By Eric D. Snider (reprint from 1/19/09 -- Sundance Film Festival)

The premise of Precious is so unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn't want to see it: It's the story of an obese 16-year-old illiterate Harlem girl who's pregnant (for the second time) by her own father, lives with her monstrously abusive mother, and has almost given up on life. But if you do see it, you'll find that it's compelling and artistic, punctuated with warm humor and masterful performances, and ultimately triumphant and hopeful.

The girl is named Claireece "Precious" Jones (she goes by Precious), and she's played with astonishing rawness by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. Narrating the film, Precious tells us the grim facts. Beyond the ones already noted, she is still in junior high school (where she's dumbly in love with her kindly math teacher); her first child, born with Down syndrome, is technically in her mother's custody but is actually cared for by her grandmother; and her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), is a welfare-absorbing harridan who abuses Precious in every possible way, hating her daughter for "stealing" her man. Precious did no such thing, of course -- she was raped by her father -- but Mary is not interested in details.

Precious is directed by her principal to an alternative school called Each One Teach One. Her class is populated by other girls who dropped out or were kicked out of public schools for various reasons; it's telling that even in such a motley group, Precious is still the most timid, the most withdrawn, and the most messed-up. The teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), is dedicated to her work, perhaps the first adult to ever take a genuine interest in helping Precious. The other students might be Precious' first friends, too.

Sunday over at Cinematical's sister site, Horror Squad, vigilant contributor Brian Salisbury picked up a news story from Arrow in the Head about Saw VI receiving no less than an 'X' rating for violence from the ratings board in Spain. While this might be minor news if the rating board awarded 'X' ratings to its predecessors, or even just some of the other horror films released in recent years that borrowed from the first film's gag-inducing inspiration, evidently Saw VI is the first-ever movie that has been awarded the killer rating for violence in the country's history, which begs makes us wonder what the board saw in, uh, Saw that made it so offensive?

Despite having seen only the first and sixth installments in the Saw series, I can attest that the new film is indeed gross and gory, featuring scenes like a showdown between two victims to shave off enough body mass (or maybe just body parts) to survive, and a merry-go-round fitted with six victims who more or less indiscriminately suffer from direct shotgun blasts to the chest. But personally I'm not sure that the movie is really any more violent or gratuitous than any of its predecessors, even those that I haven't seen; while one could perhaps make the argument that many of Jigsaw's victims were dubiously "guilty" at worst (or even outright innocent), making their deaths more tragic, it seems unlikely that the murkier morality of this film would earn it a harsher rating than any of the others.

Since I'm sure there are plenty of readers who have seen all of the films and are ready to weigh in with their own opinions, we'll put the question to you: Is Saw VI deserving of an 'X' rating?

Sorry to break it to fans of the Saw film series, but Jigsaw, a/k/a John Kramer is a self-righteous dick. In comparison to the Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers of the horror world, whose raison d'être is causing carnage mercifully bereft of deeper moral or instructional value, Jigsaw devotes a ridiculous amount of time thinking about what other people do with themselves, and effectively (if ironically) conceives his traps as object lessons in humility, compassion, and self-awareness. Personally, I find this high-handed moralizing far more painful than any evil device he could possibly design, but then again, that's why I'm not a fan of the series; that said, the latest installment in the Saw franchise appears to fulfill all of the demands of its audience and then some, making it a worthy and faithful entry in a franchise which at this point seems expressly designed to document people dying in increasingly inventive ways.

After a cold-open sequence where two loan officers compete to dismember themselves as an alternative to being literally screwed to death, Saw VI opens as Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) investigates Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) latest crime – which, coincidentally, he helped execute. As he narrowly eludes discovery by his colleagues, across town a claims adjuster named William (Peter Outerbridge) becomes the victim of Jigsaw's next deadly game, while the long-deceased killer's widow Jill (Betsy Russell) carries out her late husband's final wishes. Soon, the paths of these various players intersect, but despite their various efforts to take control of their lives - and in some cases those of the others, it's Jigsaw himself who comfortably presides over all of them, even from beyond the grave. This time, though, his goal seems to be to drive his deadly game towards its ultimate conclusion.

According to longtime Saw editor and now first-time director Kevin Greutert, coming up with new and interesting ways to kill people is not as easy as one might imagine, especially when you've already come up with a gauntlet of gory deaths in not one but five previous films. "There's no point in trying to hide it," Greutert said in a roundtable interview in Los Angeles last week. "I think the films have this longevity because we've managed to rise to the task, somehow. But, it made me want to cry sometimes, sitting in a room, brainstorming and pounding my head against the wall. You can think of cool ways to kill people, but it still has to fit in with our story."

"It's very complicated, he insisted. "We want to always push the envelope to the end, in terms of insanity and mayhem, but if you go too far, it becomes campy or silly. It's a really tough balancing act." Ironically, Greutert is only the guy who has to bring those death traps to life; screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan are the guys who have to actually develop and design them, making sure they're not only inventive and interesting, but that they actually reflect the personalities and storylines of the characters in each film.

Cinematical recently sat down with Dunstan and Melton to discuss Saw VI, the latest installment in the long-running horror franchise, to find out where they get those wonderful – and terrible – toys. In addition to describing their creative process, they talk about challenges of collaborating with a cast and crew filled with Saw experts, and reflect on why and how their debut on Project Greenlight didn't result in a dead end for their careers, as was the case with their predecessors.

Last summer, the trades reported that Bruce Willis was in talks to play Kane in a big screen adaptation of Kane and Lynch. Perhaps you were one of the game fans excited by that prospect, but as the long months wore on, you may have forgotten such a fleeting news item. But Kane and Lynch didn't go anywhere, and GameDaily is confirming that Bruce Willis is ready to go in with his guns blazing, with Simon Crane directing, and that filming will begin in March 2010. They're just looking for their Lynch and their locations.

GameDaily caught up with producer Adrian Askarieh, who confirmed Willis' casting, and shared just what had lured him to the project in the first place. "[Kyle Ward's] script has been incredibly well-received around town. After Bruce Willis read it, he called it one of the best action scripts he's ever read, and Bruce is an expert in terms of action scripts because he's read everything over the last 20 years." Askarieh describes the film as "a great buddy action movie" (nothing's funnier than kidnapping and death row) and promised that'll remain faithful to the game, at least in terms of its plotline. "It's going to have the basic premise. But the details for the movie are going to be different. It's not going to have every sequence from the game, but it's essentially the story of a mercenary teaming up with a schizophrenic psychopath to save his wife and daughter."

While none of us hold out hope for video game adaptations, I would like this one to turn out solid. It's two death-row inmates (one of whom is heavily medicated) doing rotten, sociopathic things in the name of rescue. It's the kind of movie Hollywood should be able to make, but probably won't, even with an action heavy like Willis.

[via Empire]

If you're an aspiring filmmaker hoping to break into the studio system, you'll want to hop on over to Massify.com and create an account. If you're unfamiliar with the site, it's a portal that links together actors, writers, directors and producers for all kinds of in-community projects that result in everything from Internet shorts to TV commercials to actual feature-length films. Now Lionsgate has taken notice of the service, signing a deal with the startup that will hopefully lead to multiple theatrical films down the line.

The collaboration is being dubbed the Lionsgate Incubator Project (LINC) and will kick off later this year with a "high-concept, male-driven comedy short", no doubt inspired by the enormous success of The Hangover, that will serve as a proving ground for future development. If the end product satisfies Lionsgate, they'll usher it into their feature film development program the same way they would any other project.

Lionsgate isn't the first studio to take advantage of the Massify process, either. After Dark Films created the film Perkins 14 by running a competition through the site in which users submitted and then voted on scripts, cast, and even directors. And though Lionsgate doesn't cite ADF's success (Perkins 14 was one of the better reviewed titles of the last Horrorfest), it's clear that they see the bonus inherent to working with thousands of hungry talents. From the Massify press release on their new deal:

By Brad McHargue

Am I the only who thinks 3-D horror films are a waste of time and money?

While some films may lend themselves to the technology (such as Burst, which is about exploding humans), the effect is usually lost on me. In the end, it almost seems like a distraction to prevent the audience from realizing your story is formulaic and conventional. The effect is lost once the film hits DVD, and although Blu Ray technology can emulate 3-D quite well, the overall impact is diminished considerably.

Given the recent spate of horror films being filmed in 3-D, it comes as no surprise that the Saw franchise will venture into the third dimension with 2010's Saw VII. Shock reports that the seventh installment in the seemingly never-ending franchise will feature a longer production time and be more expensive ... due to the conversion to 3-D.

Read more at Horror Squad!

Ten years from now, 95% of the human population has been transformed into vampires, with those few uninfected survivors evading capture as best they can and those already captured being farmed for every last drop of their blood. However, supplies are dwindling, substitutes aren't working, and vampires who are driven by starvation to feed on one another tend to mutate for the worse.

This is the world of Daybreakers, a more ambitious and straight-faced follow-up than anyone might've expected from the Spierig Brothers in the wake of their cheeky low-budget aliens-and-zombies debut, Undead; better yet, it's a smarter and more refreshing take on the vampire genre than most of late, and a solid action flick in its own right.

Read the rest at Horror Squad!

I'm beginning to think that Liam Neeson owns Hermione Granger's Time Turner, or that he has a lifelong supply of Red Bull because he's signed on for another role -- and this one would appear to be filming simultaneously with The A-Team. According to The Hollywood Reporter reports that Neeson has just joined Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in Paul Haggis' The Next Three Days.

Days is a remake of the 2008 French thriller Pour Elle, and accuses an ordinary woman (Banks) of a gruesome crime she insists she didn't commit. She's sent to prison and becomes suicidal, and her desperate husband (Crowe) plots to break her out. (Ah, love!) But she'll have a little help from Neeson, who plays an ex-con who has broken out of prison multiple times, wrote a how-to guide about it, and offers his assistance to Crowe. The role is being described as "cameo in nature" which suggests Neeson might be narrating his own Dummy's Guide to Escaping From Prison, or is at least available to Crowe by cell phone to work out the tougher bits.

Filming just started on Days in Pittsburgh last Friday, and wraps on December 12. The A-Team just started filming too, so I'm honestly surprised that their schedules can coincide so neatly. Maybe Neeson is ducking down to Pittsburgh and filming this one on the weekends. I think they're missing a prime opportunity here to tie The Next Three Days into The A-Team universe. If there's one thing Hannibal Smith knows anything about, it's being accused of crimes you didn't commit, and evading the law until you're free of them.

In my neck of the woods, the Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore seemed to spot it first. The Colonial Promenade, de facto destination for dollar movies (on Tuesdays anyway), appeared to be opening something called Blood Creek on Friday. The only title that IMDb had to spare was a 2006 Canadian horror flick that had already come out on DVD up there, although this map of showtimes would suggest that it's sweeping the nation regardless.

However, Lionsgate had opened Midnight Meat Train at this same theater and others like it last summer, and they did have distribution rights for Joel Schumacher's latest thriller, which had been alternating titles between Creek and Town Creek while sitting on the proverbial shelf for nearly two years. Without a Clive Barker to raise a fuss this time around, who was to know any better if it slipped into a couple of so-called 'dollar' theaters over the weekend?

Yesterday, Memphis' John Beifuss confirmed that said film was to quietly open in their market as well. He mentions Dallas as another location for the film. Bloody Disgusting readers name-checked Canton, OH; Manteca, CA; Las Cruces, NM; Wichita, KS; and Plano, TX; Shock-ers mentioned Willoughby, OH and Saginaw, MI.

We have our review up over on Horror Squad. In the meantime, if you happen to notice it playing in your neighborhood, help us out narrow things down by commenting below. We find "shame releases" all sorts of fascinating.

(Pardon the modest shot of the one-sheet, but until my cell phone looks to co-operate a bit better, that's the first glimpse of it that you can see online.)

I've yet to determine whether John Travolta shot The Taking of Pelham 123 or From Paris with Love first, but it's nice to see him progress from a shaved-bald baddie with a fu manchu and a fondness for the f-word to a shaved-bald bad-ass with a full goatee and a fondness for the f-word. Such range he has.

Travolta's Agent Wax (yes, really) is teamed up with American lackey Richard Stevens (played by Dublin's own Jonathan Rhys Meyers) to prevent a terrorist attack in Paris (played by Paris). If the new expletive-laden trailer from Movie City News is any indication, there'll be plenty of wisecracks and crack shots in Pierre Morel and Luc Besson's follow-up to Taken, whose credits alone should've told us as much.

It's strange to see a trailer takes its own tonal turn towards the end, but it looks like things go from cheeky fun to Training Day 2. Let's hope the movie doesn't get bogged down in the same way come next February. You can check out the trailer after the jump, but bear in mind that it is a bit NSFW.

The latest movie from writer-director Tyler Perry, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, may strike you as being another comedy featuring Perry's big bad old lady Madea. However, Madea has only a small role as comic relief in this melodrama/morality play. The credits tell us that the movie is based on Perry's 2000 play of the same name, but after reading summaries of the play, the two seem to have little in common apart from the title and a moral awakening on the part of the lead characters.

April (Taraji P. Henson) is a mess -- a nightclub singer who rarely sees the light of day, an alcoholic, a woman heavily involved with a married man (Brian White) who pays all her bills. Suddenly, she has three children foisted upon her -- caught trying to break into Madea's house, they confess that the grandmother who has been raising them has gone missing. Madea sends them to Aunt April, who is unwilling to take them but can't find another option. In the meantime, the local church sends April a handyman to help fix her crumbling old house in return for room and board, the optimistic and caring Sandino (Adam Rodriguez). How will April deal with these disruptive people in her life?

A colleague of mine once observed that the very manner by which Chev Chelios had to keep himself alive in the Crank films respectively represented the approach that writing/directing team Neveldine/Taylor took for each of them, which is to say that Crank 1 was all about keeping our hearts racing and Crank 2 was all about shocking us as an audience. It's a simple, literal assessment that nonetheless cleared up why yours truly was a fan of the first and yet let down by the second -- I'd rather be excited than appalled any day.

And at the intersection of 'thrill' and 'shock' is precisely where N/T's latest, Gamer, falls, and it succeeds considerably more when it's shooting for the former than when it's reveling in the latter.

Every day, I get up and I wonder why the movie gods have never seen fit to grant us a Nicolas Cage movie in 3D. I can think of no flaw in The Wicker Man that a 3D bear suit punch couldn't fix altogether, and I know I'd be ten times more interested in The Sorcerer's Apprentice if we got some 3D trenchcoat swishing. But at last, my wish has been granted, though it probably won't be until 2010, 2011 or something, as The Hollywood Reporter has announced Cage will Drive Angry in three-freaking-D!

Directed by Patrick Lussier, who co-wrote the script with Todd Farmer, Drive Angry centers on a man who is driven literally and figuratively by rage. What has filled him with such unquenchable anger? Why, a gang that killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. He's hunting them down, one by one, and mile by mile. I'm just going to quote THR here because to paraphrase would be a sin: "The vendetta / rescue spins out of control as the chase gets bloodier by the mile, leaving bodies strewn along the highway." If you thought Vanishing Point was too boring and 2D, Drive Angry will be the film for you.

Drive Angry will be burning rubber and leaving its gasoline fumes all over Shreveport, Louisiana in April, courtesy of Nu Image / Millennium Films' new Louisiana studio. As we wait for Cage to pop out of the screen, you can revive our Love Him or Tolerate Him debate all over again!

You can't keep a good Sylvester Stallone hero down, even if they should have been dead ten or twenty times over through the course of their 1980s careers. John Rambo is set to take another step towards complete and utter immortality as Variety reports that Stallone is officially putting a fifth Rambo film into production.

Stallone has been avidly talking about a fifth Rambo for nearly two years, and last anyone heard, was debating whether to set it in Austria or America. But seeing as there's not a ton of John Rambo-esque conflict in Austria at the moment, and Rambo did show him back on U.S. soil, he's opted for the latter. The storyline finds our hero on the U.S.-Mexican border, fighting through human traffickers and drug lords in order to rescue a young kidnapped girl. (Actually, I can see the exact same movie set in Austria, but Stallone & Company probably realized it would be too close to the story of Taken. Or maybe they really did opt in favor of geographical continuity.)

Lest you think this is just talk, Nu Image / Millennium Films have officially green-lit the film, and it's set to begin production in the spring. I know I should be really critical of this and roll my eyes, but I can't help it. There's something very comforting in seeing an old warhorse continue to unleash semi-automatic hell on those most deserving of it.