my bloody valentine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

At theaters, 3D is all the rage, boosting box office receipts and giving moviegoers something to talk about -- if not always to love. The year began with generally positive reactions by horror fans to My Bloody Valentine 3D and continued as young fans enjoyed Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, and families lined up for Monsters vs. Aliens 3D. Can that enthusiasm spread beyond theaters? Can the 3D experience be enjoyed equally well at home?

When he reviewed My Bloody Valentine 3D, our own William Goss felt it was "cheesy, corny, gimmicky, gory fun -- if only in its 3-D theatrical presentation." He questioned whether it would translate at all in 2-D or on DVD. The movie hit DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, and our friend Peter Hall at Horror's Not Dead took the movie for a spin. He found the experience seriously wanting: "Watching [My Bloody Valentine 3D] on Blu-ray is akin to trying to watch a movie after staring into the sun before getting donkey punched with an ugly green paint can." He points to a message board thread at High Def Digest that says the "the technology to do Real D (the non red-blue glasses variety) at home does not exist." So all that's available is the "dreadful red-blue" type of "3D" experience for home viewers -- you know, the same type that made us want to claw our eyes out while trying to watch 3D movies in the 80s.

I tried watching the old school 3D at home with Friday the 13th Part 3 on DVD and lasted about 15 minutes. Awful!! Have you seen any recent 3D titles at home? Do they provide a decent experience, or are they a complete waste of time and money?

I know today's supposed to be alllll about Watchmen lunacy, but there's another new flick that's really piqued my interest, mainly because it's a horror film (and I love horror films), but also because it stars Dennis Quaid, and I'll always find time to watch a Dennis Quaid movie. Even a lame one. But in the case of this particular film, the distributor (one Lionsgate) is working overtime to make sure I don't see it.

Reliable sources like Filmjerk and BOM indicate that The Horsemen (or, if you're going by the poster, Horsemen) is opening today in 75 markets. Or 75 screens, I'm not sure on that. But I can't seem to track it down on Moviefone, and selling movie tickets is, like, their big thing! They WANT me to find a ticket! Ive spoken to a few pals, and it doesn't look like the film is playing anywhere near Philly, New York, Austin, Orlando, or Chicago. I can only assume it's playing all around Hollywood, right?

Now, it feels really strange for me to be defending a film directed by Jonas Akerlund, since I consider his FIRST film (Spun) to be a rat turd of the highest odor. But what's the deal with Lionsgate already? I certainly don't want to slap the hand that gave me a lot of great horror flicks over the past five years, but between their virtual burials of The Midnight Meat Train (102 theaters, $83,000 gross), Repo! The Genetic Opera (11 theaters(?), $146,000), The Horsemen, and The Burrowers (straight to DVD, and a damn fine movie), I'm starting to take this an affront to the fine horror geeks of the world. LG sure didn't mind scooping $51 million out of My Bloody Valentine a few months back, and they've got Saw 6 in the oven as we speak, so clearly they're not averse to ALL horror movies ... just the smaller ones. Nice.

We've all been there, that incredibly awkward, deeply painful moment when your beloved looks into your eyes and says: "We need to talk." That translates into: "It's over." / "I've found somebody else." / "I love you, but I'm not in love with you." / "I'm getting married. No, not to you." / "Actually, I'm straight."

No one likes to be spurned, and with Valentine's Day arriving this year the day after the new Friday the 13th will be released, the deadly combo of horror and romance made me think about movies in which someone goes nutty after being dropped or dismissed, or is left feeling unloved. Should we count our blessings that Jason Voorhees never got dumped by his girlfriend?

1. Fatal Attraction

"I'm not going to be ignored, Dan!" The movie that was single-handedly responsible for scaring all married men away from cheating on their wives in 1987 features my top pick for a spurned psycho. Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) looks like a perfectly responsible, attractively mature lady, but she has a naughty side that flares up when Dan (Michael Douglas) dares to treat their one-night stand as, well, a one-night stand. Rabbit, anyone?

2. Carrie

Poor Carrie (Sissy Spacek). She might have been fine if everyone had just left her alone. But, no, her mother berates her and the kids at school tease and ridicule her. Then Tommy (William Katt) insists on taking her to the prom and even kisses her! Maybe everything will be OK! Nope. When she's bathed in blood and everyone laughs, she knows she's been set up -- Tommy must be in on it too! -- and takes care of business as only a spurned telekinetic psycho can do.

Warning: This post contains major, movie-ruining spoilers for My Bloody Valentine 3D and The Uninvited. Don't read it if you haven't seen them, or if you have any intention of ever seeing them.

January leftovers My Bloody Valentine and The Uninvited have a few superficial things in common. They're both remakes (of a 1981 Canadian slasher film and a 2003 Korean thriller, respectively), they're both set in rustic little towns, they're both meant to scare you. But as those of us who have seen both films know, they also share a pretty significant plot device. We'll talk about it in the next paragraph, after one last spoiler warning.

Both films end with the surprise revelation that the protagonists, both recently released mental patients, are the real villains, and that they're so crazy they don't even realize what they've been doing. This is convenient, because it means the audience -- seeing the story through the protagonists' eyes -- has been in the dark, too. In My Bloody Valentine, the masked killer turns out to be Tom (Jensen Ackles), who has spent most of the film trying to stop the masked killer, unaware that it was himself. In The Uninvited, Anna (Emily Browning) has been convinced that her dad's girlfriend is trying to kill her. But as it turns out, Anna has been imagining it all, including conversations with her sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), who actually died a year ago. When "Alex" kills Dad's girlfriend at the end, it's really Anna holding the knife.

Neither of these films is the first to use the old split-personality-murderer trick, and the fact that they've been released two weeks apart is just a coincidence. But what does it say about modern scary-movie making?

How Kevin James managed to open a movie called Paul Blart: Mall Cop to the tune of $39 million in the middle of January may become one of those cosmic mysteries, like the origin of the universe and what the "Frost Glacier Freeze" flavor of Gatorade actually is. It's kind of astonishing, and a little disturbing. What drew people, exactly? Was it the part in the trailer where he tries a rolling maneuver but misses and has to painfully drag his fat self behind a mall billboard?

Two halfway-decent newcomers languished in third and fourth, though I would think that both My Bloody Valentine and Notorious are happy with their circa-$24 million 4-day bows. Notorious, in particular, opened on just over 1,600 screens, giving it the best per-screen average on the chart. Hotel for Dogs landed just below the two with $22.5 million -- also pretty good for a fairly anonymous little family film opening against a higher-profile family film.

As a footnote, $19.7 million of My Bloody Valentine's $24.24 million came from its pricier 3-D playdates, showing that 3-D is a considerable draw (and perhaps also that filmgoers are savvy to the fact that these films play in 3-D in some theaters and in 2-D in others).

Defiance expanded into wide release, ending up with a $10.7 million holiday weekend, which seems roughly commensurate with its failed Oscar hopes. Gran Torino and Slumdog Millionare both held up well, with the latter actually seeing a gain compared to last weekend, even if you don't count Monday (and even though its screen count dropped slightly).

The full 4-day top 10 after the jump.

If there's one thing that 2009's remake of '80s Canadian slasher My Bloody Valentine isn't, it's scary.

Thank goodness for us, then, that it happens to make for cheesy, corny, gimmicky, gory fun -- if only in its 3-D theatrical presentation. Director Patrick Lussier may forsake genuine suspense and tension in his quest to create an overblown small-town soap opera with no shortage of nifty kills (though they may not be enough to save the film from itself in 2-D or on DVD), but the man knows how to use today's technology to create an amplified visceral horror experience. It's low-brow entertainment with high-tech execution, and while it's anything but scary, it's also pretty much everything but scary.

Thanks to advancements in movie-going technology over the years, all one needs to view tomorrow's slasher remake, My Bloody Valentine, in three dimensions is a special pair of glasses. And according to Lionsgate's marketing department, all one needs in order to see the film in four dimensions is a set of beer goggles.

The above picture is of an online ad that I just came across while watching a video on YouTube. (Whether or not said video was a RickRoll, I'll neither confirm nor deny.) Apparently, the studio is so confident in the quality of their film that they hope young viewers over the age of 21 will stumble up to the ticket window before tossing their cookies mid-movie in an effort to create an interactive "splash zone" of sorts for some lucky viewers.

Appaloosa
Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are unlikely cowboys, Jeremy Irons is an even more unlikely villain, and Renée Zellweger is the least likely "proper widow" the Old West has ever seen. Appaloosa is a fitfully entertaining, post, post-modern Western; Eric D. described it well as "a buddy movie, a rough-and-tumble, no-girls-allowed, steak-and-potatoes romp that happens to be set in the Old West." The DVD includes an audio commentary by Harris (director/co-writer) and Robert Knott (co-writer/producer), four behind the scenes mini-features, and deleted scenes. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.

Swing Vote
Like Appaloosa, Swing Vote was pretty much ignored during its theatrical run, but deserves to find its audience on home video. Kevin Costner is in his everyman, blue collar mode here, which means the film is immensely likable and funny. He plays a small town loser, with a way too precocious daughter, who must cast the deciding vote in a presidential election. Of course it's contrived and silly and obvious and non-partisan, but I loved the election videos made by the suddenly too-eager-to-please candidates (Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Grammer). The DVD includes an audio commentary with Joshua Michael Stern (director/co-writer) and Jason Richman (co-writer), a "making of" mini-feature, deleted scenes, an extended scene, and a music video. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.

Tokyo Gore Police
For extreme horror fans only: everything your splatter-loving heart could desire. Buy it.

More new releases: Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach, Mirrors (also on Blu-ray), My Best Friend's Girl (also on Blu-ray), Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, and Without a Paddle: Nature's Calling (also on Blu-ray). Plus the great, faux-Kennedy TV mini-series Captains and the Kings, which enthralled me when it first aired way back in the Mesozaic Era (Richard Jordan! Richard Jordan! Richard Jordan!).

Woohoo, let's check one horror remake off the list for 2009! Yes, I was fortunate enough to experience the 3-D splatteriness of My Bloody Valentine at the jam-packed BNAT 10 last weekend -- and while I was equal parts skeptical and intrigued, I'm pleased to opine that this is one fun little gore-fest. Feel free to check out my review at FEARnet and / or Devin's over at CHUD for some specific thoughts. (Big fan of the original Valentine? Then check out this interview re: the new DVD!) Oh, and here's the newest teaser trailer:



Hmm, what else happened while I was down in Austin? Ah yes, Rob Zombie was officially locked in to directing Halloween 2, which excites me in the same way that would Uwe Boll directing a remake of The Thing. With all due respect to Robby Z. and his legions of fans ... I just hate his movies. Despite actively trying to enjoy each flick (more than once!), each one feels like a sweaty barbecue with the world's most disgusting inbreds. Not scary, just ugly and unpleasant. And since Halloween 2 holds a strange little place in my heart, I think I'll just forget about this project until it hits the screens this October.

Hey cool: Looks like that geek-friendly Outlander flick is finally touching down on January 23. Sounds good. Also in January? Sundance and Slamdance! My red-penciled genre flicks are as follows: Dead Snow, Grace, The Killing Room, and Moon (from Sundance), plus Conjurer, I Sell the Dead, Mum & Dad, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, and Zombie Girl: The Movie (from Slamdance). Oh, and all the dramas and comedies and such...

True or False: There is such a thing as too many Bruce Campbell interviews. (Answer: False.) And Happy Horrodays! Here's a list of cinema's ten scariest Santas! Last and probably least: Anyone out there want to see Steven Seagal as a vampire slayer? This might cure you.

I don't need much of an excuse to visit Austin, Texas. Find me an event that A) strings more than four movies together, and B) takes place at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and there's a good chance I'm checking my bank account, desperately scrambling for flight money. But despite the fact that I've done five SXSW visits, three Fantastic Fest trips, and a few more Austin journeys just for the heck of it ... I'd never attended a BNAT shindig. But I made it to the tenth annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and of course I had a damn good time once it got rolling.

Let's just do a quick run-through, chronologically speaking, and I'm listing just the FULL movies here. At the end I'll go over the various clips we were treated to...