would be to have Campbell play the villain Mysterio. One can only hope.

Also making rounds in the rumor circuit is Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds fame. The actor, who has been heavily touted as a huge Academy Award contender, has been mentioned, via DeadlineHollywood, as the replacement for Nicolas Cage as the baddy in Seth Rogen's The Green Hornet. I said earlier in the week when it was announced that Cage would be dropping out of the picture that it could turn around to be a wondrous Stephen Chow to Michel Gondry type change, and if they can nab Waltz, who deserves all the praise he is getting from Basterds, Rogen's superhero flick will have pulled another good-to-great crew change.

I can't believe that 9 garnered just $10 million at the box office, landing behind Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself. At least it didn't flop as bad as Sorority Row, which landed a debut at the six spot with just slightly over $5 million.

Last night, despite the absence of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Ben Folds being nominated, the MTV Video Music Awards played a sinister trick in the pre-show on my heart by introducing the Muppets into the mix, as Kermit the Frog escorted Lady Gaga (clad in a costume fit for a background character in Hellboy, plus a performance that included dancing cripples, vaginal piano playing and Carrie-esque blood covered female, so I sickenly, disappointingly can't even call it a terrible happening). Anyhow, aside from the whole Twitter drama regarding Kanye West's douchebaggery, the award show focused on film a bit, by debuting trailer's for The Twilight Saga: New Moon and the Michael Jackson documentary This is It. Instead of displaying any of these trailers, I opted for a challenge to any readers that I have. In Janet Jackson's tribute to her brother that opened the show, much of the video for "Scream" was shown and I noticed that some anime is prominently displayed in the background. I can't find anywhere what anime it is, although the Answerman on AnimeNewsNetwork says that it is often claimed to be Akira, although there has never been confirmation. Happy hunting kiddos. Oh, on a side note that I find interesting about the VMA's, big names in film that have won in the technical awards include Steve Barron, David Fincher, Tarsem Singh, Mark Pellington, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Samuel Bayer, Dylan Tichenor and the Brothers Quay.

Finally, to close today's blog, a few of the most memorable Swayze moments.

Patrick Swayze - Chippendale
by tressage

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

A while back, I read an article, that I can no longer find to link to, that stated that Paul Reubens' infamous man-child comic character Pee-Wee Herman would be returning to the big screen once again. I have always felt Reubens got a really raw deal when it came to his public image after the porn theater scandal. I mean, sure, he was the star of a children's show, but did the mothers' that kicked against his career ever care to look up the source material of his act, The Pee-Wee Herman Show, or the much viewed HBO special of it that was released to home video during his heyday. The generally subtle raunchy nuances was if anything, just a cliche in the very popular CBS morning show Pee-Wee's Playhouse. But since those days, we haven't seen much of the television personality with the red bow tie. Reubens, of course, went on to star in a few things like Mystery Men, Blow and a pretty funny guest spot on Reno 911! just off my memory, but the days of being the star of a feature film like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure passed long ago. So, with this thought of injustice over the misunderstood comic, I was devastated to read today, via Variety, that The Pee-Wee Herman Show was going to return for a special engagement in Hollywood, leaving many to speculate that plans for a new feature is a dead project. The article doesn't confirm it, but with no mention of a future for Reubens' creation, we cinephiles cannot expect much.

Just when it seemed that Michael Jackson would finally be out of, at the very least, the movie blogsphere, it was announced that a documentary of his final tour preparation would be released on October 30th, entitled This is It. The close to Halloween release date is fitting, as the article at Reuters states that some of the test footage was shot in 3-D, therefore we can only hope that this means a performance of "Thriller" in full, glorious use of the marketing gimmick. A Cinematical article also points out that the director of the documentary will be 80's choreographer Kenny Ortega, known from such great decade fare as Dirty Dancing and the late John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Speaking of which, with all the talk about one 80's icon being memorialized on screen with the King of Pop, when is all the blogs going to pick up and start talking about Don't You Forget About Me, a film chronicling a road trip to find the director before his death, by unknown filmmaker Matt Austin-Sadowski. I first read about the film in Geek Monthly, and just Google searched it for to find the directors' name for a reference point, and found an article on The Guardian stating that it had found a distribution deal. If some stranger happens up on this blog, and you do nothing else I implore you to do, look up this film, read a bit about, and if it pops up online, comes out to theaters, to DVD, jump aboard. It sounds very intriguing, and outside of a few blogs from Internet nobodies, it does seem that even in death, Hughes has been vastly overlooked.

Vulture has an interview with Bill Hader up, in which one of the topics discussed is the upcoming Saturday Night Live-inspired film MacGruber, including an apparent hard-R rating. For some reason, I've been gaining a bit of faith with the new cast of SNL after harboring some negative feelings by thinking they should do the impossible and live up to the likes of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, etc. Yet, I've still never really gotten aboard the enthusiasm train for the MacGruber skit, but Hader and Will Forte are both decent enough comedians and a hard-R rating at their capable hands probably gives me enough reason to get in the seats for this.

Cinematical's Kevin Kelly has a story up on how J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof has bought the rights to Stephen King's epic series of novels The Dark Tower. The article declares that the pre-production wouldn't even begin until after the 2010 conclusion of Lost, so we're still some time away; however, Kelly does sell me on reading The Dark Tower.

Finally, a star-studded (Zach Galifianakis, Henry Rollins, Ben Stiller, Olivia Wilde, Billy Crudup, Julianne Moore, Alexis Bledel, Sargent Slaughter of WWF fame, Chuck Liddell and many more) video from FunnyOrDie has been released, in a bit of a mock-up of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Enjoy.

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Last year, when I first saw the trailer to the Zach Galifianakis-starring film Visioneers, I got way overexcited, and proclaimed to all two people that would ever listen to me, that he could be the movie geek's frontrunner for Oscar contention. Because, let's face it, as great as Sean Penn, Richard Jenkins, Frank Langella, Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke was in all five respective nominated performances of last year, none has the everyman appeal that Galifianakis does. But did I go a little too far with that statement? Well, seeing that theatrical distribution fell through, I won't know for sure until July 21st, when the film goes direct-to-DVD. However, I have faith, after watching the new trailer for Robert D. Siegel's Big Fan, that Patton Oswalt will take up the mantel for the unexpected contender that we will all be cheering for come this Academy Awards. The trailer is incredible, and seeing that director/writer Siegel also wrote last year's hit The Wrestler, as well as being the former senior editor of the satirical newspaper/web site The Onion, we know he understands drama and humor, and seems capable of mixing the two perfectly. In fact, the first film I thought of when watching the trailer, mixing kind of a gritty, serious storyline with what will surely have its fair share of humor, was Todd Solondz' excellent 1998 film Happiness. To top such a film, in my personal opinion, is a tall order, but watch and see what you think.

Other things in brief... MSN Cinemash has featured an entertaining video from 500 Days of Summer, based on a snippet of dialogue from the film, where Joseph Gordon-Levitt portrays Nancy Spungen, and Zooey Deschanel takes the role of Sid Vicious in a nice parody of Sid and Nancy. Definitely worth a view if you're bored.

Cinematical has an interesting story up, stemming from an interview Francis Ford Coppola did with Esquire, where he said that he originally didn't want to do a sequel to The Godfather, and when finally convinced, he just wanted to take a role to help with the screenplay, and had considered passing off the directorial job to then young Martin Scorsese.

Not shockingly, but sadly, it was announced that Rob Zombie's inaugural animation film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, will be released straight-to-DVD. This adds on to the previously mentioned Visioneers as two kind of anticipated straight-to-DVD efforts this year. Maybe one day, we could look forward to the medium not being dominated by rejected Lifetime films and Steven Seagal.

Speaking of Galifianakis, MovieWeb reports he is considering a new film directed by The Hangover's Todd Phillips called Man-Witch, where the bearded comedian will be the only male in a school for witchcraft. Sounds like solid comedy, let's just hope this one gets made.

Stephen Dorff mentioned somewhere that Blade could get a reboot. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fan of the first film, but does anybody really want this?

I'll close with another discussion of Michael Jackson. In honor of the media insanity of his funeral today, added with the fact that Bruno debuts this coming Friday, do you think that it was the right choice to completely cut Sacha Baron Cohen's interview with LaToya Jackson out of the film? Sure, the premiere night right after he died, I get that. But, let's face it, the people most likely to be offended at a tactless joke about a recently deceased person would be Christians, homosexuals, and seeing the role Michael Jackson played in breaking down walls, African Americans. And can't we already be sure that the theater will be emptied of these groups? I can't wait to see how many people Baron Cohen offends, why not add a few more?

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I suppose before I get into any kind of movie news, rants or raves, I should say welcome to my blog, Cinemarant, where I will divulge to you, dear readers, what I think of what's going on in the world of cinema, as well as news in brief as much as I can. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

How can you speak of anything in the entertainment industry without mentioning the death of the King of Pop Michael Jackson. Ever since the popular culture icon passed away last week CNN has been covering the legal battles and the upcoming funeral services more so than the civil unrest in Iran, President Barack Obama's new energy or healthcare plans, or the deaths of the seemingly endless line of celebrities that have passed along side the tabloid sensation in the days surrounding the fall of pop. So, you may be asking yourself, why would I be blogging about a musical genius/eccentric headline hopper in a movie blog? Well, there is no time to be wasted to cash in on the money train of Jackson's death, as Randy Phillips, the president and CEO of AEG Live, the company behind Jackson's British tour that was to begin next month has already told the Associated Press that he's looking to turn the 100+ hours of rehearsal footage into live albums, a pay-per-view special, and you guessed it... a documentary film. Don't get me wrong, I've been riding a non-stop news loop of the Jackson death circus since it began, and I would welcome a well-done documentary on Jackson's highs in music and lows in his eccentricities and odd behaviors, but is this just a little too soon to be talking a documentary when we don't even know the fate of his children, his estate or even the exact circumstances surrounding his death? And what kind of voice is the documentary to have? If it is to look at anything in a comical light, it is way too soon for the public to digest, and if it is to be serious, it will either be a repackaging of Martin Bashir's Living with Michael Jackson, or as bizarre and unmarketable as Wacko Jacko's personal life became in his later career. Discuss in the comments, if I get any readers if the entire Jackson thing has reached overkill yet, and your pissed off that nobody is buying the rights for an OxiClean docudrama, or if the entire thing is to be expected, he's the fucking king of pop, right!?

Also, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took the top spot at the box office again this week, although reports have shifted between Michael Bay's cashploitation flick and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, so it is a virtual tie. Public Enemies came in third, and surprisingly The Hangover continues to keep in the top five, raking in another $11 million this weekend.

Sci-Fi Squad has a story on the development of the upcoming live-action Star Wars television series, but just cites "sources" without ever naming them. So, take the news with a grain of salt.

And finally, the red band trailer for Jennifer's Body went online today. Most of the coverage has been centered on the fact that you get to see a lot of Megan Fox in this, but the trailer looks awesome. Actually, I can't remember the last time I saw a trailer to a horror film, and became that stoked about it. Enjoy.


P.S. Speaking of Michael Jackson up there, I'm trying to spread the word of the Thrill the World event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The event coordinator Hannah Bailey contacted me to say that Guinness World Records have been contacted to show up there for the largest simultaneous dance to Jackson's hit "Thriller". You can click here for more information on the Oak Ridge event, or just go to ThrilltheWorld.com for information on an event closer to your area. Also, it is the same night as The Grand AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge, a short drive from Oak Ridge, which among other guests will be featuring Jason Mewes from Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse. I'll promote the hell out of these two events in the upcoming months, so an apology in advance.