giallo Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Jennifer's Body
Diablo Cody wrote the script for this one in which Megan Fox plays a high school girl who is possessed by a demon and inflicts her wrath upon her male classmates. The trailer seems to imply that she's a vampire but most of the descriptions I've found are avoiding the "V" word. Amanda Seyfried plays Jennifer's best friend who must put a stop to the evil. You can check out Jennifer's Body on September 18.

District 9
There's a second trailer for this extraterrestrials as refugees flick produced by Peter Jackson. You see a little more of the aliens but they're quick glances. We do get come interesting glimpses of the alien technology and with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen making so much money I have to figure the public is going to like all the robots on display here. The aliens start slumming on August 14.

Giallo
Giallo is Italian for "yellow" but in this context it refers to an Italian film genre that combines police procedural with horror and exploitation elements. This is the type of film for which director Dario Argento is best known but he doesn't usually get Oscar winners like Adrien Brody to play his lead. The trailer reminds me of some of Argento's earlier stuff like Tenebre and Deep Red, which I'm sure is the idea. No U.S. release info yet.

While the text accompanying the images might be in Italian (any readers want to lend a hand and translate?), the pictures that Dario Argento threw up for his new film Giallo speak for themselves. You can see one above, plus lots more on Argento's site of Adrien Brody (who plays Inspector Enza Avolfi) -- both doing his thing and chatting with Argento, plus a little bit of blood and death, and a few shots of Emmanuelle Seigner (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), who plays Linda. The pair team up in the film to find her sister, who has been grabbed by a serial killer named Yellow.

While this is sure to be eerie, the whole back story to this flick amuses me. Vincent Gallo signed on in January to play the killer to Ray Liotta's Inspector. Then Gallo backed out because he didn't want to work with Dario's daughter, Asia. But now Ray and Asia are out, Adrien and Emmanuelle are in, and good ol' Vinnie should've waited it out (Yellow is now being played by newcomer Byron Deidra).

Giallo is due out next year.

An Academy Award winner and two beautiful women have joined the cast of the latest thriller from an Italian master of horror. Adrien Brody will star as a police detective investigating a serial killer in Giallo, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film will also star Emmanuelle Seigner (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, La Vie en Rose) and Elsa Pataky (Asterix at the Olympic Games, Snakes on a Plane). The great Dario Argento will be at the controls in the director's chair.

Brody steps into the gumshoe role originally filled by Ray Liotta and Seigner will take over the part intended for the pregnant Asia Argento. Monika told us about the casting and the basic premise in January: a serial slasher played by Vincent Gallo is on the loose. THR updates that, saying the tale "revolves around an American flight attendant who teams with an Italian investigator to search for her missing sister who has been abducted by a serial killer known only as Yellow."

What's better for a Thursday than super-exciting money news?!?! Enjoy:

• Cassandra's weak box office Dream hasn't tarnished Woody Allen's relationship with the Weinstein Company. According to Variety, they have decided to distribute his next film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. TWC has got the North American rights, and will release the film later this year (right now, it is still in post). Allen's latest film stars Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall as American girls who visit Spain "and become amorously entangled with a couple" -- Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. The likes of Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell weren't enough to bring the audiences in last time around, but can this cast do the trick?
• On the more indie side of things, Variety reports that Jada Pinkett Smith's directorial debut, The Human Contract, will be sold internationally by Lightning Entertainment, who will debut footage at Berlinale. The film stars Jason Clarke and Paz Vega as a "repressed advertising exec and a recklass woman" who are in a relationship. Very complicated, eh? Jada also pops up in the film, as does good ol' Ted Danson.
• Finally, we're back to the Weinsteins. Just in case Woody flops again, they've also picked up Dario Argento's upcoming horror flick Giallo. (Posted on pay-site Screen Daily, found on Ace Showbiz.) Once Dario is done filming Vincent Gallo as a creepy serial killer, the Weinstein Company will distribute the movie in the U.S. and Latin America.

Where could the Italian horror master go after The Mother of Tears? Our Scott Weinberg called it "the master's best flick since ... hell, since at least the mid-'80s." That leaves a pretty big wake to fill, and Variety reports that Dario Argento is planning to follow it up with Giallo, "an English-language homage to the genre that made him a cult helmer." (Aside from meaning Yellow, Giallo is also the word given to pulp thrillers in Italy.) The flick is being produced by the LA-based Hannibal Pictures, and comes from a screenplay by Damned writers Jim Agnew and Sean Keller. But what of its stars? Take out the "i," and you've got one -- Vincent Gallo -- who will be joined by Ray Liotta and Dario's daughter, Asia Argento.

In usual horror form, the movie "will revolve around serial slashings of some very attractive women being investigated by a solitary cop, played by Liotta, who engages in a cat-and-mouse game with the psychopathic perpetrator," Vincent Gallo. Someone must've been watching Dirt last season and thought there was way too little blood when Vinnie came to visit. He's definitely the right sort for this role, and I wonder if his penile fixation will find its way into the flick in any way. It'd fit with the whole attractive woman angle. As for vixen Asia, there's no word on who she'll play -- perhaps a would-be victim that Liotta has to save.

When production gets underway this February in Turin (where he shot Tears), Argento aims to put together a movie that taps into the director's 70s thrills, like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria. Thoughts?

If you're a fan of 1970s/early '80s-era Italian horror flicks (say, Torso, Eyeball, or Deep Red), then you'll certainly want to keep your own eyeballs out for a new concoction that's being touted as the "Masters of Italian Horror." No, it's got nothing to do with the U.S. "Masters of Horror" that's presently parading across cable TV and DVD shops, but it's pretty darn close enough.

The deal is that a quartet of seasoned Italian horror veterans will be directing their own feature film, and since this project has NOT requested funding from Italian TV, that (apparently) means that all bets are off where gore, guts, and gruesomeness are concerned. The filmmakers and the projects are as follows:

Horror Baby -- A 15-year-old paraplegic girl somehow turns into a serial killer after witnessing some nasty sex. Director: Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive, City of the Walking Dead, Cannibal Ferox)

Murder House -- A slasher flick set in a musician's villa. Director: Lamberto Bava (Devil Fish, Demons, Demons 2)

The Corners of the Night -- A young woman discovers terror in the house of her dead grandmother. Director: Sergio Martino (Blade of the Ripper, Slave of the Cannibal God, The Great Alligator)

Brotherhood -- Three boys murdered by the proprietors of a degenerate sex-ring get their revenge from beyond the grave. Director: second-time helmer Nicola Rondolino (Three Point Six)

I can't for the life of me figure out why Dario Argento isn't on board, but, oh well: All four of the flicks are expected to be ready for consumption come June of 2007.

Those wonderful horror freaks over at BloodyDisgusting had a brief sit-down with screenwriter Steven Katz, and the scribe had this to say about the alleged remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria: "(It) probably will not happen at this point." Ah, but the reasons WHY are what's so entertaining: "Katz informed [BloodyDisgusting] that the biggest challenge in writing the script was finding a reason for the witches to be using a dance academy for their evil-doings."

Although I'm far from the most ravenous giallo fan under the sun, I do appreciate why most everyone digs the Argento so much. Remaking Suspiria is like you trying to replicate a dream I had last night - and you want the dream to have a cohesive plot structure and clearly delivered volleys of teen-friendly exposition. Plus, cash-grab remakes generally rely on memorable characters and recognizable plot points, and Suspiria doesn't really fit into that formula. It's just too weird to be remade. The Twitch blog sums up the issue with a stinger: "Imagine being in the script meetings for (this) remake and suddenly trying to pull the very individual vision into your perceived 'real world' or 'modern business-like approach to movies' that have a primary intent to make large amounts of cash, potentially in pursuit of bastardizing culture from other countries." Zing!

Either way, it's a remake that nobody wanted to see. Slapping together a remake of The Fog is, obviously, not all that difficult to do. But Suspiria? C'mon, that's just silly.