#Independent Horror Film Festival

[fathersonholygore]

Father Son Holy Gore Does FogFest 2022

Father Son Holy Gore Does FogFest 2022

As a film lover, a screenwriter, and a new filmmaker, I actually don’t love the everyday theatre experience; blasphemy, I know! The festival theatre experience is something far different—something much more beautiful and filled with community than paying for overpriced snacks just to listen to someone’s dad talk through half of a film on a Friday night. Grind Mind’s FogFest, now in its sophomore…

[therogerclarkfanclub]

More stills from Roger's upcoming horror short film, Damn Handy.

Roger mentioned it was supposed to come out this month, I will keep you updated when a release date is announced.

[schlock-luster-video]

On June 18, 1971, Punishment Park premiered at the Melbourne Film Festival.

Here's some new art inspired by the indie classic!

[filmcourage]

Why Filmmaking Made More Sense Than Music - Michael J Epstein [FULL INTERVIEW]

Watch the video interview on Youtube here.

[greensparty]

Stuff I'm Looking Forward To in April

Welcome to the 2nd quarter of 2024! In addition to April Fools Day (April 1), Eid al-Fitr (April 9-10), Patriots Day / Marathon Monday (April 15 in MA), Tax Day (April 15), Earth Day (April 22), Passover (April 22-30), Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24) and there's also a solar eclipse on April 8, here is what's on my radar this month:

Movies:

Coup de Chance

Not sure if I'm "looking forward to this", but I'm curious about Woody Allen's new one as he has hinted this would be his last. Whatever your opinion is of Woody Allen, as a filmmaker he has made some solid films. Opens 4/5.

Civil War 

Alex Garland has had a mixed bag as a writer/director with Ex Machina being his best so far. His new one has been creating quite a buzz about a dystopian not-so-far future where journalists try to make it to D.C. before rebels descend on the White House. No coincidence this is being released during an election year. Opens 4/12 (review to come).

Challengers

What got my attention about this tennis drama wasn't star Zendaya, director Luca Guadagnino or the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It's the fact that it was filmed in Massachusetts and more specifically it filmed a little in Bedford, where I grew up. Opens 4/26 (review to come).

Music:

Pearl Jam Dark Matter

Pearl Jam's 12th studio album is finally year. The band's last album was 2020's Gigaton, which I noted was their best album since their 2006 self-titled album. I'm digging what I've heard so far and hopes are high for this one! Album drops 4/19. (Review to come).

Bruce Springsteen Best of Bruce Springsteen

The Boss has released a number of compilations over the years, his 1995 Greatest Hits being among my favorites. Now there's a new compilation with 18 hits ranging from 1973 to 2020. Album drops 4/19 (review to come).

St. Vincent All Born Screaming

St. Vincent is back with her 7th studio album. This one features appearances by numerous guests including Dave Grohl and Josh Freese of Foo Fighters. Album drops 4/26.

TV:

Curb Your Enthusiasm finale

I've been enjoying Season 12 of Larry David's social assassin. This is the final season (or so they say) and the season/series finale is set to air on HBO on 4/7. End of an era!

Conan O'Brien Must Go

I'm a huge fan of Conan O'Brien, going back to Late Night with Conan O'Brien (read my memories of attending his show here) and since then he's bounced back from the Tonight Show debacle with a great run on TBS and his fun podcast. Now he's back with a travel show meeting fans all over the world! Series premiere on 4/18 on Max!

Fake Holidays:

Record Store Day

The day we celebrate independently owned and operated record stores is one of my favorite holidays of the year! It's on 4/20 this year!

Independent Bookstore Day

Not to be outdone, independent bookstores get their day of celebration on 4/27.

Film Festivals:

Salem Horror Fest

I have been lucky enough to cover this genre film festival in Salem, MA since 2018. This year they are hitting some venues beyond Salem as well. Fest runs from 4/25 to 5/5!

[raybizzle]

All right. Imagine this for a short film. Think Boomerang meets Insidious. An eccentric playboy boasts his risky lifestyle in between women who may be bigger deviants than he is. Need just a few more dollars to complete. Please donate and share with others. Link below:

[thelifeofchuckmovie]

“The Life of Chuck”

Director: Mike Flanagan Section: TIFF Special Presentations Domestic Sales: WME

Yes, it has Mike Flanagan directing, and yes, it’s based on a Stephen King book, but “The Life of Chuck” is not a horror movie; in fact most will say this is King channeling his “Shawshank Redemption” or “Green Mile” era. Tom Hiddleston plays the seemingly ordinary accountant Chuck, whose face oddly winds up everywhere Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character turns. The film, which was made independently under a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement, hasn’t screened yet to anyone despite selling some territories in advance, but Flanagan is said to give the film a life-affirming, humanist spin and evokes some great work out of Mark Hamill in a supporting role.

[flanaganfilm]

Hi Mike, how was Tribeca?

It was fantastic.

For those who don't know, I was lucky enough to be invited to sit on the US Narrative Feature Jury at this year's Tribeca Festival. I just got back yesterday from ten days in Manhattan.

I found the whole thing to be absolutely rejuvenating.

Our category had five jurors: myself, Zoey Deutsch, Stephanie Hsu, Tommy Oliver, and Ramin Bahrani.

Kate was also on a jury - she was on the International Feature Jury (which included Brendan Fraser and Zazie Beets) so that meant we spent the week seeing different movies. We'd pass each other on our way to different screenings, sometimes in the lobby of the theater, and then meet up for dinner or a party and get to tell each other about the awesome movies we saw that day.

It was overwhelming to start with. At the Opening Night reception, we met Robert DeNiro, and we saw Martin Scorcese and Matt Damon (we were way too timid to introduce ourselves). I did manage to introduce myself to Kenneth Lonergan, who has made some of my all-time favorite movies (You Can Count on Me is one of the best movies I've ever seen), and the great Chazz Palminteri (I got to tell him how much I absolute adore A Bronx Tale). I also spent a fair amount of time chatting with Peter Coyote, who was incredibly kind and funny. We chatted a lot about Ken Burns.

After that, we went to the Opening Night film, a terrific documentary called Kiss the Future. We walked the red carpet (something I'm never quite comfortable with, but luckily Kate is a natural) and we saw the movie with a packed house. It was a beautiful film and really started everything off on an amazing foot.

And then the judging started. I got to watch all of the movies in my category in the theater, with audiences. A car would pick me up and take me to the screening. At my busiest, I saw three movies in one day, but it was usually two.

I made it a point not to know anything about the movies before I saw them - sometimes I went in without knowing the title. And I can't overstate how amazing it was to see these independent films with an audience, in a theater, instead of streaming. Having spent the better part of the last five years watching this primarily at home, I was shocked at how inspiring and energizing it was to sit in a theater with a crowd over, and over, and over again. I've never seen this many movies in a theater in such a short time, and I LOVED it.

I didn't only see movies that were in my category, though. I also made sure I saw other films at the festival that I wasn't judging - including Downtown Owl, the directorial debut of my friends Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe.

I made a point to go to the premiere of Suitable Flesh, starring the amazing Barbara Crampton and Heather Graham, and produced by my old friends Joe Wicker and Morgan Peter Brown from the Absentia Days.

And it wasn't all movies, either - I also got to moderate a chat with the brilliant Sam Lake about his upcoming Alan Wake 2 release. Sam was a joy to spend time with, and we had a lot to talk about.

And my friend and colleague Justina Ireland traveled up to NY to moderate a Master Class where a theater full of people listened to me ramble about horror movies for an hour.

(With Justina Ireland and Johnathan Penner - Penner ran the Escape from Tribeca program, and it was his idea to bring me to the festival)

And then, just before I left, I met up with some friends to see a Broadway show. Karen Gillan and Willa Fitzgerald joined Kate and I to see Grey House.

My experience at Tribeca was fantastic. It was such an amazing celebration of art and cinema, and I can't wait to go back. I spent a lot of it feeling overwhelmed, and feeling like I didn't quite deserve my seat at the table (imposter syndrome is just one of the staples of being a filmmaker, isn't it?) but I'm so glad I went.

[mrs-stans]

‘Pam & Tommy’s Sebastian Stan & Lily James To Reteam On Horror Thriller ‘Let The Evil Go West’Pam & Tommy’s Sebastian Stan & Lily James To Reteam On Horror Thriller ‘Let The Evil Go West’On Horror Thriller 'Let The Evil Go West’

Following a highly successful collaboration on Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, Sebastian Stan and Lily James are set to reteam on Let the Evil Go West, a psychological horror thriller from director Christian Tafdrup (Speak No Evil).

north.five.six. reps the film’s international rights and will introduce it to buyers at Cannes, while CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group arranged the financing and will handle the domestic sale.

Let the Evil Go West follows a railroad worker who stumbles upon a fortune under deeply disturbing circumstances. As horrifying visions and manifestations drive him toward madness, his wife becomes convinced that an evil presence has attached itself to their family.

Xc Vs penned the script. Tim and Trevor White (King Richard, Fair Play) are producing under their Star Thrower Entertainment banner, alongside Mark Fasano and Nathan Klingher for Gramercy Park Media, which is also financing the film, and Allan Mandelbaum. Stan and James will also executive produce along with Gramercy Park’s Joshua Harris and Ford Corbett and north.five.six.’s Michael Rothstein and Samuel Hall.

Playing Tommy Lee to James’s Pamela Anderson in Hulu’s award winner Pam & Tommy, Stan will next be seen starring in A Different Man, which won him Berlin’s Silver Bear after world premiering to much buzz at Sundance 2024. A24 will release the pic in September. Also coming up for the actor is Ali Abbassi’s The Apprentice, an anticipated title that has him playing a young Donald Trump, which will premiere in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

[brian-in-finance]

Orlando Bloom /The Cut

Orlando Bloom And Sean Ellis Talk About Star’s Transformation Into Past-His-Prime Boxer In ‘The Cut’: “He Was Willing To Have His Nose Broken” – Toronto Film Festival

Sean Ellis’s sixth feature, following the deliriously atmospheric 19th-century vampire movie Eight for Silver (2021), is yet another curveball from the criminally underrated British director. Titled The Cut, it is the story of a past-his-prime boxer who goes behind his wife Caitlin’s back to accept a lucrative comeback fight in Las Vegas. But this is not yet another Rocky-style underdog story, the kind that culminates in the ring. Instead, it is a sometimes-shocking psychological thriller, a sort of boxing procedural that details the extreme lengths that cornered fighters will go to. On paper, it sounds like Southpaw, but in reality, it has a little more in common with this year’s Cannes hit The Substance, a visceral body-horror movie about a fading starlet (Demi Moore) and her desperate drive to maintain her fame.

Sean Ellis / Getty Images

In The Cut it is actor Orlando Bloom’s turn to defy expectations. As the boxer, the former Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings star is a revelation. He’s not entirely unrecognizable as the matinee idol of the 2000s, but, thanks to the magic of prosthetics, he certainly looks like he’s been through the wringer, and his return to professional boxing is not a sure thing. In fact, the most suspense in the film is generated by the initial weigh-in, which will determine whether he even gets to fight in his own title category at all. Caitlin (Caitríona Balfe), his wife and his trainer, can only get him so far, and when the team gets to Vegas, the boxer meets the charismatic Boz (John Turturro). Boz hooks into the boxer’s insecurities, drawing him into an increasingly dangerous training and weight-loss routine.

With the film about to make its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Deadline sat down with Ellis and Bloom to discuss the film and its themes.

DEADLINE: Where did the project start? Who was attached first?

ORLANDO BLOOM: I’d worked with our producer, Mark Lane, some years ago on a movie for Tea Shop Productions. We did a movie together in London called Retaliation, but it was released as The Romans. It was another small, British independent movie production. It was brutal, and I loved the brutality of it. One day Mark said, “I’ve got another one for you,” and he pitched me The Cut. We talked about it, and I loved it immediately. I loved the idea — the premise of a boxing movie without the boxing, where the focus of the fight wasn’t the boxing match itself but rather the fight within the character, who just happened to be a boxer. I thought that was really fascinating, an interesting commentary on the way masculinity operates within that space.

We worked on the script for about a year or two with [screenwriter] Justin Bull, who was fantastic. And then we were just over the moon when Sean read it and responded to it exactly as you’d hope a director with his kind of vision would. He said, “Yeah, I see this.” [To Sean.] Right, Sean? That’s the long and short of it, isn’t it?

SEAN ELLIS: Yeah, that was pretty much it. The first time I read it, actually, was over the Christmas period [in 2022]. Mark had sent it to me, and I was interested because I’d been looking to do a boxing movie. But how do you do a boxing movie? I mean, it’s become almost a genre in itself. They’ve become so clichéd. Like submarine movies: You’ve got to have a scene with one person trapping themself in the air lock and drowning, as they tap away at the little porthole.

With boxing, you’ve got to have an impossible match that they’re not going to win, and then they either do or they don’t. And I thought The Cut was just a really interesting take on that. It was the about the preparation that an athlete goes through, and the drama of that. I thought that was so much more interesting than anything we’ve already seen in a boxing movie. I called Mark back, and I said, “It’s great.” I mean, it grabs you and it doesn’t let go. And it really delivers. It doesn’t let you down, and it really takes you right through to the end. And as OB was saying, it’s pretty brutal.

BLOOM: It’s an assault on the senses — which was kind of what it was like for me, physically.

ELLIS: Yeah. But I love cinema like that. I love it when it grabs you and shakes you. I think that’s what cinema should do.

DEADLINE: Orlando, how much did you weigh when you started the process?

BLOOM: I was about 185 pounds. [Laughs.] Sorry to use pounds and not stone!

DEADLINE: Same as the character?

BLOOM: Give or take.

DEADLINE: How did you lose the weight?

BLOOM: We worked with a great nutritionist called Philip Goglia. He started me on a program about three months prior to filming, and I tiered down from there. I was eating more food than I’d expected, in order to maintain the muscle but drop the weight. There was a sort of science to how much and how often I was eating, like having a spoonful of honey at night, things like that, to hold the muscle but lose the fat. This was three months prior to filming, so when I landed in London to start — which was about three and a half weeks before filming started — I would say I weighed about 170 pounds. I’d dropped quite a lot of weight before I came to the UK, and then in that three-week period I was basically eating five tiny meals a day. A lot of it was tuna and cucumber, and nothing else. I dropped to 152 pounds for the weigh-in scene. We shot that at the beginning of the movie, and then we shot the whole movie backwards.

DEADLINE: Why was that?

BLOOM: Philip, the nutritionist was like, “He’s not going to have any brain function or energy to make the movie.” [Laughs.] He said, “You’ve got to start with the weight loss and then feed him through the movie.” So, we shot the movie in reverse. I remember, I had this massive drop [in weight], because I was sitting at about 163 pounds for what felt like forever. And the training regime was a lot. It was two hours of cardio every day, an hour in the morning and again at night, and then boxing, and then weights, and a very limited amount of food.

I’d already started training — I’d been doing boxing training in America before I came over — and then I dropped 10 pounds of water weight in one night, which was crazy. Philip had told me about this routine that boxers do — they have a hot Epsom-salt bath. I don’t know whether it’s down to osmosis or just some weird body science, but it worked. I had a photo of myself, and I sent it to my partner and my mates, who were tracking me through this wild experience. I sent it to Sean. And then I sat in this space of that weight for about two and a half weeks before we started filming. [Pause] Is that right, Sean? I have to say, my brain is very scrambled…

ELLIS: Yeah, he came to us at his lightest weight because you can’t lose weight and work. It’s almost impossible — you can’t remember your lines or anything else. So, Phil said, “He has to come to you at his lightest, and then you need to allow him to start eating again. But that means you have to shoot the movie in reverse chronological order.” Now, chronological order is a nightmare at the best of times. But reverse chronological order is a total Rubik’s cube. We only had 25 shooting days, and, obviously, Orlando was putting weight on as we were reaching the end of the shoot, which was actually the beginning of the film. But when you edit it in reverse, he starts off heavy and then goes to his lightest point. It was a big jigsaw puzzle, but we got there.

DEADLINE: How did you feel about him losing all that weight? Did you ever feel guilty?

ELLIS: Mark Lane said, “Look, he’s really committed to this. Have a call with him and see if you guys jell,” and I did, instantly. But more than that, what I saw in OB was a huge commitment to make this right. And he was willing to do anything. I think at one point we even spoke about him going to the dentist and having his teeth filed and recapped. There was also the idea that he was willing to have his nose broken. [Laughs.] I was like, “I’m not sure we have to go that far.” But Orlando’s a good-looking bloke, and we were thinking, “How do we convince the world that he’s a professional boxer and make him look like a professional boxer?”

[British makeup artist] Mark Coulier came in and did a lot of work on his face. Mark got an Oscar nomination for Elvis. I’ve worked with him on a couple of movies and he’s just amazing. He took a head-sculpt of Orlando and then showed us what he would be able to do with him. A broken nose; fake ears that were more like cauliflower ears from the fighting; a change of the jawline — there were these “plumpers” that went into his mouth — and the teeth. The eyes as well: Mark gave him a droopy boxer’s eyelid.

I remember when I saw him sitting in the makeup chair. He had the haircut and everything, and I thought, “I buy this guy as a professional fighter.” At that point, he didn’t actually look like Orlando, strangely enough. In fact, I remember when we were shooting, there were two girls in the hotel we were using — just were members of the public — and they were waiting for the elevator to go down. Orlando was down the other end of the corridor, in his pants, and one of them nudged the other one. She whispered, “That’s Orlando Bloom.” The other one looked up and said, “Nah,” and then they got in the lift. I was laughing, because they didn’t recognize him.

DEADLINE: Were you surprised by his dedication?

ELLIS: Even from that first call with him, it was obvious that he was just so committed to this film and was willing to immerse himself. We were referencing [Irish featherweight and lightweight champion] Conor McGregor for a while, to the point where we started talking about the character being Irish, and we loved that idea. Then we cast Caitríona [Balfe], who’s Irish as well, and it made even more sense. It felt like the journey from Ireland to Vegas was bigger, because in the original script he was American, I think. Those changes came about from just me and Orlando talking about the character. I love his accent in it. Honestly, he’s not giving us an Orlando that we’ve seen before, and I love that. I love the change.

DEADLINE: Why did you want Caitríona?

ELLIS: I’d seen her in a couple of movies, Belfast and Ford v Ferrari, and her TV show Outlander. And at the point when we were having these discussions about Orlando playing Irish, I was like, “Well, let’s find an Irish actress.” So, I spoke to Jamie Dornan about Caitríona, because he’d worked with her on Belfast, and I said, “What’s she like? Is she nice? I love her movies. Is she good to work with?” And he was like, “Oh, she’s the best.” So, I got that endorsement, we offered it to her, and, luckily, she said yes. [To Bloom] It was just the three of us a lot of the time, wasn’t it?

DEADLINE: How did her casting affect the script?

ELLIS: A lot of her character was really born out of a lot of the discussions that the three of us had about the relationship that the two characters had. How their past dictated their relationship, and how it was going to dictate their future. So, it was really lovely just to work with both Orlando and Caitríona on finding those characters and really giving them life without really having to spell it out. Boz has more of a visual background, because you see him in flashbacks, but what I love about Caitríona’s character is that there’s a lot of subtext in her performance. It’s not overwritten, but you still get a sense of her life and what’s happened to her in the past.

BLOOM: I remember a conversation I had with her when we first spoke. I called her up. In the early drafts, the script was really centered on this transformation that the boxer goes through, the inner torment and the fight. And I said to Caitríona, “Look at the script as a blueprint, because there’s so much more between the lines than there is in the lines.” I really wanted the authenticity of this relationship to play. Because I think he can’t live without her. He can’t function, he can’t operate without her.

DEADLINE: In the middle of these two you have John Turturro as his trainer, Boz. It’s a very interesting part, almost like a kind of sadistic Jiminy Cricket…

ELLIS: We had many conversations about the script before John actually came on board, but I think John wanted to reassure himself that he was right about how he was going to do it. Because when John turned up — am I right, OB? — he’d fully formed that character. You said, “Action,” and John just did it. There was no, “What do you think?” He’d decided how Boz was going to be.

BLOOM: Can I jump in, Sean? What was on the page for that character was completely different to what John brought to the film. I remember sitting next to him in the makeup chair, and I was in and out of consciousness, in terms of how I felt emotionally. I was paranoid as hell. It was a really weird time, because of my mental state: I wasn’t having any food. Or sleep. I wasn’t sleeping because you don’t sleep when you’re not eating — you keep waking up.

And then he said to me, “It’s love.” And I was like, “What?” He said, “It’s a love story.” And my mind exploded. Sean was like, “Yeah, of course it’s a love story.” But his part wasn’t really written like that. He was written as a pretty straightforward character, like a drill sergeant, very aggressive. And then when he told me that, it became this love triangle in my mind. Boz was seducing me, in a way, into his web. Like, “You’re my guy now.”

Obviously, I’ve been huge fan of the man and the actor for years, and everything he’s ever done. That part could have been so generic in the hands of anyone else, but he just knew what to do. He was sprinkling magic dust all around us. I think we had that conversation on the second day of filming because we were all a bit thrown to begin with. Do you remember that, Sean? I was, certainly. I was like, “Wait, what’s going on?”

ELLIS: I remember Mark coming up to me and saying, “So, is that how we want Boz to be?” Because Boz was very much on the page as a character like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. I remember saying to him, “That’s John Turturro, and he’s giving you Boz. It might not be the Boz you saw on the page, but it is a Boz, and he’s absolutely made it his own.” As OB said, he’s sinister, he’s conniving, and he’s also kind of a groomer, because he understands his victim and he knows how to take control. So, he really pulled himself into this in a very insidious way, which I find very creepy and just brilliantly executed.

BLOOM: Yeah, he totally transformed what the movie could have been.

DEADLINE: You’ve got the Toronto premiere coming up. What kind of reactions are you hoping for?

ELLIS: Well, I hope they don’t throw eggs at the screen. [Laughs.] Listen, I’m incredibly proud of the film and I’m incredibly proud of the performances that the actors have given. It was just such a privilege to record them, and be present, and see them craft those characters. That’s the thing I’m most proud of when I look at it. I think it’s very strong, and it’s a drama with very strong characters.

DEADLINE: Orlando?

BLOOM: Yeah, it’s funny, when I was at drama school, I remember working on The Seagull, the Chekhov play, and there’s a moment at the end where the audience goes silent, because it’s just so uncomfortable. And I think this movie has a similar impact. It’s such an assault on the senses. And, to his credit, Sean never takes his foot off the gas. You can’t hide at any point in this movie. It’s like we strap you into a rocket, and you’re off. And there’s a lot of commentary on the way athletes — male athletes in particular — operate. Obviously we haven’t taken this from a true story, it’s fictitious. But I think it deals with very real ideas about self-worth. It’s about what people will do to fill the void that’s in their stomach, or in their soul. It’s about the lengths they will go to.

Deadline

Remember… (about Caitlin, Caitríona’s character) I really wanted the authenticity of this relationship to play. Because I think he can’t live without her. He can’t function, he can’t operate without her. — Sean Ellis

[therogerclarkfanclub]

Sadly, Damn Handy does not have a release date just yet. But on the positive side, the film has been (so far) accepted into 8 film festivals! It already received one award at the Block Island Film Festival back in June of this year. We sure hope it wins all the awards! 🙌.

If one of these film festivals happens to be near you, you can check it out before anyone else! 😁

• Mystic Film Festival • Santa Fe International Film Festival • Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival • Filmquest 2024 • Chicago Horror Film Festival • Block Island Film Festival ("Spotlight Lighthouse Award" Winner, June 2024) • Fall HorrorHound Film Festival • Flickers' Rhode Island Film Festival

In the meantime, check out the preview trailer below while we await for that much-anticipated release date.

[schlock-luster-video]

On September 8, 2004, the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko was screened at the Venice Film Festival.

Here's some new Frank art!

[filmcourage]

What Beginning Filmmakers Should Know About Financing - Anthony DiBlasi

Watch the video on Youtube here.

[greensparty]

Stuff I’m Looking Forward to in April

It’s Springtime and we’re now in the 2nd Quarter of 2023! In addition to April Fools Day (April 1), Palm Sunday (April 2), Passover (from April 5 to 13), Good Friday (April 7), Easter (April 9), Orthodox Easter (April 16), Patriots Day (in MA on April 17), Tax Day (April 18), Eid al-Fitr (expected to begin on April 21), Earth Day (April 22), Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24), and Administrative Professionals’ Day (April 26) here is what’s on my radar this month:

Movies:

Air

Ben Affleck directs himself and Matt Damon in this true story of Nike making the Air Jordan. The last time he directed a true story was possibly his best directing Argo, so hopes are high for this one opening 4/5.

Showing Up

I kind of like the simplicity of Kelly Reichardt’s films notably Wendy and Lucy, which she did with frequent star Michelle Williams. Here Williams plays an artist in this dramedy opening 4/7.

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story

May Pang had an 18-month romance with John Lennon during his “Lost Weekend” era and she has told her story in books and been interviewed in other documentaries, but now she is getting the doc treatment she deserves. Opening 4/14.

Personality Crisis: One Night Only

Martin Scorsese and his frequent documentary editor David Tedeschi direct this doc about David Johansen, the former New York Dolls singer later known as Buster Poindexter. The fact that Scorsese is taking on this music legend is literally an NYC icon documenting an NYC icon!  Premieres 4/14 on Showtime.

Beau Is Afraid 

I had mixed feelings about Ari Aster’s first two films Hereditary and Midsommar. On the one hand they kinda lost steam at times and were a little bloated, on the other hand the parts that worked really worked and there’s not denying his ambition. His new one with Joaquin Phoenix is actually a dark comedy I have high hopes for. Opening 4/21.

Evil Dead Rise 

Alright, I don’t know if I’m actually looking forward to this, so much as cautiously optimistic about this Evil Dead sequel. I’m not expecting this to be as good as Sam Raimi’s first three, but hoping it cracks my Top Evil Dead Movies next time I revise the list. Opening 4/21.

Music:

Metallica 72 Seasons

Metallica’s 11th album is also their first since 2016′s Hardwired...to Self-Destruct, which was a serious comeback (I even included it in my Best Albums of the 2010s list). New album drops 4/14.

Smashing Pumpkins Atum

Smashing Pumpkins dropped Act 1 of Atum in November and Act 2 in January. Now Act 3 and the physical release of the entire rock opera are dropping 4/21.

Film Festivals:

Salem Horror Fest 

I have been lucky enough to cover this genre film festival in Salem, MA since 2018. Last year they decided to move the festival from October (when there is a lot going on in Salem) to April. Fest runs from 4/20 to 4/30.

Independent Film Festival Boston 

My favorite film festival (I am an alum) is IFFBoston! Last year they returned in-person after they took 2020 off and 2021 virtual. It felt so good to return to the fest in person! This year marks IFFBoston’s 20th anniversary. Fest runs from 4/26 to 5/3.

Events:

Record Store Day 

Possibly my favorite fake holiday is the day we celebrate independent record stores. This year there’s some exciting RSD releases from Pearl Jam, Ringo Starr, The Stooges and Wilco. Looking forward to 4/22!

[robsheridan]

With Coachella 2023 wrapping up, let’s revisit the 2007 direct-to-video gore-fest CoacHELLa.

The film opens when a group of bitter old Palm Springs goth Satanists, angry about the growing crowds of shallow LA hipsters who swarm the region each year, set up a stand at a Coachella party to give away free samples of organic home-brewed small batch alcoholic kombucha. The fashionable young partiers arriving for the festival can’t resist the free drinks, but the potent liquid contains a dark secret: It’s brewed with an ancient potion cursed with dark Satanic magic that unleashes a horrific revenge on Coachella’s beautiful people, turning them into hideous carnal demonic creatures who know only madness and bloodlust.

As more blood is spilled, the curse spreads, from pool parties to dance tents to the vast open desert fields, where the cursed blood awakens massive ancient demons from beneath the sand. The festival becomes literal hell on earth as thousands of zombified hipsters consume each other in mindless rage, and the uncursed trying to escape are torn limb-from-limb by elder gods hungry for souls. In the end, the military bombs the entire Coachella site before the curse can spread to the general population. In the film’s final scene, the goth Satanists return to survey the charred grounds, scattered with human bones and flowers from Coachella girl flower crowns. The crowds are gone, the parties are over, the land is deadly quiet, and no one is likely to ever return: Just how the goths wanted it.

CoacHELLa marked a surprise return to writing/directing for legendary “splattercore” auteur Ron Sharleton, who had mostly disappeared professionally after the Cannibal Quarterback 2 disaster. Unable to get a deal with a major studio, Sharleton made CoacHELLa on a direct-to-video budget. The film was panned by critics as “a disastrous attempt to bring trashy shock cinema from a different era to more refined 21st century audiences” and “dripping with the resentment of an old man angry that the world was moving on without him.” But fans of camp horror were delighted, and the film has since gained a cult following.

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NOTE: This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

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[felinemotif]

ik i could just ask this on discord but it’s not urgent so i didn’t wanna like. @ you or anything

i just had a couple of steph questions!! first: i swear i remember reading that steph was a vegetarian or had attempted being vegetarian at some point? but i can’t find anything about it & am starting to think i imagined it shsjjdkdjd

& then my second question: is she mentioned to like. enjoy any particular shows/movies or genre of shows/TV??

(these are for fics but like… minor, single sentence details so. def not urgent <333)

also feel free to throw any other interesting steph facts at me!! esp things you feel ppl forget / leave out 💞

ahhh you know i am always happy to talk about my girl <333 it’s after midnight for me so i am sorry that this isn’t the most eloquent answer and i am sure i am forgetting some things (i’ll add to this later/dm you if anything hits me) but to the best of my knowledge:

yes, stephanie is/was(?) a vegetarian. not sure off the top of my head if it was stated anywhere else but i dug up this screenshot from batgirls #13.

(for clarification this was when steph and cass body-swapped)

so no, you didn’t imagine it! though i can’t recall if she is still a vegetarian now, sorry.

now, your other question was much harder lol. i actually went and skimmed through all of the comics i have marked down as my favorite reads for her (+ a few non faves that i thought might have smth relevant) and most of the time when stephanie is shown watching tv or in front of a computer, all that’s ‘on’ is the news.

but! for you, livvy, i didn’t give up.

in nightwing #106, stephanie, cass and dick are all sitting down for their movie night. it’s cass’ pick that week but since steph did stay to watch, i think we can go on a limb and say that she at the very least doesn’t mind horror/sci-fi.

i know that she’s also referenced harry potter throughout her comics— usually just a throwaway line like ‘accio’ so from there we can infer that she does like fantasy/adventure as well.

(took some digging but i found an example in batgirl #18)

she’s referenced star trek as well, and at least in one conversation has been shown to know enough about game of thrones and star wars to joke about it with cass in batman: urban legends #5

i know that’s toeing the line of pulling at straws but given her more delved into interests in the action and fantasy genre i feel like it’s okay to assume that she does like those shows :) and if not who is going to tell me i’m wrong :) stephanie brown would love arya stark

all of this to say that stephanie has been shown to enjoy and understand pop-culture. a good portion of her civilian friends are alt as well, and i’d go so far as to say that given that, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that she would enjoy independent films.

she’s a self-confessed music snob with an interest in art. i could easily see that playing into a joy for film festivals.

(didn’t include because this is already so long but after this panel — i already had it screenshot but i believe it comes from batgirls #1 — was her saying that they were looking for models and steph did consider it so i’d argue that she would enjoy fashion shows as well, though probably ones that are entirely student-run or by small designers)

(she hung that poster up on her bedroom wall next to her bed later on)

i know this isn’t covering everything, but i hope it’s enough to help!!! so excited to read your upcoming fics 🫶🏻 and as always if you have more steph questions or need a panel dug up, i am your gal