At some point, every horror franchise becomes a comedy franchise. Repetitive rhythms of tension muddle shocking scares into crowd-pleasing familiarity. Not always a bad thing, really, and I have a soft spot for junky laterquels, titles modified with delicious word salad like Versus or In Space, ever-more-elaborate death scenes that invite a laugh track. Annabelle Comes Home is only a little scary, and too religiously dedicated to its own ongoing cash-printing megafranchise for big laughs.
Read any published screenplay, and the first thing you may see is a note from the author telling you how pointless it was to write the thing in the first place. ”Trainspotting is an incredible book…but still I didn’t see it as a film,” insists its adapter, John Hodge. ”I hope the army of admirers of Michael Ondaatje’s novel forgive my sins of omission and commission, my misjudgments and betrayals,” pleads The English Patient‘s writer-director Anthony Minghella.
Join us, if you will, on a trip back to 2006. It was the year Renée Zellweger starred in Case 39, her first horror film since 1994's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Just two years after winning an Oscar for Cold Mountain, she played a social worker who rescues a little girl from what she thinks is an abusive household. But the tyke might just be evil incarnate. Bradley Cooper—then best known as Owen Wilson's jerk rival from Wedding Crashers—costarred as a kiddie shrink.
It might have been the most risqué scene in The CW’s history had it aired uncut. The pilot for 16th century-based castle drama Reign featured a steamy masturbation scene in the version that was sent to advertisers and media after the show made the network’s schedule last May. But the final cut of the episode that was recently sent to critics and will air on the network this week has been toned down.
A wronged barber in 19th-century London wielding silver razors on a mission of vengeance sings ”They all deserve to die!” in the thrilling epiphany aria that’s the first-act climax of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. As any besotted devotee of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical-theater masterpiece knows, they all do. Die, I mean. Thwarted just when he has the throat of the villain he most wants in his hands — the evil Judge Turpin, who sent the then-named Benjamin Barker to prison years earlier on false charges — the brooding tonsorial artist expands his killing plans to include all who sit in his barber chair.
Knockemstiff, Ohio, is an actual town and, judging from Pollock’s fiction and Google, also a desolate hellhole. After setting a celebrated book of short stories there, Pollock returns to the same geographic and metaphorical stomping ground with this unrepentantly dark debut novel about sexual violence, emotional violence, and plain old violence violence. Two of the subplots concern horrific preachers, but the most unsettling story of all involves married serial killers looking for hapless guys to degrade and murder.
The Dixie Chicks no longer exist. The band is now known simply as the Chicks. After 31 years, the American country music band switched their name on Thursday in response to urgings to drop the "Dixie," a word that's often associated with slavery. The band also released a new video, the protest themed "March March" (see above) as well as a rebranded website. "We want to meet the moment," Chicks bandmates Natalie Maines, Martie Erwin Maguire, and Emily Strayer said in a statement obtained by EW.
OK, hold on, let me get some gum to take the pungently bitter taste this YouTube clip from yesterday's episode of Dr. Phil has just left in my mouth. In fact, let me spare you the experience of watching it yourself, and recreate it for you here: First, Dr. Phil emphatically warns the audience that the footage they're about to see is unpleasant and inappropriate for children. Then he runs the package in which the creator of a series of videos called Bumfights, Ty Beeson, brags about the magnanimity of capturing homeless men — as we see for ourselves in multiple clips from the Bumfights videos — fighting with each other, ripping out their rotten teeth, banging their heads into walls, and generally behaving in a completely sub-human way.
If you're a fan of TLC shows, family drama, or just good old reality television, you've undoubtedly heard of the Duggar family. And if you're not, you've probably heard of them anyway, but why? Who is the Duggar Family from 19 Kids and Counting? The Duggar family hail from Tontitown, Arkansas, a small town near Springdale. Led by patriarch Bob and matriarch Michelle, the family had its first taste of fame after making several appearances on TLC and Discovery Health specials (such as 14 Children and Pregnant Again!
There’s scarcely been a bigger name in American indie film over the past decade than the Duplass Brothers. Together, Mark and Jay Duplass have produced dozens of features, written and directed four well-received movies, and created two HBO series. Individually, they’ve carved out notable acting careers — Jay in a leading role on Amazon’s Emmy-winning Transparent, Mark heading up acclaimed films like The One I Love and Your Sister’s Sister. At seemingly any point in time, if they don’t have a major project on the way as a team, chances are one has a big movie coming out soon.