This trailer scared the shit out of me as a kid. Turns out, it’s based on an excellent Laird Koenig book from 1974. I just finished it on Kindle, so I may have to see if I can find the movie streaming somewhere.
Down in the Sand
Alan Splet, who worked with David Lynch, remains my sound design hero. And we all acknowledge Ben Burtt. But these Doooooon guys (Mark Mangini and Theo Green) put on a show. I realized from the first minute watching it that the sound was going to be fantastic, and a new article provides some insight:
By way of explaining it to me, Mangini ground his work boot into the soft patch of sand that he had dusted with Rice Krispies. The sand produced a subtle, beguiling crunch, and Villeneuve broke out into a big smile. Though he’d heard it plenty of times in postproduction, he had no idea what the sound designers had concocted to capture that sound.
“I wanted Theo and Mark to have the proper time to investigate and explore and make mistakes,” Villeneuve said. “It’s something I got really traumatized by with my early movies, where you spend years working on a screenplay, then months shooting and editing it, and then right at the end, the sound guy comes and you barely have enough time.”
By hiring his sound designers early and setting them loose, Villeneuve could even take some of their discoveries and weave them into Hans Zimmer’s score, producing a holistic aural experience where the percussive music composition and pervasive sound design can sometimes be mistaken for one another.
And much like a band, the sounds of “Dune” benefited from some intriguing vocalists. To create the Voice, a persuasive way of speaking that allows Paul and his mother (Rebecca Ferguson) to draw on the power of their female ancestors — a witchy order called the Bene Gesserit — Villeneuve and his sound team cast three older women with smoky, commanding voices, then layered their line readings over those of Chalamet and Ferguson.
– Kyle Buchanan, NYT
One of the older women with a smoky voice? Marianne Faithfull.
Yeah No Thanks
It’s funny, when I had met with Tim about it last, and we’re talking about five years ago at this point, the reason that it’s so hard to get going is because so many people love it and because there are 10 million ways to get that sequel wrong and four ways to get it right. It’s such a very fine needle to thread that I certainly didn’t get it there, on the script side. I didn’t thread the needle. There are things that were cool and some interesting ideas. I’ve certainly emotionally moved on from it and just said, “If it happens someday, it happens.”
– Seth Grahame-Smith, writer of The Lego Batman Movie
Texas Porn Star Massacre?
The plot of this one has been put out there a lot, but I’ll watch pretty much anything done by A24.
The Northman
I was pretty impressed with Robert Eggers horror flick The Witch, so I was pretty psyched to hear that he was making a Viking saga film in Iceland. Bjork is in it, so it has to be good, right?
Damn It Janet
The video won’t embed (SO ANNOYING), but this is a pretty cool little time capsule moment.
To my knowledge this is the only full interview that Tim Curry gave about his part in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Recorded during the week that the film was released in 1975, he talks about his roll in the film and whether or not he would play the part again! The Interviewer is Mark Caldwell and the Interview Director is Colin Grimshaw. Clips were provided by Fox-Rank. Fox has (June 2012) reviewed and released any copyright claim on the film footage appearing in this video. The interview was shot in black and white (the film is in colour)!
I always forget how much ass this soundtrack kicks. Mark and I were in a college cover band that played “Sweet Transvestite.”
New PTA
This looks fantastic. The lead is Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour.
Ashes to Ashes
I’m sure it’s old news to Makerbot, but I was not aware there was an alternate ending to Army of Darkness. Rather, an original ending that test audiences hated, prompting a rewrite / reshoot.
Bruce Campbell Twitter is also great Twitter, if there is such a thing.
Army of Darkness flashback. The ending that never was. Ash swallows the wrong amount of magic drops trying to get back home, oversleeps and awakes to a world destroyed. Typical Ash. Test audiences said this version was a “downer,” so we re-shot a “happy” ending. Go figure. pic.twitter.com/PBAn5BHbVi
— Bruce Campbell (@GroovyBruce) August 20, 2021
Sopranos Prequel?
Yes, please!
Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark’s history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters begin to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family’s hold over the increasingly race-torn city. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, who struggles to manage both his professional and personal responsibilities—and whose influence over his impressionable nephew will help make the teenager into the all-powerful mob boss we’ll later come to know: Tony Soprano.
Mank
Gary Oldman plays Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to complete the first draft of the ”Citizen Kane” script. Along the way, Mankiewicz, known throughout Hollywood as a charming but deeply cynical alcoholic, locks horns with Orson Welles over nearly every element of the film’s story. That feud that would continue beyond the film’s release as Mankiewicz believed Welles was trying to take credit for his work and spent the rest of his life resenting him for it.
”Mank” is more than 20 years in the making, as David Fincher’s father, Howard ”Jack” Fincher, wrote the screenplay back in the late 1990s. He passed away in 2003. The film marks Fincher’s return to feature filmmaking for the first time since his 2014 Oscar-nominated film ”Gone Girl,” having spent the last six years working on Netflix series like ”House of Cards” and ”Mindhunter.”