Auditions for Gothic Slipstream Film This Week

Categories: Film

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If you're goth in Houston, then Remi Award-winning director Henry Grevemberg wants you to meet him this week for a chance to be in his latest film. It's called SAPI3N, and it's a Harlan Ellison-esque journey of genetic manipulation. The script is available online, as is a brief novelization. Frankly, the whole thing makes as much sense to me as a screen door on the TARDIS, but Grevemberg isn't someone who deals in the conventional anyway.

He calls the film gothic slipstream.

"Gothic slipstream is a term I semi-coined, a best fit for the material," said Grevemberg via e-mail. "Slipstream is a form of sci-fi -- Wiki description: a kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction/fantasy and mainstream literary fiction. SAPI3N is inspired by Tarkovsky's Stalker, which is a sci-fi, but present day, paranormal, real and fantasy combined.

"The approach I take to all of my material is gothic, existential. Anne Rice has a lot to do with this (the Louisiana mystique), as well as movies such as Stalker, Ingmar Bergman's films, etc."

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The Anchorman 2 Teaser Trailer: It's Jean-Creaming Time!

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This week, attached to prints of The Dictator came the teaser trailer for Anchorman 2, with the original cast of boys spouting off their trademark borderline profanity from out of the holes where their moustaches lay.

When production of this sequel was announced, the social media world -- I guess we should just say world at this point -- lit up with excitement. The original film, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, ended up being a comedy classic and the source for endless quoting. It's the pleats...

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Trailer Park: Is This The Worst Trailer Ever Made?

Categories: Film

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I recently saw (dealt with? suffered?) the Step Up Revolution trailer attached to the front of the middling Jason Segel forward slash Emily Blunt rom-com The Five-Year Engagement, while on date night with the missus. Shuddup.

That was one engagement that lasted two hours and four minutes too long! Zing!

Anyhow, Step Up Revolution's trailer is easily the worst one I have ever seen in nearly three decades of watching trailers. It's bad in all the right places that you would expect a bad trailer to be bad. Like shitty music, shitty cars, shitty dialog, shitty dancing, and it's set in Miami to boot.

And what's worse, it looks like they are slapping kah-razzy hip-hop dancing onto a vague version of the Occupy movement against a greedy land developer. Time to save the block/rec center/Taco Bell.

Sorry, but dance scenes died after the sequence at the McDonald's in 1988's Mac & Me. That's just the way it is.

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Do You Hate Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory? You Aren't Alone

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What a prick.
There are a lot of people to hate in the cast of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. The bratty kids, the arrogant and maniacal Wonka, the ineffectual parents, maybe even the whiny and frail Charlie Bucket, who wastes his time trying to win a ticket to a chocolate factory while his family starves.

The 1971 musical comedy, based on Roald Dahl's 1964 children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, remains a must-see for kids of all ages. The older you get the more twisted it becomes, though.

But Grandpa Joe? Portrayed by the late Jack Albertson? The "man" from Chico and the Man? What did he do to anyone, besides get out of bed, instill hope in his grandson and bark at Wonka when he did his grandson dirty?

According to this Facebook page, "The I Hate Grandpa Joe From Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory Page," there is plenty to hate him for.

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Top 5 Carrie Fisher Characters

Categories: Film, Stage, Top 5

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The bikini that made young boys into men.
Check out our interview with Carrie Fisher.

Now through Sunday, May 20, the lady who once famously donned a gold lamé bikini will make her way to the stage of the Hobby Center. Carrie Fisher, in all her self-actualizing, uncompromising glory, will have a six-day stint in Houston for her celebrated live solo show, Wishful Drinking.

Fisher has been in Hollywood for a long time. Her mother is actress Debbie Reynolds and her father is singer Eddie Fisher. Carrie Fisher was born into fame. Being Hollywood royalty did not make for an easy life. Fisher has often been frank about her battles with drugs and her time spent in rehab. Her first novel, Postcards from the Edge, touched upon her addiction issues in a semi-autobiographical way.

Wishful Drinking was first created for the stage in 2006, then was turned into a book, then a documentary and then back to the stage. The show has garnered rave reviews for its funny and honest portrayal of Fisher's life.

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Dear Hollywood, Get Some New Ideas: Little Shop, Carrie

Categories: Film

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Feed me Joseph!
I will preface this with two facts: 1. I am quite fond of the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors movie/musical, and 2. I am madly in love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Neither of these facts convinces me in any way that there should be talk of a Little Shop remake starring JGL.

The Little Shop of Horrors was originally a Roger Corman film released in 1960. The 1960 version was, more or less, the film most of us are familiar with, save the characters' inexplicable need to break into song. The film became something of a cult classic, and in 1982 it was adapted into an off-Broadway musical. The music was composed by Alan Menken, who you may have heard of based on the fact that he wrote the music to just about every Disney movie throughout the 1990s.

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DVDs & Blu-rays: The Grey

Categories: Film

The Grey stars Liam Neeson and Dallas Roberts; Joe Carnahan directs, writes and produces.

It was easy to like The Grey when it came out last January and its release now on DVD/Blu-ray is a bright spot in an otherwise dreary week. In the film, a group of tough guys working on an Alaskan pipeline are flying home for some R&R when their plane crashes in the middle of the wilderness.

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Trailer Park: The Gangster Squad Featuring Baby Goose, Nick Nolte Slurring and Hip-Hop for Some Reason

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Yesterday the first official trailer for this fall's star-studded, Instagram-colored gangster flick The Gangster Squad was released, featuring Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn with a Dick Tracy-style facial appliance, Nick Nolte Nick Nolte-ing the scenery and Josh Brolin frowning for the big bucks.

Emma Stone shows up in glamorous '50s pin-up drag to ably entice Baby Goose Gosling as a gun moll. The thought of Penn putting his mitts on his screen gal Stone makes me sick, like "Octomom" sick. Will she be believable as anything but a cute and funny redhead? Will I still follow 17 Tumblr blogs devoted to her? We'll just have to wait and see.

Oh, and at the end of the trailer some hip-hop gets thrown in because dumb, stupid wiener kids won't come to the theater unless there's hip-hop involved, or so think the studios. This is 2012, you guys. This same thing turned me off seeing The Rum Diary in theaters because we needed some reggaeton or whatever to sell the trailer to people who didn't know the source material.

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5 Reasons Goonies Is the Greatest Kids' Flick Ever

Categories: Film

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Down here, it's our time...
This Thursday, the Alamo Drafthouse in Mason Park is hosting another in their series of movie "quote-alongs." This is nothing new, as they do these events quite regularly. However, what is so special about this month's quote-along is that the movie being quoted along to is none other than one of the greatest movies of all time -- The Goonies! I hate to make broad generalizations about culture, but it is a challenge to find a person who grew up in the 1980s and feels anything other than glowing wonderment in regards to this film. When it comes to kids' adventure movies, The Goonies is bar none.

In thinking about what makes this movie so special, I've come to realize that it is because it has never really been emulated, properly anyway. Since The Goonies' release in 1985, there have been many kids' adventure films. Some have even been compared to the Richard Donner masterpiece, but they have all missed the mark in some way or another. Don't get me wrong; there are a surplus of fantastic kids' adventure movies out there, but there is something about The Goonies that sets it apart from its contemporaries. And it has nothing to do with how cute Sean Astin used to be.

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DVDs & Blu-rays: Amador and Norman Mailer: The American

Categories: Film

Amador stars Magaly Solier: Fernando Leon De Aranoa directs.

Peruvian actor Magaly Solier and Spanish filmmaker Fernando Leon De Aranoa tell a story that is universal in Amador. Tender and lyrical, the film chronicles the unexpected relationship between a young caretaker, Marcela (Solier), and her elderly charge, Amador (Celso Bugallo). He's bedridden but that doesn't stop him from being a keen observer of life, including, we find out, Marcela's. "You don't have a boyfriend," he tells her, in a matter-of-fact way. "I can tell...because he doesn't call you." "He doesn't call me," she counters, "because he doesn't want to bother you." "It's you he bothers," he says. And sadly, that's the truth.

The two develop a friendship that's cut short when Amador suddenly dies. (And, no, that wasn't a spoiler.) Marcela is saddened by his passing, but more than that she's unemployed. To survive, she...(okay, that would be a spoiler).

The film, like Marcela, is soft-spoken, gentle and passive. For much of the movie, she lets life wash over her. Smart viewers will let Amador wash over them in much the same way.

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