Friday, October 16th, 2009

I was flipping around the telly today, and caught somebody mentioning the Darth Vader gargoyle on Washington National Cathedral. I attempted to find a news story that would have prompted the newscaster to bring up the piece of architecture, but to no avail. Still, last year I went on a vacation to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and as much as I absolutely hated D.C., especially in comparison to Baltimore, one of my highlights was the drive-by on the tour bus of the beautiful National Cathedral. Of course, I had no clue that this was part of the huge church, which was the venue for John F. Kennedy's funeral. Kind of neat, and may even cause me to go back to D.C. once I take the inevitable return trip to John Waters' hometown.

Aside from this random find, the only real news for the day is the week's Friday releases. Of course, topping the must-see list is Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, which looks brilliant and has been getting the critical acclaim to back up the amazing looking trailers and featurettes we've been seeing that past few weeks. Also out this week, the sequel to what I felt to be an underrated movie, the anthology Paris, Je T'Aime, came out today, called New York, I Love You. The movie definitely has the talent to match its predecessor, but I just don't see it recapturing the magic of the Coen Brothers' or Sylvain Chomet's entries, and as for critics, anthology films are usually dismissed anyhow, so I don't see this flick getting much exposure. There is also a nice blaxploitation throwback, Black Dynamite, out today. I've not heard much about the movie, but I'm a huge supporter of exploitation homage films, so I'll at least keep an eye on the reviews. To a lesser extent, Law Abiding Citizen looks watchable and The Stepfather being a horror film in October stands a decent chance of gaining a following, but I doubt anything special.

A few random thoughts on the rest of October in film for my local area. Next Saturday, here in Harlan at the Old Hall Gym, as if anybody that will come across this doesn't already know about it, there will be a free showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight. Since I can't find anywhere near that is doing a good Rocky Horror live show, this looks to be the next best thing. Also, the next day I will be attending The Grand AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which will be taking place the whole weekend.

Finally, since it is a slow news day, and we are drawing closer to Halloween, LiquidGeneration has a good video up of their top 25 horror flick kills. Enjoy the link.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

So, for the past week, I've been keeping the passing of John Hughes as a major topic on the blog, and for more fuel for this ongoing topic, I find that it has been swept under the table on most news outlets, and I'm a bit perturbed that The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles hasn't been in heavy rotation on cable. I'm also shocked at how little coverage the documentary Don't You Forget About Me, which I spoke of yesterday, is getting. The film, which chronicles the journey of four young filmmakers attempting to find out what has become of the reclusive director, and possibly get an interview with him seemed like a great idea already, catching my interest when I read about it in Geek Monthly before the tragedy of Hughes' death. There's just something about a road trip to satisfy a passion of cinema that plucks at the ole cinephile's heartstrings. I've been reading further about the film today, and I've still not been able to spoil the ending and find out if they ever did actually get the interview with Hughes or not, but that will be a selling point of the film, however it is distributed. One of the interesting tidbits in the movie that I can't wait to see is the interview with Roger Ebert, as he retracts many of the disparaging comments he made during the initial reviews of some of Hughes' teenage fare of the 80's. I will be keeping an eye on the film as it progresses through trying to find a distributor, as well as the talents behind it, who will most certainly be taking to the media circuits to discuss the untimely death of Hughes. In fact, I found that they also share a blog on Blogspot, which I now follow, so any news, trailers, release dates or anything further I'll pass along.

For a bit more on Hughes, the picture accompanying my blog today is from an article out of the New York Times, written by Molly Ringwald, recounting her days as the iconic director's muse, very appropriately titled The Neverland Club. A good read.

Also, speaking of the Brat Pack, Cinematical uncovered a story that loosely deals with Emilio Estevez. One of the true cult classics of the 80's that starred the Breakfast Club alum, Repo Man may be getting a sequel. Actually, the director of the film, Alex Cox, claims it will be a "freestanding film", called Repo Chick, that shares the same mind as the original. Interesting, but is this really a good idea? At the very least, it gets Repo Man into the public spectrum again.

Variety reports that Universal Studios has partnered with 20th Century Fox for their annual Halloween Horror Nights event at the Hollywood theme park, meaning that they now have the rights to stage a short tribute version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. To me, there is no better way to spend Halloween than seeing The Rocky Horror Show live; however, when Universal does this festival, I hear they go all out, so I am a bit envious of those who will get to see their live version. Let's hope it will be among the adult only attractions during the festival, as the raunchiness is what the live show is all about.

Variety also has a story announcing that David Mamet will take on the directorial job of a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank from Walt Disney Pictures. I'm not huge on Mamet like the rest of the blogsphere out there, so we'll wait to see what comes of this. With Disney behind it, I'm sadly picturing the Robot Chicken spoof of Hilary Duff in a modern day teen dramedy re-telling of this, actually happening.

Finally, I will end with more pirated footage of Kick-Ass from the San Diego Comic Con. IWatchStuff has four videos up, but the following excerpt, featuring Nicolas Cage shooting a little girl in the chest, may be the most entertained I've been in ages.