Movies
Rubber (VOD, then limited)
“Art and horror collide in Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, a clever and uniquely interesting “f*ck you” to Hollywood…It’s a triumph of filmmaking that earns the right to be a pretentious prick.“
Art and horror collide in Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, a clever and uniquely interesting “f*ck you” to Hollywood.
The film opens with a car driving towards a group of people, and as it approaches, it veers left and right knocking down a bunch of chairs littered across the dirt. The car parks and out from the trunk comes the narrator. He talks about film, and asks the audience why things are the way they are in movies (“Why is E.T. gray?” he rants. “Why doesn’t anyone stop to wash their hands in Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”). The answer: No reason.
In an exercise in filmmaking (directing a movie without the intent on making money; the biggest f*ck you to Hollywood), Rubber takes the simple concept of “no reason” and attempts to tell an engaging, one-of-a-kind story.
This bizarre black comedy horror is completely self-aware, combining never-before-seen narration with a cute, yet terrifying narrative story about a tire that likes to kill…for no reason. Manned with a pair of binoculars, the narrators watch the same thing that the audience is shown: the life and death of a serial killer tire. A tire wakes in the desert sun only to learn that it has the ability to blow things up with its new-found psychic ability. Bottles explode, birds pop, and human heads splatter across windshields. It’s funny, gory and downright INSANE.
Rubber’s biggest accomplishment isn’t that it’s weird, it’s that it’s visually striking; like true art, it’s a story told with pictures, not words. The tire doesn’t talk or breathe yet Dupieux gives life to this inanimate object. You can tell it has thoughts, feelings, and desires (watching it play peeping tom with a girl in the shower is hilarious).
The biggest challenge Rubber presents is daring you to get your jaw off the ground. It’s a triumph of filmmaking that earns the right to be a pretentious prick. Most of Hollywood is all talk and no do; Dupieux came, saw and conquered. Hollywood better watch out.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
You must be logged in to post a comment.