director

15 Sep

Host Director’s Dashcam Takes Pandemic Horror to Scarier Place

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Creating an interesting protagonist in a horror movie is a difficult thing. Conventional wisdom suggests they should be blandly appealing, and thereby a surrogate for any viewer to insert themselves into the nightmare. More often than not though, they are treated as disposable. Interchangeable faces who eventually become pieces of meat, lambs to the slaughter. Whether by fluke or design, the “heroes” of entire popular movements in the genre—slasher flicks in the ‘80s, torture porn in the 2000s—eventually devolved into figures of ridicule: victims who the audience would root against, sometimes uncomfortably so. All of which is a long way…

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03 Sep

Link Tank: Wonder Woman Director Patty Jenkins Thinks Streaming Movies Look Fake

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Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins has some choice words to describe movies that go straight to streaming. “Patty Jenkins is still very unhappy about how the release of Wonder Woman 1984 played out. Her second Wonder Woman movie came out in theaters and HBO Max simultaneously as part of Warner Bros.’ pandemic release deal with the streaming platform, and it failed to get as much attention as the first flick. We previously reported that the director had referred to the hybrid rollout as ‘heartbreaking’ and ‘the best choice of a bunch of very bad choices’ at CinemaCon.” Read more at…

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16 Aug

Would Casino Royale’s Director Helm Another Bond Movie Following No Time To Die? Here’s The Latest

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16 Aug

Don’t Breathe 2’s Madelyn Grace Says Her Director Compared The Movie To Home Alone, And Strangely, That Makes Sense

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30 May

How Cruella’s Director Took Disney to a Darker Place

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One of the most infamous villains in Disney’s storied history is Cruella de Vil, the wickedly evil heiress and socialite who obsessively wanted to make a coat from the fur of puppies in 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Based on a novel by Dodie Smith, the animated classic introduced Cruella as a fully formed monster, intent on skinning all 101 of the title Dalmatians for her own personal luxury. Cruella became such an instant symbol of vanity, greed, and malevolence that she has appeared in the decades since in a number of animated and live-action sequels and spin-offs, with…

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19 May

Eternals: How Salma Hayek’s Ajak Energy Aided Director Chloé Zhao

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Marvel’s Eternals achieved a depth of diversity in its ensemble, as exemplified by the casting of Salma Hayek, who plays the role of Ajak, a key member of the film’s titular group of gods on Earth. Yet, while a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be a notable coup for the veteran 54-year-old Mexican actress, her presence ended up providing inspiration for the film’s director, Chloé Zhao, now a Best Picture/Director Oscar winner for Nomadland. Zhao dove into the deep end of the MCU pool with an adaptation of Jack Kirby’s idiosyncratic team title. After all, the film represents…

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17 May

Game of Thrones Director: Series Was Seen as ‘A Great Experiment’

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Last month marked the 10th anniversary of the Game of Thrones series premiere: a show that changed the face of television as profoundly as The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Sex and the City, or any other series that advanced the notion of what kind of entertainment television could deliver. While any series of its scope and stature is the offspring of literally hundreds of creators–from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to the indelible cast–one person who left his own mark on Game of Thrones is director Neil Marshall, who helmed two of the show’s most unforgettable, epic episodes:…

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12 May

The Forever Purge Trailer Breakdown with Director Everardo Gout

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For one night a year, all crime is legal, including murder. For the rest of the year, America is peaceful and crime free. That was James DeMonaco’s original premise for The Purge, and the franchise is now onto its fifth – and ostensibly final – installment, The Forever Purge.  This one asks: what if some folks felt like one night just wasn’t enough? Based on a script by DeMonaco and once again under the Blumhouse roof, The Forever Purge is directed by Everardo Gout best known for Days of Grace and his work on National Geographic sci-fi Mars. Den of Geek…

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04 May

Link Tank: The Mitchells vs. The Machines Director on the Film’s Spider-Verse Animation Tech

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The director of The Mitchells vs. The Machines talks animation technology, the Spider-Man cameo the film almost had, and more. “To make Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony had to invent new types of animation technology. The result was a stunning, Oscar-winning film that blurred the line between cartoon and comic book. But at the same time, Sony was making another animated film that took the same tech from Spider-Verse and used it to do something very… weird.” Read more at Inverse. Shrek is a masterpiece that couldn’t have existed as it does if the stars hadn’t aligned. Let’s take a…

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20 Apr

Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan’s Departure Casts Doubt on Overwatch 2

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Long-time Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan stunned many by announcing that he has decided to leave Blizzard after almost 20 years with the company. “I am leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years,” writes Kaplan in a brief farewell letter. “It was truly the honor of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes for such a passionate audience. I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone at Blizzard who supported our games, our game teams, and our players. But I want to say a special thanks to the wonderful game developers that shared in the journey…

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20 Apr

Sasquatch: Hulu Docuseries Director on Murder by Bigfoot

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Some legends are so powerful they can never die, but they might be able to kill. That is a pervading idea behind Sasquatch, Hulu’s three-part murder-mystery documentary that explores a strange story of the famous cryptid tearing three men limb from limb on a pot farm in Northern California’s Emerald Triangle. Fittingly premiering on April 20 a.k.a. the weed holiday “420” the series is told through the eyes of investigative journalist David Holthouse. A man who has built his career chasing monstrous humans, such as Neo-Nazis and sexual predators, Holthouse heard of these Bigfoot murders back in 1993 while laying…

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19 Apr

Days Gone Director Boldly Blames Cheap Gamers For Canceled Sequel

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In an interview posted on David Jaffe’s YouTube channel, Days Gone writer/co-director John Garvin (who has since left developer Bend Studios over what was implied to be personality differences) suggested that part of the reason why the game will reportedly not be getting a sequel is that not enough people bought it at full price. “I do have an opinion on something that your audience may find of interest, and it might piss some of them off,” said Garvin. “If you love a game, buy it at f-cking full price. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen gamers…

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15 Apr

The Meg 2 Director Hints More Than One Megalodon Will Be in Sequel

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The Meg 2 is a thing. Three years after the release of the original The Meg, which swallowed up an astonishing $530 million worldwide at the box office, director Ben Wheatley — fresh off his eerie new horror film In The Earth — is deep in pre-production on a sequel to the 2018 thriller that pitted puny humans against a couple of oversized prehistoric sharks. “I’m storyboarding at the moment on Meg 2,” Wheatley says when we catch up with him for the release of In The Earth. “It’s been going on for four months, five months. It’s my happy…

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09 Apr

Will the Rocky IV Director’s Cut Kill its Charm?

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Rocky IV remains a prototypical example of 1980s American franchise filmmaking, having conveyed a patriotic Cold-War-evocative ethos through the lens of superhuman pugilists pummeling each other over revenge and world peace, all to Vince DiCola’s absurd synthesizer-led score. Oh, and lest we forget, it had a robot!  While those attributes entitled the 1985 film to the smug dismissal and earnest appreciation of posterity, star/writer/director Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming director’s cut risks erasing its allure. Stallone, who announced his plan for a new Rocky IV cut last year, has completed his redux of the famous franchise‘s four-quel. However, unlike that other director’s…

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03 Apr

Godzilla vs. Kong Director Almost Made a Sequel to Peter Jackson’s King Kong

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Director Peter Jackson’s 2005 version of King Kong is something of an anomaly: although the film was a box office hit—grossing $562 million worldwide against an admittedly hefty budget of $207 million—and garnered a generally positive critical response, it doesn’t seem to have made a lasting impression on the pop culture landscape in the same way that Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy did. In fact, in some quarters it’s considered an underperformer. That, however, apparently didn’t stop Jackson from developing the idea for a sequel to his Kong movie, reportedly titled Skull Island. And while Jackson himself was…

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02 Apr

Godzilla vs. Kong Director Says There’s Enough Footage for ‘Five-Hour’ Cut

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At one hour and 53 minutes, Godzilla vs. Kong is the shortest of the four movies made so far in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse. To be sure, none of the other movies are behemoths either. The longest, 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, clocks in at a still reasonable two hours and 12 minutes. But with big tentpole films regularly running anywhere from two and a half to, uh, four hours these days, Godzilla vs. Kong is the briefest of an already relatively compact franchise. Apparently director Adam Wingard did shoot quite a bit more footage that was not used in…

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02 Apr

Godzilla vs. Kong Director and Writer Talk Future of The MonsterVerse

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This article contains spoilers for GODZILLA VS. KONG. Godzilla vs. Kong is the fourth movie in the so-called MonsterVerse–following Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)–and it’s the culmination of the mythology and story arc built up over the previous three pictures. The MonsterVerse series so far has led to this climactic battle between the two most powerful Titans on Earth, and with the film’s ending leaving their futures open-ended, the question is where does the MonsterVerse go next? We have our own ideas and theories about how it should go, but of course…

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31 Mar

Thundercats Movie Director Promises “The ‘80s Cartoon Brought to Life”

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Thundercats are on the mov(i)e! After years of false starts and announcements that didn’t go anywhere, it seems that the beloved ‘80s cartoon has a giant sized champion behind it. Adam Wingard, director of Godzilla vs. Kong, is working on a Thundercats film that will be a hybrid live action/CGI movie. Wingard will direct the Thundercats movie and co-write the script with Simon Barrett. This raises a lot of questions about the film, especially considering the recent flux in Thundercats media. The original Thundercats was about as perfect an example of ‘80s action adventure cartoon series can be and the early…

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16 Feb

How Director John Carpenter Found His Second Career

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John Carpenter launched his career as a filmmaker in 1974 with the micro-budget sci-fi parody, Dark Star, and completed it, for all intents and purposes, in 2010 with his last full-length directorial effort to date, The Ward. But in between, the New York-born Carpenter created some of the most legendary cult classics of all time, including Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Prince of Darkness (1987), and They Live (1988). In addition to directing and writing, Carpenter—the son of a music professor—has composed or co-composed the scores for…

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05 Feb

More Than Miyagi Director On Honoring Pat Morita

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“I didn’t really think there were that many people out there who were interested in Mr. Miyagi,” Kevin Derek says. “But (it turns out) millions and millions of people are.”  Derek is a martial artist, producer, and documentarian, whose latest documentary, More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story, seeks to humanize the man behind some of pop culture’s most mythical characters. The timing for such a doc couldn’t have been better, but it turns out that was simply good fortune.  “We started shooting this back in 2016, so it was a year before Cobra Kai was even in production,” says…

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