In the '90s, I adored exactly three parts of Hollywood: alternative music flicks like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, Gregg Araki, and David Lynch. The first always bled into the other two, Araki partaking in the musical joys of bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order, and Badalamenti creating his own unique world of music. But now the other two are combining. Sort of.

Remember how I posted a month ago about Araki's new film, Kaboom? Well, some images have finally popped up over at Quiet Earth, including the confused-faced Thomas Dekker above. There are also shots of Dekker in bed, and some looks of exasperation, but that's not the kicker -- it's the synopsis, which kicks off with "A hyper-stylized TWIN PEAKS for the Coachella Generation..." Yes, Araki's getting into a little small-town quirk.

Building on that whole all-too-brief sexual awakening description from last month, the movie is "a wild and sex-drenched horror-comedy thriller" about an ambisexual college freshman who trips on "some hallucinogenic cookies" and is "convinced he's witnessed the gruesome murder of an enigmatic Red Haired Girl who has been haunting his dreams." Is the girl in a room with a black and white floor and thick, red curtains?

What do you think about the idea of Araki getting a little Lynchian?

When one thinks of great art, there's often the expectation of carefully prepared canvasses, lush materials, and skilled, complex detail. But it doesn't always take a horde of materials to make something impressive -- sometimes all it takes is a little plastic and some brown packing tape. CNN reports that Philly artist Mark Khaisman is taking these seemingly mundane materials and turning them into a series of scenes from Hitchcock films (The 39 Steps and Spellbound) plus a number of glimpses into Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street. The image above -- that's Spellbound. (The rest are housed in a gallery at CNN.)

This is nothing more than clear plastic panels and brown, translucent tape. Looking at the shirt -- it's fathomable -- a series of strips that, when laid on top of each other, creates areas of light and shadow. But look at the faces, and most especially, the hair. This isn't just a stained glass-like mosaic -- the artist is a former stained glass designer -- there's tone and depth in each piece. Texture.

Props and posters might be cool, but imagine walking into a home theater with a piece like this glowing on the wall. Forget movie ads. I'll take some packing tape art any day.

Slugging through the cold Monday morning, I took a moment to read the latest xkcd (a huge image through the link), and they've managed to boil some major cinematic experiences down into line charts. The latest installment of the web comic tackles Movie Narrative Charts; most specifically, the movie character interactions in Lord of the Rings, Star Wars (original trilogy), Jurassic Park, 12 Angry Men, and Primer.

The charts are actually a pretty intricate set of lines showing how each character progresses through the movie -- who they meet, and the main events and conflicts that take place. However, the big wow for me is in the overall look -- how that mass of lines evokes the same memories of confusion, or lack thereof, watching the films. There's the rolling but easy-to-follow storyline of Star Wars, the pure simplicity and ease of 12 Angry Men, and best of all -- the confusion of Lord of the Rings and Primer.

I could never get into the books, so watching Rings was an exercise in intrigued confusion -- trying to keep the characters straight, waiting for a slow moment to whisper a question, and trying to make sense of a thick storyline funneled into a film. And on the other end of the confusion spectrum, there's Primer -- the film that spins around and evokes stunned, hard-to-define confusion, the spiraling lines also mimicking a lot of the wide eyes of "what the f...?!" I saw after the film's screening at TIFF.

Sometimes it's terrible storytelling, sometimes it's confusion as an art form, and sometimes it's just the mind trying to deal with mass amounts of information. Xkcd managed to lay out some of the main moments of my cinematic confusion, but what are yours? What films leave you trying to follow and make sense of the narrative?

Here's a different way of thinking about well-known movies: imagine each one is a stop on a subway line! Designed by David Honnorat and posted at Vodkaster, the cinematic subway map is based on the top 250 movies as voted by IMDb users on June 19 (which, I suppose, is why The Hangover made it). Honnorat created 16 different imaginary subway lines, including "Universally Acclaimed Masterpiece," "Political drama," "Drama about tolerance," "Dark and weird drama," and other, more traditional categories, and then placed each film on one of the lines. He asked: "How would you go from Alien to North by Northwest without crossing The Godfather: Part II? Which station have you not visited yet?"

The placement of movies on the map can be amusing (Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction side by side with Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America on the gangster line) as well as bizarre yet strangely fitting (Se7en sitting at the intersection of Vertigo, Rashomon, Nosferatu, and Let the Right One In). Click through to see the big map and roll around a bit. Like all subway maps, it's confusing at first but starts to make more sense as you follow the lines from station to station. What's your favorite cinematic subway line?

[ via Geek Tyrant ]

I find it amazing that there was never a Disney revolution. Just this week I wrote about how horror was reinvigorated when women were allowed to fight back. Thinking of the two together, it's a bit embarrassing that horror fiends could buy into strong women, but familial units could not. On one side, there's Laurie Strode and Sydney Prescott. On the other...

There's an image swirling around Digg, which you can see above (click on the image to get it full-sized). It's the classic Disney princesses roster -- Snow White*, Aurora, Jasmine, Ariel, Belle, and Cinderella. Above their smiling faces, however, are their basic characteristics and plot lines. When you boil it down to the basics, the story is enough to make anyone queasy. Snow White's hormones almost kill her, Aurora is married off in the crib for politics and saved years later with a kiss (or sex and slavery when Anne Rice has her say), Jasmine is a pretty girl saved by a street rat, Ariel gets to look pretty and say nothing, Belle works her sexuality, and Cinderella is saved because of her beauty.

The fact that Sleeping Beauty was lucky enough to fall for her prince, like the others, doesn't change much. It's just a necessary plot twist to make all the rest palatable. How is it that we've yet to get a super-smart, super-funny, super-likable Disney princess to add to the pack -- maybe one who Nancy Drews her way to saving the prince. Sure, it'd probably make all the other princesses pale in comparison, but you know young girls would love it.

[via Slashfilm]

*Typo corrected.

Are you finding it increasingly harder to take the changing physicality of Hollywood actors?

Things change; they grow old, they morph, and sometimes even evolve. It's a fact of life, and usually a good fact of life. But lately, I find myself constantly having to try and ignore certain physical aspects to enjoy a trailer, an image, a film. Rather than absorbing the project, the mood, the plot, I'm trying to blur my eyes so Mr. or Ms. So-and-So doesn't look quite so silly.

On the one hand, of course, it's the plastic surgery. Practically everyone in Tinseltown does something. There's no way everyone has smooth foreheads and bright skin. But when the random nose job or improvement turns into new cheeks, chin, or balloonish lips until the original person is nowhere to be seen, it becomes too much. If this was happening to actors known for morphing into characters, whose performance shines much brighter than their own image or personality, fine. But when the stars whose name and faces are their fame, you can't ignore it. I simply cannot see Mickey Rourke without thinking back to The Pope of Greenwich Village, spot Meg Ryan without trying to recognize the girl from Innerspace, Melanie Griffith, Sylvester Stallone, Nicole Kidman... Can they really think that's better than a few wrinkles and some sagging skin?

Click image below to view full poster

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for The Spy Next Door, starring everyone's favorite martial arts maniac Jackie Chan as a secret agent undercover and acting like a mild-mannered guy who, while babysitting his neighbor's kids, winds up having to fight off secret agents after one of the kids inadvertently downloads some secret code. Don't you hate it when that happens? You meant to download the latest episode of The Office on Hulu when all of a sudden you end up accidentally hacking into the Pentagon? Oh internet, you so crazy.

Also starring in this War Games meets Spy Kids meets Adventures in Babysitting-type action-comedy are Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez, and Brian Levant (Jingle All the Way, Snow Dogs, Are We There Yet?) is the man behind the camera. As an added bonus, Moviefone just premiered the trailer for The Spy Next Door in conjunction with our poster premiere, so after you check out the art, head after the jump to take this sucker for a ride.

The Spy Next Door hits theaters on January 15, 2010. Click the image below to view the full poster, and watch the brand new trailer after the jump.

By the time New Moon hits theaters, I don't think there will be anything new left to watch. We will have seen still or moving images of everything. The trailers have already covered all the big plot points from beginning to end, and now new pics seem to be filling in the last bits, like the big movie theater scene above, courtesy of Beyond Hollywood. In an attempt to socialize after her post-Edward leaving catatonic funk, Bella concocts this idea to go to the movies, only everyone backs out except for the two guys crushing on her. It's horrible uncomfortableness mixed in with lots of sickness of both the human and wolfy variety. Other images (over at Ace Showbiz) include one post-movie pic, plus Billy Burke's dad presenting Bella with her gift before things for bloody papercutting bad.

Has anyone made a flip book yet? I'm betting it wouldn't be hard to make a comprehensive one now. This leads me to the thought: How much is too much? I can see some of the rationale -- these aren't exactly movies that are pulling in a huge non-Stephenie Meyer-reading crowd. It's not like Harry Potter tantalizing a whole new audience. The box office boosters know the story already. Spoilers are almost irrelevant. But there is something to be said for the magic of seeing things come to life. At some point, the wow has to fade, and the excitement of seeing it on the big screen has to fizzle.

How much do you think is too much?

Click image below to view full poster

In Me and Orson Welles, Zac Efron plays a scrappy young actor who manages to get on Orson Welles' good side and earn himself a part in Welles' stage production of Julius Caesar. For a while, anyway. The film, set in the '30s, is directed by Richard Linklater and offers plenty of talent, both big name -- Claire Danes and Efron, natch -- and smaller ones that are on the rise, like Zoe Kazan.

James Rocchi reviewed Me and Orson Welles at TIFF in 2008, and had plenty of good things to say about it: "Linklater gets the tone of a behind-the-scenes comedy drama just right, the flurry of activity on-stage and the "noises off," the parts played when the lights are up and the roles played when the theater is empty.... Me and Orson Welles won't find a mass audience, but the audience that does will find it has a lot to recommend it."

Check out the exclusive poster premiere for Me and Orson Welles by clicking below, and make sure to check out the film when it hits theaters on November 25th. You can also watch the trailer after the jump. Enjoy!

Does anybody remember movie novelizations? They've made a bit of a comeback in recent history, but whoo boy was I a fan of them back in the '80s. Of course, as an adult that love has turned into nostalgia, and to this day, my Lost Boys novelization holds a prominent location on my bookshelf. But I'm not the only one with a soft spot for those books, because over at Spacesick they have won my heart by creating the "I Read Movies" series. Granted, these books don't exist (and how I wish they did), but you have to love these retro covers they've created for everything from Shaun of The Dead to Ghost Dad.

We do plenty of poster launches around here, but sometimes it seems like we just don't see the same effort being put into our movie one-sheets like we used to. You know you're in trouble when fictional book covers are more impressive than your average studio marketing campaign. But before I start to sound too much like a crotchety grandpa, I'm going to focus on the positive and that's where the fans come in. Take a look around and you'll see some pretty awesome work being done, so we can only hope that some of that creativity rubs off on actual studio releases.

Check out some of our favorites in the gallery below.

Vampires are interesting. They're most often the baddies to become good guys. Maybe it's because they can still look pretty, or maybe it's because their method of killing can be so sexy. (A hot neck bite is a whole lot more preferable than, say, a wolfy mauling.) Whatever it is, we ascribe this whole hierarchy of acceptable and unacceptable vampiric behavior. For example, it's okay if they're killers -- whether it's human baddies they can mind read or killing sprees long ago -- but it's totally not kosher if they happen to watch you as you sleep. They have cornered this weird, batty scale of seduction and goodness, and the public loves them -- they're hot as all holy hell when it comes to media these days.

In response to the rampant sharp-toothed push, Penny Arcade has decided to figure out what's next. As you can see above, they're thinking tousley-haired mummies. It's certainly a step in the right direction. Wolves are too darned hairy for most, and zombies reek while having a tendency to mumble and grotesquely fall apart. But mummies -- they've got the mystery factor as well. Who knows what's under the wrapping? They're still human-sized; they can still wear clothing; and hey, that whole two-arms out-stretched thing is just asking for a dark embrace.

Could mummies be the next wave of horrific romance?

Rejoice! It's time for another one of those rare moments where we get to talk about Brendan Fraser acting in a drama -- one that should get him a little more recognition than the smaller dramatic bits and thrillers he's taken on recently. See, he's co-starring with Harrison Ford in a pic called Extraordinary Measures, and the still above is the first from the film (via Cinema Blend).

Based on a true story (optioned by Ford), the film follows a couple whose two youngest children were diagnosed with a neuromuscular disorder called Pompe disease. Rather than take things as they were, John Crowley quit his job and created a startup research company to help make advances that could help his children. (The C.B. link has a whole featurette sort of deal on the family.) Fraser plays Mr. Crowley, Keri Russell has the role of his wife, and Ford plays a researcher who might have a cure.

It's no Gods and Monsters, but I'm happy to see Fraser getting dramatic again, and Ford in something a little more serious as well. Here's hoping the Extraordinary Measures leads to some extraordinary filmmaking. Then again, this is coming from the man who just gave us What Stays in Vegas. Sigh. One day, my prince will return!

I wasn't much of a collector when I was a kid. I could never keep a toy in it's package perched high on a shelf. In fact, usually the packaging would last about as long as it could take me to wrench my new She-Ra, Jem, or Barbie from their cardboard cage. But the one thing I did collect were trading cards, E.T. trading cards to be exact. But that was a long time ago, and those cards have long been misplaced (and I won't even dwell on the fact I had the complete set), so you can imagine the overload of nostalgia I experienced when I saw The Improbably Movie Cards over at Automatic Lifestyle Dispenser. Because, what these fine folks have done is made movie collector cards in that classic 80's style, but the catch is that these cards are for films that no person in their right mind would want to collect, and the results are pretty funny -- if not a little bizarre.

So how bad it could it be? Well, if you thought a Silkwood card might be in 'dubious' taste, wait till you get a look at the Schindler's List "Nazi's on The Move" card. Dispenser also made collector cards for good old Alvy and Annie, Sara Goldfarb, and even Charlie Meadows. But no trading card pack would be complete without the stickers, and luckily they have thought of that too, and we get collectible stickers of Colonel "The Horror" Kurtz, and Anton "Friendo" Chigurh. Unfortunately, these cards only exist online, but I don't think I would be the only one out there who would kill for their very own set of Annie Hall trading cards.

I adore movies because they encompass the whole world and allow you to titillate a myriad of interests without having to hone in on just one. (Same with writing -- why pick one slice of life when you can write about them all!?) But there's a side-love -- the art that comes out of cinema. Whether it's seeing a director's vision narrowed down to one particular image (David Lynch's photography!), or seeing what a filmmaker inspires in others. It's like having a fan conversation through the eyes. It could invite you to see a film in a new way, or simply pull you back into the filmmaker's world.

Or, to end all of the lead-up: Film-inspired art can inspire some pretty freakin' awesome imagery! The above photo is part of a new exhibit called Stanley Kubrick: Taming Light. Running all this month at the Light House Cinema in Dublin, the show features paintings, photography, and illustrations inspired by the filmmaker behind classics like A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. And of course, you've got to realize where the above picture comes from -- it's the Grady Twin Daughters from The Shining. "Thirty Years Later" from photographer Annie Atkins, and it not only runs with Kubrick inspiration, but also succeeds in replicating the creepy simplicity from the film -- the vacant look, the dingy lighting.

Peruse some of our favorites below and the full gallery right over here, then weigh in with your thoughts: Which is your favorite Stanley Kubrick-inspired piece?



[via Superpunch]