"I really hate remakes, but the The Warriors is one of my all time favourite movies, and what I'm doing is kind of reinventing it. And rather than a gang it's going to be 30 guys who take on 3,000. It's Kingdom Of Heaven meets The Warriors."
From Grady over at Kaiju Shakedown comes this sad news: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - THE MUSIC PALACE HAS LEFT THE PLANET.
I've spent many hours of my life in old Chinatown cinemas, an insitution that died at the end of the 20th century. With great movies, cheap double bill prices, and strange snack bar food, they were exotic detours where you could feel like a stranger in a strange land and not leave your own city. Now NYC has lost one of North America's last Chinatown movie theatres, the Music Palace. For some fond memories, read Grady's piece over at Subway Cinema:I'll come clean: I've done shameful things in the Music Palace. I've eaten dinner, breakfast, lunch. Slept all day, dozed off for a few minutes, worked my way through a pack of cigarettes in one sitting, gotten drunk, dug through their trash, smoked dope, taken speed, had sex, argued with a cell phone user, played with a kitty, and had a party. To be fair, the sex and the dinner were both before they started turning on the lights between shows...knowing what I do now I would've held off.
Happy 90th Forry! Forrest J. Ackerman, the man who sparked the imagination of monster and horror and sci-fi and fantasy fans worldwide with his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland celebrated his birthday on November 24th.
Chime in on the Forrest J Ackerman Blog-A-Thon at Tim Lucas' Video WatchBlog, Flickhead, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (view his parody of the opening of James Whale’s Frankenstein), Bright Lights After Dark, and MJSimpson.co.uk.
Forry with November 23rd Birthday Boy, Boris Karloff
Check out more Dante b-day wishes in the Joe Dante Blog-a-Thon at Tim Lucas' Video WatchBlog, MovieMorlocks.com (who wishes "Joe Dante and John Sayles would get back together"), Nadaland, and at KGB Productions, Inc.
From Mystery of the Haunted Vampire via Final Girl comes this posting on the characters and casting of the Rob Zombie's reinterpretation of HALLOWEENThe casting call makes it sound like Zombie is simply going to do a variation of The Devil’s Rejects with a slight Halloween twist. The description of Michael as a stringy-haired kid who likes torturing animals after his school mates mock him for having a stripper mom is banal.
This is going to be the worst Halloween movie yet and that’s saying something.
"Also Good COLOR CARTOONS" - more fun images found at Greenbriar Picture Shows
I just celebrated my birthday on the 23rd of Nov and the grand event involved gathering with a group of friends at a bar, then going over to the Rainbow Cinema at Market Square (in Toronto) to catch the late show of CASINO ROYALE. The new Bond was a treat, more reminiscent of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE than any of the last installments. For more Bond-age, check out Poptique's BATTLE OF THE BONDALIKES (Part One, Part Two, Part Three and hopefully more in the future...).
As I got toasted and shared pints, people bring up the celebrities that I share birthdays with... Howie Mandel? I think not! I prefer to bask in the fact that I share my birthday with BORIS KARLOFF! Yup! One of
the original big screen boogeymen! And I also share my birthday with his daughter Sara and my own sister's name is Sarah... coincidence? I think not! Lots of his works are finally getting decent DVD releases and for the diehard fan, how about an official life size wall mount? And no - that was not a hint of what to get me next year for my birthday.
Film Forum in NYC had a great retrospective including THE MASK OF MANCHU, THE RAVEN, THE GUILTY GENERATION (a prohibition-era Romeo and Juliet), THE LOST PATROL, THE HAUNTED of his work including THE HAUNTED STRANGLER, and of course, one of his best, the post modern take on his legacy, Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS.
His last appearance in a major film, Karloff, plays an old horror film actor at the end of his career who must confront the new, late-1960s monster in the shape of a clean-cut, junior Republican multiple murderer. Although written and shot in 1967, it was released after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and thus had some topical relevance to then-current events."But if you drink your school, stay in drugs, and don't do milk, you'll get work!" - Mr. T
Thanks to Paul McEvoy, beloved master of mayhem of London, UK's Fright Fest along with Alan Jones (read his great blog, a delight for true genre fans) and Ian Rattray (Ian - start a blog or something so I can link you!), for sending this link to the new video for Knights Of Cydonia by the band Muse. Oh they certainly don't mak'em like they used to (or did they ever?)
(click on image to enlarge)There is a myth that KISS possess personal talismans which "transforms" them into their stage personae and endow them with "super-human" powers. They have developed unique Kabuki-like make-up "masks" which they wear on stage. They have never allowed themselves to be photographed "out of character" – this augmenting greatly their image of mystery and "otherworldiness."KISS meets Phantom of the Park - go over to the awesome PCL LinkDump for their links to the complete movie which has been uploaded to YouTube!
Pulled from the trivia section of the IMDB:Started shooting in Palm Beach, Florida in November 1978 according to articles in Boxoffice magazine. Articles said screenwriter Robert P. Davis was directing and that Robertson had co-written the script. "C. Gregory Earls of Cecil Prunier Productions is producing", said the Nov 20 1978 issue of Boxoffice. Apparently Robertson took over the directing chores.And the comments from the IMDB seem very forgiving...
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We came to Manhattan as younger generation classic porn fans, in search of the sleaze and depravity history has taught us about this place through word, verse, and cum-soaked porno house film stock. The Times Square and Deuce of yesteryear. We knew it was no longer, thanks to the crass, rancid Disneyfication of that section of the isle, but we came to hunt for even a lingering smell of jizz-coated ass…. just to say that we’d been there, and taken a loving whiff.Read on to learn of their meeting with 70s porn legend Jamie Gillis and other icky things. The article is also available on The Cultural Gutter. And make sure you wash your hands after reading Robin's livejournal. Note: not safe for work... unless you work in an adult video store...
One of the most fascinating characters in the Lord of the Rings movies is Gollum. Like Frodo, Gollum is a hobbit whose original name was Sméagol. Hobbits are stout people with elf-like faces who stand half the height of men; they enjoy good company with hearty beer in the local pubs, as did Sméagol… until he saw "the one ring to rule them all.”Other highlights include:
