Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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Doesn't that look so much better than anything you've seen advertising-wise for the new Planet of the Apes movie? I swear, why won't studios let me run them, I'd make them so much money.

Anyway whoops forgot to mention earlier this week that I'm off today through Tuesday! I know you guys need a lot of preparation to deal with my absence - medication, over-sized sunglasses, and what some might call excessive foot bathing is involved - so I apologize for springing this on you so suddenly. Send me the medical bills, I promise to make myself a nest out of them totally care.

Alright smartassery aside I do have something for you - my weekly write-up of the weekend's new movie releases is up at Celebrity Beehive. There's nothing out this weekend that I much want to see (although I could probably be dragged to Rise of the Planet of the Apes for the air-conditioning) - we're just holding our breath for next Friday when Final Destination 5 comes out. HELL YES. Y'all have a nice weekend! I'll be back Wednesday.

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I was a big fan of the first Paranormal Activity movie (my review). I know it wasn't everybody's cuppa but I loved the slow build and the way it forced you to just stare and stare at a static image until you thought your brain would snap from the tension. In the way that The Blair Witch Project mastered its teeny tiny budget through an electrifyingly creative manipulation of its sound-design so I felt that PA pulled a similar trick with its rigid visuals, turning a limitation to their favor.

Unfortunately the second film mucked it all up (my review). There were too many cameras around the house that they kept editing between, slicing any mounting tension up into ineffectual ribbons.

Plus the characters went way too far above and beyond the call of unbearable douchiness. Micah and Katie were deeply flawed characters in the first film - some might call them, and many did, monstrously annoying - but the movie was smart about it, I thought, and seemed to have built their less-than-savory aspects inextricably into the tale they were telling. Their passive-aggressive relationship became a game of one-upmanship and the final frame brought the game, and the camera and the home, crashing down. The awful people in the second movie were just ciphers with no interaction between who they were and what was happening to them. The film never found a purpose, and ended up treading stale steps in the first film's much more successful wake.

Point! We now have a teaser trailer for the third film.

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(via) So it's a prequel way back to the 1980s with the two sisters as little girls who've got access to what would have been at the time super-expensive crystal clear video technology. Mkay. What makes me most sad about this is we won't get to see any more of Micah.


Bye Micah! You were a sexy asshole. The most curious thing here is the fact that this is coming from Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the directors that made last year's buzzy curiosity Catfish (my review), the questionable documentary of a slightly adorable dorky New York douche getting caught up in a sad lady's Facebook espionage. I was pro-Catfish for the most part but didn't really keep up with it once it came out and people began picking it apart.


Anyway I am curious to see what these chaps might bring to the Paranormal table. Catfish was sold as a horror movie but really didn't end up being that at all. But it still managed to wring a lot of tension from that curiosity before you knew what was coming. I vividly remember being freaked out when Nev & Co. get to that horse-farm late at night and are peering through the darkened windows of the barn. So they can maybe handle suspense? I guess we'll see. PA3 is out on October 21st...


... which is a date that's making my brain question a question: What horror movies are we getting for Halloween this year? The Saw franchise is blessedly over and blessedly done with its nearly-decade-long campaign of ruining the holiday, and I thought we were getting Cabin in the Woods but as we found out this morning it turns out that's not coming out until April.

So as long as this is on our brain, let's take a look-see at all the major horror movies coming out between now and All Hallows. (There will probably be smaller films that will get scheduled between now and then that we're unawares of just yet.)


-- The only horror movie out before July is over - if you don't count The Smurfs - is the "teenage British thugs vs. aliens" movie Attack the Block on July 29th, which I reviewed right here. I had a fairly complicated reaction to the film and I'm still sort of plagued by it. Fantastic monster design and some wonderfully staged action scenes though, even if I'm not sure they didn't ruin everything with an erratic tone and possibly irredeemable main characters.


-- In August we get Final Destination 5 on the 12th and the Fright Night remake on the 19th. I've stopped writing about the latest FD movie because I can't look at any more trailers or pictures, I don't want to spoil anymore of the deaths than I already did with the first trailer, but I wanna see this like crazy, like I do with every installment. I hump this series to death. I think Fright Night looks generally terrible but Toni Collette and Sexy Vampire Colin Farrell might get me there anyway.


-- The Guillermo Del Toro produced remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark starring the soulless Katie Holmes and the asstastic Guy Pearce is out on August 26th.

-- Shark Night 3D - from the director of two Final Destination movies, including my favorite the second one! - is out on September 2nd. The trailer for this movie is just absolutely awful, but my FD-loving brain keeps arguing with me about it. Whole conversations have been had inside of my head! Crazy ones!


-- Also on September 2nd comes Apollo 18, which is "Blair Witch on the Moon." Space horror isn't done often enough if you ask me - it don't get much more isolated than that! I hope there's a shot of someone being killed reaching towards Earth in the sky for help. That'd be neat-o.

-- September 9th brings us Contagion, Steven Soderbergh's global pandemic movie with an impressively starry and serious cast. Winslet, Paltrow, Law, Damon, Cotillard, and wait what's this John Hawkes! Love him.

-- The closest thing to horror on September 16th is the Straw Dogs remake but that might just be terrifying us because of the basic fact that they remade Straw Dogs. It does have lots of violence and rape though so close enough. But it also has Alexander Skarsgard and Jimmy Marsden swanning around half-naked and there's nothing scary about that. Stimulating, yes. Intimidating, definitely. But certainly not anything even approaching scary.


-- Dream House, which we just saw the shirtless-Daniel-Craig-ified trailer for yesterday, is out on September 30th.

-- As is Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, the supposedly pretty funny horror-comedy starring Alan Tudyk and Reaper's Tyler Labine as two innocent hillbillies caught up in bloody shenanigans. I think the idea is that they get mistaken for serial killers by a bunch of stupid vacationing college kids who then try to kill them as if they're in a horror movie fighting off Jason Voorhees. And it's a really fun idea.


-- The Thing remake is out on October 14th. We just saw the first trailer for that last week. Love the cast and want it to be good but it has been sitting around gathering dust for a little while now. That could just be due to factors other than its worth though - I think, like Cabin in the Woods, it got held up due to studio problems.

-- Also out that same day, at least in limited release, is The Skin I Live In. It's Pedro Almodovar's newest movie. It reunites him with 80s man-muse Antonio Banderas, and it's apparently very dark and very creepy. The teaser trailer scared me. All of these things are making me want it something insane.


-- On October 21st, the same day as PA3 is out, Kevin Smith's Red State finally gets a proper release after Smith toured the country earlier this year with it. But from what I hear it's not really the horror movie it's been sold to be either?


-- Same day, another indie weirdo cult movie (as in a movie about a cult) that got talk at Sundance - Martha Marcy May Marlene also isn't really a horror movie in the oogie-boogie slobbery monster sense but it's supposedly pitch-black and horrifying in its own way. Plus it has John Hawkes again and I will mention him whenever I can. Hi again John Hawkes!

As of right now there's apparently nothing scary scheduled for October 28th, which seems bonkers. Expect something to pick up the slack, I imagine. After Halloween we're into Oscar season so there's not as much spooky scheduled - I refuse to categorize the Twilight movies as horror (except for what they say about our culture); Piranha 3DD is supposedly out on November 23rd - perfect for taking Grandma to over Thanksgiving holiday!; David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie will presumably be pretty horrific a la Straw Dogs with the violence (a lot specifically of a sexual nature) and the throbbing NIN techno; The Darkest Hour has Emile Hirsch fighting killer aliens.   

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--- Hey Look - Channing Tatum shaved his head. I have no idea what it's for, if it's for a role or whatever, but I want to rub my hands (or you know, my whatever) all over it, I know that much.

--- Three Peeks - DH has descriptions of a few trailers we'll be seeing soon - namely The Dark Knight Rises (which is already leaked online in a crappy pirated version, I watched it this morning but the copy I saw's already gone so search around maybe you can still find it), The Amazing Spider-Man (which'll be shown at ComiCon, and excuse me while I groan at the apparent extensive inclusion of origin story in it - is there anyone on Earth who needs to see him get bitten by the spider at this point?), and the first trailer for John Carter Sans Mars (I think that's what I'm calling it from now on), which is supposedly showing up "with select copies" of Harry Potter this weekend. I better be seeing a "select" fucking copy then.

--- Future Man - There aren't any shots of Colin Farrell or any of the other actors in the Total Recall remake in these pictures from the film's now-shooting set, but there are some amusing looks at the costumes the police extras have to wear. Very TRON meets storm-trooper.

--- Latest Final - BD has a rather extensive (that's code for "I only skimmed it") set report from the latest Final Destination movie, which I am officially so excited for I could barf. As I say every time this franchise comes up, I hope I'm seeing new films from this series every other year for the rest of my life.

--- Suicide Laughs - I must've heard about this project earlier but forgotten - Kristen Wiig is teaming up with the filmmakers behind American Splendor to make a dark comedy about a girl who pretends to try to kill herself to win a dude back, a scheme which backfires and gets her sent to live with her estranged mother. This sounds like exactly what she should be doing, so I am there. It's also kind of reminiscent of the darker edges of Bridesmaids - that character was forced by sad circumstances to move home and deal with her mother too. I sense a theme! Kristen Wiig hates her mother.

--- Hero Boobs - This is my sort of literature! io9 gathered up all the examples of Marvel movie superhero men taking off their clothes that they could think of in one hot spot destination post. Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, they got them all oh wait they forgot a couple which I will now bitch about, that's right. Just off the top of my head they left off Thomas Jane as The Punisher, they left off Eric Bana in the first Hulk movie (although they do give love to Ed Norton in the last film), and they left off Daniel Cudmore as Colossus in X2.

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--- Spy's Guys - Naomie Harris, the plucky lass so good in 28 Days Later, is Miss Moneypenny in the next James Bond film, which is great cuz we like her, but even better is word that Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes are pretty much locked in. Anyway I am going to have to demand a three-way between them and Daniel Craig. Demand! Wedge it in the plot somehow. They always find time for sexiness with James Bond somewhere. Maybe they can do it while on a helicopter that's on fire falling towards the ocean. Alright, where's my screenwriter credit?

--- Killa Thrilla - I haven't linked to the new trailer for Final Destination 5 yet because I heard it gives away absolutely everything to the movie from start to finish, and I ain't playin that. But with that in mind, if you don't care, click over and watch it. I'm holding out though. Just a little over a month to go!
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--- Pearl Clutcher - If you missed the first clip of Meryl Streep aping Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady that premiered online yesterday, you can see it over at The Film Experience. Love that I'm not the only one who saw some Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in there! Don't fuck with her, fellas! Anyway people seem generally a little bit skeptical, surprisingly? Which opens the door for Tilda to win her second Oscar, right? Yay Tilda!
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--- Whites Of His Eyes - Huge thanks to Bob Turnbull for cluing me in to this gallery he arranged of some incredible super-subtle gifs from several movies. The one from Full Metal Jacket is the stuff of nightmares. Stare at this for a minute:

--- Barely Bear Jew - Eli Roth says he's still working on the script for Endangered Species, his end-of-the-world movie, yadda yadda, same bullshit for years now. So very tired, Eli. So tired.

--- Big scoop! BD talked to Kit Harington - aka the bastard boy Jon Snow on A Game of Thrones - about his work on the Silent Hill sequel and he called the film "horrific" of all things! That's crazy! Alright I'm being a smart-ass, but this collection of banal quotes from him that they've assembled randomly on a page over there is sloppy enough to warrant my irritation. Yet I link just so's I can post a picture of Kit... so cheap, I am... but look at that pout! I wanna flog his direwolf so bad.

--- And finally, we want to wish Jarett at PopWrap the fondest of farewells. He closed up the site earlier this week and the internet's already been the poorer for it. He's off to the West Coast and we miss him already.

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