Anne Hathaway Catwoman

This extensive batch of new pictures from Dario Argento's Dracula 3D includes our first look at Thomas Kretschmann fanged out:

There's gore and Rutger Hauer and more to be seen if you click over. The gallery also unfortunately underlines my doubts about Argento's ability to make pretty pictures anymore, even with Thomas Kretschmann, because everything looks over-lit and cheap. Perhaps these are just super-early glimpses and things will look different with the finalized product, but then I wonder why we're even seeing them yet. I mean, Thomas' eyes are half-closed in a shot they released! WTF?
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--- Mo Better Boy - I have to admit that the prospect of a Spike Lee directed remake of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy is an interesting idea. Spike certainly isn't afraid to be controversial (ha, understatement) and could possibly be ballsy enough to take this movie where it needs to be taken, unlike somebody like Spielberg, who momentarily talked about doing this. Would Denzel Washington inevitably star? Hrm dunno about him in the role. It's a shame Morgan Freeman's too old - he'd be perfect considering outside concerns, ahem. I know this is a really weird suggestion, but I can't stop thinking Eddie Murphy now. Oh Dae-su should have a "broken clown" quality to him.

--- Deeper Than Deep - A lovely little observation about a moment in Dario Argento's Profundo Rosso from Arbogast here.

--- Cold Flesh - Apparently Bruce La Bruce decided he wanted to take the wound-fucking scene from his last movie Otto, or Up With Dead People (a movie I liked) and turn that into a whole movie, and that's what LA Zombie is. Which well obviously I'll see this at some point. Go read Adam's take on the film.

--- Wack-a-duo - Reunited and it feels very fine - Michel Gondry will direct the new Bjork video for her new song "Crystalline." Yes, that is a good thing. Sad story: I was grooving to this song at a dinner we had at my house over the weekend when I realized everyone's conversation around me had turned to how much they hate Bjork. Awww. Cue my deflated face and head-hung trip to skip to the next track on the iPod. Rejected!

--- RoboStatham - There's some probably entirely baseless speculation going about that Jason Statham could star in a 4th Transformers film which - post-Bay and LaBeouf - would take the series into a darker direction. Can't really get much darker than being a signal of the end of times like the entire franchise has been so far, can ya? And I doubt there's much space for half-naked field fucking in a Transformers movie so I says pass, Jason!

--- The Woman Beat - Ever since an audience member freaked out at a screening of Lucky McKee's The Woman (starring his May star Angela Bettis) I've been jonesing to see it (good press, that), so I'm happy to hear it's been picked up for distribution finally. I was hoping it'd play here in NY some time before officially getting released but it's been months and no go so I guess I'll have to stick it out with the rest of y'all plebes!

--- Hey It's Hooper - Apparently Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper has written a horror novel called Midnight Movie in which he is the star. STYD has the details - it's fairly reminiscent of Wes Craven's script for New Nightmare in a lot of ways. Now he just has to direct and star in an adaptation and we can slide right on down the rabbit hole.

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BD rounded up the pictures that Asia Argento's been tweeting from the set of her papa's Dracula 3D movie, currently filming and starring herself as Lucy and Thomas Kretschmann as Sir Fangsalot himself, and I like those two above a lot. If the movie has half the atmosphere that her snaps have got then it'll be three times as pretty as anything Dario's done in ages. Asia actually randomly came up in conversation over the weekend and I found myself in the position of defending her, and as I did I discovered I like her more than I realized I did. Maybe she can get more into directing and be the horror equivalent of Sofia Coppola.
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While so far they've been stuffed with the sort of praise that horror director Dario Argento's done his damndest for years now to squash deserving, it's still been worth reading the first couple of STYD's dispatches from the set of his Dracula 3D film for little tid-bits like this. When asked what the look of the film will be, Thomas Kretschmann, who you'll remember is starring at the titular bloodsucker himself, had this choice phrase on hand:

I don't care that the previously alluded to squashing of Argento's goodwill makes me doubt this Visconti allusion deeply (once upon a time an Argento movie could at least be considered pretty even while it made no sense; his recent movies have just been ugly. Giallo still haunts me) - I just love that phrase. Splatter Visconti! Splatter Visconti! Splatter Visconti! The staccato cineaste alliteration of it. And I love it especially coming from the tender lips of Tommy boy. It's a keeper.

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--- Make It A Full Moon For Luna - Diego Luna, who I love and probably even prefer to his Y Tu Mama co-star Gael Garcia Bernal if we're being honest, is in talks to join Neil Blomkamp's sci-fi follow-up to District 9, called Elysium and starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster and District star Sharlto Copley, and which... well hasn't that thing been filming for ages already? They're so damn secretive about it. Anyway yay Diego! Love him.

--- World's End - AICN got a little bit from Simon Pegg on where his and Nick Frost's third film with Edgar Wright stands right now. They are working on the story, and they want it to be interesting, basically!

--- Breathless Mahoney - Has anybody seen Dick Tracy lately? I was the perfect age of 12 when it came out in 1990 and I remember obsessing over it for that Summer but I don't think I've seen it since. I've been meaning to rewatch it for ages now but have no idea what that'll feel like. Anyway Warren Beatty's mentioned making a sequel. Timely, Warren!

--- Always Ari - PopWrap's got the trailer for a new movie with Ari "Balls Deep" Graynor called Lucky, in which she stars opposite Colin "Why does he keep getting jobs oh right, his father" Hanks. Let's make it the year of Ari! This movie's out next month.

--- The Thin Blue Broad - A friend of mine saw a screening of Errol Morris' new film Tabloid last year and apparently the woman who's the film's subject was there - she's that crazy woman who abducted a Mormon guy and cloned her dog, all sorts of bonkers shit - and she had a freak out, and it was awesome. The trailer for it's out now; the film's out in July.

--- Fairey Glare - Y'all have surely already seen this but there's artist Shepard Fairey's poster for John Carpenter's film They Live that he created for a special screening of the film down in Austin, where they vanquish movie-texters with glee. (via)

--- Space Stage - A couple of pictures of the sets and sound-stages for Ridley Scott's Prometheus have made their way online which you can look at over at io9. Green screen and a cave. Thrilling. Just get me pictures of Michael Fassbender's underwear drawer already!

--- And finally, here's video of Dario Argento talking about his intentions for his now-filming Dracula 3D with Thomas Kretschmann and his daughter Asia. After just suffering through the ineptitude of his most recent film Giallo I'm even more skeptical than ever. (via)

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Terrible movies don't live up to their hype as often as you'd hope. And even when they are quite terrible enough thank you, for every delightfully horrible Troll 2 there's a bash-your-skull-against-the-wall boring Birdemic. Dario Argento's Giallo is every ounce as awful as I'd heard, but it willfully denies you the camp factor too. Actually that's narrow-minded of me - it denies you everything. Like attractive people (it makes Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner look monstrous) in shots you like looking at, or a story that's even trying to make sense, or the feeling as if someone was paying attention to what was going on at some point, whether while putting the movie together or while filming it or afterward when all that footage is sitting there asking to be put together into a thing called a movie. None of these things are anywhere to be found. Indeed it seems so purposefully void of anything worth looking at it seems diabolical, as if it were a dare. Let's all hope that nobody ever double dares Dario Argento then.

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Guldernit, I says! It really is going to be impossible for me to do anything but hype myself up impossibly over Dario Argento's Dracula 3D now that it stars his daughter Asia as Lucy and THOMAS KRETSCHMANN AS THE BIG DRAC. Sigh. Asia tweeted this pic of her and her swanky Aryan co-star from the set today, and it's an insta-erection for the eyes. Do by them right, Dario!

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It was only a couple of weeks ago that we saw the first early "art-work" for Dario Argento's yet-to-be-filmed Dracula 3D movie, and it was cheap and abysmal looking and I admitted that I've gotten so weary of Argento's cheap and abysmal output as of late that I didn't think I could stomach another dreary go of it.

Silly me! I spoke too soon! Because today's news casts no doubt upon there being any in Hell that I'll be missing this movie. I feel a little bit less than good about it still, but it can't be helped. No fighting against this tide. Via Screen Daily:

As the pictures attached to this post attest, Kretschmann acted in a movie for Dario Argento once before (and opposite his daughter Asia as well), called The Stendhal Syndrome. I posted more pictures from it way back when I watched it, but that's not gonna stop me from posting some more today. Not when that's what we're talking about.


I mean, my god, have you ever seen anything prettier? Point being, point Argento. I'll see your damned Dracula movie now. You'd better make good use of your 3D. I want the full Kretschmann poking my eyes out, dammit.

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