TheBlairWitchProject Tagged Articles at Cinematical
'Paranormal Activity' on DVD and Blu-ray December 29
Filed under: Horror », Paramount », Steven Spielberg », Home Entertainment »
If you still haven't seen Paranormal Activity, I don't know what you've been waiting for. Seeing the horror flick in theaters is one of those great moviegoing experiences -- the more people in the theater to scream and laugh with the better. Besides, I can only imagine that watching the thing at home would be so frightening you'll never be able to sleep soundly again. Oh, that probably appeals to many of you scary movie fans, in which case you'll be glad to know you have to wait only a little over a month more to pick up the DVD or Blu-ray of this little movie that could.Paramount will release Paranormal Activity to home video on December 29, just in time to give you something to purchase with the gift card you got over the holidays. Both the DVD and Blu-ray come with the theatrical version of the film as well as an unrated cut that includes an alternate ending (presumably the original one). And the Blu-ray includes a digital copy of the theatrical version, so you can play the movie on your iPod and watch it while hiding underneath your covers.
Cinematical Seven: Movies That Start Fights
Filed under: Horror », Independent », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », New Releases », Cinematical Seven »

I've been meaning to purchase and wear this t-shirt since I learned of its existence a couple of months ago, but I figured I'd better let the Twilight: New Moon hysteria die down first. It would appear, after all, that openly declaring one's hostility toward the Twilight franchise on one's person, even with a statement as unquestionably correct as "Vampires Don't Sparkle," is just asking for trouble. You do not want to mess with a gaggle of rabid Robert Pattinson fans.
I do not hate the Twilight franchise, actually, though I would like to suggest that the Twilighteers may live to regret sinking so much time and emotion into something so utterly banal. But I seem to be one of the few who occupy the middle ground. Twilight might be the most divisive love-it-or-hate-it phenomenon of the last few years. Not everyone adores Harry Potter, but most people have at least a grudging respect for it; Twilight has as many haters as fawning admirers.
You gotta admit that if you can use a movie to start an argument, it's at least good for something. Here are seven other movies that seem to disproportionately divide the moviegoing population into adoring fans and angry detractors.
1. Titanic - To get the obvious out of the way. It's amazing to me how often people make offhand derisive mentions of Titanic, as if its awfulness were well-established and self-evident. As with Twilight, of course, the surprisingly widespread disdain of this movie is a backlash against its army of obsessive partisans (and from a similar demographic to boot) -- the folks who showed up on local news shows in 1997 bragging about having seen it 16 times in the theater, etc. The fact that Titanic is a fantastic film -- and not really (or at least not only) for the reasons many of its fans think -- tends to get lost in the shuffle, sadly.
EW Counts Down 100 Best Films of Past 25 Years
Filed under: Classics », Comedy », Fandom », Lists »
This week Entertainment Weekly is "Counting Down the New Movie Classics," listing the best films made in the past 25 years. The magazine claims that all 100 are good enough to be considered alongside the usual classics (you know, like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, etc.), but I guess that's relative. I wouldn't consider #99, The Blair Witch Project, to be equated with Poltergeist III, let alone Psycho. But isn't that the fun of these lists? They fuel our excitement about cinema while also angering us that our favorites aren't higher up, or more commonly, that the films we hate most are included on any list, ever. On the first day of the countdown, EW shows us the bottom 25, which includes such masterpieces as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Breaking the Waves, In the Mood for Love and Full Metal Jacket. When I saw that the last of these was only at #94, I got really excited, wondering what 93 films could possibly be better. And then I was shocked to see that so-so comedies like Swingers and Waiting for Guffman and the fine but poorly aged Moonstruck placed higher. I almost didn't even see those titles, though, because I almost threw my computer when I saw that Napoleon Dynamite was just ahead of Back to the Future. Just another reason to hate Napoleon Dynamite, I guess. Even the Back to the Future sequels are better than ND, but I'm going to now assume they don't even make it on this list.
#s 75-51 will be revealed tomorrow. I wonder what kind of delights and blasphemies will meet us then.
Blair Witch Director's New Film Goes Straight To DVD
Filed under: Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Site Announcements », New Releases », Home Entertainment »
Whether you liked it or not, The Blair Witch Project was a pretty remarkable exercise in pop culture. Rabid debates of its ingenuity or lack thereof, numerous "Josh!!!" jokes, nausea from the less-than-steady cam work and the all too familiar "snotty camcorder confession". Even if you didn't like the movie, you had to admire how it managed to seep into the mainstream. Director Eduardo Sanchez was supposed to be the new genius of independent horror. Fast-forward a few years and every scrap of dignity the original film had was stripped away with an abomination known as The Blair Witch Project 2: The Book of Shadows -- now to be fair Sanchez had nothing to do with the sequel, but the die was cast.After 6 years, Sanchez finally has a new movie coming out, good news right? Or maybe not, the movie is going straight to DVD. I know lots of good films have found their market with DVD but there is something about a "direct-to-video" horror movie that fills me with images of bad b-movies – Rabid Grannies, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, that sort of thing. Sanchez's Altered is a revenge flick about a group of friends abducted by aliens who get the chance for a little payback for the probing, as it were. Plus, it looks like old habits die-hard because just like The Blair Witch Project there is a character blog and a website already. There isn't much content on either yet, but there are promises of updates to come. Altered is being released on DVD December 19th, any takers?
[via Film Junk]









