News

Yesterday, the nominees for the 2010 Leo Awards were announced. The objective of this award is to celebrate all the things that have been done in the film and television industry of the Prairies and the province British Columbia along with people who are based in these regions. Furthermore, foreign TV series and films that are produced in Canada's West are also included in the party. Obviously, this is not the full list of nominees. In fact, this is the presentation of the nominees for dramatic TV series, feature films, comedy series and web series.

Feature Length Drama

Best Feature Length Drama:

* A Shine Of Rainbows

* Alice

* Cole

* Excited

* The Thaw

Best Direction in a Feature Length Drama:

* Vic Sarin - A Shine Of Rainbows

* Carl Bessai - Cole

* Bruce Sweeney - Excited

* Mark A. Lewis - The Thaw

Best Screenwriting in a Feature Length Drama:

* Vic Sarin, Chatherine Spear and...

Corus Entertainment announced the identity of its Corus Made with Pay Fund recipients. Of course, the recepients in question are actually 34 upcoming Canadian films.

By reading the press release, we can come to the conclusion that the high-profile upcoming films among the 34 recipients are:

King Leary, the novel from acclaimed screenwriter and author Paul Quarrington and Verite Films Inc., which follows the final adventure of old-timer Percival Leary, a one-time hockey legend, as he heads to Toronto to become the face of a marketing campaign. Quarrington’s previous works include Galveston, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Whale Music, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1989 and King Leary, winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal.Author and screenwriter Miriam Toews’ The Flying Troutmans brings her hilarious and heartwarming novel about a family’s road trip across Canada to life in collaboration with screenwriter Semi Chellas...

Taking a few elements from both versions of .The Thing. as well as the minuscule threats that populate .The Andromeda Strain., writer-director Mark A. Lewis uses global warming to power a smarter-than-usual dtv genre flick that still never manages to live up to its central story potential. Head and shoulders above your typical crappy Syfy movie of the week however, .The Thaw. also sports a decent cast including a small role for Val Kilmer whom the film.s storyline revolves around. Kilmer plays Dr. David Kruipen, a scientist and all-around Earth advocate, well-known for some of his past antics like taking a stand against oil pipelines that are driving away wildlife. Kruipen is leading an expedition in the arctic...

Chicago – It’s always nice to see world-famous filmmakers raising awareness about work from their lesser known peers. Where would Eli Roth be without Quentin Tarantino, or Neill Blomkamp be without Peter Jackson, or Danny McBride and Jody Hill be without the better half of Hollywood’s comedy titans? That’s why it’s nice to see “Evil Dead” creators Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert “hand pick” the indie horror films they admire, and then assist in their distribution.

Overall Blu-Ray Rating: 2.5/5.0

Raimi and Tapert’s “Ghost House Underground” series began last year with a collection of eight features that included the exuberant zombie satire “Dance of the Dead.” This year’s collection has shrunk to four features, none of which are as fun or memorable as last year’s “Dance.” Only one film manages to satisfy, while the other three vary in their degrees of mediocrity and failure. Let...

I wasn't sure what to make of the stack of Ghost House Underground DVD releases. While I tend to be a fan of B-horror movies, there's a fine line between a bad-good one (something like say Wrong Turn 2) and just a flat-out bad-bad one (like another sequel, the unwatchable Lake Placid 2). The balance between absurdity, nonsense and gore has to be just right, and if it is even just a tiny bit off any chance of enjoyment is thrown out the window as quickly as a bloody severed head.

As for an outright good one? I tend not to hold my breath on that front. Just look at those continuing After Dark Horrorfest releases. I can think of maybe one or two of those (2008's The Broken, 2006's Wicked Little Things) that I can admit to having enjoyed, and as far as Ghost House Underground has been concerned...

You know it's getting close to Halloween when Sam Raimi's Ghost House Underground label unleashes a whole new wave of indie acquisitions on the horror community. Not sure why, after last year's run of eight titles, the label decided to release only four this year, but when the offerings are this fun who really cares, right?

As usual with these types of multi-film releases, we've just not got the time to give each of he flicks full reviews before they street, so this four piece mega-review will have to do.

Tuck into the horrors of The Thaw, The Children, Offspring and Seventh Moon after the break!

***

Title: The Thaw

Year: 2009

Director: Mark A. Lewis

Writer: Mark A. Lewis

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Amazon: Purchase

Review by: agentorange

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

The Thaw is an effective little eco creature-feature from Canada. It's about a badass prehistoric parasite that gets re-introduced...

Lionsgate Home Entertainment gave Fango an exclusive advance peek at a Ghost House Underground Microvideo from the DVD and Blu-ray of The Children, one of four new chillers it’s releasing on both formats under the Ghost House banner October 6. The clip is a montage from the movie set to the song “The Great Divide” by female-fronted hard rock band In This Moment; you can see it below.

The Children, directed by Waz/The Killing Gene’s Tom Shankland, is set in the British countryside at Christmastime, when two families’ celebration turns bloody as their young kids inexplicably turn murderous. The other Ghost House titles are Andrew van den Houten’s Offspring, Eduardo Sanchez’s Seventh Moon and Mark A. Lewis’ The Thaw, all with commentaries, featurettes and/or other special features. Check out our rave review of The Children here and pick up Fango #287, now on sale, for an...

With no official release date set, "The Thaw" at least looks like an original, interesting environmental horror movie. At a remote Arctic research station, four ecology students discover the real horror of global warming is not the melting ice, but what's frozen within it. A prehistoric parasite is released from the carcass of a Woolly Mammoth upon the unsuspecting students who are forced to quarantine and make necessary sacrifices, or risk infecting the rest of the world. The film was directed by Mark A. Lewis, who also wrote it. . . .

This afternoon we got our hands on a promo trailer for Mark A. Lewis' The Thaw, a film which reminds me of the classic Shawnee Smith episode of X-Files. You can check it out over at Bdtv, while beyond the break you can also take a look at a new poster and a long synopsis. Evelyn has always had a volatile relationship with her father, Dr. David Kruipen, a world-renowned expert in climate change. When Dr. Kruipen discovers the carcass of a woolly mammoth in a melting polar ice cap, he arranges for Evelyn to travel with a group of ecology students to his remote Arctic research station and celebrate the discovery that will draw attention to his life-long cause creating awareness and promoting real change amid the global warming crisis. Though skeptical that any kind of change is possible, Evelyn reluctantly agrees to go.

This weekend we posted our exclusive chat with Mark A. Lewis, director of the upcoming horror pic The Thaw. In the film a deadly prehistoric parasite is released when a Woolly Mammoth is discovered in a melting ice cap. Faced with a potentially global epidemic, four ecology students must destroy the parasite before it reaches the rest of civilization. One-by-one they are infected and one-by-one they turn on each other. Soon the survivors are left with only one choice - to make the ultimate sacrifice and burn everything to the ground... including themselves. At the link you'll also find a few behind-the-scenes stills.

We got word today from Anagram Pictures regarding some late additions to the cast of the Mark A. Lewis eco-thriller The Thaw.

Joining Val Kilmer and Martha MacIsaac on their journey to the Arctic will be Joy Ride: End of the Road and A History of Violence hunk Kyle Schmidt. The second to sign up for this adventure is the beautiful Steph Song, whom any fan of the show "jPod" will recognize.

The Thaw started production just ten days ago and tells us the story of "Evelyn (Martha MacIsaac), a young woman who travels with a group of students on a research mission to the Sub-Arctic, headed by her father, Dr. Kruipen (Val Kilmer). When the students discover that a melting polar icecap has released a deadly prehistoric parasite on the world, they must come to terms with their part in this potentially global epidemic and somehow destroy the parasite...