Movies
TIFF ’09: Several Clips From ‘Leslie, My Name is Evil’
The countdown to the Toronto International Film Festival is slimming down as the event kicks off this week. One of the many genre films having its World Premiere at the fest is Reginald Harkema’s Leslie, My Name is Evil, which follows the trial of the Manson murders. You saw the trailer last week, now dig on several clips by read on. Click here for all of our TIFF coverage so you can keep up with all of the top indie films coming your way in 2010.“Reginald Harkema’s incendiary new film Leslie, My Name Is Evil (the follow-up to his celebrated 2006 feature Monkey Warfare) focuses on the trial of Charles Manson and his followers, but it’s far from a conventional re-hash of the grisly details. Leslie is a charged, intensely stylized postmodern analysis of one of the key battles in the culture wars that consumed America for much of the sixties.
The ostensible hero is Perry (Gregory Smith), an earnest, sexually desperate young chemist engaged to Dorothy (Kristin Adams), a devout Christian who refuses to sleep with him until they get married. “I love you, but I love Jesus more,” she explains. When he’s called for jury duty on the Manson Family trial, Perry is exposed to a completely different world, one defined by drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and, most importantly, free love. He’s especially taken with Leslie Van Houten (Kristen Hager), who appears to be the least overtly indoctrinated member of the family.
Though the filmmakers adhere to the facts, the film is fundamentally anti-realist, mixing camp, agitprop and the devices of both courtroom dramas and true-crime shows – a combination that makes for numerous moments of fiercely intelligent and spectacularly uncomfortable comedy. The film forces the viewer to confront both the trial’s sordid celebrity aspects and its political-cultural connotations.”
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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