Deadline reports that Universal will be making a movie based on the short story “8 O’Clock in the Morning”. It is the same story that was the basis for the Sci Fi cult classic They Live. It will be directed by Matt Reeves, who also helmed Let Me In and Cloverfield.
If you haven’t seen They Live, or at the very least don’t even know what it is, then I advise you start living and watch it. The story is simple. A drifter played by Rowdy Roddy Piper(yes, the wrestler) stumbles upon some sunglasses that can spot aliens that are living amongst us. Not only that, these ugly-looking bastards are mind numbing and controlling us through subliminal messages that make us into consumers who only value material goods. Piper of course goes on a rampage with my hero Keith David after they enjoy an epic 5 minute fight scene (cut with the South Park parody). It may be long but trust me, it’s five minutes well worth the time:
So even though this new movie is based on of the same story as They Live was, it’s not going to follow all of the elements from the John Carpenter version. That means no alien revealing sun glasses, and more than likely, no Roddy Piper! Blasphemy if you ask me.
They will instead opt to skip the glasses and rely on our protagonist having a ‘sudden realization’ and spotting the aliens after his epiphany. I feel like they really could have capitalized off of the 3D fad with this one. They is one of the few movies where the 3D glasses could’ve really been put to good use, maybe taken it a step further too. Perhaps they could have layered the film by having the 3D glasses serve the same purpose as the ones in the movie. You take them off, regular human on-screen, put them back on – formaldehyde face! Ah what could have been.
No word yet on expected release date, but there better at least be a Roddy Piper cameo in the movie somewhere.
If you check out the video below you won’t find a better movie quote…ever! And long before Duke Nukem I might add…
You have to think about the landscape of the horror genre in 1996. Several years removed from its last smash hit and fading, Horror fans wanted a reason to go to the theater. The genre was in trouble, and the most successful horror movies of the decade to that point were Silence of the Lambs, Misery, and Flatliners. All released in 1990, and none of which are traditional ‘Horror’ movies. It seemed the old school ‘slasher flick’ had been all but killed the in the late 1980s. Done in by endless sub-par sequels to movies like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th. Audiences had become fed up and the box office reflected it. So when Scream came out, and grossed over $100 million, it was a big deal.
I felt the Laser line background screamed 1990.
I think it’s easy to forget how big a deal it was now, 15 years removed from its release, because of what came after. Scream fell victim to the same formula that killed its predecessors: Too many mediocre (if not downright terrible) sequels and copycats. In recent years I’ve been involved in discussions where this movie will be brought up and someone will lump it in with the garbage that followed. That however, is simply not fair. Scream was a head above anything that followed through the rest of the decade. From I Know What You Did Last Summer (& it’s own sequel) to Urban Legend (& it’s terrible sequel) to Scream 2 & 3, no movie I can think of has been so copied so quickly.
Scream set a standard for a while. It wasn’t just another teenage slasher flick, it was self-aware. It was a satire of the entire genre that it unintentionally revitalized. They did everything from straight out referencing movies like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street by name, to talking about the director of their own movie in a fictional manner. All the while, more subtly throwing nods back to the classics. Skeet Ulrich’s character, ‘Billy Loomis’ should sound familiar to Hitchcock fans who will remember the boyfriend ‘Sam Loomis’ from Psycho. You might also remember one ‘Dr. Loomis’ in the Halloween movies. We get a cameo from The Exorcist star Linda Blair as a reporter, and Sheriff Burke was played by Joseph Whipp. Mr. Whipp doesn’t have much luck protecting kids apparently, as he was also a cop on Elm Street 12 years earlier.
This also came out at a time when it was rare to get A-List cast in a horror flick. I mean, this is what you did to start a career, not once you were established. And make no mistake, in 1996, Drew Barrymore was a bona fide A-List actress and I don’t think she gets credit enough for the success of this movie either. Scream catapulted almost the entire cast into furthering their careers. Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox were already TV stars, but this made them house hold names. Plus David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard, and Rose McGowan all went on to have success after this.
The story was simple enough, small town high school students are being terrorized by a serial killer. He wears a mask and calls to taunt his victims on the phone. That aspect is what has been most played up in spoofs and re-imaginings. So much so that phone companies reported the orders for ‘Caller ID’ tripled after the release of the movie. As the movie progressed and we learn who the killer is (are) we are regaled by the lack of motives. Sidney (Campbell) survives and we’re actually given a pretty satisfying end to the movie. So much so that a sequel really doesn’t make sense. Of course that didn’t stop them from making one.
In fact the movie became watered down by not 1, but 2 sequels. A watchable, but not good sequel in Scream 2, and then the abortion of a movie that was Scream 3. The second movie followed Sidney (Campbell) and Randy (Kennedy) off to college where the movie was once again packed with a good cast and similar formula. In this fictional universe there is a movie based on a book by Gale Weathers (Cox) about Sidney and the events from the original film. This movie with-in a movie is called Stab. Stab inspires a copycat killer to start stalking Sidney and recreating kills from the original killer.
This one has a cast that including Jerry O’Connell, Rebecca Gayheart, Jada Pinkett (Smith), Omar Epps, Heather Graham, and ‘Charlie’ from The Mighty Ducks. It also featured Buffy herself – Sarah Michelle Gellar, and future Arrested Development star Portia de Rossi. But the best parts of the cast were the 2 actors who weren’t yet widely known. First Liev Schreiber, who reprised his role (of about 10 seconds) from the first movie as Cotton Weary, and most importantly, my favorite actor on television – from Justified Raylan Givens Timothy Olyphant.
In the 3rd movie we were heavy on cameos and big names, like on substance. At the time I did enjoy the presence of Jenny McCarthy and the cameos Carrie Fisher and by Jay and Silent Bob, but I don’t remember enjoying much else. Scream 3 was so bad it not only killed the franchise for the next decade, but the whole genre for a couple of years. After the ware-out provided by all the copies, it wasn’t till the Japanese Horror Invasion started in 2002 with The Ring that the genre felt fresh again.
That quickly faded however, and they went back to the well. This time with a gluttony of remakes. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (& horrible sequel), The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th, The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, and an entire franchise reboot of Halloween.
Now, here we are in 2011, just a few days from the release of Scream 4. The first chapter of the franchise in over a decade, and just as before we’re not short on names. From Sookie to the Cheerleader to Annie Edison, this looks to be full of beautiful women in precarious situations. The most important one of course being my Uber-Crush: Kristen Bell.
I can’t really predict any true level of quality here, but I will say I’m expecting it to be better than the 3rd one was. As long as they’ve worked on it for, they must have learned something from the 3rd movie.
Well I can already say that I hate these new ‘movie geek’ kids. Lame ripoff of my favorite character in the series Randy. They just seem to convoluted to be likable, but I guess we’ll find out Friday.
Anyhow, I’m going to see this opening night because of my attachment to the franchise. I’ll be doing so in hopes it’s not terrible, because I’ve already committed to seeing it a 2nd time with my Secret Agent/G-Man buddy Dave. We watched all the other ones together back in High School, so it only seems fitting that we do this one as well.
“Yes Kristen, obviously I agree. VERONICA MARS was a better show than TRUE BLOOD is.”
Over the weekend I had to pleasure of seeing a film called Hanna. I had been waiting for the release of this movie for quite some time now and I can tell you – I wasn’t disappointed. The movie revolves around a 16-year-old girl (Saoirse Ronan) who is trained by her Ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) from an early age to fight and survive against exceptional odds. Cate Blanchett’s character is our antagonist, as she attempts to hunt down Hanna.
It would appear Viggo Mortensen is out of the running to play Zod, because Michael Shannon of recent Boardwalk Empire fame, has landed the job to portray the baddest Kryptonian of all. According to a report from Yahoo!, Director Zack Snyder had this to say of Zod and Michael Shannon:
“Zod is not only one of Superman’s most formidable enemies, but one of the most significant because he has insights into Superman that others don’t,” Snyder said in a statement to Deadline, which was first to report the superhero casting news. “Michael is a powerful actor who can project both the intelligence and the malice of the character, making him perfect for the role.”
Michael Shannon, who is also an Academy Award nominee for his turn in Revolutionary Road, can definitely play a sinister role. His character Nelson Van Alden in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is calm and collected, but prone to outbursts of rage from time to time. It would seem with Shannon’s addition to the cast of Superman: Man of Steel, they have an all star lineup going. Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Amy Adams and Henry Cavill round out the rest of the cast of the Man of Steel. Now the only thing to wait on is the casting of all the minor roles for the movie, assuming they’ll cast Jimmy Olsen and Perry White. And who could forget Zod’s cuddly Kryptonian minions Ursa and Non. I vote for the WWE’s Kane to fill the role of Non if he is in the movie!
Non and Kane Comparison
So what say you, the reader about this most recent Man of Steel casting selection? Yay or Nay? Unleash your fury in the comments section below!
Oh buddy. It’s hard to imagine this kind of cast in a movie this poorly shot and written. In 1992, if you had put Sylvester Stallone, Tom Berenger, Charles S. Dutton, and Kris Kristofferson into one movie, it’d be for sure a summer blockbuster. In 2002 however, this movie barely registered a blip on the radar. And that’s not all. This masterpiece also luminaries such as T-1000, Young Indiana Jones, and none other than our very own Party Crasher. Oh yeah, THE Party Crasher.
So now that I got the sweet ass cast out-of-the-way, let’s get to the shit fest movie itself. Eye See You is the story of a FBI Agent Jake Malloy (Stallone) who is hunting a serial killer who targets cops. Said killer has ended 9 cops in the last 6 months and the 10th is one of Malloy’s friends. As Malloy arrives at the crime scene he receives a call from the killer…who is at his house. He is then forced listen to the murder of his girlfriend. What I just wrote is a generous description. These first 30 or so minutes of the movie were terribly written, poorly shot, and as predictable and cliché as I’ve seen. Though I did like the killer’s method – he would knock on the door, and when people look into the keyhole he puts a drill though their eyeball.
After his girlfriend’s death Malloy falls into months of depression and tries to kill himself…twice. Eventually he is convinced by his partner (a very fat Dutton) to a middle of no-where detox facility for cops, run by an ex-cop (Kristofferson).
I admit that once he arrives at the detox center the movie gets exponentially better. It climbs from the depths of a ‘terrible action movie’ all the way up the ladder to a ‘mediocre thriller’. Of course when you add those 2 halves together, it still averages out less than a sub-par movie. Bad enough in fact that the studio shelved it for 3 years before they altogether disowned it. And despite spending $55 million on the production (most of which was probably the cast) they gave it such a limited US release that it grossed only $32 thousand dollars. That’s a bit of a bust. It also didn’t help that it was released around the rest of the globe under the title D-Tox, and then renamed Eye See You for the U.S. DVD release, effectively confusing the shit out of people.
Once the mystery part of the story gets moving it’s obvious they drew upon one of the greatest mystery thrillers of all-time: The Thing. In fact, if you take the aliens and the quality out of The Thing, you’re basically left with this movie, right down to the blizzard setting.
Now I am a Stallone fan, but even surrounded by the talent present in this movie, he gives one of his weakest performances. In fact, so do Kristofferson and Berenger. And I would rip Dutton, but there wasn’t enough script for him to work with for him to take any of the blame. But this is what happens when you hand your movie over to a director who biggest critical success is I Know What You Did Last Summer. And yes, I said critical, not commercial, though that would qualify too.
My biggest problem with the movie however, is clearly the same problem that prevented this garnering a bigger release. Both under exposure and misuse of The Party Crasher. Here you have one of the greatest actors of our time, and he was given all of 10 lines or so. It’s down right shameful.
Overall I’d have to give this movie 3 Bears for the Party Crasher, but I have to take away one of those Bears since they so poorly used him.
It is official, we have our gunslinger ‘Roland Deschain’ for the upcoming Dark Tower franchise in the form of Javier Bardem. According to IGN, Bardem’s agents are in the final stages of sealing the deal.
Grizzly Bomb 