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Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum will be honored at EnergaCamerimage with the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Set to run in Torun, Poland, on Nov. 12-19, Camerimage, which focuses on films and cinematography, will celebrate its 30th anniversary this year.

Burum is best known for his collaborations with director Brian De Palma, which yielded such classics as “The Untouchables” (1987), a tale of the battle between good and evil; Vietnam War drama “Casualties of War” (1989); ”Carlito’s Way” (1993), which portrayed deep social divides; the iconic “Mission: Impossible” (1996); “Snake Eyes (1998); and “Mission to Mars” (2000).

His body of work also includes Joel Schumacher’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” (1985), Danny DeVito’s “The War of the Roses (1989), and Ken Kwapis’ and Marisa Silver’s “He Said, She Said” (1991).

Born in rural California in 1939 to a family of that owned and worked on several small newspapers, Burum became interested at an early age in film and shot his...

Mommy issues were firmly cemented in horror lore with Psycho (1960); there’s just something about a tight mother and son relationship that brings a tear to the eye, or perhaps the occasional hot poker. But Norman wouldn’t be the only maladjusted kid on the block however, as films popped up on the big screen and small espousing the dangers of really close familial relationships. This brings us to Scream Bloody Murder (1973), your typical Boy Loves Mom, Boy Runs over Dad with Tractor, Boy Grows up with Hook and Kills Anyone Who Isn’t His Mom story.

Distributed by Indiepix Releasing in February on North American shores, and I have to hand it to the original marketing team behind Scream Bloody Murder; labeling your film as “The First Motion Picture to be Called Gore-nography!!!” is some William Castle worthy hucksterism, even if Hgl’s Blood Feast (1963) should probably hold that distinction.

The chief creative officer at the ad agency that created the spot for Oregon’s bungled Aca enrollment site mocked by Oliver has struck back. North agency’s Mark Ray notes that since Oliver’s parody, the ad has united conservatives and liberals in a sort of kumbaya of mockery. “Images from our campaign have also recently accompanied scathing reports by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, and pretty much every conservative blog in the known universe,” Ray wrote in his blog on the North.com website. Oliver’s scorn is unfair — the ad agency had nothing whatsoever to do with the botched online application portal (pricetag $200M+). Of the company’s diverse ad campaign, that spot in particular was intended to connect with mothers, “the primary drivers of health care decisions in the family.” Oliver singled it out from a field of ads because, the HBO host said, it was “violently...

Australia’s most tragic serial murders have been re-imagined as Snowtown, a psychological thriller that will prove its early detractors wrong. Miguel Gonzalez reports.

Few Australian films have attracted as much attention as Snowtown, and it’s easy to see why. The ‘Bodies in Barrels’ murders it’s based on shocked the nation in 1999, when eight bodies were found in barrels of acid in a disused building in the small town of Snowtown, South Australia. Four people were arrested and charged over the murder of 12 victims; John Justin Bunting was the central figure behind the killings, with the assistance of Robert Joe Wagner, Mark Ray Haydon, and James Vlassakis, the son of Bunting’s partner Elizabeth Harvey.

Ever since the project was announced and it was revealed it would receive public funding, some were eager to cast the first stone and dismiss the film as “a shocking way to spend...