It’s been over a decade since we’ve gotten a BioShock game and no official follow-up has been announced, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something on the horizon for fans of the franchise. Upcoming shooter Judas looks to be a BioShock game in everything but name, and it’s helmed by none other than Ken Levine, the…
PLOT: An in-depth look at famed Italian Horror director Dario Argento’s life and film career.
REVIEW: There are few filmmakers that can be considered all-time greats, yet Dario Argento is most definitely one of them. From the films he’s made to the filmmakers he’s inspired, it’s evident that the world of horror would be very different without his presence. And Dario Argento Panico does a great job of proving why. A beautifully shot and all-encompassing retrospective provides a unique look at the auteur filmmaker. So if you’ve never experienced his work before then buckle up: you’re in for a ride.
While I was obviously familiar with the works of Argento, I wasn’t aware of his life. So I was consistently blown away by some of the revelations here. Dario having no prior experience before getting behind the camera for the first time is flabbergasting. Mostly because the work that he pulls off is more masterful than you’d expect from a first-timer. There were various factors that contributed to this, with his father Salvatore being the main one. Given that he was such a massive driving force in his life highlights a popular 2024 issue through the lens of the 60s and 70s: nepotism.
Whether it’s Dario himself or his daughter Asia, they were given opportunities due to who they were. This shows the other side of the argument, at least for Dario, as he’s such an auteur, that without his father’s unfettered support, he may not have been able to push the boundaries of the genre as he did. So while it may have been family that got them through the door, it was their own talent that kept them there. While others were questioning his vision, Salvatore stood by him, which just made his vision even stronger.
Regarding the technical side, Panico is very impressive. It’s beautifully shot and the main focus consistently stays on Dario. Too often these career retrospectives end up doing these random detours but thankfully this one works really well. Even the slight shift towards Asia works because it’s done in the context of Dario’s own work. Everyone is spoken to that would need to be, and provide interesting insight. I could have gone for some archive footage of George Romero, given Argento’s impact on Dawn of the Dead, but you can’t win them all.
One aspect that I really loved was Dario’s sister retelling his childhood. There’s been an increasing trend of journalists simply recounting a person’s life based on what they’ve read/studied. It can feel a little surface-level. So it’s nice to get what feels like genuine insight. I also got a lot of entertainment out of Nicolas Winding Refn‘s cocaine comparison regarding Argento’s films. The man has clearly lived an interesting life. There’s a lot of praise being heaped onto the director from all sides so fans should be pleased.
But if you hoping for some criticism of Argento’s career then you’re probably going to have to look elsewhere. This is simply 98 minutes of pure praise. Even Argento’s latter career, which is marred with terrible film after terrible film, is simply glossed over. Because of this, it feels like a little bit of the truth is missing. While I certainly understand the respectful approach taken, I do think more could have been addressed. Then there’s the Asia Argento of it all that just adds an air of unease to her segments.
In the end, there’s a lot to like about Dario Argento Panico. While some films are glossed over a little too quickly, that’s expected for a man with such a filmography. I’d argue it’s been over 30 years since we’ve gotten a good film from him, so sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of the director he once was. This was proof as to why Argento left the impact that he did. From films such as Suspiria to Deep Red, he made some of the most interesting films in all of Italian Horror but it’s evident that his biggest accomplishment was the many lives he touched along the way.
DARIO ARGENTO PANICO IS STREAMING ON SHUDDER ON FEBRUARY 2ND, 2024.
The post Dario Argento Panico Review appeared first on JoBlo.
February is in full swing, new games have arrived, and we’re looking at a month full of some pretty neat games to pick up in the coming weeks. So what are we here at Kotaku looking forward to spending our time with this weekend?
February is in full swing, new games have arrived, and we’re looking at a month full of some pretty neat games to pick up in the coming weeks. So what are we here at Kotaku looking forward to spending our time with this weekend?
Season 2 of the HBO series adaptation of the video game The Last of Us is expected to start filming in Vancouver, Canada sometime in February, and we’ve previously heard that returning stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are going to be joined in the cast by new additions Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart and No One Will Save You) as Abby Anderson, a major character from the video game who is described as being “a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved”; Isabela Merced (Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Sweet Girl) as Ellie’s new romantic interest Dina; and Young Mazino of Beef as Jesse, “a pillar of his community who puts everyone else’s needs before his own, sometimes at terrible cost.” (Jesse also happens to be Dina’s ex.) Now Entertainment Weekly has confirmed that Schitt’s Creek Emmy winner Catherine O’Hara – who will be seen in the long-awaited Beetlejuice sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice later this year – is also in talks to join the cast. Details on the character she’ll be playing have not been revealed.
O’Hara actually confirmed the casting news herself during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, where she also mentioned that her son is a set dresser on the show.
The story of the The Last of Us video game is set years after a fungal plague wiped out much of humanity, transforming most into vicious zombie-like monsters, the story follows Joel, who’s living in a militarized quarantine zone. He has a close relationship with Tess, who operates in the black market of this community. Together, they’ve become known by the local criminal underworld for their ruthlessness. On a mission to reclaim their stolen guns, they run into the leader of the Fireflies, a resistance group, who tasks them with smuggling a young girl named Ellie out of the zone. This mission soon becomes much more than they were prepared for.
For the HBO series, Pedro Pascal plays Joel, who is “tormented by past trauma and failure. He must trek across a pandemic-ravaged America, all the while protecting a girl who represents the last hope of humanity”. He is joined in the cast by Bella Ramsey as Ellie, “an orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet and who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging… as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world”; Anna Torv as Tess, “a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world”; Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, “a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world”; Merle Dandridge as Marlene, “the head of the Fireflies, a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime”; Nico Parker as Joel’s daughter Sarah; Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, “a rebel in a quarantine zone”; Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, “two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town”; and Storm Reid as Ellie’s best friend Riley.
Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who did the motion-capture performances for Joel and Ellie in the video game, are also in the cast of the show. Baker plays James, “a senior member of a group of settlers who must fight to keep their community alive in the face of increasingly brutal odds.” Baker also hosts a podcast that serves as a companion to the TV series. Johnson’s character is Anna, “a pregnant woman, alone and on the run, who must give birth under the most terrifying of circumstances.”
What do you think of Catherine O’Hara joining the cast of The Last of Us season 2? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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After a relatively quiet Christmas movie season at the box office and January being a movie dumping ground, we get our first big release of the year with Matthew Vaughn’s spy flick, Argylle. The early reactions to star-studded action comedy have been pretty positive, with the consensus from audiences at advanced screenings being that it is a fun time. Our own Chris Bumbray would say in his review, “It’s silly – but intentionally so. If you like your spy flicks infused with a heavy dose of camp and are maybe tired of espionage tales being ultra-serious, this might be just the ticket. And, as a bonus, if you ever wanted to get a feel for what a Bond film might be like with an everyman like Sam Rockwell in the lead.”
However, according to Deadline, the Thursday previews would perform below what was originally expected. Many exhibitors estimated that a movie such as Argylle would go for a $20 million-plus kind of opening. Thursday previews totaled in at $1.7 million, which falls below the $2.4 million that Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper earned in early previews. The Beekeeper would go on to open with $16.5 million, which means that one can assume that unless there is a major surge in moviegoers this weekend, Argylle will not likely be hitting the $20 million estimates.
While the early reactions gave a much more positive impression, the critical score over at Rotten Tomatoes come in at just 35%. The audience reactions are a mixed bag of viewers who had a lot of fun and viewers who found the movie convoluted, as well as running on for too long. Argylle had screened at 3,100 theaters last night and has the benefit of all the cinema upcharges this weekend of IMAX and other large-format premium screens.
The film may not be a well-known IP, but should this movie come out as a success, Matthew Vaughn has planned an extension for a franchise with two sequels. Vaughn told Total Film, “Book one is about: how did Argylle become a spy? That will be the next film. And then Argylle 2 is – I don’t want to give it all away, but there’s the young Argylle, and that becomes Henry, because Henry loves the idea of doing a proper Argylle movie as well.” However, he wanted to see what the reception and the business for Argylle was like first. “Everybody complains there’s not enough original stuff, but it’s because they don’t go see it. People have got to buy tickets first, or there won’t be f***ing anything.“
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I’ll never forget the first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite. It was in a Montreal movie theater in the old Forum building (currently featured in the Queen IMAX doc Queen Rock Montreal). The film had only been out a few weeks but had already started becoming a cult hit following its Sundance premiere. I remember it being a matinee on a weekday, and I was stunned when I saw several audience members wearing identical “Vote for Pedro” t-shirts. I knew from the reviews that it was a reference to the movie, and it was then that I had an accurate idea of just how deep the Napoleon Dynamite cult was going.
And folks – that was TWENTY years ago! Crazy isn’t it? But yes, Napoleon Dynamite has been a thing since 2004, with it grossing $44 million on a $400,000 budget, and it’s known as being one of the best-selling DVDs of all time, in addition to the marketing bonanza it became thanks to the merchandising. Being one of the biggest cult hits to come out of the Sundance Film Festival, it was appropriate that the fest celebrated the film’s 20th with a gala screening, and I was thrilled to be invited to participate in the press line. While director Jared Hess wasn’t there due to him shooting the Jason Momoa video game adaptation Minecraft, I got to speak to most of the other folks from the film, including the iconic Pedro, Efren Ramirez, who gave JoBlo a big shout-out, and Napoleon Dynamite himself, the great Jon Heder.
Check out the interviews above, and big thanks to former JoBlo.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Shirey, my former erstwhile partner on who you can catch on his own Arctic Ninja Network, for helping me with the shooting.
Do you think Napoleon Dynamite holds up after twenty years? Let us know in the comments.
The post Napoleon Dynamite Turns 20: We Interview the Cast appeared first on JoBlo.
Developer Shift Up Second Eve Studios made quite the splash at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s recent State of Play broadcast with a gameplay reveal trailer for Stellar Blade (previously known as “Project Eve”). The PS5 character-action exclusive is looking real good, thanks it part to its stylish combat and even…
Developer Shift Up Second Eve Studios made quite the splash at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s recent State of Play broadcast with a gameplay reveal trailer for Stellar Blade (previously known as “Project Eve”). The PS5 character-action exclusive is looking real good, thanks it part to its stylish combat and even…
Charles Band’s company Full Moon has been delivering wild, crazy, entertaining films for almost thirty-five years now – and on the latest episode of his YouTube series Full Moon Universe, Band has revealed that 2024 is going to be another big year for them, as they’re launching a new production label called Pulp Noir with a slate of ten films. The plan being that all ten of those movies are going to be filmed by the end of this year.
Here’s how Band explained it: “I’ve been thinking recently about how to create a new brand of movies. Movies that are still deep in the sci-fi, fantasy, mainly horror sub-genre, and do it differently than what we’ve been doing with Full Moon. So I thought it was time to make a series of features that would be darker, edgier. (There are) a lot of concepts I’ve wanted to make over the years that now, with help from some of the new technology, AI, there are things we can do that we were not able to do and worlds we can go into. For instance, back in the ‘90s I made a few movies, one of them was called Meridian. Today you would call that a paranormal romance, and Meridian is one of those films that has really stood the test of time. People loved it. Some of those kind of movies, no one can find anymore, no one’s really making them, aside from the real shocking, bloody, crazy twisted films, which we actually have not been making for many years here at Full Moon. Probably the only movie I’ve made in in recent memory that fits into that category is Castle Freak and Castle Freak is one of the better films, I know people enjoy watching it. So I wanted to come up with a sub-label that would feature movies like that again; a harder, edgier slate of films. The title Pulp Noir kind of sums it all up. Then it was time to go through all the hundreds of ideas that I’ve worked on for years that haven’t been made and select ten that would represent this new sort of sub-genre of filmmaking.“
Pulp Noir’s first slate of films consists of: Quadrant, Death Streamer, Subscriber, Subhuman, Bad CGI Werewolves! (sort of a companion piece to Full Moon’s recent release Bad CGI Gator), Zombie Hotel, Surprise Party, the paranormal romance The Lost Girl’s Private Diary, Svengali 2024, and Hourglass. Concept art for all of these films can be seen in the Full Moon Universe video embedded below.
The first Pulp Noir movie will go into production later this month, with others following basically at a “one a month” pace through the rest of 2024. To help ensure these productions will go smoothly, Full Moon has also set up a Patreon account where fans can subscribe and show their support for the company. There are multiple tiers to choose from, with incentives including access to new episodes of Band’s podcast Full Moon Freakshow, Blu-rays, Tiny Terror action figures, a subscription to Delirium magazine, a shirt, a hoodie, etc. Fans who subscribe to the highest tier will also receive an executive producer credit on Pulp Noir movies during their subscription.
I’ve been a fan of Full Moon since I was a kid, so I’m always excited to see new projects coming from the company. Pulp Noir sounds like a lot of fun to me.
What do you think of Full Moon’s Pulp Noir plans? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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