The folks out at Troma sent over a copy of the 20th anniversary edition of There’s Nothing Out There for us to review, and if you’ve ever seen a Troma movie before, you probably know what you’re in for: bizarre, sometimes baffling, sometimes disgusting, but always thoroughly unique horror and science fiction on shockingly low budgets. Troma’s been at this game for 35 years now, and There’s Nothing Out There will prove to be a fine example of the particular brand of hash Troma’s been slinging for years.

There’s Nothing Out There sends a bunch of horny kids along with one extra odd man out type who have gone plunging into the woods for a wild weekend of booze, sex, and everything else that’s sure to get you killed in a horror movie. And of course, one of our group is well aware that, hey, this is exactly how horror movies get started…which just sounds like a horror buff’s whining until they discover that there’s an alien creature out in the woods. It’s out to lunch up the guys…and do much more unspeakable things with the women. In other words, it’s par for the horror course.

I grew up with Troma film. Troma was putting out low-budget direct to video horror before even Full Moon got started at it, and frankly, I’d sooner watch a whole lot of Troma films LONG before sitting through another one of Charles Band’s stylized eighty minute toy commercials. And of course, I’ve seen a couple pieces from writer / director Rolfe Kanefsky, and he does pretty nice job of putting on a show. This is his earlier work, of course, but it shows through well–the Kanefsky work I’ve seen does a wonderful job of blending horror and comedy, making him perfect for Troma, whose entire oeuvre is pretty much “blended horror and comedy”.

Horror blended with comedy is an excellent cross-genre mix because the laughs cut the scares, and make the scares sharper by breaking up the tension between scares. Surprise goes a long way toward making a scare–atmosphere to build tension and a surprise to break it, standard horror formula–and when you throw jokes into the mix, you destabilize the whole thing and make it much more random. Surprises come with more regularity.

It’s funny, it’s got some good scares…it’s most anything you can want in a horror film, and it’s well worth your time to catch this one if you’ve got any kind of love for the horror genre at all.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands There’s Nothing Out There, a compelling and hilarious blend of horror and comedy a nine out of ten for doing a terrific job of mixing things up and keeping its audience quite thoroughly on edge.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing The Social Network on DVD and Blu-ray on January 11, 2011.

Called “the best movie of the year” by Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and the New York Post, The Social Network is a story about the founders of the social-networking website, Facebook.  It has been nominated for 6 Golden Globes, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. 

David Fincher directed the stunning tale of a new breed of cultural insurgent: a punk genius who sparked a revolution and changed the face of human interaction for a generation, and perhaps forever. Shot through with emotional brutality and unexpected humor, this superbly crafted film chronicles the formation of Facebook and the battles over ownership that followed upon the website’s unfathomable success. With a complex, incisive screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and a brilliant cast including Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, The Social Network bears witness to the birth of an idea that rewove the fabric of society even as it unraveled the friendship of its creators.

I normally resist posting trailers for television, but TNT just released the first trailer Falling Skies, its new sci-fi series starring Noah Wyle and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg.  It looks good if you can handle the commercial time.

The Oscar-winning director co-conceived the project with screenwriter Robert Rodat, who earned an Oscar nomination for Saving Private Ryan. The pilot was helmed by Carl Franklin, one of the directors of the Spielberg-produced HBO miniseries The Pacific.

Despite the virtually global gloom generated by the aftermath of economic recession, the start of a new decade saw promise and hope. It’s often noted that in times of strife culture proffers, and that’s certainly the case for 2010. While pages could be spent on the music and writing, here at Screenhead we must stick to the people’s art: cinema. And what a year for cinema. Despite Hollywood’s insistence on tired sequels (Iron Man 2) and poor TV adaptations (The A-Team), when you looked between the money machines there was much to behold. So without further ado here’s the Best 10 Films of the year…

(Disclaimer ado: Due to geographical reasons, certain recent indie films such as 127 Hours, Black Swan, and The King’s Speech have not been seen by yours truly, and may indeed be the part of the year’s best)

10: Four Lions
Chris Morris is known in the UK as a master satirist, with news spoofs like The Day Today and Brass Eye being both hilarious and also disturbingly accurate. Never one to settle, Morris delved into film-making and took on the one subject you can’t joke about: terrorism. And of course he made a comedy out of it. Four Lions follows a bunch of four young English men who train to become organised terrorists, and on failing that, they create their own plot to suicide bomb a public London event. Morris’s film treads on thin ice by refusing to entirely ridicule the young extremists yet nevertheless mocking certain acts and attitudes. And indeed, as the plan comes to fruition the joke turns serious, and Morris subverts expectations of the genre.

9: Another Year
Despite the underwhelming response by the critics at Cannes this year, Mike Leigh has found yet another way to represent his social-realist take on life. This time Leigh follows the somewhat elderly and how their lives have been shaped. Loving couple Tom and Gerri enjoy their lives, but are surrounded by old friends who are quite the opposite. Most notable is Mary (the excellent Lesley Manville), a woman in denial about her age and must face constant rejection. But we’re also shown work-centred Ken, insomniac Janet, and Tom’s emotionally retarded brother. Leigh’s wonderfully performed film appears to be about ambitions and self-realisation, showing us how working-class origins are not an excuse for a miserable life. It’s powerful, thought-provoking stuff by a master of British cinema.

8: Kick-Ass
It was a shame to see this underperform at the box-office, but what do you expect from a comic-book adaptation that features a murderous pubescent girl? Kick-Ass subverted the superhero movie by imagining what would happen if an ordinary guy tries to become one. The film’s first half contains just the right amount of satire, as Kick-Ass gets stabbed, beaten, run over, and rather than run to his rescue the onlookers just pull out their mobile phones and video him. The film displays how difficult it is to maintain morals in a corrupt world, so we can only relish the action when it comes in the film’s second half. Funny, smart, and at times disturbing (only a sociopath would not be affected by Hit Girl’s brutality and the brutality exacted on her), Kick Ass has marked the second generation of superhero movies, and they’re doing something very different. READ ON »

Promising director John Hillcoat (who made Aussie Western The Proposition and the apocalyptic The Road) got a tough blow earlier this year when his next project, The Wettest County, ground to a halt. However, things are looking up and thanks to a certain popular young actor, the film could start filming early next year.

According to Hollywood Reporter, Shia LeBeouf (Transformers, Indiana Jones 4) has signed on to the project, making it considerably more bankable. LaBeouf considers it a pet project and signed on to get the ball rolling on a film that lost actors like Ryan Gosling and Paul Dano. Also joining the cast are Tom Hardy (Inception) and Jessica Chastain (the upcoming The Tree of Life).

Adapted from the Matt Bondurant book The Wettest County in the World, the film follows a group of brothers who run a moonshine business in Prohibition-era US, and is based on a true story. What’s also exciting about the project is the excellent song-writer Nick Cave, a long time collaborator of Hillcoat, has penned the script.

Is it just me or are reboots getting closer and closer to the original? Not only do we have a Spiderman reboot only a decade after the definitive movie version first hit our screens, but now one of the most iconic TV characters of the 90′s is being revived. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the 7-season series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, is set be remade for the big screen. Again.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Kuzui Enterprises, owners of Buffy, are developing a film of Buffy to be written by relative unknown Whit Anderson (at least it’s a she) for Warner Bros. Kuzui made the 1992 film flop of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was not liked by creator Joss Whedon. But Whedon worked with Kuzui to resurrect the character into a TV show which followed the teen as she battled vampires and demonds through high-school and into university. The show was known for its razor-sharp wit, self-awareness, and sense of irony, appealing to both sarcastic teens and adults alike.

However, Whedon (who seems to be cursed, what with his Firefly and Dollhouse shows being cancelled too soon, not to mention the financial flop that was his film Serenity, the disaster of the binned Wonder Woman film, and now the endless delay of horror film The Cabin in the Woods) has not been asked to be involved. He wrote a letter to E Online expressing his dissatisfaction:

With reboots being the major event of this decade (as Hollywood studios get increasingly fearful of the scary notion of originality), how soon before we see a reboot of Jason Bourne, of the Twilight franchise, or even Lord of the Rings? Let’s hope this Buffy remains in the ground.

Now there’s a combo you’d never expect to see. Director of offbeat indie comedies that tend to lean towards the darker elements of life (Sideways, About Schmidt), Alexander Payne is set to direct a film produced by the bombastic Sam Raimi (Spiderman 1 – 3, Drag Me To Hell, the Evil Dead trilogy). The pair are lined up to work together on an adaptation of the leftfield comic Wilson.

Okay, so it’s not entirely accurate. According to Deadline, Payne is interested in the project that will be produced by Raimi’s company Stars Road. But it’s still an exciting line-up, especially since Payne hasn’t released a feature film since 2004′s Sideways (his next film, The Descendants, should see a release late next year).

Wilson is a comic book following the eponymous character as he tries to find human connections despite being an overt misanthrope. There are similarities to the late Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor comics, which became the brilliant American Splendor movie in 2003. Wilson was written by Daniel Clowes, who is also adapting the script. Clowes also adapted his own Ghost World into a script which became the effective film in 2001, and also Art School Confidential.

Many of you won’t remember this spy show from the late 1960′s, but as a child my Sunday afternoons were blessed with reruns of The Man from U.N.C.L.E, a James-Bond inspired show in which two agents, American Napoleon Solo and Russian Illya Kuryakin, fought the forces of evil (namely the Nazi-inspired THRUSH agency who planned to dominate the world). A movie has been in development for years, if not decades, but this week saw some news that may push the film forward.

Director of Traffic and the Ocean’s 11 films, Steven Soderbergh is apparently in line to direct the project, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Obviously his new film, Haywire, a Bourne-like spy thriller set in Spain, Ireland, and New Mexico, is impressing people with its relatively low-budget approach to making an action flick. Soderbergh will also bring along his writing colleague Scott Burns, who penned The Bourne Ultimatum and Soderbergh’s upcoming apocalypse flick Contagion.

What’s more, a report from Indiewire suggests that George Clooney is interested in playing the lead role of Solo. Clooney, a friend and supporter of Soderbergh, seems like an obvious choice if the schedule will work, and his interest will certainly drive production for the remake forward. The original role was played by Robert Vaughn, who you may remember from The Magnificent Seven, The Towering Inferno, and the original The A-Team.

Just think, if Ed Burns hadn’t of chosen to stay out of the big studio system with the film Nice Guy Johnny, shooting on a tight budget and forgoing a theatrical release; creating a better business model for independent filmmakers, Screenhead would never have held this giveaway!

Since we did hold the giveaway, we have our two winners: Marcy Strahan and Sara Heller!  Congratulations to our two lucky winners!

 The Nice Guy Johnny Prize Pack includes:

Signed Nice Guy Johnny poster by Ed Burns

Signed Nice Guy Johnny screenplay by Ed Burns

DVD of Nice Guy Johnny

Soundtrack from Nice Guy Johnny

Like I mentioned before, I would love to get my hands on the signed screenplay. What a treasure that would be!  But, I can’t participate in the giveaway because I am sponsoring it. Alas!

As the story of Harry Potter nears its end, you’d expect the films to get better. The climax is nearing, the subject matter is darker, and so the ante is upped in terms of visuals, performance, etc. Only, the series is getting slightly worse, and the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is probably the most disappointing yet. Being half of a book it’s a veritable non-starter of a movie, complete with forced mini-resolution, and borrowing a lot from a better franchise.

In this story Harry finds himself as an outlaw on the run. The Ministry of Magic has been taken over by the evil Lord Voldemort and his cohorts who are forming a new dictatorship: one in which us regular humans will be considered lesser creatures, and crushed into submission. But Voldemort must destroy Potter first. So our hero flees with his allies, most importantly Ron and Hermione whose relationship is threatened by Harry’s bond with the spritely lass. Feeling alone, Harry must work to find one of the “Horcruxes” that make Voldemort’s soul invincible, and destroy it. But he doesn’t know how and must revisit his tragic past in order to change the future.

In a way, the latest Harry Potter film is no different from the others, but therein lies a major problem. The whole movie franchise suffers from Poor Adaptation Syndrome. Writers fail to acknowledge the vast difference between plots and characters in a novel and in a movie, and so attempt to squeeze in as many elements of a 400 page book into a 120 minute film. So what we see are characters appearing and disappearing faster than corpses dropping in a Rob Zombie flick. These characters often have one important line or piece of information, and then disappear. In this film, for example, we see Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody and Domhnall Gleeson (Brendan’s actual son) as Bill Weasley given about 3-4 minutes of screen time and then they completely disappear, having zero narrative function. In the novels they’re afforded more time but in a film it’s so brief it’s pointless from a narrative perspective. This was the exact same problem that made The Golden Compass such a bad film of a great book, and we will never see the sequels made. This latest Potter film goes a step further and forces a sort of climax by reintroducing a character from one of the earlier Potter films and then perish as if he’s some sort of Obi Wan figure. But not only does this pale in comparison to the death of Dumbledore in the previous film, but it’s hard to care about a character that appeared several years ago and doesn’t do much here. It’s like making a 2-hour movie and trying to make us feel for someone who has 2 minutes presence in the entire film. A more ambitious writing team would tear apart the books and restructure it drastically to work as a film. Indeed, the series has had so much padding and so many diversions that it would probably work better as a trilogy. READ ON »