Movies

Mutant Pussy Bites The Hand That Pets It

An innocent Christian girl discovers her vagina has teeth of its own. On its gleaming white surface, Teeth looks like another gross-out horror comedy. Judging from the just-released trailer, it’s definitely over the top. But critics are already praising its exploration of female sexual empowerment through mutation. When Teeth premiered at Sundance, Cinematical wrote: At…

Ang Lee’s “Lust” Spreads Sexually Transmitted PC Virus

People who didn’t want to settle for the sanitized version of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution turned to the dirtier illegal download, and ended up in need of a shot of virtual penicillin. Chinese censors chopped about 30 minutes of the old hot-n-heavy out of the movie, increasing demand for a pirated copy showing the American…

Battlestar Could Be Knocked Out By Contract Tangles

Will Battlestar Galactica ever film its final episodes? Maybe not, says Ron Moore. Blame complicated contract wrangling: the studio wants to keep the show’s actors on contract without paying them, under the “force majeure” clauses of their contracts. But because the show managed to film the required minimum of 13 episodes before halting production, their…

Star Wars Clones May Hit Theaters Before Invading Your Home

Next August could see another Star Wars movie in theaters. Only it would be an animated film, to launch the gritty new Clone Wars animated TV series that George Lucas is working on. During a conference call with investors, an executive from the Hasbro toy company said the Clone Wars film would be in theaters…

Special effects are killing movies. The cost of making the 50-year-old Ray Winstone look “17 again” in Beowulf is just one example of the SFX excesses that drove up the cost of movie-making by 16 percent between 2004 and 2006. Meanwhile, DVD sales are plummeting. Image by James Higgins/Splash News [Times of London]

Black Friday at JR.com Offers $3.99 DVDs

The Black Friday madness continues! JR.com has gotten into the swing of things a bit early, offering $3.99 DVDs. Sure you might be a hi-def guy, but four DVDs would go a long way toward stuffing a stocking. Granted, a lot of the movies are crap, but here are a few we either own already…

You Cannot Escape Shaky Camera Syndrome

During a real alien attack, most of us would have no clue what the hell was going on. And judging from both trailers, J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield will bend over backwards to simulate that state of confusion. The first trailer, especially, has a hand-held camera swooping and jostling as if the camera holder is running for…

Nothing Like an Alien Death Orgy Where Rich Eat Poor

Poor Bill. He’s just found out that his rich Beverly Hills family is actually a bunch of incestuous, polymorphous aliens who have raised him for food. Now his parents and their rich alien friends have kidnapped him and his friend David, and are going to eat them in a giant orgy. That just one tiny…

The newest trailer for J.J. Abrams’ top secret monster flick Cloverfield started airing in front of Beowulf last night, and of course its popping up left and right all over the web already. The only problem is that it’s via a handheld cam from an enterprising young YouTuber sitting in a theater, so prepare your…

Poll: Which Monster Movie Will Kick The Most Ass?

Cloverfield, The Mist or Alien Vs. Predator 2? Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

The Good Shit From Beowulf, In the Form of an Alliterative Poem

Beowulf, the CGI 3D monstrosity that hits theaters Friday, was originally an alliterative Old English poem. Instead of composing a review of this cinematic epic, I’ll just go Old English on your ass and alliterate. Below the fold are your spoilers, in verse. Sea monsters mangled from inside their eggy eyeballs by sword-swinging soldiers are…

Tron Sequel Will Feature Cutting-Edge Special Effects

Men in day-glo body suits could battle in a virtual world again soon. Jeff Bridges says he’s eager to do a Tron sequel. For a while, Disney was talking about a remake instead, but Bridges says he expects to be pitched a sequel in the near future. And he’s excited to do Tron 2, because…

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe screenwriter: “If we don’t see the humanity and the truth in what [supervillain] Skeletor’s trying to do, then the story’s not compelling.” He also explains why you can’t be afraid to say the words “He-Man,” and the importance of staying true to He-Man’s science fiction roots. [IESB]

Time for a Movie About Parthenogenesis

It’s been a couple of years since scientists were able to create a baby mouse via parthenogenesis, combining the DNA from two female mice to create a baby with no father. Now it’s time for a scary, smart movie about what would happen to a world where men were no longer needed for reproduction. It’s…

Future Cities Will Run On Pig Shit

Forget wind turbines and solar panels. In the ragtag future, Tina Turner will get her mood lighting from hog lagoons. In Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, an army of pigs swarms beneath Bartertown, one of the last (semi) civilized outposts. The pigshit produces methane, a gas which keeps the city’s power going. The only thing anybody…

Ludacris will be the leader of an underground resistance group called HUMANZ in the dystopian play-or-die film Game, also starring Gerald (300) Butler and Alison Lohman. Image by Splashnews.

3D Is Yesterday’s Tech All Tarted Up With Nowhere to Go

Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf hits theaters Friday in a haze of speculation. Can cutting-edge motion-capture CGI animation, combined with 3D, turn a 1000-year-old alliterative poem about a monster-slaying warrior into the awesome? The answer is no. Studios rolling out 3D stuff for 2009 like James Cameron’s Avatar, and the animated Monsters vs. Aliens are hoping…

Southland Tales Devolves Into Artistic Apocalypse

Southland Tales was eagerly anticpated by fans who loved director Richard Kelly’s cult hit Donnie Darko, but. But the weird movie that blended musical comedy with post-apocalyptic LA is getting raked across the coals by reviewers. Kelly was able to sign up talent like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott and…

Cyborg and Bioroid Love After the Apocalypse

After a biological apocalypse, humanity’s only hope is a city called Olympus, run by an AI named Gaia. Most of the city is inhabited by genetically-engineered, semi-tech Bioroids, creatures whose strong emotions have been bred out. Still, somebody has to keep the peace. That’s why the human Deunan and cyborg Briarios have trained as warriors.…

Telepathic Alcoholics More Common In Books Than Movies

Why can’t movie science fiction be as creative as the books? Brendan at Balancing Frogs just read a collection of 1950s science fiction novellas about ancient telepathic civilizations, crystalline alien explorers and super-advanced humans who despise their primitive Earth cousins. Each story has at least one loopy plot twist. Why can’t the movies have that…