Posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 by Angie Han
Macaulay Culkin’s career may not be what it once was, but the franchise that shot him to fame apparently lives on. ABC Family has just announced the start of production on Home Alone 5: Alone in the Dark, which will premiere on TV later this year as part of the network’s “25 Days of Christmas” programming block. And before you even ask, no, Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern aren’t involved — but Edward Asner, Debi Mazar, Eddie Steeples, Malcolm McDowell, and the guy who directed Garfield are. More details after the jump.
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Posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2011 by Angie Han
Silent films died in the late ’20s with the advent of “talkies,” but it seems they’ve now been gone for so long they feel new again. One of the major stories out of this year’s Cannes was the unexpected popularity of The Artist, a silent film by OSS 117 director Michel Hazanavicius. Set in 1920s Hollywood, the tale revolves around a movie star named George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) at the height of his career who falls for aspiring starlet Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) at the start of hers. John Goodman, Missi Pyle, Malcolm McDowell, Penelope Ann Miller, and James Cromwell also star.
I realize that the concept is pretty unusual in this day and age, and may therefore sound off-putting to some. But all the reviews I’ve seen so far indicate that The Artist is a lively crowd-pleaser that makes fantastic use of an old-fashioned medium. I was utterly charmed by the recently released trailer, and I feel the same way about the six clips that have just been unveiled. Watch them after the jump.
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The Silent Hill sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, is shooting right now in Toronto, and keeps adding cast members as it does. Director Michael J. Bassett (Solomon Kane) already had Adelaide Clemens and Kit Harington starring, with Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean and Deborah Kara Unger reprising their Silent Hill roles in some unknown capacity.
Now a press release announces that the film also boasts Carrie-Ann Moss as Claudia Wolf and Malcolm McDowell as Leonard Wolf. In the video game Silent Hill 3, Claudia is a major character (modeled to look like Julianne Moore, actually) who sets a good chunk of the plot in motion, and isn’t exactly a passive or sane presence. Read more about her here (and about her father Leonard here) but be warned of possible spoilers for the film. The header image for this article, by the way, is a new still of Adelaide Clemens and Kit Harinton in the film, that was supplied with the press release. Click it to enlarge.
After the break, the Dean Koontz adaptation Odd Thomas gets a young actress and Tyler Perry’s next finds a romantic lead. Read More »
Warner Bros. is setting up a remake of the 2008 Argentine romantic comedy Un novio para mi mujer as a star vehicle for Steve Carrell. The comedian is producing, and WB hired Mark Gibson and Phil Halprin to write a script based on the Argentine film. A Boyfriend for My Wife would see Carell as “a timid husband [who] believes the only way out of his stifling marriage is to get his wife to fall in love with another man, so he enlists the help of a legendary yet unlikely Lothario.” [Variety]
After the break, Footloose and Vamps both make new hires. Read More »
As I was typing up some notes on Rob Zombie‘s Halloween II, this CNN headline flitted through my newsreader: ‘Victims of repeated abuse suffer complex trauma.’ It’s a truth that might jokingly apply to fans of the Halloween series, as the years since John Carpenter’s standard-setting original film have seen so many pointless, insipid sequels.
More seriously, you can apply it to the characters in Halloween II. Zombie seems quite interested in the psychological effect of violence on his characters. No one touched by Michael Myers is ever whole again. Those not carved into physical pieces are broken into traumatized shards. But while Zombie’s movie has ideas and intent, it is no more expressive than Myers’ white mask. Despite heavy doses of extreme violence, the most frightening thing about the movie is that it is unremittingly dull and inert. Read More »
Post-Screening Update: In short, my verdict on Halloween 2 is that it’s superior to Rob Zombie‘s first effort and a far more entertaining film. Zombie definitely listened to criticism that the first film wasn’t holiday-oriented. In this one, he stages a trippy Last Supper with Jack-o-Lanterns. And moreover, it works for chrissakes. The critics labeling the film a by-the-numbers “rote slasher picture” either didn’t see the movie or haven’t been paying attention to recent ”rote” horror flicks like Prom Night and Platinum Dunes‘ stillborn Friday the 13th.
I ask these critics to show me a comparable “rote” horror film this well-shot that stars the excellent Brad Dourif (Blue Velvet, John Huston’s Wise Blood) reminiscing about Lee Marvin. Or how about one with a fun Malcolm McDowell thinly and hilariously disguising contempt for movie journalists who trash certain directors with trigger-happy aimlessness. The early hospital scenes set to The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” make for only one of the sweet, sweet uses of music therein. Sidenote: I enjoyed seeing actress Silvia Jeffries‘ (Tracy on Eastbound & Down) play a stripper who receives a priceless tip from Michael. Like most, I was worried that Sheri Moon Zombie would take a sizable Yoko-like chunk out of the movie, but she’s merely a muse to Michael (and Zombie) here. And sure, the dream sequences are different from previous Myers installments, but is that a bad thing? They add genuinely creepy flourish to Zombie’s grisly murder scenes. It’s only been an hour since my screening let out, but I’d say this is the second best Halloween movie in existence: inferior to John Carpenter‘s first (obviously!) but better than Rick Rosenthal‘s original sequel. I doubt the critics hating on this movie (and Zombie, for whatever reason) can debate my closing statement. And tellingly so. Rob Zombie put Laurie Strode in a Black Flag shirt and dragged her to hell. And I liked it!! And it makes me wonder: are sites like CHUD and STYD, that profess love for horror, this out of touch per the genre? They really prefer the dated Abercrombie bottle blondes of Platinum Dunes to Zombie’s girls, who for Halloween go as guys dressed as girls and leave parties to shag a werewolf in a van? Weird.
Set Visit Report: Earlier this year, /Film went down to Georgia to visit the set of Rob Zombie‘s Halloween II. The sequel to 2007′s remake was shooting in a quaint, charming town called Newborn—an hour or so outside of Atlanta—that is tucked behind sprawling farmland and reached by hilly roads outlined in dead trees. Spring was in session, but outside it was already chilly and the approaching darkness and anticipation made it feel like Halloween night. After spending an hour completely lost and staring at a cow in search of cell phone reception, /Film finally reached the set. A handful of other peers including STYD’s Ryan Rotten joined us as we piled into a van and drove down a dark street to watch what publicists said was a climatic action piece in the film.
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Dimension Films has released the second full trailer for Rob Zombie‘s Halloween II (no longer H2, thankfully) on the InterWebs and it is…well, I’m not quite sure what it is. Quite a bit of new footage is in this clip, and it’s difficult to tell if it will add up to anything or not. Watch the clip after the jump. Read More »
With Jason Voorhees likely to receive a bloody good welcome this weekend for his Platinum Dunes revamp, Michael Myers will have to settle with a new teaser poster for H2, the sequel to that oh-so-polarizing of horror remakes, Rob Zombie’s Halloween. According to Shock, Zombie will begin filming shortly in Georgia to meet the release date seen above. And the film now has an official site.
Meanwhile, Malcolm McDowell, whose uneven and halfhearted take on Dr. Loomis was one of the only problems I had with Zombie’s graphic and feral vision—would naysayers really prefer another sequel with Busta Rhymes?—offered an update to a tipster at AICN. McDowell admits to still having never viewed John Carpenter‘s original masterpiece (weird, right?) and says that reprising the role will come down to the Weinsteins agreeing to his fee. He added that the sequel picks up two months after the first film and finds Loomis “in the middle of a book tour.” Read More »
