The Hero Complex Film Festival always manages to put together a great line-up with fantastic speakers, and 2013 is going to be no different. The L.A. Times has sent out a press release announcing that this year’s Hero Complex Film Festival will celebrate horror and sci-fi by screening films from and talking to John Carpenter, Frank Darabont, Chris Carter, Roland Emmerich, and Guillermo del Toro. There will be showings of Halloween, They Live, The Mist, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, and Independence Day. Also, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the X-Files, the film festival will show three of the series’ best episodes uncut: “Pilot”, “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”, and “Jose Chung’s from Outer Space”.
Hit the jump for the full press release. The 2013 Hero Complex Film Festival runs from May 10 – 12th.
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Shout Factory has become the Criterion Collection for horror and B movies, or – if nothing else – the company that Anchor Bay tried to be on DVD. Recently they’ve released some John Carpenter films that he either produced or directed. They are the magnificent They Live, with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Meg Foster and Keith David, and the first two Halloween sequels, Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Our reviews of all these Blu-rays follow after the jump.
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Last night, the Mondo Gallery in Austin, Texas threw open the doors on their final gallery show for 2012, and—as expected—it was about as fitting an end to the Mondo Gallery’s first year in operation as anyone could have imagined. Tina’s Mom’s Boyfriend—a show composed entirely of creations from the mighty Australian-based team known as We Buy Your Kids—was a celebration of the bizarre, a colorful explosion of “WTF?!” that (from where Limited Paper’s standing) courageously refused to offer up anything even remotely obvious, safe, or easily-digested.
Infinitely stranger than this summer’s Adventure Time showcase and twice as inexplicably disturbing as Jay Shaw’s Don’t Go Out Tonight, Tina’s Mom’s Boyfriend is certain to be remembered for being the Mondo Gallery’s most divisive show (in 2012, anyway). Wanna know what we thought, hear a few interesting tidbits about a few of the featured prints, and see a video walking tour of the entire show? Meet me after the jump, folks.
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This week on Blu-ray, we’re finally able to delve into the deleted scenes from The Amazing Spider-Man, a few Christmas titles get Blu-ray releases, and the entirety of HBO’s Entourage hits the format. Briefly:
Hit the jump for all the details.
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Yesterday we gave you a sneak peek at the Mondo poster Shepard Fairey was doing for the Alamo Drafthouse’s screening of John Carpenter’s They Live. Tonight, we have the full image of the poster and, unsurprisingly, it is a beaut. It’s Obey-squared, and it’s going to be a madhouse trying to get one online tomorrow. If you attended tonight’s screening, you had a chance to pick one up. Before getting it framed and hanging it on your wall, make sure you take note of all the jealous stares, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then, once you’re in the safety of your own home, laugh triumphantly.
The poster measures 18 x 24, is limited to an edition of 500, and costs $50. Hit the jump to check it out. Be sure you’re following @MondoNews for the announcement and then whip over to Mondotees.com and then pray you’ll get one. Protip: have your credit card info ready. If you’re slowly entering in your digits, someone else will be copy-pasting their info into the form and have a better shot of grabbing the poster.
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The Ward, horror master John Carpenter’s first feature film in about 10 years, is a psychological thriller about a young woman locked in a mental institution in the 1960s. Unsure of who she is and what has happened to her, Kristen (Amber Heard) finds herself held against her will in a remote ward of a psychiatric hospital that is inhabited by four other equally disturbed young women. As Kristen quickly realizes that things are not what they seem, she learns that the hospital has dark secrets that will lead to a truth more horrifying than she ever could have imagined.
At the film’s press day, filmmaker John Carpenter did this exclusive interview with Collider, in which he talked about why he was burned out on the movie business, the appeal of working with a female ensemble, how much he loves collaborating with actors, the challenge of shooting such a self-contained story, being open to directing again, and how he feels about remakes of his previous films like They Live and Escape From New York. Check out what he had to say after the jump.
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I’m pretty sure the Alamo Drafthouse’s mission statement is to make everyone who doesn’t live near one of their theaters to just be insanely jealous all the time. The latest evidence for my suspicion comes from their upcoming screening of John Carpenter’s They Live. The screening takes place tomorrow night at the Alamo Drafthouse and Carpenter recorded a video introduction for the audience.
But that’s not enough. Nooo. There will be a Mondo poster for the film designed by renowned artist Shepard Fairey. Posters will be on sale at the screening and a limited amount will be available online this Friday. You and I will be competing with everyone else on the Internet to get one. Hit the jump to check out Carpenter’s video introduction to They Live, a sneak peek at Fairey’s Mondo poster, and to read a statement from Fairey about how They Live inspired his work. Carpenter’s new film The Ward is currently on VOD and will hit theaters July 8th.
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Matt Reeves (Let Me In) will write and direct a sci-fi film based on Ray Nelson’s short story 8 O’Clock in the Morning for Universal. The story is about a man who wakes up and realizes that aliens are controlling our daily lives. If that sounds a lot like the basis for John Carpenter’s They Live, that’s because it was, but Deadline reports that Reeves’ film will not be a remake of the 1988 cult classic. Reeves explains that while Carpenter’s film was more satiric, he’s approaching the material from the emotional side, “the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.” I’m far more enthusiastic about this kind of approach rather than Universal taking the easy route and simply remaking They Live.
Hit the jump for more details on the project and where this leaves the potential sequel to Reeves’ Cloverfield.
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It’s a scientific fact that the best way to see evil aliens who walk among us is through use of magic sunglasses. John Carpenter’s 1988 classic They Live took this fact and ran with it. But now producer Eric Newman says they might be going in a different direction with the remake. Speaking at the New York Comic-Con [via io9], Newman said:
Are you going to keep the whole sunglasses aspect to it?
We’re discussing that. I’d like to say that really, a vagrant wandering around the streets could get you to try on his sunglasses, if he would leave you alone afterwards. He may even pay you $100, “Hey put these on.” So we’re kind of exploring different versions of what is that thing that allows you to see. But I’m not going to tell you what it is.
So it might be something different than sunglasses?
It might be something different than sunglasses.
I don’t know how you see evil aliens without special sunglasses. I get the sinking feeling they’ll use cell phone cameras or something else that is in no way believable. However, Newman says the remake isn’t going forward until at least next summer and that writer D.B. Weiss is currently busy on HBO’s upcoming mini-series, Game of Thrones. In the mean-time, keep plenty of bubble-gum on hand.
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