First TV Spot Arrives For “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes”

I have said it before and I will say it again-The Planet Of The Apes reboot is one of the best things ever! Check out the first TV spot for “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes” . The film hits theatres on July 11th and continues the ever evolving new world after Caesar kick-starts ape evolution with a little human scientific advancement. “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes” stars Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis, Jocko Sims, Judy Greer and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth's dominant species.

Sci-fi/Creature Feature “Rise Of The Dinosaurs” DVD Release

Anthony Fankhauser directed “Rise Of The Dinosaurs” also known as Jurassic Attack, has a DVD release date set. The sci-fi/creature feature will hit shelves on June 17th, 2014. The film stars Gary Stretch, Corin Nemec, and Vernon Wells. “Rise Of The Dinosaurs” is available for pre-order at Amazon.com thanks to Gaiam.

 Commando squad reflects a hostage at the hands of terrorist Marquez, but their helicopter is shot down and falls into unexplored valleys. How quickly it is inhabited by dinosaurs, for which soldiers are tasty morsel.

Scream Factory Releases “Without Warning” To Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

Scream Factory to release horror classic “Without Warning” to blu-ray/dvd for the first time. The disc will arrive in August. “Without Warning” is directed by Greydon Clark and stars Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Tarah Nutter, Cameron Mitchell and Sue Ane Langdon.


From the Scream Factory Facebook Page:

“We are very thrilled to report that we are bringing Greydon Clark’s 1980 alien/slasher cult classic WITHOUT WARNING to DVD & Blu-ray for the first time this August! This long-overdue release has been requested several times since we started the brand so we know many of you just jumped for joy. (We’re jumping too!) What makes this even more exciting is that this title has never been released on ANY home entertainment format in the U.S. or Canada (and is often bootlegged as some of you can attest to) so to be able to bring this out period is a feat in itself.

No further details to report back at this time but we’ll keep you posted on developments in a few months. The artwork you see – which uses the original theatrical poster – is final.(However, the flipside will have the other poster art some of you may remember with a girl running from flying alien discs.)”

Release Date Announced For Restored Horror Classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”

Press Release:
MPI/Dark Sky Films, one of the leading distributors of independent and genre films, announced today they will be releasing a restored version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic.

The re-release comes in celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary with the restoration having its unveiling at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, next week.

In 1973 Tobe Hooper, a cast of unknown actors, and a crew of Austin film students and recent graduates headed to Round Rock, Texas, in the middle of July. For the next 32 days they worked around the clock in 100-degree weather to make The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The movie became a huge hit on the drive-in circuit and eventually grossed $30 million. It was invited to the 1975 Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight and was acquired as part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Since then it has become the eighth highest-grossing horror franchise of all time. In 2012 Sight & Sound magazine named it one of the 250 most important movies ever made.

The new version of the film will be released in theaters this summer with a brand new 4K transfer, roughly four times the resolution of today’s more commonly used 2K for cinema. This is the only transfer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to go back to the original 16mm A/B rolls, the actual film that rolled through the cameras.

The restoration of the film, overseen by Todd Wieneke of Dark Sky Films, took place at NOLO Digital Film in Chicago with the use of an ARRISCAN Film Scanner.

Taking 5 months of 40-hour workweeks to complete the color grading and the restoration, NOLO engineer Boris Seagraves stated, “This film probably needed the most restoration of any project we’ve done.”

Having been shot on less expensive 16mm film stock and cheaper, tougher “reversal” stock (which means there is no negative), the restoration started by taking the original 16mm film that rolled through the cameras and transferred all 120,960 frames to a 4K scan.

Scratches, film stains, chemical stains, dirt, torn perforations, rips in the film image, and glue splices had to go through a painstaking correction process frame by frame. “There were hundreds, if not thousands, of instances where you’d find a splice mark cooked into the middle of a frame. Some frames would have close to two hundred dirt events on them. We also spent a lot of time stabilizing the image. When doing a digital scan of a conformed 16mm print with a splice at every cut, it can be tough to achieve the high standards we all aspire to in the era of digital cinema. What might have passed as acceptable in the 70′s looks jarring now. So we worked hard to smooth out the tremors that almost inevitably occur when scanning this type of film element. There were tears in the film that we had to digitally rebuild from adjacent frames. There were tens of thousands of things we were dealing with”, said Seagraves.

Estimating that he spent about 50 hours on the color correction alone, NOLO Colorist Michael Matusek used a previous transfer of the film that had been supervised by Tobe Hooper as his guide to a rough color correction. Tobe Hooper then gave notes on this roughly timed version, and the process of adjusting the color began.

Hooper, who helped score the film and did the sound design, was also deeply involved with the audio restoration.

Todd Wieneke stated, “I’ve seen the film literally frame by frame, and I’m still hearing and seeing things I never noticed before… it just adds a whole different level.” Matusek added, “This 4K scan delivers such an intense reality that it feels like you’re really seeing through the film to the actual world behind it.”

Tobe Hooper stated, “I haven’t seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on the big screen for many, many years. This 40th anniversary restoration is absolutely the best the film has ever looked. The color and clarity is spectacular, displaying visual details in the film that were never before perceptible. The newly remastered 7.1 soundtrack breathes new life and energy into the film. I am very much looking forward to audiences experiencing this film as they never have before.”

Pagan Festival Shout Out: Festival Of Luna

March 31st Monday (revered as the borrowed days in Ethiopian culture); Waxing Moon-First Quarter; Color association-Lavender; Moon sign-Aries; and the Incense of choice for today is Hyssop.

Today, March 31st, is the first of the festivals in honor of the Goddess Luna. Luna,  is associated with moon magic, transformations, the psychic, and the feminine.  She symbolizes the heavenly embodiment of the moon.  She is often presented as the female complement of the Sun (Sol) conceived of as a god. Luna is not always a distinct goddess, but sometimes rather an epithet that specializes a goddess, since both Diana and Juno are identified as moon goddesses as well making the aspect of Luna the drawing force of feminine divinity and a powerful force in both the natural and supernatural realm.

Luna's attributes are the crescent moon and the two-yoke chariot (biga). In the Carmen Saeculare, performed in 17 BC, Horace invokes her as the "two-horned queen of the stars" (siderum regina bicornis), bidding her to listen to the girls singing as Apollo listens to the boys. A festival in Her honor was held on March 31st.  In Her temple on Aventine Hill in Rome, the cover was removed from the labyrinth passage to the Underworld, to allow the spirits of the dead to roam free. The temple was destroyed by the Great Fire of Rome in the year 64 C.E.

Sacrifices to Luna were held at this time on the Graecostasis; and the first of three days when the mysterious ritual pit called the mundus was opened. (I guess it goes without saying that if this holiday is one to incorporate in your modern spiritual calendar of festivals then the sacrifices should be symbolic.)  The temple of the moon goddess Luna on Aventine Hill was the site of worship, feasting, and wild dancing orgies. The untamed character of those abandoned revelries was the source of our word 'lunatic'. As the Goddess of the moon, Luna is associated with witches with moon magic, transformations, the psychic and all things feminine.  She represents growing awareness, the fulfillment of love, and the mystery of enchantment.   She is often pictured with a crescent Moon on her head. Since she is also known as the bringer of light, she is shown carrying a torch in her hand.

My Review Of Horror Short “Lucky”

“Lucky” is a modern twist-of-fate horror short from Jakob Bilinski which focuses on a young woman facing a would-be attacker in a library late at night. The film was created as part of an expanded project titled Unscripted: An Indie Film Xperience . “Lucky” stars Louisa Torres, Dillon Schueller and was filmed in the Owensboro,. Ky library in 8 hours.

The film has a clever story told in a very simple format with a minimalist style. Two characters, one setting and a twist with a horrifically cool ending. The quality and feel of “Lucky” is pretty quality work, exceeding the standard low budget quality you would expect. The script is a fun, dark tale that could easily be expanded into a much larger film surrounding Torres character. It was entertaining and atmospheric. The twist ending was one I kind of expected but the nature of the twist was not something I expected. Fate sometimes has a sinister, otherworldly heavy hand to strike someone down.

The effects are very minimal with most of the film hanging on story, suspense, and anticipation. With clever elements meant to direct the viewer one way that is both predictable and exciting only to spin it into the much more anticipated but unexpected was executed well. Jakob Bilinski manages to create a film that, from start to finish, holds the audience and even begs for expansion. At least as the final moments ended and the credits rolled I imagined it as just an intro to something bigger.

My Review Of “Curse Of The Dragon Slayer”

“Curse Of The Dragon Slayer” is a fantasy adventure film directed by David Lyde and starring Danielle Chuchran (Body of Proof), Richard McWilliams, Paul D. Hunt and James C. Morris in a middle earth/other-realm styled quest. The film follows an unlikely trio as they ban together to defeat an ultimate evil infecting the kingdom. Keltus, a knight of the ruling Order is on the trail of the Shadow Cabal -- a group of Orc cultists. Keltus recruits Neymt, the elf bounty hunter and the infamous Orc raider, Kullimon. Incidentally this film was going by the name “Curse Of The Shadow Cabal”.

The story for “Curse Of The Dragon Slayer” is one that I am not familiar with but the company behind the film is also responsible for games and other movies in this ilk. I say that just to let it be known that fantasy adventure films are not my forte and although I find them entertaining they are not a world or mythos that I contemplate enough to have a personal checks-n-balances to validate what I the film intends. So my review is solely on this film’s value and merit alone. The good thing about “Curse Of The Dragon Slayer” is you don’t really have to be that familiar with this world or they encompassing storyboard to enjoy the movie. The quality of the acting, direction and story arch offer a pretty entertaining fantasy adventure with cool character dynamics that press beyond the cliché that is this genre’s burden. The fact that the story combines unlikely characters as heroes is a plus. At times the burden of cliché does hinder the concept’s  plausibility (If you develop your characters to a set standard then they will hardly band together for a common goal-in my opinion). However that notion didn’t stop me from enjoying this movie and guess what?, I found myself favoring the Orc more than the Elf and Human.

The special effects and creature make-up is pretty quality with an obvious attention to respect for the genre present from the creators. There are elements of CGI within “Curse Of The Dragon Slayer” but the film isn’t co-dependent upon them and there are far more practical effects utilized. The atmosphere and cinematography for this one is pretty stellar with some beautiful scenes framed by awesome scenery and design.  The film took all the things I loved about the Tolkein films and combined it with a classic feel of one of my favorite fantasy films “The Beast Master” in a well crafted and nicely executed story. I found “Curse OF The Dragon Slayer” very entertaining and I think it works for all ages.