H2 teaser!

Rob Zombie’s upcoming sequel, Halloween 2 hits theaters Aug. 28, 2009. The film will pick up at the exact moment the first movie stopped and follow the aftermath of Michael Myers murderous rampage through the eyes of heroine Laurie Strode. A remarkable team has been put together to bring this entry to the screen. Special effects masters Douglas Noe and Bart Mixon no doubt will thrill us with there work. Here’s a sneak peak!

 

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Hysterical Psycho is both!

Launching the “Moonlake Series Horror Stories,” writer/director Dan Fogler (who acted in Balls of Fury and Fanboys) and NYC theater troupe Stage 13 create a hilarious horror lampoon of the stuck-in-a-cabin-with-the-phone-lines-cut-and-the-car-battery-dead ilk. “Moon Lake has been a hotbed of evil activities for centuries,” our droll, Hitchcockesque narrator tells us in an inventively animated preamble to the live-action splatterfest that’s about to unfold. The site of some ancient, angry goings-down between the moon and the earth, rural Moon Lake now holds the strongest amount of insanity-inducing lunar radiation on the planet. When a New York theater troupe travels to those snowy woods to “find themselves,” one by one, each member begins to get killed. But who is the killer among them? Did the lunar radiation turn one of the thespians into a crazy killer? And what’s up with the groundskeeper and his deaf-mute sister?

The sheer fun that Fogler and the cast had while making Hysterical Psycho is palpable. Their play with horror clichés results in some uproarious scenes, but Fogler doesn’t scrimp on the thrills and kills. It’s his ability to merge the horror with the laughs seamlessly that ultimately makes Hysterical Psycho such a bloody good time.

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Bloodthirsty killers in The Crazies remake

The Crazies

MTV News April 15, 2009

       “It’s like being on PCP or meth!” the director Breck Eisner explains. “Ex-girlfriend crazy, most of ‘em!” says Timothy Olyphant. “It’s all dependent on whether your mommy and daddy were nice to you!” his co-star Radha Mitchell decides.

They’re talking about the insanity-inducing, homicide-provoking effects of a military-grade bio-weapon that accidentally infects the water supply of a small Iowa town in the remake of George Romero’s 1973 horror flick “The Crazies.” While they may have different descriptions of what it’s like to become a diseased, blood-thirsty killer, during my visit to the set they are all in agreement about one thing: they’re not zombies!

“The most challenging thing for us was how do we make these Crazies not look like zombies, yet have a signature look that is dynamic and aggressive and memorable,” Eisner (“Sahara”) tells me before filming gets underway at a high school in central Georgia’s Peach County.

        Eisner and visual effects master Robert Hall studied Ebola, tetanus and Stevens-Johnson syndrome victims, consulted with the Centers for Disease Control, then added a healthy dose of horror movie poetic license to achieve a look that is at once realistic and terrifying and totally disgusting. I can attest to all of this first-hand, as I spend the three hours after my chat with Eisner in a makeup chair becoming a Crazy myself for a walk-on role in the movie (the full tale of my makeup ordeal and acting glory will have to wait for another day, as photos of the Crazies are still being kept under lock and key until shortly before the September 25th release date).

     As darkness falls, the temperature dips into the bone-chilling range, and I finish off filming my scene, the stars begin stopping by one-by-one to fill me in on a production that is still very much under wraps (turn back now if you want to avoid any and all spoilers).

    “We’re keeping the conceit of the story that a bunch of people go nuts in a town,” Mitchell says. “And we’re keeping the idea that can you trust or not trust your government to protect you when things go wrong.” But with a bigger budget and better technology, the new “Crazies” is a far cry from the campy, low-budget original.

“I saw what looks like a trailer for ‘The Crazies’ online,” Olyphant tells me with a laugh, “and if that’s any indication of what the movie is, I really don’t need to see the rest of it.”

    The night’s action takes place at the point in the film where the military takes over the infected town and institutes a martial law quarantine in which residents are rounded up, examined for signs of the disease and split into various bio-containment zones. A massive collection of extras are gathered on a playing field, getting set to stage a breakout from their government captors. Sheriff David Dutton (Olyphant) is separated from his pregnant wife Judy (Mitchell), who is suspected of having the virus. Inside the high school, soldiers in hazmat suits and gas masks keep watch over the infected. Later David and his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) are going to bust her out of detention and, along with a local high school girl (Danielle Panabaker), will attempt to escape from an increasingly destruction-oriented military occupation.

    Because the infection is getting rapidly out of control. A man has burned his entire family alive. The high school principal has attacked his students. And, according to Anderson, the bio-weapon, a Cold War-era creation nicknamed Trixie on its way to be destroyed before a military plane crashes in town, at some point goes from waterborne to airborne. Imagine “Outbreak” meets “28 Days Later” meets a Hollywood disaster flick.

“The infection is terminal,” explains Eisner, “on a 48- to 72-hour time frame depending on your immune system. You burn hot, you burn fast, and then you burn out completely.”

    But before that point, of course, you create some serious blood-soaked havoc. Panabaker, who starred in this year’s “Friday the 13th” reboot, says the terror originates from the fast-paced, anything-might-happen nature of the film.

“With Jason you know what you’re running from,” she says. “You’re running from a big guy who’s out to kill you. With a disease like the Crazies, you don’t really know what’s coming. There’s the huge fear of the unknown.”

Vanessa Zachos in Credo

Vanessa Zachos

 

Fri, 17 Apr 2009

South African actress Vanessa Zachos can be seen in the British horror film, Credo, premiering in the UK on Monday 20 April as part of the London Independent Film Festival 2009 Official Selection.

Zachos makes her professional acting debut alongside well known actors such as Colin Salmon (Die Another Day/ Resident Evil), Stephen Gately (Boyzone) and Clayton Watson (Matrix) in the prologue of this teenage horror flick. She plays the role of one of five theology students who are persuaded to summon up a demon in order to prove the existence of evil.
      “Horror is a genre I’ve always been rather passionate about, so being a part of Credo was really exciting for me,” says Zachos.
    The Johannesburg actress has been honing her acting skills in the UK. In 2008 she was selected at the Durban International Film Festival as one of 40 to represent South Africa at the Berlinale Talent Campus.
     Zachos has also completed filming her first leading role as the love interest in a British indie feature, and is attached to two UK features, which are currently in development.
Credo will be released 25 May on DVD in the UK.

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I, Frankenstein

I Frankenstein

 

 

 

4/16/09  – 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Director Patrick Tatopoulos, Underworld co-creator Kevin Grevioux and Death Ray Films are partnering up on the film I, Frankenstein.

I, Frankenstein is a soon to be released Darkstorm Comic that was written by Grevioux. The film combines classic monsters of horror like Frankenstein’s Monster, the Invisible Man, Dracula and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a present day “film noir” setting.

In the film Frankenstein has learned to control his inner demons and is now a private detective. As for Dracula, he is a crime leader and the the Invisible Man works as “a secret operative.”

Producing will be Robert Sanchez and Chris Patton through Death Ray. Ryan Turek is helping to develop the project.

Death Ray hopes to launch a franchise with I, Frankenstein.

 

 

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Frankstein Head Knocker

Superman, Lois Lane and whips?

   

   Hundreds of racy, violent and sadomasochistic cartoons by Joe Shuster, one of the creators of Superman, have been unearthed by comic-book historian Craig Yoe.

Researching the secret origins behind America‘s favorite superheroes has revealed much in recent years, but never anything like this.

In the new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts, $24.95), page after page of lascivious panels are reproduced from underground comics that Shuster drew in the early 1950s when the artist was down on his luck. Titled Nights of Horror, the crude, stapled pamphlets of erotic horror were sold under the counter at drugstores for $3.

Within are naked women with whips, brutish men brandishing red-hot pokers, exotic torture and politically incorrect spankings. What makes the illustrations more than simply a curiosity of the times is the disturbing fact that many of the characters look exactly like Shuster’s Superman and Lois Lane.

“Yes, they look like Lois and Clark,” Yoe says. “Joe obviously had some very dark fantasies. There’s a panel in an early Superman comic book where he has Lois over his knee and is spanking her. But certainly nothing of this depth or extremeness.”

Artist Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel created Superman in 1938 but didn’t benefit when the character exploded in popularity in the 1940s. By the 1950s, Shuster was barely working. He died in 1992.

It is not unusual for comic-book artists to handle sexier fare; MAD magazine’s Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder produced Little Annie Fanny in Playboy for 26 years.

But Stan Lee of Marvel Comics writes in an introduction that the Shuster work is “startling” in that it caters to “the basest of man’s character. … It clearly indicates how desperate Joe must have been.”

Says Yoe, who found the complete 16-issue run of the crude publication at a used-book store: “There are some who say I should have left this stuff buried and not ruin Joe’s reputation. But this is a major body of work by the creator of the superhero. Some of the drawings are beautiful, showing the great craftsman that he was. There’s even an innocence.

“I can’t say I’d frame it and put it above my mantel, but it’s a very important find for comic-book history and cultural history.”

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Actress Marilyn Chambers dead at 56

Rabid starring Marilynn Chambers

 

Tuesday, April 14th 2009

Marilyn Chambers, the angelic-looking, blue-eyed blond who symbolized purity while selling laundry detergent then went on to become one of the first mainstream porn superstars, died Sunday in her Los Angeles home. She was 56.

Chambers briefly worked as a legitimate model, most notably as the mother on an Ivory Snow box holding a baby under the tag line “99 & 4-4/100% pure.”

She later had a bit part in the 1970 Barbra Streisand flick “The Owl and the Pussycat,” before breaking into the adult film world with a role in 1972′s “Behind the Green Door” – the first porn film released widely in the U.S.

Marilynn starred in 1977’s Rabid, Directed by David Cronenberg. She starred as Rose, who is involved in a motorcycle accident, and has experimental surgery performed in order to save her life. However, she develops a taste for blood. Her victims grow in number as well as madness, turning the city into chaos.

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Marilynn Chambers

 

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DragonBall Evolution

Dragonball Evolution

 

 Press Release from Frantic Films VFX
Hollywood, CA (April 13, 2009) — Award-winning VFX studio Frantic Films VFX, a division of Prime Focus Group, has contributed 334 shots to the forthcoming feature film DRAGONBALL: EVOLUTION from Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by James Wong, the movie was released in the U.S. nationwide on April 10, 2009 and stars Justin Chatwin, Emmy Rossum, Jamie Chung, and Chow Yun-Fat in the live-action film adaptation of the popular Japanese manga comic book series.

DRAGONBALL: EVOLUTION is based on the popular Japanese manga created by Akira Toriyama, whose work spawned best selling graphic novels, video games and a phenomenally successful television series. The live action adventure centers on a team of warriors, each of whom possesses special abilities. Together, they protect Earth from a force bent on dominating the Universe and controlling the mystical objects from which the film takes its name.

 

Frantic’s Vancouver and Winnipeg facilities handled the bulk of the VFX shots, with VFX Supervisors Chad Wiebe and Mike Shand overseeing the work from Vancouver and Winnipeg, respectively. Ken Nakada, one of the industry’s leading matte painters, oversaw about 30 matte painting shots from Frantic’s Hollywood studio, while additional rotoscoping and paint work was completed at sister company Prime Focus in Mumbai. Prime Focus Group company Machine FX in London also contributed plate treatment to about 35 shots. Frantic and its partner studios worked directly with the film’s VFX Supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw and VFX Producer Janet Muswell Hamilton. Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff handled the Special Effects

 

“Because the movie is based on a very popular anime series-and because fans tend to scrutinize comic book adaptations much more than regular films-Mike Shand and I acknowledged that this was sacred material,” shared Chad Wiebe, co-VFX supervisor, Frantic Films VFX.

 

  In addition to assisting with overall look development for the film and color treating plates throughout the movie, Frantic handled two primary scenes in the movie: an extremely technically challenging lava lake sequence in which Goku battles an army of virtually indestructible demon warriors called the Fulum Assassins, and a climactic fight sequence between Goku and his enemy, the evil Lord Piccolo.

 

For the lava lake sequence, Frantic provided on-set VFX supervision in Durango, Mexico. Artists at Frantic’s Vancouver facility designed a digital environment, including mountainscapes and a molten lava lake complete with lava falls and crust, rocks and debris swirling about, that all had to interact fully with Goku and the Fulum Assassins.

 

Frantic created full digital versions of these Fulum Assassins that had to match up seamlessly with shots of the actors in costume. During one dailies review, the Frantic team actually had to remind the producers which characters were real and which were digital replacements. Additional work done by Frantic on this scene included extensive sky replacement and the scripting of custom tools for Frantic’s in-house fluid simulation toolset Flood to generate the photo-real lava.

Frantic Films VFX’s Technical Director and Science Advisor Marcus Steeds oversaw the development of new architecture for the Flood fluid simulator, which gave full scripting access to the TDs. It also gave Frantic an integrated pipeline for voxel and particle-based simulations using an enhanced meshing technology. Frantic also made a custom direct-to-renderer mesh loader. The new architecture, scripting access and tools gave the studio’s artists an integrated simulation pipeline workflow that was more efficient and allowed it to tackle bigger problems with more speed.

 

For the climactic fight scene, Frantic’s artists in Winnipeg did complete set extension of the film’s practical set of a stone temple that forms out of the ground, and also did full sky replacement as well as creating the “energy ball” effects generated by Goku and Piccolo during the battle.

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Judd Apatow and Bill Hader to team up for slasher comedy

Bill Hader

April 12,2009

Bill Hader and comedy mastermind Judd Apatow are teaming up to do a slasher film. The project, now titled House of Joel, is moving along nicely with the Apatow gang and Universal on board. Hader co-wrote the script with SNL scribe Simon Rich, and Hader said he would play the titular character Joel himself. The premise of House of Joel surrounds the contemporary state of television violence and how violence in our culture is so prevalent. There aren’t a lot of new details, but it’s still something that should interest Apatow and Hader fans.

Basically, the film is about a group of “dipshit friends” who are forced to deal with the the type of violence they’ve only seen on TV in their real lives and what they end up doing about it. Though details are still spotty at this point and the project doesn’t have a solid timeline for production, if it should happen at all, just the inkling that Apatow is actively entertaining Hader’s script is exciting. And it’s sounding like the slasher genre will be seeing its fair share of subversive commentary in the near future, with both this film and Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods on the horizon for 2010.

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Rob Zombie “Michael Myers to Be Maskless” in remake of H2: Halloween 2

Michael Myers

 

 

 

 

April 12,2009

When Rob Zombie released “Halloween” in 2007, rebooting the story of the masked killer Michael Myers, critics were not too thrilled at having to watch it. Fans, however, loved the new film and, as such, were equally eager for a sequel to come out. Now, said sequel is underway and it will certainly not disappoint, since the killer will not be wearing a mask for about 70 percent of the movie.

   

    Speaking with effects makeup specialist Wayne Toth, the above mentioned horror movie-oriented e-zine has managed to confirm early speculation regarding the mask that made of Michael Myers such a dreaded and terrifying onscreen presence. Apparently, Toth says, the killer will not be wearing his iconic mask for more than a half of the movie, since it no longer fits the story.    The sequel, somewhat redundantly called “H2: Halloween 2,” is set approximately two years after the events in the 2007 film. All this time, Myers has been living in the wild and is now back on a killing spree. The only difference, this time, is that he won’t be wearing his mask but will appear to his victims as the disheveled, bearded man pictured in the first on set photo that leaked on the Internet a short while back. “That’s Michael’s new look for a lot of the film. Fans will be shocked. They seem pretty responsive to it. But it’s like anything else, as long as you’re doing something cool, people get it.” Toth reveals for the above source.

   However, the fact that Myers won’t be wearing a mask for 70 percent of the film is not to say that he won’t be wearing a mask AT ALL. Quite on the contrary, the same insider says, since director Rob Zombie has a surprise for fans here as well: a new mask, something that will be different from any other in previous films, and which will make Myers even more scary.

   “There are a couple different versions of the mask, but none of them are the same mask from the first film. He wanted to take them a step further, even though one of them is basically supposed to be the last mask. We’ve changed it anyway. Then towards the end of the film is the current version of the mask which is a lot different from any of them we’ve seen. People are going to be surprised when they see it. It’s going to throw the Myers fans for a loop.” Toth explains.

   “H2: Halloween 2” will hit US theaters in August 2009. Earlier this year, director Rob Zombie unveiled a prototype of the Michael Myers mask – so fans of the movie can get a vague idea about what’s coming their way. Keep an eye on this space for further developments.

 

 

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