Joe Dante
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“Self-Aware Doesn’t Work for Us”: Joe Dante on The Movie Orgy, Matinee at 30 and William Castle’s The Tingler
All of Joe Dante‘s films revolve around distinctly American paranoias—consumerism, threats to the nuclear family, suburban NIMBY sensibilities—but none feel more entrenched in a tangible era of American anxiety than Matinee. Now 30 years old, the film takes place during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, centering B-movie shlock jockey Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, riffing big time on William Castle), who lands in a panicked Key West, Florida for a promotional screening of his radioactive new horror film Mant (half-man, half-ant, all monster!) Both enraptured and horrified by the real-world implications Woolsey’s film hints at (nuclear disfigurement, neighborhoods-turned-warzones, the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 10, 2023 -
Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Explorers, Fool for Love, 12 Monkeys
One of director Joe Dante’s most interesting and underrated films gets the Blu-ray treatment it deserves with the Shout Factory release of Explorers, Dante’s 1985 follow-up to Gremlins that walks a similarly unconventional line between Spielbergian sentiment and Tashlinesque pop satire, with an undercurrent of unsettling melancholy thrown in for good measure. There’s genuine warmth and wonder to spare in the first half of the film as friends Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, and Jason Presson build their own spaceship; when they actually manage to rendezvous with the aliens who have been communicating with them, the movie shifts gears to become […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 24, 2021 -
Masters of Horror, Madam Secretary, Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
One of the more interesting experiments in mid-2000s cable television was Mick Garris’ Masters of Horror anthology for Showtime, a series that lasted only two seasons but yielded terrific work by John Landis, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, John McNaughton, and Garris himself. It’s now streaming free on the advertiser supported platform Tubi, and many of the episodes are well worth revisiting – particularly Joe Dante’s The Screwfly Solution, an entry from season two that presciently taps into current anxieties relating to both the coronavirus and the #MeToo movement. The movie begins with a series of unprovoked assaults on women by […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 10, 2020 -
Watch: Joe Dante on The Mask (1961)
Joe Dante is one of the collaborators behind the site Trailers From Hell, which regularly posts videos of directors speaking about films of their choice. For this video, Dante himself appears to give a little history on the 1961 horror film The Mask. Topics of discussion include anaglyph 3D, the rise of Canucksploitation, and the exploits of late publicist Jim Moran (who once sat on an ostrich egg for 19 days until it hatched as part of a publicity stunt).
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 11, 2015 -
“We’re Making Fat Cells, Arteries, and a Heart:” Bill George on Innerspace
Today teenagers interested in the world of special effects are a few tutorials and some affordable software away from getting their feet wet. In 1977, the requirements were a bit more elaborate. It involved woodshop, sheets of styrene, and maybe a few surreptitious pictures taken at a screening of Star Wars. That’s how a teenaged Bill George got his start – making models from scratch dedicated to George Lucas’s space opera. Four years later, George was working on the crew of Return of the Jedi. Now in his 33rd year at Industrial Light & Magic, George has been a part […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 16, 2015 -
“You Can’t Turn Around Without Bumping into a Zombie Movie”: Joe Dante on Burying the Ex
With Burying the Ex (opening theatrically and on VOD June 19), one of the greatest directors of the past forty years returns to the style that made him famous while also striking out in immensely entertaining new directions. Joe Dante’s first film, the Roger Corman-financed Hollywood Boulevard (co-directed with Allan Arkush), established him as a singular satirical voice; like many of the films that would follow (The Howling, Gremlins and Gremlins 2, Matinee, etc.), it was both a celebration of and a sly commentary on American pop culture, with a delirious wit and energy masking an underlying seriousness. Over the […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 16, 2015 -
MOMA’S ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF FILM PRESERVATION LINEUP ANNOUNCED
Looking for something to do in Manhattan over the next month? MoMA has announced the slate for its 9th annual International Festival of Film Preservation, in which the museum presents preserved and restored films from archives, studios and distributors around the world. This year’s festival runs from October 14 through November 19, and the lineup looks like a pretty stellar way to spend an evening (or twenty). One of the highlights is the focus on ’70s genre-enthusiast and frequent Spielberg collaborator Joe Dante (Gremlins, Piranha). The festival opens this Friday with a digital preservation of the original celluloid print of […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Oct 12, 2011 -
FINCHER, EASTWOOD, DAMON, ASSAYAS AND DANTE FOR DOWNLOAD
Jamie Stuart has made available the complete video interviews excerpted for his short film NYFF 48, which we premiered here at Filmmaker. (If you haven’t watched Jamie’s Kubrick and Bruce Connor-inspired piece of apocalyptic film journalism, please turn up the speakers, turn down the lights, and click here.) After viewing then check out the full interviews by clicking over to Jamie’s site. Here’s Olivier Assayas (pictured). David Fincher. Clint Eastwood and Matt Damon. Joe Dante.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 24, 2010 -
JAMIE STUART’S “NYFF 48”
Jamie Stuart’s NYFF 48 is the latest in his annual cinematic trips to the New York Film Festival, “a 13-minute impressionistic juxtaposition of modern film’s evolution and man’s progress.” Turn your lights out, crank your speakers and watch. With appearances by David Fincher, Clint Eastwood, Olivier Assayas, Joe Dante, Charles Ferguson, Frederick Wiseman, and others. The 720p file can be downloaded here. Visit Jamie at Mutiny Company.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 13, 2010
