I love films, all films, in general but if there’s one particular film genre that really floats my boat then it would be in the horror category. This summer will see the release of a title that I’ve been anticipating since I heard about it at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con. The film I speak of is the remake of the 1973 tv horror film of the same name: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.
While Troy Nixey takes the director’s chair for this film he’s working on a story written by Guillermo Del Toro who’s been known to dabble in the horror genre (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone). Del Toro promised a horror film that would bring back horror the way it’s meant to be and that’s with genuine scares and not horror predicated on torture and extreme use of gore. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will be a throwback to the atmospheric, almost gothic horror, that reached it’s peak during the late 70’s before the slasher boom hit.
The film has been delayed several times as Miramax Films was sold by Disney and the restructuring of the studio after it’s owners finalized it’s purchase put the film on the backburner. It now has an official August 26, 2011 release and it looks like the film got an R-rating from the MPAA for “pervasive scariness”. While Del Toro, Nixey and the rest of the film crew were hoping for a PG-13 rating the one given by the MPAA who seemed to really enjoy said “pervasive scariness” recommended it go out as an R-rated horror (one with little to no gore).
So, we have an upcoming horror film by an upcoming filmmaker handpicked by Del Toro. A film written by Del Toro himself and one which just got an R-rating which made Del Toro as happy as a clam. Plus, it’s a horror film that relies on genuine scares and not gore. My answer to that is August 26, 2011 cannot come sooner.
Today we saw the release of the second official trailer for the upcoming X-Men prequel/reboot helmed by British director Matthew Vaughn.
X-Men: First Class looks to show the early days when Professor X and Magneto were still friends and allies instead of the adversarial relationship they had in the first three films in the franchise. This new trailer shows more of the characters who will be involved in this film. It also shows the mutants and their powers in action. I must admit that I wasn’t too thrilled with the previous trailers shown about this film, but this latest shows more action and finally reveals it’s summer blockbuster pedigree. The sequence with Magneto lifting the submarine out of the water was really cool.
It’s still not the superhero film this summer that tops my must-see list, but this trailer has put this film in the running as one of the films I must-see.
X-Men: First Class is still slated to have a June 3, 2011 release.
Sometimes, you watch a movie and there’s a line that will jump out at you so brightly that you have to stand up and take notice. You carry it with you and find that even if it didn’t mean to be, it just comes across as cool or funny. My family watches tons of movies, so at any given time you can make the room smile by screaming something sudden like “They cut the power?! How could they cut the power man? They’re animals!!”
I give you the awesomeness that is Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. In this scene, which was both shocking and funny, a priest takes offense to zombies causing trouble in the cemetery behind his church. I laugh every time I think of this. Enjoy.
So, last night, I was feeling a bit down for a number of reasons so my BFF Evelyn came over and we had a little slumber party of sorts in my living room. And before everyone does a double take and accuses me of trying to be all like Paris Hilton, let me just explain that when we refer to each other as being “BFFs,” we’re not just being sincere but we’re being postmodernly satiric. It’s kind of the same principle behind why me and my sister Erin tends to casually toss around the word “bitch” whenever we’re having a conversation. Of course, “BFF” doesn’t inspire quite the same reaction from the older folks at the family reunion as “bitch” does but that’s a whole other story.
Anyway, as I informed everyone earlier on twitter, Evelyn and I did all the usual things that you do at a slumber party. We stripped down to our underwear, watched horror movies, ate food that we shouldn’t have eaten, had a violent pillow fight, and swore that we would never reveal the divine secrets of the ya ya sisterhood. I also recruited her to look through all the possible picks for the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers and help me narrow them down to just 6 trailers.
This, she helped me down without (too much) complaint. Though it may not always be apparent, deciding which 6 trailers to feature each week is actually a pretty long and thorough process and it’s one that can be very tedious if you’re not a fan of these movies. I think a lot of people would have said, “Who cares? Just toss up 6 random trailers and be done with it.” Not Evelyn. Even as I forced her to watch some really odd and kinda disturbing trailers, she stuck with it until we had this week’s 6 trailers. She even put up with me explaining to her why a certain trailer was more grindhouse than another. And that is one of the many reasons why I love Evelyn and why she’ll always be my BFF.
And here’s the 6 trailers that she helped me pick for this week…
Okay, Evelyn and me both literally fell in love with this trailer from the minute we heard that narrator say “The curse that begins with a kiss.” Needless to say, we both jumped to a conclusion as to what that curse was and let’s just say it wasn’t syphilis. But anyway, this appears to be some sort of cross between an old educational short and a blaxploitation film. I haven’t seen this film yet and hadn’t even heard of it until I came across the trailer but now, it has become one of my obsessions. I must see Stigma. I must find out about the curse that begins with a kiss…
2) The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970)
Wow, isn’t that just the most annoying title ever? It just screams “FILM SCHOOL GRADUATE!” at the top of its trust funded lungs. Still, this trailer does have one line that made me laugh out loud and that line was: “Where am I going?” Otherwise, this trailer is also memorable for the horrid “gingerbread” song that plays over the first few clips . Evelyn claims that the song is now stuck in her head, which is pretty bad since the entire song is basically “something something gingerbread something something gingerbread…” Evelyn thinks that Stanley (played by Don Johnson of A Boy and His Dog and The Harrad Experiment) looks hot in this trailer. I think he’s a little bit too much of a pretty boy. Neither one of us can believe that he later grew up to be the redneck in Machete.
Fred Williamson is …. Jesse Crowder! Despite our different feelings concerning the appeal of Stanley Sweetheart, both Evelyn and I agreed that Jesse Crowder would kick his scrawny little ass. That said, I objected to the “I’m going to bruise you up a little” line towards the end of the trailer but Evelyn defended it, making the argument that Crowder would have bruised up a man with a knife as well.
“It could have been … a love story.” Much like Stigma, this is a case of us just falling in love with a overdramatic tag line. Apparently, the film itself appears to be a grindhouse version of Cyrus.
We had to include Zachariah because, as the trailer explains, this was the world’s first electric western. Add to that, Don Johnson looks a bit less fancy here than he did as Stanley Sweetheart.
We saved the best for last. Now, I know that the original Get Carter is such a classic (especially when compared to the Stallone version) that you might wonder if it really belongs here. Well, trust me, it does. Get Carter is pure grindhouse art and this trailer proves it. Plus, both me and Evelyn were surprised and delighted to discover that once upon a time, Michael Caine was quite the sexy beast. When, at the end of the trailer, we were told to “Get Carter before he gets you,” we both responded with, “Carter can have us.”
On Friday night, after we saw the movie Hanna, a friend Jeff and I returned back to my house and retreated to my bedroom where he eventually fell asleep and I tried to sleep. Insomnia, however, won out and I ended up watching a Lifetime horror movie called The Haunting on Sorority Row.
Why Was I Watching It?
I couldn’t get to sleep. Poor me. So, I turned on the TV, checked out what was on the DVR, and as soon as I saw The Haunting of Sorority Row, I knew what I had to do. Somehow, I forgot that, regardless of how low I turned down the sound the last time I was watching it, whenever I turn on my TV, the volume is always reset to full blast. So, as soon as I hit play, the TV literally thundered to life and woke up not only Jeff but probably the rest of the neighborhood as well.
As I frantically turned down the volume, Jeff sat up in bed and asked, “What’s this?”
“It’s a movie,” I said, “Sorry, I couldn’t sleep.”
“I bet it’s a horror film,” he said.
“Yeah,” I nodded. Then I looked over my shoulder, gave him my wicked little smile (well, I like to think of it as being my wicked little smile), and I added, “It’s a Lifetime horror film.”
“Oh,” he replied, sounding much less enthusiastic.
Anyway, The Haunting of Sorority Row put him back to sleep in about five minutes. Me, I still haven’t slept which is why I’m still sitting here in my beloved Pirates t-shirt while Jeff peacefully sleeps behind me. Maybe after I finish writing this, I’ll give sleep another chance.
What’s The Movie About?
It’s about a haunting on sorority row. More specifically, it’s about a really angry ghost who is determined to kill the four sorority sisters who are hiding a secret. Their ringleader is Leslie who is played by an actress named Lisa Marie Caruk. And that’s a great name. Anyway, Blair Waldorf herself, Leighton Meester, is also pledging this haunted sorority and she is determined to set things right.
What Worked?
Oh, this is a Lifetime Movie so everything worked. I mean, you know what you’re getting with Lifetime and part of the reason why we love Lifetime movies is because they’re all exactly the same. The perfect Lifetime Movie is the epitome of a stupid movie that can be best enjoyed by intelligent women with a healthy sense of the absurd. I’d like to think that I qualify on all three of those.
That said, there were a few things that worked even if you decided to ignore the fact that they were found in a Lifetime film. Not surprisingly, the nearly-all female cast was a lot more likable and their roles were a bit more developed than you’d expect to find in a horror film. Leighton Meester is probably one of the most underrated actresses working right now and she does a great job playing the film’s “final girl” while Lisa Marie Caruk has a lot of fun playing the bullying head of the Sorority.
Another thing that worked here was the great pleasure that I got out of imagining how many of you guys rented this film thinking it was a typical, Dead Women In Lingerie Slasher Film just to discover that it was instead a Lifetime movie.
What Didn’t Work?
This film works pretty well as a Lifetime movie but it totally sucks as a horror film. A lot of this is due to the fact that this is a TV movie which pretty much means that it can’t really show anything that would scare us.
As often happens in Lifetime movies, the main character’s boyfriend is a eunuch. In this one, we’re asked to believe that an 18 year-old boy would refuse to have premarital sex with Leighton Meester. Yeah, right. Because boys have so much self-control…
Finally, this is another one of those films that suffers from having a final twist that’s so obvious that most viewers will figure it out before the movie even begins. Yes, it’s that obvious.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
There’s a scene in which one of the unfortunately sorority sisters ends up getting trapped in the shower and scalded to death by hot water. This is scene vaguely disturbed me because 1) I’m claustrophobic, 2) I have a fear of scalding water, and 3) I’ve actually managed to get trapped in a shower before and I had to scream and scream until someone heard me, ran into the bathroom, and told me that I needed to pull (as opposed to pushing) the shower door in order to open it. Of course, my hands and arms were too busy trying to cover up me for me to take his advice on the door. So, I said. “Thank you. sir,” and then waited until he left.
Otherwise, it was hard for me to relate to this film because I never pledged nor did I ever want to pledge a sorority in college. I was actually invited to do so by one of them but, at the time, I said, “No, that’s way too bourgeois for me.”
“Bourgeois?” she replied, confused.
Lessons Learned
I definitely did the right thing by never joining a sorority.
The next hottie of the day comes from the Land of the Rising Sun. Like most hotties chosen from this region this one also happens to be one from the gravure model and idol scene. Kumada Yoko is our latest “Hottie of the Day”.
Ms. Kumada was born in Gifu City, Japan in 1982 which would make her, like fellow gravure model Hoshino Aki, a rarity in that she remains in the J-Idol world despite being much older than the usual models. This speaks to her longevity in the business which usually prefers that the models it hire for Idol projects and gravure photoshoots be between 17-23 years of age.
Yoko did start out much older than most of her peers as she studied to become a nurse once she was out of high school. She did try taio go into the entertainment business much earlier but was forbidden by her parents who disapproved of the profession. But while studying to be a nurse the urge to enter the business was still strong in Yoko and she finally followed her dream and hasn’t looked back.
While her early career was mostly gravure photoshoots and the Idol videos here and there, in time work came to her and she began to branch out to appearing on several TV shows and her share of live-action dramas. In the end, her love remains as a model and she continues to this day to pump out new photoshoot book collections and J-Idol videos.
It is Super Bowl Sunday and while most of the nation and also others around the world will be watching this event as if their life depended on it for some it’s just another Sunday. These people, some of them at least would rather be watching the Lingerie Bowl. In honor of the latest Lingerie Bowl we have a new “hottie of the day”. The hottie chosen is the lovely model and Playboy Playmate Jessica Canizales.
Ms. Canizales was born in Brazil, but spent most of her childhood growing up in Panama and Idaho as her family moved several times. Once she was 18 she moved to Miami where she began to go to school to become an interior designer. While going to school she worked part-time at the local Hooters. It would be while she was employed at Hooters that she began modeling for the Hooters calendar.
It sounds cliche but she was discovered by a Playboy scout while walking down South Beach and asked her if she was interested in posing for the magazine. Her decision to take the offer would payoff for Jessica as she became a Playmate for the Spanish version of Playboy. She has since appeared many times on special editions of the magazine and has begun working for Playboy TV.
Jessica has now begun to branch out and started her own official website where she interacts with her fans.
The newest hottie of the day share similarities with four previous hotties. This latest choice for our hottie feature is the lovely Melissa Giraldo.
Ms. Melissa Giraldo come straight from Medellin, Colombia. Like her lovely sisters the Davalos Twins, Daniela Tamayo and Sandra Valencia she is also one of the more popular models in South America as her work in the swimwear and lingerie industry has made her quite sought after to model companies’ products. Melissa has become one of the exclusive models for PHAX swimwear and also Besame Lingerie. She has also appeared many times in magazines as the featured pin-up and continues to expand to new fields in modeling such as runway shows both in her local Colombia and throughout South America.
Like the other South American models featured in this site’s “hottie of the day” she has gained quite a loyal following outside of Colombia and South America due to the spread of her pictorials over the internet. Only time will tell when she will finally explode in popularity here in the US. I wouldn’t be surprised if she becomes one of the new Victoria’s Secret Angels in a year or two.
For our latest “Hottie of the Day” we leave merry ol’ England and return back to U.S. shores. My latest pick is the very cute and lovely Misa Campo.
The one and only Misa Campo was born in Canada from a Filipino father and a Dutch mother. A combination of genes when combined turned out a lovely daughter who has been one of the most popular import car models for the past several years. A career which only happened after her boss at the place she bartended at recommended that she try modeling for the import car tuner shows which are popular in the West Coast.
She has been one of the major faces in the import car tuner model scene and a mainstay in the trade publications which promote the industry. Misa has also appeared on men’s magazines such as Maxim, AskMen, DragSport and others. She also does go-go dancing at hip-hop events which also tends to find itself paired with import tuner shows. Ms. Campo has also branched out her usual show modelling gigs by becoming the face of RocaWear Canada.
While she does yearn to settle down and raise her own family she has set that aside for the moment to focus on her modeling career. Maybe she’ll branch out to other forms of entertainment. One thing for sure that wherever she goes and whatever she decides to do Misa will have legion of fans always on the look out for more work from her.
What better way to usher in Christmas Eve 2010 than by introducing the newest selection for “Hottie of the Day”. Our latest hottie is none other than UK glamour model Alice Goodwin.
Ms. Goodwin, like most glamour models in the UK, was discovered by talent scouts for one of Great Britain’s many tabloid newpapers. This time around it was a scout from the Daily Star who discovered Alice as she sunbathed on a beach in Bournemouth (coincidentally this was the very same beach where Daily Star model Lucy Pinder was discovered a few years earlier). She quickly made the Daily Star‘s roster of topless models and became a favorite of the paper’s readership. She has since expanded her modeling career by posing for other UK lad magazines such as Nuts, Zoo Weekly and Maxim. Alice has also released her very own pin-up calender her first two years as a model.
Alice Goodwin has become such a favorite with fans in Great Britain that she was voted hottest babe of 2009 in the UK edition of Maxim. With her career just starting to take off it shouldn’t be long before she joins past UK glamour models such as Lucy Pinder, Keeley Hazell and Rosie Jones in moving into videos and other branches of the entertainment media.
Through the Shattered Lens