May For May

Here's a bit of amazing news that dropped while I was away that I didn't realize was as amazing as it is until just now -- Lucky McKee's magnificent 2002 horror flick May is finally getting a U.S. blu-ray release! Starring Angela Bettis, Jeremy Sisto, and Anna Faris, I've long sung this flick's praises so you'd think I'd have been right on this, but I got confused by the film having gotten a U.K. release like last year-ish that I snapped up the instant it went on sale -- this blu from Vestron, which is released on May 13th, is the first for our little pile of states though. For the moment you can pre-order the blu right here, although I can't imagine this will stay limited to Lionsgate's website. But it's loaded to the gills with special features -- as well it should be. What a movie! Here's its trailer if you're unfamiliar:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

May (2002)

May: So many pretty parts and no pretty wholes.

Although I labeled May as a 2002 movie above, this Lucky McKee horror classic didn't actually hit movie theaters until 2003 -- June 6th 2003 to be precise, making today its 20th anniversary! Happy 20, May! And coincidentally (or maybe not, I had nothing to do with its making) Second Sight, the UK boutique blu-ray distributor, just announced they are finally, FINALLY, putting May onto blu-ray -- this movie has been out of print for ages and I have bitched about that fact for ages, so this news was met with a whoop-whoop and an immediate pre-order from me. The set is out on July 24th and it looks as spectacular as the perfect movie deserves! Hopefully it can enter the canon proper-like now. Angela Bettis is an icon!

The Princes of Darkness

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We've expressed our enthusiasm about this project a couple of times now, and since two batches of news have hit regarding it today I figure we'll post them even though we're inching towards the door for the weekend - Tales of Halloween is that anthology movie about you guessed it Halloween night, which has gathered some great directors for its segments, amongst them Neil Marshall, Paul Solet (he made the memorably creepy vampire-baby movie Grace), and Lucky "May" McKee...

... well Twitch has info on all the directors, all the segments, and the entire cast - as for the latter there are some fun names in there, including yes the terribly attractive Sam Witwer, seen here pursing his pretty lips to Hell and back, but also James Duval, Keir Gilchrist (where the heck has he been lately?), Clare "GLORY" Kramer, Lin Shaye... oh and ADRIENNE BARBEAU. Hells yeah! As for the second thing, there's an interview with neil Marshall over here where he talks about the process of setting up the project, and hints that his segment is sort of similar to Gremlins, at least in tone. I am so on-board for this thing!
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I Am Link

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--- Ghost Protocol - The big news today is the reveal that the next James Bond movie will be called Spectre (Or is it all capitalized, as in SPECTRE? I've seen it both ways), after the sinister organization lurking in the series' long shadows, and the reveal of the entire cast, including the as-previously-rumored Christoph Waltz, Monica Belluci and Lea Sedoux rightfully taking their place as Bond Girls, and Sherlock's Andrew Scott - he's the one I'm most excited about, natch. I assume Christoph will be the main big bad (booooring) but here's to hoping that Andy gets the juicy sexy henchman bit. I think it's well overdue that Daniel Craig put his money where his mouth is with his "James Bond should sleep with a dude for her Majesty's Secret Service" quote, don't y'all? Letting Javier Bardem caress your inner thigh doesn't count.

--- Second Source - I thought that Duncan Jones' film Source Code with Jake Gyllenhaal was a perfectly fine little sciffy flick (my review) but I don't know if I'll have much interest in a sequel, especially considering it's coming from a different director and will star some nobody not named Jake Gyllenhaal.

--- Turn Back The Radio - I posted it when Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood talked about the fact that the band was just about to enter the studio to start working on their next album so it's best I follow that up with linking to the first picture out of those sessions, which producer Nigel Godrich tweeted out. Thom my man hard at work making his wailing (whaling) sounds.

--- Ozzy Oscars - Australia's Oscars, otherwise tediously known as the AACTAs (and no I have no idea what that stands for), revealed their 2014 nominations this week and our resident Aussie Glenn took a gander at 'em over at The Film Experience. It was a very fine day for Jennifer Kent and The Babadook, as well it should've been.

--- I'll Do it For You, Damien - When I clicked on this link I expected to see a creepy-eyes little kid so imagine my surprise that the lead in the upcoming Damien (yes that Damien) TV show turned out to be a hot adult piece. His name is Bradley james and I guess he was on that Merlin show; anybody familiar with him?

--- Empty Nest - There's been a change-up director-wise on the long long long gestating reboot of The Crow and now Luke Evans - full stop, do note I am not noting anything about Luke Evans anymore, do - says he's off the project because he's very very busy, dammit. Busy face-fucking his model boyfriend, no doubt.

--- Sniff This - I guess the new hot topic is old people perving on young people (yeah, there's something "new" about that) - besides Bruce La Bruce's next movie Gerontophilia (which is actually more about young people perving on old people, I guess), which we talked about previously right here, now there's a NSFW trailer for The Smell of Us, Larry Clark's new movie, which was just prominently placed on John Waters' fave movies of the year list the other day. Smell is out in France next month; no US date yet.

--- Ringing Hallows - We told you about Tales of Halloween, the new horror anthology movie, recently - it already had  Neil Marshall attached and that was good enough to get us there. Well now comes word that Lucky McKee, director of May and recently the tremendously entertaining All Cheerleaders Die, is going to direct a segment too! Yes yes good news, that.

--- And Finally I was medium to lukewarm on Noah Bambach's new movie While We're Young when I saw it at the New York Film Fest earlier this year (my review) but it's strangely comes up in conversation a lot since then - mostly having to do with Adam Driver, which makes sense (who wouldn't want to talk about Adam Driver?). Anyway the trailer just got released today, you can see it below. The movie's coming out in March.

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You're Having Cheer-Sex With Him

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The hotness of Tom Williamson (dude in front) is far from the only reason to watch the horror flick All Cheerleaders Die, which has just hit Netflix Instant, but it might be the quickest way that I actually get you to watch the movie so I'm using it. Let it be known - I'm using you, Tom Williamson! Here's my review of the super fun flick from way back when - co-written and co-directed by Lucky McKee of May fame, this movie bears the MNPP stamp of enthusiastic approval. Watch it!

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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One dead gay son down! One more to go!

Hit the jump to get him...
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I Am Link

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--- All of Efron - I considered using this cock-tease of Zac Efron's as a quote of the day earlier this week but it's so slight and off-the-cuff that it'd probably be pushing it even for here, where pushing it's par for the course - anyway Zac talking about his cock is welcome, so we need to let that be known. Speaking of, Nat's been doing his yearly "April Showers" series at The Film Experience and last night he got around to the most holy scene of Efron-underpants in The Paperboy.

--- The Ass In Assassin - Apparently Michael Fassbender and Snowtown director Justin Kurtzel had a good time working together on that MacBeth movie with Marion Cotillard, because they're trying to team up again, this time with the Assassin's Creed video-game adaptation that Fassy's been trying to get made for awhile. Supposedly they might be jumping onto this quick. (If you've got Michael Fassbender, you jump on him quick.)

--- Hungry Man - I'm not sure if this article's out of Britain or Canada (don't know the website) but whichever it is they're just getting the second season of Hannibal now and so they've got a visit to the set, which is cool even though we're ahead of them because we all should want to just live on that set. (thanks Mac) Plus pictures of Mads in that plastic jumper are always welcome.

--- Velvet Love - Rolling Stone did the lord's work by sussing out a list of twelve things we learned about David Lynch at the talk he did in Brooklyn last night (thanks Mac) that I went to; it was literally the worst Q&A I've ever been to, and I've been to some doozies. Can't blame this one on dumb audience questions since there weren't any - the interviewer managed the feat all on his own. It was excruciating. So bad I considered demanding a refund. A waste of everybody's time, and a probably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I don't really even want to talk about it because I'm kind of furious.

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--- Mister Fantastic - I don't really understand why Ioan Gruffudd hasn't had a better career; he's awfully pretty, and he's ample-behinded - isn't that all it takes? Well he's signed on to die terribly in that earthquake movie with Dwayne Johnson now, so that's something I guess.

--- Nerd Alert - Who'd have thunk that it'd be Danny Strong who'd end up the most successful person to come out of Buffy - he's got an awards raining down on him for his screenplays! Now he's signed on to direct his first film, which will be about JD Salinger's life. So who's gonna play the kinky recluse then?

--- And Speaking of people who started off small, one-time America's Next Top Model contestant Analeigh Tipton  has done so much better than anybody having anything to do with that show has any right doing - she's just signed on to star in the new horror movie from the makers of Catfish and one of the Paranormal Activity movies (I am not looking up which one, you can't make me) called Viral, which is about a horrible mutant virus that takes people over with tentacles and shit - it sounds kind of like Body Snatchers or The Faculty.

--- Fright Full - Holy shit you guys - the 1983 slasher Curtains, which has one of the freakiest death masks ever filmed, is finally getting released! STYD has all the info; it'll be right in time for my birthday... just saying...

---  And Finally (appropriately given it's the Mean Girls anniversary) the trailer for the terrific horror-comedy All Cheerleaders Die (co-directed by May's Lucky McKee) has made its way online, you can watch it below. I reviewed the movie last Fall when it played the Scary Movies Fest here in NYC; it is a ton of fun. It's getting released on demand on May 8th, and then it'll play theaters in June; I definitely recommend having a couple drinks and checking this one out!

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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Oh god if I could just fill this blog with Anna Faris reaction shots I would probably do just that. (Well that and Jon Hamm's visible penis lines.) Anyway go ahead and hit the jump for the rest of this incredibly disturbing scene if you dare! Polly's up for it, but then she's up for anything and that doesn't work out well for her...
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All Cheerleaders Die in 200 Words or Less

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Everybody knows we live in a cheerocracy - the eternal question, from moment to moment to infinite moment, is: who's the cheertator? And even moreso -- what will be left of them??? All Cheerleaders Die is all up in that delightful nonsense, and manages to have a whole lot of fun pondering the queries of a life well cheered. And then that after-life, and then the after that after-life - so succubi in a miniskirt, so fetch. Much to its benefit I never quite knew where it was going - it makes up its own silly rules as it side-steps slash shimmies along, and nevers spends too much time worrying about sorting it out for us. A dash of Jennifer's Body, a gallon of The Craft, a schmear of Charmed, a sprinkling of May even - the latter makes sense this coming from May's writer-director Lucky McKee (alongside I Know Who Killed Me's Chris Sivertson, this is a remake of their 2011 short by the same name) - All Cheerleaders Die sometimes feels like Final Destination: Heathers Edition, which is totes okay with me. Great gags to gag by.

ETA Oh here's the trailer, in case you want to see more. The film's not out until some time next year. Above from said trailer you see personal-highlight-for-obvious-reasons Tom Williamson, who we'll hopefully be seeing more of in the future.

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Get Lucky

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Are you a fan of the horror director Lucky McKee? He made a stir, rightfully, right out of the gate with May, his fantastically effective 2002 chiller about Angela Bettis and her wandering eye coveting Jeremy Sisto's big manly hands and Anna Faris' lesbian thighs. He followed that up with The Woods, with Patricia Clarkson and Bruce Campbell, and then Red with Brian Cox, and most recently The Woman, which caused a lot of controversy with its tale of a seriously effed up family taking in a stray lady. Well if you are a big fan of him you should go vote on this Facebook poll for Chiller TV and tell them what your favorite Lucky McKee movie is. They're showing The Lost, which Lucky produced, tonight at 9pm. So go, do it. Suzy says you should do it. You wouldn't want to make Suzy angry.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

May (2002)

May: Okay. A couple of weeks ago, an old man comes in and says his dog is dying. And he begs us to save it. A 90-pound black lad named Seymour. We take him in and run some tests, and find that he has a twisted bowel, and needs to be operated on immediately. So we shave Seymour's tummy, we cut him open, and take out a piece of intestine about - about the size of a hot dog. Everything went smooth, but... when we went to sew Seymour back up, we realized we were out of the heavy sutures your supposed to use for large dogs. So the doctor decided that if we tripled up on cat sutures, that should do the trick. Well... a few days go by, and the old man calls up hysterical. The sutures had burst while he was at work, and by the time he got home, Seymour was sprawled out on the back porch with his guts spread all over the concrete, and the fence was soaked in blood all around the yard. It was a mess. I had to sew that one back up. 

A happy 40th birthday to the ever awesome Angela Bettis! 

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The Woman In 210 Words Or Less

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I wanted to be more traumatized by The Woman than I was. There were a few moments where the film churned up my stomach acid and dug its nails into my nervous system, but target-wise it scattered more than it knifed straight in. The main problems for me were two of the lead performances - I found Sean Bridgers as the malevolent patriarch rather flat. Much like the similarly praised by horror-folk performance by Patrick Fabian in The Last Exorcism, I remain unconvinced. He never hooked me; his monstrousness felt half-hearted. And as the titular Woman, a feral forest-banshee of ravenous appetites, Pollyanna McIntosh (what a name!) was too much of a pose-able action figure, her look designed too clearly, aiming for mythic stature without earning it. Her performance was drowned out by a hipster hair-do and fervently yet perfectly applied eyeliner. But Angela Bettis is very good as a woman boiling on the inside though, trapped and beaten down, and all the kids leave strong impressions (Zach Rand as the "taking after his poppa" son milks far more mileage from his hateful character than Bridgers did, I thought). It's kind of what you'd expect an afterschool special in Hell to look like.

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Kenny Wormald Is Cute And All...

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... but his name has at least 57% too much W-O-R-M in it and I just can't deal with it. I can't! I literally haven't eaten rice in my entire life because of the scene in The Lost Boys where the rice turns into maggots, so don't underestimate my mind's ability to fuck with itself. The worm's in the way, Kenny! The worm's in the way.

Not that a Footloose remake really ever stood a chance with me. But people seem to be enjoying the movie, and far be it from me to tell people they are wasting their lives on garbage that is eating their eyeballs from the outside in. Who am I to judge? I once spent a day illuminating the myriad pleasures of Stella with Bette Midler!

Point being - I have a point? - I have garbage to say about Footloose and The Thing remake and Pedro Almodovar and Jack Black and Joel effing Schumacher in my weekly piece at Celebrity Beehive, which you can read right here.

One thing I forgot to mention there though - Lucky McKee's The Woman is also out in theaters today! You can see where it's playing at this link. If you loved May, you'll want to see this one, I hear.

Howdy, Woman

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A big beautiful HD trailer for Lucky McKee's apparently-very-upsetting new movie The Woman is up over at Apple! Head over there and give it a peek. It looks upsetting, and people are saying it's upsetting, so I think we should prepare ourselves to be upset. Angela Bettis will eat us right up!

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I Am Link

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--- Tom Gets Mad - Flooding in Australia caused some delays - apparently the rain turned the needed apocalyptic desert too lush for filming - but Tom Hardy says that the new Mad Max movie he's star to star in (and hopefully slip into some snug leather pants for) is still going to begin filming in April, come hell or high water as the saying goes. It co-stars Charlize Theron, I think? We've been hearing about this movie for so long I can't even remember. Anyway that pic of Tom and Joel Edgerton to the left (via JJ) is from a party for Warrior, which apparently still hasn't come out in theaters? God. Here's my review from half a decade ago.

--- Bed Ridden - Speaking of Aussie stuff, Glenn's alerted us that a remake of the 1978 horror classic Patrick is getting a remake. This was one of the first movies my boyfriend felt compelled to show me, and around the time the nurse gave the comatose patient a hand-job I knew this was someone special that I had here in my life.

--- Super Pack - Lots of people saw some footage from Joss Whedon's Avengers movie at that Disney Expo thing this weekend, and io9 went nutso for it. Fuck y'all, I shoulda been there! Sitting on Chris Hemsworth's and/or Chris Evans' and/or Jeremy Renner's and/or Mark Ruffalo's laps. Dammit.

--- She Devil - Finally, a release date for Lucky McKee's controversial horror movie The Woman with Angela Bettis - it'll be out on October 13th, says BD. There's the poster.

--- Raise Hell - Clive Barker - whose third volume of Abarat is out in just a month! - does not have any kind words for the new Hellraiser movie. In fact, calling his words:"unkind" does the sheer bitchiness of them a disservice.

""Hello, my friends. I want to put on record that the flic [sic] out there using the word Hellraiser is no fuckin' child of mine," he told his followers, adding in his own colorful way, "I have nothing to do with the fuckin' thing. If they claim its from the mind of Clive Barker,it's a lie. It's not even from my butt-hole.""

Okay then!

--- A Boy For Bond - Human whippet and talented Brit Ben Whishaw has maybe gotten himself a part in Sam Mendes' James Bond movie. I'd love to see him and Daniel Craig together. Yes, that way.

--- From East To Westoros - A Game of Thrones is taking its act on the road - the second season will be filming in Iceland and Croatia, as well as Ireland and Malta which is where the first season shot. I love that they're using real locations instead of CG. Oh I'm sure they'll tweak things with CG here and there, but the real landscapes give the show some heft, not to mention beauty.

--- And finally, here's the trailer for Weekend, which I've been hearing great stuff about for months and months and months now. It seems almost too much to ask to have an actual decent gay-themed movie out in the world, but everybody says it is so fingers crossed. It's in NYC on September 23rd and spreads out after that.

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She Is Woman, Makes Us Roar

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I've been so busy posting today - today has been a crazy prolific day, too much, too much - that I haven't even gotten around to watching this the trailer for Lucky "May" McKee's new movie, The Woman. (via)

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The film's become infamously associated with the screening where some dude freaked out at a Q&A at Sundance that supposedly almost turned into a fight, so offended was the viewer by what he perceived as rampant misogyny. Several of the actresses in the film, inlcuding McKee's muse since May Angela Bettis came to the film's defense. Point being, I've been dying to see this movie since it was first announced and the hoopla only made me die a little bit more. I've been waiting for a New York screening for ages but haven't seen a single one pop up anywhere. Boo! I'll keep on keeping my eyes peeled. According to the film's website it's out on August 18th but it's an Aussie web address so it's confusing. IMDb doesn't have a date listed at all so I'm inclined to wonder. Wonder I will!

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I Am Link

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--- Mo Better Boy - I have to admit that the prospect of a Spike Lee directed remake of Park Chan-wook's Oldboy is an interesting idea. Spike certainly isn't afraid to be controversial (ha, understatement) and could possibly be ballsy enough to take this movie where it needs to be taken, unlike somebody like Spielberg, who momentarily talked about doing this. Would Denzel Washington inevitably star? Hrm dunno about him in the role. It's a shame Morgan Freeman's too old - he'd be perfect considering outside concerns, ahem. I know this is a really weird suggestion, but I can't stop thinking Eddie Murphy now. Oh Dae-su should have a "broken clown" quality to him.

--- Deeper Than Deep - A lovely little observation about a moment in Dario Argento's Profundo Rosso from Arbogast here.

--- Cold Flesh - Apparently Bruce La Bruce decided he wanted to take the wound-fucking scene from his last movie Otto, or Up With Dead People (a movie I liked) and turn that into a whole movie, and that's what LA Zombie is. Which well obviously I'll see this at some point. Go read Adam's take on the film.

--- Wack-a-duo - Reunited and it feels very fine - Michel Gondry will direct the new Bjork video for her new song "Crystalline." Yes, that is a good thing. Sad story: I was grooving to this song at a dinner we had at my house over the weekend when I realized everyone's conversation around me had turned to how much they hate Bjork. Awww. Cue my deflated face and head-hung trip to skip to the next track on the iPod. Rejected!

--- RoboStatham - There's some probably entirely baseless speculation going about that Jason Statham could star in a 4th Transformers film which - post-Bay and LaBeouf - would take the series into a darker direction. Can't really get much darker than being a signal of the end of times like the entire franchise has been so far, can ya? And I doubt there's much space for half-naked field fucking in a Transformers movie so I says pass, Jason!

--- Fall's For Rimming - Guillermo Del Toro is set to begin shooting his giant monster movie Pacific Rim in Toronto on Halloween of this year for a July 21st, 2013 release. This is the future!
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--- The Woman Beat - Ever since an audience member freaked out at a screening of Lucky McKee's The Woman (starring his May star Angela Bettis) I've been jonesing to see it (good press, that), so I'm happy to hear it's been picked up for distribution finally. I was hoping it'd play here in NY some time before officially getting released but it's been months and no go so I guess I'll have to stick it out with the rest of y'all plebes!

--- Hey It's Hooper - Apparently Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper has written a horror novel called Midnight Movie in which he is the star. STYD has the details - it's fairly reminiscent of Wes Craven's script for New Nightmare in a lot of ways. Now he just has to direct and star in an adaptation and we can slide right on down the rabbit hole.

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