Vampires, Will Smith, Argento ………….. I hate writing.

I have the next couple of days off and am going to focus on my feature I have in development. But, I still wanted to get some info out to my faithful 300 readers a day; thanks, by the way. - I’m not trying to rape and pillage the net for news stories form other sites, but I have a lot of writing to do today if I’mgoing to finish this feature by Halloween.

First up, Variety is reporting that Will Smith is looking at an I AM LEGEND Prequel. I AM LEGEND, a book written by Richard Matheson, a book directly responsible for inspiring Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as well as being a key read that made Stephen King want to become an author and a film that was released into the world of PG-13. (Brakes screeching)

This is a book near to my heart and if I have my way, I’ll make my own, definitive version of this film one day. The day I heard about I AM LEGEND coming to the screen, twas a bittersweet one. I wanted to make this film, this would be my endead epic but I also was excited to see more undead films with the backing of a major studio. Alas, I predicted the canvas of the film long before it came out, PG-13, Will Smithy “Oh no you didn’t!” pop corn lameness.

The film was an uninsirped piece of crap with CGI vampire creatures to boot. CG Vampires ? What genius made this call during pre-production ? Well, it looks like we’re getting a prequel.

The prequel will chronicle the final days of humanity in New York before a man-made virus caused a plague that left Smith’s character the lone survivor among a mutated mob in the city.

Here’s an idea, ditch Will Smith, pick up where the movie left off and rate this shit R. Does anyone really want to see another PG-13 Horror film for th sake of Box Office profit ? Oh yes, the studios do. Read the article Here.

You can also read my rant from April 2005 when I first learned of the project HERE.

In other news; Guillermo del Toro has inked a publishing deal with HarperCollins imprint William Morrow to pen a trilogy of vampire thrillers with Chuck Hogan. Here we go again with the resurgence of the Vampire film, of which most outright suck, although I loved 30 Days of Night (Rated R.) With the huge popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s young adult novel series ‘Twilight’ you would bet thathere come the Vampires. Always a popular sub genre genre, but what’s the point when we get PG-13 crap. It’s like Soft Core porn but not really. Read it HERE.






Clive Barker’s The Midnight Meat Train.

Is that fucking Brooke Shields ? Why would you cast Brooke Shields in anything ? Never the less, this still looks pretty cool. The trailer is HERE.

Suspiria remake ? Really.

1977’s Suspiria is an Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento and is often considered Argento’s finest film and a classic of the horror genre. Entertainment Weekly rated it #18 in its top 25 scariest movies of all time, saying it had “the most vicious murder scene ever filmed”, and it was rated #24 on the cable channel Bravo’s list of the “100 Scariest Movie Moments”.

IFMagazine sat down with Giallo Master Dario Argento and to my notice has a Suspiria remake in the works. Here is the interview.

And finally, from CHUD. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is a Swedish Vampire film that has gotten some nice hype about 2 12 year olds that fall in love. And Hollywood of course has greenlit a reamke directed by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves; yeaaaaaaaah, there’s a good idea. Oh yes, and we shoul remake it PG-13 too !

Oskar is a 12-year-old-boy who is being bullied at school. He befriends a mysterious girl, Eli, who moves in next door with her father Håkan. In the course of the story the reader finds out all is not what it seems. Eli is really a vampire and her ‘father’ supplies her with fresh blood by murdering young boys. As Oskar gradually begins to understand who Eli really is, the bond between them grows stronger. Eli teaches him to stand up to his bullies and Oskar grows increasingly fond of ‘her’.

The film won the “The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature” at the TriBeCa Film Festival in 2008.

The Trailer

Alright, I have to get to working on my horror masterpiece.

“Blue” Language on the Silver Screen - !@%$#%@

Colorful language has long been an important tool for movie makers. Sure, it has been used as a gratuitous placeholder or as a shocking spacefiller from time to time. (Bad Santa’s bottomless bag of F-Bombs comes to mind.) On the other hand, the use of swearing has lent itself to an authentic sense of realism for many a genre (think any crime or police drama since the late-sixties). Sometimes, just sometimes, profanity can be a beautiful weapon…a weapon crafted by the blacksmith artisans (aka the writers), and wielded by the (not always so) heroic Sir Actalot on screen. In the rarest of occasions, the perfectly written explicative perfectly delivered can go well beyond the purpose of merely driving the character’s point home. It is in these instances that, instead of the dialogue reflecting how “real people” talk, we the audience are schooled in the proper use of the profane.

During the silent era, Douglas Fairbanks would hurl a “cocksucker” or a “son of a whore” (or worse) at his on-screen adversary, knowing full well that the final print would instead include a title card that read “You Scoundrel”. He and other leading men of the day were forced to curb the obscenities, however, when some deaf lip-reading audience members became flabbergasted by what they “heard”. The infamously feared Hayes Office was officially born in the year 1922. As all content censorship was largely voluntary for the next eight years, however, the occasional colorful adjective would still rear its dirty head. Then came the early 1930’s, and with them the Production Code was rolled out. Starting in ‘34, all films had to adhere to said code in order to get the all-important Seal of Approval. Make no mistake about it, some of our greatest films were produced over the next thirty years. All the same though, movie swearing went largely into the dark ages…or into the fucking dark ages, as the case may be.

Join me now, fellow filmphiles, as we take a look at the decades that followed. Along the way, let us examine the unforgettable moments in colorful language that exploded right off the screen and into the pop culture itself.

The Essential Ten
Great Moments In Cinematic Cursing History

#1 Gone With the Wind (1939)
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

It may seem tame by today’s standards, but David O Selznick had to fight a long drawn-out battle with the Hayes Office just to insure this now-classic “damn” was left in. Keep in mind, this is the same period in which Sir Laurence Olivier (for his title role in Shakespeare’s Henry V) was forced to change the line “Norman bastards” to “Norman dastards”. True story.

#2 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
“Look, sweetheart, I can drink you under any goddamn table you want, so don’t worry about me.”

This Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton tour de force caused the language restrictions long imposed on Hollywood to come crashing down. The Production Code Administration reluctantly granted the film a Seal. The reason? Virginia Woolf was acknowledged as “reflecting the tragic realism of life”. This also laid the groundwork for films to be separated into either “general audience” or “mature audience” categories.

#3 The Last Detail (1973)
“Welcome to the wonderful world of pussy, kid.”

Jack Nicholson is a presence, plain and simple. As Navy lifer Billy “Bad Ass” Buddusky, he delivers Robert Towne’s colorful dialogue with unabashed frankness. This comedy showed moviegoers everywhere what “swearing like a sailor” was all about.

#4 Serpico (1973)
“You stupid fuck! You didn’t know me? You fired without a warning, without a fucking brain in your head? Oh, shit. I buy one, motherfucker, I ain’t buying it from you.”

I’m sure many of you will be surprised that Scarface wasn’t included on a list involving profanity. Sure Tony Montana rendered nearly 200 versions of “fuck, but I have come to see Scarface’s potty mouth as somewhat cartoonish. On the other hand, Pacino’s earlier portrayal of real life NY policeman Frank Serpico was a game changer in poignant realistic grittiness of the tongue.

#5 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
“Well, I don’t want to break up the meeting or nothin’, but she’s something of a cunt, ain’t she Doc?”

Jack strikes again. One of the most memorable characters of the 1970’s, Nicholson’s McMurphy is anything but looney. Talking about being ahead of its time…the word “cunt” is still considered by many the last real taboo left in our lexicon. Now imagine uttering it on a major film nearly thirty-five years ago, and winning the Oscar in doing so. That’s crazy…ah, no offense, Chief.

#6 Arthur (1981)
“Perhaps you would like me to wash your dick for you…you little shit.”

Okay, basically at this point along our trek, anything goes. It was the 80’s after all, and colorful language was becoming more and more mainstream. Nearly all foul language was becoming fair game. That is, of course, until it is spoken with dirty eloquence by legendary Shakespearian thespians like Sir John Gielgud. Playing butler Hobson to Dudley Moore’s drunken millionaire title character, Gielgud takes no guff whatsoever.

#7 Full Metal Jacket (1987)
“I’ll bet you’re the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. I’ll be watching you.”

Okay, there’s real…and then there’s REAL. I don’t care how many method acting classes you have taken, or how long you’ve been at the Actor’s Studio honing your craft; nobody but nobody could have breathed life into the role of Gny. Sgt. Hartman the way R. Lee Ermey did. Quite simply, you can’t teach that stuff. Ermey steals the show so completely, that the second half of the film is fairly forgettable without him (except of course for the Vietnamese hooker’s immortal utterance of “me so horny” and “me love you long time”).

#8 Die Hard (1988)
“Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker”

Who could have predicted it? Who woulda thunk that a cop thriller starring a fairly popular television actor would go on to create a brand new subgenre? Furthermore, who would have believed that word “motherfucker” could sound so unimaginably cool coming from the lips of a white guy? Did Bruce Willis’ smartass remark to supervillain Alan Rickman become a national catchphrase years before “show me the money” and long after “go ahead, make my day”? Fucking-A right it did.

#9 Goodfellas (1990)
“No. No, I don’t know. You said it. How do I know? You said I’m funny. How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me, tell me what’s funny!”

Certainly, if you look at the numbers, Casino outswears Goodfellas by nearly 25%. That’s all fine and dandy, but the dialogue in this Scorsese offering in infinitely more dynamic for the collective consciousness. Joe Pesci’s barraging of Ray Liotta is the stuff of legend. It will be remembered long after Pesci is as dead as Tommy DeVito.

#10 Pulp Fiction (1994)
“Say what again. Say what again! I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker. Say what one more goddamn time.”

Samuel L. Jackson is the profanity poet laureate; the vulgarity Da Vinci; the motherfucker maestro. His true artistry is in the fact that even his most colorful lines are delivered seamlessly and are anything but contrived. It doesn’t hurt matters that Tarantino also happens to be one of the finest dialogue writers of the last quarter century. The two together? A match made in Heaven…or, if you will, a match made along “the path of the righteous man”.







Cheers,
Callaghan

QUANTUM OF SOLACE theme song and the new TRAILER B!

Courtesy Joblo.com.

The Theme for Quantum of Solace is out. From two of musics best acts, Jack White of the White Stripes and the hot hot hot Alicia Keys. The song is called ‘Another Way to Die’ and it kicks ass. I do miss the more traditional Bond themes that have a Bondesque cinema undercurrent that wreaks with adventure and espionage but by now, we know the producers are taking Bond to places we’ve never seen in the franchise. It’s a different Bond and it’s all good.

Here are my Top 10 Bond Songs and then you can check out the new one.

10. Diamonds Are Forever (Shirley Bassey)
09. Tomorrow Never Dies (Sheryl Crow)
08. Live and Let Die - (Paul McCartney & Wings)
07. A View To A Kill (Duran Duran)
06. The Living Daylights (a-ha)
05. GoldenEye (Tina Turner)
04. Die Another Day (Madonna)
03. For Your Eyes Only (Sheena Easton)
02. The World Is Not Enough (Garbage)
01. Nobody Does It Better (Carly Simon)

Sadly, neither the new song nor Chris Cornell’s from Casino Royale have me hooked. And on a liner note, I miss the opening theme with the silhouettes of the girls. I hope we don’t get poker cards as a substitute on this one.

Okay, check it out.

And here’s the second trailer TRAILER B

This film looks phenomenal. A perfect balance of bad ass and love interest. I can’t wait.