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Goth Chick News: Pass Me a Prom Dress and Some Pig Blood

Goth Chick News: Pass Me a Prom Dress and Some Pig Blood

image0022There’s just no point in continuing to harp on this whole remake / reboot craze that Hollywood seems to be suffering from the last few years.

True that the lack of innovation is depressing and the originals are almost always better, but you can probably think of at least one movie that you’d be interested to see in the light of a new generation of special effects.

So with that firmly in mind, let’s dust off the formalwear, order some carnations, drop by that slaughter house on the outskirts of town and once again, take Carrie White to the prom.

If you recall, the original Carrie of 1976 had Sissy Spacek in the waif-like, telekinetic, bullying-victim lead role, while Piper Laurie played her nutso, religious fanatic Mommy-dearest, Margaret.

Margaret White is, in many ways, the center of the horror classic and undoubtedly one of the most disturbing characters ever seen on screen. Associating sex and puberty with shame and sin, Mrs. White turned her tortured daughter’s home into another place of torment instead of a sanctuary.

Spitting out lines like, “They’re all gonna’ laugh at you,” and “I can see your dirty pillows,” Laurie created a psycho movie mom that would make you want to spend the holidays with Joan Crawford.

Now four-time Oscar nominee Julianne Moore will attempt to top Laurie’s Oscar-nominated performance; she has signed on to play Margaret White in the upcoming Carrie remake.

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: First Official Clip from Prometheus Dropped Today

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: First Official Clip from Prometheus Dropped Today

Prometheus has landed.

Or at least the first official clip has.

Today Fox unleashed a never-before-seen bit of the upcoming Aliens prequel and we here at Goth Chick News are so excited we very nearly opened a Facebook account.

Well, not really. But you get the idea.

In the minute-long sequence featuring Idris Elba landing his impressive looking spaceship on a planet that definitely is not Earth, we’re treated to a few hints as to the origins of our species.

Less than 3 weeks to go… Can you stand the wait?

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Dark Shadows

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Dark Shadows

dark-shadows-posterDark Shadows is the first victim of The Avengers. Next up is Battleship.

Contrary to the horrified reactions to the trailer, the state of Tim Burton’s creative career, and Warner Bros. willful promotional ignorance of the movie, Dark Shadows is not a massive disaster. It’s merely a dull flick that suffers from the most standard of bad-movie flaws: an uninteresting story. A few flashes of something better appear — although it is hard to determine what that something was — but this latest attempt to revive the 1966–71 Gothic daytime soap opera seems to drift in clouds of weed, lazily resorting to some broad yet humorless gags while forgetting that it has multiple plot strands that require attention. The film’s slogan really should’ve been: “We were going to make a compelling story for Dark Shadows, but instead we got high.”

Dark Shadows also isn’t much of a comedy; the reviled trailer sells the film as outrageous culture-clash humor, but these kind of jokes make up only about a third of the film. The rest of it consists of stilted scenes of characters sitting down and talking about what isn’t happening in the rest of the movie.

At least there’s a great soundtrack, a surprisingly smooth meld of one of Danny Elfman’s better scores in recent memory with pleasing early ‘70s pop and rock. Another plus is a production design that feels more natural and sensuously subdued than what Tim Burton usually produces. If Burton was consciously experimenting with an understated Gothic décor and a more realistic vision of the 1970s than people expect of him, I applaud him for it. It works, and it’s one of the few aspects of Dark Shadows that does.

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Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Avengers

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: The Avengers

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So begins my long trip through the genre movies of the Summer of ’12 for Black Gate and benefit of several readers. I’m glad that things got off to a tremendous start.

As in a recording-shattering $207 million dollar take at the U.S. box-office, for a total of $640 million globally — so far. Oh, what a menacing term: “so far”!

The Avengers is not the end product of five movies and five years of preparation from Marvel Studios. It’s a beginning. While the two Iron Man films (2008 and 2010) were smash hits, the other three superhero films in the Avengers roster (The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger) were more standard successes, and they meant more to the comic book fan-base than to general audiences. Now, the general audience is pumped to get more from these characters. All the Avengers are now major public stars, and with this insane success, Marvel is poised to truly unleash their stable of heroes on a public than will be drooling and clawing to get more.

I have watched The Avengers twice in theaters on its opening weekend, something I haven’t done since The Lord of the Rings films. That’s a review in itself, but a since I am 1) a Marvel zombie and Avenger fan since childhood, and 2) inaugurating this series of movie reviews for the summer, I have an obligation to go in-depth on this stupendous piece of entertainment cinema. I will avoid big spoilers as much as I can, since this is technically still a “review,” but some tidbits about the massive set-pieces will leak out. But you’ve seen the film already at least once, right? Three times, anyone? (I know plenty who are “three times and counting.”)

Okay, let’s assemble and do this.

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What Writers Can Learn From Joss Whedon’s The Avengers

What Writers Can Learn From Joss Whedon’s The Avengers

avengers-movie-poster-1Disclaimer: This article will reference some scenes from The Avengers film. While I’ve tried to avoid specific spoilers about major twists, there are some things that give away plot elements and twists from the other Marvel Comics movies, such as Thor.

If you are a writer, be sure that you get a receipt when you go to The Avengers, because you should be claiming it as a work-related research expense on your taxes this year. (This should not be considered tax advice. Please consult with your tax preparer before making financial decisions.)

There has been no shortage of digital ink spilled gushing over how great the movie is. I’ll provide a link to some of the highlights below if you want to delve into the film itself. However, I wanted to go beyond discussing The Avengers as purely a viewing experience, but to focus on a couple of elements that writers can best take away from it.

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Quoth The Raven: “Nevermind”

Quoth The Raven: “Nevermind”

the_raven_posterThe Raven (2012)
Directed by James McTeigue. Starring John Cusack, Alice Eve, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Luke Evans, Brendan Gleeson, Kevin McNally.

This is more of a funeral oration than a review: The Raven flew right into a car windshield this weekend and failed to crack either the windshield or the top five at the U.S. box office, instead pulling in a sad $7.2 million to flop down at seventh place. This coming weekend, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes will tread it into dust, from where its spirit will be lifted “nevermore.”

And that’s fine, because The Raven is a sad sack of a film. It’s bad, but instead of feeling resentful of the filmmakers, you feel bummed that their good intentions and concepts never gelled — and they were apparently quite aware of it. The Raven knows it isn’t good, and that’s the saddest part.

For a great U.S. author inexpensively reachable in the public domain, Edgar Allan Poe has always posed a puzzle for feature-length filmmakers. Poe predominantly wrote short stories and poetry (producing only one novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which I always thought sounded like the start of a dirty limerick), and his tight construction and “unity of effect” philosophy of writing makes his work difficult to translate into a length of ninety minutes or more. Short stories often make superb material for feature films – the form is closer to narrative movies than the novel is – but Poe helped define the form with an economy of story, time, and place beyond the call of duty. When this combines with the intricacy and detail of Poe’s language, it puts any screen adaptors in a tough position. Most films with Edgar Allan Poe’s name in the credits are more homages to his work than straight adaptations.

The Raven, the third major film to carry the title of Poe’s most famous poem, takes the “loose inspiration” tactic, mixing the concept of previous fictionalized biopics like Kafka (1991) and Hammett (1982), where the author plays the part of the hero within a story similar to those he writes. However, I doubt either Steven Sorderberg or Wim Wenders were on the producers’ minds. They were probably thinking of the success of the recent Sherlock Holmes films and all the serial killer movies to come in the wake of The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en.

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Goth Chick News: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary is Friday (again)

Goth Chick News: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary is Friday (again)

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

You’ve got to go a long way to adequately capture the creepiness that is the poetry of Edger Allen Poe.

And Hollywood has tried… a lot.

There have been 44 films to date dealing directly with Poe material, not to mention all the films with Poe “inspired” material, from the first Batman movie in 1966 to Saw V in 2008.

It started in 1909 when D.W. Griffith created the first Poe bio-pic in the form of a six-minute, one-reeler entitled Edgar Allen Poe commemorating the 50th anniversary of Poe’s passing. Even with all the wonders the turn of the century brought, including moving pictures, Edgar Allen Poe stood out as a mystery.

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Five Genre Movies to Look Forward to This Summer

Five Genre Movies to Look Forward to This Summer

prometheus_movie_05Summer is almost here, and the time is almost right, for dancing in the streets. Or sitting your butt down in a movie theater to watch a big green thing in purple pants beat up aliens.

As I more and more become “The Black Gate Movie Guy,” I’ve grown aware of my responsibilities regarding upcoming films of interest to our readership. This summer I promise to post reviews of all the major genre releases, which means that, yes, you will get to hear my thoughts on Snow White and Huntsman. Because you didn’t demand it.

This is also a transparent bid to get officially recognized as a movie critic so that I will be invited to press screenings here in Los Angeles and thus be able to post up reviews of films in the days before they are released.

Looking over the summer roster (posted below — yes, all shall be reviewed), aside from a few groans of anticipatory pain, there are five films that really have my geek adrenal glands turned up to the danger zone. Here are the films I hope will make summer worthwhile.

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Jonathan Frid: December 2, 1924 – April 14, 2012

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Jonathan Frid: December 2, 1924 – April 14, 2012

image0021Before we had heard of Lestat, Bill Compton or Edward Cullen, one vampire alone dominated our collective pop culture conscious; the formidable and classic, Barnabas Collins.

This week the offices of Goth Chick News are draped in black, or I should say more draped in black, in respectful mourning for Mr. Jonathan Frid, who portrayed the character on the soap opera/horror series Dark Shadows (making his first appearance at the doors of Collinwood on April 18, 1967) until 1971, and who died last Saturday at the age of 87.

As we’ve previously discussed, Johnny Depp will be reprising Mr. Frid’s iconic role in the Dark Shadows remake set for release on May 11th, though it’s probably more appropriate to call is a “redo” as director Tim Burton has elected to make it a… sigh… comedy.

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Celluloid Heroes

Celluloid Heroes

the-vikings1The year was 1958. I was six years-old. Life was a waking dream filled with magic, mystery, and wonder. It was a year that would have a lasting effect on me.

It was the year I first encountered the cinematic “ancestors” of the warriors and heroes I would go on to discover ten or so years later in the paperback pages of Lancer, Ballantine, Avon, Signet, Paperback Library, Pyramid, and other publishers who had taken up the banner of sword and sorcery, and heroic fantasy.

Of course, I had already become a fan of Disney’s Zorro, had seen the Errol Flynn swashbucklers on television, and had desperately wanted to become a pirate when I grew up. I would also see Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, The Mongols, starring Jack Palance, Hannibal, starring Victor Mature, and other films like Genghis Khan, The 300 Spartans, and Ben Hur a few years later. On television I would later see the silent Thief of Baghdad and Siegfried, and other adventure films of the 1930s and 40s.

But the movie theater in 1958 would have the most profound impact on my life.

The film that started it all was The Vikings, starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and the wonderful Ernest Borgnine, whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting.

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