It’s Street Scene weekend here in San Diego, which means this Woman is out dancing in the streets to an eclectic mix of music with an even more diverse crowd of people, so this Weekly Wrap-up for September 13-19, 2008, is going to be a tad abbreviated. But, after looking over the stories of what transpired during that period, there doesn’t seem to be a very large quantity of stuff to rehash anyway.
I had fun with Jake West’s Evil Aliens, so when a trailer for his recent film Doghouse showed up, I had to check it out. You should, too — if, that is, you can find the humor in a male bonding scenario gone bad when a group of flesh-eating cannibal women show up. West calls it his best film yet; we’ll see if he’s right come spring of next year.
At about the same time as we put up a review for Splinter, we also provided a link to the creature feature’s website. You might want to bookmark it since Splinter‘s director, Toby Wilkins, has a blog that ought to be pretty interesting to keep tabs on as his latest project, Grudge 3, wraps up post and moves toward its release date in 2009.
Two genyooine “movie star” names popped up in updates of upcoming horror projects A Jealous Ghost and The New Daughter. Kirsten Dunst is producing and will star in Ghost, a story with connections to Henry James’ classic tale Turn of the Screw. And Kevin Costner portrays a father doing battle with monsters in Daughter, which screenwriter John Travis hopes will achieve its intended “hard R” rating. We hope so, too, John. We hope so, too.
Someone who went from movie star to best-selling author is the eternally adored Carrie Fisher. Why she’d attach herself to a remake of Sorority Row is beyond me, but hey … if she can have some fun playing house mother to a bunch of whiney 2nd generation Hollywood brats who wind up getting sliced and diced, then by all means, why not go for it?!
I remain high on the prospects of the new Dorian Gray, and judging from a batch of photos from the shoot, the film’s beautifully authentic Victorian garb certainly does suit its actors. We’ll see if their characters fit them as well as more updates and behind-the-scenes info trickle down to us over the coming months.
There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for Pulse 2: Afterlife, which we got an exclusive clip for a couple of days ago. Most discount the need for a sequel to a remake that received, at best, a lukewarm reception, but I like the sounds of its premise in which “ghosts are doomed to a repetitive loop of something they did while they were still despairing humans.” And I mostly enjoyed writer/director Joel Soisson’s two Prophecy sequels, so I can’t write it off completely just yet.
But I’m one of the few optimistic DC’ers. Most of the rest of us believe horror is dead, or at least dying, as evidenced by the newest Dinner for Fiends. The usual suspects do what they do best in this installment and impart numerous choice bits of wisdom as to how best to save our beloved genre. Do they know what they’re talking about? Do they ever? Of course they do! Prepare to nod and laugh a lot while you listen in.
I wasn’t sure any of the events of the past seven days warranted being dubbed The Woman’s Story of the Week until I went all the way back to something Butane posted on the 14th: FearNet Gets Midnight Meat Train. Wow. A studio (Lionsgate) that we thought might be turning its back on horror actually does something to support both a horror film that it appeared to have all but abandoned and a horror channel that all three of its owners, of which Lionsgate is one along with Sony and Comcast, seem to regard as a bastard stepchild. I don’t have Comcast so can’t watch the film’s debut on October 1st, which is a bummer since Clive Barker is hosting it, but everyone reading this has an Internet connection and can watch MMT when it appears on the On Demand channel’s website October 30th. The more hits they get, the more seriously people will take horror fans. We asked for something original and unwatered down, which Midnight Meat Train definitely is. It’s time to put our browsers where our mouths are.
