10 Haunted Movie Sets

Like many haunted house movies before it, this weekend’s “The Conjuring” is based on a true story (read our review of the film here). In James Wan’s latest jump scare extravaganza, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play Ed and Lorraine Warren, two paranormal investigators (the latter a psychic) who have made a living (or a killing?) in uncovering the ghosts who live in old, creaky houses. Their case files have been the sources for various horror films, including “The Amityville Horror” and “The Haunting in Connecticut.”

Hollywood loves a good ghost story, especially when they can find a glimmer of truth among the “boos.” The importance of tangibility becomes so important, they the movies themselves have created myths of their own. Are they fabricated by the marketing team or could souls trapped in the in-between be trying to contact us using mass-consumed entertainment? You play the Warrens as we rundown the notably haunted movie sets:

“The Exorcist”

The movie that dared to cast Satan in a leading role is also the movie best known for feeling the wrath of supernatural forces. During the shooting of William Friedkin’s horror masterpiece, nine people died, a fire (cause still unknown) destroyed a set causing a 6-week delay, and Linda Blair suffered serious injuries after being tossed around for a bed shaking scene. Other stories from set add the mystique of the William Peter Blatty adaptation, even while having obvious explanations; One day the crew arrived the set to see everything covered in a layer of snow — the result of high air conditioning temperatures.

But circumstances start looking more like the work of unseen Hell gods when one realizes that Friedkin ran into devil-worshipers while shooting in Iraq. “They had heard that this crazy American was taking raw meat to the statue of the demon Pazuzu,” he explained in an interview. “And when I told them it was for a movie, and we had hoped to attract wild dogs and vultures, they were disappointed.”

“The Omen” (2006)

Richard Donner’s original Antichrist tale had its fair share of unexplainable coincidences, from lightning striking Gregory Peck’s plane on his way to the shoot, to the bizarre death of set designer John Richardson’s girlfriend. A car crash left the woman sliced in two, just like in the film.

But when it comes to on-set disturbances, it’s the remake that’s the most noticeable victim. After a pivotal day of shooting, “The Omen” production team was met with a camera error that read “Error 666.” Later, the lab where their film was processed would lose 13,500 feet of footage. Was it the work of the devil? Clearly someone, or something, didn’t want Donner’s original getting a modern makeover.

“The Ring”

Gore Verbinski’s J-Horror remake centers on a videotape that will kill its viewer seven days after he or she gazes upon its grainy, ghastly content. In a meta-twist, “The Ring” is also said to contain actual footage of ghosts. We can’t promise how long you will last after watching the above sequence.

“Introducing Dorothy Dandridge”

Some haunted sets only make themselves known after the stars have hauled off possessed goods. For her 1999 biopic of Dorothy Dandridge, Halle Berry wore an actual gown owned by the first African-American Oscar winner. It was only after the film wrapped and Berry brought the dress home that the paranormal activity began to brew. The actress told Ebony Magazine in July 1999 that one night, she was awoken by the sound of boiling water. When she went to check out the noise, she saw a doll dress floating in front of her Dandridge. She knew it was a sign.

On a tangentially-related note, there are people in the world who believe that Halle Berry isn’t haunted by the ghost of Dorothy Dandridge, but that the actress is actually the reincarnated spirit of her biopic character. “Cloud Atlas” — a very realistic film — is cited as evidence of Berry’s instinctual connection to reincarnation.

“Ghost”

There haven’t been stories that Jerry Zucker’s foray into romantic drama/sensual clay molding was plagued by actual spirits, though it was inherently a haunted production having shot on Stage 19 of Paramount Studios. The production space, that also housed “Citizen Kane” and “Happy Days,” is said to be one of the most vibrantly haunted places in Hollywood, second only to Phil Spector’s mansion.

Crew members of various movies and TV shows shot on the stage have reported hearing the sounds of running in the rafters and childlike laughter. Many believe this to be the ghost of “Poltergeist’s” O’Rourke, who appeared on several episodes of “Happy Days.” (It should be noted that the set of “Poltergiest” is often referred to has cursed in its own right. While there weren’t reports of supernatural occurrences on set, the movie saw four cast members die within six years of its release.)

“The Innkeepers”

While shooting his horror film “The House of the Devil,” Ti West and his crew experienced a parallel ghost story taking place in the hotel that housed them. The staff of the Yankee Pedlar Inn in Connecticut are convinced their lodge is haunted and, while skeptical, West couldn’t help but acknowledge the slamming doors, flickering lights, and did-I-see-what-I-think-I-just saw silhouettes that plagued his crew. The atmosphere inspired West to come back for more and shoot “The Innkeepers” in and around the Yankee Pedlar. As he puts it, “Sara Paxton would wake up in the middle of the night thinking someone was in the room with her.”

“Journey 2: The Mysterious Island”

Turns out, being abducted by Alien wasn’t the most paranormal moment in Vanessa Hudgen’s career. That title goes to the sequel to “Journey to the Center Earth,” which reportedly played host to a ghost that followed Hudgens around her hotel. She would apparently hear creaking noises in her rented home’s hallway each night. Searching for a source proved fruitless; Hudgens eventually chalked it up to beings from another plane of existence. “I look down and I hear it to the left, so I step over to the left, look up, look down, step over to the right, look up, look down… It kept moving around.” Later speculation revealed that it was likely the ghost of former “Journey” star Brendan Fraser’s career.

“Three Men and a Baby”

Nothing kills the mood of a light-hearted family comedy like the appearance of a lost soul. In the pre-Internet, grainy VHS days of “Three Men and a Baby’s” home video release, rumors swirled that a scene featuring Ted Danson’s Jack Holden mulling about house revealed a childlike figure sparked a paranormal investigation. Claims were and continue to be made that a nine-year-old boy committed suicide with a shotgun in the house where the Leonard Nimoy-depicted was filmed. Snopes has since debunked the otherworldly cameo, claiming the figure to be a cardboard standee of Ted Danson in a tuxedo (equally weird…) and that there wasn’t a house — all of the “Three Men and a Baby” interiors were shot on sound stages. Sure, likely story. Watch the video below and see if you buy it:

“Behind the Candelabra”

An unnamed source from the set of Steven Soderberhg’s Liberace biopic told the National Enquirer that while filming, Matt Damon and Michael Douglas would often feel the caress of an invisible force on their shoulder. “They swear they’ve felt cold damp air swish by, reeking of a potent men’s cologne,” the source said.

“The Heat”

Paul Feig makes it easy for us. Well aware that Boston is as haunted a city as they come, the director was happy able to record the below video, pointing out all the ghosts in the dinner scene from his most recent comedy.

Categories: Features

Tags: Haunted Movie Sets, Matt Patches, The Conjuring, The Exorcist, The Heat, The innkeepers, The Ring

SPF One-Sheet: American Summer Movie Posters vs. Their European Counterparts

Summer has always felt like a bit of a fever-dream: a series of months bound by haze and heat that, by the end, paint a picture somewhat estranged from reality. Unsurprising, really, when you take a step back and look at the burden placed on a single season’s shoulders. We spend the majority of our year mulling forward, clinging to a few months that offer an elusive promise of getting away from it all. It’s not always possible, of course, and there are some years that are better than others, but even they have a way of making themselves somewhat memorable (if only through heatstroke). They’re allowed to occupy a place that stands in sharp contrast to the other eight or nine months out of the year, harboring on an ideal that’s often out of reach during the fall or winter when life feels tethered to a more narrow path.

That’s how I’ve always seen it and, call me crazy, it’s also how I’ve felt whenever I’ve dipped my toes into the oasis that is Eastern European poster art. There’s a similar sense of abandon mixed with a dreamlike sense of storytelling within it that couldn’t be further from the more rigid structures in much of the advertising from mid to late 20th century America. The imagery often exuded a personal, specific vision that played on a more lyrical level rather than literal, undercutting some of the more odious aspects of communist rule. Posters from the Eastern Bloc bordered on traditional art, imbued with an unmistakable energy, while their American counterparts (not without its charms) often housed itself in tried and tested methods of mass communication.

But energy isn’t necessarily always enough, and often times commonplace structures yield equally compelling work that speak more clearly to an audience than those thriving solely on one’s passionately personal interpretation. A poster is a film’s ambassador and has a responsibility to the audience it’s attempting to draw in: speaking honestly to a story and it’s themes shows a respect for the filmgoer to make a relatively informed decision for themselves about what they want to see. Tossing all that out in favor of something engaging yet tonally inappropriate places the viewer at a disadvantage, and you’re left with work that borders on art for art’s sake in arena aimed at having a conversation with those you most want to tell your story to. Regardless, there’s something captivating about those things that feel inseparable from a haze of abandon, existing to give hope to the creatively forlorn.

The way in which films were marketed both here and beyond the “iron curtain” gives a sense of that tension, with studio releases during the summer months in America allowing for a clearer picture to be displayed by two differing schools of thought. What better time of the year to see the full might of the US advertising engine pitted against techniques from overseas than in the sweltering months adorned by Hollywood studios?  But while the heat is great, it’s best to remember that there’s beauty in the crisp, autumn weather – even if the sky appears a bit dull.

“Innerspace” (left: US, John Alvin/Intralink, right: Poland, Andrzej Pagowski)

“Die Hard” (left: US, right: Poland, Maciej Kalkus)

“Ghostbusters” (left: US, right: Czechoslovakia, Petr Poš)

“Big” (left: US, right: Czechoslovakia)

“Jaws” (left: US, Roger Kastel, right: Czechoslovakia, Zdenek Ziegler)

“Alien” (left: US, Philip Gips, right: Czechoslovakia, Zdenek Ziegler)

“Escape from the Planet of the Apes” (left: US, right: Poland, Andrzej Mleczko)

“Airplane!” (left: US, right: Poland, Witold Dybowski)

“The Omen” (left: US, Tom Jung/Murray Smith, Poland: Jan Mlodozeniec)

“Rocky II” (left: US, right: Poland, Edward Lutczyn)

“Rosemary’s Baby” (left: US, Philip Gips, right: Poland, Wieslaw Walkuski)

“The Empire Strikes Back” (left: US, Roger Kastel, right: Poland, Jakub Erol)

“Zelig” (left: US, right: Poland, Wiktor Sadowski)

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” (left: US, Richard Amsel, right: Poland, Twardowska)

“Young Guns” (left: US, right: Poland, Jan Mlodozeniec)

“New York, New York” (left: US, right: Poland, Jan Mlodozeniec)

“Labyrinth” (left: US, right: Poland, Wieslaw Walkuski)

“Betrayed” (left: US, right: Poland, Wieslaw Walkuski)

“The Swarm” (left: US, right: Poland, Andrzej Pagowski)

“The Day of the Locust” (left: US, David Edward Byrd, right: Poland, Rene Mulas)

Categories: Columns

Tags: Brandon schaefer, Die hard, Ghostbusters, Jaws, Movie posters, One-Sheets, Polish Movie Posters, Rocky II, The Art House

This Is the Trend: This Summer, Fame Is the Ultimate Movie Monster

In “The Bling Ring,” Paris Hilton cameos but other glossy-mag staples appear without actually being in the room, ghosts in the media machine existing only in a particular set of minimally-differing iterations. In “This Is The End,” not even the celebrities can see themselves outside of how their comic personas have been defined; the movie can’t exist outside of the joke of seeing how those on-screen differ from or conform to how we already think about them. The shock (or at least novelty) of both films is how closely they train their primary focus on the idea of abstract celebrity, considering Los Angeles as a celebrity fishbowl from two oppositely gendered perspectives.

The idea of being famous for being famous isn’t entirely new: the surprisingly credible Wikipedia page on the topic plausibly names Zsa Zsa Gabor as the first non-socialite to be written about far more than her tangible level of achievement would suggest. Nonetheless, it’s clear celebrity culture as an industry with its own internal economy has developed exponentially in the last fifteen years (in 2011, “The New York Times” estimated the annual value of celeb gossip publications at $3 billion). “People” magazine’s first issue in 1974 had Mia Farrow on the cover and made room for an Alexander Solzhenitsyn excerpt, a feature on the wives of soldiers who’d gone MIA in Vietnam and some socialite profile softballs (“Gloria Vanderbilt: A fourth marriage that really works”). The magazine’s early innovations included a penchant for highlighting ordinary Americans who’d undergone some kind of horrific sickness or performed an unusual act of heroism.

In the early aughts, the magazine retooled itself to be much more aggressively/manically fixated on celebrity coverage (something its editors were so defensive about they went so far as to claim in 2006 that “the mix of celebrity and human interest stories has remained steady at about 53% to 47%, respectively, over the past five years”). This retooling came about in response to the emergence of competition from “In Touch Magazine” (founded in 2002), the decision in 2000 to change the focus of the previously industry-minded “Us Weekly” to a celebrity-fixated publication and other new competitors.

So it makes sense that the relatively scanty movies that take the idea of celebrity seriously are mostly confined to the last decade. This isn’t to be confused with movies in which the fame of their players is a strong subtext (like “Vanilla Sky,” in which the scenario is that Tom Cruise literally doesn’t live in the real world) or any old biopic, since those generally function as half-baked psychologically-minded biographies attempting to “explain” how someone’s past led to their cultural/social achievements, not tracts on fame itself. (This will be the only sentence in this article to acknowledge the existence of the 2004 movie “Paparazzi,” which attempted to get ordinary Americans really and truly outraged about pesky celebrity photographers; it didn’t take.) I’d be remiss (I suppose) if I didn’t also mention Woody Allen’s “Celebrity” or Gus Van Sant’s “To Die For,” though these mostly seem like warnings before the storm. Matteo Garrone’s “Reality” (released here earlier this year) is worth noting, because it’s about a guy who believes appearing on Italy’s “Big Brother” will validate his life, although a) “Big Brother” is a much bigger phenomenon abroad than here b) “Reality” mostly treats celebrity as a metaphor for/correlative with religion.

That leaves us with two movies that came out three weeks ago.

“This Is The End“‘s jokes depend on viewers being able to mediate between the person on-screen and what their understood personality is; otherwise, there’s simply no humor in meek Michael Cera as a cocaine-snorting monster of self-absorption or watching Danny McBride take his bumptiously obnoxious self-confidence to its logical conclusion. Watching famous people pretend to non-celebrity status onscreen is always mildly disorienting, requiring collusion and a mutual agreement to ignore the obvious; puncturing this hard-won illusion seems to make people nervous. Trying to find financing for “This Is The End” was tough because of the premise of Seth Rogen, James Franco et al. enacting distorted versions of themselves. “Everyone asked: ‘This apocalypse thing is great but do they have to play themselves?’” co-writer/-director Evan Goldberg recently explained. “Yes, they do, that’s the whole point!”

“The Bling Ring” is a movie in which the famous are visually inescapable without being physically present (read our full review here). Sofia Coppola’s totally committed to trying to visually represent the mental intake of a teenager whose primary media consumption is of images of celebrities. Large swaths of the film are scrolling screenshots of gossip blogs; at one point, all we have to look at is a video loop of Lindsay Lohan stalking into court in a white dress. (“While Lindsay Lohan used to be an actress, her main stage these days is the paparazzi-filled walk into the courthouse, where she struts her stuff in designer duds like it’s a catwalk,” the “New York Daily News” snorted earlier this year.) The movie’s teens believe that accessorizing like the stars can place them tangibly closer to fame. “I wanna have my own lifestyle,” says lead protagonist Marc (Israel Broussard), meaning that the goal isn’t to act/sing/perform/etc. in any capacity so that you can then enjoy the good things in life, but simply to exist as someone whose every appearance in the public sphere is compulsively hypnotic. The guys in “This Is The End” monetarily worry about whether they’re so insulated that they can’t even understand the apocalypse happening outside; the girls+guy of “The Bling Ring” aspire to that condition.

What’s funny about “This Is The End” is that it treats Rogen as the biggest celebrity around while four years ago he played the embarrassed/disposable assistant to Adam Sandler in “Funny People.” In that film, Judd Apatow (sort of) considered what celebrity does to a person by having Sandler’s comic confront his inability to come up with new material due to having been disconnected from reality so long. He needs Rogen’s struggling comic for inspiration (the cancer subplot is a red herring in a lot of ways), and “This Is The End” takes that idea to its logical conclusion by having Rogen as someone now so famous the only jokes that can emerge concern his direct existence. This is the end, indeed.

Categories: Features

Tags: Fame, Op-ed, Paris hilton, The Bling Ring, This is the End, Vadim Rizov

The Blockbuster Artist: How Brad Pitt’s Refusal to Make Bad Movies Changed Movie Stardom

I first discovered Brad Pitt along with the rest of the world – leering at his tight blue jeaned butt with Geena Davis. Who would have predicted how he’d shake his money maker to help enable great cinema?

“Thelma & Louise,” Ridley Scott’s film of Callie Khouri’s ur-Girls Gone Wild tale, could not have plucked a more handsome specimen upon which to reverse the male gaze. Chiseled, rugged, with a crooked smile, sparkle in the eye and beautiful hair. Pitt’s character JD didn’t really have to act, he just had to turn everybody on. He succeeded.

Pitt was quick to gain magazine cover fame and he took to it well. In fact, a whole cottage industry exists writing (or, should I say, “writing”) about Jennifer Aniston in a post-Brad Pitt breakup context. It didn’t matter much to Pitt’s stardom that, by and large, most of his movies stunk, and acting was arguably not quite the most important part of his job description. (Indeed, James LeGros’ character Chad Palomino in the filmmaking satire “Living in Oblivion” is a none-too-subtle parody of Pitt.)

In 1995, though, he made two interesting choices. He appeared in David Fincher’s “Seven,” a pretty asinine thriller that somewhat redeems itself with a pronounced sense of style, and “Twelve Monkeys,” Terry Gilliam’s slick and entertainingly fatalistic sci-fi film. It was “Twelve Monkeys” that surprised people – in it, Brad Pitt actually did a character. He played an anarchic and psychotic eco-terrorist/spoiled rich kid and he took a lot of chances on the screen. I’ve actually watched the movie recently and, quite frankly, I think Pitt is the worst thing in it – partially that’s because everyone else is so good – but it was still a breakthrough for being taken somewhat seriously. 1995 was the year Pitt began to align himself with directors who could reasonably be called auteurs.

Time marched on and every forgettable “Sleepers” and “Meet Joe Black” was met with a “Snatch” or “Fight Club.” I wouldn’t exactly call these art films (no: “Fight Club” is not an art film, you’ll discover that when you aren’t 21 anymore) but they are films coming from directors with a distinct voice. Then came the “Ocean’s” films.

Steven Soderbergh, as we all know, is one of the finest filmmakers living, dead or yet unborn. The “Ocean’s” films are probably his least interesting, which is why they’ve made the most money and had the largest ephemeral cultural impact. Pitt’s involvement with the trilogy blessed him with some sort of nose for sensing true genius in collaborators, and in picking out projects that needed to get made, and probably wouldn’t get made without his star power.

Pitt’s resume since “Ocean’s Thirteen” have been important works of art and entertainment that, I think, will only grow more valuable over time. You can pretty much go down the list.

The cult of Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward of Robert Ford” keeps growing. In fact, people are still waking up to the fact that 2007 was a watershed year for cinema and its relationship to the West. (We had this, “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country For Old Men” all looking for our attention – plus we hadn’t quite shaken off the last season of “Deadwood.”) It is a formal masterpiece and an actors’ triumph. Casey Affleck upstages Pitt from time to time, but there’s no way in hell this movie would even exist if Pitt didn’t believe in it. It is gorgeous and thought provoking and not commercial in the slightest.

After the so-goofy-it-hurts Coen Brothers film “Burn After Reading” came one of the only two David Fincher films that is actually worth a damn: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” (The other is “The Social Network,” by the way.) “Benjamin Button,” a beautiful fantasia on loss, remembrance and human connection, is a weird movie to wrap your head around. A lot of people flat out don’t like it. (These are, I should point out, people who don’t know how to live, how to truly live!) It is one of those rarest things, a genuine work of art done with a large canvass, and it made money for everybody, no doubt because Pitt’s magazine face got butts in seats.

Next up was “Inglourious Basterds,” another masterpiece. Now, Quentin Tarantino could no doubt make magic with just about anybody, but Pitt’s performance (particularly the shootout in the bar and the interrogation of Christoph Waltz) is played at a perfect pitch. What you’ll find with so many of his current films is that the directors are finding a way to use Pitt’s (let’s call it) limited range and zeroing in on that – giving him characters that play to his strengths.

After “Basterds” comes one of the greatest stunts ever pulled on the mainstream American movie audience: Terence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” The fact that this movie played in mall multiplexes is nothing short of a miracle. It probably would have been more appropriate in the installation spaces of the Whitney Museum of American Art, but screw it: the people need to be exposed to beauty.

“The Tree of Life” is sublime. What’s that, you say? The movie is confusing? The plot is messy? Nothing happens? EVERYTHING happens, and if you think the parents are too vague (Mom is nice, Dad is a jerk) that’s because Malick has the insight and ability to strip things bare. Malick’s paintbrush needed broad stroke characters to tell his impressionistic story, and Pitt is perfect in it. (And he ain’t too hard on the eyes during magic hour.) Now shut up as I twirl and tussle in the ground.

Pitt felt no need to reconnect with the slobbering masses with a “Troy 2” after “The Tree of Life.” He jumped right into “Moneyball,” which is arguably the least rah-rah big game sports movie ever made. Some might argue it is the anti-sports movie, where the eggheads are the heroes and the determination of will, spirit and might are all coldly shoved aside against bloodless, cruel math. Hardly apple pie.

His next theatrically released live action feature was “Killing Them Softly,” again from Andrew Dominik. It is an up-from-within tone poem about criminal behavior that has remarkably elegant sequences of violence as well as hilarious monologues. It does all it can to shake off its traditional three act structure. This structure exists, but it colors outside of the lines so much it resists sinking your teeth into it. It isn’t a big budget picture, but I imagine none of it would have been raised without Pitt saying yes.

But the siren’s call of a potential Hollywood franchise ended the streak. “World War Z” isn’t a paycheck gig – it is very much Pitt and his production shingle Plan B’s baby. And it was a breech birth. While the end result isn’t terrible, it sure as hell ain’t marvelous. It is also documented as one of the more boondoggled productions of our time (see Vanity Fair’s expose.) Pitt was smart enough to see a train wreck coming, and knew enough to put his ego in check and allow for a team of specialists (including Damon Lindelof and Chistopher McQuarrie) to overhaul the film to something a tad less ridiculous. The current ending is flawed, but when you read about what could have been, it’s worthy of a standing O.

The reaction to “World War Z”‘s original cut is the decision of a mature, intelligent man – not some Hollywood haircut.  And when all the US Weeklys are left floating amid the melted ice caps, we’ll still be talking about movies like “Jesse James” and “Tree of Life.” Who’d’a thunk it: from a pair of tight blue jeans to great art patronage. It’s a hell of a package.

Categories: Features

Tags: Brad pitt, Fight club, Killing Them Softly, Thelma and Louise, Twelve Monkeys, World war z

Why Jim Carrey Distancing Himself from ‘Kick-Ass 2′ Is the Best Reason to See the Movie

The road to “Kick-Ass 2? has been full of surprises.

The first was that it was happening at all. Two years after the 2010 original walked away with modest box office numbers, hope for a sequel looked bleak. And then — surprise! — Mark Millar in May of 2012 that Universal Pictures picked up the property and was moving forward, hiring director Jeff Wadlow (“Cry Wolf”) to make it all happen. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse were all returning, but what sweetened the deal, even the skeptics, was the recruitment of a newcomer. Surprise! Jim Carrey was joining the movie.

“Kick-Ass 2? filmed in the Fall of 2012 and early footage promised a faithful follow-up. The first trailer put the spotlight directly on Carrey, promising one his most demented roles yet. But on Sunday, June 23, fate decided to deal “Kick-Ass 2? one more twist: Carrey would not be endorising the movie. Surprise.

Per a series of tweets left on Carrey’s official account, the actor has withdrawn his support of the film, stating that after the violent shooting in Sandy Hook, CT back in December 2012 — months after the wrap of “Kick-Ass 2,” he could not in good conscience “support that level of violence.” He went on to apologize to others involved with the film, adding that he was “not ashamed” of the film, but that “recent events have caused a change in my heart.”

Since the beginning of his career, Carrey has thrown caution to the wind in favor of a big, loud, and often crass performance style. He’d twist his body in knots in his stand-up act, he’d become the dumbest human being on the planet or emerge from the butthole of a rhinoceros to turn his films into hits, and these days, as an advocate of peaceful living, he’ll take to Twitter to unleash hell on the pro-gun crowd. He’s managed to balance his full plate of career choices, but in the last 24 hours, he’s come under fire for continuing to act boldly. And not just from fans — “Kick-Ass” creator Mark Millar took to the web to respond to Carrey’s remarks.

“I’m baffled by this sudden announcement, as nothing seen in this picture wasn’t in the screenplay eighteen months ago,” Millar says. “Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin.” Millar makes the obvious clear: “Kick-Ass 2? is fiction, and while blood is shed, the writer likens it to the works of Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorcese and Eastwood. It has purpose. ‘Kick-Ass’ avoids the usual bloodless body-count of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence, whether it’s the ramifications for friends and family or, as we saw in the first movie, ‘Kick-Ass’ spending six months in hospital after his first street altercation.”

This is the moment when “Kick-Ass 2? became a movie I want to see. Surprise!

Millar brings up a good point in his rebuttal. Carrey just awakening to the idea that America has a gun problem. Since the movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, Carrey has been vocal on the Internet about a need for weapon control. Earlier this year, as a way of mixing his comedic talents and political points of view, Carrey released “Cold Dead Hand,” a vicious piece of satirical sketch that divided his audience.

Can movie violence go both ways, presenting extreme, Grindhouse-esque violence while showing that those actions have real world ramifications? Millar says “yes,” and that the balance is what attracted Carrey to the role of “Colonel Stars and Stripes,” a born again Christian who opts for blunt objects and hungry dogs over a standard firearm (the Colonel does back a gun, but it shoots rubber bullets). In March, MTV spoke to Carrey during press rounds for “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” about his decision to take on a role that at first glance, could promote everything he strove to abolish.

“Well it was a little bit [of a factor], but my character is a guy that came from a violent background who is trying to turn it around and he uses a gun with no bullets in it,” he said. “These are things I am considering now because I just feel like we don’t cause the problem, but we don’t help it much either. Even at that time, how the Sandy Hook shootings affected his work in the film. “I made ‘Kick-Ass’ before all the things, the unfortunate shootings happened and stuff happened, and so that’s kind of a little interesting blast from the past almost. But it’s just going to be a great movie. But I’m being careful with choices.”

Celebrity culture doesn’t allow for ideological mobility. A person with Carrey’s level of fame can’t be brazen with his/her political views, involve themselves in a film that tests those views, and then backtrack after the fact. Thanks to the Internet, audiences see it and judge it all. Regrets are unacceptable. Yes, Carrey knew what he was doing, having acted out a script chock full of comic book violence, but as he’s stated, the line between artful, comedic insanity and gratuitous bloodshed is thin. Sometime in the last year, it dawned on Carrey that what he had performed fell on the wrong side of the line.

One of my major problems with the original “Kick-Ass” was its inability to figure itself out. Was it a comic book movie about regular joes strapping on jet packs and wielding swords to slice their foes in two? Or was it a movie about a kid who dreamed of superheroics who found out the hard way that when a goon shoots you in the arm, it really, really, really hurts? The movie was schizophrenic, and one imagines that if Millar is convinced “Kick-Ass 2? can explode squibs with the staccato and existential consideration that made Sam Peckinpah a master, that the sequel may be equally scatterbrained.

Outraged by Carrey’s quiet reconsideration of the movie (misread as a condemnation), the Twitter community immediately called for Carrey to put his money where his mouth was and donate his paycheck to charity. A nice gesture, but the man is still working for a living and his work will still be there in “Kick-Ass 2? when it arrives in theaters this August. And when people see it, they should be as open as Carrey is to role. Arguments are made for and against media having an impact on our violent society. Many are 100% confident that the answer is “no, it doesn’t.” But “Kick-Ass 2? made Carrey wonder, and he decided that putting the movie out there was a mistake. If the movie is tonally out of whack, he might not be wrong. Absolutes will never apply — not all violent movies spur real world violence. But feeling that one could is acceptable.

Defending the violence, Millar says audiences are “smart enough to know they’re all pretending and we should instead just sit back and enjoy the serotonin release of seeing bad guys meeting bad ends as much as we enjoyed seeing the Death Star exploding,” but also that it’s a “sequel to the picture that gave us HIT-GIRL was always going to have some blood on the floor.” So “Kick-Ass 2? will try and eat its cake and have it too. Considering Carrey’s departure, we’ll be waiting to be surprised if the movie can pull it all off.

Categories: Features

Tags: Jim carrey, Kick ass 2, Mark millar, Matt Patches, Movie violence

Visualizing Sound: Creating the Movie Poster for ‘Berberian Sound Studio’

A friend of mine regularly reminds me that much of what designers do is destined for the landfill. It’s a sobering thought, kind of like the realization that your future will most likely involve an intimate relationship with ground mulch. Everything is finite and a lot of what propels us forward is the meaning we carve out for ourselves. Visions of being remembered in the annals of design history give plenty of people a sense of purpose in their life, while others sustain themselves on the prospect of higher wages. The more altruistic will say that their cockles are warmed solely through following orders.

I’ve never been on a quest to please, nor have I had any delusions about securing a place in the history of design. Fame is fleeting, money only lasts for so long. There’s no end goal I hope to achieve, no mountain to get to the top of or a princess to save. I’m just interested in playing a long game against myself, trying to be better than what I was capable of the day before. That momentum propels the process forward and makes these projects into a journey of exploration rather than one of just idly checking boxes off on a bucket list. Everything is best served in moderation, though, and as motivating as pushing yourself can be, using that as on its own can lead to a host of messy results. That happened both with this project and, in a case of art imitating life, to Gilderoy, the sullied sound foley artist of Peter Strickland’s “Berberian Sound Studio.”

Blending together sight and sound to create a wholly unique experience, “Berberian Sound Studio” revolves around the increasing frustrations and unraveling mental state of a sound engineer working on an Italian horror film in the 1970’s. It was one of the first films that I’d worked on in awhile where I’d had some passing knowledge of its existence: it premiered months before in the UK, backed by a vibrant set of posters that either played off of the soft, beautiful imagery within the film or brought to the forefront it’s giallo roots. A pre-existing campaign often isn’t a burden when a project is separated by time, but the fresher something is in the public’s consciousness, the greater the risk there is at being influenced and stumbling onto similar lines. Pulling from the same visual well as the original would speak honestly to the look of the film, but would teeter on the edge of that well-trodden ground. Berberian offers a premise rich in interpretation, allowing for different roads to be taken without straying too far from any central themes or ideas. It’s a unique film that grants the opportunity to push oneself without worrying about getting too weird.

That doesn’t mean the process won’t go up in flames, though. This sort of did.

Many of the early sketches were an incomprehensible mess; there were sound ideas, but the driving force became less concerned with focusing on them, and more with a desire to repeatedly try stranger things. A demon made out of sound equipment, Gilderoy’s face peeled back to reveal another world within – bizarre for the sake of being bizarre, but in a way that tried to top what came before. It can be a miserable process, watching pieces not click together despite continuously attacking the problem at different angles. Things get better, eventually, but then the rigorous second-guessing begins: are these being pushed far enough? Can they go further? Do they feel too easy? Do these avenues make any sense?

Scribbling without a direction can offer a multitude of possibilities but deadlines are always looming, and too much time spent yanking your own chain is a recipe for a whole lot of form without much of the content. What’s being produced becomes too insular and alienating to an audience not steeped in design history; a case of the work having it’s head firmly up it’s own backside. A clear idea, some semblance of a path forward – those can give definition to creative chaos. Thematically, Gilderoy becoming consumed by his process, causing the subsequent unraveling of his mental state, offered a foot hole in which to reign everything in.

Sound reels became the focus, with magnetic tape spiraling outward and becoming a chaotic mess in several versions of the poster. The foley artist is devoured by the equipment he employs, becoming a part of him or covering the gaps that would be filled by traditional facial features. Fantasy and reality collide sometimes violently within the film, so many of the pieces use rough juxtapositions between different sound waves and other shards of imagery to evoke a fragmented sense of unity. Themes and similar patterns of exploration were strewn across different ideas rather than honed in on for a single piece as a way of playing within a sandbox, rather than getting lost within a jungle again.

Berberian revels in ambiguity, employing certain techniques and staging certain scenes in a way that makes their meaning open to interpretation. That, in of itself, offers a license to make associations and indulge in bizarre imagery. The large, looming eye that found its way into several iterations is strange, and its addition is more emulative of the film’s aims by being suggestive rather than communicating a literal idea. Grounding everything falls to the title treatment (emulative of vintage vinyl packaging) and, in the case of the final one-sheet, the familiar, vertical structure used in most modern film posters. For a film that works against convention, a case could be made that laying everything out in a way that’s overly-familiar contradicts the story’s ethos, but I see it more as a coincidental nod to a classic Argento poster.

Now, with all of that said, this managed to be both the easiest and difficult assignment I’ve tackled lately. Both IFC and Peter Strickland were wonderful; their reception to the work out of the gate isn’t typical in this business, and at the end of the day it’s existence is owed to them.

The rough patches only asserted themselves in my own time, created by myself, while I privately waged a war against myself to move in directions I wasn’t altogether comfortable with. The results were satisfying in the end in the face of a tumultuous process.

Here is the final one-sheet:

There are an infinite number of ways to solve a problem, although some reveal themselves more easily than others. That alone is enough to make anyone roll into a fetal position and call it a day. Obstructions help reel things in, though, keeping the project moving forward without going too far off the rails and spiraling out of control. The temptation is there to try so many avenues, regardless of whether you’re prepared or not, and building walls for a sandbox can be the only thing standing in the way of stooping over your equipment and thinking…

“Berberian Sound Studio” is now playing in theaters and is available to rent on iTunes, YouTube, and other VOD outlets.

Check out the previous installment of The Art House: The Beautiful Movie Posters of Post-War Germany.

Categories: Columns

Tags: Berberian sound studio, Brandon schaefer, Dario argento, Giallo, IFC, Movie posters, Peter Strickland, Process Post, The Art House, Toby jones

The 10 Best ‘Star Trek’ Movie Deaths

Despite being set in space, “Star Trek” takes its heritage from naval adventure stories, and death is always a certainty on such dangerous voyages. In its ongoing mission to seek out new life and new civilizations the crew of the Enterprise has faced the grim reaper on many occasions, despite Kirk and Picard’s best efforts to avoid a Kobayashi Maru scenario.

Since at least one major character probably gives up the ghost in “Star Trek Into Darkness,” we thought we’d count down the most memorable moments among the eleven previous big screen Treks when crew members and baddies alike bit the dust… hard.

This has been, and always shall be, the most earth-shattering death in the entire “Star Trek” canon. What makes it the greatest? Gravitas. Spock and Kirk’s relationship is at the core of everything. Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner carry that unmanufactured camaraderie into the scene, along with their eternal conflict of cold logic vs. human instinct. When these two friends stare at each other through radiation shielding, the pointy-eared Vulcan having sacrificed himself to save the ship, Kirk must face death for the first time. His valedictory speech at Spock’s funeral is the final gut punch: “Of all the souls I have encountered, his was the most… human.” *NERD TEARS*

Although we, as an audience, only discovered that David (the late Merritt Butrick) was Kirk’s son, like, less than a movie ago, he bites the dust here, albeit valiantly. When Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd) orders that one of his prisoners on the planet Genesis be killed, David prevents Spock from getting stabbed by some Klingon prick, making the ultimate sacrifice. Lieutenant Saavik (Robin Curtis) breaks the heartbreaking news to Kirk. In a reportedly accidental ad-lib, Shatner falls off his captain’s chair, expressing Kirk’s shock, loss and uncharacteristic helplessness. “Klingon bastards, you killed my son!” For all the crap Shatner gets as a repeat offender scenery chewer, he handles this scene with the sensitivity and grace of a true pro.

When William Shatner was a young understudy in the ’50s taking over Christopher Plummer’s role as Henry V at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, he probably never imagined he’d be torpedoing Plummer in a movie nearly forty years later. Plummer fought hard with the studio to crack a new Klingon look, and his bald south seas pirate getup surely did the trick, as General Chang proved to be Kirk’s most devious adversary since Khan. That made it all the more satisfying when Dr. McCoy and Spock’s specially modified torpedo finds Chang’s cloaked ship. Plummer’s famous last words are, ironically, Shakespeare’s: “To be… or not… to be…”

Christopher Lloyd has had such a monumentally eclectic career, whether he’s playing a loony scientist in “Back to the Future,” a loony cabbie on the show “Taxi,” or a loony toon in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” but to play a renegade Klingon in “Search for Spock” Lloyd channeled a side we hadn’t seen: Cold, calculated evil. Of course he orders the death of David, so Kruge has to pay, and the mano-a-mano between he and Kirk is as pummeling as you’d want it to be. Even though Kirk shows mercy as Kruge dangles off the cliff on a crumbling Genesis, the proud Klingon makes one last pyrrhic jab, causing Shatner to kick his dirty teeth in and utter “I (*kick*)… have had (*kick*)… enough of YOU!” (*kick, fall into lava, DEAD*).

J.J. Abrams wanted to kick his franchise reboot off with a bang, so why not have Kirk’s birth occur simultaneously with his father’s death? Okay. This event skews the timeline of the series into its current layman-friendly iteration, and it helps that the mighty Chris Hemsworth was able to make George Kirk the kind of hotshot heroic archetype little Jimmy could strive towards once he enlists in Starfleet twenty-some years later. Ramming the U.S.S. Kelvin right into the Romulan squid ship took brass cojones, and earned the event a major place in history, as exemplified by a whole memorial museum seen behind Benedict Cumberbatch in “Into Darkness.”

Okay, so a lot of Trekkies do NOT dig this final curtain for perhaps the numero uno space hero of all-time. How can you blame them, since Kirk basically slips off a bridge like a loser? What? However, a lot of folks miss the metaphoric significance of this, since you could argue it represents a bridge between the original cast and the “Next Generation.” When that bridge collapses and Kirk dies, it allows Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard the opportunity to literally bury Kirk and finally be his own man. Too bad it only led to three more sub-par films. As Shatner says, perhaps forseeing future installments: “It was fun… oh my.”

Probably the series’ trippiest death scene –this was the ’70s after all- it has the demoted new captain of the Enterprise Will Decker (Stephen Collins) merging with his old Deltan girlfriend Ilia (Persis Khambatta) via the mystical light powers of space probe Vger. Huh? Yeah. Collins’ hair billows upwards like its being blow dried, and sparkly stars transform he and Ilia into a pure being of some kind, but in terms of their being people they’re basically dead. It looks like something Jim Jones would describe to get his followers to drink the Kool-Aid, and for that reason alone it makes the cut.

The assassination of Klingon leader Gorkon (David Warner) on the eve of intergalactic peace talks gets the conspiracy plot of this final voyage for the original cast going with an added enhancement: CGI space blood. Pink floating globules of fluid squirting out of Klingons in Zero-G looked pretty rad in 1991, and still kinda does today. It was a clever sequence concocted by director Nicholas Meyer, and Warner plays perhaps the most sympathetic Klingon we’d seen onscreen… until Worf, that is. The scene where Bones tries unsuccessfully to revive him through CPR is genuinely moving and icky.

In unquestionably the crummiest “Trek” outing ever, Picard faces off against an ugly clone of himself named Shinzon (played by the handsome Tom Hardy) who threatens to spray Earth with this green stuff that’ll melt people. Boring. Picard ices Sh**zon via impaling, but it’s everyone’s favorite wacky cyborg Data who saves the day, transports Picard back aboard Enterprise 1701-E and shoots the green glowing goo so it blows up. This sacrifice has special significance to actor Brent Spiner since he co-wrote the screenplay, undercutting the death by having them conveniently find Data’s brother, but the crew’s remembrance/toast of Data is touching.

In J.J. Abrams’ in-your-face “Star Trek” universe it’s not dramatic enough to simply have Spock’s mom killed, but ALL OF VULCAN has to die. Damn, dude! Chill with the holocausts already! To add insult to serious injury, Spock (Zachary Quinto) watches his human mother Amanda (Winona Ryder) perish as the ground crumbles beneath her just before she can be beamed up. DUUUUUUDE. What really makes this whole scenario fascinating is how much they had to make up Ryder (age 41) to smooth over the age disparity with Quinto (age 35). Now THAT’S a time warp.

Categories: Features

Tags: Star trek, Star Trek Generations, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek The Motion Picture, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: Nemesis