“Enter the Dragon” Poster by Tony Stella
Tony Stella first appearance here was for his fantastic Way of the Dragon movie poster. Today he’s back with his equally impressive Enter the Dragon poster. You can see it and more of Tony’s art at his site.
Category: Celebs
Original “Dracula” Cast Behind-the-Scenes
I love how in this publicity shot of the original cast of Dracula everyone is in character as they read Bram Stoker’s novel.
Source: Laurie Bee Cool.
20 Things We Learned from Ben Affleck’s Live By Night Commentary
Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 20 Things We Learned from Ben Affleck’s Live By Night Commentary. Here are three of my favorites…
7. The falling snow is done via CG, and when one of the guys compliments its look and how it even appears to land and melt. “Yeah, the first time it didn’t,” says Affleck suggesting he had words with the effects folk, “but by the time it was finished it landed.”
14. He says shooting a scene with a burning cross and Klan members in their hooded uniforms made him realize how terrifying the real thing must have been.
20. This is Affleck’s favorite of his own movies. “Everything about it was so much harder to do and required so much more elaborate work.”
10 Invasive Facts About “Mars Attacks”
Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Invasive Facts About Mars Attacks. Here are three of my favorites…
2. BURTON WANTED HIS MARTIANS TO BE ANIMATED VIA STOP-MOTION.
The concept of a Mars Attacks! movie first surfaced in 1985, but development wouldn’t begin in earnest until 1994, when screenwriter John Gems and director Tim Burton got involved with the project. To bring the aliens to life, Burton intended to utilize stop-motion animation, something he’s “always [loved] and always will.”
Early in pre-production, a set of 12-inch articulated Martian models were built for testing purposes. At first, Burton’s plan was to have these animated in front of a blue screen. They would then be inserted digitally onto miniature sets by the artists at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Ultimately, though, Burton decided to abandon the stop-motion approach when ILM presented him with some impressive screen tests featuring computer-animated aliens.
Despite this, Mars Attacks! still pays tribute to the older effects technique. At Burton’s instruction, ILM animated the digital extraterrestrials as if they were stop motion puppets. This is why the Martians move a bit more rigidly than did most contemporary CG characters, such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993).
4. WHY DID SO MANY CELEBRITIES JOIN THE CAST? THANK JACK NICHOLSON.
Let’s do a quick head count. Glenn Close, Martin Short, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Michael J. Fox, and Sarah Jessica Parker are just a few of the big names on this movie’s mile-long list of stars. And yet, when the casting process began, Mars Attacks! struggled to attract any players with serious marquee value. Gems blames this on the fact that most of its characters either die in some cartoonish manner or end up disfigured.
“Agents didn’t want to see their star clients playing loser roles, and a lot of big acts passed on the project,” he says. “At one point, we thought we were going to have to cancel the film. The guy who saved our butt was Jack Nicholson.” According to Burton, the Academy Award-winner was enthusiastic about joining Mars Attacks! from the very start. After sending Nicholson the script, Burton gave him a call while location-scouting. “Which part would you like to do?” asked the director. “How about all of them?” Nicholson replied.
In the end, he was double-cast as President Dale and a sleazy Vegas businessman. Once word got around that Nicholson would be involved, other celebs lined up to join the ensemble. “We started getting requests from more stars than there were parts for,” Gems notes. “It was like a tidal wave when Jack came on.”
9. INDEPENDENCE DAY OWES ITS TITLE—AND PART OF ITS PREMISE—TO MARS ATTACKS!
While Burton toiled away on Mars Attacks!, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich were writing an alien invasion movie of their own, but theirs was to have a more serious tone. The duo knew that both pictures would be released at some point in the summer of 1996.
“I said to Dean, we can’t do our film after a parody comes out. We had to beat [Burton] to it,” Emmerich recently said in an interview with The Guardian. “If it came out on the 4 July weekend, we would beat Mars Attacks!, which was coming out in August. So we wrote the concept around the release date. Dean said: ‘Let’s just call it Independence Day; we can come up with something better later.” The rest is history.
“Way of the Dragon” Poster by Tony Stella
Tony Stella created his version of a Way of the Dragon movie poster. You can see it and more of Tony’s art at his site.
Rob Hoskins Takes His Rocky Figure Collection to the Next Level
Rob Hoskins is a long-time SZoner with an amazing collection of Rocky figures that he has taken to the next level. Although I can’t share all the fan photos sent in, I felt that Rob’s were worth a look. Hope you enjoy! – Craig
15 Modern Horror Movies Stephen King Has Personally Recommended
John Squires and Bloody Disgusting present 15 Modern Horror Movies Stephen King Has Personally Recommended. Here are three of my favorites from his list…
11) THE MIST
“The ending will tear your heart out… but so will life, in the end. Frank Darabont’s vision of hell is completely uncompromising. If you want sweet, the Hollywood establishment will be pleased to serve you at the cineplex, believe me, but if you want something that feels real, come here. Darabont could have made a higher-budget film if he’d added a cheerful ‘It’s all OK, kiddies’ ending, but he refused. His integrity and courage shine in every scene.”
4) DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)
“Genius perfected would be Zack Snyder’s Dawn remake, which begins with one of the best opening sequences of a horror film ever made. Snyder’s zombies are, it seems to me: fast moving terrorists who never quit. You can’t debate with them, you can’t parley with them, you can’t even threaten their homes and families with reprisals. All you can do is shoot them and then steer clear of the twitchers. Remember that their bite is worse than fatal.”
12) THE RUINS
“The Scott B. Smith-scripted adaptation of his novel isn’t quite as creepy as the book, but the sense of dismay and disquiet grows as the viewer begins to sense that no one’s going to get away. With its cast of mostly unknowns, this would play well on a double bill with Snyder’s Dawn [of the Dead] remake.”
12 Solid Facts About “Pumping Iron”
Jake Rosen and Mental_Floss present 12 Solid Facts About Pumping Iron. Here are three of my favorites…
1. THE MOVIE ORIGINALLY CO-STARRED A WIMP.
When photographer George Butler was dispatched by both Life magazine and The Village Voice to cover the burgeoning bodybuilding scene in the early 1970s, he was fascinated with its abundance of charismatic participants. Feeling one of the sport’s star attractions, Arnold Schwarzenegger, could carry a full-length film, Butler decided to pursue a feature-length project with collaborator Robert Fiore that he began shooting in 1975. The problem was that Butler was focused on the mass monsters of the Mr. Olympia scene; to balance it out and offer audiences a more relatable subject, he enlisted slightly-built actor Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) and shot a lot of footage of him working out and marveling at the well-developed bodies all around him. The footage wound up being cut from the finished film.
2. NO ONE BELIEVED ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER COULD CARRY THE MOVIE.
While Butler was trying to raise funds, he shot a 10-minute test sequence of Schwarzenegger making a guest posing appearance in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Screening the footage for investors in New York, Butler was dismayed to see that they seemed more horrified than intrigued by the sight of the massive Austrian flexing his deltoids. After the footage ended, playwright Romulus Linney stood, turned to Butler, and said, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that if you make a movie about this Arnold person, we will laugh you off 42nd Street.” (Butler turned to another approach, piecemealing his budget together by petitioning more than 3000 separate financiers until he got the money he needed.)
5. LOU FERRIGNO PREDICTED HIS OWN FUTURE.
The nature of raw footage means that hundreds of hours of film were left on the cutting room floor, but according to Butler, one sequence in particular has never left his memory. Talking to Ferrigno about his future hopes, the actor told the director that “all I want to be is the Hulk.” He got his wish just two years later, starring for five seasons on CBS’s The Incredible Hulk.
Kurt Russell: 3 Essential Films
Neil Mitchell and BFI present Kurt Russell: 10 Essential Films. (Sadly the original post is no longer available.) Using just their choices, here are my top three…
- Escape from New York. Could anyone else have been Snake Plissken? The correct answer is, “No.”
- Tombstone. One of the most re-watchable films of any genre.
- Bone Tomahawk. A cult classic.
Kurt Russell movies that didn’t make the cut, that I through would have: Big Trouble in Little China, Breakdown, Backdraft, 3,000 Miles to Graceland and of course, Tango & Cash.
RIP – Bernie Wrightson
It was announced today that Bernie Wrightson has passed away after a long battle with brain cancer. Mr. Wrightson was 68.
Known best for his drawings and paintings in the horror genre, Mr. Wrightson was a humble and soft-spoken man who appreciated his fans. Wrightson was an artist’s artist. Not only was his work loved by fans, but professional artists were also in awe of his talent. Best known as the co-creator (with Len Wein) of Swamp Thing, Wrightson was also known for…
- Being one of the young upstart talents of “The Studio” (along with Barry Smith, Michael Kaluta, and Jeff Jones)
- His horror work at Warren Publishing
- His Frankenstein project (beautiful pen and ink illustrations for Mary Shelley’s classic tale)
- His work with Stephen King – creating the poster for the movie Creepshow and illustrating King’s Cycle of the Werewolf novella, illustrations for The Stand (restored version), and art for the hardcover editions of From a Buick 8 and Dark Tower V.
- His comics at Marvel (Punisher, Spider-Man), DC (Swamp Thing, Batman) and IDW (The Ghoul and Doc Macabre – both with co-creator Steve Niles)
- His conceptual art for films such as The Faculty, Spiderman, and George Romero’s Land of the Dead, and The Mist.
- So much more
I was fortunate enough to meet Berni Wrightson a couple of times at HeroesCon. He was kind and humble and appreciative of the praise fans (myself included) gave him. On the first occasion, when my wife learned that Mr. Wrightson was a guest at the con she came into the show to meet him. She wasn’t a real comics fan, but she did love Mr. Wrightson’s art, appreciated his talent and wanted to meet him. When she spoke to him, he seemed genuinely touched. As we were leaving his area other fans were coming over to share their appreciation. I’m glad Bernie Wrightson was aware of how much his art positively impacted so many people.
My thoughts and prayers go out to Berni Wrightson’s family, friends and fans.
Tarantino’s Choices for the 11 Greatest Movies of All Time
The PlayList recently posted Quentin Tarantino’s Choices for the 11 Greatest Movies of All Time.
Tarantino has created an interesting list. I’ve never developed a top anything past two: Rocky and The Wizard of Oz. I think if I tried the rest would be interchangeable based on my mood.
Joss Whedon on Reboots/Reunions, Binge-Watching & More!
Joss Whedon (Writer – Director – Producer – Actor) makes some interesting observations in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Two things that stuck out for me were Whedon’s thoughts on reboots/reunions and binge-watching tv episodes.
Whedon on reboots/reunions…
“I see a little bit of what I call monkey’s paw in these reboots. You bring something back, and even if it’s exactly as good as it was, the experience can’t be. You’ve already experienced it, and part of what was great was going through it for the first time.”
Whedon is on point. As much as we want to bring back favorite favorites, it is so difficult. There has to be some growth or we’re getting more of the same and we’ve seen that. And Whedon is so right — part of what was great was experiencing it for the first time.
Whedon on binge-watching tv episodes…
“…the more it (television watching) becomes lifestyle instead of experience. It becomes ambient. It loses its power, and we lose something with it…I would not want to do it. I would want people to come back every week and have the experience of watching something at the same time… I loved event television.”
Technology has made movie and television watching less of an event. I love the convenience of being able to record and watch what I want when I want, but when was the last time watching something became an event (not counting live broadcasts)? When I was a kid, The Wizard of Oz was shown once a year and you’d better be in front of the tube when it was broadcast. I can still remember the thrill of being allowed to stay up late to watch it, or Hitchcock’s The Birds. The series finale of The Fugitive was another tv event that was huge. So was the murder of JR, a new episode of All in the Family.
Binge-watching takes away the event feel. Not only that, because the series is available ANY time you want, there is less of a pull to watch it. My wife and I tuned in every week for Longmire. When it switched to Netflix, we followed but now we could watch it whenever. We have a full season yet to be watched. Same with Daredevil. I’ve yet to watch a single episode of House of Cards or Luke Cage. What’s the rush? They’ll be there when I’m ready.
Rocky and Mickey Limited Edition Maquettes
Have you seen these Rocky and Mickey limited edition statues coming from NECA?
These limited edition maquettes (statues) are based on a famous stopmotion commercial from the late 1990s that starred Rocky and his trainer Mickey in puppet form. Even in stylized form, those two had selling power!
Working from the actual puppets used to make the commercial, we’ve reproduced Rocky and Mickey as extra-detailed maquettes. Rocky stands approximately 12″ tall and has fabric boxing shorts. Mickey stands approximately 10″ tall and features fabric hat and clothing.
Both statues are in accurate scale to each other and have movable eyes that can be positioned in various directions.
Comes with two display bases. Limited to 1500 pieces worldwide
Any of my deep-pocket buddies wondering about an early birthday or Christmas present for me… now ya know. ; )
18 Things We Learned from John Carpenter’s “Rio Bravo” Commentary
Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 18 Things We Learned from John Carpenter’s Rio Bravo Commentary. Here are my three favorites…
2. Hawks is Carpenter’s favorite director, and this is one of his favorite films ever made. He’s long credited it with being the inspiration for his own Assault on Precinct 13.
8. Robert Mitchum’s brother, John, plays the bartender in the scene where Chance and Dude enter the bar in search of the wounded bad guy.
9. The belt buckle Wayne wears during the film was a gift from Hawks upon the completion of their first film together, Red River. It features the brand from the ranch his character owned in the film.
