TheLastWinter Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Color me surprised.

I feel like I shouldn't be any time something gets in line to be remade, but I thought we would've heard about a remake of the J.A. Bayona-directed, Guillermo del Toro-produced thriller The Orphanage by now. Well, it's indeed in the works, with del Toro remaining on board as producer and Larry Fessenden (The Last Winter) being brought on as director, according to THR.

An actor, producer, director, writer and editor in his own right, Fessenden has no small familiarity with the horror genre -- even presently starring as a grave robber in this Friday's horror-comedy, I Sell the Dead -- and his more considered filmmaking style seems ideal for a story that turns out to have as much sorrow in store as spooks.

The Reporter notes the the project is still in need of a lead actress. The original hinged on Belén Rueda's wonderfully empathetic performance; who do you think could fill the role of leading lady in this case? Not to dwell on that Lovely Bones post, but I really do think Rachel Weisz could bring the right sensibility to this, or maybe Diane Lane... Your thoughts?

TV is not one of my vices. At the moment, I'm not watching much at all. I'm a season behind with Lost. I'm patiently awaiting the return of 24. And lastly, I'm a big fan of a wonderful show that recently stared directly into the abyss of premature cancellation and lived to tell about it: Friday Night Lights. I don't watch enough to make a pronouncement like "it's the best drama on television," but it wouldn't surprise me: the show is consistently beautiful, subtle heartbreaking, and -- most important -- amazingly well-acted (this despite its practice of casting actors in their mid-20s to portray highschoolers, regrettable but necessary given the difficulty of finding good teenage actors who can credibly portray football players).

One of Friday Night Lights' MVPs is Zach Gilford, whose Matt Saracen -- a sophomore second-stringer shoved into the spotlight in the first season after the career-ending injury of the team's star quarterback -- is the heart and soul of the show. It remains to be seen whether the shy, awkward, good-hearted Saracen is an acting creation or if Gilford is mostly playing himself (in the only other place I've seen him -- Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter -- his performance was basically the same). Meanwhile, I'm glad to see that he's been able to capitalize on Friday Night Lights to secure a couple more roles. He will appear alongside Emmy Rossum in an indie drama called Dare, and is in final talks to star in an adaptation of David James Duncan's popular The River Why.

That last R-rated clip from 30 Days of Night was pretty cool, but wait'll you get a load of this new one. It's definitely more my kind of thing, since I prefer zombies to vampires, and the clip makes the pic look more like a zombie movie. What could be better than Mark Boone Junior driving around in some kind of chainsaw-esque tractor, slicing through multiple baddies while simultaneously blowing away others with a shotgun? Exactly. Nothing could be better. In fact, I think I like this scene better than that sequence in Dawn of the Dead where they're driving the modified bus around. But that partially has to do with my appreciation for Mark Boone Junior. He just looks like the perfect guy to be in charge of a task like this. Anyway, once again you have to prove you're 18 (or otherwise get through the sign-in page) in order to watch the clip. Or you could just wait until Friday when the movie hits theaters.

Cinematical wimp pansy editor-in-chief, Erik Davis, saw the film and loved it, even though he's probably back to sleeping with a night light. He even claims it's the most beautiful horror film he's ever seen. For those still out of the loop, the movie is based on Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's graphic novel about a small town far up north where the sun disappears for a whole month -- ripe time for a crop of vampires to go on a rampage. Directed by David Slade (Hard Candy), it stars Josh Hartnett, Ben Foster, Melissa George, my favorite supporting actor these days, Danny Huston, and, of course, Mark Boone Junior.

I'm not much of a horror buff myself, but if there is more stuff like this new clip, I'm pretty much sold on going to see it. And though I don't think I've ever needed a night light, I bet I'll have at least one nightmare as a result. It just looks like that kind of movie. At the very least, I'm sure I'd at least get freaked out the next time I'm walking around late at night in the snow. Between 30 Days of Night and the recently released The Last Winter, I'm pretty set never to go up to the arctic circle.

Something about Into the Wild drove massive amounts of people to see it this weekend, propelling Sean Penn's drama into the #1 spot on the specialty box office charts. Playing at just four locations, Into the Wild earned an impressive estimate of $50,310 per screen, according to Leonard Klady of Movie City News.

Cinematical's Kim Voynar described it as "one of the most polarizing films playing at Telluride this year ... even as we feel anger at Chris for hurting his family, or frustration at his choices, or fear for what will happen to him, a part of us has to admire his courage in taking a leap that most of us would never be able to take." James Rocchi had strong feelings as well: "As the credits roll at the close of Into the Wild, you don't feel like you've celebrated a life spent on the road less traveled; you feel like you've just witnessed a slow-motion suicide."

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was the other major limited release; it performed quite respectably with a per-screen average of $29,460 at five locations. I thought the film was glacially paced, incredibly gorgeous visually, and richly detailed in period authenticity and character. James Rocchi wrote: "Anyone looking for beauty and transcendence and a meditation on the West starring a terrific ensemble will be more than rewarded." Jeffrey M. Anderson was even more impressed: "Certainly one of the year's best films, and the best Western to come across the range since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1996)."

With such fierce, big name competition, other indie films opening this weekend fared less successfully. Larry Fessenden's environmentally-themed thriller The Last Winter played at two theaters for a $4,150 per-screen average, while Ray McKinnon's comedy Randy and the Mob brought in an estimated $3,020 at each of five locations. Ann Hu's drama Beauty Remains snagged just $1,310 per-screen at two screens.

In a spaceship, in an underwater vessel or in an Arctic or Antarctic station, some of the best science fiction takes place in an isolated setting. More precisely, such locations are the convention of the narrower genre of sci-fi horror, in which remote environments combined with tight, claustrophobic spaces are perfect for the unleashing of our worst fears. This is, of course, obvious to any viewer, who recognizes these are places difficult or impossible to escape or be rescued from. But more importantly these settings allow for psychological conflicts that parallel, heighten or even overshadow the genre's typical conflicts with aliens, sentient computers or supernatural beings.

Take Larry Fessenden's latest film, The Last Winter, which is set in an Arctic station and follows all the rules of the sci-fi horror genre, while almost completely leaving out the physical conflict. Yes, it features a supernatural threat, but it doesn't need one, because the film works so brilliantly as simply a psychological mood piece. In most of these kinds of films, the creature or villain is the pay-off for the audience that seeks some sort of spectacle, or at least some material baddie to make for a cinematically appropriate, externally battled climax. In The Last Winter however, the spectacle actually falls flat because it consists of disappointingly horrible special effects.