the hills have eyes Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I can think of at least three movies in the coming two weeks that feature scenes that are strikingly out of tone with the film they're a respective part of and yet seemingly included as a means of getting people to tell their loved ones how ridiculous Bit X in Movie Y is. And so today's Cinematical Seven list will be an arbitrary, far from ultimate compilation of the most distractingly disgusting and supremely superfluous parts in recent movies. Sure, most of these are comedies, and yes, most of them seem to have been released from the year 2000 on, and as always, we welcome your comments below. Just make sure they're not too gross.

(Speaking of which, NSFW clips follow after the jump.)

(As a way of welcoming my very favorite month of the year, I thought it would be fun to reprint one of the very few good articles I've ever written. So here it is!)

By: Scott Weinberg

House of Wax, starring Paris Hilton. The Fog, starring Wooden Superman. The Amityville Horror, starring Van Wilder.

Yep, it's tough to be an old-school hardcore horror fan these days, what with all the really atrocious remakes that keep flopping off of the studios' assembly lines. (If you paid money to see When a Stranger Calls, you're either one devoted horror fan -- or a really bored high school kid.) But since the Horror Fan is nothing if not loyally optimistic, we trudge off to each successive remake with a small kernel of hope -- maybe this one won't suck the proverbial egg. So while it's perfectly logical for a passionate horror geek to throw up his/her hands and shriek "Ack! Horror remakes! They all suck!!" -- the simple truth is that they don't all suck. The good ones are just pretty darn few and far between.

7. Night of the Living Dead (1990)-- Splatter-master Tom Savini got the chance to direct his own remake of Romero's all-time classic back in 1990, and -- whaddaya know? -- he did a pretty solid job of it! With extra gore dripping from the floorboards and the presence of genre favorites Tony Todd & Bill Moseley, this re-visit came long before the Remake Renaissance, but I think it still holds up pretty well today.

Oftentimes Hollywood's lack of originality leads to overexposed trends. Remember when every action movie seemed to be easily defined as 'Die Hard on a ...'? Remember when disaster movies were all the rage? And then twenty years later when they were all the rage again? Remember when there were like a hundred body-swapping comedies? Well, there appear to be fewer trends these days, or maybe it's just that Hollywood turns trends into full-blown practices, as in the case of sequels, comic book movies and fantasy films based on literary franchises. Nowadays even a promised trend, like the one involving religious Passion of the Christ copycats, isn't necessarily going to happen. But despite there being so few here-today-gone-tomorrow film fads, there's at least seven bad ideas currently in vogue in Tinsel Town, and all of them need to disappear soon, lest they too become permanent.

1. Torture Porn

I'm going to start with an easy, surely obvious one. Torture porn is the latest trend in horror, a genre that changes its predominant style every few years, and it may be the most despised -- at least by us non-horror junkies. I miss the days when a friend, an actual junkie, could drag me to a harmless scary movie that provided a few screams, a few laughs and afterward, at the most, a few silly nightmares. Now, with each new horror movie there's promise of a seriously depressing experience. After watching The Hills Have Eyes, I realized I hadn't been frightened at all. Instead I wanted to cry my heart out. I haven't been to a horror flick since, and my friend is going solo. Sure, I hear that Eli Roth's movies are a lot more enjoyable than watching a young woman raped while watching her father burned alive and her mother raped and then shot in the head, but I just haven't been in the mood to find out.

Apparently the torture porn trend is already on its way out. Hostel II performed poorly at the box office and Captivity may have peaked too soon, reaching maximum tastelessness before even opening in theaters. So what will be next? I'm rather looking forward to when slasher movies are in fashion again, when I can delight in seeing sinful human beings killed off quickly and deservedly by an implausible maniac. Which brings me to the next trend ...

In a new interview at comingsoon.net, legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven discusses The Hills Have Eyes II, which is a sequel to last year's remake of The Hills Have Eyes, but not a remake of Craven's The Hills Have Eyes II, which was a sequel to Craven's The Hills Have Eyes. which was an update of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and was recently remade without credit to Craven as Chaos. See? Who says there's no original ideas in Hollywood? Craven wrote the new Hills Have Eyes II (They still have eyes!) with his son Jonathan and it releases Friday. From the interview, it also looks like we can expect yet another remake of one of his films, this time of his debut The Last House On The Left, which itself was an update of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and was recently remade without credit to Craven as Chaos. We first heard rumblings of this way back in August, when it was eyeing an early 2007 start date.

I can still recall watching Last House as a kid, intrigued by Roger Ebert's positive review. That was the day I lost my innocence. I won't be watching it again, and I doubt I'd try to stomach a sure-to-be more extreme remake, but the plot was basically: "Teenage girls get raped, tortured and killed. Parents strike back with excessive force." The original was shot for $90,000 and funded by Boston theater owners, who wanted cheap flicks to round out double features. This remake will likely cost a bit more. In the article, Craven also mentions the rumored remakes of his People Under the Stairs and Shocker (a movie it doesn't seem humanly possible to make any worse, so more power to them). He doesn't confirm them, but he certainly doesn't rule them out either. Craven actually says in the article: "I think the biggest danger is that people just think that any kind of horror film they make will make money or that they don't have to bring the highest standards to it, which sometimes can happen." It sure can, Wes. It sure can.

It's starting to seem like Craven is going to have carbon copies of his entire filmography. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but...isn't this just getting kind of sad?

New corporate stepchild Fox Atomic pulled out all the stops at ComicCon yesterday for their latest offering, The Hills Have Eyes II. (If I have to explain that this is a sequel to a remake, you probably shouldn't be reading this post.) The day's activities started with an invitation-only breakfast, attended by producer and co-screenwriter Wes Craven and the film's two female leads, Jessica Stroup and Daniella Alonso. Most of the attendees of the breakfast arrived early and planted themselves at one of several round breakfast tables, in anticipation of some kind of formal welcome from Craven himself, but nothing of the kind was on the menu. Instead, Craven and party arrived without fanfare and sat themselves down at one of the tables, ready to eat. Just as the first coffee cups were starting to get cold, the busy PR people dimmed the lights and treated us to a never-before-seen clip of the upcoming film. The scene in question involves a 'mutant birth' sequence -- not a mutant giving birth, but a seemingly normal woman giving birth to a horrible mutant. After basically ripping his way out of mom's vagina, the mutant baby promptly stands up and punches mom in the face. No, I'm not kidding.

After this, we were allowed to view another clip, which seemed like a trailer but went on for several minutes and seemed to contain scattered bits of new footage. Not about to leave Craven and the ladies to eat in peace, several journos eventually began to saunter over to the director's breakfast table to pepper him with questions; for the next thirty minutes or so, Craven stood by his table, talking in the direction of several outstretched hands and digital tape recorders. Stroup and Alonso also received the treatment, although they seemed to be more in demand for photo opportunities than for serious, get-to-know-you, how-did-you-approach-this-character type of interviews. The breakfast dispersed about an hour after it began, and everyone went their separate ways. About four hours later, the Hills crew would reassemble in ComicCon's main auditorium for a panel discussion open to the general convention audience. The event may have been more sparsely attended than expected, because shortly into it, the organizers suddenly decided to let in the massive crowd waiting outside for Kevin Smith, an hour early.

A few days ago, Slither-maker James Gunn mentioned on his MySpace page that his adorably splattery sci-fi horror rom-com was the receipient of four Fangoria Chainsaw Award nominations. My response was "Hey, cool. Where are the rest of the nominations?!?!?" And now, a few days later, here they are. Neat-o.

Although Fangoria has been doing their annual Chainsaw awards for over a decade now, 2006 marks the very first time the event will be televised, much to the delight of zombie freaks and slasher geeks all over North America. The event will be held in L.A. on October 15th, although the Fuse Network won't be airing it until the 22nd. (Which means if you want to watch the event "un-spoiled," I wish you luck.) Want to throw your own votes into the tally? Fine. You can vote right here, but only between September 1st and 13th (which is a Friday, mwaahaaa!)

After the jump you'll find a complete list of all the 2006 Chainsaw nominees, plus my own predictions on which flicks would win if the event were called Amazing Geek Weinberg's Horror Awards instead of The Chainsaws.

Maybe I'm too cynical, and immediately calling Fox Atomic's just-announced slate of films bombs might be a bit harsh, but the new youth-centered specialty division of 20th Century Fox has such an unoriginal bunch of releases, I can't help but expect the worst. Besides, with a name like Atomic, how can one not make the connection? Martha already told you about Turistas, the studio's first, and only fresh, title. After that we'll be treated to two sequels, The Hills Have Eyes 2 and 28 Weeks Later, in the spring of next year and eventually we'll be permitted to suffer through the Revenge of the Nerds redo and The Comebacks, which is yet another movie about an awful sports team.

Even more disturbing than Atomic's horribly worthless crop is how most of the films don't even seem appropriate for the "young adult" demographic the studio is targeting. Maybe I'm unclear as to what "young adult" refers to these days, but I thought it meant adolescents. Maybe it means late teens, though, since the first installments of the two sequels (follow that?) were rated R, as was the first version of Nerds -- not that it makes economic sense for Fox to do the remake with as much nudity (though, come on, wasn't that the only reason you saw it?). So either all these movies are going to be watered down in addition to being totally lacking in creativity, or Fox has changed its mind as to what its new arm is all about. I'm guessing the former, because in addition to being a movie distributor, Fox Atomic will also be publishing comic books (yeah, I know, older people read comic books, I was one of them that did, but you know what I mean). The graphic novels The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning and 28 Days Later: The Aftermath (where is Revenge of the Nerds: Enough Already?) will be released next year.

V for Vendetta roared to the top of the box office this weekend, its take of about $26 million out-earning the nearest competition by more than $10 million. While that total - on just under 3400 screens - sounds pretty impressive, it's believed to be below the studio's opening weekend hopes. Meanwhile She's the Man, the week's other debut, met estimates with $11 million, which was enough to make it the fourth-highest earner of the weekend. Finishing second was Failure to Launch which, with a take of $15.8 million, fell 35% from last week's chart-leading totals. In third was The Shaggy Dog with $13.6 million, the audience for which fell only slightly after last week's open - thanks to families with small kids, this one might have some staying power. Wrapping up the top five was The Hills Have Eyes, which took in $8.1 million; the film's $28.8 million total after just two weeks in release is nearly twice its budget.

Full numbers are after the jump.

Three big studio flicks go wide this week, and what do you know - all of them were screened for critics, even the horror remake! Someone, make a note of the date. Reviews of all three are all over the place, but in sum: Failure to Launch is either astonishingly sharp and well-acted or meh; The Hills Have Eyes is really, really violent; The Shaggy Dog is either cute or stupid (the latter if you're mature, or at least think you are). Details follow.

• Failure to Launch: I can't possibly express to you how odd it is it to read a dozen or so reviews of this movie, back to back. You go from Robert's "at least it doesn't suck," to Stephen Hunter's declaration that the film is "the only American comedy in a long time that could be called Wilderan in its concept and execution"; from Roger Ebert, who hates the movie so much that he resorts to a story of being bitten by a Kubrick donkey, to your friend and mine, Mick LeSalle, who praises Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker for their rare willingness to "go out of their way to project thought and emotion in concentrated doses." I mean, honestly. What's a girl to think? There are mixed opinions all the time, but this is insane.
  

Anyone who enjoys movies keeps a secret tally of any movie's strengths and weaknesses. Like an Olympic judge rating an athlete's performance, the final score determines whether a movie rates a recommendation or is forgotten as an also-ran.

As far as formula fare goes, one could do worse than the above-middlin' romantic comedy Failure To Launch starring Matthew McConaughey as a 30-something who still lives with his folks (Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw) until they hire a motivationalist (Sarah Jessica Parker) to help him fly the nest. Naturally and against all odds, McConaughey's and Parker's completely artificial relationship blossoms into something more. Here's how I broke it down:

First, it's funny. Not just an occasional giggle, sit-com kind of funny but infused throughout funny. TV vets Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, who are attached to this year's Steve Carell update of Get Smart, may be green as screenwriters, this being their first project produced, but with that inexperience comes a kind of hunger. Of course, most first-timers become well-fed and lazy after a taste of success like this, but for now, proof of their talent is apparent. Each character is created with a specific purpose, as is every scene, sequence and act. It's all very textbook, but it works. Mark one in the "plus" column.