Exclusive Interview with Mike Elizalde: Amazing Special Effects Artist

Mike Elizalde

Jackie Jekyll – GoreMaster.com

Mike Elizalde, whose credits include “X-Men: The Last Stand”, both of the “Fantastic Four” films, both of the “Hellboy” films and most recently “The Land of the Lost” film, has been in the special effects business for over 20 years.   Mr. Elizalde was nominated for a “Best Makeup” Oscar for his work on Hellboy II (2008).  He is the owner of Spectral Motion an all purpose special effects shop offering Creatures, Props, Special Makeup Effects. His shop specializes in the design and creation of astonishing cinematic creature effects, special makeup effects, animatronics and action props.  Mr. Elizalde shares his journey into the world of filmmaking and special effects with GoreMaster.

Read the Exclusive Interview HERE!

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It’s ‘Grimm Up North’ at Manchesters Premier Horror Festival!

From Barry Renshaw – http://www.grimmfest.com

October is upon us. The nights are drawing in….
There’s a sudden chill in the air. Visitors to the city are discovering that the old saying is actually true. It really is Grim Up North. But this year, for the very first time, it’s also GRIMM UP NORTH!

This Halloween, something dark and deadly is slithering towards the Printworks. Manchesters very first full-on, hell-bent, red-in-tooth-and-claw Horror Film Festival is all set to grab you by the throat and drag you along with it on a journey into the blackest night.

We’ve heard the screams and smelled the blood in the air, and we know. We know where the bodies are buried, we know where evil dwells, we know where the bad things are. And we’re all set to take you there.

Join us for three days of the best in horror and experience some of the worst nightmares you’ve ever had. We’ve bloodsoaked red carpet film premieres, ghoulish guest appearances from cast and crew members, and the chance to preview one of the gaming industrys hottest unreleased titles. You can even stock up on sinister supplies at our horror fair. Why not become one of the undead at the Zombie aid walk of death or party on at the Zombie Ball. It’s all happening at GRIMM UP NORTH! You want to know more? Of course you do.

Check it out, if you dare!

THE FULL SCHEDULE GOES LIVE! It’s been one hell of a job to cram all of that gore, mayhem and chaos into an organised three day event, but we’re bloody-minded enough to have succeeded where others might fail. Check out our Programme Page RIGHT NOW and see whats screening when. There are premieres galore, Q&A session with cast and crew after many screenings, along with the odd competition for ticket holders (We have got goodies from many of the films to win!). We are also screening some mighty disturbing short films with many of the features. Its a veritable catalogue of horrors, and you can subject yourself to it HERE! TICKETS ON SALE. 5th OCT from Odeon Box office. Your best bet is to go straight to the GRIMMFEST SITE, for a comprehensive and ghoulish guide to our full Halloween horror show, and from there you”ll be directed to the right place on the ODEON online ticket shop to buy all the tickets you need!

THE OPENING NIGHT! Starting as we mean to go on, mix celebs and press as we present a gala screening of DESCENT 2, with drinks reception, Q+A with cast and crew and apocalyptic after-party! Join stars Myanna Buring, Anna Skellern, and director Jon Harris for this exclusive screening of the much-anticipated sequel to Neil Marshalls claustrophobic classic, well before its December release. This is your chance to ask the team a few awkward questions and win a signed movie poster. Seats are strictly limited for this one off event, so be sure to book early! There will be limited access to the after party, which will take place at an undisclosed PRINTWORKS venue. If you have purchased a screening ticket, you’ll have a chance to get in at a reduced rate but space WILL be very limited.

LET THE DARKSIDE OUT! We have partnered with games company CAPCOM to bring you an exclusive chance to try out their new game in the Resident Evil franchise, RESIDENT EVIL: DARKSIDE CHRONICLES, which promises to be their bloodiest, most challenging release yet. The game isn’t released until end of November on the Nintendo Wii, so this is your chance to get your clammy hands on it before anyone else! And to top it all off, all players will be entered into a prize draw to win a Wii console and a copy of the new game! Check out the Games page for more info. Don’t miss out!
AUTUMN GUESTS. To celebrate the premiere screening of Steve Rumbelow’s AUTUMN, we are pleased to welcome the film’s stars Dexter Fletcher (Lock Stock, Layer Cake) and Dickon Tolson (The Bill, Casualty, Peak Practice), together with author David Moody, whose cult novels were the basis for the film. David has just had the option on his novel HATER picked up by Mexican master of the macabre Guillermo del Toro, and will be on hand to sign copies of his books. Then he and the film’s stars will all attend a Q&A after the screening on the Sunday!
STRIGOI MEETS ITS MAKERS! Strigoi are the Vampires of Eastern European mythology, far removed from the familiar creatures of cinema cliché. Director Faye Jackson and producer Rey Muraru have been turning heads and blowing minds with their film at festivals around the world, and we are delighted that they will be joining us for the Premiere UK screening at GRIMM UP NORTH, to give us the low-down on blood-sucking in darkest Romania!

UK PREMIERE. Just to prove that it really is Grimm Up North, we celebrate the local talent, with the UK premiere SPLINTERED – award winning horror from our own Simeon Halligan. There’ll be a big turn out for this one, including Holly Weston (Madonna\’s Filth and Wisdom), Sacha Dhawan (The History Boys) Jonathan Readwin (Dread), Sadie Pickering (Waterloo Road). The director, producer and many other members of the crew will be on hand to answer all your questions. There’ll even be a few SPLINTERED goodies to win! And we’ll also be offering you a chance to feast your eyes on….
SEE BEHIND THE SCENES. ….forbidden fragments from SPLINTERED! A chance to see behind the scenes, with storyboards, visuals, props and documentary material. You’ll not find any of this material anywhere else until the release of the film next year – and perhaps not even then. So, if you want to take a look where you shouldn’t and find out how a horror film is spawned, stitched together, and finally unleashed, check out our exclusive SPLINTERED exhibition at the Odeon Printworks through out the weekend.
CLIVE BARKER. Back in the 80s, Clive Barker revolutionised the world of horror. And he”s set to do so again. We are proud to be screening an exclusive premiere of DREAD, the latest cinematic horror from his dark and deadly imagination, as well as a chance to relive that first terrifying glimpse of the Cenobites, in the classic HELLRAISER. Both on the same night. Can your already flayed and frayed nerves stand the strain? If were luck we might just have a celebrity guest or t wo! Watch this space.
COLIN. You’ve heard the hype, you’ve read the press, now see the film. The infamous £45 Zombie movie will be shambling onto the screen at Grimm Up North. Now is your chance to discover for yourselves the trials and tribulations of being COLIN, just a normal rotting face in the crowd of the undead apocalypse. Director Mark Price and members of his cast and crew will be joining us for this exclusive screening to launch the film”s UK release. If we’re lucky, they might even join us at Zombie Aid 2, the charity Zombie walk of death! COMPETITIONS: Plus if you sign up to our group on Facebook, sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter, you can enter exclusive competitions to win great prizes like free tshirts from Last Exit To Nowhere and festival tickets!

More announcements (and maybe a few dire warnings!) to come from the GRIMM Office as we draw ever closer to the abyss, but for now, we wish you unpleasant dreams…

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Lynsey Jefferies at info@grimmfest.com. Fax: 0845 017 6769. Grimm Up North!, 4 Acton Square. The Crescent. Manchester M5 4NY, UK.

Find out more at The Official Website…Click HERE

Sam Raimi to produce Yeti flick ‘Refuge’

By Steven Zeitchik – HollywoodReporter.com

Sam Raimi is taking “Refuge.”
The genre maestro has signed on to produce a supernatural horror pic of that name, based on a pitch from up-and-coming British director Corin Hardy. The project has been set up at Mandate, where Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures has a deal.

“Refuge” centers on a remote town terrorized by a Yeti, the mythological creature native to the mountains of the Himalayas. Hardy will direct from a script by fellow British writer Tom De Ville; both are repped by Paradigm’s Marc Helwig and Trevor Astbury.

Jason Blum, Nathan Kahane and Steven Schneider will produce.

Meanwhile, Blum’s Blumhouse Prods. will finance a short film with the same premise as the “Refuge” feature. Hardy and De Ville will work on that as well. The idea is to offer a teaser that can help Hardy refine his vision even as the script is being developed.

Genre auteurs are increasingly taking on projects from young directors and shepherding them through the indie and studio system as both producers and mentors. Guillermo del Toro, for instance, has taken on that role with Juan Antonio Bayona and other Spanish newcomers.

The CAA-repped Raimi, who is next set to shoot “Spider-Man 4″ as well as an adaptation of the video game “World of Warcraft,” is involved in a number of projects as a producer, including the vampire comic book adaptation “Priest” at Screen Gems.

Guillermo del Toro to Produce a Deadman Movie

From BeyondHollywood.com

If it’s nerd-based, but also horror-inclined, it’s always a good idea to see if Guillermo del Toro is available to produce. That’s what producer Don Murphy and Warner Bros. have done, and lo and behold, del Toro has agreed to produce a live-action adaptation of the D.C. comic book “Deadman”. Del Toro won’t direct, though; that honor will go to Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, director of the inspirational-sounding “Island of Lost Souls”, and one of the writers on a little Danish martial arts gem I saw last year called “Fighter”.

According to Variety, “Deadman” will be based on the D.C. comic book character created by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino in 1967. The character first appeared in “Strange Adventures #205″, and is the ghost of a murdered circus acrobat name Boston Brand, who has the power to possess the living in order to seek out his killer. Besides that little vendetta, he uses his powers to help the innocent and generally freak people out. He is called Deadman, after all. You don’t invite a guy with that name to dinner.

This won’t be the first time Deadman has showed up on the screen. He’s appeared in the animated shows Justice League Unlimited and more recently, in the new Batman show, Batman: The Brave and the Bold. For a while there back in 2000, a live-action TV show for Deadman was in development over at TNT, back when TNT was still on their comic book kick. They’ve since shaken that itch and gone strictly into TV crime sans superheroes.

G.I. Joe director talks sequel and Tarzan remake

Caspar van Dien as Tarzan

By David Bentley – CoventryTelegraph.net

WITH HIS new action-packed sci-fi flick G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra opening this weekend, director Stephen Sommers already has a sequel in mind.

And he’s also set to direct a remake of Tarzan, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous ape-man most recently seen on screen in live-action form in 1984′s Greystoke (starring Christopher Lambert) and 1999′s Tarzan and the Lost City (pictured here, with Caspar van Dien in the lead role).

CineFOOLS reports that when Sommers was asked if the G.I. Joe cast were locked in for a sequel, he said “Yes, they are. Next summer.”

Of course it also depends on how the first film performs and Sommers told SuperheroHype he was all set to do a follow-up if Paramount gave it the green light. “I’ll take August off, but then sure, I’m right back in there”, he said.

So, where would the next film take us? Sommers said: “Larry Hama, who gave me the comic books, gave me a lot of the mythology of it. There’s so much more to tell just about these characters and where their relationships go.

“I think that even though this movie has a beginning, a middle and an end, you still want to know what’s going to happen to them. You want to know more about these characters which is the best thing about it. As great as the action is and all the special effects, I think people really fall in love with these characters. The key is that I have a lot of ideas and there’s a G.I. Joe mythology. If we get to do a sequel, there’s a lot more to tell.”

He also spoke about his Tarzan remake for Warner Bros: “It will be live action but we’ll contemporise it. It’ll still be a period movie, but it’s almost like The Mummy, it took place in Ancient Egypt and the 20s and 30s, but it felt more contemporary, that sort of deal.

“We’ll just stick with the book. What I want to make is our idealised version of a Tarzan movie. Seeing a guy talking to apes didn’t work 30 years ago with Greystoke so it won’t work now.”

The remake is being written by G.I. Joe screenwriter Stuart Beattie, who also worked on 30 Days of Night, Australia and the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Beattie was recently asked about the Tarzan project by Collider and said: “It’s at Warner Brothers. They’re deciding how much money… there’s like a battle over the budget of that. People do it one way, studio wants it another way and they’re just trying to find a middle ground.”

He said it could be Sommers’ next project if the budget was agreed.

Explaining his take on the story, he said: “It’s a period [story]. Tarzan, I think, is probably the most filmed story of all, so our belief in doing a Tarzan movie today was you couldn’t go tell the raised-by-gorillas and loincloths and ‘Me Tarzan and You Jane’ story because it’s been done so much and it’s just not interesting anymore.

“So it was much more big romantic action-adventure film with supernatural stuff and witch doctors and lots of really fun stuff.

“And mythic Africa, like that deep dark heart of Africa stuff, you know, where the trees are twice as big and the vines stretched forever and the canopy is a whole world in itself and just really cool-looking place to spend a couple of hours.”

He said it would be “big, fun summer spectacle” and would be set in 1932 or 1933.

Back in December 2006, it was announced by Variety that Guillermo del Toro was in line to make a live-action Tarzan movie.

Del Toro said at that time: “I’d love to create a new version that is still a family movie, but as edgy as I can make it. There are strong themes of survival of a defenseless child left behind in the most hostile environment.”

John Collee (Master and Commander) was in talks to write the screenplay but Del Toro’s commitment to The Hobbit put him out of the running and Sommers replaced him in September 2008.

“Why Vampires Never Die” by Guillermo del Toro

GUILLERMO del TORO

New York Times – Op-Ed Contributors

Why Vampires Never Die

 

By GUILLERMO del TORO and CHUCK HOGAN

 

TONIGHT, you or someone you love will likely be visited by a vampire — on cable television or the big screen, or in the bookstore. Our own novel describes a modern-day epidemic that spreads across New York City.

It all started nearly 200 years ago. It was the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816, when ash from volcanic eruptions lowered temperatures around the globe, giving rise to widespread famine. A few friends gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva and decided to engage in a small competition to see who could come up with the most terrifying tale — and the two great monsters of the modern age were born.

One was created by Mary Godwin, soon to become Mary Shelley, whose Dr. Frankenstein gave life to a desolate creature. The other monster was less created than fused. John William Polidori stitched together folklore, personal resentment and erotic anxieties into “The Vampyre,” a story that is the basis for vampires as they are understood today.

CHUCK HOGAN

With “The Vampyre,” Polidori gave birth to the two main branches of vampiric fiction: the vampire as romantic hero, and the vampire as undead monster. This ambivalence may reflect Polidori’s own, as it is widely accepted that Lord Ruthven, the titular creature, was based upon Lord Byron — literary superstar of the era and another resident of the lakeside villa that fateful summer. Polidori tended to Byron day and night, both as his doctor and most devoted groupie. But Polidori resented him as well: Byron was dashing and brilliant, while the poor doctor had a rather drab talent and unremarkable physique.

But this was just a new twist to a very old idea. The myth, established well before the invention of the word “vampire,” seems to cross every culture, language and era. The Indian Baital, the Ch’ing Shih in China, and the Romanian Strigoi are but a few of its names. The creature seems to be as old as Babylonia and Sumer. Or even older.

The vampire may originate from a repressed memory we had as primates. Perhaps at some point we were — out of necessity — cannibalistic. As soon as we became sedentary, agricultural tribes with social boundaries, one seminal myth might have featured our ancestors as primitive beasts who slept in the cold loam of the earth and fed off the salty blood of the living.

Monsters, like angels, are invoked by our individual and collective needs. Today, much as during that gloomy summer in 1816, we feel the need to seek their cold embrace.

Herein lies an important clue: in contrast to timeless creatures like the dragon, the vampire does not seek to obliterate us, but instead offers a peculiar brand of blood alchemy. For as his contagion bestows its nocturnal gift, the vampire transforms our vile, mortal selves into the gold of eternal youth, and instills in us something that every social construct seeks to quash: primal lust. If youth is desire married with unending possibility, then vampire lust creates within us a delicious void, one we long to fulfill.

In other words, whereas other monsters emphasize what is mortal in us, the vampire emphasizes the eternal in us. Through the panacea of its blood it turns the lead of our toxic flesh into golden matter.

In a society that moves as fast as ours, where every week a new “blockbuster” must be enthroned at the box office, or where idols are fabricated by consensus every new television season, the promise of something everlasting, something truly eternal, holds a special allure. As a seductive figure, the vampire is as flexible and polyvalent as ever. Witness its slow mutation from the pansexual, decadent Anne Rice creatures to the current permutations — promising anything from chaste eternal love to wild nocturnal escapades — and there you will find the true essence of immortality: adaptability.

Vampires find their niche and mutate at an accelerated rate now — in the past one would see, for decades, the same variety of fiend, repeated in multiple storylines. Now, vampires simultaneously occur in all forms and tap into our every need: soap opera storylines, sexual liberation, noir detective fiction, etc. The myth seems to be twittering promiscuously to serve all avenues of life, from cereal boxes to romantic fiction. The fast pace of technology accelerates its viral dispersion in our culture.

But if Polidori remains the roots in the genealogy of our creature, the most widely known vampire was birthed by Bram Stoker in 1897.

Part of the reason for the great success of his “Dracula” is generally acknowledged to be its appearance at a time of great technological revolution. The narrative is full of new gadgets (telegraphs, typing machines), various forms of communication (diaries, ship logs), and cutting-edge science (blood transfusions) — a mash-up of ancient myth in conflict with the world of the present.

Today as well, we stand at the rich uncertain dawn of a new level of scientific innovation. The wireless technology we carry in our pockets today was the stuff of the science fiction in our youth. Our technological arrogance mirrors more and more the Wellsian dystopia of dissatisfaction, while allowing us to feel safe and connected at all times. We can call, see or hear almost anything and anyone no matter where we are. For most people then, the only remote place remains within. “Know thyself” we do not.

Despite our obsessive harnessing of information, we are still ultimately vulnerable to our fates and our nightmares. We enthrone the deadly virus in the very same way that “Dracula” allowed the British public to believe in monsters: through science. Science becomes the modern man’s superstition. It allows him to experience fear and awe again, and to believe in the things he cannot see.

And through awe, we once again regain spiritual humility. The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane “reality show” lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well. In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying.

Forever.

Guillermo del Toro, the director of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and Chuck Hogan are the authors of “The Strain,” a novel.

“The Hobbit” Not Yet Greenlit

It seems like Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro have been working on “The Hobbit” prequels for a while now, but according to Jackson, they have yet to complete the script, begin casting or try to get the project greenlit.
“You never go offering a role to an actor until you have a script that they can read, and you also need a schedule so you can tell what dates you need them to work,” he said.
Jackson added that the script is about three weeks away from being complete. “We have to deliver that to the studio,” he said. “They have to read it. They have to like it. They have to agree to a budget. They have to green-light the movie, because we haven’t really got a green-light. Everybody assumes that ‘The Hobbit’ is being made, but the reality is, unless we can write a script that the studio likes and present a budget that they like, there won’t be any ‘Hobbit’ film being made.”

Source(s) –  MTV News, Worst Previews.com

Hobbit film could be jeopardized by Tolkien heirs’ lawsuit

JRR Tolkien

Xan Brooks – guardian.co.uk

• Family of Lord of the Rings author claim $220m in compensation for unpaid profits from the trilogy
• Suit also seeks option to terminate further film rights, including for Guillermo del Toro’s Hobbit project

Guillermo del Toro’s film version of The Hobbit could be killed off in a pending battle between a Hollywood giant and the family of the book’s author, JRR Tolkien. The heirs to the Tolkien estate are suing New Line Cinema, the studio behind the Lord of the Rings adaptations, claiming $220m (£133m) in compensation for undistributed profits from the films. For good measure, they are also demanding the option to terminate further film rights to Tolkien’s work, citing breach of contract.

“Should the case go all the way to trial, we are confident that New Line will lose its rights to The Hobbit,” said Bonnie Eskenazi, the lawyer working for the author’s son, Christopher, and the family’s charity, the Tolkien Trust. The case – officially billed as Christopher Reuel Tolkien v New Line Cinema Corp – is due to be heard at Los Angeles superior court in October.

JRR Tolkien sold the film rights to the trilogy in 1969 for an upfront fee of £250,000 and a reported 7.5% of future profits. Released between 2001 and 2003, the Lord of the Rings trilogy went on to earn upwards of $6bn in theatrical and DVD sales. However, the Tolkien estate claims it has yet to receive any payment from New Line or its parent company, Time Warner. For their part, lawyers acting for New Line argue that terms of the original contract are “ambiguous”.

The studio has grown accustomed to fighting legal battles in the wake of The Lord of the Rings’ success. In 2005 director Peter Jackson sued New Line for a share of the profits, eventually settling for an undisclosed sum in 2007. The film-maker Saul Zaentz, previous owner of the rights to Tolkien’s work, settled for a reported $168m in 2005.

The Hobbit is currently in pre-production in New Zealand, with a release date set for 2011. Tolkien’s tale of an intrepid hobbit who sets off in search of dragon treasure will be divided into two pictures, directed by Del Toro and executive produced by Jackson.

 

Pete Jackson talks Bilbo Baggins casting

Helen O’Hara – EmpireOnline.com

It has been rumored that the casting of Bilbo Baggins for The Hobbit may be announced at Comic-Con next week. Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy and David Tennant are all rumored to be in the running for the role – but according to what Peter Jackson told us when we spoke to him recently, the fans shouldn’t be holding their breath for a ‘Con announcement.

   “No, we won’t be announcing Bilbo for a little while,” he said when we asked about a Comic-Con announcement. “We’re starting to think about casting, but we’re knee-deep in the script right now. And when we do go to actors, they’re probably going to ask to see a script, so we’re powering ahead with getting the first draft done.”

   We also asked him what he’s planning to do next after The Lovely Bones, but he’s not yet sure. “I haven’t yet decided what I’ll be directing after that. At the moment we’re concentrating on writing a couple of little movies with Guillermo [Del Toro]. A couple of small films! (Laughs) And that’s going to take us another few months of writing to do.

“But we are developing a couple of projects which are potentially films that I’d direct for next year. Temeraire is still on the cards. But those are really taking a second place at the moment…”

   Temeraire, of course, is his mooted adaptation of Naomi Novik’s fantasy-lit saga, in which French and English forces wage the Napoleonic wars with enormous battle-dragons. A heady blend of sea battles and bloody big monsters, we reckon it would be a perfect fit for the Lord Of The Rings director. 

New horror-film remake “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

Brian Warmoth – MTV

Like Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller before them, Guillermo del Toro and Troy Nixey will be working closely together on their new horror-film remake “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” which will star “Memento” actor Guy Pearce. Del Toro co-wrote and will produce the remake, with Nixey, a former comic book artist with credits on “Batman: Gotham Knights” and Matt Wagner’s “Grendel: Black, White & Red.”

News of Pearce’s recent casting in the movie showed up earlier today over on MTV Movies Blog, along with confirmation that the reworked ’70s ABC telefilm about a demon-possessed house would also feature Katie Holmes and young “Bridge to Terabithia” actress Bailee Madison.

In addition to being del Toro’s protégé, Nixey shares a common collaborator with the “Hobbit” director in “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola. Nixey contributed artwork to Mignola’s “Jenny Finn” comics.

Thus far, Nixey’s only directorial credit is on his 2007 short film “Latchkey’s Lament,” so “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” should prove to be a big event in his career as his feature debut. Much as Miller had a bona fide star director looking over his shoulder with “Sin City,” Nixey should be getting the best guidance possible for his new venture with del Toro. It should be fun to see what comics’ latest shared human resource with the movie industry produces.

The story centers around a young girl sent to live with her father and his new girlfriend discovers creatures in her new home who want to claim her as one of their own.

GoreMaster Mike Elizalde is the creature design consultant. Mike has extensive credits including Land of the Lost, The Day the Earth Stood Still, X-Men: The Last Stand, Hellboy and so many more. Read more about Mike Elizalde HERE

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