Once the Weinsteins (finally) got around to releasing Project Greenlight Movie #3 (aka Feast), it found a rather warm reception on the horror circuit. And while screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan were invited to join the Saw series and the Hellraiser remake, that doesn't mean the team doesn't have time for a sequel or two. (And that includes director John Gulager, who's also big for two more swings.)

We've been hearing little rumblings about Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds and Feast 3: The Happy Finish (?) for a little while now, but Fango brings us new word on a release date: Looks like Part 2 will be hitting video shelves on October 21. And since I've actually seen a few moments of Feast 2's unfinished gore-geyers, I can tell you one thing: They got the "sloppy" part right. Plot-wise, the sequel picks up right where we left off, with the crazy monsters now set to invade a nearby town. Expect a few familiar faces, several new victims, a lot of monsters, and tons of splattery mayhem. (It's like the Tremors series all over again, only in glorious "R"!)

Yes, I'm sorry to say it, but we officially won't be getting any Harry Potter next year. After Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince premieres on November 21of this year, we're going to have to wait almost two whole years for Part 1 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Coming Soon reports that the first part is set to hit theaters on November 19, 2010, with the second and final installment coming the next summer in 2011. It's nice that Potter fans won't have to wait a full year to see the Part 2, but it's still sad to think that so much time will pass before we can start wrapping up Harry Potter's life on-screen.

The end is still a few years off, but it still brings to mind the start of this cinematic whirlwind. When all this started, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Tom Felton were just wee little things. Check out that cute, bespeckled face above. It's hard to believe this is the nude boy who hurts horses in Equus. How times change. Just imagine how old they'll be and look by 2010!

Man oh man do I love a good Killer Croc flick. Problem is ... there's maybe one true "classic" of the sub-genre (that'd be Lewis Teague's and John Sayles' Alligator, of course), and the rest of 'em are pretty much floating crap. Over the past year or so we've seen a bit of a resurgence in the category: Lake Placid 2 is mindless stupidity; Stewart Raffill's Croc is slightly better than that; that Primeval one is a passable enough time-waster; and the indie Aussie import Black Water is actually quite good, although more of a slow-burn nature thriller than a chomp-'em-up horror flick -- but what of Rogue?

Yes, Rogue. Ring any bells? Sophomore effort from Wolf Creek director Greg Mclean, Rogue looks to be a standard enough Killer Croc flick that stars Michael Vartan, Radha Mitchell and Sam Worthington. The fact that the flick has been sitting on a shelf over at Weinstein Co. for over a year might seem like a red flag, but that's why the world needs horror geeks like me: So I can tell you that early reaction to the flick has been surprisingly positive! The flick came out in Australia last November, and while it didn't do a whole lot of business, I've been hearing rumblings from my horror colleagues that the movie's quite good!

We thought it would arrive as part of After Dark's 2007 event, but since unrated flicks cannot screen as part of AD Horrorfest, at least there was a good reason for the delay. And now with the U.S. release of Xavier Gans' Frontier(s) only a few weeks away, it only stands to reason that we'd be treated to a new poster, trailer, and website for the freaky French fright flick.

May 9 is when the stylish horror salad bar will hit the cinemas, but if you're not presently a part of the release pattern, fear not: You can pick up the DVD only a few days later. Click here to delve into the nutty, nasty world of Frontier(s), which is full of dangerous downloads, powerful pictures, and some decidedly violent videos. And then, since you're already hanging out at Cinematical anyway, feel free check out my review of the flick right here. Word is that the DVD will contain some extra goodies for the horror freaks; I shall update this post as soon as I receive an official note from After Dark.

A few months back I knocked the After Dark Horrorfest guys for not booking Frontiere(s) as part of their second annual sorta-festival. I quickly received a very cordial response from an AD representative who told me basically precisely this: "I'm emailing in regards to your article about "Frontiere(s)" and Horrorfest. Basically, I just wanted to let you know we absolutely are not going to cut this film up in any way. We have not accepted any rating for it so far and at this point we do not know if it's going to be released NC-17 or unrated. We haven't decided. But I promise you it will get released theatrically and in its originally intended form."

He also explained how an unrated / NC-17 film could not play as part of Horrorfest, given the existing contracts between the event and its venues. OK, fair enough. But the horror geeks are getting royally gore-teased by the Weinsteins on Inside, so when can we get a peek at this freaky Frontiere(s) flick already?

May 9, according to ShocktyDrop.com, is when Lionsgate will be releasing Xavier Gens' whacked-out horror stew in theaters. It will no doubt be a contractually-mandated very limited release pattern, but here's some strange-yet-good news: It seems that the DVD will arrive only four days later. Gee, now there's some incentive to get out to the theaters, eh?

Normally the arrival of a new release date wouldn't warrant an entire blog post of its own ... but then again most movies aren't hardcore post-apocalyptic action-adventures from the guy who directed Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Yes, genre fans, Mr. Neil Marshall is back with a concept that should thrill anyone old enough to remember the sheer cinematic awesomeness of Mad Max, The Road Warrior and Escape from New York.

Starring Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell, Adrian Lester and the mega-cool Sean Pertwee, Doomsday goes a little like this: "Authorities brutally quarantine a country as it succumbs to fear and chaos when a virus strikes. The literal walling-off works for three decades – until the dreaded Reaper virus violently resurfaces in a major city. An elite group of specialists, captained by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), is urgently dispatched into the still-quarantined country to retrieve a cure by any means necessary. Shut off from the rest of the world, the unit must battle through a landscape that has become a waking nightmare."

Sold! Done! Yes, I'd like to see that movie NOW please, thanks very much! But alas, we must wait until March 14 to enjoy the end of the world, and it looks like Universal chose a very solid release date for the action thriller. Also opening on that date is a family flick (Horton Hears a Who), an awful-looking Karate Kid retread (Never Back Down), and a cop drama (Pride and Glory) -- which means an R-rated action-fest could do pretty well that weekend.

I'm not all that interested in the box office numbers, really. I just want to see Neil Marshall maintain his perfect record.

When Rogue/Universal pulled their Liv Tyler / Scott Speedman thriller The Strangers out of its July 13 release date, that left a certain VOID in the movie schedule, which might explain why Lionsgate opted to bump its oh-so-controversial Captivity into that spot. (The flick had previously been scheduled for May 18 and then again for June 22, but now it's set for July 13. Until they change it again.) This means that 1408, A Mighty Heart and September Dawn now have June 22 all to themselves, while Captivity now gets July 13 all to itself! It's great how these things work out, isn't it? (Until another studio realizes what's going and and drops one of their flicks into July 13.)

This gives Captivity a little more time to "promote awareness" following their advertising embargo that was placed on them by the MPAA for having the audacity to publish unapproved posters that were both nasty and inappropriate. Then again, horror flicks rarely do all that well in the summertime, so I'm guessing LG and After Dark just want to unload the damn thing already. The Roland Joffe horror flick stars Elisha Cuthbert as a woman who gets abused. Be there on June 22 July 13. That's two days after the new Harry Potter flick, by the way.

Thanks to people like Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and Lawrence Kasdan, I'm a huge fan of the Western genre. (Yes, Lawrence Kasdan. What of it? Silverado rocks!) So when I read that Warner Bros. was bankrolling a Western with Brad Pitt as Jesse James and Casey Affleck as the man who (finally) put Jesse in a pine box, I was more than a little intrigued. Then I learned that Andrew Dominik (Chopper) would be directing, that Ridley Scott (one of my favorites) was producing, and that the supporting cast would include Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel and Ted Levine. I was officially psyched for this movie.

Unfortunately that was about two years ago. So where the heck is the movie already? Its release date has been pushed around more violently than a Big Mac at a vegan rally, but what gives? It's got BRAD PITT in it, right? How tough is it to release a Brad Pitt movie these days? Well, according to The L.A. Times, the flick's been met with some pretty unfriendly test screening audiences. Reports also indicate that director Dominik has his preferred cut, but Pitt and Scott also have a version that they like. One of the cuts apparently runs over three hours long; WB wants something more Clint Eastwood-y, whereas Mr. Dominik seems to be shooting for something a bit more Terrence Malick-ish. Good thing they have three-time Oscar winner Michael Kahn helping out in the editing room.

Seems to be a prickly issue all around, but the thing only cost about $30 million, which is probably about as low-budget a studio Western as you'll ever find these days. Based on the book by Ron Hansen, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is presently scheduled for release on September 21. And I bet they shorten the title too.

A few days back, as I was sharing the link to the new Captivity trailer, I mentioned that the flick was still "locked in" to its May 18 release date. Well, turns out I was a bit premature with that assertion. Turns out that After Dark will hold the horror movie's release until June 22, most likely in an effort to appease the MPAA, which they royally pissed off with their unapproved (yet still published) billboard ads.

This moves the Elisha Cuthbert thriller from a head-to-head sorta-battle with Shrek the Third and positions it up against a whole bunch of movies, such as the fact-based tragedy A Mighty Heart, the big-time comedy Evan Almighty, the historical drama September Dawn, and the oft-delayed action-jiggle flick DOA: Dead or Alive. Odds are that one or more of these movies will be shifting release dates ... again. If Lionsgate and After Dark decide to push Captivity back again, the thing might just end up as an entry in the second annual After Dark Horrorfest.

It was about 15 months ago when I sat down at a Toronto Film Festival screening and enjoyed the hell out of David Ayer's Harsh Times. It's a stark, dark and (yes) harsh piece of 70's-style hard-boiled character study, and one that features two fantastic performances: one from Freddy Rodriguez and the other from the mega-chameleon known as Christian Bale. It's the story of a frantic Gulf War veteran who desperately wants to earn a career in law enforcement -- despite the fact that the guy's maybe three whiskers short of Postal Mode. Anyway, it's a damn good flick, so I kept my eye out to see when the thing would hit the cinemas already.

(Harsh Times was obviously a labor of love for Ayer, who, after penning the screenplays for The Fast and the Furious, Dark Blue and Training Day (among others), decided it was time to re-finance his house and use the money to direct his first feature. And so he did.)

The New York Times just published a rather excellent article that details what went on after the upstart Bauer Martinez boys offered Mr. Ayer $4 million for his movie. Needless to say, bitterness and animosity bubble just beneath the surface: Ayer hasn't received his full paycheck, Martinez claims to have dropped $15 million on advertising, although that money most likely came from MGM. Oh yeah, apparently MGM will be doing the distributing for Bauer Martinez ... which is weird because Bauer Martinez was supposed to be, well, a distribution company.

Long story short: Harsh Times will (finally) hit about 800 screens come November 10th, although most of you movie fans will have to be content with catching it on DVD some time early next year. Bale's performance is pretty much a force of nature, but I doubt a flick this "low profile" will be yielding any Oscar nominations. And that's a shame, because Bale's long overdue for some award-time affection. Isn't he?