All our films and animations!
In keeping with our horrific new game, Frankenstein – The Creature Must Die!, here’s a 1957 Hammer Film called The Curse of Frankenstein. It stars Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the monster.
This version of the Frankenstein story caused critical outrage when it was released. It was ground-breaking in its level of gore and violence and it kicked off a long series of popular horror flicks from Britain’s Hammer Film Productions.
A science fiction web serial! The Mercury Men. This is amazing. I love stuff like this. A group of filmmakers are producing a series of cliffhanger shorts just for the web. The trailer looks very interesting, well-shot, exciting, and perfect for web viewing. These people seem to really know what they’re doing.
The director is Chris Preksta who made the Captain Blasto series. The producer is Kati Lightholder. Mark Tierno, who acted in George Romero’s Day of the Dead and will appear in the upcoming feature, The Road, plays the lead role.
I know it’s going to sound silly, but the Mercury Men Pictures logo with the light bulb is one of the best movie production logos I’ve ever seen. I also love the way the trailer clip uses light and shadow to maximum effect. And the alien is really creepy and looks amazing.
They even have this wonderful poster.
When people do this kind of work on the web they do it with limited means that require them to use real creativity in order to bring their vision to fruition. It lends a sense of adventure and excitement to the endeavor which translates directly to the viewer. This is something that is mostly lacking when you turn to a television. Science fiction is going to have a fantastic golden age because of the web. Keep watching.
Lest We Forget is a short civil war film directed by Brandon McCormick and produced by Whitestone Motion Pictures. It’s the kind of short film I don’t see much of anymore. Very simple and well-produced. I really like its fearless punch and its call to the audience to not forget. Because we do forget. We forget everything. We want to forget. In fact, we’ve been seeing a lot of wonderful old-fashioned folk come out of the woodwork around this country to put on a country fair display of their rancid all-American racism. This film is for that guy at the town hall meeting on health care reform who decided to tear up the poster of Rosa Parks. Boy did he forget! That guy should watch this film and think about it a lot. Then put himself out with the garbage. Because I really don’t care whether a guy like that remembers or not. He’s really just a hole in the road that needs to be paved over.
But the one great thing about all this raging racism coming out, much of which is directed at President Obama, is that it does in fact come out. We see the bigots. Yes, indeed… we know who you are.
Today is the 107th anniversary of the first science fiction film ever made, A Trip to the Moon. It was directed in France by Georges Méliès who had been inspired by the novels From Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, and by The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. This is the film with the famous image of the spaceship landing in the eye of the moon’s face.
I’ve never been able to get through a book by Thomas Pynchon. Well, I should reveal that I’ve only tried once with his Against the Day. Unreadable as far as I’m concerned. But I still went out and bought a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow. James Joyce is unreadable too and yet I still like him. I never hold unreadability against a writer because I know how truly stupid I can be while reading – sometimes falling asleep and having to reread many pages. But this video is probably the best book trailer I have ever seen. I’d been thinking that the book sounded like a bore, but this trailer has me digging into the side pouch of my briefcase to find some spare change for the bookstore.
Another thing – whoever did the voiceover for this little movie is a stark raving mad genius. He should read the entire book out loud. I’d buy that too.
Here’s an experimental film by Xavier Chassaing that uses 35,000 still photos with some stop motion animation and something called ‘live projection mapping.’ The music is by Fedaden.
I found this via Coilhouse.