the shining Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Well, it's just about 'All Hallows Eve' and if you're anything like me, then you have already depleted your candy supply and you've been watching as many horror movies as you can get your hands on. And as I've watched everything from The Wolf Man to 13 Ghosts I've been thinking how few movies actually scare me -- the rise of torture porn was nauseating, sure, but scary? Not really. Over at Den of Geek they've compiled a list of movies that scare them and it has inspired me to think about what flicks have given me the honest to goodness heebie-jeebies over the years.

Usually when I watch horror, it's with an eye for comedy and usually the lamer the film, the better. But occasionally there's a film that actually does what it's supposed to: scare the crap out of me. But as much as I tried to find a common denominator for what scares me on the big screen, I came up empty. In fact, there's never really any way to tell just what is going to hit the right buttons when it comes to horror, but I guess that's what makes it so much fun.

After the jump: 5 movies that guarantee me a 'bad night's sleep'...

I adore movies because they encompass the whole world and allow you to titillate a myriad of interests without having to hone in on just one. (Same with writing -- why pick one slice of life when you can write about them all!?) But there's a side-love -- the art that comes out of cinema. Whether it's seeing a director's vision narrowed down to one particular image (David Lynch's photography!), or seeing what a filmmaker inspires in others. It's like having a fan conversation through the eyes. It could invite you to see a film in a new way, or simply pull you back into the filmmaker's world.

Or, to end all of the lead-up: Film-inspired art can inspire some pretty freakin' awesome imagery! The above photo is part of a new exhibit called Stanley Kubrick: Taming Light. Running all this month at the Light House Cinema in Dublin, the show features paintings, photography, and illustrations inspired by the filmmaker behind classics like A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. And of course, you've got to realize where the above picture comes from -- it's the Grady Twin Daughters from The Shining. "Thirty Years Later" from photographer Annie Atkins, and it not only runs with Kubrick inspiration, but also succeeds in replicating the creepy simplicity from the film -- the vacant look, the dingy lighting.

Peruse some of our favorites below and the full gallery right over here, then weigh in with your thoughts: Which is your favorite Stanley Kubrick-inspired piece?



[via Superpunch]

What has the combination of YouTube and inexpensive editing software wrought? For one thing, the opportunity for fans to fashion their own movie trailers, recutting footage to honor or, more commonly, ridicule well-known films. The practice has become so commonplace that online video sites are now jam-packed with fan-made, recut trailers that should never have left the privacy of their creator's computer. To help sort out the good from the bad (and the ugly), our friends at Urlesque have compiled a list of "The 10 Best Recut Movie Trailers."

They date the phenomenon back to 2006 and the recut trailer for The Shining, transforming Stanley Kubrick's horror picture into a "fuzzy, family-friendly comedy replete with a Peter Gabriel song to give the whole thing some 'extra polish.'" Their Top 10 includes one that goes the opposite direction, from family-friendly comedy to horror picture (Toy Story), as well as a couple that rescue romantic comedies by emphasizing their more hair-raising possibilities (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle), along with a few surprises. Head on over to Urlesque to watch all ten.

Of course, centuries before motion pictures were invented, the Greeks were parodying epic literature. The first movie parody may have been 1922's Mud and Sand, starring Stan Laurel. Fan-made or recut trailers are simply the latest variation on a theme. Thanks to technology, industrious fans now can crank out amazing, funny, clever, or silly recut trailers almost as soon as the originals appear.

What are your favorite fan-made / recut / remix trailers?

Oh, what might have been! Alison Lohman gives a terrific performance as the cursed loan officer Christine Brown in Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, which opens tomorrow. If not for the vagaries of scheduling, though, Ellen Page would have played the lead role. Would Page have been any better? We'll never know, but she joins a long list that inspires thoughts of 'What if ...?'

Once upon a time, we might have seen Leslie Howard as the titular Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi as The Monster. Instead, Colin Clive played the good doctor, Boris Karloff got a jump-start on life, and the rest is horror history. Here are seven more recent examples of actors and actresses who were considered for key roles in great horror films ... and the ones who replaced them, listed in chronological order. [Disclaimer: Based on information provided on IMDb's "trivia" pages, so no guarantees on accuracy.] Better? Worse? You decide.

1. Melanie Griffith / Sissy Spacek (Carrie)

Even though she was in her mid-20s, Spacek looks so young and fragile as Carrie that it's difficult to imagine anyone else in the role. Griffith was 18 or 19 and already had made an impression in Night Moves, The Drowning Pool, and Smile when she auditioned to play the telekinetic high schooler. Conveying Carrie's complexities might have been beyond her still-developing skills at that point. The pic above, left, is from Joyride, released the following year.

So it looks like Vanity Fair is back playing in their creative sandbox as they've launched a new set of photos called Comedy's New Legends, featuring some of today's favorite comedic actors and actresses dressed up (and down) to resemble their favorite big-screen legends. There's Seth Rogen as Frida Kahlo, Danny McBride as Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Will Arnett as Han Solo, Russell Brand as Charlie Chaplin, Paul Rudd as Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein (my personal favorite), and Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Jason Bateman and Leslie Mann as The Honeymooners, among others.

Above you will find the image that kicks off VF's latest series, which is a throwback to another (much sexier) Vanity Fair cover featuring the naked bodies of women like Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley. Instead, this time around, we get Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Segel in skin-toned body suits. (Thank you Vanity Fair for not allowing them to get naked, because one imagines they totally wanted to go that route.) Check out some of our favorites in the gallery below, and the rest over at Vanity Fair.



Other popular Vanity Fair photo collections:
Something Just Clicked
2008 Hollywood Portfolio (featuring Alfred Hitchock recreations)
Disney recreations

Well, it's the day after Christmas -- Santa has packed up his sh*t and ditched town for another whole year -- and we're left with some stuff we want, some stuff we don't want and some stuff we haven't yet figured out. Like me, most of you will probably head on back to the mall today or over the weekend to do some returning, and with that extra cash in your pocket you might be looking for something film-related to pick up. Well, those new and old Blu-ray costumers should seriously run on over to Amazon.com, who have put roughly 200 titles on sale for 50% off.

There's no time like the present to stock your Blu-ray library, and if you haven't picked them up already, here are a few titles we definitely recommend WALL-E ($24.49), Bottle Rocket Criterion Collection ($23.99), The Thing ($16.49), The Shining ($13.99), A Clockwork Orange ($13.99) and The Nightmare Before Christmas. That should get you started ... now head on over to Amazon.com to check out the rest.

We here at Cinematical hope you're having a wonderful holiday season!

As an admitted Admirer-And-Not-Much-More of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic, The Shining (I know, I know, blasphemy and such), I still got a genuine kick out of this Channel 4 promo for their upcoming month-long Kubrick retrospective.

Hosted on UK newspaper The Guardian's website, the ad consists of a single minute-long tracking shot and takes the view of the Academy Award-winning filmmaker as he dashes about the quite meticulously recreated set. The twins, the axe, the maze, each and every last iconic touch -- it's almost like they Overlook-ed nothing... (No? Too much? Apologies all around then.)

I'm having trouble ascertaining whether or not Channel 4 was also responsible for this live-action opening to 'The Simpsons' that popped up a few years back. Even if it's not, the fact still remains that precious few American commercials can claim to be their equal in both fondness and dedication. Alas, until Spike someday hosts a Joe Eszterhas tribute marathon...

[by way of AICN]

A friend of mine emailed this morning with a link to this site and one simple question: "Which t-shirt are you buying?" After checking out said website, the question then became: Which t-shirt am I NOT buying? Over at Last Exit to Nowhere, they specialize in creating movie t-shirts. Ah, but these aren't just your run-of-the-mill shirts, see -- they're so much better. The site's intro description says it's "home to a collection of unique shirt designs which are inspired and pay homage to some of the most memorable places, corporations and companies in modern fiction – from the sunny shores of Amity Island (Jaws) to the frozen climes of Outpost #31 (The Thing)."

Oh yes, that's the Little Lebowski urban achievers t-shirt to the right of your screen; they also have shirts for Hudsucker Industries (Hudsucker Proxy), Skynet (Terminator series), Shawshank State Prison (Shawshank Redemption), and much more. Then there's the random shirts like the Stovington Academy shirt Jack Nicholson wore in The Shining, a Polymer Records shirt from This is Spinal Tap, and a shirt wearing the logo of the fictional TV station from Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Insanity, I tell you! So many awesome shirts -- honey, consider this month's paycheck officially blown. Check out all the shirts over at Last Exit to Nowhere ...

... and extra credit goes to the first person who can name all the films from the t-shirts pictured in the galley below (no cheating!).

Just about anyone who follows horror has bemoaned the sorry state of the genre these days. Nearly everything is a remake, either of some 1970s or 1980s classic or of some recent Asian hit. The rare films that aren't remakes are simply lazy copies of whatever worked a year earlier, the current "torture porn" subgenre, for example. And hardly anything screens for the press, which means that even the studios now understand how low things have sunk.

The new film The Ruins likewise isn't screening for the press, but it is based -- of all things -- on an actual book! With pages! It's by Scott B. Smith, who many years ago wrote both the book and screenplay for the excellent A Simple Plan. The new movie inspired me to look up other literary-based horror movies (whether inspired by novels or short stories). Sadly, aside from Stephen King and the upcoming Midnight Meat Train (based on Clive Barker's short story), I couldn't find much good recent work, but there is plenty to choose from ...

Last week in my Indies on DVD post, I mentioned a new Stanley Kubrick box set (from Warner Home Video) and Criterion's release of Terence Malick's Days of Heaven. Both releases had raised pre-release questions. Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere sounded the alarm back in August that Criterion's upcoming re-issue of the Days of Heaven on DVD would look "really different" than the previous version from Paramount Home Video. He based his concerns on comments by Criterion's Lee Kline. Now that Wells has seen the new DVD, he writes: "I saw Days of Heaven in 70 mm on the day it opened -- 9.13.78 -- at the Cinema 1 on Third Avenue, and the Criterion DVD took me right back to that transporting experience. This is how it looked back then, and should have always looked. " Good to hear.

The Kubrick set raised eyebrows when it was announced that three of the films (The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut) would be presented in a different home video format than Kubrick had insisted upon when he was alive. Film critic Dave Kehr noted: "Kubrick apparently had his reasons, as mysterious as they may be, for releasing them to video the way he did." The new, reformatted aspect ratio, Kehr says, "would be closer to the way the films were originally seen in theaters." Kehr then quotes a statement from Jan Harlan (the present keeper of the Kubrick estate) and questions the historical sense of Harlan's statement before concluding: "I'm really not well informed enough to have a solid opinion. And without Kubrick around to consult, I don't see how we'll ever know for sure." He recommends hanging onto the older DVD versions as reference points, if nothing else. So if you've been waiting for the definitive edition of these films (others in the set are 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, in addition to the doc A Life in Pictures), you'll need to weigh out the positive and not so positive.