Random Fun

Troma Entertainment has harnessed a young group of Canuck filmmakers who go by the moniker ASTRON-6, and will be debuting their first feature film venture into the realm of bad taste. The film is called Father’s Day and the trailer, which is filled to the brim with topless women and bloody, man-and-man rape, is already getting attention online. As well, it seems that Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman simply cannot stop talking about the film, based on the amount of clips available online (google Lloyd or Troma and soon find out).
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Once again Upcomingdiscs found themselves the guests of Busch Gardens and their annual Halloween event, Howl-O-Scream. Each year the friendly amusement park employees turn in their mandatory smiles and courtesy for chainsaws and scarred flesh. The park’s normally pristine nature areas are converted into terrifying scare zones where you’ll encounter creatures unfit for the normal Florida sunshine. So once again I put on my Frankenstein shirt, a gift from Sara Karloff (with whom we’ll be talking soon for a podcast), and braved the horrible hallways and petrifying pathways of Busch Gardens.
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Lionsgate is holding eBay charitable auctions for FIVE posters from THE EXPENDABLES signed at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con by actors Terry Crews, Steve Austin and Randy Couture, benefiting The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The winning bidders will receive studio certified posters signed by the cast along with a signed letter verifying their authenticity.Continue reading for the auction links.
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Hey Gang,

On Sept. 28, Fangoria magazine and Lightning Media are releasing eight feature-length horror/thrillers as the Fangoria FrightFest collection.

From now through July 19, fans are the voting jury in a mini film festival “Demand It” competition hosted by Fangoria, to select one of the eight films for limited theatrical release in late July by viewing and voting for their favorite trailer at www.FangoriaFrightfest.com.

The FrightFest line-up represents a diversified array of quality genre entertainment of a range of horror film styles embracing fans of every demographic—from supernatural chillers to psychological horror and slasher flicks. These eight new, terrifying flicks feature such stars as the Twilight saga’s Xavier Samuel, Calista Flockhart, Keri Russell, Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts and more.

On July 28th, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a conference call with Monk’s Tony Shalhoub. Below is the transcript of that interview. I’ll be posting the audio portion of my question shortly:

Final Transcript

Monk – Tony Shalhoub Q&A Session

July 28, 2009/11:00 a.m. EDT

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That’s right, gentle reader, it’s fast approaching Christmas. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, and today it is the single most filmed Holiday story ever. There are over 12 film versions, of one sort or another. There have also been literally hundreds of adaptations for various television shows over the decades. My favorite was always the Sanford and Son episode where grumpy Fred meets with the Christmas Spirits, who bear a striking resemblance to a certain “Big Dummy”. Fred soon learns the true meaning of Christmas, a secret that most of us have, hopefully, known for years. For me, the best film version of the tale is the 1951 version with Alistair Sim as ol’ Scrooge. No other beats it for atmosphere.

Since that time a lot of Holiday films and specials have come and gone. Some have gone on to become classics, while others are best quickly forgotten lest we are tempted to lose our Christmas spirit. Here at the Sassani home there are two that have become as much a part of Christmas tradition as trees and eggnog. I simply adore A Christmas Story. I always loved Darrin McGavin, and he’s perfect here as the “Old Man”. He even offers us a Kolchak moment as he’s reading the paper and lets out one of his Kolchak sounding “It’s Neeeews”. The story is a simple one that each of us has experienced at some time or another. For Ralphy it was a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, but all of us have chased that elusive gift we coveted with all of our hearts. The narration is perfect and is presented by Jean Shepherd who wrote the original source material, “In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash”. Shepherd can also be seen as the man who tells the kids to go to the back of the line to see Santa. Coupled with the Boris Karloff rendition of The Grinch, we watch these Holiday classics each and every Christmas Eve. One of these years I’ll even get it in Blu-ray.

So what are your favorite Christmas films or specials? Let us know and share some of your holiday film memories and traditions in our comment section below. A movie can be the perfect excuse to spend quality time with your own loved ones.

From all of us here at Upcomingdiscs we wish you the best of the coming Holiday Season.

(And don’t shoot your eye out, okay?)

Follow this song link to a Christmas Song I composed a few years ago, called Passage.

It’s a musical Christmas card from us to you:

Passage

I’ve seen thousands of movies in my time and today I’m sharing the ten most important things to learn from action flicks. Jump to check it out.

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Okay, title got your attention? Good. Now the disclaimer. I was thinking of calling this piece “Ten Horrors From the Path Less Travelled,” but that would have been a bit precious. I’m not going to pretend that the serious horror fans out there are unfamiliar with these titles. Nor is this list meant really and truly as a “Top Ten” (see, two lies already in my title). But consider this a reminder that there’s something other than the umpteenth rental of The Exorcist or latest iteration of Saw out there for your Halloween pleasure. So here, chronological order, are ten fine films for the season.
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Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, made an interesting observation about R vs. G rated movies in a recent post:

“A study done in 2005 showed that G-rated movies are 11 times more profitable than R-rated movies, yet the industry cranks out 12-times more R-rated movies.” [from Scott Adams]

More info on the study in question can be found here – rwurl.com/cnngstudy.

What’s up with that? Scott suggests its the pursuit of Oscars motivating producers and directors. Anyone know the ratio of G to R rated Academy winners or nominees?

In other news…

“For the past 18 months, my syndication company, United Media, and I had been negotiating with a major movie studio to do a Dilbert movie. They wanted to do it. We wanted to do it. A top director wanted to do it. We even agreed on price. But that wasn’t enough to get it done, for reasons that have already appeared in a Dilbert comic. (I can’t tell you which one.) So the movie rights for Dilbert are available.” [from Scott Adams]

Huh. Read the plot line idea that Adam’s puts forward and you may have an idea why this isn’t being filmed yet. IMHO, The Simpsons is one of the few series (in any medium) without a coherent, cross-series plot arc to make the jump to the big screen successfully.

Found via digg, another funny feature on Cracked: the 10 Best Animated Films for (Traumatizing) Kids.

Number One: Pom Poko, distributed by Walt Disney.

“Although us narrow-minded Westerners may have issues about our kids watching racoons bludgeon construction workers with their massive genitals, this kind of thing is pretty much par for the course in Japan. “Tankui” as the anatomically-improbable monsters are known, are traditional Japanese folklore creatures. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Japanese version of Davy Crockett wears a coonskin cap made entirely of scrotum.

This type of film would never be distributed by a major film company in the United States. Oh, wait. It was distributed in the United States by the Walt Disney Pictures. [from Cracked]

Here’s an edit of the movie Fargo (read the review here!), cut to include only dialog with the word “yeah.” A funny take on a fantastic film, found via digg.

Good question, posed by author Iain Levison.

Citing a number of insane trucker movies (Joyride, Thelma & Louise, and Duel among others), Levison turn the stereotype into a quasi-screed white-working-guy manifesto:

There is a theme here, and it doesn’t look good for white, working class males. In fact, I can’t think of a single movie that features a positive white working class male character. They’re either slimy, like the painters in 2002’s The Good Girl, downright hateful to women (North Country, Dwight Yoakam in Sling Blade) or full blown psychopaths, as in most of the films listed above. [from Iain Levison]

Huh. I’m not so sure about that. For every psycho trucker, there’s 10 heroic white cops (as working a man as they come) pursuing gangsters of varying ethnicities.
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Terminator 2 tells us that Skynet nuked the planet on August 29, 1997 – making today the 10th anniversary of Judgment Day. Thanks, Wikipedia! T2 still goes down as one of the most influential movies in my collection: action, ground-breaking sfx, and an engaging plot all combined in the perfect storm of movie awesomeness. Below is the T2 trailer for your retro enjoyment…