Oftentimes Hollywood's lack of originality leads to overexposed trends. Remember when every action movie seemed to be easily defined as 'Die Hard on a ...'? Remember when disaster movies were all the rage? And then twenty years later when they were all the rage again? Remember when there were like a hundred body-swapping comedies? Well, there appear to be fewer trends these days, or maybe it's just that Hollywood turns trends into full-blown practices, as in the case of sequels, comic book movies and fantasy films based on literary franchises. Nowadays even a promised trend, like the one involving religious Passion of the Christ copycats, isn't necessarily going to happen. But despite there being so few here-today-gone-tomorrow film fads, there's at least seven bad ideas currently in vogue in Tinsel Town, and all of them need to disappear soon, lest they too become permanent.

1. Torture Porn

I'm going to start with an easy, surely obvious one. Torture porn is the latest trend in horror, a genre that changes its predominant style every few years, and it may be the most despised -- at least by us non-horror junkies. I miss the days when a friend, an actual junkie, could drag me to a harmless scary movie that provided a few screams, a few laughs and afterward, at the most, a few silly nightmares. Now, with each new horror movie there's promise of a seriously depressing experience. After watching The Hills Have Eyes, I realized I hadn't been frightened at all. Instead I wanted to cry my heart out. I haven't been to a horror flick since, and my friend is going solo. Sure, I hear that Eli Roth's movies are a lot more enjoyable than watching a young woman raped while watching her father burned alive and her mother raped and then shot in the head, but I just haven't been in the mood to find out.

Apparently the torture porn trend is already on its way out. Hostel II performed poorly at the box office and Captivity may have peaked too soon, reaching maximum tastelessness before even opening in theaters. So what will be next? I'm rather looking forward to when slasher movies are in fashion again, when I can delight in seeing sinful human beings killed off quickly and deservedly by an implausible maniac. Which brings me to the next trend ...

In a new interview at comingsoon.net, legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven discusses The Hills Have Eyes II, which is a sequel to last year's remake of The Hills Have Eyes, but not a remake of Craven's The Hills Have Eyes II, which was a sequel to Craven's The Hills Have Eyes. which was an update of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and was recently remade without credit to Craven as Chaos. See? Who says there's no original ideas in Hollywood? Craven wrote the new Hills Have Eyes II (They still have eyes!) with his son Jonathan and it releases Friday. From the interview, it also looks like we can expect yet another remake of one of his films, this time of his debut The Last House On The Left, which itself was an update of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and was recently remade without credit to Craven as Chaos. We first heard rumblings of this way back in August, when it was eyeing an early 2007 start date.

I can still recall watching Last House as a kid, intrigued by Roger Ebert's positive review. That was the day I lost my innocence. I won't be watching it again, and I doubt I'd try to stomach a sure-to-be more extreme remake, but the plot was basically: "Teenage girls get raped, tortured and killed. Parents strike back with excessive force." The original was shot for $90,000 and funded by Boston theater owners, who wanted cheap flicks to round out double features. This remake will likely cost a bit more. In the article, Craven also mentions the rumored remakes of his People Under the Stairs and Shocker (a movie it doesn't seem humanly possible to make any worse, so more power to them). He doesn't confirm them, but he certainly doesn't rule them out either. Craven actually says in the article: "I think the biggest danger is that people just think that any kind of horror film they make will make money or that they don't have to bring the highest standards to it, which sometimes can happen." It sure can, Wes. It sure can.

It's starting to seem like Craven is going to have carbon copies of his entire filmography. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but...isn't this just getting kind of sad?

New corporate stepchild Fox Atomic pulled out all the stops at ComicCon yesterday for their latest offering, The Hills Have Eyes II. (If I have to explain that this is a sequel to a remake, you probably shouldn't be reading this post.) The day's activities started with an invitation-only breakfast, attended by producer and co-screenwriter Wes Craven and the film's two female leads, Jessica Stroup and Daniella Alonso. Most of the attendees of the breakfast arrived early and planted themselves at one of several round breakfast tables, in anticipation of some kind of formal welcome from Craven himself, but nothing of the kind was on the menu. Instead, Craven and party arrived without fanfare and sat themselves down at one of the tables, ready to eat. Just as the first coffee cups were starting to get cold, the busy PR people dimmed the lights and treated us to a never-before-seen clip of the upcoming film. The scene in question involves a 'mutant birth' sequence -- not a mutant giving birth, but a seemingly normal woman giving birth to a horrible mutant. After basically ripping his way out of mom's vagina, the mutant baby promptly stands up and punches mom in the face. No, I'm not kidding.

After this, we were allowed to view another clip, which seemed like a trailer but went on for several minutes and seemed to contain scattered bits of new footage. Not about to leave Craven and the ladies to eat in peace, several journos eventually began to saunter over to the director's breakfast table to pepper him with questions; for the next thirty minutes or so, Craven stood by his table, talking in the direction of several outstretched hands and digital tape recorders. Stroup and Alonso also received the treatment, although they seemed to be more in demand for photo opportunities than for serious, get-to-know-you, how-did-you-approach-this-character type of interviews. The breakfast dispersed about an hour after it began, and everyone went their separate ways. About four hours later, the Hills crew would reassemble in ComicCon's main auditorium for a panel discussion open to the general convention audience. The event may have been more sparsely attended than expected, because shortly into it, the organizers suddenly decided to let in the massive crowd waiting outside for Kevin Smith, an hour early.

A few days ago, Slither-maker James Gunn mentioned on his MySpace page that his adorably splattery sci-fi horror rom-com was the receipient of four Fangoria Chainsaw Award nominations. My response was "Hey, cool. Where are the rest of the nominations?!?!?" And now, a few days later, here they are. Neat-o.

Although Fangoria has been doing their annual Chainsaw awards for over a decade now, 2006 marks the very first time the event will be televised, much to the delight of zombie freaks and slasher geeks all over North America. The event will be held in L.A. on October 15th, although the Fuse Network won't be airing it until the 22nd. (Which means if you want to watch the event "un-spoiled," I wish you luck.) Want to throw your own votes into the tally? Fine. You can vote right here, but only between September 1st and 13th (which is a Friday, mwaahaaa!)

After the jump you'll find a complete list of all the 2006 Chainsaw nominees, plus my own predictions on which flicks would win if the event were called Amazing Geek Weinberg's Horror Awards instead of The Chainsaws.

Maybe I'm too cynical, and immediately calling Fox Atomic's just-announced slate of films bombs might be a bit harsh, but the new youth-centered specialty division of 20th Century Fox has such an unoriginal bunch of releases, I can't help but expect the worst. Besides, with a name like Atomic, how can one not make the connection? Martha already told you about Turistas, the studio's first, and only fresh, title. After that we'll be treated to two sequels, The Hills Have Eyes 2 and 28 Weeks Later, in the spring of next year and eventually we'll be permitted to suffer through the Revenge of the Nerds redo and The Comebacks, which is yet another movie about an awful sports team.

Even more disturbing than Atomic's horribly worthless crop is how most of the films don't even seem appropriate for the "young adult" demographic the studio is targeting. Maybe I'm unclear as to what "young adult" refers to these days, but I thought it meant adolescents. Maybe it means late teens, though, since the first installments of the two sequels (follow that?) were rated R, as was the first version of Nerds -- not that it makes economic sense for Fox to do the remake with as much nudity (though, come on, wasn't that the only reason you saw it?). So either all these movies are going to be watered down in addition to being totally lacking in creativity, or Fox has changed its mind as to what its new arm is all about. I'm guessing the former, because in addition to being a movie distributor, Fox Atomic will also be publishing comic books (yeah, I know, older people read comic books, I was one of them that did, but you know what I mean). The graphic novels The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning and 28 Days Later: The Aftermath (where is Revenge of the Nerds: Enough Already?) will be released next year.

V for Vendetta roared to the top of the box office this weekend, its take of about $26 million out-earning the nearest competition by more than $10 million. While that total - on just under 3400 screens - sounds pretty impressive, it's believed to be below the studio's opening weekend hopes. Meanwhile She's the Man, the week's other debut, met estimates with $11 million, which was enough to make it the fourth-highest earner of the weekend. Finishing second was Failure to Launch which, with a take of $15.8 million, fell 35% from last week's chart-leading totals. In third was The Shaggy Dog with $13.6 million, the audience for which fell only slightly after last week's open - thanks to families with small kids, this one might have some staying power. Wrapping up the top five was The Hills Have Eyes, which took in $8.1 million; the film's $28.8 million total after just two weeks in release is nearly twice its budget.

Full numbers are after the jump.

Three big studio flicks go wide this week, and what do you know - all of them were screened for critics, even the horror remake! Someone, make a note of the date. Reviews of all three are all over the place, but in sum: Failure to Launch is either astonishingly sharp and well-acted or meh; The Hills Have Eyes is really, really violent; The Shaggy Dog is either cute or stupid (the latter if you're mature, or at least think you are). Details follow.

• Failure to Launch: I can't possibly express to you how odd it is it to read a dozen or so reviews of this movie, back to back. You go from Robert's "at least it doesn't suck," to Stephen Hunter's declaration that the film is "the only American comedy in a long time that could be called Wilderan in its concept and execution"; from Roger Ebert, who hates the movie so much that he resorts to a story of being bitten by a Kubrick donkey, to your friend and mine, Mick LeSalle, who praises Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker for their rare willingness to "go out of their way to project thought and emotion in concentrated doses." I mean, honestly. What's a girl to think? There are mixed opinions all the time, but this is insane.
  

Anyone who enjoys movies keeps a secret tally of any movie's strengths and weaknesses. Like an Olympic judge rating an athlete's performance, the final score determines whether a movie rates a recommendation or is forgotten as an also-ran.

As far as formula fare goes, one could do worse than the above-middlin' romantic comedy Failure To Launch starring Matthew McConaughey as a 30-something who still lives with his folks (Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) until they hire a motivationalist (Sarah Jessica Parker) to help him fly the nest. Naturally and against all odds, McConaughey's and Parker's completely artificial relationship blossoms into something more. Here's how I broke it down:

First, it's funny. Not just an occasional giggle, sit-com kind of funny but infused throughout funny. TV vets Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, who are attached to this year's Steve Carell update of Get Smart, may be green as screenwriters, this being their first project produced, but with that inexperience comes a kind of hunger. Of course, most first-timers become well-fed and lazy after a taste of success like this, but for now, proof of their talent is apparent. Each character is created with a specific purpose, as is every scene, sequence and act. It's all very textbook, but it works. Mark one in the "plus" column.
 

"Don’t tarry, and don’t take no shortcuts." - Price Marshall, surviving member of the Donner Party

The Hills Have Eyes may be set in the sprawling, wide-open and lightly radioactive spaces of the American West (and shot in Morocco), but it actually occupies narrow territory. It's a remake of a film that lies in a sub-genre of a sub-genre of horror. Back in the '70s, films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and Last House on the Left (along with an army of lesser imitators) combined low budgets and high body counts; full of lifeless performances and life-like (or, more accurately, death-like) makeup, they formed a sub-genre to themselves: Snuff-horror.  Made in 1973, The Hills Have Eyes (the follow-up film for Last House director Wes Craven) also shares the same settings, look and feel of Texas Chainsaw and even Steven Spielberg's Duel, where the blazing desert sun shows the way to dusty death.

So, a snuff-horror desert-setting flick, with doom in the dunes and blood on the sand. The Hills Have Eyes, in its newest iteration, is actually helped substantially by the fact that very few people have seen the original. Directed by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension), this version of The Hills Have Eyes is a creepy, jumpy gore-fest that should please horror fans – and, bluntly, it's hard to imagine the circumstances under which someone who isn't a horror fan would want to see it.

It's cold and rainy here in blustery Seattle, so why not go catch a movie? Here's a roundup of some of the film offerings around the Emerald City:

FREE MOVIES IN SEATTLE! 

Sure, you can listen to your fave radio station to find out about those nifty free preview screenings.  But if you're really a movie buff, you might want to check out Janet's Film Club at Janet Wainwright PR. They'll send you passes to get in free to lots of preview screenings! The only catch? Use 'em or lose 'em.

UW Film Club 

Japenese Film Series - Supermarket Woman (1996, Itami Juzo). Japanese comedy about a woman (Miyamoto Nobuko) hired to remake a small grocery store to compete against a large chain. Thursday, March 9 @ 7:30PM, UW Savery 239

A Moveable Feast  - Check out a rough cut of this film, by a former UW student. And it's free! At the Ethnic Cultural Center, 3940 Brooklyn Ave NE.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival March 5-19 - This year marks the 11th year of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, and they have a fantastic lineup. This year's fest runs at three venues: Seattle's Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), AMC Pacific Place, and Majestic Bay Theaters in Ballard. The festival really kicks into high gear this week, with an interesting lineup of films:

March 11 - The opening night film is Live and Become, which you can have with dessert at the 7PM showing (for passholders special ticket holders only), or without at 9:50PM. The film, which won the audience award at the 2005 Berlinale, tells the story of a young Ethiopian boy in the 1980s whose mother places him with a group of Ethiopian Jewish refugees to save him from the famine. As he grows from a boy into a man under his assumed identity, the lie under which he has lived begins to take its toll.

Check out the full lineup to see when other films are playing.