Remakes are always a tricky proposition. Some of the greats both in the horror genre and elsewhere are actually remakes, whether it’s a loose one or not. Be it The Magnificent Seven coming from Seven Samurai or The Thing being birthed into imitation dog from the Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks original. I talk about The Thing A Lot but obviously it’s for a reason. You could also throw The Fly in that same category too while we are here. Those are some of the examples of the good but unfortunately, things can go downhill and fast. You have harmless ones like the Friday the 13th remake or Texas Chainsaw, the annoyingly unnecessary like Halloween and Amityville Horror, or the egregiously awful like The Fog and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Like them or loathe them, or in our case both, they are here to stay, and each...
- 4/23/2024
- by Andrew Hatfield
- JoBlo.com
The last time our writer interviewed him, the drugged up director dozed off then asked for coke. Now sober, he reflects on #MeToo, Italian fascism and his fight for the final cut
The last time I met Abel Ferrara, he dozed off in the middle of our interview then woke up and asked me to score him some coke. It was 1996, and he was in the UK promoting his gangster drama The Funeral – which the actor Vincent Gallo alleged Ferrara had been too blitzed on crack to direct properly – and his vampire horror The Addiction. He was on a roll, his reputation fortified by King of New York, starring Christopher Walken as a flamboyant crime boss, and the gruelling Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel as a bent junkie cop. Ferrara was the scuzzball Scorsese: no matter how celebrated he became, he never shed the patina of grime from his...
The last time I met Abel Ferrara, he dozed off in the middle of our interview then woke up and asked me to score him some coke. It was 1996, and he was in the UK promoting his gangster drama The Funeral – which the actor Vincent Gallo alleged Ferrara had been too blitzed on crack to direct properly – and his vampire horror The Addiction. He was on a roll, his reputation fortified by King of New York, starring Christopher Walken as a flamboyant crime boss, and the gruelling Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel as a bent junkie cop. Ferrara was the scuzzball Scorsese: no matter how celebrated he became, he never shed the patina of grime from his...
- 1/22/2024
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
Ken Kelsch, the hard-charging cinematographer and Vietnam War veteran who shot the down-and-dirty classic Bad Lieutenant and 11 other features for iconoclastic director Abel Ferrara, has died. He was 76.
Kelsch died Monday at Hackettstown Medical Center in New Jersey after a battle with Covid and pneumonia, his son, Chris Kelsch, told The Hollywood Reporter.
“If you knew him, you probably have a story about him,” Chris wrote on Facebook. “He really was a great man, loved by many. A war hero who filled every room with his presence. An artist who never stopped being himself. A caring father who would do anything for his kids and grandkids. Shared his experience, wisdom and love with all. Our family will deeply miss him and always love him, as I’m sure many of you will as well.”
Kelsch also was the director of photography on Big Night (1996), co-directed, co-written and starring Stanley Tucci,...
Kelsch died Monday at Hackettstown Medical Center in New Jersey after a battle with Covid and pneumonia, his son, Chris Kelsch, told The Hollywood Reporter.
“If you knew him, you probably have a story about him,” Chris wrote on Facebook. “He really was a great man, loved by many. A war hero who filled every room with his presence. An artist who never stopped being himself. A caring father who would do anything for his kids and grandkids. Shared his experience, wisdom and love with all. Our family will deeply miss him and always love him, as I’m sure many of you will as well.”
Kelsch also was the director of photography on Big Night (1996), co-directed, co-written and starring Stanley Tucci,...
- 12/13/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Clockwise from top left: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Sony), Dracula (Universal), Only Lovers Left Alive (Sony), The Hunger (MGM/UA), Nosferatu The Vampyre (Shout Factory), Nosferatu (Kino Lorber) Graphic: AVClub
The vampire is cinema’s favorite monster. Ever since Nosferatu more than a century ago, bloodsuckers of every conceivable persuasion...
The vampire is cinema’s favorite monster. Ever since Nosferatu more than a century ago, bloodsuckers of every conceivable persuasion...
- 10/17/2023
- by Matthew Jackson
- avclub.com
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
’90s Horror, Art-House Horror, and Pre-Code Horror
It’s October, which means you are likely crafting an endless queue of horror films to consume. When it comes to a single streaming service to dedicate your eyes to this month, The Criterion Channel takes the cake with three different series. First up, ’90s horror brings together such films as The Rapture (1991), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Addiction (1995), and Ravenous (1999), while Art-House Horror features Häxan (1922), Vampyr (1932), Eyes Without a Face (1960), Carnival of Souls (1962), Onibaba (1964), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Sisters (1973), Eraserhead (1977), House (1977), Suspiria (1977), Arrebato (1979), The Brood (1979), The Vanishing (1988), Cronos (1993), Cure (1997), Donnie Darko (2001), Trouble Every Day (2001), Antichrist (2009), and more. Lastly, Pre-Code horrors brings together ’30s features such as Freaks (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Old Dark House...
’90s Horror, Art-House Horror, and Pre-Code Horror
It’s October, which means you are likely crafting an endless queue of horror films to consume. When it comes to a single streaming service to dedicate your eyes to this month, The Criterion Channel takes the cake with three different series. First up, ’90s horror brings together such films as The Rapture (1991), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Addiction (1995), and Ravenous (1999), while Art-House Horror features Häxan (1922), Vampyr (1932), Eyes Without a Face (1960), Carnival of Souls (1962), Onibaba (1964), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Sisters (1973), Eraserhead (1977), House (1977), Suspiria (1977), Arrebato (1979), The Brood (1979), The Vanishing (1988), Cronos (1993), Cure (1997), Donnie Darko (2001), Trouble Every Day (2001), Antichrist (2009), and more. Lastly, Pre-Code horrors brings together ’30s features such as Freaks (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Old Dark House...
- 10/6/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
These last few years the Criterion Channel have made October viewing much easier to prioritize, and in the spirit of their ’70s and ’80s horror series we’ve graduated to––you guessed it––”’90s Horror.” A couple of obvious classics stand with cult favorites and more unknown entities (When a Stranger Calls Back and Def By Temptation are new to me). Three more series continue the trend: “Technothrillers” does what it says on the tin, courtesy the likes of eXistenZ and Demonlover; “Art-House Horror” is precisely the kind of place to host Cure, Suspiria, Onibaba; and “Pre-Code Horror” is a black-and-white dream. Phantom of the Paradise, Unfriended, and John Brahm’s The Lodger are added elsewhere.
James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...
James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...
- 9/28/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The ’70s shocked you, the ’80s gored you . . . now the ’90s come in for the kill!
The Criterion Channel has announced this year’s Halloween spectacular, which “celebrates an era that saw terror undergo unsettling new transformations.”
The team previews, “In the ’90s, horror movies got bigger budgets, became playfully self-aware, and even won some Oscars—but they’re just as nasty as what came before.
“Featuring cult heroes like John Carpenter (In the Mouth of Madness) and Abel Ferrara (The Addiction) plunging the dark depths of their uncompromising visions, established auteurs like Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) taking on the genre, and new voices like Ernest R. Dickerson (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) and Antonia Bird (Ravenous) offering fresh perspectives on familiar tropes, this selection curated by Clyde Folley offers a hair-raising tour through an oft-overlooked decade in horror that’s ripe for rediscovery.”
The full...
The Criterion Channel has announced this year’s Halloween spectacular, which “celebrates an era that saw terror undergo unsettling new transformations.”
The team previews, “In the ’90s, horror movies got bigger budgets, became playfully self-aware, and even won some Oscars—but they’re just as nasty as what came before.
“Featuring cult heroes like John Carpenter (In the Mouth of Madness) and Abel Ferrara (The Addiction) plunging the dark depths of their uncompromising visions, established auteurs like Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) taking on the genre, and new voices like Ernest R. Dickerson (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) and Antonia Bird (Ravenous) offering fresh perspectives on familiar tropes, this selection curated by Clyde Folley offers a hair-raising tour through an oft-overlooked decade in horror that’s ripe for rediscovery.”
The full...
- 9/22/2023
- by John Squires
- bloody-disgusting.com
Genre films have often utilized the depiction of vampirism as a powerful metaphor for addiction, as seen in films like The Hunger (1983), The Addiction (19995), and Habit (1997). More recently, My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020) used vampirism as a potent allegory not only for addiction, but also for people living with chronic illness and the toll it takes on their caregivers. In his new film Blood, written by Will Honley (Bloodline), director Brad Anderson adeptly blends motherhood, vampirism, and chronic illness, emphasized by the need for blood, to present a compelling story of a family torn apart.
Blood stars Michelle Monaghan as Jess, a caring nurse and mother, who is also a recovering addict going through a nasty divorce and a battle for custody of her children. Jess’ ex-husband, played by Skeet Ulrich, got the house, the babysitter, and a new baby, and is using Jess’ previous struggles...
Blood stars Michelle Monaghan as Jess, a caring nurse and mother, who is also a recovering addict going through a nasty divorce and a battle for custody of her children. Jess’ ex-husband, played by Skeet Ulrich, got the house, the babysitter, and a new baby, and is using Jess’ previous struggles...
- 1/26/2023
- by Michelle Swope
- bloody-disgusting.com
Click here to read the full article.
Of the many questions one might ask when watching Abel Ferrara’s clunky portrayal of the legendary and controversial early 20th-century Italian friar, Padre Pio, the main one has to be: Why, oh why Abel, did you decide to make the movie in English?
Granted, Ferrara probably felt more comfortable working in his native tongue — as likely did Shia Labeouf, who seems fully committed to his pious role, sporting a beard that’s bigger than the Book of Psalms itself. But the Bronx-born director has been living in Rome for a while now, and had he chosen Italian for this story of a priest caught between his alleged healing powers and his visions of Lucifer, between the rise of fascism and a growing communist revolt in a small village, this bungled drama may have seemed a little more credible.
Instead, Ferrera surrounded Labeouf...
Of the many questions one might ask when watching Abel Ferrara’s clunky portrayal of the legendary and controversial early 20th-century Italian friar, Padre Pio, the main one has to be: Why, oh why Abel, did you decide to make the movie in English?
Granted, Ferrara probably felt more comfortable working in his native tongue — as likely did Shia Labeouf, who seems fully committed to his pious role, sporting a beard that’s bigger than the Book of Psalms itself. But the Bronx-born director has been living in Rome for a while now, and had he chosen Italian for this story of a priest caught between his alleged healing powers and his visions of Lucifer, between the rise of fascism and a growing communist revolt in a small village, this bungled drama may have seemed a little more credible.
Instead, Ferrera surrounded Labeouf...
- 9/2/2022
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
(Welcome to Year of the Vampire, a series examining the greatest, strangest, and sometimes overlooked vampire movies of all time in honor of "Nosferatu," which turns 100 this year.)
Though it sounds like the key to unlocking the whole movie, the title of "The Addiction" is not necessarily as straightforward as it seems. Filmed in crisp black-and-white, Abel Ferrera's 1995 indie vampire film stars Lili Taylor as Kathleen Conklin, an NYU philosophy student who gets cornered and assaulted in a dark alley one night by a bloodsucking "Casanova" with the face of Annabella Sciorra.
Two other future "Sopranos" stars, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli,...
The post Year of the Vampire: The Addiction Bites into Dependency and the Problem of Evil appeared first on /Film.
Though it sounds like the key to unlocking the whole movie, the title of "The Addiction" is not necessarily as straightforward as it seems. Filmed in crisp black-and-white, Abel Ferrera's 1995 indie vampire film stars Lili Taylor as Kathleen Conklin, an NYU philosophy student who gets cornered and assaulted in a dark alley one night by a bloodsucking "Casanova" with the face of Annabella Sciorra.
Two other future "Sopranos" stars, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli,...
The post Year of the Vampire: The Addiction Bites into Dependency and the Problem of Evil appeared first on /Film.
- 8/6/2022
- by Joshua Meyer
- Slash Film
Vampirism has been used as a metaphor for various kinds of addiction in several films over the years, like The Addiction (1995) and Larry Fessenden’s Habit (1995). There are just so many ways to compare creatures of the night who need to drink blood to survive to humans’ many unhealthy addictions. What would happen if a vampire decided to try and kick their habit of drinking blood? Filmmaker Blaine Thurier (Teen Lust) poses this question in his new film Kicking Blood and the answer is captivating.
Written by Thurier and Leonard Farlinger, and directed by Thurier, Kicking Blood premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2021. The film stars Alanna Bale as Anna, a vampire who likes to read books and works the overnight shift in a library, and Luke Bilyk (Adams Testament) as Robbie, a messy alcoholic whose life is falling apart.
Kicking Blood introduces the mysterious Anna, working her late-night...
Written by Thurier and Leonard Farlinger, and directed by Thurier, Kicking Blood premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2021. The film stars Alanna Bale as Anna, a vampire who likes to read books and works the overnight shift in a library, and Luke Bilyk (Adams Testament) as Robbie, a messy alcoholic whose life is falling apart.
Kicking Blood introduces the mysterious Anna, working her late-night...
- 3/28/2022
- by Michelle Swope
- DailyDead
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDario Argento's Dark GlassesFollowing his appearance in Gaspar Noé's Vortex, Dario Argento returns to directing with Dark Glasses, his first feature since Dracula 3D (2012). Starring Asia Argento and Andrea Zhang, the thriller follows a serial killer, a blind sex worker, and a 10-year-old Chinese boy in Rome's Chinese community. John Woo is also set to make a return to Hollywood with Silent Night, a "no dialogue" action film about a father (played by Joel Kinnaman) who seeks to avenge his son's death. Film Labs, a "worldwide network of artist-run film laboratories," now has a new website! The website includes more than 500 films made at artist-run film labs from Vancouver to South Korea, as well as technical resources and distribution information. Dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and filmmaker Wakefield Poole has died. A pioneer of the gay pornography industry,...
- 11/3/2021
- MUBI
Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theater du jour of cinephiles, is finally ready to open the doors to its first Manhattan location.
Starting on Oct. 18, customers will be able to visit the Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan to get their fix of popcorn, buffalo cauliflower and beer while watching the latest blockbuster unfold on the big screen. The soft launch period will run through Oct. 21, a time during which guests will receive special discounts on select food and non-alcoholic beverages while staff members train and find their bearings. Located in the Financial District at 28 Liberty Street, the 14-screen multiplex and 598-seat theater is the company’s third New York-based operation following Yonkers and Brooklyn.
“The last 18 months have been a rollercoaster for our industry, but through it all we’ve believed in the future of this industry,” says Alamo Drafthouse CEO Shelli Taylor. “Opening our Lower Manhattan theater is an expression of...
Starting on Oct. 18, customers will be able to visit the Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan to get their fix of popcorn, buffalo cauliflower and beer while watching the latest blockbuster unfold on the big screen. The soft launch period will run through Oct. 21, a time during which guests will receive special discounts on select food and non-alcoholic beverages while staff members train and find their bearings. Located in the Financial District at 28 Liberty Street, the 14-screen multiplex and 598-seat theater is the company’s third New York-based operation following Yonkers and Brooklyn.
“The last 18 months have been a rollercoaster for our industry, but through it all we’ve believed in the future of this industry,” says Alamo Drafthouse CEO Shelli Taylor. “Opening our Lower Manhattan theater is an expression of...
- 10/13/2021
- by Rebecca Rubin
- Variety Film + TV
Some readers might remember when, in 2013, Abel Ferrara’s third feature film, Ms. 45 (1981) was once again released in theaters, reinvigorated by a brand-new, state-of-the-art restoration and with its sound remastered in HD. This re-release, with its first screening held fittingly in New York on Friday, December 13th, demonstrated to audiences the extent to which Ferrara’s controversial and hastily labelled “rape and revenge” film had maintained its aggressive spleen.
While walking home from work, Thana, a mute young woman working as a seamstress in New York City's Garment District, is raped at gunpoint in an alley by a mysterious, masked attacker. She survives and makes her way back to her apartment, where she encounters a burglar and is raped a second time. Thana—her name an allusion to Greek god of death Thanatos—manages to knock her second assailant out, then bludgeons him to death with an iron and carries his body to the bathtub.
While walking home from work, Thana, a mute young woman working as a seamstress in New York City's Garment District, is raped at gunpoint in an alley by a mysterious, masked attacker. She survives and makes her way back to her apartment, where she encounters a burglar and is raped a second time. Thana—her name an allusion to Greek god of death Thanatos—manages to knock her second assailant out, then bludgeons him to death with an iron and carries his body to the bathtub.
- 8/17/2021
- by Eugenio Ercolani
- DailyDead
Illustration by Jeff CashvanMovie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Mubi Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a flick that we think embodies the era of all-night moviegoing down the “Flamboyant Floodway,” and present the theater at which it premiered.Back in October 2013, for our second screening at Nitehawk, we presented Abel Ferrara’s second feature—so, we thought for our second Mubi column we would feature the film a second time. You dig?Every screening concludes with our 'famous' raffle, the grand prize of which is always an original poster by the 'Maestro’ Jeff Cashvan. Enter for your chance to win Jeff’s one-sheet above by shooting us an email and saying ciao: thedeucefilmseries@gmail.
- 4/20/2021
- MUBI
A man of many talents, Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of state, speaks French fluently and even tweeted this fall that his hands know how to handle a guitar.
“Mostly blues and rock. Not good enough for bluegrass,” he posted Oct. 18. But the former deputy secretary of state has yet to comment on another notch on his résumé: associate producer of Abel Ferrara’s experimental black-and-white vampire film The Addiction.
Starring Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Anabella Sciorra, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, the story centers on a New York philosophy graduate student turned vampire ...
“Mostly blues and rock. Not good enough for bluegrass,” he posted Oct. 18. But the former deputy secretary of state has yet to comment on another notch on his résumé: associate producer of Abel Ferrara’s experimental black-and-white vampire film The Addiction.
Starring Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Anabella Sciorra, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, the story centers on a New York philosophy graduate student turned vampire ...
A man of many talents, Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of state, speaks French fluently and even tweeted this fall that his hands know how to handle a guitar.
“Mostly blues and rock. Not good enough for bluegrass,” he posted Oct. 18. But the former deputy secretary of state has yet to comment on another notch on his résumé: associate producer of Abel Ferrara’s experimental black-and-white vampire film The Addiction.
Starring Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Anabella Sciorra, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, the story centers on a New York philosophy graduate student turned vampire ...
“Mostly blues and rock. Not good enough for bluegrass,” he posted Oct. 18. But the former deputy secretary of state has yet to comment on another notch on his résumé: associate producer of Abel Ferrara’s experimental black-and-white vampire film The Addiction.
Starring Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Anabella Sciorra, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, the story centers on a New York philosophy graduate student turned vampire ...
Ethan Hawke, Cristina Chiriac and Phil Neilson will star in the upcoming war thriller “Zeros and Ones,” with Abel Ferrara directing from his own script.
Filming begins in Italy later this month. Hawke will portray an American soldier stationed in Rome as it’s under siege, with the Vatican blown up. He embarks on a hero’s journey to uncover and defend against an unknown enemy threatening the entire world.
Christian Mercuri’s Capstone Group will launch sales at the virtual American Film Market this week under its Blue Box International label and will co-rep domestic with CAA Media Finance.
“Zeros and Ones” is produced by Diana Phillips of Rimsky Productions, and Philipp Kreuzer from Maze Pictures. Sean Price Williams, who most recently lensed “Good Time” — starring Robert Pattinson, and directed by Benny and Josh Safdie — is heading the production team. Executive producers are Danny Chan of Almost Never Films,...
Filming begins in Italy later this month. Hawke will portray an American soldier stationed in Rome as it’s under siege, with the Vatican blown up. He embarks on a hero’s journey to uncover and defend against an unknown enemy threatening the entire world.
Christian Mercuri’s Capstone Group will launch sales at the virtual American Film Market this week under its Blue Box International label and will co-rep domestic with CAA Media Finance.
“Zeros and Ones” is produced by Diana Phillips of Rimsky Productions, and Philipp Kreuzer from Maze Pictures. Sean Price Williams, who most recently lensed “Good Time” — starring Robert Pattinson, and directed by Benny and Josh Safdie — is heading the production team. Executive producers are Danny Chan of Almost Never Films,...
- 11/9/2020
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
CAA Media Finance, Capstone to jointly represent US rights.
In one of the most tantalising projects to come together for AFM 2020 Online, Ethan Hawke will star for Abel Ferrara in the contemporary thriller Zeros And Ones, which Capstone’s Blue Box International is introducing to buyers today.
CAA Media Finance will jointly represent US rights with Capstone on the project, which Ferrara will direct from his original screenplay.
Ferrara, whose career includes such noted films as King Of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Addiction, Siberia, Pasolini, and Mary, is gearing up for a production start in Italy later this month.
In one of the most tantalising projects to come together for AFM 2020 Online, Ethan Hawke will star for Abel Ferrara in the contemporary thriller Zeros And Ones, which Capstone’s Blue Box International is introducing to buyers today.
CAA Media Finance will jointly represent US rights with Capstone on the project, which Ferrara will direct from his original screenplay.
Ferrara, whose career includes such noted films as King Of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Addiction, Siberia, Pasolini, and Mary, is gearing up for a production start in Italy later this month.
- 11/9/2020
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
There is no writing credit for “Sportin’ Life,” which feels like an omission, but an apt one. On the one hand, this documentary self-portrait by rogue auteur Abel Ferrara feels wholly the product of his eccentric imagination, colored by his voice from beginning to hasty end. On the other, it’s impossible to imagine such a chaotic, clashing assemblage of half-thoughts and impulses being “written” per se: A video diary of the filmmaker’s travels and stasis from February to August of this year, edited with nary a moment to reflect ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival this month, it gives every appearance of having been downloaded directly from his brain in its full antic, distracted form. Whose 2020 has been a year of tidy ideas, after all?
On the one hand, then, “Sportin’ Life” mostly captures the spirit of an enervating, dislocated time, as Ferrara touches on...
On the one hand, then, “Sportin’ Life” mostly captures the spirit of an enervating, dislocated time, as Ferrara touches on...
- 9/20/2020
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The unexamined life is not worth living. The half-examined life isn’t worth living either or - to be more accurate - isn’t worth documenting in narrative film, let alone a character study with a two-hour running time and a loose, unfocused structure that suggests a filmmaker, Abel Ferrera wrestling to find meaning in or meaningfully engage with half-formed, underdeveloped ideas in a lightly fictionalized meta-drama about a filmmaker at a personal, figurative, ultimately spiritual crossroads. That Ferrara’s latest film, Tommaso, succeeds as a tour-de-force for Willem Dafoe, an oft-underused, underutilized performer, while failing as a character study or meta-drama, comes less as surprise or disappointment then as the not an entirely unwelcome price...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 6/5/2020
- Screen Anarchy
Following his role in Tommaso, the actor is once again playing the Us director’s alter-ego as Ferrara returns to compete in the Berlin Film Festival 25 years after The Addiction. After bagging a starring role in the intimate and self-reflective Tommaso (shown in a Special Screening in Cannes 2019), Willem Dafoe is returning as Abel Ferrara’s alter-ego in the director’s new project Siberia. The film tells the story of Clint, a broken man who lives alone in the heart of a frozen tundra. But despite his isolation, he can neither escape from the world nor find peace. One evening, he embarks upon a journey, travelling through his dreams, memories and imagination, trying to make his way through the darkness and into the light. Starring in the cast alongside Dafoe are Cristina Chiriac and the director’s real-life daughter Anna Ferrara - who also appeared in Tommaso - as well as Dounia.
Appearing online for the first time, here is Scott Macaulay’s report on Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, from our Winter, 1995 edition. It appears here in newly revised form. ***“Addiction will be our question: a certain type of ‘Being-on-drugs’ that has everything to do with the bad conscious of our era.” — Avital Ronell, Crack Wars “Look at this,” Abel Ferrara says, tracing his finger across the video monitor in his Manhattan office/editing room. On the screen: black-and-white images of blood-streaked, bullet-ridden Bosnian casualties. “This is the real thing.” These images, and others of Nazi concentration camp victims from Ferrara’s new […]...
- 7/7/2019
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Appearing online for the first time, here is Scott Macaulay’s report on Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, from our Winter, 1995 edition. It appears here in newly revised form. ***“Addiction will be our question: a certain type of ‘Being-on-drugs’ that has everything to do with the bad conscious of our era.” — Avital Ronell, Crack Wars “Look at this,” Abel Ferrara says, tracing his finger across the video monitor in his Manhattan office/editing room. On the screen: black-and-white images of blood-streaked, bullet-ridden Bosnian casualties. “This is the real thing.” These images, and others of Nazi concentration camp victims from Ferrara’s new […]...
- 7/7/2019
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for Peter Strickland's In Fabric, which stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a woman who purchases a haunted dress from a sinister boutique. The long awaited trailer to Hideo Kojima's new boundary-pushing video game Death Stranding, which by way of motion capture stars the likes of Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Guillermo del Toro.Alien: The Play, a North Bergen High School production that features handmade costumes made of recycled materials, is now available online in its entirety. In the latest edition of the Museum of Modern Art's "How To See" series, curator Dave Kehr discusses how the nitrate prints and negatives of cinema's early days inspired audiences by expanding their perception of the world. Miranda July directs the music video for Sleater-Kinney's "Hurry On Home,...
- 5/29/2019
- MUBI
Born in Brooklyn, Ken Kelsch enlisted to fight in Vietnam when he was still a teenager. He became a decorated officer in the Army Special Forces, and with over four decades as a cinematographer, has amassed more than 50 credits in film and television. His work alongside Abel Ferrara, with whom he has collaborated over 15 times, includes Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game, The Addiction, The Funeral, and recent Tribeca Film Festival entry, The Projectionist. Along with actor Annabella Sciorra and composer Joe Delia, Kelsch will be doing a Q&A at MoMA during the screening of The Funeral on Thursday, May […]...
- 5/22/2019
- by Evan Louison
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Born in Brooklyn, Ken Kelsch enlisted to fight in Vietnam when he was still a teenager. He became a decorated officer in the Army Special Forces, and with over four decades as a cinematographer, has amassed more than 50 credits in film and television. His work alongside Abel Ferrara, with whom he has collaborated over 15 times, includes Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game, The Addiction, The Funeral, and recent Tribeca Film Festival entry, The Projectionist. Along with actor Annabella Sciorra and composer Joe Delia, Kelsch will be doing a Q&A at MoMA during the screening of The Funeral on Thursday, May […]...
- 5/22/2019
- by Evan Louison
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
For the first three decades of his career, Abel Ferrara was a seminal New York filmmaker whose gritty tales of furious pariahs, addicts, and rebels made Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” look like “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” But Ferrara fled New York after 9/11 and found a new life abroad. On a recent evening in Rome, he stood on the porch of his home, thousands of miles from the city that put him on the map, and contemplated his history of battling for final cut.
“You can’t paint a mustache on a Mona Lisa just because you fucking buy it,” he said, wearing a pair of scruffy headphones as he stared into a Skype session on his laptop. His leathery features and wisps of long white hair gleamed against a shadowy backdrop. “You dig what I mean? I’m working in my own language.”
With Ferrara, meaning can be an elusive thing.
“You can’t paint a mustache on a Mona Lisa just because you fucking buy it,” he said, wearing a pair of scruffy headphones as he stared into a Skype session on his laptop. His leathery features and wisps of long white hair gleamed against a shadowy backdrop. “You dig what I mean? I’m working in my own language.”
With Ferrara, meaning can be an elusive thing.
- 4/27/2019
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
It’s been nearly five years since Abel Ferrara’s “Pasolini,” starring Willem Dafoe as murdered Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, made its debut at the Venice and Toronto International film festivals in 2014. Now, at last, it’s getting U.S. distribution: Kino Lorber has picked up North American rights to the film and has set its premiere for New York City’s Metrograph on May 10.
Ferrara will be showing a new documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival this April called “The Projectionist,” but his films have barely been seen in the U.S. over the past decade. In the ’90s, Ferrara established himself as a bad-boy auteur with “King of New York,” “Bad Lieutenant,” and “The Addiction.” But a reputation for being difficult has made it harder and harder for his films to get released.
A particular flashpoint in Ferrera’s career was “Welcome to New York,” his film...
Ferrara will be showing a new documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival this April called “The Projectionist,” but his films have barely been seen in the U.S. over the past decade. In the ’90s, Ferrara established himself as a bad-boy auteur with “King of New York,” “Bad Lieutenant,” and “The Addiction.” But a reputation for being difficult has made it harder and harder for his films to get released.
A particular flashpoint in Ferrera’s career was “Welcome to New York,” his film...
- 4/2/2019
- by Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
Abel Ferrara's King of New York (1990) and 4:44 Last Day on Earth(2011) are playing April – May, 2019 on Mubi in the United States.The world has shrunk around Abel Ferrara. He was once able to shoot every corner of his oft-filmed hometown in movies like Fear City, Ms. 45, RXmas, The Addiction, Bad Lieutenant and King of New York as if it were Babylon. It's darkest corners and towering skyscrapers, its crooked cops, princely dealers and bottom-feeding scum riding an unpredictable wave of fortune and misery. And fittingly Ferrara himself fell prey to that same tide and by the time he wanted to make 4:44: Last Day on Earth, he was no longer the in-demand presence he once was. King of New York and 4:44 are perfect twins, charting the disintegrating mental peace two men with storied pasts. Drug addictions, prison time, lost potential, lost time, both men have to...
- 3/11/2019
- MUBI
Review by Roger Carpenter
Abel Ferrara has always existed on the fringe of filmmaking. The themes he tackles, the controversial content of his films, and his New York City attitude all help in keeping him on those fringes. Even when he attempted to cross over in the early 90’s to bigger-budgeted Hollywood films–with limited success– it wasn’t long until he again embraced the outsider attitude and moved right back into making no-budget films. The Addiction is a case in point. Shot for around $500,000, most of the cast and crew were employed for delayed compensation, a big gamble considering the typical earning potential of an Abel Ferrara film. But one doesn’t work with Ferrara for a big payday. One works with Ferrara because one appreciates pure cinema, the authenticity of Ferrara, and his guerrilla-style filmmaking. After dabbling with the Hollywood elite, The Addiction was a breath of fresh air for Ferrara,...
Abel Ferrara has always existed on the fringe of filmmaking. The themes he tackles, the controversial content of his films, and his New York City attitude all help in keeping him on those fringes. Even when he attempted to cross over in the early 90’s to bigger-budgeted Hollywood films–with limited success– it wasn’t long until he again embraced the outsider attitude and moved right back into making no-budget films. The Addiction is a case in point. Shot for around $500,000, most of the cast and crew were employed for delayed compensation, a big gamble considering the typical earning potential of an Abel Ferrara film. But one doesn’t work with Ferrara for a big payday. One works with Ferrara because one appreciates pure cinema, the authenticity of Ferrara, and his guerrilla-style filmmaking. After dabbling with the Hollywood elite, The Addiction was a breath of fresh air for Ferrara,...
- 7/31/2018
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Watch out – a bloodsucking fiend is stalking the highways and by-ways of lower Manhattan… and she has a PhD! Abel Ferrara’s vampire mini-epic puts Lili Taylor through an ordeal that’s harrowing, transformational and either profound or pretentious depending on how you roll with existential philosophy. We acknowledge that Ferrara is a good judge of actor-flesh: sharing in the theory-speak and blood-soaked grue are Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco, and Kathryn Erbe.
The Addiction
Blu-ray
Arrow Video USA
1995 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 82 min. / Street Date June 26, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video
Starring: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco, Paul Calderon, Fredro Starr, Kathryn Erbe, Michael Imperioli, Jamal Simmons, Robert W. Castle, Michael Fella.
Cinematography: Ken Kelsch
Film Editor: Mayin Lo
Production design: Charles Lagola
Original Music: Joe Delia
Written by Nicholas St. John
Produced by Denis Hann, Fernando Sulichin
Directed by Abel Ferrara
By the time Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction came along,...
The Addiction
Blu-ray
Arrow Video USA
1995 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 82 min. / Street Date June 26, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video
Starring: Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra, Edie Falco, Paul Calderon, Fredro Starr, Kathryn Erbe, Michael Imperioli, Jamal Simmons, Robert W. Castle, Michael Fella.
Cinematography: Ken Kelsch
Film Editor: Mayin Lo
Production design: Charles Lagola
Original Music: Joe Delia
Written by Nicholas St. John
Produced by Denis Hann, Fernando Sulichin
Directed by Abel Ferrara
By the time Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction came along,...
- 6/26/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
For this final week of home media releases, June is closing things out on a strong note, as we have plenty of horror and sci-fi offerings to get excited about. For those who may have missed it during its theatrical run earlier this year, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless arrives on both formats (and is absolutely worth your time).
Arrow Video is keeping busy with a pair of Special Edition releases–The Addiction and Vigil–and Vinegar Syndrome is serving up a double dose of cult filmmaking with their multi-format presentations for Grave Robbers and their Blood Theatre/The Visitants double feature. Scream Factory has put together a stellar Blu for The Curse of the Cat People, and for those in the mood for more feline-themed horror, Cat Sick Blues arrives on DVD this Tuesday. And for those of you Puppet Master fans out there, you’re...
Arrow Video is keeping busy with a pair of Special Edition releases–The Addiction and Vigil–and Vinegar Syndrome is serving up a double dose of cult filmmaking with their multi-format presentations for Grave Robbers and their Blood Theatre/The Visitants double feature. Scream Factory has put together a stellar Blu for The Curse of the Cat People, and for those in the mood for more feline-themed horror, Cat Sick Blues arrives on DVD this Tuesday. And for those of you Puppet Master fans out there, you’re...
- 6/25/2018
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
To celebrate the release of The Addiction - available on Blu-ray 25th June from Arrow Video – we have a copy to giveaway!
Starring Lili Taylor and Christopher Walken, The Addiction is one of the most powerful vampire movies ever made, with everything from its grainy black and white aesthetic to its raw central performance, combining to position vampirism as a hedonistic addiction above all else. Whether you’re already a convert or completely new to the film, Abel Ferrara’s take on vampire mythology, on a specially restored director-approved 4K Blu-ray from Arrow Video, will have you craving more.
Order today: https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/the-addiction-blu-ray/FCD1769
To win a copy of The Addiction on Arrow Video Blu-ray, just answer the following question:
Which of the following was also directed by Able Ferrara? Was it:
a) Body Snatchers
b) Communion
c) Four Rooms
Email your answer to NerdlyComps@gmail.com,...
Starring Lili Taylor and Christopher Walken, The Addiction is one of the most powerful vampire movies ever made, with everything from its grainy black and white aesthetic to its raw central performance, combining to position vampirism as a hedonistic addiction above all else. Whether you’re already a convert or completely new to the film, Abel Ferrara’s take on vampire mythology, on a specially restored director-approved 4K Blu-ray from Arrow Video, will have you craving more.
Order today: https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/the-addiction-blu-ray/FCD1769
To win a copy of The Addiction on Arrow Video Blu-ray, just answer the following question:
Which of the following was also directed by Able Ferrara? Was it:
a) Body Snatchers
b) Communion
c) Four Rooms
Email your answer to NerdlyComps@gmail.com,...
- 6/22/2018
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
Controversial director Abel Ferrara has blasted and confounded cinema-goers in the past with challenging but breathtaking works. His films chart religious/psychological battles with the degeneration of corrupt societies, cultures and characters, via acts of extreme violence and sexual depravity.
Ferrara’s body includes: Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, Ms. 45 and The Driller Killer. All provocative, divisive yet astounding works, widely considered cult classics. His recent two films to be released in the UK (Welcome To New York and Pasolini) are among the Bronx director’s best, revealing an artist bravely embracing new styles and concepts into his career winter years, while refusing to blunt the edge that makes his work so intoxicating.
Heyuguys caught up with Ferrara recently to talk about The Addiction. This black and white, mid-nineties allegorical vampire parable starring Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken and Annabella Sciorra, which is about to make its UK Blu-ray/ 4K restoration debut from Arrow Video.
Ferrara’s body includes: Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, Ms. 45 and The Driller Killer. All provocative, divisive yet astounding works, widely considered cult classics. His recent two films to be released in the UK (Welcome To New York and Pasolini) are among the Bronx director’s best, revealing an artist bravely embracing new styles and concepts into his career winter years, while refusing to blunt the edge that makes his work so intoxicating.
Heyuguys caught up with Ferrara recently to talk about The Addiction. This black and white, mid-nineties allegorical vampire parable starring Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken and Annabella Sciorra, which is about to make its UK Blu-ray/ 4K restoration debut from Arrow Video.
- 6/19/2018
- by Daniel Goodwin
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction (1995) will be available on Blu-ray June 26th From Arrow Video
The mid-nineties were a fertile period for the vampire movie. Big-name stars such as Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy flocked to genre, as did high-caliber filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, veterans Wes Craven and John Landis, independents Michael Almereyda and Jeffrey Arsenault, and up-and-comers Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro. Amid the fangs and crucifixes, Abel Ferrara reunited with his King of New York star Christopher Walken for The Addiction, a distinctly personal take on creatures of the night.
Philosophy student Kathleen is dragged into an alleyway on her way home from class by Casanova and bitten on the neck. She quickly falls ill but realises this isn t any ordinary disease when she develops an aversion to daylight and a thirst for human blood…
Having made a big-budget foray into science fiction two years earlier with Body Snatchers,...
The mid-nineties were a fertile period for the vampire movie. Big-name stars such as Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy flocked to genre, as did high-caliber filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, veterans Wes Craven and John Landis, independents Michael Almereyda and Jeffrey Arsenault, and up-and-comers Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro. Amid the fangs and crucifixes, Abel Ferrara reunited with his King of New York star Christopher Walken for The Addiction, a distinctly personal take on creatures of the night.
Philosophy student Kathleen is dragged into an alleyway on her way home from class by Casanova and bitten on the neck. She quickly falls ill but realises this isn t any ordinary disease when she develops an aversion to daylight and a thirst for human blood…
Having made a big-budget foray into science fiction two years earlier with Body Snatchers,...
- 6/13/2018
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
In The Overlook, A.V. Club film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky examines the misfits, underappreciated gems, and underseen classics of film history.
“The information highway is leading straight to hell…”
—Abel Ferrara
The films of Abel Ferrara are probably too anguished and tragic to be called hangout movies. To an extent, they wallow in states of sin, doom, and moral disrepair: a personal hell in Bad Lieutenant, the Lower East Side as it faces the end of time in 4:44 Last Day On Earth, a grueling film shoot in Dangerous Game. To the circles of Ferrara’s inferno, one can also add the indistinct cyberpunk future of his 1998 William Gibson adaption, New Rose Hotel. It’s a shame that Ferrara’s forays into the fantastic—such as Body Snatchers and the vampire film The Addiction—are more obscure than his crime films and psychodramas, as they interpret well-worn sci-fi ...
“The information highway is leading straight to hell…”
—Abel Ferrara
The films of Abel Ferrara are probably too anguished and tragic to be called hangout movies. To an extent, they wallow in states of sin, doom, and moral disrepair: a personal hell in Bad Lieutenant, the Lower East Side as it faces the end of time in 4:44 Last Day On Earth, a grueling film shoot in Dangerous Game. To the circles of Ferrara’s inferno, one can also add the indistinct cyberpunk future of his 1998 William Gibson adaption, New Rose Hotel. It’s a shame that Ferrara’s forays into the fantastic—such as Body Snatchers and the vampire film The Addiction—are more obscure than his crime films and psychodramas, as they interpret well-worn sci-fi ...
- 4/25/2017
- by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
- avclub.com
Baker, Nyoni, Jasper and Carpignano join Cannes veterans Denis, Ferrara, Dumont, Garrel and Gitai.Scroll Down For Full List
Tangerine director Sean Baker, the UK’s Rungano Nyoni and Italo-American film-maker Jonas Carpignano will be among the buzzed-about names premiering new works at the 49th edition of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this year (18-28 May).
Artistic director Edouard Waintrop unveiled the eclectic selection, comprising 19 feature-length films and another 11 shorts, at a press conference at the Cinéma Le Grand Action in Paris on Thursday (20 April).
Read more: Cannes 2017: Official Selection in full
Opening And Closing Films
Claire Denis will open the 49th edition – running May 18-28 - with Un Beau Soleil Intérieur starring Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu and Xavier Beauvois.
Us director Geremy Jasper’s debut feature Patti Cake$ - which world premiered at Sundance this year has been selected as the closing film.
Us Presence
It is one of two Sundance titles in this year’s selection...
Tangerine director Sean Baker, the UK’s Rungano Nyoni and Italo-American film-maker Jonas Carpignano will be among the buzzed-about names premiering new works at the 49th edition of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this year (18-28 May).
Artistic director Edouard Waintrop unveiled the eclectic selection, comprising 19 feature-length films and another 11 shorts, at a press conference at the Cinéma Le Grand Action in Paris on Thursday (20 April).
Read more: Cannes 2017: Official Selection in full
Opening And Closing Films
Claire Denis will open the 49th edition – running May 18-28 - with Un Beau Soleil Intérieur starring Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu and Xavier Beauvois.
Us director Geremy Jasper’s debut feature Patti Cake$ - which world premiered at Sundance this year has been selected as the closing film.
Us Presence
It is one of two Sundance titles in this year’s selection...
- 4/20/2017
- ScreenDaily
Ryan Lambie Nov 24, 2016
Maverick director Abel Ferrara talks to us about his career in movies, from Driller Killer to Bad Lieutenant and Body Snatchers...
When British distributor Vipco put out full-age ads depicting a particularly bloody scene from Driller Killer, the movie became an unwitting part of the 'video nasty' moral flap of the early 80s. Suddenly, director Abel Ferrara's low-budget, quick-and-dirty horror-arthouse-drama about a young artist going crazy in Manhattan was lumped in with such films as Cannibal Holocaust, Last House On The Left and the tawdry SS Experiment Camp.
See related Yonderland: saluting a brilliant fantasy comedy Yonderland series 3 episode 6 review: Swapsies Yonderland series 3 episode 5 review: The Negatus Redemption Yonderland series 3 episode 4 review: Boo
Banned from 1984 until 1999 (when it was released with nearly a minute of cuts), Driller Killer is about to get a restored, 4K edition courtesy of Arrow Films, which presents the original theatrical version...
Maverick director Abel Ferrara talks to us about his career in movies, from Driller Killer to Bad Lieutenant and Body Snatchers...
When British distributor Vipco put out full-age ads depicting a particularly bloody scene from Driller Killer, the movie became an unwitting part of the 'video nasty' moral flap of the early 80s. Suddenly, director Abel Ferrara's low-budget, quick-and-dirty horror-arthouse-drama about a young artist going crazy in Manhattan was lumped in with such films as Cannibal Holocaust, Last House On The Left and the tawdry SS Experiment Camp.
See related Yonderland: saluting a brilliant fantasy comedy Yonderland series 3 episode 6 review: Swapsies Yonderland series 3 episode 5 review: The Negatus Redemption Yonderland series 3 episode 4 review: Boo
Banned from 1984 until 1999 (when it was released with nearly a minute of cuts), Driller Killer is about to get a restored, 4K edition courtesy of Arrow Films, which presents the original theatrical version...
- 11/21/2016
- Den of Geek
There is style and chutzpah in this vampiric story of supermodel cannibals – as well as a superb central turn from Elle Fanning – yet it lacks the focus and wallop of his earlier work
Nicolas Winding Refn brings the cinéma du choc to Cannes with a movie which is fantastically preposterous and objectionable, but expertly varnished with a sheen of pure evil. It features the excellent Elle Fanning whose insouciant freshness is a reason to keep watching: a quality which oddly survives her inevitable journey to the dark side. There is a very great deal of Bret Easton Ellis in this story of vampirism and cannibalism in the La fashion scene — a world which shocks no-one by turning out to be shallow and vicious. If Andy Warhol wanted to remake Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction it might turn out like this. Or maybe if Ferrara wanted to do Zoolander 3.
Exasperating though this film can be,...
Nicolas Winding Refn brings the cinéma du choc to Cannes with a movie which is fantastically preposterous and objectionable, but expertly varnished with a sheen of pure evil. It features the excellent Elle Fanning whose insouciant freshness is a reason to keep watching: a quality which oddly survives her inevitable journey to the dark side. There is a very great deal of Bret Easton Ellis in this story of vampirism and cannibalism in the La fashion scene — a world which shocks no-one by turning out to be shallow and vicious. If Andy Warhol wanted to remake Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction it might turn out like this. Or maybe if Ferrara wanted to do Zoolander 3.
Exasperating though this film can be,...
- 5/20/2016
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
“Don’t think it. Don’t say it.” From Stx Entertainment, The Bye Bye Man will pay everyone a visit on June 3rd. Also: details on Karyn Kusama’s (The Invitation) curated collection on Shudder and Dark Horse Comics’ Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes at Emerald City Comicon.
The Bye Bye Man: “People commit unthinkable acts every day. Time and again, we grapple to understand what drives a person to do such terrible things. But what if all of the questions we’re asking are wrong? What if the source of all evil is not a matter of what…but who?
From the producer of The Strangers and Oculus comes The Bye Bye Man, a chilling horror-thriller that exposes the evil behind the most unspeakable acts committed by man.
When three college friends stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man, they discover that there...
The Bye Bye Man: “People commit unthinkable acts every day. Time and again, we grapple to understand what drives a person to do such terrible things. But what if all of the questions we’re asking are wrong? What if the source of all evil is not a matter of what…but who?
From the producer of The Strangers and Oculus comes The Bye Bye Man, a chilling horror-thriller that exposes the evil behind the most unspeakable acts committed by man.
When three college friends stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man, they discover that there...
- 4/11/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
If ever there was to be a Mt. Rushmore of modern horror, there’s no question that the face of Larry Fessenden would get prominent placement. One of the patron saints of indie horror, Fessenden is a true auteur and a true original whose incredible career is now being celebrated with the Scream Factory release of The Larry Fessenden Collection, containing four of his films and hours of bonus features that help illuminate just what a vital voice Fessenden has been in the genre for more than three decades. This is one of the best horror releases of the year.
Fessenden (whose Glass Eye Pix has been around since the mid-’80s, helping produce films including The House of the Devil, I Sell the Dead, Stake Land and Late Phases) has built a career on twisting and subverting the conventions of classic horror films and filtering them through his own distinctive lens.
Fessenden (whose Glass Eye Pix has been around since the mid-’80s, helping produce films including The House of the Devil, I Sell the Dead, Stake Land and Late Phases) has built a career on twisting and subverting the conventions of classic horror films and filtering them through his own distinctive lens.
- 11/25/2015
- by Patrick Bromley
- DailyDead
Scream Factory and IFC Midnight have paired up to present an inspired disc set for The Larry Fessenden Collection, an assortment of four of the director’s most notable genre films. Migrating between a number of notable projects as a character actor (he usually appears as some peripheral, grizzled weirdo, showing up in titles by Scorsese, Neil Jordan, and Kelly Reichardt, amongst others), he’s also a noted producer, editor, screenwriter, and cinematographer. But Fessenden’s made his most striking impression with a growing body of genre oriented independent directorial efforts. Usually prizing strong characterization amidst situations of mounting dread, Fessenden seems fascinated with testing the strengths and inherent weaknesses of mankind, and it’s probably easiest to label his filmography as environmental horror.
Out of Fessenden’s own production company Glass Eye Pix, 1991’s No Telling (or the Frankenstein Complex) melds motifs of Mary Shelley’s famed mad scientist with modern animal experimentation.
Out of Fessenden’s own production company Glass Eye Pix, 1991’s No Telling (or the Frankenstein Complex) melds motifs of Mary Shelley’s famed mad scientist with modern animal experimentation.
- 10/27/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Special Mention: Shock Corridor
Written and directed by Samuel Fuller
USA, 1963
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Shock Corridor stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter who wants to expose a killer hiding out at the local insane asylum. In order to solve the case, he must pretend to be insane so they have him committed. Once in the asylum, Barrett sets to work, interrogating the other patients and keeping a close eye on the staff. But it’s difficult to remain a sane man living in an insane place, and the closer Barrett gets to the truth, the closer he gets to insanity.
Shock Corridor is best described as an anti-establishment drama that at times is surprisingly quite funny despite the dark material. The film deals with some timely issues of the era, specifically the atom bomb, anti-communism, and racism. It features everything from a raving female love-crazed nympho ward,...
Written and directed by Samuel Fuller
USA, 1963
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Shock Corridor stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter who wants to expose a killer hiding out at the local insane asylum. In order to solve the case, he must pretend to be insane so they have him committed. Once in the asylum, Barrett sets to work, interrogating the other patients and keeping a close eye on the staff. But it’s difficult to remain a sane man living in an insane place, and the closer Barrett gets to the truth, the closer he gets to insanity.
Shock Corridor is best described as an anti-establishment drama that at times is surprisingly quite funny despite the dark material. The film deals with some timely issues of the era, specifically the atom bomb, anti-communism, and racism. It features everything from a raving female love-crazed nympho ward,...
- 10/9/2015
- by Ricky Fernandes
- SoundOnSight
The first and most important thing that happened as a result of the staging of "Sticks and Stones" at the Met Theater as part of the Act One Festival was that Scott Swan and I got our first agent. Barbara Baruch worked for Ambrosio/Mortimer, a smaller boutique agency at the time, and from the moment we met her, she seemed like what I imagined an agent to be. She was nurturing, she was a cheerleader, she was a ballbuster, and she was always, always, always in our corner. Our time with her was unfortunately too short, and by the time the agency imploded in accusations of embezzlement, we were already repped by Gersh out of New York. Barbara was first, though, and she was the first one to start pushing people to come see our show and to read our work. The strangest thing about those early days is...
- 6/11/2015
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
Lili Taylor, who starred in Abel Ferrara’s 1994 NYC vampire film The Addiction and put in a properly awards-worthy performance in James Wan’s The Conjuring will return to horror in the upcoming Texas Chainsaw prequel, Leatherface. In reporting Leatherface’s presence at the Cannes Market, Deadline revealed Taylor has joined Stephen Dorff, Angela Bettis and young…
The post The Conjuring’s Lili Taylor joins Leatherface appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.
The post The Conjuring’s Lili Taylor joins Leatherface appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.
- 5/5/2015
- by Samuel Zimmerman
- shocktillyoudrop.com
“If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.” —Aristotele OnassisFor over forty years now Abel Ferrara’s cinema has spewed out from the gangrenous wounds of our civilization of images. Never mind how ugly it was, it was always in your face. And unapologetically so. The damnation of life, as low as it could possibly get, and the existential dirt polite society and cinema sweep under the carpet have been Ferrara’s carnal muses. If crime and the underworld were often his preferred milieu, it never was out of teen-aged fascination for the dark side of society but because there he senses and lenses the bio-illogical matrix of our lives: the law of the jungle rationalized into the language of the Bible. Redemption in his cinema is never a concrete possibility, it functioned as a sort of moral mirage for lost souls—the...
- 3/24/2015
- by Celluloid Liberation Front
- MUBI
S’Blood: Lee’s Facsimile of Bill Gunn an Odd Satisfaction
Surprisingly, after the failure of his 2013 remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, provocateur Spike Lee’s latest, the Kickstarter funded Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, is also a remake, a modernization of Bill Gunn’s 1973 classic Ganja & Hess, a film tenuously positioned within the spectrum of Blaxploitation. Lee initially explained that the film was about blood addiction and not vampires, with early conversations indicating that this had nothing to do with the likes of Blacula. But those familiar with Gunn’s brilliant and strange (if somewhat compromised) original film will see his stamp all over it, directed with uneasy disconnect from Lee. It’s an odd, sometimes off-putting film, but it strikes a distinctive, addictive chord, generating a particular scent that will draw you down its path. Though Lee expressly wishes the focus of the film to be about...
Surprisingly, after the failure of his 2013 remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, provocateur Spike Lee’s latest, the Kickstarter funded Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, is also a remake, a modernization of Bill Gunn’s 1973 classic Ganja & Hess, a film tenuously positioned within the spectrum of Blaxploitation. Lee initially explained that the film was about blood addiction and not vampires, with early conversations indicating that this had nothing to do with the likes of Blacula. But those familiar with Gunn’s brilliant and strange (if somewhat compromised) original film will see his stamp all over it, directed with uneasy disconnect from Lee. It’s an odd, sometimes off-putting film, but it strikes a distinctive, addictive chord, generating a particular scent that will draw you down its path. Though Lee expressly wishes the focus of the film to be about...
- 2/6/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are oddly endearing as centuries-old lovers in Jim Jarmusch's vampire movie
Us indie pioneer Jim Jarmusch has been pursuing his laconic strain of cinematic hipsterism for 30 years now, so long that he seems as ageless as the blood-sipping characters in his latest film. You thought there was nothing new to add to the vampire genre? So, apparently, did Jarmusch, which is why Only Lovers Left Alive luxuriates in a curious end-of-an-era melancholy, as if he'd set out at once to make the last ever vampire movie and cinema's last ever love story.
The lovers in question are reclusive rock musician Adam (Tom Hiddleston, exuding fastidiously weary cool) and Eve (Tilda Swinton, pallid and otherworldly – I swear, you'd barely recognise her). Centuries old, the couple are married and still deeply in love though living apart: she in Tangier, he in a Detroit seemingly reverting to primeval jungle.
Us indie pioneer Jim Jarmusch has been pursuing his laconic strain of cinematic hipsterism for 30 years now, so long that he seems as ageless as the blood-sipping characters in his latest film. You thought there was nothing new to add to the vampire genre? So, apparently, did Jarmusch, which is why Only Lovers Left Alive luxuriates in a curious end-of-an-era melancholy, as if he'd set out at once to make the last ever vampire movie and cinema's last ever love story.
The lovers in question are reclusive rock musician Adam (Tom Hiddleston, exuding fastidiously weary cool) and Eve (Tilda Swinton, pallid and otherworldly – I swear, you'd barely recognise her). Centuries old, the couple are married and still deeply in love though living apart: she in Tangier, he in a Detroit seemingly reverting to primeval jungle.
- 2/23/2014
- by Jonathan Romney
- The Guardian - Film News
This retro-chic haute-hippy vampire flick gets its energy from the sulphurous chemistry between Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston
I have warmed up – or maybe rather cooled down – to Jim Jarmusch's beautifully made and exquisitely designed vampire movie since seeing it at Cannes last year. At first, it looked studenty and self-congratulatory. But if it is an exercise in style … well, what style. With its retro-chic connoisseurship and analogue era rock, this is a brilliant haute-hippy homage: a movie that could almost have been conceived at the same time as Performance or Zabriskie Point.
As the undead lovers, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston hang out together very elegantly, exchanging worldly badinage and wondering what's in the fridge, like Withnail and Withnail, or I and I. Hiddleston is Adam, a reclusive vampire rock star hiding out from his fans in Detroit and savouring the necrophiliac ruin-porn thereabouts. Swinton plays his paramour,...
I have warmed up – or maybe rather cooled down – to Jim Jarmusch's beautifully made and exquisitely designed vampire movie since seeing it at Cannes last year. At first, it looked studenty and self-congratulatory. But if it is an exercise in style … well, what style. With its retro-chic connoisseurship and analogue era rock, this is a brilliant haute-hippy homage: a movie that could almost have been conceived at the same time as Performance or Zabriskie Point.
As the undead lovers, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston hang out together very elegantly, exchanging worldly badinage and wondering what's in the fridge, like Withnail and Withnail, or I and I. Hiddleston is Adam, a reclusive vampire rock star hiding out from his fans in Detroit and savouring the necrophiliac ruin-porn thereabouts. Swinton plays his paramour,...
- 2/21/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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