With a total of three War of the Worlds‘ coming to you this year (most of them directly to DVD) , this Steven Spielberg project re-unites the director with Tom Cruise, after another sci-fi project, Minority Report. Although scheduled for a 2007 release, Spielberg’s take on the classic 1898 H.G. Wells novel was speeded up, after Spielberg got stuck with the Indiana Jones IV script and Cruise had problems with Mission: Impossible III, when his director resigned. It was produced in a mere eight months (including post production) and shot in only three months. In a time of all of these really lousy remakes, this can hardly be called one.
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Vampire movies are older than the hills. Let’s face it – they’ve been going on for years. The first theatrical appearance of the quasi-legendary toothpick fetishist Vlad Dracul, AKA Vlad the Impaler, AKA Vlad Tepesh, AKA fifty dozen other nicknames of much more unsavory quality, hit in the thirties. And ever since, Dracula movies, vampire movies, have been a staple of popular American film.

Dracula 3000 is at once the newest and possibly best retelling of a gestalt that should be as tired as an eighty-year-old man in a marathon.

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He is the master of suspense. I began to show more interest in old movies a few years ago. I feel I can safely say that my knowledge of modern film is more than average (to stay on the modest side). However, I have difficulties keeping up with what is released these days, let alone diving into all of those classic gems. This series is dedicated to the amazing work of Alfred Hitchcock. We are hoping to see and review most of the 63 films he directed, if not all. We will start with the most famous and obvious ones and then dive into his rich history and more obscure titles…

Strangers on a Train is the first of a set of films Hitchcock directed for Warner Bros. The film stars Robert Walker, who died shortly after the film was released and Farley Granger, who earlier on did another Hitchcock film, called Rope. Many consider both Rope and Strangers on a Train filled with hidden homo-erotic elements. In 1991 a new, longer version of Strangers on a Train was discovered that more extensively shows the first encounter between the protagonists. It is also one of the many films that tries to come up with the perfect murder and is based on the first novel by Patricia Highsmith.
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No, that’s not a typo.

This week comes complete with an open plea to whoever’s actually reading my stuff. This was a phenomenal move for The Asylum Home Entertainment. See, it’s always a twitchy concept, taking an old story and trying to update it. Longtime readers will remember my Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain coverage, and the utter lambasting I gave that contemptible piece of cinematic slime. But now, The Asylum comes along with its rendition of War of the Worlds. It’s hard enough to pull off by normal standards, but well-nigh impossible with Spielberg’s version hitting theatres within mere weeks after The Asylum’s version hits video stores next week.

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He is the master of suspense. I began to show more interest in old movies a few years ago. I feel I can safely say that my knowledge of modern film is more than average (to stay on the modest side). However, I have difficulties keeping up with what is released these days, let alone diving into all of those classic gems. This series is dedicated to the amazing work of Alfred Hitchcock. We are hoping to see and review most of the 63 films he directed, if not all. We will start with the most famous and obvious ones and then dive into his rich history and more obscure titles…

North by Northwest marks the fourth and final collaboration between Hitchcock and Cary Grant. Its fame has derived mainly from the legendary scene in which Grant’s character, Roger O. Thornhill, is chased by a crop-plane. However, the film, that can be considered the first real James Bond film (that does not star James Bond, at all), has so much more to offer. In fact, it is a chase all across the United States, from the northeast to the northwest (hence the title), that is full of intrigues, love affairs and plot changes, finding its climax at the Mount Rushmore monument.
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True story: On October 6th 1998 in Laramie Wyoming, 21 year old Matthew Sheppard was kidnapped, robbed, beaten, tied to a fence, tortured and left to die. Because he was gay.
The Laramie Project (adapted from the play with the same name) explores that terrible event and it’s aftermath, and is a compassionate movie that, while trying to fill in the blanks surrounding Matthews murder and the prosecution of his killers, lets us see the world in miniature, with people at their best and people at their worst.
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He is the master of suspense. I began to show more interest in old movies a few years ago. I feel I can safely say that my knowledge of modern film is more than average (to stay on the modest side). However, I have difficulties keeping up with what is released these days, let alone diving into all of those classic gems. This series is dedicated to the amazing work of Alfred Hitchcock. We are hoping to see and review most of the 63 films he directed, if not all. We will start with the most famous and obvious ones and then dive into his rich history and more obscure titles…

Vertigo wasn’t an instant hit when it was released back in 1958. In fact, Hitchcock considered it a flop. It was also one of the first in a row of his most famous and celebrated titles that wasn’t considered a masterpiece. Due to legal restrictions, Vertigo wasn’t allowed to be publicly shown until 1984. When it was eventually re-released, its genius was finally acknowledged and it is now listed among the six greatest Hitchcock films (these are Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds).
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The old Waverly Theater in the West Village (best known for starting the whole cult of midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show) has finally been reincarnated as the brand spanking new IFC Center. IFC stands for The Independent Film Channel, a movie lovers favorite on US cable television. So, while the theater isn’t independent, the movies promise to be.
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I must admit I was a little bit thrown by the idea of this being yet another Hollywood remake, when I heard about plans to make an entirely new Batman film. A film that would tell the story from scratch about how billionaire Bruce Wayne becomes the masked crusader. There were three things that kept my initial scepticism in check: one, Australian director, Christopher Nolan, who made the tantalizing Memento, as well as the atmospheric but rather shallow Insomnia, two, Christopher Bale, who kind of possesses the required arrogance a character such as Batman needs (as he proved superbly in American Psycho) and three, the casting of a plethora of (Hollywood) stars such as Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Rutger Hauer, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Katie Holmes – the list goes on forever.
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Millions begins and ends with a sunny disposition, our protagonist Damian (Alexander Nathan Etel) letting his imagination run wild in a flurry of good-natured wonder. This imagination and its owner possess a pure innocence, embodied by Saints Peter, Francis, Joseph, Clare and Nicholas, which remains uncorrupted by the society around him despite the presence of hurt and villainy in his young life. Millions is a film about innocence and belief in the unbelievable, all in the face of a society that demands the triumph of pointless expenditure that survives on the basis of human greed, embodied by the Dickensian figure of The Poor Man (Christopher Fulford). And who better to tell this story of sparkling imagination in a shadowy environment but Danny Boyle, whose last film was about zombies.

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