Crispin Glover Tagged Articles at Cinematical
What Is It? -- Cinematical with Crispin Glover
Filed under: Independent », Theatrical Reviews », DIY/Filmmaking », Movie Marketing », Interviews », Cinematical Indie »
[Note: If the video plays slowly for you, feel free to download it straight from Netscape. Also, the running time is just over 10 minutes.]
Cinematical recently attended a screening of What Is It?, which was written and directed by Crispin Glover. He also plays a small role in the film, and has been touring (it also screened at Sundance last year) with a print and his "Big Slide Show", where he reads and shows images from several of the books he has published. He's an extremely interesting guy, very well-spoken, highly intelligent, and couldn't have been nicer. It presents a real conundrum, because on one hand you have a really strange film, but on the other you have an intelligent person telling you why they made the choices they did in making the film. With Crispin Glover, it was like yin and yang / night and day.
Now having said that, What Is It? is without a doubt one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. There is a lot of stuff in here that will make you queasy, uncomfortable, and possibly even offended. A word of warning to the wise: if you're offended by people killing live snails in pretty graphic ways, you're going to want to avoid this one. Also, if you're disturbed by scenes of graphic sexuality, you'll want to skip this. Additionally, the use of a cast made up almost entirely of actors with Down's syndrome feels exploitative at times, and that could be bothersome to some people. If you can get through all of that, there's also a fair amount of swastikas on display, nude women wearing animal masks, a character in blackface, a mom forcing her disabled son to inhale smoke from a pipe through a tube, and Shirley Temple as you've never seen her before.
Save the Back to the Future Timeline!
It's either that, or save the clock tower, it's your choice. Granted, if you help save the clock tower, then future generations may forget when it was struck by lightning, and of course that'll strand Marty McFly in the past forever, but we digress.There is a massive and mind-bogglingly complete Back to the Future timeline on Wikipedia that is the effort of some seriously fanatical fans. It details events that were cut from the original scripts (for instance, did you know that Doc Brown and Marty met in 1983 when Marty showed up to sweep the Doc's garage?), the animated series, and meticulous picking apart of the films themselves. It's a real labor of love, and it's in danger.
Wikipedia has some pretty strict policies regarding verifiability, and that leaves the BTTF timeline somewhere between limbo and a hard place. Check out the discussion page where people are chiming in on whether to keep the article or not. So far is a resounding "keep it!" but if you want to give your own opinion on the matter, roll up your sleeves and dive right in. Wikipedia is by the people, for the people.
My two cents on the matter is "keep it." But it goes a bit deeper than that. I've probably seen Back to the Future at least 20 times, and it's ingrained into the folds of my brain (perhaps that explains a lot). This timeline is really an amazing work of fans that detail everything you could possibly want to know about the history of
Guilty Pleasure: The 'Friday the 13th' Series
Filed under: Horror », Paramount », Remakes and Sequels », Guilty Pleasures »
How many horror movie series start with a good movie and then just get worse and worse? I'm talking mainly horror movies that move past the "trilogy" stage, like Halloween, The Exorcist, Hellraiser, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.
What sets the Friday the 13th series apart is that it started in mediocrity and continues in mediocrity. No one has ever been disappointed by a Friday the 13th movie; each and every one delivers exactly the same thing. A friend of mine, a beer connoisseur, once explained to me that even though Budweiser beer is bland and horrible, it's apparently a difficult task to continually brew beer with the same taste. There's something admirable, even comforting about that. When one comes to a Budweiser or a Friday the 13th movie, one attains the illusion of stability in an unstable world.
Back to the Future -- Spotlight on Continuity
Filed under: Comedy », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Universal », Fandom », Home Entertainment »
Continuity is one of the most difficult things to manage on a film. A script supervisor is always on set making sure everything in the shooting script or screenplay is covered on film, and also making sure continuity errors (the things that become "goofs" in a film's IMDb listing) are avoided -- or, more realistically, kept to a minimum. Usually this requires meticulous note-taking and careful observation of actors appearances, placement of props, set decoration and other such details. The importance of continuity is best exhibited in a film like Back to the Future Part II, which not only had to maintain its own continuity, but also work with the continuity of the original Back to the Future, since it revisits many of that first film's settings, scenes and shots. I've always wanted to play the "Enchantment Under the Sea Dance" sequences of both films at the same time to see how well Robert Zemeckis did with the continuity, but I didn't care enough to buy another VCR or DVD player. Fortunately, however, the internet keeps making dreams come true, and now we can see a split screen showing both films, and check to see how they match up. A guy named Matthew Muhl did the job for us and synced up the 15-minute-long section of the films, and it appears the makers of the sequel were mostly spot on, with the few exceptions being performance based (watch Lea Thompson as she tells Marty that George will drive her home). The two films aren't time-exact, but movies rarely represent real time, so that isn't an error on the part of the filmmakers.
The script supervisors on BTTF2 were Marion Tumen and Alan Greedy -- perhaps they should have been given a special Oscar for continuity.
Glover Takes What Is It? Into his Own Hands
Filed under: Drama », Independent », Fandom », Distribution », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
For the great majority of the country (apart from my friend Sue, who is still haunted by his appearance in River's Edge), Crispin Glover is and will forever be George McFly. No matter what he does for the rest of his career, or how weird he gets, that's how we'll always remember him. Glover, though, isn't happy just resting on his increasingly odd laurels. In addition to appearing in tons of wide-ranging films, he's also gotten into directing over the last few years, and What Is It?, his debut as a director, made its first appearance at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Acted by a cast made almost entirely of people with Down Syndrome, the film has been described as "weirdness for weirdness' sake," and not surprisingly didn't exactly pile up distribution deals. Undaunted by the lack of distributor interest, however, Glover has decided to take What Is It? on the road: He's set up about six weeks of screenings (running from late October through early December), and will visit New York, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles with the film. Not only will there be screenings, but Glover will actually be on hand at each screening to talk about his baby and, presumably, answer questions. If you're interested in Glover and What Is It?, this is really the only way to see the film -- it's clear from reading Sundance reviews that his words about it at the screenings there went a long way towards rescuing the film from complete dismissal by audiences and journalists alike.
H.G. Lewis Splatterfest Gets Remade
Filed under: Horror », Remakes and Sequels »
Usually when we talk about the current wave of horror remakes, the conversation has to do with well-known titles like Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or The Omen, but the guys over at Open Sky Entertainment decided to set their sights on a lesser-known piece of low-budget genre cheese. This explains why we'll soon be seeing a remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1970 grindhouse semi-classic The Wizard of Gore. Well, maybe you won't be seeing it, but I know I will be.Written by first-timer Zach Chassler and directed by Jeremy Kasten (All Souls Day, The Attic Expeditions), the new-fangled Wizard of Gore was barely on my radar screen before the Bloody Disgusting gang reminded me that the flick was almost finished ... and get this cast: Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif, and Jeffrey Combs! Not too shabby!
The original flick had to do with a malevolent mind-controlling magician who could compel his subjects to do truly nasty things onstage ... and I'm guessing the remake will stick close to that concept. (Yes, Mr. Glover is playing the maniacal magician, and you just know that's gotta be worth the rental fee.) No release date has been announced just yet, but BD.com snagged a pretty slick poster off of IMDb, so go on and give it a look-see.
Incidentally, another H.G. Lewis remake just hit the DVD shelves recently; Tim Sullivan's 2001 Maniacs is, of course, a remake of the old-school splatter king's 2000 Maniacs -- only with one extra maniac.
Sundance Blog Roundup: Robert Downey Jr. is nice; Dennis Hopper is old
Filed under: Independent », Sundance », Festival Reports », Cinematical Indie »
Some film students got shut out of a screening of A Guide to Recognizing Your
Saints, in spite of having hard tix. But don't feel too bad for them - while standing in the cold
shivering, they met the director and actors, and ended up having lunch with them! And to prove it, they got a pic with
Robert Downy Jr. (pic right)! - A sighting of Nick Cave and Marlee Matlin -- no, not together, so don't get excited.
- Imogen Heap contributed music to Chronicles of Narnia. Check out video footage and photo gallery of their concert at Starbucks Cafe.
- Cinnamon director Kevin Everson blogs about Team Cinnamon shaking it up at Sundance.
- Crispin Glover should play the Joker in the next Batman movie? I still remember him going all Hong Kong Phooey on David Letterman years ago.
- Dennis Hopper was at the Stay premiere, and looked...old? Man, that's harsh.
- Defamer talks about the premiere of Destricted, which may well win the prize for most walkouts at Sundance.
From King Kong to Batman?
Filed under: Action », Drama », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Casting », RumorMonger », Comic/Superhero/Geek », Remakes and Sequels »
At last count, there were roughly 20 billion names swirling around the blogosphere in
connection with the role of The Joker in the Batman
Begins sequel. Out of the muddle, the three that seem to emerge most often are Paul Bettany, Crispin
Glover, and Lachy
Hulme, whoever that is. While second-hand reports suggest that Hulme
is unlikely to play the role and the Glover rumors have recently quieted, the Bettany talk is still going strong. And
now a new name can be added to the mix: King
Kong (and, lest we forget, Oscar winner) star Adrien
Brody has decided that he should get to play the role, though no one from the movie has actually ever approached him
about it. Said Brody, "I would love to play The Joker. I think he would be deformed and creepier." (Creepier
than what was never made clear.)I know we've asked about your Joker casting ideas a dozen times already, but does the Brody rumor do anything for you? Personally, I love Bettany and would be more than happy to see him in the role.
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