If you thought you were getting through Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC unscathed because you have a 200-hour file and an NG+ character, Hidetaka Miyazaki has recently assured you’ve got another thing coming. Speaking to Famitsu, whose interview was translated via Reddit and reported by GamesRadar, Miyazaki…
After spending more than a decade in development hell, a remake of The Crow (watch it HERE) has made its way through production and is set to receive a theatrical release, courtesy of Lionsgate, on June 7th. With that date just three months away, a trio of first look images have arrived online to show us what It star Bill Skarsgard and singer FKA twigs look like as the new versions of goth rocker Eric Draven and the love of his life, Shelly. These images come from Vanity Fair and can be seen at the bottom of this article.
According to the Vanity Fair write-up, Eric and Shelly are brutally murdered when the demons of Shelly’s past (in the form of a deliciously insinuating Danny Huston) catch up with them. Caught in a limbo state between the living and the dead, Eric sets out to avenge their deaths, walking the gossamer-fine line between the natural world and the supernatural one.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) directed this take on The Crow, working from a screenplay by Oscar nominee Zach Baylin (King Richard). The remake is produced by Victor Hadida, Molly Hassell, John Jencks, and Edward R. Pressman. Dan Farah serves as executive producer.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Sanders revealed that he found the look for Skarsgard’s Eric Draven by blending how Sanders looked in the ’90s, “when we were squat-raving in London” with modern influences like Post Malone and Lil Peep. He said, “I think the beauty of Bill is that he has a disturbing beauty, and as he transforms through his loss he becomes this thing that even he can’t control. It’s that famous line: ‘Whoever fights monsters must be careful that they don’t become one.’“
As mentioned, Danny Huston (Yellowstone) plays the lead villain. Isabella Wei (1899), Laura Birn (A Walk Among the Tombstones), Sami Bouajila (The Bouncer), and Jordan Bolger (Peaky Blinders) are also in the cast.
Sanders told Vanity Fair that he was drawn to The Crow because it was an “opportunity to make a dark romance, something that dealt with loss, grief, and the ethereal veil between life and death and reaching through that. Look, I grew up listening to Joy Division and The Cure, and this movie is a bit like a Cure song—the beauty of melancholy.“
Addressing the fact that the original The Crow featured an iconic performance by Brandon Lee, who was tragically killed during the production, Sanders said, “It’s definitely something that we’ve always had in mind through the making of the film. Brandon was an original voice and I think he will always be synonymous with The Crow and I hope he’s proud of what we’ve done and how we’ve brought the story back again. His soul is very much alive in this film. There’s a real fragility and beauty to his version of the Crow, and I think Bill feels like he is a successor to that.“
Are you interested in The Crow remake? What do you think of the first look images? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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I’ve seen thousands of Pokémon cards in my time, and I had become so desensitized to an error on nearly every card in the United States that I’d forgotten about it. If you’ve ever seen an American Pokémon card, you’ll know that the back of each features art of a Poké Ball opening up. These devices are used in video…
I’ve seen thousands of Pokémon cards in my time, and I had become so desensitized to an error on nearly every card in the United States that I’d forgotten about it. If you’ve ever seen an American Pokémon card, you’ll know that the back of each features art of a Poké Ball opening up. These devices are used in video…
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part Two is finally upon us after the writer and actor strikes delayed the release for a few months. The hype surrounding the film is massive and the review from our own Chris Bumbray says of the film, “In this day of assembly line blockbusters, it’s a miracle that director Denis Villeneuve has managed to get not one but two incredible, uncompromised epics like this through the studio system. It works as a tentpole blockbuster, but Dune Part Two is also filmmaking at the highest level.” Josh Brolin makes his return in the second part as well, and although the Academy Award-nominated actor has sealed himself in comic book movie history as one of the greatest villains with his role as Thanos, he still makes sure to talk trash where trash is due.
Variety reports that the outspoken Brolin continues to bad mouth a career misstep he encountered in the past with the DC movie, 2010’s Jonah Hex. In a new GQ interview, Brolin would not hold back, saying, “I won’t ever stop sh*tting on Jonah Hex because it was a sh*tty f*cking movie!” He had admitted that the failure was squarely on his shoulders since he had rushed to hire a director for the film, and the one who took up the task, Jimmy Hayward, was far too inexperienced to take on a big-budget film and execute the vision that Brolin had for the DC property.
He was given two weeks by Warner Bros. to find a director and Brolin explained, “Then you meet somebody who has a lot of knowledge, Jimmy Hayward, and I remember it didn’t feel right. I loved that he was excited, but he just didn’t have the experience and he didn’t treat it like I would imagine somebody would want to treat it — to run back to their house at the end of their every day and watch tonal inspirations and Scorsese movies or this or that. He would be out partying instead.”
It was revealed that Brolin and Hayward recently reconnected and Hayward had “apologized for his part in the mess.” Hayward made amends as he revealed he’d been diagnosed with bone cancer and had undergone several surgeries. Brolin fully takes the blame for the film’s failure since he made the initial decision to hire a director who wasn’t the right fit, “It reminded me [that] you can’t just keep shitting on somebody. I don’t know what the f*ck’s going on in his life. I mean, total facial reconstruction, the whole thing.”
The post Josh Brolin will continue to trash Jonah Hex as long as he can “because it was a sh*tty f*cking movie!” appeared first on JoBlo.
The romantic comedy Anyone but You (read our review HERE) has earned around $200 million at the worldwide box office (on a budget of $25 million) since its theatrical release back in December, and now Sony Pictures is bringing it home! The film received a digital release on February 20th (you can watch it at THIS LINK) and will be reaching DVD and Blu-ray on March 12th (pre-order HERE) – and today, right in between those two release dates, we’ve gotten our hands on an EXCLUSIVE clip from a bonus featurette! You can check it out in the embed above.
Here’s the film’s synopsis: In the edgy comedy Anyone But You, Bea and Ben Glen Powell look like the perfect couple, but after an amazing first date something happens that turns their fiery hot attraction ice cold – until they find themselves unexpectedly thrust together at a destination wedding in Australia. So they do what any two mature adults would do: pretend to be a couple.
Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) star as Bea and Ben, and they’re joined in the cast by Alexandra Shipp (Barbie), GaTa (Self Reliance), Hadley Robinson (The Boys in the Boat), Michelle Hurd (Star Trek: Picard), Dermot Mulroney (Young Guns), Darren Barnet (Never Have I Ever), and Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under).
Directed by Will Gluck, who also wrote the screenplay with Ilana Wolpert, Anyone but You was produced by Gluck, Joe Roth, and Jeff Kirschenbaum, with Sweeney serving as an executive producer alongside Alyssa Altman, Jacqueline Monetta, Catherine Bishop, Natalie Sellers, Charlie Corwin, Sidney Kimmel, Mark O’Connor, and Jonathan Davino.
Will you be checking out the digital or DVD / Blu-ray release of Anyone but You? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and let us us know what you thought of the exclusive featurette clip as well.
Following the success of Anyone but You, Sweeney and Powell are now looking for another project to do together.
The post Anyone but You exclusive featurette clip takes a behind-the-scenes look at the hit romantic comedy appeared first on JoBlo.
If you’ve been keeping up with The Test of Time, you have probably learned what the rules are in terms of what we tackle. Those rules, of course, are that there are no rules whatsoever and we cover whatever sounds good or we think would be an interesting topic. In the Mouth of Madness (watch it HERE) came out in Italy in late 1994 and that means, gulp, that movie is now 30 years old. It came during an interesting time in the master of horrors career when he was running flop after flop and being disappointed by studios interference and stars that weren’t willing to be true collaborators. It’s the ending of a loose trilogy and in some people’s estimation his last great film. Is In the Mouth of Madness a tale that stands the Test of Time, or should it be put in the bargain bin of the now defunct crown books? Lived any good books lately?
Plot
Carpenter had kind of a roller coaster of a run throughout his career. In 1988, They Live would come out during election week and be #1 at the box office with a professional wrestler in the lead and a plot where Carpenter could really express his views. A couple of years went by and he was stuck in a contract dispute with They Live production company Alive Films which led to several movies not happening. These included a Dracula movie, a Cher vehicle, and even The Exorcist III. It’s a fools errand to regret these not happening but it is fun to wonder what if, particularly on the Dracula flick or his version of Exorcist III. Chevy Chase had purchased the script to Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Carpenter was convinced to work on it. Long story short, it was a disaster of epic proportions. Chase was as hard to work with as we’ve heard he can be on various projects and the movie only made 14 million on a 30–40-million-dollar budget. Carpenter was burned by a big studio project again, this time at Warner. But why the heck are we talking about one of Carpenter’s worst and more forgettable movies? Well, something good came of the project and that was the casting of Sam Neill in Memoirs that would lead to the star and director working again on today’s movie. Neil even suggested a shot or two for Carpenter, specifically the aerial view shots later in the movie at the hotel.
In the Mouth of Madness was written in the late 80s by sometimes screenwriter but 3-time Oscar nominated mega producer Michael De Luca. While his first thought was to offer it to John Carpenter, he had to turn it down. Later he agreed to direct after he got past the debacle of Memoirs and his gig with Tobe Hooper in Body Bags. While De Luca is better known as a producer, particularly later in his career, he has some interesting writing credits. In addition to today, he also has 7 episodes of Freddy’s Nightmares, the screenplay for Freddy’s Dead The Final Nightmare, and a story credit on Judge Dredd. Carpenter would do the music with Jim Lang and the movie would be produced by Sandy King with the special effects being done by Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman, and Greg Nicotero among others.
The cast is a fun mix with the main characters being played by Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, and Jurgen Prochnow with cool smaller turns from the likes of Bernie Casey, John Glover, David Warner, and Charlton Heston among other notables. I’ll save the comments section some time and mention that this was Anakin Skywalker himself Hayden Christensen’s first role. Sam Neill is no stranger to horror with The Omen 3, Possession, and Dead Calm but this is my favorite role in the genre for him. You may not recognize Julie Carmen at first, but she is Regine Dandridge from the criminally underrated Fright Night 2 and Prochnow has been around forever seemingly with his role in Das Boot being unmissable, well, certainly compared to House of the Dead.
The movie follows the disappearance of a Stephen King stand in named Sutter Cane and a fraud investigator named John Trent who is hired by the publisher to find him. Trent takes his role seriously and dives headfirst into the world of Cane in order to find his whereabouts. He is taken to the no longer existing town of Hobbs End which is the location for a ton of the author’s stories. Think Castle Rock for King or New England for the inspiration of the movie’s H.P. Lovecraft. The publisher sends one of their employees with John and he slowly loses his mind and eventually no longer believes the disappearance and events as a publicity stunt, but the world ending. This is lent credence as the framing of the story is a bookend with Trent being brought into an asylum to tell his story and when we catch up, we get to see the end of the world. It’s a movie full of practical effects, Lovecraft inspirations both direct and subtle, and some really good scares.
Signs of the Time
The easy one here is the inability to get ahold of the author in the middle of the mystery. While at the time of filming, there were things like fax machines, cell phones, and email, it wasn’t as prevalent as it is now and there weren’t any of the social media outlets or even immediate ways to get ahold of people. Add in the fact that the author was already kind of a recluse, and he would be hard to get a hold of and find anyway. It’s one of the nice ways that movies OF the time still make sense in that regard while screenwriters today have to figure out ways to make cell phones irrelevant. Often, it can come off as forced or nonsensical but here it makes sense organically in the story. Its kind of the reason that Sam Neill’s character is hired in the first place because he is good enough at his job and coming up with the truth that he would know how to find the dude and be patient.
Another factor and one that could easily go into the section of what holds up is the effects. Minus one or two things here, this was the tail end of the mostly practical effects era. While big budget movies like Jurassic Park could use CGI to go with their practical effects, to get the job done on a smaller scale, it was still mostly a rubber and corn syrup kind of era. The trick was getting the right people to do the right thing for you. In the Mouth of Madness does a wonderful job showing why practical was still the way to go and you can see shades of it in today’s movies. From Malignant using a trained stuntperson just like the character who crawls out of the car after Sam Neill’s Trent to the gore effects and miniatures that show up from time to time in both big and small budget alike.
What Holds Up
This movie is shockingly good 30 years on. From the acting to the story to the effects to the earned ending, everything still holds together wonderfully and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. Starting with the acting, we get to see characters that are mostly one dimensional with Charlton Heston’s literary mogul to Jurgen Prochnow’s Sutter Cane and most in between. The standout here is Neill’s Trent who we see in both flashbacks and in the present. He has a full arch as every main character should and we get to see him go from hardened skeptic to frightened believer. While all the other performances add up to great set pieces and scenes, the movie would be made or broken from whoever played Trent and Neill brings everything we need to it and doesn’t even hide his New Zealand accent!
The effects here are great too. While they are also a sign of their times, that’s exactly what we look for. Horror fans harken back to the time of pre-CGI and a lot of fans during this era who went on to be directors or movie creators themselves tend to try and recreate that same look and feel. The creatures, both miniature form and large and in charge like the ending as well as the gore and make-up all stand out and still look good even on high-def formats. This includes the costuming and set design as well as little things like all the covers for the already published Sutter Cane books that harken back to the 80’s horror novel boom that operated much like the video era. The covers of these books and sometimes outlandish titles would get people to buy them regardless of the quality of the actual story.
Finally, speaking of story, apart from direct adaptations like Re-Animator or Castle Freak, this is as good as we will get to a Lovecraft type story. Many of the names of the characters or places are reminiscent of Lovecraft and his themes of the unknowable and other side. Even little set ups and payoffs like every character having blue eyes when you get a close up followed by Trent having a dream of Cane telling him blue was his favorite color. This scene works and is remembered by most people because the bus and everything on it has a blue tint, but the blue eye detail goes that much deeper.
What Doesn’t Hold Up
Is it a cheat to say nothing? Probably, so here we go. As much as I love the effects here, there are a couple that do NOT stand the test of time with the mask worn by the kid on the bike, some of the town kids make-up, and the part where Cane peels his face open to reveal the world outside the book and let the rest of the creatures in all kind of fall flat, especially compared to the rest of movies goods. The only other nitpick I can levy on this movie is that the music isn’t quite as good as the rest of the man’s movies but that’s like saying I didn’t have as good of food at this 3 star restaurant as I did the 4 star one. It’s still good and even superior to many of it’s contemporaries, just not as good as the auditory perfection we are used to.
Verdict
In the Mouth of Madness may have been a flop when it was released in theaters, but it was good then and it’s better now. While it’s not Carpenter’s last good movie with both Escape From L.A. and Vampires being fun, I have no problem calling it his last GREAT one. 30 years later and this movie needs to be in everyone’s regular rotation because it more than stands the Test of Time.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
The post In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – The Test of Time appeared first on JoBlo.
This year has carried over two significant trends for the video game industry from 2023 into 2024: a lot of excellent games are coming out, and, unfortunately, the people who make them are suffering. It’s still early, but we’ve gotten some fantastic new games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the surprise hit Balatro…
This year has carried over two significant trends for the video game industry from 2023 into 2024: a lot of excellent games are coming out, and, unfortunately, the people who make them are suffering. It’s still early, but we’ve gotten some fantastic new games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the surprise hit Balatro…
Police were called to the scene of “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” in Glasgow, Scotland, as children burst into tears when the “immersive experience” promised in AI advertisements turned out to be a sparsely decorated warehouse.