American Horror Story. Black Mirror. Room 104. Channel Zero. The Mortuary Collection. Monsterland. Creepshow. Scare Me. Nightmare Cinema. Scare Package. Books of Blood. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. 50 States of Fright. Into the Dark. Welcome to the Blumhouse. The Twilight Zone. Horror anthologies are all the rage across various media right now, and the Shelter-In-Place Edition of Telluride Horror Show is no exception.
A collection of selected short stories, anthologies come in the form of literature, television shows, movies and more. Typically running somewhere between ten to thirty minutes, segments may either make up several chapters within one whole picture, like in Tales from the Hood and John Carpenter’s Body Bags, or they may be relegated to one story per episode, as is the case with cult classics like Tales from the Crypt and Masters of Horror. Most contain wrap-around stories which explain the reasoning behind the varied stories, and some even feature a dryly sardonic host, such as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, or the Crypt Keeper. Some anthologies may devote entire seasons to one plotline, like The Act, while others land somewhere in the middle, like Lovecraft Country, which follows a monster-of-the-week scenario not unlike The X-Files, but simultaneously carries an overarching villain that comes to a head over the course of the season a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
When it comes to the types of anthologies at Telluride, there’s a little something for everyone.
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Amazon Studios has released some very nice viewership figures for Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Borat sequel. The predictably polarizing mockumentary sequel to Cohen’s 2006 comedy hit, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm may be getting embroiled in many controversies, but it’s got the viewing numbers to match: Amazon Studios claims that “tens of millions” of customers viewed Borat 2 on its first weekend.
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The second season of The Mandalorian arrives on October 30, giving us quite the treat before Halloween weekend. But what if you’re not caught up on the first season of the Star Wars series? Or you have some friends who want to jump on the bandwagon without watching all eight of the episodes in the first season? Or you just forgot everything that happened? Disney+ has a brisk recap that will prepare you for the next round of episodes. Watch The Mandalorian season 1 recap below. Read More »
Last we brought news that eOne and Hasbro were working on a new Power Rangers universe that would unfold in both a new movie and TV show. The new version of the sci-fi superhero team, originally imported from Japan in the 1990s, will move away from the most recent big screen adaptation that came from Lionsgate in 2017 and branch off into an entirely new franchise. Now we have word that the script for the new Power Rangers movie will be in the hands of writer Bryan Edward Hill, who has written on the DC Universe series Titans, where he also serves as executive story editor. Read More »
In Danse Macabre, Stephen King’s 1981 critique on horror fiction, the author examined popular culture in film, books and television, reflecting on what makes for a good fright, and why terror is such an important commodity. “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones,” he wrote. “A good horror story is one that functions on a symbolic level, using fictional (and sometimes supernatural) events to help us understand our own deepest real fears.”
Years later, science would prove King right. A new study conducted by a group of researchers – Coltan Scrivner, John A. Johnson, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Mathias Clasen – from the United States and Denmark sought to discover whether or not horror fans are better adept at handling the stresses of everyday life, especially when faced when extenuating circumstances, such as a deadly pandemic on a global scale. Their work was recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences and funded by the Research Program for Media, Communication, and Society at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University.
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Marvel’s Moon Knight series has found a director in Egyptian filmmaker Mohamed Diab. The director behind Clash, a 2016 revolutionary drama that was an official selection at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard category, has been tapped to helm Moon Knight, the Marvel series for Disney+ starring Oscar Isaac as the titular mercenary with multiple alter egos.
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Last week, Sony Pictures delayed Ghostbusters: Afterlife from its March 2021 release date for a hopefully more certain release date later that summer. It turns out they aren’t the only ones worried about the early months of next year being a viable release window in theaters.
MGM has pushed back their Aretha Franklin biopic Respect, and Paramount Pictures is delaying their animated monster wrestling movie Rumble, both previously slated for release in mid-January 2021. Meanwhile, MGM has also removed Tomb Raider 2 from their release calendar, which had been sitting on the schedule for a March 2021 release. Get the details below. Read More »
With Halloween just around the corner, Mondo’s Monster Mash continues, with a slew of new Universal Monsters items, including figurines, pins, and Tiki mugs of the Creature From the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and more.
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(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Show: Song Exploder
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: Ever wonder how R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” was made? How about Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s “Wait For It,” arguably the best song in Hamilton? Based on the popular podcast, Song Exploder follows host Hrishikesh Hirway through a series of interviews with bands or singer/songwriters, tracking the origin, production, and reception of one of their most popular or interesting songs. It’s a piece-by-piece breakdown of the music, and through the use of isolated tracks, you may hear these songs like never before.
Why It’s Essential Viewing: I grew up watching VH1’s Behind the Music and being mesmerized by the stories behind the songs I was hearing on the radio. And while that show frequently took a macro perspective which covered a band’s entire history, this one takes a micro approach by zeroing in on a single, specific song and getting the people responsible for it to talk us through how it came together. Song Exploder‘s nitty gritty approach is not something Behind the Music really had the time to adopt, but the results are equally mesmerizing. Read More »
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We’re coming up on the second season premiere of The Mandalorian on Disney+, and fans are excited to see how the story of the bounty hunter named Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) will continue to play out. The show is a bright spot for fans who may have found some problems with the consistency of quality in the new trilogy created by Lucasfilm under the tutelage of The Walt Disney Company. But as The Mandalorian Honest Trailer reminds us, this story begins when the bounty hunter’s childhood is literally torn apart by the prequels. Read More »
