Posted in: Random Fun by Gino Sassani on October 21st, 2014
This last Friday night Upcomingdiscs was invited to attend the 10th annual scare fest at Busch Gardens in Tampa. They call it Howl-O-Scream, and what a scream it is, literally. I believe that most of the people who attend these events do it so that they can scream themselves hoarse. I bumped into a young girl reaching for napkins at a concession stand and she practically had a heart attack. She screamed and began thumping her chest. I apologized for the unintended startle, but I’m not sure she ever heard a word I said. If you’re reading this, sorry once again. But that’s the climate you can expect to encounter should you be fortunate enough to get to the spooktacular before it closes up for the season.
Posted in: Random Fun, Release Announcements by Gino Sassani on May 1st, 2014
"This is class here, and you don't ever want to spit on class."
All this week we've been talking about Hill Street Blues. Why? Because Shout Factory has finally given fans what we've literally waited decades to have. The entire seven seasons of Hill Street Blues are finally available in one fine collection. I've been hard at work on the review, but we're talking 144 episodes, and I'm eating them as fast as I can. We hoped to have the review up today, but there is still a little more to watch. In the meantime we have another character profile to keep you going until next week.
Posted in: Random Fun, Release Announcements by Gino Sassani on April 30th, 2014
Hill Street Blues is finally out on DVD, and we're celebrating all week long. Yesterday we shared the various awards that the show has earned in its seven years on television. We've also shared a couple of character profiles starting with the Captain and Detective Belker. This time out we're going to talk about two characters who were patrol officer partners for the entire run of the series. What makes them special is that they were killed off in the pilot. What the heck is that about? Read on, my friend.
When the pilot episode ended, Officers Andy Renko (Charles Haid) and Bobby Hill (Michael Warren) were gunned down in a tenement building and left for dead. In the original cut of the episode, dead is exactly what they were. However Charles Haid, who was expecting to have another pilot picked up, was suddenly without a job and came calling to Hill Street Blues asking to report for duty. The Hill character was never completely decided upon, and Michael Warren was up for a return. The pilot was swiftly rewritten with a few minutes of footage reshot, and the rest is history.
Posted in: Random Fun, Release Announcements by Gino Sassani on April 16th, 2014
"Would you like to sit down or would you prefer internal bleeding?"
Next on our list is Detective Mick Belker, played by Bruce Weitz. Weitz did such a phenomenal job in the role that he found himself typecast for years after Hill Street ended. On the pilot commentary Bochco tells us that when Weitz went in for auditions he was often asked to growl for them. In a way it's a shame, but can you blame them?
Posted in: Random Fun by Gino Sassani on October 29th, 2013
The following cautionary tale is brought to you by the folks at Fox and American Horror Story:Asylum out on DVD/Blu-ray.
Whilst the criminally insane remain under the care of sadistic medical staff in the second chapter of the Emmy winning series, American Horror Story: Asylum, released this week, we are going to look at our favorite medical villains who prescribe the maximum dose of patient dread and suffering. Are you sure you want that warm sponge-bath sir …?
Posted in: Random Fun by Archive Authors on October 20th, 2013
What is horror? It is something truly terrible that we are afraid of. War is full of horror, but we tend to compartmentalize that as a fact of life or simple necessity. So we'll put war aside, because the unspeakable atrocities that occur during war are sanctioned by international law. But it is difficult for me, because the unspeakable nightmare that is war throughout history is the ultimate in horror. When we see the enormously popular The Walking Dead or World War Z, we are seeing a metaphor for war. The unbridled frenzy that is a zombie attack comes close to making us understand what war is like. World War Z also tried to give us a clear connection to what a world wide pandemic would be like. The Black Plague and the killer flu were real things that killed millions. When we go about our daily lives we don't like to think that death is eminent, but it is always in our subconscious. Death is in our DNA. We may not want to think about it, but it always courses through our dreams. We watch horror films to confront our fears. There are very real fears.
The most obvious of our real fears is the crazed, psychopathic killer. No one would deny that this is real. I always think back to the book by Robert Louis Stevenson about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which was published not long before a similar case took hold of the popular imagination. Jack the Ripper has been linked to another killer who built a hotel in Chicago designed specifically for his prodigious need to kill. Some suggested it was this killer who went to London to commit similar murders. There was another set of gruesome murders in Cleveland that were linked to the Black Dahlia case. The point is that horrifying mass murders have been around for a while. There is the story of a Scottish clan of 40 who ate 1000 victims in the 16th century. It supposedly inspired The Hills Have Eyes.
Posted in: Random Fun by Gino Sassani on June 16th, 2013
Posted in: Random Fun by J C on June 4th, 2013
The tight-knit cast and crew of Attorney at Low weren’t about to let a little rain — ok, it was a lot of rain — dampen their spirits during the movie’s June 1 world premiere. So nobody objected when the red carpet was transported from the sidewalk to the inside of the historic Zephyrhills Home Theatre, as everyone involved with making the indie comedy got the star treatment.
“Tonight is really more for everybody else,” said Richard Siggins, the film’s writer/director/producer. “My work has been done for months.”
Posted in: Blog Posts, Random Fun by William O'Donnell on April 24th, 2013
Steve Kostanski, a special effects artist working out of Toronto who has been a part on such productions as Silent Hill: Revelation and the upcoming Pacific Rim, began making the film Manborg as a personal project. It was mostly shot in a garage with his friends and a budget of roughly $1000. Now, much to his surprise, the film has become something of a cult sensation as it screens in theatres all over the world as well as receiving a loaded DVD release in almost every region. I spoke to the Director about the explosion of Manborg fandom worldwide:
Posted in: Random Fun by Gino Sassani on January 9th, 2013
We catch up with iconic film director Tim Burton to find out more…
Frankenweenie is described as a semi-autobiographical project. Does this mean the younger characters in the movie are based on your classmates from school?
