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Make-Up Makes the Monster
It takes more than great acting and directing to create a great fright for audiences—make-up is key to a character's believability. Blood, guts and gore are all necessary, whether you're talking about the undead or soon-to-be dead, and Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and Tom Savini are among the best in the business at making you believe it's all real. Among them these make-up men have been key in some of horror cinema's most frightening faces, from the zombies of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead to human-to-wolf transformations like in An American Werewolf in London and The Howling. Their reputations precede them and their awards are numerous, but just to review, MM takes a look at some of the best in the business.
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James Whale Creates Frankenstein’s Monster
James Whale, one of the original horror moviemakers is perhaps best known for directing Boris Karloff in the iconic 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and its 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. One of the few celebrities at the time to be openly gay, Whale led a far more tragic life than any of his horror movies. The critically acclaimed Gods and Monsters featured Sir Ian McKellen depicting the director in the final days of his life.
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Craig Singer Looks to the Internet for Perkins’ 14
Are you an aspiring, tech-savvy moviemaker posting your short films on YouTube, hoping to use the Internet to eventually develop your first feature-length movie? Your dreams may become a reality now that Perkins’ 14, the first feature film to be developed entirely over the Internet, will soon be released. Now in post-production in New York City, the film follows Ronald Perkins, a mentally unstable, emotionally damaged man who kidnaps 14 people in his hometown and brainwashes them, creating a deadly team of psychotic killers.
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Savannah, Georgia Has a History of Mystery
Savannah, Georgia, was named “America’s Most Haunted City” by The American Institute of Parapsychology in 2002. Established in 1733, it is a historical city long rumored to be teeming with paranormal activity, and is one truly horror-ific location.
Savannah has many tours dedicated to its supernatural history, where visitors can witness the spooky sites of legend first-hand. Deceased war heroes are rumored to walk among the living at night at The Colonial Park Cemetery (established 1750). Other areas associated with spine-tingling tales are Wright Square, haunted by the ghost of executed indentured servant Alice Riley, and Johnson Square, the supposed playground of six-year-old specter “Little Gracie.”
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Wayne Wang Turns to YouTube for The Princess of Nebraska
Acclaimed moviemaker Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club, Smoke) is utilizing an innovative new distribution strategy for his latest film, The Princess of Nebraska. The film will make its world premiere on YouTube on Friday, October 17th as part of the recently launched YouTube Screening Room, a channel dedicated to premium film content.
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Colin Cunningham Heats Up iTunes with Centigrade
Centigrade, a short movie made by actor Colin Cunningham and actor-producer Madison Graie, is the first-ever Canadian live-action short available internationally on iTunes. The movie, about a man trapped in a trailer that has been hijacked by a mysterious pickup truck, now has widespread exposure, qualification for the Academy Awards and a chance to make actual revenue. The success of this short, which was shot entirely on a handheld camera with an extremely low budget, is an inspiration to independent moviemakers everywhere and a lesson in 21st century distribution.
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Dario Argento: The So-Called Italian Hitchcock
The so-called “Italian Hitchcock” makes horror movies unlike any other. His movies are renowned for their inventive, sinuous camerawork, elaborate, intense set pieces that build to acts of graphic violence and strange, unreal atmospheres in which everything seems dream-like and slightly illogical. With their odd acting, blaring soundtracks and shocking violence, his movies take place in a surreal otherworld, one in which Argento is the demonic puppet master, pulling the strings of eager-to-be scared horror fans all over the world.
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These Women Can Scare You Silly
Whether they’re running for their lives, bravely defending themselves or scaring us senseless, these women have all played indispensable roles in the horror genre. Join MovieMaker as we recap the five scream queens who helped put a face to the genre and the five performances that still give us nightmares.
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Art Linson Asks: What Just Happened?
Super-producer Linson shares his golden rules for surviving Hollywood
Art Linson’s producing credits include The Untouchables, Heat, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Scrooged, Fight Club and Into the Wild. He has written two books, A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood and What Just Happened?: Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line. Most recently, he wrote the screenplay for and produced What Just Happened?, starring Robert De Niro and directed by Barry Levinson. Here, Linson shares his golden rules for surviving Hollywood.
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Eli Roth Gives Audiences Cabin Fever
After years of working in film and theater production, Eli Roth won the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films' Filmmaker’s Showcase Award for his first movie, Cabin Fever and went on to direct and produce Hostel, one of the most famously brutal, violent horror movies to come out of Hollywood in recent decades. This young director, who has been called “the future of horror” by friend and frequent collaborator Quentin Tarantino, still has a long career ahead of him to thrill and chill audiences and shake up the horror genre.
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Sayed Badreya Is a Man of the People
Although his latest role sees the Egyptian actor playing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, his career has always been about representing his people
There’s so much more to Sayed Badreya than what appears on the surface. Born in Port Said, Egypt, the actor took a rather circuitous route to his current position in Hollywood as the go-to man for terrorist and doctor roles. It was while he was serving the country’s required military service that the future actor heard he was accepted to college in the United States. “So the deal was, ‘Okay, let me go to America for five years to study,’ because this was my dream.” He spent his first few years at the University of Massachusetts in Boston before studying film production at New York University. “The problem is, everyone in the class was using me as an actor. So I became really good at it,” Badreya says.
Five years turned into a few decades and by 2008 Badreya had carved himself a niche in the American movie landscape as Hezbollah Head Gunman (The Insider), Terrorist (in his own T for Terrorist) and Assisting Surgeon (Stuck on You). Now, Badreya is preparing for reaction to his role as Saddam Hussein in Oliver Stone’s anticipated drama W.
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Murderous Melodies: A Look At the Work of Bernard Hermann, Jerry Goldsmith and Goblin
As any scared stiff moviegoer can tell you, a haunting music score is one of the horror genre’s most valuable assets. Try watching Halloween or Psycho with the sound turned off and you've set yourself up for a significantly less terrifying experience. Over the years, several composers have emerged with a gift for continually delivering memorably creepy horror film scores; not the kind of music you’d want to hear alone in the dark, but perfect for scaring trick-or-treaters on a windy Halloween night. Among them, MM takes a look at Bernard Herrmann, the man behind Psycho, Vertigo and more; Jerry Goldsmith, who scared audiences with The Omen; and Goblin, whose work with Dario Argento on Suspiria and Deep Red has made the band a horror movie legend.
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Freddie Francis Tells Tales from the Crypt
While his work, much of it starring genre legends Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, might seem restrained compared to today’s horror movies, Freddie Francis creates an undeniably creepy atmosphere vastly more effective than filling the screen with gallons of gore in movies such as Paranoiac, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Tales from the Crypt and The Creeping Flesh.
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George Romero Brings the Dead to Life
The godfather of the modern zombie movie, George A. Romero has proven time and again that the undead are vehicles for scares and social commentary.
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Which Texas Massacre Had the Biggest Impact?
Released in October 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was unlike anything the horror genre had produced before—it was a raw, gritty, totally immersive experience; a nightmare from which viewers, like the helpless victims in the movie, could not escape. In 2003, a remake of the infamous movie was released, directed by Marcus Nispel, produced by action-auteur Michael Bay and shot by cinematographer Daniel Pearl (who was also a DP on the original movie). But while the original movie has remained creepy and harrowing due to its nightmarish atmosphere and the psychological torment experienced by the characters, the remake replaces all the suspense and implied violence of the former with copious amounts of gore.
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Academy of Art Is Off the Beaten Path
Moviemaking hotspots like New York and Los Angeles are generally the first place a potential film school student turns when looking to learn more about the moviemaking process. The cities are host to a plethora of film schools, but you can find a few off the beaten path, too—like Academy of Art University. Located in San Francisco, the university has both BFA and MFA programs and is made up of many schools that target different areas of the arts and offers various courses that cover acting, cinematography, editing and screenwriting, to name a few.
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Movie Magic Streamlines the Writing Process
Write Brothers comes up with an easy way to "cheat" your script
Screenwriters know the panic all too well: Their 125-page masterpiece is just five pages over the typical screenplay length for a feature film, leaving their work somewhere between the realm of never-to-be-seen or, at best, a producer’s trash can. So with margin change after margin change, fonts reduced, line heights diminished until words are nearly sitting atop each other, page numbers duplicated and the screenplay’s format looking strangely stretched on the special lightweight paper purchased to fool those who pick the script up, the script has been successfully “cheated,” right?
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Joe Dante Makes Monsters of Comedy
With movies like Piranha and Gremlins, Joe Dante has challenged conventions and proven that horror movies don't just have to scare—they can be funny, too.
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Amityville Is More Than Horror
Amityville, NY, the famed location of the Amityville murders and supposed haunting, is more than a perfectly horror-ific location—especially since neither of The Amityville Horror movies were actually filmed here. This small Long Island town first became famous after Ronald “Butch” DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family on November 13, 1974 but with the bay nearby, picturesque Victorian homes and a refundable 35 percent tax credit from New York State, Amityville is not only a quaint town shrouded in mystery, but a great location for your next production.
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Kodak Filmschool Winners Shoot For the Sky
Four students, each from a major region of the world, have been named first-place winners in the 2008 Kodak Filmschool competition. Now in its ninth year, the annual contest recognizes outstanding achievements in cinematography by student moviemakers. This year’s winners include Devendra Golatkar from the Film and Television Institute of India, Mateo Soler from the Universidad ORT Uruguay, Aonan Yang from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Canada and Amparo de Miguel Viguer of ECAM in Spain. The winners will receive a trip to the 2009 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France, where their films will be presented in the Kodak Short Film Showcase.
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William Fraker Dances with the Devil
Cinematographer William Fraker says there are still lessons to be learned from Rosemary's Baby
Cinematographer William Fraker and director Roman Polanski created a monster when they made Rosemary's Baby 40 years ago. Today, the six-time Oscar nominee says there are still lessons to be learned from the movie.
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Wes Craven Makes Nightmares Come True
It's been 24 years since Wes Craven first brought Freddy Krueger to life in A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the most popular and influential horror movies of all time. But this horror mastermind is no one-trick pony, directing such movies as Music of the Heart and Paris, je t'aime.
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Murders and Masks and Zombies! Oh My!
Somewhere after F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and the 1950s’ monster mash-up movies featuring mummies and werewolves, the horror genre took a slight detour, trading monster-centric and supernatural premises for more psychological, socially apt and, ultimately, more human antagonists. In the process, two new sub-genres were formed within horror cinema: The slasher flick and the zombie movie. Here, MM counts down the top five landmark movies from each.
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Danny Boyle Honored by Austin Film Festival
British director and producer Danny Boyle has been announced as the 2008 recipient of the Austin Film Festival’s “Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award.” The honor is awarded to industry professionals who have demonstrated an unyielding commitment and creativity to moviemaking. AFF co-founder and director Barbara Morgan said of Boyle, “His work is regarded as some of the most cutting -edge and thought-provoking filmmaking today.”
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FirstGlance Film Festival Conquers New Frontiers
What began 12 years ago in the basement of a little movie theater in Center City Philadelphia with a group of indie moviemakers scrounging up every big screen TV and movie projector they could find has become one of the most revolutionary film festivals in the country. With more than 400 projects shown to date, an audience of more than 10,000 and two separate bi-coastal events (one in Philadelphia and the other in California) being held annually since then, the FirstGlance Film Festival has come a long way from its humble basement beginnings.
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Lorene Scafaria Makes A Date With Nick & Norah
There have been countless comparisons made between Lorene Scafaria, the talented screenwriter behind Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and Juno writer Diablo Cody since both of them penned indie-minded comedies that attracted understated charmer Michael Cera to star. But the similarities between the two promising writers end there. Unlike Cody, Scafaria has been in the business for quite some time, writing screenplays (Nick and Norah is merely her first to be produced) and appearing in independent films.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist debuted third at the weekend U.S. box office, but before the movie made a splash with audiences, MovieMaker spoke with Lorene Scafaria about the movie, her inspiration and projects on the horizon.
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Only Boris Karloff Can Animate Frankenstein
Like Lon Chaney's Quasimodo or Bela Lugosi's Dracula, Boris Karloff became the face of one of the horror genre's biggest monsters with his portrayal of Dr. Frankenstein's Monster in the 1931 original movie and its sequels.
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Stefan Forbes Explores the Boogie Man of American Politics
New documentary traces the impact of Republican strategist Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater
Just in time for election day, director Stefan Forbes releases his documentary on the father of the politics-as-war ideology: Harvey "Lee" Atwater. A political consultant and strategist for the Republican Party during the elections of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Atwater's abrasive negative campaigning not only made him a star in the eyes of his party and George W. Bush’s “number one soul mate” but also set the playing ground for the dirty politics we know today. With the debates underway and mudslinging ads coming from both sides, one thing is certain: Atwater's legacy is still very much alive. Forbes gave MM the scoop on Boogie Man after its screenings at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Here, he discusses everything from making a documentary on such a controversial figure to the importance of the Atwater story on the current political climate and upcoming election.
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Mark Ruffalo's Blind Faith
It took a role opposite Laura Linney in 2000's You Can Count on Me to bring Mark Ruffalo into the spotlight. While his name became a staple of independent flicks like XX/XY, My Life Without Me and We Don't Live Here Anymore, the actor has been able to straddle the line between indie and mainstream success, moving between genres with ease and working with some of the greatest directors of the time. With a string of upcoming lead roles in the year ahead, it's clear: The name Mark Ruffalo is synonymous with versatility.
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Clive Barker Knows How to Raise Hell
While he’s only directed a handful of movies, many of Clive Barker's frightful stories have made it to the big screen, like Candyman and The Midnight Meat Train (2008), and he's produced movies like Gods and Monsters (1998). With Tortured Souls: Animae Damnatae, his first directing gig in 14 years, and a remake of Hellraiser on the way, now is a good time to catch up with the moviemaking triple-threat.
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Marc Rosenbush’s Internet Marketing for Filmmakers
How marketing your film online could be the best distribution deal you’ll ever find
Only after years spent employed at various other ventures—including stints as a theater director in Chicago and a Web entrepreneur—did Marc Rosenbush finally move to California to pursue his dream of making movies. By 2006 his first feature, Zen Noir, was complete and ready for release. But, despite numerous festival credits and a healthy following, the movie didn’t receive any distribution offers. So Rosenbush turned to his background in Internet marketing and began self-distributing the film online. The moviemaker describes himself as coming from a “starving artist’s mentality,” where he was “embarrassed to be too aggressive a marketer.” But Rosenbush realized that “if I spent two years making a film that I care about and I honestly believe will be of value to people, then I’m doing a disservice to myself and the audience by not using any of my power to get it into their hands.” Sound familiar?
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When Psychos Compete Does the Audience Win?
Spoiler Alert! How does the original Psycho compare with Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake? Read on only if you know how it ends.
When Alfred Hitchcock released Psycho in June 1960, he had little idea how influential his low-budget “B-movie" would become. His experiment in terror would lead the way for the slasher movie craze and redefine the horror genre in the process. Which makes one wonder what Gus Van Sant was thinking when, in 1998, he directed a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock’s classic. Here, MM examines what went right and what went wrong with Psycho.
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Simon Pegg Knows How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
The co-creator of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz—and star of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek—shares 10 lessons he's learned as a moviemaker.
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Spike Lee’s Cinematic Eye
With Miracle at St. Anna, writer-director makes his mark on war dramas
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Finding Inspiration in Iraq
Movies find a home, a character and inspiration in this war-torn country
In recent years, Iraq has been one of the film industry’s most sought-after backdrops. Since the United States’ 2003 invasion into the country, movies set in or around this war-torn battleground range from big-budget Hollywood features like Jarhead to revealing documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 to small local productions like Damn Gum, a movie made by Baghdad native Ammar Saad, referencing the current role of Iraqi journalists.
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Video Views Pick: Wanted
The editors of VIDEO VIEWS magazine pick Wanted, based on the Mark Millar graphic novel, as the best new DVD this week. Featuring eight bonus featurettes and a cast that includes James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, home video watchers can't go wrong.
Posted 12.3.08 | Video Views Pick | 1 comment
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