A Bloody Disgusting writer reports the recent arrival at his doorstep of a package containing an unidentified USB flash drive. It turned out the flash drive featured a viral clip from, in all probability, Paramount’s upcoming Paranormal Activity 2.
Instead of the bed ghosts – here’s wondering if they caused this year’s bed bug infestation – the viral has a creepy baby walking in the dark.
Before you can ask yourself why in hell that baby is up and about after 1 a.m. (1:22:04 to be exact), there’s lots of noise, something or other upside down, and what looks like a woman making a disgusted face.
The return address found on the paranormal baby package was 40 University Dr, Rindge, NH 03461 (Franklin Pierce University). Whatever that means – if anything at all.
Directed by Tod Williams from a screenplay by Michael R. Perry, Paranormal Activity 2 is scheduled to hit US theaters on Oct. 22. The film features Katie Featherston and Gabriel Johnson.
Sally Menke Dies: Quentin Tarantino Editor
Sally Menke, film editor on Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, both Kill Bill parts, Jackie Brown, and Inglourious Basterds, was found dead early Tuesday (Sept. 28) morning by searchers in the Hollywood Hills’ Beachwood Canyon, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Menke was 56 years old.
She and a friend had gone hiking with Menke’s Labrador retriever on Monday, the hottest day ever recorded in the Los Angeles area. The friend later returned, but Menke continued on with her dog. No cause of death has been reported as yet, but the heat may have been a factor.
Menke’s body was found at the bottom of a ravine. Her dog was found alive, sitting next to her.
In addition to her work for Tarantino, Menke also edited, among others, Steve Barron’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Oliver Stone’s Heaven & Earth (1993), Lee Tamahori’s Mulholland Falls (1996), Billy Bob Thornton’s All the Pretty Horses (2000), and Michael Lander’s Peacock (2010), which stars Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, and Josh Lucas.
Menke was nominated for two Academy Awards (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds), two American Cinema Editor Awards (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), and three British Academy Awards (for the aforementioned three titles).
She won Best Editing awards from both the Las Vegas and the San Diego film critics for her work on Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
Mark Zuckerberg multimillionaire damage control attempt
Today, Sept. 24, 26-year-old billionaire and Facebook co-creator Mark Zuckerberg – sandwiched between a Republican governor (New Jersey’s Chris Christie) and a Democratic mayor (Newark’s Cory Booker), no less – went on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show to announce that within the next five years he’ll be giving $100 million to Newark schools.
Today, director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s scathing portrayal of Zuckerberg and his fellow Facebook nerdy, ambitious, greedy, spiteful cohorts, The Social Network, opens the New York Film Festival.
Coincidence? You and your Facebook “friends” decide.
The Social Network, the film to beat at the 2011 Oscars, opens in the U.S. on Oct. 1. The cast includes Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, and Rooney Mara.
Below are snippets from a handful of highly positive reviews – though the IFC’s Alison Willmore misses the Facebook point a bit, as the mammoth social-networking website a global, not an American phenomenon.
It may feel a little soon to be dissecting the creation of Facebook on the cinema screen, but Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires is a compelling source text. And in the hands of The West Wing‘s Aaron Sorkin, credited as the scriptwriter, and powerhouse director David Fincher (after Zodiac, no stranger to recent-past reconstruction), The Social Network emerges as a fantastically surefooted and immensely watchable anatomy of a “holy-shit, once-in-a-generation moment”, as it’s aptly described at one point.
Andrew Pulver, The Guardian.
Just how much director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin are able to wring out of the story of the founding of Facebook is astounding. In this tale of asthmatic overachievers and entitled princelings trying to litigate each other to the death over a site based on showing off how many people you know is a microcosm of class, of ethics, and of the warped, weird thing that’s become of the American Dream. The film rings like a boxing bell, but it’s also uncommonly entertaining.
Alison Willmore, IFC.
A word of warning – you’re going to hear and read a lot of hyperbole about this movie. This is why – The Social Network is smart, tense, and absolutely invigorating to watch. It is a triumph for crew and cast and the audience as well (a major exception being the real-life people these actors portray). Whether Network is the defining film of this decade, the last, or the next remains to be seen – and in any case, if this is the kind of wordplay on hand, we must be really starving for a non-condescending, genuinely interesting motion picture to pop up in theaters.
Mark Zhuravsky, Obsessed with Film.
The briefest summary of this fast, caustic, super-brainy entertainment is that Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard College, was a brilliant, prickly loner — “He doesn’t have three friends to rub together,” one rival says — who created a website that gave him, at last count, 500 million friends. Mark can be seen as a disabled hero, like a legless man who invents a better wheelchair, or a tragically flawed king, like Superman with a Kryptonite chip embedded in his brain. Either way, the film says, geniuses are abnormal. The obsessive focus that these blessed, cursed minds bring to their goal often excludes social peripheral vision.
Richard Corliss, Time.
As Zuckerberg, Jesse Eisenberg offers up a must-see performance. A dead ringer for the mop-haired Zuckerberg, Eisenberg inhabits the role of a status-hungry geek-turned-larger-than-life billionaire to perfection. Sorkin’s swift hand gives Eisenberg the sniveling, slightly sinister tone of a genius who speaks faster than he thinks and thinks at the speed of light. He’s not a run-of-the-mill bookworm. He’s an aggressive nerd bent on world domination.
Sheila Marikar, ABC News.
Photo: Columbia Pictures.
In the above photo, from left to right, are: Steven Poster, International Cinematographers Guild (ICG) national president, Jim Matlosz, chairman of ICG’s ECA committee, Stephen Lighthill, recipient of the Deluxe/Bud Stone Award, Bob Fisher, recipient of the Technicolor Award, Andy Romanoff, recipient of the Kodak Award, and Alan Gitlin, ICG’s national secretary-treasurer.
The International Cinematographers Guild’s 14th Annual Emerging Cinematographer Awards were held this past Sunday, September 26, at the Directors Guild of America Theater in West Hollywood.
Andy Romanoff was given the Kodak Award for Mentoring Young Cinematographers in the Art and Craft of Cinematography. Stephen Lighthill’s Deluxe/Bud Stone Award was for Educational Contributions to the Art and Craft of Cinematography. Bob Fischer’s Technicolor / William A. Fraker Award was for Outstanding Journalistic Contributions to the Art and Craft of Cinematography.
Photo: Mathew Imaging
Producer/director/actor Kevin Smith made a guest appearance at the International Cinematographers Guild’s 14th Annual Emerging Cinematographer Awards (ECA), which took place on Sunday, September 26, at the Directors Guild of America Theater in West Hollywood.
Smith described his reliance on his cinematographers, particularly David Klein (Clerks, Zack and Miri Make a Porno). The filmmaker stated that initially he had known very little about cinematography, framing the shots with his hands and having Klein translate that with the appropriate lens.
The Emerging Cinematographer Awards evening was hosted by Steven Poster ASC, national president of the International Cinematographers Guild (ICG), and Jim Matlosz, chairman of the Guild’s ECA committee.
Photo: Mathew Imaging
ICG national president Steven Poster with Cameron Duncan, winner of Panavision’s $60,000 film rental package at the International Cinematographers Guild’s 14th Annual Emerging Cinematographer Awards were held Sunday, Sept. 26, at the Directors Guild of America Theater in West Hollywood. Duncan’s win was for his work on the the short film Mr. Marceau.
Arri awarded a prize to Tod Campbell, DP on The Big Bends. Brian Udoff received a prize from Abel Cinetech for his work on Les Mouches, and Deluxe gave their award to Jacob Pinger, cinematographer on The Cycle.
Other honorees, whose films were shown, were Stephanie Dufford (Fantastic Magnifico), Rodney Lamborn (Meridian), Patrick Meade Jones (Android Love) and John Snedden (Brite Eyes).
Trailers were screened for two Honorable Mentions: Aaron Medick (Weequahic) and Tim Bellen (State of Grace).
Photo: Mathew Imaging
And finally, according to a press release we’ve received, actor James Holzier is in negotiations to play the lead in Champion Entertainment’s thriller Playing the Card. If he does get to sign on for the part, Holzier will play a law student whose younger sister is gunned down in a random bank robbery. The attorney-to-be must then use his legal background to bring the killers to justice. Nancy Mccreary penned the screenplay. The project’s director still hasn’t been announced.