Film, Television & Music – Page 25

Universal refuses to let Larry Talbot die, plans 2018 resurrection of “The Wolf Man”

As reported by The AV Club, Arrow in the Head and many other movie news outlets today, Universal’s “Classic Monsters” reboot scheme is continuing apace with a March 30th 2018 release date for “The Wolf Man”. That’s one year after the planned release of their Mummy reboot, and eight years after the 2010 The Wolf Man remake squandered Rick Baker and Benicio del Toro.

Writes Dennis DiClaudio for The AV Club:

There’s still no word on who will star as the hapless and hirsute Lawrence Talbot; unlike The Mummy’s Imhotep, it’s a meaty part for an actor (no pun intended), so the studio may even be able to secure an A-lister. The script was written by Aaron Guzikowski, who was recently tasked with bringing a very different horror icon back to the screen.

The only source for this news is an updated entry for the film on Box Office Mojo, but given the site’s connection to IMDB and the film industry, it seems credible. It’s certainly no coincidence that Friday, March 30th 2018 is on the cusp of a full moon.

What I don’t understand is what’s in it for us. (I originally wrote why here, but I know why – they want to make a shitload of money with their intellectual property.) Nothing about the concept of another Wolf Man reboot stirs me. It’s a tired story. Unless Guzikowski takes things in an entirely new direction – and then is it really a reboot? – my only reaction to this news is vague dread. The creature effects eye candy is nice, Hollywood, but please tell some new stories.

Thanks to @colonelnemo for the link.

Angela Quinton Dec. 4th 2015

Horror-comedy “Crying Wolf” coming soon to VOD and DVD

Someone at Uncork’d Entertainment really likes werewolf movies! The same distributor that released Blood Moon and Dark Moon Rising is bringing Crying Wolf to VOD on December 12th and to DVD on January 5th.

There is a lot of strange and weird goings on in the little village of Deddington. For centuries a pack of werewolves have resided in the sleepy town but when local girl Charlotte meets a particularly gruesome death, the town is descended upon by reporters, crazy detectives and lunatic hunters desperate to get their story, solve the crime and kill the beasts. But these wolves are smart… very smart.

Its Facebook page and various other sites describe the movie as a “horror comedy”, but despite a bit of ham and some so-bad-it-must-be-intentional CGI, the trailer looks pretty straight-faced. I want to be interested in this, but I’m worried it’s another film that tried to go for straight horror, fell short, and got repositioned as “satire”.

Also, does anyone know what “VOD” actually means? Netflix and Hulu? Local cable company pay-per-view?

Edit: Craig J. Clark explained which services “VOD” tends to cover in the comments. I’ll quote him here to save you a scroll & click:

In addition to being available through your cable provider (provided you have one), VOD generally also means it’ll be on platforms like iTunes, Amazon, and maybe even as a rental on YouTube or Vimeo.

Thanks, Craig!

Thanks to @Crystalakhanna for the link.

Angela Quinton Nov. 30th 2015

Mr. Kate’s “Gabriel” beat made me like “Van Helsing” again

Other than some great werewolf designs, I didn’t think there was anything that could redeem the 2004 Hugh Jackman feature Van Helsing. Beat-maker Mr. Kate (aka Th3N1ghtF0x) just proved me wrong. “I’ve been making some beats lately,” they wrote in an email, “and being a huge werewolf nerd, had to do a little Van Helsing tribute.”

I have a deep appreciation for El-P but I don’t know anything about beat-making, hip hop or its many sub-genres. I do know that in less than two minutes, Mr. Kate’s trap beat “Gabriel” delivers more entertainment than the film it samples did in two hours. I want to hear someone rap over this, ideally some verses about vampire trash and preposterous stagecoach jumps.

Check out the rest of Mr. Kate’s beats and remixes on SoundCloud for some great stuff, including an insanely catchy Anchorman-inspired beat.

Angela Quinton Nov. 26th 2015

Full Moon Features: When Animals Dream

Strictly speaking, 2014’s When Animals Dream isn’t a werewolf film, but since it’s a coming of age story about a young woman who, like her mother, is genetically disposed to grow thick hair all over her body — and become short-tempered and aggressive to boot — it’s close enough to count for this month’s Full Moon Feature. Set in a provincial fishing village in Denmark, When Animals Dream opens with 16-year-old protagonist Marie (Sonia Suhl, making an assured screen debut) seeing the doctor about a small rash on her chest. This concerns him enough that he submits her to a full examination of her fingernails, gums, and back, along with a barrage of questions about any other symptoms she may be experiencing. What these may be isn’t clear at first, just as there’s some mystery about what condition Marie’s invalid mother (Sonja Richter) suffers from, but it does require her to be given shots by Marie’s rock-steady father (Lars Mikkelsen), who’s also seen shaving her back. Then Marie starts having disturbing dreams in which she’s transforming into some kind of bestial creature and, well, do the math.

Even if they had eschewed the supernatural angle, director Jonas Alexander Arnby and screenwriter Rasmus Birch would have been on to something since they paint a compelling portrait of a withdrawn young woman struggling to fit in. New to her job working on a fish disassembly line, Marie has the expected locker-room confrontations with the factory’s alpha-male bully and undergoes a humiliating initiation where she’s pushed headlong into a tank filled with fish heads. (Paging Carrie White.) On the other hand, she also catches the eyes of friendly fisherman Daniel (Jakob Oftebro), whose interest is reciprocated. Heck, he doesn’t even bat an eye when she tells him, “I’m transforming into a monster and I really need to get laid before.” That’s what I call a keeper.

If When Animals Dream has a fault, it’s that once all its cards are on the table, the back half of the film is far too predictable. Still, it’s worth sticking with it to see how Marie is emboldened by the changes she’s going through, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. When she’s leaving home for good and her father’s parting words to her are “Don’t take any crap,” viewers can feel confident she won’t.

Craig J. Clark Nov. 24th 2015

End of the Road

Funding a feature-length film through crowdsourcing requires more than luck. It only seems to work if you have a huge pre-existing audience or a devoted cult following. A team of filmmakers decided to “get the ball rolling on [their] feature-length werewolf movie” by creating a stand-alone short film to woo studios and investors. Their 2013 campaign met its goal, and they got to work.

The result, a 10-minute horror film called End of the Road, feels like a particularly vicious Tales from the Crypt episode. Writer/director J. Spencer’s screenplay puts archetypical characters in an enclosed space and then lovingly surveys the carnage. There’s no world-building and no deep character exploration – the surprise is that everyone is exactly who you think they are – but the point is not to win an Oscar. The point is to grab audiences and investors by the shoulders, point to the beautifully-composed shots, endearingly-rendered characters (big Travis fan, here) and gore-splattered windows and say “look at the cool shit we did with $23,000… now imagine if we had a bigger budget”.

End of the Road isn’t simply a means to an end. It stands on its own as a brutal, funny and supremely-well-made horror short. There are flourishes of pacing and character detail that delighted me so thoroughly that after watching it once, I immediately started it again and attempted a goofball live-tweet session.

It’s not perfect – some of the dialogue clunks, and the werewolf design seems to vary significantly depending on whether or not it’s in focus – but perfection isn’t the point, either. J. Spencer and his colleagues are making the case for a feature-length werewolf project (which he teased in a message to me, and which sounds awesome), and in demonstrating their capabilities, they’ve created an aesthetic showcase that exemplifies the strength of crowdfunding, and the power a group of creative people can wield when they’re truly passionate about something.

You can watch End of the Road for free right now by asking for a download link and password on their Facebook page. There’s also an excellent behind the scenes gallery on the Unmanned Media web site.

Also, just putting this out there: I would pay to watch a Wes Anderson style movie about a day in the life of Travis.

Angela Quinton Nov. 23rd 2015

John Keogh’s werewolf vs. wrestler poster for The Mountain Goats now on sale

Remember this stunning tour poster John Keogh did for The Mountain Goats? I think of it often, because the song that inspired it gets shuffled into my earbuds on the regular, and because a print of it hangs in my office. Now, it can hang in your designated art area too.

Previously, there were only four ways to obtain this poster:

be a member of The Mountain Goats. Hard to do if you’re not already there.
be John Keogh. Also tough to manage if you’re just starting now.
run a “werewolf stuff” blog and be publicly excited about the poster and lucky and be prepated when someone nice who also has access to a test print and the Topatoco shipping facilities DMs you on Twitter. Easier than the first two, but availability is limited.
purchase it directly from The Mountain Goats merch table at a live show during the spring and summer of 2015. This was the easiest way, but it required advance planning, so if you didn’t already do it, sorry.

Except I’m not sorry! I’m excited – excited to tell you that this poster is now available to purchase directly from The Mountain Goats, in Spring and Summer configurations, for a mere $20. Go get it, friends!

Angela Quinton Nov. 19th 2015

Enjoy the 80’s Teen Wolf cartoon intro

Today I want to take you back to a slightly more innocent time: the mid-1980s. It was a time when literally any family-friendly film might be wadded into a ball of bright colours, cheap animation and baggy plaid overshirts and then crammed into a hopefully-lucrative Saturday morning cartoon slot.

The gamble paid off for Columbia Pictures with Ghostbusters, but it did not work for Atlantic Entertainment, who tried to turn the Michael J. Fox comedy film Teen Wolf into a cartoon series that threw out pretty much everything from its parent film except some character names and the premise “there is a teen, who is also a werewolf”.

The series ran for 21 episodes between 1986 and 1987 before disappearing in the paperwork shuffle that accompanied one of the many entertainment conglomerate mergers of the era. It wasn’t a hit. It didn’t even have a consistent schedule, I don’t think – I only ever saw it once, when a local TV station needed to fill time when a live event ended early.

Some Googling will find random episodes on various video streaming sites, but as of today there’s no legal modern way to watch the show. That’s why I’m grateful for everyone who shared this Retro 80s post on Tumblr today. This one GIF contains everything you need to know about television in the 1980s.

Angela Quinton Nov. 16th 2015

“Hair of the Dog” full werewolf makeup preview

I got a follow-up email from Hair of the Dog director Michael Butts the other day.

Just wanted to share this picture of the “werewolf” in “Hair of the Dog.” Bennett Rodgers spent 6 hours in make-up which went from head to toe. This of course is just a shot of Bennett’s face in full werewolf make-up.

Scott Crain took the picture[,] and the make up artists were Stacy Lockhart, Caleb Paschall, and Laura Natalie Homer.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn the werewolves in this movie have a form more lupine than the wolfman-esque visuals we’ve already seen (and that I was quite happy with).

Angela Quinton Nov. 14th 2015

Cartoon Saloon & Tomm Moore take on the wolfen shapeshifters of 17th century Ireland

Cartoon Saloon and Tomm Moore are responsible for The Secret Of Kells and Song Of The Sea, two of my favourite animated films of recent years. Now, according to a post on Moore’s Tumblr and this Den Of Geek write-up, Moore’s laying the groundwork for Wolfwalkers, a film exploring Irish (maybe-)werewolves and Oliver Cromwell’s campaign of destruction in their country.

In a time of superstition and magic, when wolves are seen as demonic and nature as evil to be tamed, a young apprentice hunter, ROBYN, comes to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last pack. But when Robyn saves a wild native girl, MEBH, their friendship leads her to discover the world of the WOLFWALKERS and transforms her into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy.

Cartoon Saloon’s next film is The Breadwinner, due out in 2017, so Wolfwalkers may still be in production for a few years yet. Song of the Sea narrowly beat out Patrick McHale’s gorgeous miniseries Over the Garden Wall as my favourite animated project of 2014 – lupine metamorphosis or not, I’m very excited to see what wonders Moore’s latest visit to Ireland’s history and mythology will unveil.

Thanks to Tandye for the link!

Angela Quinton Nov. 13th 2015

Hair of the Dog updates: Whiskey poster & Sleep Nation video with werewolf action

It’s a big week for Hair of the Dog, the upcoming film about a middle-aged werewolf trying to get his life back on track through AA and a lycanthropy support group.

As you may recall from my Q&A with filmmaker Michael Butts, Hair of the Dog has evolved from a short film into a feature-length production, and filming starts this weekend. As with any big production, this is a collaborative effort, and I want to share two things that Michael shared with me.

Tennessee rock band Sleep Nation is providing the soundtrack for Dog, and they just released a music video for their song Mr. Unlucky, directed by Michael and starring Scott Crain as werewolf Ethan Russoff. I like the tune, and if this is the kind of stuff Ethan gets up to in bars, he’s going to need more than a support group to get his shit figured out.

Michael also sent me this faux whiskey poster by Caleb Paschall, “a buddy of mine who does special make-up effects for films who designed this fun poster on my behalf”. I might learn to like whiskey if this was a real brand.

Angela Quinton Nov. 6th 2015