Tag: Saw (Page 3 of 3)

What’s scary?

October 22, 2009 /

I’ll be doing my weekly box office preview next, but before I do we have an apt movie moment for this week’s box office derby as the “extreme” horror of the latest entry in the “Saw” franchise will be pitted, among other films, against the clever head games of “Paranormal Activity.” Just in case anyone out there thinks the push and pull between scaring an audience by showing it disturbing material or by almost showing it disturbing material is anything new, I’ve got a wonderfully concise sequence from Vicented Minelle’s soapy-but-brilliant 1952 inside-Hollywood tale, “The Bad and the Beautiful.”

Below Barry Sullivan as a hardworking director and Kirk Douglas as a hotshot writer-producer partially modeled on horror-legend Val Lewton (“Cat People,” “The Body Snatcher,” etc.), deal with the rather basic filmmaking problem their low-budget scare flick is presented with.

That’s Ned Glass as the costume guy, by the way, feeding those great reactions by Douglas and Sullivan. Gotta love Ned.

Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News

Will “Funny People” be a sad clown at the box office?

July 30, 2009 /

Whatever my reaction to it winds up being when I finally see “Funny People,” Judd Apatow has my respect. As a producer, writer, and sometime director of mostly R-rated comedies, he’s enjoyed a level of unusually consistent box office and artistic/critical success over a large number of movies that only Pixar, which takes much longer to make its very different brand of crowd-pleaser, can top right now.

Making good movies requires taking risks, and Apatow is taking one right now with a film that is being described as a tragicomedy and with his only hedge being a cast dominated by popular comic actors led by Adam Sandler. That the film seems to be largely dividing critics and generating confused reactions would, if I were Apatow or Universal, make me a little nervous. Actually, Universal may be more nervous than Apatow. As Nikki Finke and everyone else is reporting tonight, the hyphenate comedy guy just inked a 3-picture deal with them, so he’s set for the time being.

Variety‘s Dave McNary reports that box office predictions vary pretty widely for the film, from the low twenty millions to the mid-thirties. No wonder. A casual look around the wilds of Rotten Tomatoes indicates that the Apatow’s third feature as a director after “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” is far different piece of work and what you might call “difficult.” As far as I can remember, this has almost never indicated an immediate box office success — better to have critics universally detest the movie, it seems, than be conflicted. Movies that elicit this kind of reaction have more than once emerged years later as cult hits or even, as in the case of “Blade Runner,” legitimate classics. On the other hand, Adam Sandler’s name will count for something, and the presence of Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, among others, certainly won’t hurt. But, on the other other hand, we’ve seen the power of stars amount to less than expected results more than once over the last year or so.

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Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Reviews, Sci-Fi Movies

Greetings to the New Show: “13: Fear is Real”

January 4, 2009 /

I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the programming department of The CW when the folks over there first heard that the Sci-Fi Channel had beaten them to the punch in the field of horror-themed game show, but I can only imagine the sigh of relief they released after taking a gander at “Estate of Panic.” I received a screener of the premiere episode, and I duly handed it over to my wife, whose fascination with scary movies is, if not quite an obsession, certainly a bit of a hobby; after watching it, she duly reported back that she had lost a great deal of respect for Steve Valentine for agreeing to host such a cheesy show, likening it more to “Fear Factor” than anything legitimately scary.

Even after this disappointment, however, I was still optimistic about The CW’s “13: Fear is Real,” if only because of the series’ executive producers: Sam Raimi, Robert G. Tapert, and Jay Bienstock. Horror fans will no doubt recognize the first two names, with Raimi having earned his genre stripes with the “Evil Dead” films and then teamed with Tapert to produce such flicks as “30 Days of Night,” “The Messengers,” “Boogeyman,” and “The Grudge.” Bienstock, meanwhile, is best known in reality-TV circles as the guy responsible for bringing “The Apprentice” to the airwaves. In theory, it’s hard to imagine that you could bring this trio together and not come up with a legitimately scary reality show.

The premise of “13: Fear Is Real” as laid out in the press release is thus: “Thirteen people compete to ‘stay alive’ as they face their deepest fears in an all-out elimination competition and scare-fest. Pitted against each other in situations straight from the horror movies, the 13 will face shocking surprises, psychological scares and lots of ‘beware of the dark’ moments, all designed by a ‘mastermind’ of terror.”

So, wait, is this when we cue the clip of Count Floyd saying, “Ooooh, scary“?

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External Entertainment, External TV, Horror Movies, Reality TV, Reviews, TV

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