Sometimes a movie is exactly as advertised and exactly what you want. If you love a good John Carpenter movie and are intrigued by a director’s ambitious attempt to create a worthy homage to Carpenter’s most memorable early work, then Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is for you. With pacing, cinematography, music, and characterizations found in Carpenter’s Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, The Thing, and Escape from New York, writer-director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) delivers more mood than scares, but it’s the perfect beginning to a video game franchise movie series and a fantastic throwback 1980s-style horror romp. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is available on physical media here at Amazon and currently has a $9.99 sale price for digital streaming at Vudu.
A military sci-fi adventure begins this month in the pages of a new Oni Press comic book series created by Cullen Bunn. Rogue Planetis the next intergalactic journey of a crew similar to the Colonial Marines of the Alien franchise. Similarly bloody and also set among a world of strange fantasy world elements, readers will meet a hardened team as they awake from a long-term space sleep, and step right into a horror story. It’s not just a catchy title–their destination is a rogue planet, a planet not connected to any star or planetary system.
TKO Studios is the new comic book publisher that surprised the industry early this year with an entirely new way to entertain readers. They release four books at once in a binge format paralleling Netflix TV streaming shows, and they offer each story available in a trade paperback edition and as six separate comic book issues in a boxed set. Readers buy whichever format appeals to them. The last positive is the publisher’s slightly oversized format, a size that allows more artwork space per page while still feeling like a comic book. But this is all formatting. The substance doesn’t pull any punches, with TKO bringing in some familiar, beloved writers and artists for their first round (check out our reviews of those series linked below). So does the second round measure up to the first? It was worth the wait, and fans will be pleased.
We’ll begin with Eve of Destruction, a zombie survival story in the vein of The Walking Dead, but mixing in several other influences and concepts along the way. The story is written by TKO’s CEO and co-publisher Salvatore A. Simeone and Steve Simeone, with lettering by Ariana Maher. The heavy lifting comes from artists Nik Virella, Isaac Goodhart, and Ruth Redmond who fill six issues with non-stop action. And if you’re a fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, you might agree the creatures have more than a little in common with that horror film.
On the night of an important school dance, a girl’s separated parents, both women, are feuding over how each is contributing to the parenting the girl. A hurricane is closing in off the coast, and with it comes a change in biology fueled by changes in the Earth’s environmental conditions that are triggered by this new storm. The nature of the threat is specific and unusual–it is only targeting men and boys, and the results are on track to produce a kind of extinction forecasted in the title. Although it could be a story about feminism, it doesn’t have any time to even broach the ramifications of this threat. This is a story about survival in the first hour of a disaster.
So many books that go behind the scenes of films take a similar approach, skimming the surface with interviews of only top production heads, providing diehard fans of the property who have read all the fanzines little that is new. So when you get an immersive treatise like The Making of Alien, you must take a few weeks to digest every story, quote and anecdote found inside. Maybe it’s because so much of the inception of the other classics J.W. Rinzler has written about is the stuff of sci-fi movie legend, but Rinzler’s research this time around is completely enthralling. Writer Dan O’Bannon, writer and initial director Walter Hill, concept artist H.R. Giger, director and storyboard artist Ridley Scott, actors Sigourney Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright, and Ian Holm–Rinzler’s chronology is framed by the entry of these people into the project and their key roles. The account of their intersected careers and efforts resulting in the 1979 sci-fi/horror classic provide a detailed understanding of studio productions in the 1970s. For fans of the film and the franchise, you couldn’t ask for more for this year’s 40th anniversary of Alien.
Rinzler, who has also created similar deep dives behind the scenes of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, the Indiana Jones films, and last year’s The Making of Planet of the Apes, has established the best format for giving sci-fi fans the ultimate immersive experience. In many ways The Making of Alien is an account of the necessary vetting process behind any major creative endeavor. The first draft of any story is never the best, and sometimes neither is the 100th draft. But the best books and the best movies get reviewed by other people, usually producers, editors, studios, departments, some with prestige and money backing them, sometimes over and over, with changes made to every chapter, with creators and ideas that are tried on for size, dismissed, re-introduced, and sometimes brought back again. By the end of many a film, the contributors are exhausted and disenchanted, some even devastated. Only sometimes this is alleviated by a resulting success. It was even more difficult working on a project like Alien–a mash-up of science fiction and horror pulled together in the 1970s, when drama was in, and science fiction meant either the cold drama of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the roller coaster spectacle of Star Wars. Behind the scenes there would be overlaps in creative types, like famed set “graffiti artist” Roger Christian and sound expert Ben Burtt. But ultimately Alien had to be something different to get noticed.
The stories of O’Bannon and Giger’s contributions and conflicts are the most intriguing of the bunch, and if you’ve read everything available on the film you’ll be surprised there is far more to their stories you haven’t read. The influence of John Carpenter was paramount to getting the idea of the film past the first step, particularly his films Dark Star and The Thing. Along the journey other creators would intersect with the project–people like Steven Spielberg, Alan Ladd, Jr., John Dykstra, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder, Ron Cobb, Jerry Goldsmith, and even Jean “Moebius” Giraud.
It’s not every location for a TV series that becomes the best part of the that series. For the third season of Stranger Things, which arrived on Netflix this Fourth of July weekend, the big win was Starcourt Mall. Maybe it’s the fact so many of us have vivid memories of their own mall for their first jobs, for birthday parties, or where they bought their favorite shoes, rendezvoused with friends, and watched their favorite movies–or just as likely, the fact that so many younger viewers weren’t around to witness malls of the 1980s and can only guess what they were like–whatever the reason, Stranger Things showrunners the Duffer Brothers (Ross and Matt) made a wise move setting a major part of this year’s eight episodes there. Initially Netflix kept its Starcourt Mall intact for a possible tourist attraction (actually a rebuilt section of Duluth, Georgia’s Gwinnett Place Mall, far away from Indiana), but early crowds and the inability to make a deal resulted in trashing the sets entirely (except Scoops Away, which went into storage). Now nothing remains of the rented space in the mall used for the series, but what a great idea gone to waste!
So what other than the mall makes for the good and bad this season on Stranger Things?
Six writers concocted interwoven storylines that matched the prior two seasons–the series is consistent, neither better nor worse than past seasons, but just as good and even great in places. That fandom phrase “I’d rather watch bad [insert: Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. here] than anything else” rings true for Stranger Things, although you’ll rarely find much that qualifies as completely “bad.” Each season has those early season episodes that make the story seem like the greatest thing since the 1980s, and yet other episodes stumble. That was true this season. The best thread tracked older teen Joe Keery′s Steve Harrington and one of the series’ main four kids, Gaten Matarazzo′s Dustin Henderson. Dustin has just returned from a science camp, to find the two series kid leads Finn Wolfhard′s Mike Wheeler and Millie Bobby Brown′s Eleven/El inseparable in their young romance. The best recurring question of the season is whether Dustin’s girlfriend Suzie is real or imaginary. Steve works at the mall now with a grumbly gal named Robin, played by Maya Hawke, who becomes another high point of the season, and integral to moving the story forward. What better way to launch the career of the daughter of popular and acclaimed actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke than a fun season of Stranger Things? (Her work and quick development of a likeable character promises a huge career is in store for her). Growing out of the events of last season, Dustin and Steve, with co-worker Robin, embark on a mission to save their friends, Hawkins, and the world from a beast connected to El, Noah Schnapp′s Will Byers, and the Demogorgon of past seasons, and a new, perfectly timed 1980s nemesis: the Russians, led by Andrey Ivchenko as a thug mash-up of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Patrick in their Terminator series roles.
The other series cast members are divided into three teams, each slowly piecing together clues to solve the season’s riddles, with older teens Natalie Dyer′s Nancy Wheeler and Charlie Heaton′s Jonathan Byers still a couple, but now struggling against 1980s office politics, including a vile co-worker played in typical Busey fashion by Jake Busey. The other kids–El, Mike, Will, Caleb McLaughlin′s Lucas Sinclair and Sadie Sink′s Max Mayfield, also still a couple, reflect most of the “coming of age” story that dominated past seasons. The best of this is the visual nostalgia accompanying an El and Max outing to the aforementioned Starcourt Mall. The adults are back, with top-billed star Winona Ryder getting some better development this season as Joyce Byers, the first to realize something is again wrong in Hawkins. David Harbour is back as police chief Jim Hopper, but unfortunately his character is the low point of the season–he gets tossed around and becomes the butt of jokes as with last season, instead of carrying forward that decisive, strong, cool personality we met in Stranger Things′ first season.
Sometimes writers find the right obscure but fascinating event of the past to tap for the next fictionalized tale. The Terror, a new series beginning tomorrow on AMC, has the potential of being the next clever idea in the historical horror category. By all accounts it looks like a secret prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing (just as the movie Split was a secret film in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable saga). That’s not really the case for this suspense-thriller, supernatural-horror series despite its similarly chilling, desolate, Arctic setting, blood and gore horrors, and lurking menace. It’s a fictionalized account of actual events from 1845-1848, written by author Dan Simmons in his 2007 novel of the same name. But it couldn’t look more like a John Carpenter creation. It begins tomorrow night on AMC.
The novel is such prime fodder for a novel it’s incredible it hadn’t been adapted before in this way. In the real world the British Captain John Franklin was leading an Arctic exploration for the Northwest Passage with two ships, the HMS Terror (The Terror! Yes, really!), and the HMS Erebus (in Greek mythology Erebus was a primordial deity representing the personification of deep darkness, shadow, and chaos). It is no secret that the expedition is noted in history books as a famous lost expedition. The British character names sound like you’d expect in a fictional seafaring crew penned by the likes of C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, or Robert Louis Stevenson: Commander James Fitzjames, Dr Harry D.S. Goodsir, Cornelius Hickey, Seaman Magnus Manson. Playing Captain Franklin is Ciarán Hinds, the brilliant character actor we’ve loved in everything from Mary Reilly and Jane Eyre to The Sum of All Fears, Road to Perdition, The Phantom of the Opera, Munich, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Woman in Black, John Carter, and Shetland (and he was the voice of Steppenwolf in Justice League and starring now in Red Sparrow). The captain of the Terror is played by Sherlock Holmes film star Jared Harris(Far and Away, Last of the Mohicans, Lady in the Water, The Riches, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Fringe, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). Fitzjames is played by Tobias Menzies (Star Wars: Rebels, Outalnder, Casino Royale, Law & Order: UK, Black Mirror, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones). Alistair Petrie (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Victor Frankenstein, Hellboy) plays Dr. Stanley. And Greta Scacchi (Emma, The Player, Presumed Innocent) plays Lady Franklin.
The production for The Terror looks gorgeously historic, the ships and costumes as intricately crafted as those in the A&E Horatio Hornblower series and Master and Commander. The show’s production design is by Jonathan McKinstry (known for the original Total Recall, Band of Brothers, Penny Dreadful, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, The Borgias, and Sphere), with supervising art director Matthew Hywel-Davies (Doctor Who, Torchwood), and set decorator Kevin Downey (Mary Shelley, King Arthur, Penny Dreadful, Little Women). Costumes were created by Annie Symons, who designed the wardrobes for King Arthur, The Woman in Black 2, and TV shows The Hollow Crown, Doctor Zhivago, Sweeney Todd, Dracula, and Great Expectations. Showrunners are David Kajganich(In the Clouds, A Bigger Splash) and Soo Hugh (The Killing, Under the Dome, The Whispers). The fact that Ridley Scott(Alien, Blade Runner, Alien: Covenant, Coma) is executive producer has been heavily marketed.
Here is a preview for tomorrow’s first episode of The Terror:
If you were an artist and asked to create a modern, retro poster based on John Carpenter’s 1982 cult favorite sci-fi/horror movie The Thing, what would be your centerpiece? Kurt Russell’s arctic helicopter pilot MacReady? The mimicking monster in one of its many phases? Maybe just the secluded facility among the snow drifts? Incorporate the dogs? The sprawling logo? More than 350 artists were asked to do just that, and the result is publisher Printed in Blood’s The Thing Artbook, showcasing the many ways artists see the film, 35 years later.
Dedicated to legendary horror artist Bernie Wrightson, the book includes a foreword by Eli Roth (Death Wish), a few pages of storyboard concept art from comic book artist Mike Ploog and illustrator William Stout, and page after page of images based on the film, reflecting a first frame to last frame look at the movie. Some designs hint at the horror that awaits, others provide an in-your-face look at the gory creature transformations the film is known for. And several incorporate that marketing tagline, “Man is the Warmest Place to Hide.” All attempt to challenge the senses, visions created in styles of impressionism, avant garde, mod, art nouveau, psychedelic, abstract, art deco, travel, or other retro/vintage homage–something from the myriad designs will appeal to every fan of the film.
Poster interpretations of The Thing from artist Adam Cockerton (left) and Bryan Fyffe (right) in The Thing Artbook.
Artists providing work for The Thing Artbook include Dave Dorman, Bryan Fyffe, Bryan Timmins, Joe Corroney, Jeff Lemire, Ben Templesmith, Kate Kennedy, Francesco Francavilla, Dan Panosian, Tim Seeley, Adam Cockerton, Bill Sienkiewicz, Nicole Falk, Brian Rood, Peter Steigerwald, Tim Bradstreet, Sam Gilbey, Michael Godwin, Salvador Anguiano, Rio Burton, Neil Davies, Steve Thomas, Dave Acosta, Chris Sears, Cecil Porter, and hundreds more.
Take a look at some other images from the book:
Look for an afterword by The Thing director himself, John Carpenter.
Next to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, there is probably no other actor in the action genre who has had more action figures with his likeness. Snake Plissken himself, Kurt Russell. Once upon a time movies like Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China came and went with no toys or collectibles, mainly thanks to a clash between R ratings and the unwillingness of toy companies to release toys for such films. But even those classics now provide fans of Kurt Russell with a desktop warrior of many of his films to guide their day. Today we’re running down a brief history of Kurt Russell in action figures and collectible toys.
The first image we had of Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, were images of collectible figures for his character Ego. You can get his Marvel Legends version of the figure here:
If Dorbz are your thing you can also find him in that format here, and as a Funko Pop! figure here. There is also a MiniMates version, but no Hot Toys or Sideshow versions of Ego available–yet.
Although we’ve found no Bone Tomahawk or Tombstone figures for Russell, his Western The Hateful Eight resulted in a 1:6 scale figure of Russell’s John Ruth, available here, an eight-inch version here, and a Funko Pop! here.
But how about the Kurt Russell classic characters?
I was 11 in the Summer of ’82. And yet I remember that summer vividly. Rare has there been a year since that I saw so many awesome movies in the theater. Many have commented on what was the best year in movies over the years, with the classic answer from critics usually being 1939 because of stellar films like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Princess, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk.
So what do you think is the best year of movies? If you whittle it down to the best summer of movies, I’ve got a real contender here.
I remember standing in line at a new theater on my side of town, with my mom and sister, getting a sticker advertising a new brown and orange candy somehow tied to one of the movies. I saw an unexpectedly powerful sci-fi franchise entry with my brother at the S.E. 14th Street Drive-In Theater (pictured above before they tore it down a decade later) on a really hot day one Friday night. And he and his RadioShack computer tinkering friends took me to see a new Disney film that had its setting inside a computer at a Saturday matinée. The preview for one of the movies gave me nightmares. Two of the movies I wouldn’t truly appreciate for another 20 years. It all happened during the summer 33 years ago.
Check out this summer movie sneak preview from the YouTube archives and recall where you were during the Summer of ’82:
The best of the new documentary on the life and career of Drew Struzan is not what you might think. You’d expect Drew—The Man Behind the Poster, now available on video and digital release, to include images of the best of Struzan’s stylized movie posters. What you might not know is the variety of artwork he produced before and after his two decades of poster work. He’s well known for unique designs and more than 150 memorable movie posters that defined the movies for audiences before they stepped into the theaters, creating his last movie poster before retiring in 2008 for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Probably his best work includes a six-poster series for the two Star Wars trilogies, which begs the question: Can Disney get Struzan to come back from retirement for the next three films? Will Disney understand the nostalgia factor? In recent weeks Struzan seems open to the idea, but seems to be waiting for Disney to call. Unfortunately Episode VII plans came after the documentary so you won’t find answers to those questions in the film.
Will he or won’t he?
For the most part Drew—The Man Behind the Poster is a straightforward success story about a struggling and very amiable artist that found his audience. You won’t see an abundance of critical awards coming for the filmmaking–it’s something like an episode from the old Biography channel with Peter Graves. But it’s worth watching for the explanations behind his process for the most well-known posters, including the Muppet movies and the quickly designed yet successful poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing.
