Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Eric Beetner’s new novel, All the Way Down, reads like a cross between Game of Death, Die Hard and The Raid: Redemption. It’s an action-packed page-turner. Beetner talks about All the Way Down and a more in an interview by Matt Phillips at Medium.
When I saw that Giovanni Valletta, an artist on the John Wick comic series was taking commissions, I jumped on board for a couple of head sketches (John Wick and Jack Carter). Because it took a little longer than expected to get the art to me Giovanni added more to the art and threw in some prints as well. That’s customer service!
Here’s the teaser and what may or may not be an official poster for The Irishman. I love the simplicity and cleverness of the trailer. If the poster is fan-made, the fan who made it sure did a great job.
The photo above comes from Sly Stallone’s Official Instagram and is one of a series of photos from the set of Sly’s next film, Rambo V: Last Blood.
Sly has several films in development and is busier than ever. Here’s what’s in the works:
Sylvester Stallone and Balboa Productions have also acquired the rights to…
Source: ComingSoon.
Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 28 Things We Learned from Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon Commentary. Here are three of my favorites…
8. While set primarily in New York City, much of the film was shot in North Carolina including the sequences on the streets of Chinatown. They recreated streets with attention to detail up to and including the angled grade of their Mott Street — the “main” street in NYC’s Chinatown — which is not actually flat. They took plaster casts of curbstones and recreated the grade for authenticity, something he says most NYC reproductions on film don’t achieve. “If you look at Ragtime, it’s flat, and that’s why it doesn’t look like New York [City]. It’s a very rocky little island.” He’s proud of their accomplishment as it even fooled Stanley Kubrick. The legendary director was given a screening in London where he told Cimino that “Chinatown looks so great.” Cimino told him the truth, and after a little bit of back and forth Kubrick realized he’d been duped. “If you can fool Kubrick, who had the best eye in the world, you can fool anyone.” The sets have been reused in dozens of films in the years since.
12. He feels Lone and Mickey Rourke compliment each other well and achieve his goal of confusing “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” He says the bad guy is attractive and likable, the good guy is neither of those things, and viewers are ultimately forced to like the good guy because of what he does.
18. He credits Clint Eastwood with his career. Cimino’s debut as writer/director, 1974’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, only got made thanks to Eastwood’s belief in him. The contract gave Eastwood the right to fire him after the first three days of shooting, and thankfully he never felt compelled to do so.
The Kid Poster and Trailer are Here!
The Dragged Across Concrete Poster and Trailer are Here!
The Highwaymen poster and official trailer are here!
The Triple Frontier poster and second official trailer are here!
Justified is perhaps my all-time favorite television drama. It was extremely well- cast, acted, written and directed. Justified fans will enjoy the article I’m about to recommend. If you’ve never watched the series, you may enjoy the article even more. So please consider checking out The Underappreciated Genius of Justified by Lisa Levy at CrimeReads.com.
The Mind of Donald E. Westlake by Levi Stahl takes a look at Westlake’s ventures into screenwriting and the adaptations of his work for movies and television. It’s worth a look.
Did you know Westlake wrote a screenplay adapting Hammet’s Red Harvest? Sadly it was never made. Neither was Westlake’s James Bond screenplay. It’s no secret that Lee Marvin played Westlake’s most popular character Parker on the big screen, but did you know…
…that Between Point Blank, in 1967, and Parker, in 2013, Parker (usually under other names) was played by Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, Jim Brown, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham, and, strangest of all, Anna Karina…
I didn’t.
Kristin Hunt and Mental Floss present 10 Shocking Facts About The Black Dahlia, Hollywood’s Most Famous Unsolved Murder. Here are the three I found most disturbing…
THERE WAS NO BLOOD FOUND AT THE SCENE.
The naked body Bersinger discovered was in horrifying condition. In addition to being cut completely in half at the waist, and having her intestines removed, Short’s mouth had been slashed from ear-to-ear, giving her face a ghastly, semi-smiling appearance known as a Glasgow Smile. Her body had also been washed clean before it was left to be found. Despite the severe mutilation, there was no blood at the scene, leading police to conclude that the young woman had been murdered somewhere else, drained of blood, then cleaned before the killer dumped her body.
SOME LINKED THE CASE TO THE CLEVELAND TORSO MURDERS.
When Short’s death became national news, police officers in Cleveland felt an awful sense of déjà vu. Between 1934 and 1938, a serial killer had terrorized their city, claiming 12 victims—all of whom were grotesquely dismembered. Some theorized that the Ohio serial killer and Short’s murderer could be the same person, especially since—like Short’s killer—the perpetrator of what came to be known as the Cleveland Torso Murders was never caught.
GEORGE HODEL IS ONE OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS SUSPECTS.
One of those names is George Hodel, a physician who ran a venereal disease clinic in Los Angeles in the 1940s. According to The Guardian, Hodel was on a list of six primary suspects in the Black Dahlia case, and the LAPD even bugged his home during the investigation. But Hodel—who died in 1999—gained more recent notoriety when his son, Steve Hodel, accused him of killing Short in the 2003 bestselling book Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story.Steve claims his father’s handwriting matches strange letters the police received, supposedly from the killer. He also uncovered photos of a woman who resembles Short in his father’s personal photo album, and believes Hodel’s medical background would explain the precise, clinical cuts on the body. But some have discounted Steve’s claims since he started linking his father to other infamous unsolved murders, including the Zodiac killings.
Donnybrook wasn’t even on my radar until a couple of days ago. You can believe it is now. I read the novel Donnybrook by Bill Frank when it was first released and really enjoyed it.
The Donnybrook is a three-day bare-knuckle tournament held on a thousand-acre plot out in the sticks of southern Indiana. Twenty fighters. One wire-fence ring. Fight until only one man is left standing while a rowdy festival of onlookers―drunk and high on whatever’s on offer―bet on the fighters.
Jarhead is a desperate man who’d do just about anything to feed his children. He’s also the toughest fighter in southeastern Kentucky, and he’s convinced that his ticket to a better life is one last fight with a cash prize so big it’ll solve all his problems.
Meanwhile, there’s Chainsaw Angus―an undefeated master fighter who isn’t too keen on getting his face punched anymore, so he and his sister, Liz, have started cooking meth. And they get in deep. So deep that Liz wants it all for herself, and she might just be ready to kill her brother for it. One more showdown to take place at the Donnybrook.
As we travel through the backwoods to get to the Donnybrook, we meet a cast of nasty, ruined characters driven to all sorts of evil, all in the name of getting their fix―drugs, violence, sex, money, honor. Donnybrook is exactly the fearless, explosive, amphetamine-fueled journey you’d expect from Frank Bill’s first novel . . . and then some.
Here’s the trailer!
Sean Phillips is an amazing artist as you can see from his James Cagney piece above. The art appears with an article on Angels with Dirty Faces by Kim Morgan that will appear in Criminal #2 dropping on February 12th.
The great thing about the Criminal comic series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips is that each issue is packed with a great comic story PLUS bonus features and art.
Source: Kim Morgan.
Here’s the trailer for The Informer and it looks pretty good.
