Fictum Scientia

Happy St. Patty’s Day… and watch out for that Leprechaun

I lift my beer up to Warwick Davis for his relentless portrayal of the little evil critter, The Leprechaun.
And what I mean relentless, I mean 6 movies, including the last two Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood.

Here’s a trailer from the first one… check out Jennifer Aniston from her pre-Friends era. She probably should have stuck with being a B-Movie vixen, they have a whole lot less paparazzi.

When a single father, his daughter, and three painters discover a pot of gold hidden near a house that the family is moving into, a vengefully violent leprechaun stalks them and uses his magical powers to frighten them into returning his gold. Although they are more than willing to meet his desires, one of the painters, while biting it to determine its authenticity, accidentally swallows it, complicating matters and leading to a night of terror.

Coincidently… Syfy is playing a block (in reverse order?) of the first four. You can catch this first classic at 4:00pm (how lame… I wish Syfy would go back to their old style of programming and drop the Wrestling and the reality show… we want more movies!!! and not just on weekends!!)

Where all the monsters hang out

It’s no secret that Comedy Central is constantly trying to come up with an original series that will come close to the success of South Park. And in some of these attempts, they try to reach out to the soft spoken crowd in hopes to spark up something big (does anybody remember Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire… this was an attempt to reach out to those Dungeons & Dragons folk).

Well, they are at it again. This time, they are reaching to the Horror Film Fans. And like Kröd Mändoon, it doesn’t look like it will be hilariously funny, but it will prove to be weird… weird enough to get me to watch it… at least for a while.

The Oscars

OK… so the Oscars were last week. I didn’t watch them, I never do (I’ll get to that later), but I did manage to see the cool Horror Montage the morning after. Very cool.

A couple of days later, my buddy Cinesthete, at Reel Friction posted his thoughts on the Oscars. Upon reading it, I felt that I had express some of my own thoughts… mostly as rebuttal to his thoughts, and adding a few of my own.

I reproduced most of his article here, at least the parts that I had felt the need to comment. To read the whole article, go here. There were a few things that I had no thoughts or cares about.

Here goes:

I don’t pretend to understand cinematography (anyone who has seen my films can attest to that), but does lighting generated on a computer count? I’m surprised Avatar won.

I won’t even claim to understand any cinematography (at least you made a few films, Cinesthete), but as a 3D artist and animator, I can say that lighting is one of the most challenging aspects of the job. Every aspect of lighting is translated through hundreds of parameters that we take for granted. Positioning, intensity, and attenuation are just a difficult to determine in a virtual scene as it is in real life. And then there is the whole science of Radiosity (shadows and light bounces) that need to be configured… otherwise you’ll end up with something like a scene in the original Tron (they may have been ground breaking in 3D, but we have gone a long way since then).

Once you tweak all the parameters in order to imitate real life, you then have to marry it to actual real life footage. Granted, on many of todays sophisticated computers and equipment (thanks to George Lucas), this is not too difficult. But trust me, it takes damn near rocket science to figure out how to use all that equipment and programs.

So “lighting generated on a computer” is really putting it lightly. It’s like saying anyone can pickup a camera and become a James Cameron. It is, after all, just “looking through a lens”, right? I’m not shocked that Avatar won that award. As a matter of fact, I am shocked it didn’t received more technical awards, but thats how the Oscars work…
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Box of Shadows – Trailer

Pulled this off their official website… A different kind of movie. It sounds pretty cool:

BOX OF SHADOWS, centers around a group of college friends, who discover a 15th century coffin that allows them to experience the world as ghosts. While their first adventures in the spirit world are playful and innocent, the “Box of Shadows” soon brings out the group’s most dangerous impulses and desires. The friends find themselves pulled into a world of evil where they learn the line between life and death is there for a reason.

Yeah… I’m there. Release scheduled for July 2, 2010. I think I need to start a “wish list” of movies that I want to see… gets a bit rough keeping track. By the way, don’t forget to check out my movie activity log every once in a while (accessible at the top of the sidebar).

Sharktopus withdrawal? SyFy has something to help…

Some of you may have recalled my article on Sharktopus. And some of you may find it difficult to wait for this film to arrive (like myself). Well… fear not. Roger Corman has something to tide you over.

Mark your calendars: March 13 for Dinoshark!

I just wish that SyFy would do this more often on the weeknights, and not the Wrestling or Wisps-of-air…er…Ghost Hunters. At least they have all day movies on the weekends, even if they are not always available to me…

BTW… love the Jaws reference: “Think we’re going to need a bigger chopper…” (two-fold!)

Vampire Slayers in History

You know, Buffy isn’t the only vampire slayer out there. She’s not even real! But did you know that Abraham Lincoln was, secretly, a vampire slayer? Yep. While writing para-phrases for the Emancipation Proclamation, he was driving stakes into the blood sucking vile beasts!

No… I have not lost it. But in all seriousness, Seth Grahame-Smith, who brought us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an parody(?) of Jane Austen’s classic, has just released Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. How awesome is that?

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

To help promote the book, a trailer was made. Just more awesomeness. No, really! How ofter to you hear a “theatrical” trailer made for a book. You need to check it out!

I don’t know about you… but after seeing this, I caught myself thinking “This would even be more awesome if they actually made a real movie out of this!”

And, then, low and behold…. someone felt the same awesomeness and I did!

According to The Hollywood Reporter, there is going to be a film adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. And we’re not talking about some no name people here… Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov are getting together on this! Most likely producing, and not directing… but still, it promises to be some “awesome” entertainment…

Cool stage theatrics from pop star Lady GaGa

I’m really not into pop music. I’m more of a heavy metal/classic rock type of guy. Through out the history of the genre, many artists would put on a great show using some pretty awesome theatrics. My personal favorites were the Pink Floyd shows that I attending in my tween years. There are quite a few bands out there, especially some heavy metal bands, that have intense stage props that would even put Broadway to shame.

You’ll never catch me at a Lady GaGa show, for sure. But I stumbled across this video (probably from a cell phone, just look at all the other cell phones!) of a performance for the song Paparazzi. I have to say… I may have to give her nod to some pretty cool props on this one. Kind of looks like a cross of a Lovecraftian creature and the monster in George P. Cosmatos’ Leviathan.

Another thing about “The Thing”

Just a quick note about “The Thing” prequel that I reported about the other day. Some more recent news, positive news, surfaced that sheds a bit of light to the prequel that is definitely a prequel…

From the What’s Playing website:

…Australian actor Joel Edgerton spoke briefly about his next project, a prequel to John Carpenter’s classic horror-hit The Thing.

Edgerton, who’ll appear in the film opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead, tells Hit he can’t say much about the Matthijs van Heijningen Jr-directed project only that it takes place before the original movie.

“Anyone who is a big fan of the John Carpenter version of The Thing knows that it starts on the American base station but the investigation of where the Thing has come from leads us to know something very bad has happened at the Norwegian base station and the prequel centres itself around there and what happened pre-Kurt Russell”.

In the film, due to film in Vancouver, Edgerton plays Sam Carter a helicopter pilot who teams with a graduate student named Kate Lloyd (Winstead) to pursue an alien life form.

No talk about some brother of a lead from the original. This, to me, sounds like the movie is going in a positive direction. Even if it does go sour, it will not mar the original.

Now, if people would just stop whining about it, we can get on with our lives. That is, at least until the movie is released.

“The Thing” Prequel Progressing

A while back (more than a year ago) I caught wind of a possibility re-make of John Carpenter’s The Thing. This really upset me. The movie is a perfect sci-fi/horror that does not need to be remade. Even when I watch it today, it’s suspense and creepiness rivals most of what is being put out. There simply was no need for it.

The rumors basically died and everyone forgot about it. But then, I heard new rumors that a prequel is being made. Actually, now they’re no longer rumors. It’s official. Shooting will begin in mid March. However, the idea of a prequel does not sound so bad. It’s definitely better then a remake. But, it could go bad in many ways, as well. According to BloodyDisgusting.com, there is some notion of having a character that will be the brother of one of the leads from the original (MacReady played by Kurt Russell). This would be bad. Very bad. It just does not fit in with the story and it would be just plain stupid.

You see, in original 1982 version, there were events that occurred up to the present point of the movie. These events focus on a Norwegian Camp in Antarctica (the movie take place on an American research outpost on Antarctica), and from what I have read, this prequel is supposedly focused on these events. This fine… I can accept this. But to have MacReady’s brother involved… NO! Ronald D. Moore (of new Battlestar Galactica) is penning this new story. While I’m not not too crazy about his recent work, he did write for Star Trek’s Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. One can only hope he will look back to his roots and not cheese out like he did for Battlestar.

Setting that aside… if things don’t go too sour (like this brother angle), I’ve recently came across some refreshing news that could work in its favor. Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. have been added to head the special effects. The good news is these guys are NOT CG artists. They do special effect the old fashion way: Make-up and Animatronics. Frankly, with the rise of CG graphics lately, some movies are becoming more and more like cartoons. It’s good to know that some old fashion techniques are still used. This, and the fact that an up and rising director, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., are on board with this project, Things are looking a little positive.

PS: While looking for the latest news regarding The Thing, I can across an interesting article from CoronaComingAttractions.com. While I knew that SciFi Channel (now just SyFy) had originally planned on making a sequel to The Thing, I never knew how far it went. The news came and went so fast that most people were not aware of it (I didn’t hear about until after they decided not to do it). Patrick Sauriol from CoronaComingAttractions so how got hold of the script that was made for the SciFi special (set to be a miniseries). He writes about it and the sequel sounds pretty decent. What was it shelved? Probably for budgeting reasons.

Zombie Porn

Got your attention, right? Yeah, well this is no joke. Two of the my favorite things have finally merged to create, what will probably be, one of the best zombie films ever. OK… I’m exaggerating a bit. But really… like chocolate and peanut butter, what male, in his not-so-right mind, can not resist zombies and porn? And now, someone took the time to combine them into, what I’m sure to be, a masterpiece of a film! Come on… look at what others are saying…

“DAWNA OF THE DEAD is so wrong on so many levels, that it actually achieves high art in cinema. Plus, there is simply nothing sexier than something you shouldn’t be seeing.” – Dave Navarro

“The DAWNA OF THE DEAD trailer is obscene, disgusting and just plain wrong… So naturally we are now dying to see the whole film!” -DIGITAL RETRIBUTION

In all seriousness, who ever did take the time to make this film was obviously a big zombie aficionado. The costumes and make-up are above par for your typical porn flick. Hell… they are worthy of most the zombies films out there, past and present!

Check it out the Website, but:

**Warning #1: NSFW (that means “Not suitable/safe for work”… don’t be stupid).

**Warning #2: If you are offended by any kind of sexually content, pornographic material, blah, blah, blah…. don’t bother.

Official Website

Screw that! Just take me straight to the TRAILER!