Entries from March 2009 ↓

Arriving on DVD April 7 from Magnet Releasing is Edward Anderson's highly anticipated thriller Shuttle (trailer; review), which Tex reviewed from the SXSW Film Festival last March. Now it's coming to your home for your enjoyment. Check out some exclusive new hi-res images below. When Jules (Cameron Goodman) and Mel (Peyton List) return late at night from a ladies-only vacation, they find themselves at the airport on a rainy night that seems darker than usual. Wanting to get home but with limited options, they board an airport shuttle with a driver (Tony Curran), hoping for a safe and short ride.

Back at Sundance CHUD broke the news that funny man Bill Hader was embarking into uncharted waters... horror. Today, they learned that Hader will topline the film currently titled House of Joel. Assuming the movie happens, Hader will play Joel, a potential slasher victim. "The screenplay, a draft of which Hader just handed over to the good people at Apatow, is being co-written with Simon Rich, a writer at Saturday Night Live," reports CHUD. Hopefully this sucker turns out better than Adam Sandler's attempt at horror in The Shortcut. Click over for more.

Over at BDTV you'll find the DVD trailer for Lionsgate's The Burrowers, which arrives at retailers on April 21. The Dakota Territories. 1879. A handful of brave pioneers maintain isolated settlements in the badlands beyond civilization. Irish immigrant Fergus Coffey is near to winning the hand of his beloved Maryanne when she is suddenly taken from him, her family brutally abducted in a nighttime attack on their homestead. Suspicion falls immediately on hostile Indians. Experienced Indian fighters Will Parcher and John Clay form a posse and set out to rescue the kidnapped settlers, taking along a naïve teenager hoping to prove himself a man, an ex-slave looking for his place, and their ranch hand, Coffey. But as men vanish in the night, and horrific evidence accumulates with the dead and dying, the group discovers that their prey is far more terrifying than anything human, and their prospects are far more terrible than death. Extra features include: "THE BURROWERS: Making a Horror Western", "Digging up THE BURROWERS: Creating the Monster" and Commentary with Writer/Director JT Petty and Actor Karl Geary.

After an abysmal release list last Tuesday, this week's Horror In Your House is dead set on breaking the bank. Hopefully you've got Netflix, because this week you can not only pick up all "8 Films to Die For" from Lionsgate and After Dark Horrorfest, but Grindhouse is putting Lucio Fulci's The Cat in the Brain on DVD in a special limited edition release. You can see everything hitting retailers tomorrow by reading on.

Paul Bettany, who recently blew my mind in the incredible Gangster No. 1 (2000), is in negotiations to star in Priest, a horror Western that Michael De Luca (In the Mouth of Madness) and Stars Road Entertainment's Josh Donen are producing for Screen Gems for release on August 13, 2010. The move will reunite Bettany with director Scott Stewart, for whom he just finished starring in Legion, an upcoming Screen Gems supernatural thriller. Read on for more details.

While most teens were anxiously awaiting the release of Twilight, they should have been keeping their eyes glued to HBO Sunday nights for a real vampire drama, True Blood, which will be entering its second season on June 14. If you missed the first season, now is the time to find a way to catch up (Hulu maybe?) on the adaptation that follows Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a barmaid living in Louisiana who can read people's minds, and how her life is turned upside down when the Vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer), walks into her place of employment two years after vampires 'came out of the coffin' on national television. Today the first images from the second season have sunk their teeth online, read on for a look.

If Zombie Strippers was too tame for you (and it was), "Fear Agent" creator Rick Remender is in progress of adapting XXXombies for the big screen. XXXombies screenplay is almost done, wrote Remender on his Twitter feed last week. Rewriting the story so many times has [made] it rock solid but Im really tired of looking at it. MTV got in touch with the writer for more info, check out inside.

Back in Episode 49 of the Bloody Good Horror Podcast we laid into "Feast 2" with both barrels and proclaimed the movie a fun staple on the over the top gore side, yet light on plot and purpose. Now that "Feast 3: The Happy Finish" is finally here on DVD ...

We broke the news a few weeks back that Daeg Faerch had been recast as young Michael Meyers in Rob Zombie's forthcoming Halloween sequel tentatively titled Halloween 2: The Devil Walks Among Us. Today you get your first look at Chase Vanek as lil' Michael. "Here he is for the first time CHASE VANEK the new young Michael Myers," Zombie writes. "Chase has been kicking ass on set and we are sure you will love him as much as we do. Chase's favorite question to ask me is "When do I get to kill someone ?" Kind of reminds me of another young Michael I used to know." Shooting is now underway in Georgia with Dimension Films lining the release for August 28th.

British actor Jamie Campbell-Bower (RockNRolla, Sweeney Todd; pictured inside) has revealed he will play Volturi leader Caius in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, reports the BBC News. He stars alongside Dakota Fanning in the second adaptation hitting theaters November 20th. The role of Caius is key to the plot of New Moon. He forms part of the triumvirate leading the Italian based coven of vampires called the Volturi. The second book in the series sees the gang become a threat to lovers Bella and Edward. Chris Weitz is set to get behind the camera next month.

Little Big Top is playing at the legendary New Beverly Cinema this Tuesday, March 31st @ 9:30 pm. As part of Sid Haig Week, it will be the 2nd half of a double feature that leads off @ 7:30 pm with the 1969 classic Pit Stop, followed by a Q & A with iconic director Jack Hill and Sid Haig himself, who will then introduce Little Big Top! Sid Haig stars as Seymour Smiles, an old circus clown and current drunk, who returns to his small, Indiana hometown to live the rest of his days boozing in solitude. But when his childhood friend Bob (Richard Riehle) convinces him to help the struggling clown squad at the local circus, Seymour is thrust back into the place he fears most...the spotlight.

Ever since Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's UK horror comedy Shaun of the Dead hit theaters back in 2004, horror fans have been begging for more. While the duo have moved on to bigger and better things, there was always hope they'd re-team again for something horrific - while that's not exactly the case here, at least the duo are about to take on the end of the world. Read on for the skinny.

We just got our hands on the first official photos from Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio's documentary Cropsey, which will be playing at this year's Tribeca Film Festival running April 22-May 3 in New York. Urban legendswe either dismiss them or accept that they have some grain of truth. Directors Zeman and Brancaccio attempt to uncover one such urban myth as they investigate five missing children and the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearance in Staten Island during their youth. Will this terrifying journey resolve what has haunted them since childhood?

Beyond the break you can check out the first hi-res still from Michael Cuesta's Tell-Tale, which stars Josh Lucas, Brian Cox, Lena Headey, Beatrice Miller, Ulrich Thomsen, Pablo Schreiber, Dallas Roberts, Jamie Harold, Tom Riis Farrell, Tom Kemp, Scott Winters. Inspired by the classic Edgar Allan Poe story "The Tell-Tale Heart," the contemporized adaptation premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York sees Lucas starring as a single father whose recently transplanted heart leads him on a frantic search to find the donor's killer before a similar fate befalls him.

Review by Jeffery J. Timbrell

The story of Puzzlehead deals with a scientist named Walter in a desolate future who builds a humanoid robot that looks identical to him named Puzzlehead.

Not only is the machine a physical doppleganger for Walter, but the scientist is even using his own mind as the foundation for Puzzlehead’s artificial intelligence. The scientist copies his own neural net onto the robot’s brain and then nurtures its intelligence by teaching it chess, language and music. As time goes by Puzzlehead becomes a companion to Walter who uses it for chores and eventually lets it go out into the world to fetch food and supplies. After a dangerous encounter with unsavory elements Puzzlehead is modified so that Walter can chronicle and record all of his movements. The recording of Puzzlehead’s actions leads to the scientist discovering a chance encounter between the machine and a local grocery store owner whom Walter has been secretly infatuated with for a long time. This event gives the scientist an unprecedented opportunity to approach the woman he loves by stealing the identity of his own creation. The ramifications of this act set in motion a chain of events that lead to betrayal, rebellion, revenge and murder.

Puzzlehead takes the Frankenstein concept and explores its philosophical ramifications, and while that is nothing new the questions asked by the filmmaker are definitely more interesting and thought-provoking than the norm. Puzzlehead is intellectually multi-faceted and takes the concept of artificial intelligence in an interesting direction. Where even if mankind could create AI, would it be able to get over its own prejudices in how it has perceived and always used technology? We are used to machines being lower than animals and even insects, they are simply devices to be exploited by humanity’s whim; can we overcome that bias? At first Walter cherishes Puzzlehead, but as the story continues one begins to view the relationship not as a father and his creation, but as a child with a toy. Walter has created something that can engage him and communicate with him on a personal level, but he has done so for entirely selfish reasons. Not to create and study a new non-human intelligence, but just as a hobby. In many ways Puzzlehead represents much of modern technology in the modern era; where technology has given us a way to no longer live in communities and live with the people around us. Where we only have to talk to the people we want to talk to, and are never forced to confront opinions that are different from our own. So many people are cut off from different ideas and different perspectives on life which limits their point of view and makes them myopic. Walter uses Puzzlehead not to expand his own experience of what it means to be alive, but to isolate himself, to distance himself and cut himself off from the harsh realities of the outside world. Puzzlehead allows Walter to have a friend without the hassle of worrying about their feelings or getting into disagreements or arguments.

Technology has also become an intermediary between people communicating both online and off, and can act as a tool for us to meet and build relationships with new lovers and build friendships with people we would have otherwise have never met across the globe and even create business and working opportunities. However the frightening aspects of that very same technology allow for an unprecedented level of deceit and manipulation, allowing people to steal other people’s identities and use those identities to gain an innocent person’s trust while betraying their intimacy.  One can see Walter’s own use of Puzzlehead as a way to seduce a woman who is he has been infatuated with, in a similar sense. But in this case, the technology is aware of how it is being abused.

In the case of Puzzlehead, Walter steals his own creation’s identity, which ultimately reveals Walter’s own limited perception of Puzzlehead and his intellectual bias regarding machines. Walter has built a Toaster Oven with a Soul, but to him it’s still just a Toaster Oven. Puzzlehead was only a living creature until Walter could use it to meet his own selfish ends, in which case Puzzlehead became a disposable piece of technology. And while Walter is too blinded by his own vanity to perceive this bias, Puzzlehead is all too aware of his creator’s faults and as Puzzlehead’s freedoms are limited, his privacy is invaded and his identity is stolen, he becomes more and more rebellious and ultimately outaged with his “father”.

This is truly an actor’s film, it could easily be a theatrical production, it’s so intimate, so having good actors with good performances is vital to the script’s execution and Puzzlehead delivers. Stephen Galaida is subtle and surprising as both Walter and Puzzlehead; his performance in the first part of the film is so convincing that when I realized that the two characters were played by the same actor it came as a genuine shock to me and I had to go back to earlier parts of the film to watch them again. The evolution of Galaida’s performance from the beginning until the film’s finale is a fine bit of acting and a nice spin on both characters, their differences and their similarities. Robbie Shapiro is also very good as Julia; she comes across equally damaged and vulnerable, and her initial attraction to Puzzlehead, considering the circumstances of her environment, seem to mirror Walter’s own interest, creating a strange love triangle dynamic.

Written and directed by James Bai, Puzzlehead is a quiet, thought-provoking and interesting science fiction/psychological thriller; it’s a film for people who are bored to death of the same-old, same-old in the genres and want something a bit more challenging. In Puzzlehead there is no gore, there is very little violence or action and very little suspense, instead the threats and conflicts are mostly emotional and intellectual. The film plays like an early David Cronenberg movie mixed with early John Carpenter sensibilities; in fact there’s a definite Dark Star feel to the intellectual duel between man and machine, where the line between them is blurred enough until finally there is no difference at all. Puzzlehead’s a movie with big ideas and large emotional landscapes that feels intimate while examining characters that are fatally detached.

A movie is often defined by the questions it asks, most films ask very simple questions like “would you survive a zombie holocaust” (hint: the answer is no). In Frankenstein films the question is usually “Should Men Play God?”, which usually comes off as preachy and melodramatic instead of thought-provoking. In Puzzlehead the question is “Why does man want to play God”? And that’s a far more interesting subject. Instead of looking down at the accomplishment of creating an Artificial Intelligence, Puzzlehead studies the human motives that could give birth to such an intelligence and it asks whether or not we’re prepared to overcome our own prejudices and preconceptions regarding the nature of that intelligence.

Puzzlehead is a smart, subtle and very different kind of movie, I enjoyed it and I recommend it.

Watch the trailer: