Anne Hathaway Catwoman

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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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Right there are the UK posters for the characters that Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell play in the Fright Night remake. (via) Obviously by picking those two from the several character posters and placing them beside each other I am totally pretending to make them kiss. I'm like a three year old girl with her dolls (in so many ways) up in here. Smoochie smoochie you two!

I didn't realize until right this very second that the director Craig Gillespie had directed a slew of United States of Tara episodes. I guess that's how Toni Collette got the mom gig. I mean besides being awesome and deserving of any part ever, of course.

Anyway perhaps this means that he'll fill out his probable next project Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Tara faces. Brie Larson is Elizabeth Bennett! And Keir Gilchrist is Mr. Darcy!

Okay no that's just weird.

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Since I'm always watching all the shows on a delay and we live in an insta-society it usually feels pointless to write up my thoughts on shows by the time I get around to watching them, but I'm gonna go ahead and offer up a few thoughts on some anyway right now, and you're gonna have to summon up the strength to just deal. So let's look at Sunday night's premiere of True Blood then, which I got to last evening.

First up, the obvious: there wasn't anything in the way of dude-nudity (BOO) but everybody was looking so good I almost didn't notice. The guys are competing with each other at this point who can be the most ridiculously fit, right? Because everybody looks amazing. But the MVPs (Most Valuable Pieces) of the episode were Ryan Kwanten first in that cop uniform which is tailored obscenely snug, and then in just his jeans and t-shirt, which well was also tailored obscenely snug.

And then of course Alexander Skarsgard, who shows up in a black t-shirt just a fraction of an inch too short for his torso (SIGH) threatening the mot wanted fang-rape in the history of ever.

Honestly, this cast is just ridiculous though. Guys aside, you know you've tapped into some sexy sorcery when you've got me rooting for two female characters to go at it - no, not Tara and her underwear-model slash kick-boxer girlfriend, but PAM AND JESSICA - oh my god they need to do it.

Fave line of the night:

"Toilets are for humans only.

Do I need to explain why?"

It's all in the delivery. Oh Pam. How I adore your endless snark. And the bat wings framed around her head! Glorious. And I'll agree with the general consensus that the arrival of Fiona Shaw as the head witch was the bright spot, but why would anyone be surprised?

Fiona Shaw is about as crazy (emphasis on that word) talented an actress as there is working today, and she's gonna go for this shit 1500 percent. I give you Black Dahlia. Gutsy broads like this are in short supply and there aren't many shows on the air that'd let them do their thing quite like Blood will so this is a match made in heaven, methinks.

Speaking of shows like True Blood, generally I liked the episode a lot. True Blood has never ever never ever been about anything approaching sane consistent storytelling. So I sat through this episode understanding that I was getting a whole bunch of, "Okay, this is who these people are now for this season, and this is a the ridiculous crap we'll be flinging at them for several weeks." Okay! Sure I'll take a "Charmed if it had aired on SciFi" level Faerie-world shot on old Land of the Lost back-lots! Sounds great! Okay, Tara's a lesbian now, sure, that's how those things happen, right? You just keep giving me Eric Northman rape fantasies and Jason Stackhouse dumb as a pile of steroids in pants so tight you know his religion and little girls biting into sacks of raw meat and you and me? We're good, True Blood.

The other show I want to give a couple moments to is the finale of The United States of Tara, which aired a thousand days ago but I just got around to this weekend. I am going to miss the Gregsons so freaking much, y'all. Has there ever been a better sibling relationship put onto TV than the one between Marshall and Kate? Marshmallow! How I will miss Marshall. 

And having Toni Collette beamed into my life every week felt like such a gift. Even if the show was wobbly here and there, even if I could take or leave mostly leave John Corbett, even if the introduction of that new alter there at the end felt a little bit scatter-shot, I still can't deny that the arrival one-by-one of the alters we've come to love and hate over these three seasons as they said goodbye to someone and were snuffed out really got me. When Alice showed up I screamed, "NO!!!" at the TV and then I was all, "Wait, what? Alice is awful!" And yet there it was. 

In summation, I can't be the only person that screamed, "Goodbye Porpoise Spit!" at the last shot of the show, can I?

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... Michael Jackson died and I was able to miss out on all that hullabaloo for the most part because I was too busy staring at mountaintops. That thought occurred to me halfway through this recent vacation, and I wondered if this could present itself as a recurring jinx of sorts - who'd buy it this time? 

Well believe me, when I saw that Aussie acting icon Bill Hunter went and died I wished I'd tossed such morbid thoughts to the wind. Glenn wrote a lovely piece on him over at Stale Popcorn that does the man better justice than I ever could; I've seen him in several parts but for me he was always and forever gonna be Bill Heslop, Muriel's obnoxious dope of a father in Muriel's Wedding. I guess you can stop progress. I hope where ever you are now, Bill, you're just happening to stumble upon Deidre Chambers, and man is it a coincidence.

In somewhat related news, after a full year since first hearing about it we're finally getting a little more word on that reunion between Muriel director PJ Hogan and star Toni Collette - Variety says they've gotten the funding for it. It's called Mental and it's about "a family and its crazy but charismatic nanny." Methinks that nutty nanny might be tailor-made for our Tara, no?

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It's amazing how quickly I freeze up - 24 hours without blogging access has left my gears a little bit stuck. My timing's all off. Gotta grease myself right! Anyway I have yesterday's Way Not To Die sitting here but I've decided, since it's already approaching 4pm on Friday, to just save it for next Thursday. Try not to explode from all the stored-up anticipation. For now though, here be some links that've come and gone in importance in the past day. Enjoy!

--- First Gear - First up and most importantly, there a picture of Ryan Gosling in Drive that I hadn't seen yet, via IMDb. If you click over you can see the rest of the picture, which includes Carey Mulligan, but I've edited it down to what matters most I think. God he's aged well.

--- Speaking of pictures, The Playlist has the first image I've seen anywhere from Rian Johnson's next movie Looper. The movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who worked so magnificently with Rian on Brick of course, but for some reason the first image they released is of Bruce Willis. Okay.

--- Nosy Business - After he makes the (first?) Hunger Games movie, Gary Ross will direct a new version of Cyrano de Bergerac. Apparently "the twist" will be its use of modern social media, like Facebook I guess. So Cyrano will be a cyber-stalker, and it'll end with somebody raped and dead. Hooray!

--- G-String Apprentice - Steven Soderbergh has tapped (heh, I'm sure) Alex Pettyfer to play the young stripper that gets tutored by Channing Tatum in Channing Tatum's true life story of male stripperdom. That's a sentence I never thought I'd write, that's for sure. Anyway I am happy that the "Alex Pettyfer" tag here at MNPP is not for naught; his prickishness and terrible choices were beginning to cast it in doubt.

--- Mark's Playbook - Mark Wahlberg is reteaming with David O. Russell, aka the only director not named PT Anderson that knows how to effectively get anything out of Mark Wahlberg, for an adaptation of a book called The Silver Lining Playbook, about a high school teacher who gets outta the loony-bin and tries to restart things with his ex-wife, while having no idea he was just in the loony-bin. The last time Mark Wahlberg tried to play a teacher, we got The Happening.

--- Quite A Fright - You can watch the trailer for Fright Night over at PopWrap. I haven't watched it yet, so you tell me. Well? I'm waiting.

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--- Poof There He Is - STYD has got a look at David Tennant in his role of the Vegas-ish magician in the Fright Night remake. Dare I say it's sort of... sexy? In a really weird way? Oh I am ashamed. I just get blinded by chest fur every time. Anyway Colin and Toni aside this movie is gonna be awful, I think.

--- Natural Selection - Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli's follow-up film, the alien-themed Area 51, hasn't even come out yet but he's lining up what he'll do next. It is "the tale of friends who discover they are not alone after they become stranded in a ghost town overrun by nature." Whatever the eff that means.

--- How Many Makers - I love this listicle at The Film Experience on the working habits of the many directors we love. Would that nearly every single name on the list work more. I don't care. I want it all!

--- Multi-Fassy-ed - io9 dissects a new TV bite-sized trailer for X-Men Muppet Babies that's got a bunch of new moments in it, including a suspicious one involving Michael Fassbenders. That "s" is meant to be there.

--- People Pets - I apparently spaced on posting this news earlier this week so here it is briefly, which doesn't mesh with how epic the news is but whatever, it's been two days and the world's moved on already! Darren Aronofsky and George Clooney are perhaps probably maybe teaming up for a sci-fi movie about a man who wakes up from his cryogenic slumber to find that the human race has been turned into pets for another species. Seems like people are actually tackling harder-edged old-fashioned sci-fi themes these days, doesn't it? I like it.

--- And speaking of Clooney, here's the first clip of him in Alexander Payne's much-waited-for new movie The Descendants. (via) I haven't watched it yet so y'all tell me what's up.

--- Sally Boy - James Franco has cast his Sal Mineo for that biopic he's apparently making - his name's Val Lauren, and he's mostly done TV work so far, although his IMDb bio says he's done a lot of "play originals" with Scott Caan. Mmhmm. I've heard that about Scott. Anyway that's him to the left there and I guess he could look the part, with some effort. If we're looking at later-years Sal, that is.

--- Queen of the Knight - Marion Cotillard says that her part in The Dark Knight Rises is very small and non-challenging for a lady who will be tremendously pregnant when it comes time for her to film.

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