Acclaimed Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is no stranger to Fantastic Fest, appearing in 2013 with Jodorowsky’s Dune and again last year for the documentary My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn directed by his wife Liv Corfixen. He returned once again this year with Fantastic Fest serving as the perfect launching pad for his new book Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing.
Read MoreIn 2011, DC Comics made the surprising and controversial decision to reboot their entire line of comics, erasing years of continuity and starting fresh. In promotional images for the reboot, all their main characters had new costumes designs that reflected this new era. No longer were DC’s heroes clad in spandex. The red trunks Superman famously wore for decades were gone. His costume (and the costumes of his peers) more resembled battle-ready armor. But unlike the rest of the Justice League, Superman was featured in a second promotional image with a completely different and even more surprising outfit—a t-shirt and jeans.
Read MoreOver the weekend, David Ayer, director of the upcoming Suicide Squad film, debuted the first image of Jared Leto as the Joker. The look garnered a great deal of response – both passionate hatred and accepting optimism. But the vocal and emotional reaction is unsurprising. The Joker has been around for 75 years, and he means a lot of things to a lot of people. With this new Joker in our midst, it has inspired me to reminisce about some of my favorite looks of the Clown Prince of Crime.
Read MoreFor those who haven’t been keeping up on the 52-year long soap opera that is the X-Men, the founding members of the team—as they were in the 1960s—have traveled to the present and got stuck there, potentially damaging the whole of space-time continuum if they remain. And in the latest issue of All-New X-Men (#40 to be exact), Bobby Drake, aka Iceman, is outed by Jean Grey, his mind-reading teammate. He’s gay… and crushing on teammate Angel to boot!
Read MoreFurious 7 opened over the weekend with the largest box office debut in the 14-year-old series. The upward trajectory of the franchise has been astonishing especially when it seemed all but exhausted after The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006. The appeal of this big, loud, and silly series is undeniable. Wesley Morris, film critic for the Boston Globe, summed it up perfectly when he called the franchise “the most progressive force in Hollywood.” Short of a LGBTQ character or two, the series reflects today’s world better than most.
Read MoreLove lasts forever, or at least until we’re dead. And let’s face it, we’re all going to die. Some of us swiftly and tragically, some slowly over a gruelingly long period of time. Either way, we all face the same fate – that long black corridor of eternity. Our literary characters are no different. They’ll meet their fate at some point during the narrative, or maybe long after the final pages have turned, careening forever toward their destiny, entertaining us along the way.
When a character is taken from us, plucked from the narrative in some dramatic way, it hurts. It truly hurts. Their demise, though completely made up, haunts us. As in real life, we’re often left thinking about what could have been – if only they wouldn’t have made that stupid choice, got on that plane, lit that fire, etc. But, much to the author’s devilish delight, we must live with their deaths. And it’s even more heart wrenching when the characters are in love. Because what doesn’t make your eyes fill like water reservoirs more than a tragic love and death?
Read MoreDanny Peary’s Cult Movies series has been loved for decades. Before the dawn of the internet, his books were many film lover’s gateway into the odd corners of cinema. Recently I was given the opportunity to edit a series of ebooks culling the material from these books, repackaging them in genre-specific collections, starting with Cult Horror Movies. The strength of his writing left little room for revision, though the new releases afforded Peary the opportunity for minor updates and tweaks (think of it as an Author’s Cut), as well as adding HUGE checklists for additional cult movies in each genre. These lists bring so much joy to my geek heart.
Read MoreAh, it’s that magical time of year when all the scary things in the dark can finally show their face. A celebrated season of spooky fun and gruesome delights, where kids can dress up like monsters and their parents have full permission to scare the shit out of them.
Read MoreGorgon Video is one of the essential 80s producers of what’s dubbed “horror cheapies,” films that probably didn’t have much of an onset budget beyond craft services and cocaine. Described as a company “focusing on the sub-genre of extreme horror and dark documentaries,” they’re best known for their classic VHS clamshell cases and the Faces of Death series, an utterly delightful video taboo among teenagers of every decade since its release.
Read MoreAh, the 90s. A time of democracy, rock ‘n roll, hip hop, American wealth, and the carefree days of the early internet. We see those days now, looking back through rose-tinted lenses, as the last decade of true innocence. Death and destruction only existed on the 11 o’clock news. Our sitcoms and cartoons satiated us and kept us safe from the hideous dangers of the larger world.
But if we took off those rose-tinted glasses we’d probably see that our world wasn’t quite as pristine as we remembered. In a way, that’s exactly what artist Paul Ribera has done with his latest works, a series of beloved 1990s cartoon characters depicted as down-and-out drug addicts. With this, he’s sufficiently tuned many people’s childhoods, but has also given us a dose of reality some may not have experienced.
Read More
