Sam Raimi
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I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes!, The Gift and 1408: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Walter Mirisch is best remembered today as the producer of studio prestige releases like In the Heat of the Night, The Apartment, and the original West Side Story, but before he became one of Hollywood’s most reliable sources of “A” pictures he toiled away in the “B” trenches of Poverty Row company Monogram. He kept the studio in the black with his Bomba the Jungle Boy series, but before establishing that franchise he produced a pair of noir movies based on material by Cornell Woolrich, the suspense writer who would hit paydirt with Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Mirisch’s first solo Monogram […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 4, 2022 -
“We Laid Out the Chessboard of the Movie”: Fede Alvarez on Don’t Breathe
Filmmaker Fede Alvarez made an impressive feature debut in 2013 with his uncompromisingly savage, Sam Raimi-approved remake of The Evil Dead, but it didn’t come close to preparing me for his extraordinary follow-up, Don’t Breathe. That film, which reunites Alvarez with his Evil Dead producers Raimi and Rob Tapert as well as co-screenwriter Rodo Sayagues, is a clinic in how to construct a perfect thriller – a Swiss watch of a movie that takes the audience in the palm of its hand in the opening scene and then squeezes hard for an hour and a half. The premise is elegantly […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jul 20, 2016 -
Ten Lessons on Filmmaking from James Franco
There’s a trend in actor-turned-director helmed films at Cannes this year, an impeccable direction of the people on screen. You can tell there’s a sense of trust and cohesive goal to create something great. One of the clearest examples of this is James Franco’s new feature film, As I Lay Dying, based on the great American classic by William Faulkner, the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family’s quest to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. The vivid characters have come to life on the big screen through Franco’s split-screen filmmaking, led by […]
by Ariston Anderson on May 21, 2013 -
25 Picks for the SXSW Film and Interactive Festivals
SXSW is a festival of contradictions. (Or, “Spring Break for filmmakers,” as Ti West posted on his Twitter stream last night.) Its film program feels homey, intimate, with Janet Pierson and her team evincing a real sense of enthusiasm as well as curatorial play. There are, of course, types of films that are expected and do well at SXSW: cutting-edge genre titles, hip mainstream features, music- and technology-themed documentaries, and low-budget, youth-oriented relationship tales. But within and even outside of those categories, SXSW always turns up some real discoveries. (Last year there were several — Sean Baker’s Starlet, Andrew Neel’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Red Band for Evil Dead Remake
The whole idea of remaking Evil Dead just seems wrong, but this upcoming movie has the backing of both Sam Raimi (who has a co-writer and producer credit on the film) and Bruce Campbell, who’s also a producer — and declared last year, “The remake’s gonna kick ass – you have my word.” This NSFW trailer has a number of elements in it that will be all too familiar to fans of the original, but I’m not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing. What do you think?
by Nick Dawson on Oct 25, 2012 -
JIM MICKLE AND NICK D’AMICI, “STAKE LAND”
In so many ruined, dystopian futures, ravenous beings stalk the burned out countryside, praying on the flesh and/or blood of humans, while a small band of tough survivors, almost always including a grim professional killer, a protege and a young refugee, desperately try to escape this world overrun. This basic conceit resembles Jim Mickle’s somber, post-apocalyptic tone poem fashioned as a late night, grindhouse B movie, Stakeland, which proves altogether more satisfying than any of the recent cable and multiplex ready vampire narratives or dystopian dramas (The Road, Time of the Wolf, One Hundred Mornings or Children of Men). Despite […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 20, 2011
