jaws Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This month is all about villains on Cinematical, and thankfully, October seems flush with folks who fit the bill: horror movies, often released in anticipation (if not exploitation) of Halloween, usually offer at least one person, creature or entity that qualifies as an adversary to be fled from or feared. But the sad truth is that not a whole lot of them have particularly great theme music, which brings us to this week's Cinematical Seven.

To be fair, these folks don't often have the luxury of choosing said music themselves, so if they get a crappy rock song or some kind of dumbass lullabye, it's not their fault. But after revisiting a number of classic horror series and the movie monsters they immortalized, we've put together what we think is a pretty good collection of themes that folks can and will still find scary. (And while some of this music may or may not be specifically associated with the individual character or creature, the guideline to which we held ourselves was the association of the music with that particular monster.)

Suffice it to say there are a number of other great horror movie themes, and we're just scratching the surface with a list of seven, but check our list of some of the most famous, memorable, and yeah, terrifying, with or without some dude in a mask bearing down on the bathroom door where you've found temporary safe haven.

Summer doesn't officially end for another few weeks, but I tend to think in terms of semesters, even though I've been out of school for many years. Labor Day weekend used to signify a return to classrooms, but these days kids go back to school even before that three day weekend, which seems like a cruel trick. Our end-of-summer three day weekend always meant trips to a lake somewhere, someone cutting their foot on a pop-top pull-tab from a can of Coke, and my Dad watching the Jerry Lewis telethon until he fell asleep.

There's a distinct change in movie attitude as you shift from summer to fall, and the Oscar-weighty movies start appearing out of the woodwork like ants at a picnic. No more spectacle movies, and on to the talking head snoozers that kids just can't stand. The bright lights of fall are Thanksgiving and Christmas, but those are but blips in a sea of other movies. To celebrate the end of the season, this list is about those movies that capture the true spirit of summertime.

Stand By Me
It's hard to believe that 23 years have passed since this movie came out, although it's fairly evident if you happen to catch a glimpse of Jerry O'Connell in anything, since he went from chubster to pretty boy in the intervening years. This movie crystalizes those summer moments of wandering in the woods with friends and having adventures that you'll talk about for years to come. More childhood truths and friendship are forged in circumstances like there than in any classroom ever created. Of course my buddies and I never found a dead body. That might have pushed us over the edge.

Best line: "Chopper, sic balls."

It's late at night, you've had an adult beverage or two, you fumble with your keys, stumble into your living room, snap on a lamp, and wham! You're face to face with a great white shark, ready to eat you. The latest Jaws collectible isn't quite life-size -- the shark in Steven Spielberg's classic was described as a 25-footer by Quint (Robert Shaw) -- but it's big enough to throw a decent scare into the unsuspecting. According to a press release (available at Dread Central), the "Bruce NTT piece is a full-length nose-to-tail maquette and dwarfs Sideshow's latest rendition at a little over 3 feet."

This looks pretty awesome. Maybe I could just run around with it, scaring the neighborhood kids. Self-described "finfan" Mike Schultz says he's spent years researching the project; he's a Missouri 911 operator by night and an artisan by day ... No detail, tooth, or scar was ignored in the process. Spielberg's art director Joe Alves has also been brought into the project as a consultant to ensure its attention to detail." Schultz even details which original prop shark inspired his work: "This model represents the more detailed and slimmer 'platform Bruce,' post Shark City build, but pre-waterlogged/damaged Bruce depicted later in the film." Glad we got that cleared up!

The model is scheduled to be manufactured as a licensed, very limited edition collectible, to be available next summer to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the release of Jaws. More information will be available at Operation Orca. Schultz thinks this could be "the ultimate conversation piece." Personally, I think you're gonna need a bigger living room.

Because of the commercial pressures Hollywood places on filmmakers these days, many directors adopt a sort of "one for them, one for me" career strategy that allows them to exercise their creativity while maintaining a degree of viability at the box office. Brad Silberling, despite an array of films that really do run the gamut from intimate character studies to effects-laden opuses, seems to have effectively synthesized the two more and more effectively with each subsequent effort. Starting with straightforward studio fare like Casper, he quickly graduated to meatier projects, including the semi-autobiographical Moonlight Mile, before tackling an adaptation of the first book in Daniel Handler's Lemony Snicket series.

But he seems to have truly captured both his own creative idiosyncrasies and the demands of a summer blockbuster with Land of the Lost, a sprawling, bizarre big-screen reimagining of the Sid and Marty Krofft TV series from the 1970s. The film stars Will Ferrell as a disgraced scientist trying to rebuild his reputation while dodging aliens, dinosaurs, and oversized crabs, and Silberling brilliantly brings the film's fantastic world to life. Cinematical recently spoke to the director via telephone from the film's Los Angeles press day, where he discussed the prospect of making a madcap, foul-mouthed summer movie, explained how (and why) he managed to include an extended homage to "A Chorus Line," and talked about the summer movie that inspired him to become a filmmaker.

LEGOs really are the perfect toy, aren't they? Think about it: no pesky gender divide about what boys and girls like, they thrive off of pure imagination, and they come in handy for some pretty geeky fan art. Now, we've already seen Silence of the Lambs done in LEGO, recreations of our favorite scenes, but now an industrious group of individuals at Speckyboy Design Magazine have compiled some great examples of movie posters that are made of those oh-so adaptable plastic building blocks. There's a poster here for everybody, including a few nods to the current summer movie season (my favorite just might be the Inglourious Basterds recreation courtesy of Dr. Sinister -- it's not easy to find a bat that small), but we've also got some classics like Jaws by LegoLyons, and Rocky by Marcin ImpreSariO to round out the mix.

So it just goes to show that with a little imagination and a few plastic blocks, there is no limit to what a fan can, or will do. Check out some of our favorites in the gallery below.

We tend to feature a lot of movie poster photoshopping contests on Cinematical because a) they're tons of fun, and b) they promote creativity and imagination. This latest one is close to being one of my favorites -- over at SomethingAwful.com, as part of their Photoshop Phriday, they asked folks to create public service announcements out of movie posters (or, as they say, "rehabilitated them to be educational, informative, and inspirational"). So, for example, the classic Jaws movie poster suddenly turns into an advertisement to join the Amity Island High Swim Team, and The Spirit poster featuring Sarah Paulson turns into a PSA against germs. One of my personal favorites, although a tad fuzzy, takes the famous Fight Club poster and transforms it into a PSA for fighting infections. Some very funny and unique creations to be found, for sure.

Check out the ones mentioned above and a couple other favorites in the gallery below, then hop on over to SomethingAwful.com to see the rest.



[via Superpunch]

Earlier this year, I alerted you to a bloody ear cake, Blue Velvet-style. But now the blood ante has been upped -- just in time for the spooky, Halloween-themed month of October. Forget just one lone, severed body part, and go for a whole bunch -- feet, hands, and more floating in the crisp blue sea! The above is just part of an excellent shark attack cupcake display made by Moogieland.

Now, it isn't specifically Jaws inspired, but man, these would be great for any Jaws-themed night or movie-themed costume party. Best of all, anyone can make them. The more cake-skilled can whip it all up from scratch, while the cake newbies can grab toy sharks and doll parts.

But, if you like to keep your severed parts away from your food (boo), you can always check out Spider-Man, sock monkey style.

Over the past few weeks, movie ratings have been a popular topic for discussion. While Kevin Smith's upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno appealed an NC-17 rating (and won), The Dark Knight was enjoying a record-setting box office take and a pretty controversial PG-13 rating. Once again, we ask: Why is sex more inappropriate than violence? Should raunchy language and a few "thrusts" be condemned while a dude with half his face falling off and a psychopathic, murderous clown get off practically unscathed? And are there other issues at work here? Does a film with a giant budget and an all-star cast get it "easier" than a smaller film with a lesser-known cast and a director who chain smokes profanity?

No doubt there are shady politics at play here (as is all over this fine country of ours), and over the years there have been a number of films that deserved a different rating. Over on OMG Lists, they currently have up a list of six wrongly rated movies; films that, for one reason or another, deserved either a lower or a higher rating. It's a weird system, for sure -- these days, if you're a comedy, you kinda want that 'R' rating because your box office take will most likely be higher. However, if you're a horror flick, you want to try for a PG-13. Strange world we live in ...

But anyway, among the films featured on their list are Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which, at the time, received an R-rating because of a few profanity-laced scenes, but totally could've gotten away with a PG-13. Or what about Jaws ... with its PG rating! Hey, it's a film about a giant shark that devours people -- bring the whole family!

I don't know how I never saw these, but some old Canadian Filmmakers Festival posters are sailing through the web, and they show what spoofing should be like. Think Jaws -vs- a fisherman, the little Poltergeist girl swayed by hockey, Superman ready for winter, and Dorothy in a pair of sensible boots rather than slippers. But my favorite is above, because it would make one hell of an awesome comedic remake of The Birds. Canadian geese -- they're the real birdly foe. They take over outdoor spaces, attack you to mark their territory, and they're scarier than Hitchcock's mean feathered fiends. If only these were the sort of spoofs hitting the big screen these days.

Check them out in the gallery below, and read more about the festival over here.



[via Slashfilm]

It would be easy to offer you appropriately themed movies for the Fourth of July. There is, of course, Independence Day, plus flicks like Yankee Doodle Dandy, or on a more serious note, Born of the Fourth of July. But what's the fun in that? You could come up with those yourself. I could be snarky and offer only British fare, which is actually very tempting, but I have something else in mind: Independence-themed chills.

The two films for this double feature are not centered specifically on the Fourth of July, but the date is important to both stories -- whether it's the tale of tourists and teeth, or parades and creepiness. Do you see where I'm headed? For this double feature, in honor of the Fourth of July, I give you: Jaws and Cape Fear.