News

“Lucifer” actor Db Woodside wants to lead his own show.

The actor, who most recently appeared in Netflix’s “The Perfect Find,” tweeted this wish in a self-proclaimed bold post.

“Boldest tweet I’ll ever send. Lucifer. Big success. Blessed to play my part. Night Agent. Big success. Blessed to play my part. Suits. Big success. Blessed to play my part. ,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “In conclusion: I think I deserve the opportunity to lead my own show.”

Boldest tweet I’ll ever send.

Lucifer. Big success. Blessed to play my part.

Night Agent. Big success. Blessed to play my part.

Suits. Big success. Blessed to play my part.

In conclusion: I think I deserve the opportunity to lead my own show.

— Db Woodside (@dbwofficial) August 15, 2023

Woodside is best known for his television roles as bass singer Melvin Franklin in “The Temptations,” Robin Wood in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,...

For many, Videodrome (1983) remains David Cronenberg’s signature film. It is not his most successful or necessarily even his best, but it does most thoroughly define the descriptor “Cronenbergian.” It is a distillation of many of the themes and motifs he would explore throughout his filmography. Along with The Fly (1986), it is perhaps his greatest depiction of the subgenre that he is most often associated with—body horror, but it also explores a number of philosophical ideas that thread their way through much of his body of work. Above all, Videodrome is an often uncomfortable interrogation of humanity’s relationship with violence, entertainment, and media, and forty years after its release, that interrogation has only become more disturbing and prescient.

Videodrome is an idea movie wrapped up in a mystery/conspiracy plot. That the plot makes any sense at all is rather remarkable considering, due to Canadian tax shelter policies,...

Fifty years ago, two unknown filmmakers named Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham released their low-budget thriller “Last House on the Left.” Or, given its effect on audiences, maybe it’s more accurate to say they unleashed the film. Either way, the horror genre was never the same: Craven, who was making his feature directorial debut with “Last House,” went on to helm several of the smartest, scariest, and most imitated horror films of all time, including “The Hills Have Eyes,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and “Scream.” Cunningham, his producer, would exert an equally pervasive influence on the genre as the director of the original “Friday the 13th.” Ironically, neither filmmaker had a strong desire to make horror movies. “I do not think Sean or Wes had any personal affinity for horror or set out to make an influential mark on the genre,” David Szulkin, author of “Wes Craven’s...

Dušan Makavejev was born on King Milutin Street in Belgrade on October 13, 1932. This was about nine years before the city was occupied by the Nazis, at which point the Chinese embassy across the street became the headquarters of the German Chief Command of the Southeast. As a child, he watched German officers go in and out of the building, one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, would later become the Secretary of the United Nations—though of course the young Makavejev didn’t know this at the time. Following the Second World War, it was under Tito's Communist, but anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia that Makavejev first emerged as a major Eastern European filmmaker, initially associated with the loosely defined Novi Film (new film) movement. His eclectic career, the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Anthology Archives, garnered praise from the likes of Amos Vogel, Robin Wood, Stanley Cavell, Jonas Mekas, and Roger Ebert,...

Michael Cimino could have done worse for his first directing gig — a big Clint Eastwood-Jeff Bridges buddy picture with guaranteed major attention. It’s a simple crime caper for simple audiences, and he pulls it off in style. The Sunday movie supplements celebrated Cimino as a great new talent. His picture still looks handsome and it runs like a Swiss watch — the writer-director even has his vulgar comedy down pat, giving bad guy George Kennedy a few memorable choice bits to play.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date November 12, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, Geoffrey Lewis, Catherine Bach, Gary Busey, Burton Gilliam, Roy Jenson, Bill McKinney, Vic Tayback, Dub Taylor, Gregory Walcott.

Cinematography: Frank Stanley

Art Direction by Tambi Larsen

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Dee Barton

Produced by Robert Daley

Written and Directed...

Gremlins (1984)Towards the end of his latest book, Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, film critic J. Hoberman highlights Charles Musser’s Politicking and Emergent Media: Us Presidential Elections of the 1890s, a historical study that demonstrated how “the candidate most adroit in deploying new communications technology almost always prevailed.” Extrapolating from this, Hoberman points out Roosevelt’s “successful use of radio,” Eisenhower’s “pioneering TV commercials,” and Kennedy’s victory over Nixon which was secured over televised debate—after which he moves on to Ronald Reagan, the book’s prime player. The final entry in the author’s “Found Illusions” trilogy, Make My Day completes the long-gestating historical project Hoberman started in 2003 with The Dream Life and extended with 2011’s An Army of Phantoms. Thus, it's both a culmination of the author’s considered, career-long engagement with American film culture, and a kind of corollary to Musser’s study,...

Gus van Sant's Psycho (1998) is showing October 5 – November 4, 2019 on Mubi in several countries as part of the double feature Original Vs. Remake.It’s a recognizable scene, almost comforting in its familiarity, like a recrudescent dream: A woman, pale and lissome, hair cropped short, stands beneath the stream of a motel shower. There is nothing to indicate trouble, no portents of doom, but we know what’s going to happen, it is ineluctable, and this knowledge lends the scene an air of menace. We await the inevitable. Through the corrugated plastic curtain we now see the bathroom door open, slowly, silently. A figure emerges, galvanized from shadow, arm raised and face obfuscated; the figure pulls back the curtain—it’s a woman, with long blond hair, an anachronistic dress from the 1950s, a kitchen knife clutched in her fingers—and, after a brief dramatic pause, long enough for a scream...

“If I had had a home, I would have never ended up in Seoul station.”

Over the last decade, zombie movies have become something which many had never anticipated: a part of our pop culture. Looking back at the most prominent entries into the genre, from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead” to Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie Flesh Eaters”, perhaps no none would have thought the undead would be on prime time television, attracting millions of viewers. However, while the themes of films like “28 Days Later”, “The Zombie Diaries” and “The Walking Dead” may have changed, the overall nature of the genre has not been touched. You can even go so far as to say the real artistry behind the zombie genre is truly to paradoxically bring new life, fresh ideas to the shuffling (or sometimes running) zombies.

Interestingly, and maybe due to the development of global pop culture,...

Charlie Chaplin had been making movies for less than a month when he appeared in A Film Johnnie, a one-reel comedy about moviegoing and moviemaking set around the Keystone Studio. This genre of films with a movie background has flourished ever since, with pictures ranging from Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place to Satyajit Ray's Nayak. While most are set in Hollywood, three of the very best are by European directors: Fellini's 8½, Godard's Le mépris and Truffaut's Day for Night (aka La nuit américaine).

Truffaut's warm, humane film, made in 1973, can be seen as a delayed riposte to Godard's acrid attack on the commercial cinema in Le mépris, the action of which it closely parallels. A vicious letter Godard wrote to Truffaut about Day for Night effectively turned their friendship into a bitter enmity.

Set in Nice's Victorine Studios, where it was filmed, Day for Night is a touching,...

By James Morgart

“There is no pleasure. There is no pain. There is only skin.” - Pinhead, Hellraiser III

“Women tend to be more tolerant about visceral things because they have more direct personal experience with them. They cope with periods once a month, they go through childbirth and they are usually the ones who look after the bleeding and battered limbs when the kids take a tumble. They can put blood and gore in context and generally cope better than men.” - Bela Lugosi

Most scholarship on the horror film has assumed that males are the primary spectators of horror; however, there have been developments, both in scholarship as well as in mainstream media, to contradict this point. In 2009, journalist Michelle Orange pointed out, in an article written for the New York Times, “Recent box office receipts show that women have an even bigger appetite for these [horror] films than men.

American director best known for Bonnie and Clyde, he focused on disillusioned outsiders

Arthur Penn, who has died aged 88, was one of the major figures of Us television, stage and film in the 1960s and 70s when the three disciplines actively encouraged experimentation, innovation and challenging subject matter. "I think the 1960s generation was a state of mind," he said, "and it's really the one I've been in since I was born." He will be best remembered for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), a complex and lyrical study of violent outsiders whose lives became the stuff of myth.

The film, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and based on the exploits of the bank-robbing Barrow Gang in the 1930s, became a cause celebre. It was praised and attacked for its distortion, bad taste and glorification of violence in equal measure. Newsweek's critic, Joseph Morgenstern, retracted his initial view of the film's violence,...

It's hard to believe that Canada's Rue Morgue Magazine has been around as long as it has! Their next issue marks their lucky thirteenth year of kicking ass and taking names and we have a look at what's in store for readers both old and new!

Congrats, guys! Here's to another 13!

From the Press Release

Rue Morgue Special Edition 13th Anniversary Halloween Issue

On Stands October 1st!

We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes

Fifty years ago Marion met Norman at the Bates Motel and the modern horror film was born. Rue Morgue’s panel of experts celebrates the lunatic legacy of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece. Featuring Wes Craven, assistant director Hilton Green, and authors Stephen Rebello and David Thomson.

Plus: A look at Bernard Herrmann’s score, a new documentary on the film, sequel spotlights, and more!

by Aaron Von Lupton, Mark R. Hasan, James Burrell, Stuart F. Andrews,...

Creepy new sci-fi Splice harks back to an era of movies that questioned the institution of family. John Patterson pines for a more horrible age

Splice comes on as a brainy, knowing, bio-engineered spoof of James Whale's The Bride Of Frankenstein – its leads are named Clive and Elsa, for starters – but it ends up more like a flawed throwback to the great sci-fi and horror movies of the 1970s that questioned the very notion of the American nuclear family. Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody are married bio-scientists who create their own lifeform, a demanding pseudo child who soon rouses all the latent anxieties in their relationship (he's never wanted kids), and disinters horrific secrets from Polley/Elsa's childhood. The villain of the piece: family.

Family is everything in Hollywood these days. You might even say that one of the seven plots of American cinema involves actual families being rebuilt...

The CW's upcoming fall show "Hellcats" has tapped the '24' White House Chief of Staff, D.B. Woodside to join the cheerleading squad... Sort of. Of course, Woodside won't actually be playing a cheerleader - though that would be a sight to see.

"Hellcats" revolves around Marti (Aly Michalka), a cynical college student forced to join the cheerleading squad when her unreliable mother drops the ball on her tuition.

Woodside, who fans will also remember from his stint as Principal Robin Wood on "'Buffy the Vampire Slayer," plays Derrick Altman, a "handsome young physician who takes care of the Hellcats cheerleaders."

He's a man's man who is dedicated to his work with the team - and it's no wonder, because these cheerleaders, as you'll see in the pilot, are an aggressive group of athletes. He's also dedicated to his live-in girlfriend, Vanessa. Vanessa, played by "Boston Public's" Sharon Leal,...

Toronto’s Cinematheque Ontario will present five movies as a tribute to Canadian film critic and educator Robin Wood, beginning Friday, June 18. According to the Cinematheque’s release, Wood "changed the way we appreciate cinema. His audacious and insightful reviews made him a critic of astonishing power. This tribute reflects his wide and at times surprising interests." It’ll be an eclectic mix. Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (1959), with John Wayne and Dean Martin, is a well-known classic, but Arthur Penn‘s The Chase (1966), starring Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, and Robert Redford, was much lambasted at the time. Bruce Labruce was initially announced as the guest who would introduce The Chase, but Labruce has had to cancel his appearance. That’s unfortunate, as it would have been interesting to hear what he would have to say about Penn’s sociopolitical drama. After all, Labruce’s sex films, e.g., The Raspberry Reich,...

Movies are Saturday night-wasting entertainment and they're transcendent mega-art, but they're also history, living tissues of the past that overpower any other medium we have for preserving experience and retaining cultural memory. This is no small matter, despite the relatively slight influence that film's historical potential has in the consumer marketplace, which is virtually defined by its amnesia. "Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives" (1977), then, is a gift, not just a film preserved and sold as product, but a piece of the 20th century that will now never quite fade completely from view.

Shot and assembled by a six-person collective (including Rob Epstein, later director of "The Times of Harvey Milk" and "Common Threads"), this film is as simple as it is expansive: amidst the definitive stirrings of the gay rights movement, the filmmakers sat down with 26 gay men and women -- young and old, fat and skinny,...

To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, it appears as though the Tiff Cinematheque is set to pull out all the stops.

According to Criterion, the Tiff, formerly known as the Cinematheque Ontario, will be bringing out a rather superb and cartoonishly awesome summer schedule, that will include films ranging from Kurosawa pieces, to films from Pier Paolo Pasolini. Other films include a month long series dedicated to James Mason, Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, a tribute to Robin Wood, and most interesting, a retrospective on the works of one Catherine Breillat.

Personally, while the Kurosawa, Pasolini, and Rohmer collections sound amazing, the Breillat series is ultimately the collective that I am most interested in. Ranging from films like the brilliant Fat Girl, to the superb and underrated Anatomy of Hell, these are some of the most interesting and under seen pieces of cinema of recent memory, and are more than...

Publisher of Movie magazine and books on cinema and art

Ian Cameron, who has died aged 72 from a virulent form of lung disease, had a long and enterprising career as an independent producer of books, notably on cinema and art, and of an influential film magazine, Movie. Producer is the best word, since he was variously author, editor, photographer, designer and publisher. The flair and commitment that he brought to the last four of these roles came to overshadow his own writing, but in his 20s he was a sharp and articulate film critic, a dominant voice in the debates that were transforming attitudes to cinema in Britain in the 1960s.

His childhood had been unsettled. Born in London, he was only five when his mother died and his Scottish father sent him to live for a year with maiden aunts in Inverness; on returning, he found he now had a stepmother.

Influential teacher, critic and pioneer in the field of film studies

'Why should we take Hitchcock seriously? It is a pity the question has to be raised. If the cinema were truly regarded as an autonomous art, not as a mere adjunct of the novel or the drama – if we were able yet to see films instead of mentally reducing them to literature – it would be unnecessary." The opening lines of the first book by the film critic and teacher Robin Wood, who has died at the age of 78, had a remarkable and lasting impact on the field of film studies both in and beyond academia.

Before he published Hitchcock's Films in 1965, there were – in English, as opposed to French – virtually no books on film directors, and few books of any kind that brought either rigour or sympathy to the analysis of popular cinema. The teaching of so-called "film appreciation...

"Just learned, Robin Wood has died," Jaime posted at Dave Kehr's site yesterday evening. "I can't think of anything else to say, except that the loss hurts, a lot. What a wonderful mind."

Anecdotes and appreciations have followed in the ensuing hours. "He and Andrew Sarris were my role models when I started writing film criticism," posts Joseph McBride, "and they remain my two idols in the field. Robin wrote brilliantly and in great intellectual depth and with a brave candor and passion. He showed us all the way to write about films seriously and with the kind of scholarly involvement that characterized the work of the great literary critics who paved his way before film criticism became a true scholarly field. Robin was one of the few auteurists who weathered the structuralist storm by accomodating its insights while not succumbing to its jargon or conformism. His work was actually strengthened by that challenge.

"The Museum of Modern Art's retrospective of the French screenwriter, director, and actor Jacques Tati (born Jacques Tatischeff, 1907–1982) features newly struck, gloriously restored 35mm prints of his six feature films," brags the Museum, and well they should: "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, Playtime, Mon Oncle, his long-dreamed-of colorized version of Jour de fête, the revelatory Traffic, and the little-seen Parade - along with three short sketch films." The series runs through January 2 and Jordan Hruska (T Magazine) notes that, architecturally, "MoMA is a perfect venue" for it, while Nicolas Rapold (Voice) notes that it follows "the huge Cinémathèque Française exhibition" and: "Besides a 1936 René Clément short with gangly Tati as a farm boy recruited for sparring (sports-based routines were initially his specialty), MoMA also shows the delightful Cours du soir (1966), shot during Playtime downtime, in which Tati presides at a night school for pratfalls and mime. It's quite an education, but then,...

Creator Joss Whedon's Dark Horse Comics' "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" 'Season 8: Willow' one-shot , a continuation of the horror, action adventures of the TV series in graphic novel form, is written by Whedon and illustrated by Karl Moline /Andy Owens, with a cover by Jo Chen.

"...'Willow Rosenberg' has worn many faces -- a shy computer geek, a loyal friend, a passionate lover, a fierce Wiccan, and a dark Willow. Now in Season Eight of the award-winning 'Buffy' comics series, Willow's powers have grown exponentially. She can fly. Teleport. And may or may not be immortal. All we know is that Willow went on a walkabout following the demise of 'Sunnydale' and she met a very sultry, extremely powerful serpent lady who seems to be the key to unraveling the mysteries of what Willow is, and will become..."

Publication date is December 23, 2009.

Also "Buffy" will return to...

Those familiar chords, that signature font, that full moon. Yes, Buffy is coming back to TV. No, alas, not new episodes. Reruns of all seven seasons of the cult series are coming to the Viacom-owned channels MTV and Logo next year.

Talk about wanting my MTV! (Sorry, Logo, there’s no appropriate Dire Straits song to reference here, but I like you, too). Buffy the Vampire Slayer will air daily on both channels and mark the first time since 2008 the show has been on TV anywhere. It was previously syndication on FX from 2001 to 2008.

The show will launch New Year’s Day on Logo with an 18-hour marathon from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. Est. Then starting Jan. 4 it will air weeknights at 6 and 7 p.m. and late nights at 2 and 3 a.m. It will also show at various times on the weekends. [Full disclosure: Logo owns AfterElton.com, but trust me my excitement stems solely from my fanatical love of the show. I might or might not even own an action figure or two. I admit nothing.]

MTV will kick off their Buffy bonanza on Jan.

Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance by Donna McRae

Low cinematic genres – (as Clover, Williams and Robin Wood and others) have often pointed out – often handle explosive social material that mainstream cinema is reluctant to touch. — Joan Hawkins (1)

Can you make a film about the aftermath of incest and child abuse and its effect on three generations of women in the same family? Would this film contain an inherited ghost running through the narrative that could represent repressed feelings of colonial guilt on another level? Could this film prick the conscience of a nation that might be shuddering in silence for all its past sins? Would you get funding for this film from an Australian funding agency if you didn't have a track record? Would this very serious film fill cinemas, especially Australian ones? Could you get international profile actors to star in your film? Or would Australian film actors like Gracie Otto,...

Those familiar chords, that signature font, that full moon. Yes, Buffy is coming back to TV. No, alas, not new episodes. Reruns of all seven seasons of the cult series are coming to the Viacom-owned channels MTV and Logo next year.

Talk about wanting my MTV! (Sorry, Logo, there’s no appropriate Dire Straits songs to reference here, but I like you, too). Buffy the Vampire Slayer will air daily on both channels and mark the first time since 2008 the show has been on TV anywhere. It was previously syndication on FX from 2001 to 2008.

The show will launch New Year’s Day on Logo with an 18-hour marathon from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. Est. The starting Jan. 4 it will air weeknights at 6 and 7 p.m. and late nights at 2 and 3 a.m. It will also show at various times on the weekends. [Full disclosure: Logo owns AfterEllen.com, but trust me my excitement stems solely from my fanatical love of the show. I might or might not even own an action figure or two. I admit nothing.]

MTV will kick off their Buffy bonanza on Jan.

MattCanada here with another week of gay cinema. This week's film is My Best Friend's Wedding, one of the most criminally underrated films of all time and, in my opinion, the best comedy of the nineties.

From afar the film's gay credentials seem to amount to just another example of the romantic comedy's stereotypical use of the gay best friend character. However, George (Rupert Everett in a career best performance) is the film's voice-of reason, moral centre, and ultimately the film's unconventional leading man.

The friendship between George and Julianne (Julia Roberts) highlights the special and unique relationship gay men and women can have. In gay film critic (and personal hero) Robin Wood's wordsGeorge's maturity, considerateness, and tact are intimately connected to the gayness that sets him apart from social norms, permitting him a wise distance from the practices and conventions in which those around him are entangledThroughout the...

Before you get too excited let me say that this post is not about a new Buffy TV series or about the movie that others are making without Joss Whedon’s participation. No, this particular bit of news concerns yet another way in which the characters we all know and love from Buffy can live on in another form. In this case, it is via a series of motion comic webisodes based on Whedon’s highly successful series of Buffy Season Eight comics from Dark Horse.

Based on casting notices highlighted by Sci-Fi Wire, we know that the series will be based on the comics and feature the characters Twilight, the Big Bad of Season Eight, and evil British socialite Slayer Lady Genevieve Savidge, who wants to take Buffy’s place atop the Slayer food chain. The webisodes are also looking for actors to voice some other more familiar Buffy...

Joss Whedon fans distraught over the recent cancellation of "Dollhouse" might find a silver lining in at least one piece of news today. It appears that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" could find new life above and beyond Dark Horse Comics' well-received "Buffy" comic book series, as a casting notice recently popped up online for a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" motion comic.

Over at SciFi Wire, they've posted the full breakdown of voiceover casting calls for the "Buffy" motion comic, which offers a nice indication of which characters fans can expect to see in the series. Among the notables are slayers Faith, Robin Wood and Kennedy, as well as "big bad" villain Twilight. Curiously, there's also a call for a voice actor who sounds like current James Bond actor Daniel Craig.

Here are a few of the casting calls:

[ Faith (V.O.) ]

Co-Star / Female / Caucasian / 20 - 25 years

Description: Maxx Initiative is now casting voice...

Most fans, including myself, were left feeling shortchanged and screaming for more when "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" went off the air after seven seasons. It was even worse when "Angel" got yanked, but that's a whole other can of worms. Season Eight in comic form never really did it for a huge percentage of the fanbase, but it looks like Whedon and company may have found a solution.

According to Sci-Fi Wire a series of motion-comic webisodes based on Whedon's "Season Eight" comics is very much on its way and casting people to do voiceover work as we speak.

Based on the breakdown, the series will be based on the comics and feature the characters Twilight, the Big Bad of Season Eight, and evil British socialite Slayer Lady Genevieve Savidge, who plots to usurp Buffy's place in the Slayer hierarchy.

Check out the casting info below:

Casting Director: Jeff Shuter...

Bring up Alfred Hitchock’s Vertigo (1958) in conversation to anyone who has seen it and you are bound to get one of two responses; complete and utter contempt over its baffling complexity or hyperbolic gushing over the film’s genius. Whatever your opinion of Vertigo, the film does have a lot of talking points. One of Vertigo’s most striking and memorable elements is Bernard Herrmann’s lush, predominantly string score. Using motifs (small phrases of melody or even just a few notes attributed to a character, object, and emotion etc.), Herrmann was able to imbue scenes that had little to no dialogue with meaning that might have otherwise been lost on the viewer. Vertigo’s narrative concerns an ex-police detective, Scottie (James Stewart), who suffers from a condition known as acrophobia, or vertigo, which causes him to essentially lose his shit when he is even just a few feet off the ground.

I could very much be preaching to the choir here, but I need to have this talk, because more often than not, instances like this really get under my skin. For a long time now, I’ve tried to not let it get to me. People seem to dismiss anything remotely intelligent with ties to the horror genre as being something other than horror. They say it “transcends,” “doesn’t qualify as such” or “is really a very harsh drama.” This is killing me. Normally, I’ll just chalk it up to the fact that they don’t understand, they don’t get it and they refuse to see the art and intellect. But this time really caught me off guard.

On Ain’t It Cool News recently, Capone ran an interview with none other than master Wes Craven, who we also have been covering pretty heavily in Fangoria to...