I had nothing to do with this, but I want to draw your attention over to this Youtube video made by my far too talented roommate Will Hyler, who put this together in the last couple weeks, a music video filled with amazing creativity and astonishing technical skill. I was floored when I saw this. Check it out!
Most people, especially filmmakers and movie buffs, often have stories about how they first came to love movies. I remember certain things, like the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, at 3 years old (Cinderella), and the first real horror movie I saw, at age 10 (Halloween, bright and early on a Saturday morning). The films in high school that inspired me to become a filmmaker included American Beauty and Mulholland Drive. But the earliest love I can remember of movies started at age 7, when my dad introduced me to two guys who have made me laugh probably more than any other actors.
My joy for the Laurel and Hardy films first grew out of the joy in hearing my father’s never-ending laughter. My dad has my favorite laugh of anyone I know, and it’s absolutely infectious. To this day I’ve never heard him laugh so hard at anything but the Laurel and Hardy shorts. As a kid, I wanted to watch the movies all the time because, I suppose, I loved to see my dad so happy. It’s just a natural reaction to love seeing one’s dad completely losing his composure in a fit of laughter. As I got older, still watching the films with my dad, I started to respect them more and more. Now, at 22, I finally understand just how special these two guys are and how we’ll never see anyone like them again.
Laurel and Hardy were teamed in the late 1920’s (more…)
In the last nine months, I’ve made two short films–Creature Story and the still-unfinished Kelly–both of which I’m very proud of. But I’ve had an itch lately to get back to making some short (2-3 minute) guerrila films, shot by myself on my precious (and dust collecting) Canon XL2 camera. Lo and behold, I heard about a monthly contest for filmmakers at FILMAKA.COM, which features cash prizes. All they give you is a topic, and you have complete creative freedom.
September’s topic is “The Clinic.” Below is a picture from my first of two films for this month’s contest.
Wow, this looks fantastic! Early buzz has been, at best, mixed, but I’m feeling pretty stoked about Mr. Richard Kelly’s follow-up to Donnie Darko. It looks to be one of the most original movies of the year, it has The Rock, Jon Lovitz, Mandy Moore, and Justin Timberlake all the in same movie, Sarah Michelle Gellar as a frickin PORN STAR, and my all-time favorite artist Moby did the film’s soundtrack!!
November 9 can’t get here any faster!! I can’t wait!
Click on Sarah below to be taken to the first trailer released for the film.
Most movies people will see only once. Good or bad, they’re not enough to get excited about to warrant further viewings. Then there are great movies that people go out of their way to see a second time, maybe a third time. Maybe they’ll buy the DVD. But then there are those movies that seem like miracles to film lovers… movies that never get old. Some get better with each viewing, some remain at about the same enjoyment level. The original Planet of the Apes, written by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, and directed by Pierre Boulle, is just such a movie.
Planet of the Apes is magical, and not in a genre kind of way. It’s magical because it’s a sci-fi movie, released in the late 60’s, with a totally absurd premise, starring campy Charlton Heston, that works beautifully, on every level, from beginning to end. This movie should’ve come and gone. It should’ve been a fleeting entertainment that everyone forgot about by the time the next decade rolled around. But it hasn’t been forgotten, not in the least. And it lives on today as a staple of classic science fiction.
Before the movie was even made, the filmmakers made some important choices (more…)
Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) has never feared the cool, dark shadows of New York City. She’s got everything going for her–a hot radio show and a hot, well, fiancee (Naveen Andrews). We’re introduced to her when she’s at work. She talks with her boss (Mary Steenburgen), goes to a party, meets up with her fiancee, and goes for a walk with him and their dog. It’s just another typical day for the both of them. Behold, the classic set-up for a thriller. Erica and her fiancee are attacked by a group of hoodlums, who tie up their dog, and proceed to beat both of them on the ground. Left for dead, Erica makes it, only to find out the love of her life is long gone.
The typical series of events to follow would be Erica’s quest to locate the four men who killed her fiancee, as we as an audience wait in anticipation to see her come face to face with the men. But The Brave One is more intelligent than the average revenge thriller. And that’s not to say it’s any better necessarily than classic revenge flicks like Death Wish, Kill Bill, or the underrated Sally Field-starrer Eye for an Eye. It tries to be more, allowing Erica to fully unravel and become a different person. The film is more concerned with her transformation than the thugs who killed her fiancee. If one walks into this movie expecting just a basic revenge movie, he’s going to be disappointed. If one walks in with an open mind, putting the trailers and TV spots out of the mind, he should be pleasantly surprised. This is an imperfect film with some flaws, but there’s a lot to like here.
Jodie Foster elevates this material along the lines of (more…)
There are so many joys in this movie I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, it must be said that I don’t really care for westerns. I don’t know what it is about them, but if I have a choice between a western and, well, anything else, I’ll choose the other movie. Therefore I was surprised to enjoy this movie as much as I did. This is a supremely entertaining movie that features not just great performances from its two leads but also from many of its supporting actors. It also marks the most accomplished job yet from director James Mangold (Girl Interrupted, Walk the Line).
A remake of a 1957 film (and a pretty good example of a remake, at that), 3:10 to Yuma stars Christian Bale, who can seemingly do no wrong, as Dan Evans, a former soldier struggling to maintain a life for his wife and two sons. The situation is pretty grim, as his land is being considered by others for railroad property. Soon enough, outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) and his men come riding into town. Ben splits up from his group and spends the night with a lady, only to wake up in the morning to find the local sheriff waiting for him. He is to be put on the 3:10 train to Yuma, where he will be tried and put in prison. The railroad offers a reward to anyone who helps transport him, enough for Dan to take part in the journey whisking Ben to the train station. The trip to the station turns out to be a lot more trying for all involved, and the survival of all, including Dan’s older son, is put into jeopardy.
The beauty of the film is (more…)
“Can a fully grown woman ever come to love a midget?” asks the tagline of Tod Browning’s 1932 bizarro curio movie called Freaks. Just try to guess the answer. While Browning’s previous film Dracula lived in a world of gothic atmosphere, Freaks has a more fly-on-the-wall characteristic set firmly in reality. The movie unfolds like a soap opera, and very little would seem out of the ordinary if the actors were all, well, normal. But in this soap opera, there is indeed a love triangle of two sweet and naive little people and a regular-sized money-hungry witch of a woman. And those are just the main characters, three of many. The most astonishing question to ask is how this movie ever got made at all.
The film takes place at the background of a sideshow circus, where various kinds of people go on about their lives. The A story concerns trapeze artist Cleopatra, who has an admirer by the name of Hans, a German midget. She agrees to marry him, but it’s soon thought by friends of Hans, especially the jealous Frienda, that Cleopatra is only after his money. She’s clearly flirting with another more normal individual and making fun of side-show performers, like the Bird Lady, the Bearded Lady, the Human Skeleton, and the Half Woman, Half Man (oh my!). The freaks all come together in the end to take matters in their own hands.
The film doesn’t work so well (more…)
When I walked into Rob Zombie’s new “re-imagining” of Halloween, I didn’t have the highest of expectations. First of all, the original Halloween holds a special place in my heart—it’s my favorite horror movie, and it’s a film that more so than maybe any other has inspired me creatively. It is literally the perfect horror film, a mesmerizing, gore-free exercise in suspense. Second of all, horror remakes almost never work. They either go in the direction of sticking too close to the original, like Gus Van Sant’s pointless Psycho re-make or that horrendous re-make of The Omen. Or they go in the direction of trying something completely different, like Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead re-make, which was better but still lacking the zest of George Romero’s original. Third of all, the studio was releasing it on Labor Day weekend, a time when studios typically dump their bad apples. The hopes were not high.
But there was a bright light at the end of the tunnel. The most positive thing going for this movie was that it was written and directed by Rob Zombie. While not yet a great director by any means, his House of 1000 Corpses was a lot of fun, and his follow-up The Devil’s Rejects was a near-brilliant horror movie that is one of the better genre films I’ve seen in the last five years. The man knows how to make an entertaining and grisly movie. He has seemed to be fairly humble in his interviews, paying a lot of respect to the original Halloween, and making it seem like he was going to make the film his own, while at the same time not change too much of the material. Also, I was just excited to be seeing a Halloween movie again. The last one, Halloween: Resurrection, wasn’t one of the finest chapters of the franchise, so I was excited to see, at the very least, a new take on the Halloween saga. The first film will always stand alone as a genre masterpiece; everything that comes after could never diminish that.
Well, thank God that’s true, because (more…)
Thanks for visiting my site! Here you will find all the newest updates about my films, movie reviews, and more!
Take a look at a collection of links to all my films, ranging from 2001 to the present, on the Films page, and find links to all my current reviews on the Reviews page. There you will find reviews to contemporary films as well as the classics.
Soon there will be more material added to the Films section, like the addition of behind-the-scenes stories, trailers, outtakes, and even my feature Eve & Adam downloadable in its entirety. Also, more information about my two newest projects, Creature Story and Kelly, will be added once it becomes available.
Enjoy!