Author: Eric Francisco

Eric is a graduate of Rutgers University and is working to become a filmmaker/producer, but he really just wants to be a Power Ranger. He likes his sugar with coffee and cream.

Low-Res Banner Reveals “Shuriken Sentai Ninninger,” 2015’s Super Sentai Series

by Eric Francisco

While Power Rangers Dino Charge is right around the corner, standing quietly behind it is the next iteration of Power Rangers’ Japanese sibling show, Super Sentai. Long-rumored to be the ninja-themed Shuriken Sentai Ninninger (yes, that’s a small typo away from trouble), a very pixel-y, low-resolution banner image has been leaked and posted on RangerBoard.

Confirmed: Yes, it’s Ninninger and they are ninjas.

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With 1994’s Ninja Sentai Kakuranger and 2002’s Ninpu Sentai Hurricanger, this is now the third ninja-themed Super Sentai series in the franchise (but certainly not the third to have ninjas at all, see: 1987’s Hikari Sentai Maskman). And, I like it!

Every year around this time the look of the next Super Sentai series is leaked in some form or another in very low-resolution images. This year is no different, but for once the costumes look pretty good despite the Windows 95-era image quality. The suit designs are expectedly a mix of Kakuranger, Hurricanger, and somewhat of a surprise, I see a little of 2009’s Samurai Sentai Shinkenger.

For the past few years I avoided Super Sentai due to incredibly dumb premises I couldn’t get past. I can definitely get behind plain, badass ninjas. Have you seen this year’s Ressha Sentai ToQger? If you frequent sites like Uproxx, you might have heard of it.

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This isn’t a bootleg. This is real.

ToQger looks silly and goofy (and I’ve been told it really is, because Jesus Christ look at the picture above), and not in the charming ’66 Batman way either. 2013’s Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger mixed dinosaurs with samba dancing, which only makes sense in Japan. 2012’s Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters has been hailed as a storytelling masterpiece by my fellow peers, but I couldn’t stand the low-rent C-3POs each Ranger had as their companions robots.

On the topic of spandex color and genders, this is the first since 1985’s Dengeki Sentai Changeman to feature a female White Ranger and Pink Ranger. Retro! And, look, about that.

I know I’ve been serving as the sort of official/unofficial liaison between Geekscape and the Power Rangers fandom, and I hope you’ve been finding my job at that satisfactory thus far, but there are some nuances — like the gender/color combination as a thing to care about — that are totally normal to me but weird to you and that’s something I take for granted. Fans looking forward to what colors will be used and the gender of each Ranger has become something of a …thing to speculate. I can’t tell you why. It just is. Thanks for just going with it, I sincerely appreciate it.

Anyway. Unlike Dino Charge, which has TV promos online, toys already on shelves, and even a smart phone app to play with, Ninninger is still just away from arm’s reach. This pixel-feast of a banner is all we have. So stay tuned to Geekscape, we’ll post more information as soon as we know more.

‘Parks & Recreation’ Final Season Premiere Date Revealed!

by Eric Francisco

According to Entertainment Weekly, NBC has given an expiration date to the beloved Parks & Recreation. The 13-episode final season will start on January 13 at 8 PM and will take its final bow on February 24. Yeah, if you do the math that means NBC will air back-to-back episodes for the entire run.

From EW:

“Mike Schur and Amy Poehler, along with their incredible producers, cast, and crew, have given us one of the great television comedies of all time, and we’re inordinately proud of Parks and Recreation,” said NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt in a statement on Monday. “In an effort to give it the send-off it deserves, we wanted to ‘eventize’ the final season to maximize the impact of these episodes, which really do take the show to a new level. The highly-anticipated one-hour finale will air behind The Voice in order to lead the largest audience possible into what promises to be a very special hour of television.”

The jarring time-jump from last season was a creative leap of faith. Giant manipulations of time in TV have an interesting history, and it is the number one thing I’m looking forward to seeing from the affable sitcom this final season. I look forward to all the think pieces online that will compare Parks & Recreation to an epic like Battlestar Galactica.

Remember the way Leslie Knope used to address Ann with a soft and comforting, “Oh, Ann Perkins,” followed by like a random assortment of flowery adjectives? That’s the way I and I’m sure many feel about Parks & Recreation. So it isn’t easy for me to say this, but it’s time for the show to bow out.

Almost everyone in the core cast’s profile has skyrocketed since the show began. Every one of them are very talented individuals, and while Parks has given them the spotlight it’s time for them to shine brighter and move on. Amy Poehler has become a comedy titan, and will in fact be hosting The Golden Globes with tag-team partner Tina Fey for the third and last time. Aubrey Plaza just voiced the Grumpy Cat for Lifetime as basically one complicated troll, and will no doubt do something major in the near future. Aziz Ansari is huge. Rashida Jones is everywhere. Rob Lowe too. Ditto Nick Offerman. Adam Scott is selling you vodka and will star in comedies until you can’t have any more. And arguably the biggest star of all? Lovable oaf Chris Pratt is now a part of the Marvel Universe as a ripped space outlaw. I also can’t forget about Retta. Follow her on Twitter, it will make live TV fun.

A lot of people are bummed out about the show’s imminent end. As well they should, because Parks & Recreation will go down as a legend in the annals of TV comedy. But fans should take comfort knowing that it is a deserved end and not a premature cancellation or a long-past-due mercy kill. Hardly any shows get such a dignity. And hey, remember when season one Parks & Rec was nothing but a pale imitation of The Office? We’ve come a long way since.

Set your DVRs, we leave Pawnee starting January 13, 2015 on NBC. Rachel Dratch, Jon Hamm, Megan Mullaly, and even fellow Rutgers alum Natalie Morales are set to guest star. I can’t wait.

Batman Makes Tanks Go BOOM! in ‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ Ace Chemicals Infiltration Trailer (Part 2)

by Eric Francisco

I won’t argue with you the necessity of Batman utilizing heavy firepower in his vehicles to combat tanks and aircrafts. I get it, and it’s not like Batman hasn’t used guns before. But with the way most Batman fans rally behind the Dark Knight’s anti-firepower philosophy, it’s really off-putting seeing a version of Batman unleash more lead than a dozen Expendables movies all directed by John Woo.

But enough of that! You came to see Part 2 of the new “Ace Chemicals Infiltration” trailer for Batman: Arkham Knight, because even video game trailers get The Hobbit treatment!

Despite the snark (I can’t help it), this looks like a ton of fun. It’s a gameplay trailer and not pre-rendered, as in this is what the actual game looks like, sans all the fancy camera angles, slo-mo and editing. I still haven’t gotten any of the new-generation consoles, but when Batman: Arkham Knight is released next summer that will be rectified.

In this trailer Batman is going up against the Arkham Knight’s heavily armed militia and drone tanks. That’s a great wave-off to cause destruction, but don’t you think Batman’s foes would have figured out his unwillingness to kill can be used to their advantage?

Oh my God, I sound like a villain. Don’t tell the bat!

Guillermo del Toro Just Completed A ‘Justice League Dark’ Script

by Eric Francisco

Renowned director Guillermo del Toro just submitted a new script based on the Justice League Dark comic series (tentatively titled Dark Universe) to Warner Bros. We have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

According to Forbes and /Film, del Toro’s script will feature DC horror staples Swamp Thing, The Demon, Deadman, The Spectre, and among others, John Constantine. I hope Zatanna Zatara is in there somewhere. del Toro has been working on Justice League Dark for several years now, but the last anyone heard about it was vague updates about a story bible. Until today.

With Warner Bros. desperate for any new franchise — and have been since Harry Potter completed his studies and Christopher Nolan’s Batman stopped doing Batman-y things — the studio might be more receptive to the fertile ground that is DC’s occult universe. While Warner Bros. does have Justice League and other associated superhero movies slated for the next several years, they all rely on the success of Batman v. Superman, and while the financial success of that movie is pretty much a given it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the studio to be cooking up other things. The Justice League Dark offers a wealth of fresh characters still relatively unknown and have the potential to be their own powerhouse. At best, they can be the true, symbolically new Universal monsters for the 21st century.

It is also entirely unknown whether or not Dark Universe will tie into the previously-mentioned Justice League movies. A year ago Guillermo del Toro said it was a possibility, but Badass Digest says it’s a sturdy no. I can’t see why not, although I’d understand if they want to focus on building each universe to be their own thing first before expanding into one giant clusterf*ck.

Still, there are reasons for pause. del Toro is currently knee-deep in post-production of Crimson Peak, and shortly after he’ll be taking on continuing Pacific Rim. On top of that, I’m pretty sure executive producing The Strain requires a lot of attention. Even if Warner Bros. executives love del Toro’s script and immediately greenlight it, we won’t see a glimpse of it until maybe 2017. A final film maybe in 2018 or 2019, and that’s being optimistic. (I just realized Power Rangers will be an actual thing by then, and I just got mad del Toro isn’t working on that.)

Elsewhere, NBC’s Constantine struggles to stay on television. News about the show’s continuation are still up in the air, but in the meantime you can watch all five episodes aired so far in their entirety here, free!

I’ve said before how Constantine on NBC is a chance to see the league on television and be totally amazing. I’m still processing how the show might die but a league story may live on a greater scale than I could have imagined.

While movie Constantine pretties himself to return to the big screen, TV Constantine is a drunken pledge passed out at a frat party. He’ll be fine! No, don’t call the cops yet! Wait! Just, turn his head over or something.

Are you excited for a big-screen Justice League Dark movie as I am? Comment below.

The Park is Open: ‘Jurassic World’ Trailer Now Online!

by Eric Francisco

Ahead of its scheduled Thanksgiving weekend debut, the trailer for the new Jurassic World has been released online! Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and — whoa, BD Wong!

Colin Trevvorow sits in the director’s chair, but the man himself Steven Spielberg is on board serving as executive producer.

From the press release:

Steven Spielberg returns to executive produce the long-awaited next installment of his groundbreaking Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World.  Colin Trevorrow directs the epic action-adventure from a screenplay he wrote with Derek Connolly.  Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley join the team as producers.

Jurassic World will be released in 3D by Universal Pictures on June 12, 2015.

Well, I know what I’ll be watching over and over this weekend.

NBC Halts ‘Constantine,’ Series’ Future Unknown

by Eric Francisco

The “Keep Constantine On-Air Watch 2014″ is nigh here at Geekscape HQ (aka, my desk at home). According to Deadline, NBC has halted production on Constantine after work on the initial 13-episode order was completed. The network will still air the remaining episodes at its usual time slot while they decide what to do next. Renewal or an episode order past thirteen episodes is a possibility at this moment, but the situation is delicate.

I like to imagine NBC executives are now pacing around the room, with an intern scribbling on a yellow legal pad with “PROS” and “CONS” written on opposite sides.

From Deadline:

NBC had to make a decision whether to keep Constantine in continuous production with little ratings information. While the series began production on a standard fall premiere production schedule, its launch was delayed until late October when NBC’s Friday genre block usually debuts, so the network had to make a call whether to order additional episodes after only four episodes had aired vs. at least seven, which is the norm for freshman series.

 

Constantine has not been a breakout the way fellow NBC Friday genre drama Grimm was in its debut. But NBC brass were probably encouraged by the freshman’s +38% week-to-week ratings jump for Episode 5 this Friday to a 1.1 among adults 18-49 in Live+Same day, the show’s highest mark since the series debut, and by its best retention of the Grimm lead-in, also since the series debut. Additionally, Constantine, based on the DC property, has strong fan base because of its comic origins and has seen big DVR lifts, most recently rising +81% in Live+3 for Episode 4, regarded by fans as a possible creative turning point in the series.

I don’t know what to blame should Constantine be canceled. I’d like to blame something, because that’s just how I pathetically occupy my time, and I point the finger at timing or lack of week-of promotion. Friday nights might be a “death slot” but that hasn’t stopped shows from finding an audience. It seems no one paid attention in the week it premiered, no matter how many ads they bought on YouTube, and definitely no one paid attention in week two which was Halloween night. That has left just the last few weeks for the show to build an audience — and it has! — but on the executives’ end of things it may not have come soon enough. All the summer hype seemed to fade when it came to the week of the premiere. Who in the marketing department slacked off?

It still baffles me how The Walking Dead succeeded premiering on Halloween night in 2010.

Deadline had some additional information that made me chuckle:

NBC has been supportive of the show, running a marathon of episodes on cable sibling Syfy this weekend and slating Constantine cast members to appear on the network’s broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade next week.

Having the cast show up on one of the biggest daytime television events of the year? That just might do the trick! If not, at least we’ll have the memory of an Alan Moore creation smiling next to Santa Claus in the most corporate of carnivals in the 21st century. That’s a scary enough thought to last a lifetime. See? Constantine IS a horror show!

Speaking of the cast, remember when I spoke to executive producer David S. Goyer and actors Matt Ryan and Angelica Celaya about the show at this year’s New York Comic-Con? Good times.

My fellow Constantine fans should hope for the best, but after my heart was broken with the cancellation of Selfie (I’m serious) I’m preparing for the worst. Still, hope is not lost! If you want the show to remain on air, show support and watch live (ESPECIALLY you bastards who are in Neilsen homes) and flood your social media as much as possible. No one cares about that Mumford & Sons lyric anyway, so tweet #Constantine instead!

Meanwhile, “Danse Vaudou” was last week’s episode, and was also probably the best of the season (so far).

http://youtu.be/ELBDBua4k3w?list=UUwLw7wMt6ra3yIdSd8EK8FQ

(Psst. If you haven’t seen Constantine yet, allow me from a few weeks ago to convince you why you should!)

NBC’s ‘Constantine’ Ratings Spike 28%, But Things Could Be Better

by Eric Francisco

NBC’s Constantine has gone from hyped genre TV train to a little engine that just maybe can. The excitement from this past summer, as I’ve written before, has kind of vanished, but there’s a renewed vigor amongst fans on social media to keep the show going after cancellation seemed like a possibility just a few short weeks ago. Executive producer Daniel Cerone tweeted this early this afternoon:

I’m not sure just how good exactly a 1.1 is, but because it’s Fridays nights I’m sure the rules are a little different. Ratings, ultimately, are a totally archaic and old-school perspective on television and if I had the power I’d do away with them completely. It’s unfair that a small portion of the TV viewing audience dictates what everyone else gets to see. But because that’s how the game is still played, we have to live with it for now.

While the ratings have spiked, there is still a way to go. The numbers could be better, and the show’s quality — while improving — is still erratic and both the storytelling and the filmmaking are kind of messy. It’s a fun show for sure, but stacked against fellow DC series like The Flash and it pales in comparison.

But congratulations are in order to the cast and crew of Constantine for finally being able to etch out their audience and stay in the fight. As you know, I’m a total supporter for the show (as a lover of Power Rangers for two decades, I always root for potential, and Constantine has that in spades). If you haven’t watched it yet now is the time to dive in. Last night’s episode, “Danse Vaudou,” sees the return of Papa Midnite and is easily the best episode of the season so far. That’s kind of a dubious statement since it is only just the fifth episode, but if the upward trajectory in quality that the show-makers have demonstrated continues, we’re bound to be in for a hell of a ride. I can’t wait for next week.

It demands repeating: Constantine has the entire occult corner of the DC Universe covered. While The Flash and Arrow take on superheroes and super beings, Constantine‘s territory is the supernatural. Should the show thrive, we’re going to see characters like Swamp Thing and Zatanna. Without spoiling, we were introduced to Jim Corrigan (played by Emmett Scanlan), and the producers have made it pretty clear that he will be The Spectre eventually.

I reiterate that I am not paid or sponsored in any way by NBC Universal, DC Comics, or anybody involved with the production of Constantine. I’m just a fan who wants good television to stay on the air. You can watch Constantine on NBC, Friday nights at 10 PM EST. Set your DVR or something. Remember, even Arrow was kind of bad at first.

Brand New ‘Power Rangers Dino Charge’ Teaser Has Almost Entirely New Footage

by Eric Francisco

Power Rangers Super Megaforce mercifully came to an end today. Two years a “Legendary War” was hyped that lasted just under four minutes and was predominantly recycled Gokaiger scenes. There’s supposed to be an extended cut airing this Monday night, but safe to say fans have moved on to greener pastures. Those pastures being 2015’s Power Rangers Dino Charge.

After the abysmal finale to the abysmal Super Megaforce, Nickelodeon aired a brand-new teaser to Power Rangers Dino Charge, different than what was shown at this year’s Power MorphiCon and Licensing Expo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebu9oPWZ7WE

It’s almost entirely new footage! And we get a great look at the villain, the first original villain in Power Rangers since the Disney era. But the teaser itself is really just okay, and not too different from what a Megaforce promo looked like.

But it’s Dino Charge! There are legitimate reasons to be excited. Beloved producer Judd Lynn has returned to helm the series, and the characters just look great. For those unfamiliar with showrunner Judd Lynn, it’s the rough equivalent of having Bruce Timm (showrunner of the acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series) work on Gotham. But the standout is actress Camille Hyde, who will be playing the Pink Ranger. While unfortunate she’s the only woman on the team (for now), she is breaking ground as the first black Pink Ranger, which is a first in the twenty-plus years that Power Rangers has been on air. Twenty years. Better late than never. And hey, not even the Marvel movies have a black female superhero.

Also of note is Yoshua Sudarso, playing the Blue Ranger. On the surface he’s a pretty boy model and extremely athletic stuntman, but if you catch him on social media you will see just how dyed-in-the-wool nerd he is of the franchise. He’s constantly on the closed (but not secret) Facebook Rangers group — the largest network of Power Rangers fans on Facebook — gushing about Super Sentai and working with the stunt crew. He reminds me of David Tennant, who was obsessed with Doctor Who as a child and grew up to become a powerhouse of a Doctor himself. He even has cool hair like Tennant.

For me, it’s just nice to be excited about Power Rangers again, because Super Megaforce left me a vegetable.

Power Rangers Dino Charge will air in early 2015 on Nickelodeon. Will you be watching?

Geekscape Movie Reviews: ‘Late Phases’

by Eric Francisco

LatePhases_Poster

It isn’t difficult to be overwhelmed with a sense of dread when amongst retirement homes or communities. Although retirement community residents retain much more independence and dignity than home residents, there is still has an emptiness that can’t be fulfilled. It is life worn out, the light of yesteryear faded and burned. Of course, perspectives vary on how to spend one’s twilight, but generally speaking there are two options: Stay dwelling in the ghosts of yesteryear, or go out kicking and screaming in a blaze of glory.

Ambrose McKinley chose option three: Showdown with a werewolf.

Adrián García Bogliano has roared in his English-language debut with Late Phases, an expertly-crafted throwback to ’80s monster movies for modern audiences that is bound to be a new indie classic someday. Nick Damici stars as Ambrose, a blind Vietnam War veteran who has moved into a retirement community. A lesser movie would have had a needless arc of Ambrose refusing to admit he’s silvered, but Ambrose has embraced his age. Rather, his issues lie with his son Will (Ethan Embry), who has moved on in his life and treats his father as a kind of burden. Ambrose just wants some peace before he kicks the bucket, wherever and whenever that will be.

But where is Crescent Bay, a retirement community at the edge of a deep forrest. It’s a perfectly normal, if quiet and somewhat religious community, until Ambrose is attacked and his beloved seeing-eye dog and next-door neighbor are viciously murdered by a giant… thing. Ambrose is blind, and no one in the town, not even the police, want to admit what it is. Either they don’t know or they don’t want to know, but Ambrose — “23 United States Army, 5 years Vietnam” — for damn sure well. With revenge on his mind and his gun in hand, Ambrose spends the next month, until the next full moon, preparing for revenge. On paper that sounds like a riot, like an old school monster movie — and, yeah, Late Phases is! — but the movie is in fact kind of subdued, and in between the encounters with the werewolf the movie is very much a drama about a father and son.  It’s a quiet riot, if you will. It has a brisk pace at a calculated speed, and truly unlike other indie horror movies of its kind.

Late Phases, the title, refers to more than just the moon. It refers to everyone in Crescent Bay, spending their last days in relative peace besides the monthly werewolf murder. And it especially refers to Ambrose himself. In action movies, a man with nothing to lose is a tired trope, but in horror it’s fertile ground. In fact, the choice of protagonist is a supremely unique choice given the genre. Horror, unlike other genres, frequently employs tropes like horny teenagers and the well-known “final girl,” but here the film is centered on a grizzled war vet. A blind vet. It is really, really difficult for me to say that a film is unique when its protagonist is an old white dude and make you believe that is a good thing, but watching Nick Damici as Ambrose gives the film a dynamic unlike many other monster movies before it. The last badass white guy in the center of a monster movie I recall was a superhero Van Helsing. Ambrose isn’t a superhero, but he’s a man with nothing to lose. Hell, he’s already lost one of his senses. And still, the terror never goes away.

And what terror! The very design of the werewolf is ingenious, and its fee-fi-fo-fum presence utterly chilling. There’s something about the old school costume design and the body language the werewolf actors employ. It is both animalistic and alien, like a foreign creature from a totally other world. But I need to give a round of applause to the sound editors above all. From the banging doors to the howl of the werewolf, the blood-churning sound engineering really sells the atmosphere of the film. Even when the werewolves look their goofiest from certain shots, their growls and howls keep them a force to be feared. What’s weird: They used stock library dragon growls. And somehow, they still manage to make that work.

A word about Ambrose’s blindness. It’s a weird character trait for sure. In the end, there’s no payoff from him being blind. I’m sure there’s a deep reading you can make of it somewhere, but Ambrose could have had 20/20 vision and his character arc would have been roughly the same. But there is a wonderful dynamic for a blind man to be in a horror movie, a monster movie at that. To remove sight from the central protagonist in a monster movie kind of removes an element of visual fear for the character, so when it comes to pointing a gun at them they won’t blink twice (uh, so to speak). Yet, his background as a Vietnam War vet could have easily sufficed. His blindness didn’t need to add to that.

Bogliano and cinematographer Ernesto Herrera know how to direct the camera, and their vision of horror action is both novel and superb. A lesser film would have shook the camera to a frenzy, because that’s just how things are now. But Bogliano remains steadier than others, and no matter how dark the picture the action is clear and concise. Ambrose, being a Vietnam vet, chooses guerrilla tactics that’s best described as a cross between Eastwood and Home Alone. But it’s good! The film does not resort to absurdity to tell its story, and you will not see this old dude bring out an AK-47 he just happened to have in his closet. He’s a soldier, not a gun-toting maniac. The Vietnam part of his military career was careful. He doesn’t just know how to kill. He knows how to survive.

Damici sticks out, and for good reason. His New York accent and Army vet swagger separates him from the rest of Crescent Bay. He’s an outsider, and he doesn’t belong playing nice with wannabe elder WASPs still trying to keep appearances. But he finds kindred spirits with the local church’s pastor, Father Roger (character actor Tom Noonan), both outsiders aimlessly seeking to make up past sins somehow. But Damici is a powerhouse, and his presence in Crescent Bay is probably the most exciting thing that has happened to the community in awhile. The werewolf comes every month, they’re kind of used to that by now, but Ambrose? They weren’t prepared for him.

Despite how much he’s pissed off Crescent Bay, he hasn’t pissed anyone else more than his own son Will. It’s understood that Will’s mother had something to do with Ambrose and his son’s tiff, but in the end the specific thing that caused their riff is no real matter. Sometimes you don’t even remember why you fight with someone for so long, you just know that you can’t stand them and need no other reason to. It sounds like a fault, but the chemistry between Damici and Embry carry weight that sells their history well enough that you won’t need to ask so many questions. You kind of just get it.

Late Phases is really just a really good indie horror movie, warts and all. And there are warts, but to go over them in detail would be needless nitpicking. Some of the other characters could be better developed, primarily the women, but the movie is really just one soldier with family issues against a monster. Almost everything else is second. It’s fascinating that the film accomplishes to both terrify and excite, and that it only uses the monster sparingly demonstrates just how good the central character and his inner turmoil is. You come for the werewolf fight, you stay to see a man struggle to be a father to a grown-up son. There’s more I could talk about but it would be giving away far too much. It’s an expertly-paced monster movie with surprisingly dramatic elements that all form to make up a new kind of horror movie, one that is bound to find a dedicated, hardcore audience in the years to come.

Geekscape gives Late Phases a 4/5. It is a monster movie unlike anything else with a compelling central character, emotionally strong inner and outer conflicts, and one hell of an atmosphere. You seriously need to see the werewolf transformation.

Late Phases is out now in theaters and Video on Demand.

Geekscape Interviews: ‘Epochalypse’ Author Jonathan Hennessey!

by Eric Francisco

Jonathan Hennessey’s passion for American history is almost infectious. Shortly after our conversation I felt like watching 1776 or even playing some Assassin’s Creed III. His published works to date have been made up of graphic novel/history textbook hybrids, such as The United States Constitution: A Graphic Novel Adaptation and The Comic Book Story of Beer. Yes, beer! Now, Hennessey enters the realm of fictional storytelling with his new series, the sci-fi epic Epochalypse, from Legendary Comics.

Six hundred years have collapsed into one time and space. Whole societies from the past and present are forced to co-exist in a single dystopian civilization. In an effort to maintain order and restore the timeline, government “Resynchronization Officers” seek out “anachronisms,” items from the future that threaten the laws of time.

One officer in particular rises up to hunt down the criminal dealer, The Salesman, and the elusive scientist Dr. Tomorrow. Standing in his way: shadowy agencies, rebel militias, and his own forbidden desires.

Before we get to Epochalypse, I want to talk about you. You describe yourself as “American history is my muse.” How and where did your love for American history begin?

Jonathan: I will admit I didn’t always love it. I was raised in Massachusetts and [although] I was never in the military myself, I was born on an army base and my father was in the service for a pretty good chunk of my life. So I was just sort of surrounded by it. I remember having little 4th of July parades in the condo complex where my parents lived, wearing those little tricorn hats and pretend muskets.

But it gets so in your face when you live in Massachusetts, that it’s just something you get bored of. So I was sort of not interested in it for a long time. And then in my twenties, I became a sort of “born again” American history geek, I would say. I was riding a bicycle … I would say cross-country [but] it wasn’t quite that far, I started in Massachusetts up to Montreal and down to Texas [in Austin] where I lived for several years. Along the way, I went with a buddy of mine, and we were coming back [from Canada], on the New York stateside of Lake Champlain. And we kept running into these John Brown sites. John Brown, being the guy in the 1850s, he was this crazy, sort of radical abolitionist. Terrorist, really.

I remember him!

Jonathan: He wanted to incite a slave uprising. And he wanted all slaves to rise up and kill their masters, and it was gonna be his job to start it and he was going to hand out weapons. He was gonna go through Virginia handing out like, haldberds and really horrible spear-like weapons. And we just kept running into John Brown sites, [even] way up the Canadian border. And then, where he tried his ill-fated attempt to have his slave uprising, which was in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, we were camping there and close to that was the battlefield for the Battle of Antietam. We were camping in the swamp, like not even in the camp ground, we were sort of pushed off the trail we were biking on, and it was just spooky. And I couldn’t stop thinking about John Brown. I wouldn’t say I had a supernatural experience that night, but … there was something in the air. After that I couldn’t stop. It just got sort of reborn in me.

You use the comic book medium in novel ways. You’ve adapted the Gettysburg Address, the United States Constitution, and even the history of beer into a graphic novel format. Now, you’re currently working on The Comic Book Guide to the USA. What is it about comic books that you’re attracted to? What do you like doing in comic books that you don’t want to do in other ways?

Jonathan: I love prose literature, but I think we’re very visual animals for the most part. I know I’m very visual, but I cannot draw to save my life. I’ve tried, I’ve taken instructions, it’s not gonna happen.

Me too.

Jonathan: I would if I could! And being able to hand off your writing to an illustrator and see that person come up with something is so gratifying. It’s not that it’s easy, [but] if you were making a film you’d have to hire a whole crew, and it would be tons of money, so it’s just so gratifying to take ideas that you want to express visually, and [comic books are] a great way to do it. But also I think it’s a great way of clarifying without simplifying. It’s an old, shop-worn idea, but a picture is worth a thousand words. You can make a lot of head way, narratively with pictures and words, that you can’t get with just one or the other alone.

What led you to Epochalypse? What made you want to dive in fiction, and what influenced Epochalypse?

Jonathan: It’s interesting that you asked that. I never set out to be a writer of nonfiction, actually. These other projects were born out of me trying to shop Epochalypse around insanely. Epochalypse in 2006 was developed enough where I was sending it around to editors trying to get it going, and it was close enough to where people were interested but nobody wanted to pull the trigger. But there were people interested in doing nonfiction. There were people who asked me, “Well there’s nothing I can do with this crazy time-travel story, but what other ideas do you have? What other ideas do you have that the book publishing industry might be interested in?” And so the nonfiction book became this kind of strange interlude, unexpected but very enriching and very rewarding. It was done sort of parallel trying to launch Epochalypse.

How did you choose a character like Johannes to lead Epochalypse? You have 600 years of human history colliding, I imagine it’s difficult to pick just one. What led you to pick him? And what do you think is making Johannes tick?

Jonathan: I picked Johannes because I found myself really interested in an overlooked chapter in American history, which is the history of the Dutch colony. When the old New York was really old New Amsterdam. I’ve lived in New York City and anybody who lives in the east coast, and arguably anybody who lives in America, lives in the shadow of New York City. But New York is such a hustling, bustling place … [in cities like] Boston or Philadelphia, the history comes first. In New York, it’s not even second or third. It’s a very distant afterthought.

But I was really intrigued. How was it that the Dutch were the ones who started things here? We tend to forget that the Netherlands were great merchant exploratory power when the empire was at its height. And also, because it’s an overlooked period [we have forgotten that] the Dutch values really did help make America, America. The Dutch was one of the only really middle class countries in Europe, particularly at the time. It didn’t have a lot of nobility, it was sort of a model republic for the United States. It’s a civilization that I’m very interested in, and they were famous for their tolerance. Most people forget that the pilgrims actually moved to the Netherlands first and tried to have a go at it before they came to Plymouth.

I think I remember reading that in school, but I admit I forgot.

Jonathan: Yeah! So, Johannes came out of that for me. And in some ways I describe Johannes as a sort of anti-Batman. And I say that because, one of the things that’s motivating him as we’ll see in Issue #2 before he gets displaced from history, he witnesses the massacre of his whole family. He comes into the year 1951, along with all the people from the past and the future. Most people want to go back to where they came from. He hears that there is this mysterious new government that promises that [they] can undo what has been done and it needs people to help it, and in exchange the people who help the government restore history will be allowed to go anywhere in history they want.

Epochalypse has a distinct vision of time travel problems as paradoxes, and I think this is another bone that I have to pick with time-travel in general: I think we humans have such vanity for ourselves and our own role in the history of the universe. Like when we imagine if we [were to] go back in time and kill our grandmother or something like that, like something that trivial can really throw the whole universe off, it’s silly to me. So in Epochalypse, the only paradox in the universe wouldn’t be able to just absorb, would be some kind of event that would have huge consequences for mass or energy. Not some trivial human event. So Johannes has been told that he will be the one to go back in time and save his family. And I say that he’s an anti-Batman because witnessing the violent death of his loved ones doesn’t make him this dark person bent on revenge. It sort of awakens in him a compassion for he suffering that other people have had and the desire to alleviate that.

You seem to be exploring the more darker corners of human history, especially the realities of colonial/native relations. Coincidentally, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. How do you intend to explore the lesser known and grim realities that have unfortunately happened and tend to be swept under the rug?

Jonathan: In the case of the Native American response to this fictional universe that I’ve created is a very specific one. Because, since the event called the Incongruity has not picked and chosen people carefully. I mean, I as a storyteller have, but I imagine that the event was not discriminating. And so, in this post-Incongruity world, I think there’s actually many more living Native Americans than there would have been had history played out the way it’s supposed to. So the Native American community in this world, which we will begin to see through a character who is introduced in Issue #3, are among several communities in this world who maybe don’t have a vented interest in history going back the way that it was, and may oppose the Resyncronizers and challenge them in important ways.

The art style of Epochalypse has a sort of hyper-realism to it. Yes, it’s a comic book, but there’s a hefty amount of detail. What dictated this style? What discussions did you have with your artist Shane Davis?

Jonathan: The number one thing that I would say is that the things from the future have to really stand out from the past. We’re looking through the eyes of mostly people from the past, looking at what they imagine things from the future should look like. And so, there was a big stylistic choice to go with things that look slightly paleo-futuristic, a vision of a future that did not happen. But that’s not just a mere stylistic choice just to be cute. We will learn as the series goes on that there is a very specific, and possibly sinister reason for things looking the way they do.

I know Epochalype just started, but after the series, what are you looking to tackle next? Would you ever want to write an established character? I imagine you’d be right at home with something like Assassin’s Creed.

Jonathan: [laughs] Right? I would be overjoyed to work on a license character by somebody else. And [because] it’s very important to me, I do plan to continue nonfiction graphic novels as well. I’m exploring some other ideas for that too. It’s interesting to take common things, like beer for example, and you start to peek under the covers and you begin to see how strange history is and how unexpected things influence the present. Like in the History of Beer for example, the early Catholic church came up that I did not expect to see, and things like the Black Death, and how the Black Death helped give rise to the modern period in some strange ways, and how it all had to do with beer!

What ultimately is Epochalypse about at its heart? More than just history colliding into one time and space. What do you want Epochalypse to reflect on the here and now?

Jonathan: The big thematic question at the center of Epochalypse is the question of history itself. As the series go on, the characters will begin to have reason to question themselves. Their task is to save history. Things will happen along the way that will sort of make them question, “Is history worth saving?” Or, if destiny hands you a big reset button for the universe, would it be worth gambling on a fresh start?

From Legendary Comics, Epochalypse #1 is available on comic shelves now.

You can keep up with Jonathan Hennessey through his website.

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EXCLUSIVE: Clip From Tonight’s Lucha Underground, Fenix vs. Pentagon Jr.

by Eric Francisco

Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey network has been proving itself to be ground zero for cool things cool nerds want to watch. Whether it’s reruns of The X-Files or Bruce Lee movies, El Rey is just that awesome channel to have on when you show off your man cave. Lucha Underground is one of their original programs, and just four weeks in we’ve seen some of the craziest wrestling anywhere on television.

Tonight is the premiere of the fourth episode, and we have an exclusive clip featuring Fenix and Pentagon Jr. tearing the house down.

The episode premieres tonight at 8 PM EST/PT on the El Rey network. Check your local listings.

From the press release:

El Rey Network will air the fourth episode of their action packed original wrestling series “Lucha Underground,” from Emmy Award®-winning producer Mark Burnett on Wednesday, November 19th at 8:00PM ET/PT. In the brand new episode entitled “Thrill of the Hunt,” Konnan cautions Puma to not get involved in the main event between Mundo and Big Ryck and Sexy Star makes a theatrical return as she vows vengeance on Chavo and takes on Ivelisse in the ring. Let us know if you would like photos/clips from this week!
The new 39-episode series combines ancient lucha libre tradition, extraordinary athleticism and a flare for theatrics in each hour-long episode. Every Wednesday, viewers will have a backstage and ringside seat as masked villains and heroes tell their stories while facing off to battle for wrestling supremacy resulting in programming that is unlike anything else on the screen.

Are you watching Lucha Underground? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

Geekscape Interviews: ‘Insufferable’ Author Mark Waid!

by Eric Francisco

Picture Batman and Robin. They’re the ultimate two-man team: one, a vengeful but intelligent detective, and the other a spunky young ward. The dynamic duo of Gotham City, they rid the streets of crime and villainy!

Now picture if that spunky ward Robin was a total dick.

That’s the premise of Mark Waid’s Insufferable, which just launched its third volume on Waid’s digital comic website Thrillbent. From Captain America, to the seminal Kingdom Come, to Irredeemable and Incorruptible, Mark Waid is a reigning titan of the comic book industry and has forged a new path in creating Thrillbent, the web-centric comic book publishing house.

Waid’s latest series pits the superhero and father Nocturnus at odds with his brash, egotistical son and former crime-fighting partner Galahad. In Volume 3, Nocturnus and Galahad are struggling to join forces once more as the city they have sworn to protect is under siege. Will they save the day or are they only capable of saving themselves?

Before we get to Insufferable, I want to talk about your open letter to freelancers from last year. What led you to write to all working creatives? Did anything happen to you that led you to, in slang terms, drop a pipe bomb?

Waid: [laughs] Nothing happened to me. What happened was, because I’ve been in the industry for such a long time and I’ve seen everything and I’ve dealt with everybody, I tend to be sort of the wailing wall that younger freelancers come to sometimes to look for advice or to look for guidance for those sorts of things. And I’m flattered by that, I don’t know that I’ve got anything important to say, but I had just heard from the thousandth freelancer that week who felt like they had been screwed over by a publisher. And it was the same complaints over and over again. It became so common.

And I just felt like [it was time] to talk to young freelancers and say, “Look, the gist of what I’m saying is all you have is your reputation. All you have is your resume.” And it’s different for everybody, but you have to find the fine line between willing to take editorial direction and take notes to the point it makes the story better, but the moment it starts making the story worse, you’ve gotta walk away. Even though it’s a guaranteed paycheck. You’re gonna end up doing years of bad stories to please editors who are not loyal to you, and then you’re gonna look for jobs somewhere else and no one is going to look at the story and go, “Oh, this must have been badly edited.” No, they’re just gonna look at it and go, “Wow, this story sucks.”

What inspired you to write the story of Insufferable? What inspired you to pit former superhero teammates who are at the tail end of a grudge match?

Waid: I don’t want to name names, but I was reading an interview with a comics pro who was very full of himself [and] very ungrateful towards the people who had shepherded him along and just full of pomposity and braggadocio and I was rolling my eyes going, “Man, what if Robin grew up to be that guy?” And that sparked everything. That sense of seeing Kanye West grab the microphone from Taylor Swift so many times without wanting to say, “Man, dial it back!” So that struck me that that would be a really good superhero [story]. I’ve never seen that relationship before in comics. The idea of, what if your sidekick grew up to be an insufferable douchebag?

Hence the title. 

Waid: Yes!

So Volume 3 starts out with a bang. The whole city is basically on fire. You’ve got Nocturnus and Galahad kind of getting back in the groove, what can you tell us is in store for them? Is this their last hurrah?

Waid: It may actually be their last hurrah. We haven’t officially said so, but the challenge this time with this adventure was, let’s really blow up the stops and remind ourselves that we’re in control of the story. We don’t have to keep the status quo going because it’s part of some universe, we can do whatever we want. So, it is, as my co-creator and artist Peter Krause kept pointing out, for two story story arcs now we’ve had the two of them spiting each other. Which is fun, and fun to write and fun to read, but to keep it from being a cartoon, it’s probably best if their relationship could find some new level. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good level, or a happy level, but we need to find [a new] status quo for them. So that’s where we’re headed to with arc three. They’re going to be in a much different place than they have been.

In relation to your open letter to freelancers and Insufferable, which I assume you have total control over, what’s it like having that freedom? What is it like to stretch your legs without having to be hindered? 

Waid: It’s great and it’s very liberating, but, and your mileage may very, it’s not the end all be all. Because there’s a lot to be said for working with established characters in certain universes too. The upside to something like Insufferable is, as you said, we own it. It’s ours. We’re the boss. We can make up the rules. But that also means we have to invent everything from scratch. And that means there is no mythology or continuity to draw upon, and therefore you can’t take things for granted. You can’t just bring back an old villain because nobody has seen him in awhile. You have to invent this guy. And so, honestly? As much fun as it is to do your own stuff, there is that drawback that people don’t talk about often. Which is, it’s a lot more work.

You’re actually first writer to tell me about how more of a burden there is in creating your own mythos.

Waid: At least equally a burden. Not more of a burden, but equally.

If you had to choose, where do you find yourself the happiest: working on established characters or creating your own?

Waid: Honestly, I know this sounds like a cheap answer, but it really depends on the project and how enthused I am on any given moment. When it comes to being happy, it doesn’t have anything to do with the character whether it’s an established character or one of my own. The happy moments are when you’ve discovered something new about the characters or about storytelling in general or some new technique in comics. That’s the fun part, and that’s irrespective of who owns the characters.

Modern superheroes tend to be grim, a little self-loathing. Superman is supposed to be a shining beacon of hope, but in Man of Steel he was, I don’t know, a little mopey?

Waid: [laughs] Yes!

As someone who has created some of the most seminal works in comic books, what are your thoughts on superheroes today? Do you think they’re in the right to be self-doubting? Where do you see Nocturnus and Galahad fitting in the modern superhero landscape? Did you want them to reflect any particular age in the history of superheroes?

Waid: I think neither. I think they’re a little more timeless, but that’s because a lot of the heart of what their relationship is has nothing to do with superheroes or crimefighting. It has to do with father/son relations. And that’s pretty universal. So it wasn’t any attempt to do anything like a throwback or some new post-9/11 invention, it was just trying to get more universal themes and do them through a superhero lens.

And as far as superheroes today goes, I’m hoping the pendulum is swinging back away from relentlessly grim and gritty. I don’t think all superheroes should be fun, light, and goofy, but neither do I think they all have to be blood, guts, violence, cynical, and self-loathing. I think there’s a wider palette to be drawn from. I wish there were more out there that wasn’t dark and grim. But I’ve seen advancements. Luckily, I think the success of the Marvel movies as much as anything else are proving to people to people there’s an audience for stuff that’s not relentlessly grim. I think The Flash TV show is also a yardstick to prove that not everything has to be cynical, dark, and ugly.

The creative team you’re working on Insufferable with, you’ve worked on your previous titles like Irredeemable. What was it like getting that band back together?

Waid: Pete and I knew after Irredeemable we wanted to do something together that we could create from scratch. We had a bunch of ideas, but it became a question of what do we do next? I respect Pete immensely as a creative person, I would be a fool to let that guy travel far out of my sight.

You wanted Insufferable to be uniquely for the digital format. The widescreen format was a necessity. Why did you want that style and not the traditional comic book?

Waid: Well if we’re doing it on the web, it only makes sense to do it in the landscape format. Because that’s the shape screens are. And frankly, that’s the shape the world is. That’s the reason why your eyes are side-by-side and not one on top of each other on your head. That’s how we see the world, in a widescreen view. And so, my biggest problem with digital comics at that point had been trying to force that portrait format style on to a landscape screen. You’re scrolling up and down, but you’re not looking at the whole page at once because it doesn’t fit your screen. I just thought that was ridiculous. I wanted to use the screen space to its maximum. And let the art breathe. And that dictated the 4×3 format. Which, again, we can turn into print comics, and will turn into print comics, but I’d rather worry about digital first and then print comics later.

As you said before, we’re approaching an end of sorts with Volume 3. Whether it’s the end or not, what’s next after Insufferable? What do you want to tackle?

Waid: That’s a very good question. Honestly, no one has asked me that question yet and I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that it needs to involve Peter Krause because I’m not letting that guy go.

What, ultimately, is Insufferable about to you? What is it about this story you want out in the world?

Waid: That it’s possible to love someone in your family without liking them. That’s really the universal theme. That’s the father/son thing. It’s like, you can love your family without really liking them.

You can read Mark Waid’s Insufferable Vol. 3, now available on Thrillbent! New chapters are released every Wednesday.

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‘Zyu 2’: Unused ‘Power Rangers’ Fight Scenes From Japan Now Online After Twenty Years

by Eric Francisco

I am so mad I only found this now because it was first uploaded all the way back in February, but I thought it was still worth sharing. Jeff Pruitt, the former stunt/action director of the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, has uploaded a chunk of old footage filmed in Japan and used exclusively for the American series. This footage, commonly referred to by fans as “Zyu 2,” is fabled for its rarity and that it contains unused fight scenes for various Power Rangers episodes.

For the first time in over twenty years, you can finally watch what was never used.

No one predicted Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers to be as successful as it was. Billionaire music mogul Haim Saban conceptualized the show after watching Super Sentai in his hotel room while in Japan (rumor has it, he was watching Bioman), and tried to shop an American version of the show to television networks for years. Today it would take him maybe one phone call and he’d have a deal on Hulu, but in the late ’80s importing a strange sci-fi show was like moving a mountain. He was constantly rejected until the stars aligned and the show was produced and aired in 1993.  But even then, he didn’t think it would last longer than a year.

Well, it did, and twenty years later you have obsessed weirdos like me going to conventions asking fellow fans if they can name the Wu-Tang Clan (yeah, I actually did it). But there was a pivotal moment in 1993 when the show was at its hottest and the FOX Kids network was even prepping it to air in prime-time. The only problem was that there was nothing left.

Producing Power Rangers, even today, is unlike any other scripted TV show. The show predominantly makes use of the long-running Japanese Super Sentai series as its source material. Each year, Power Rangers borrows costumes, props, monster suits, action scenes, (and during the Jonathan Tzachor years, entire storylines) from Toei Company’s franchise and tweak it to fit American tastes. They shoot new footage featuring American actors (or since 2003, New Zealand talent, you can hear their kiwi accents slip from time to time) so American kids and parents won’t be scared by a gang of Asians. That’s how Power Rangers is made.

But in 1993, Saban — and I mean Saban Entertainment (now Saban Brands), not the guy himself — didn’t know what to do. The original Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger footage from which Mighty Morphin’ was specifically adapted from had all been used, and whatever was left was pretty much unusable because Zyuranger even by its genre standards was a fucking weird show. Towards the finale, a disembodied head named Satan lends his powers to Frankenstein’s monster — YES, FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER — who goes bezerk and turns into a towering monster of meat and guts. It’s still a kids’ show, though.

With all action scenes used up, Saban went to Toei and paid for new footage for them to film so they can use it for their show. Stop for a second and think about how much balls that takes. To be a film company and admit that whatever you could create wouldn’t look as good as the original guys that did it. It is both EMBARRASSING and BALLSY to admit that. Also, CHEAP. Somehow, the Hollywood paperwork and noisy union fees that would have to go into shooting your own footage is far greater than asking a bunch of dudes in Japan to do the work for you. Imagine if the producers of Homeland, which was adapted from the Israeli series Prisoners of War, asked Gideon Raff if he could film new footage of terrorists blowing shit up for them to use exclusively. It’s completely unheard of.

But Saban’s check must have been pretty sweet because Toei did just what they asked. They shot entirely new footage of the Power Rangers fighting brand-new monsters and this footage, dubbed “Zyu 2” by fans, makes up for most of the fights in late season one and the first half of season two. And they have been uploaded in their raw(ish) glory, thanks to former director Jeff Pruit. The video is entirely silent, because duh, they were only shooting for fight scenes.

Fun note: The original Zyuranger had an emphasis on Tolkein-esque fantasy. The original monsters were goblins, orcs, minotaurs, trolls, skeletons, and dark knights. The monsters in “Zyu 2” were far more generic and less fantasy-themed, a rogues gallery of beetles, iguanas, apes, crawfish, sharks, and like fleas and shit.

Watching this video is a sublime experience. The video is silent but there is a slight hum that must have come from the VHS transfer. There is so much action and colors flashing on the screen, but with the audio cut it’s like watching ghosts. It’s like being in a dusty film archive in the middle of the night and coming across an old treasure.

This footage is fabled because we even though we see most of it on the show, just knowing how film production works there is a ton of stuff not used in the final episodes. There are gaps in continuity in the episodes that are fully explained with the unused material. There is also some pretty weird shit. Unfortunately this 30+ minute video doesn’t even cover half the episodes that contain “Zyu 2” footage, but considering it has been twenty years and that footage has likely been destroyed, we fans will eat up whatever we can get and this video is a Thanksgiving feast.

The big treat in watching this video is seeing the action continue from whatever Saban cut. Take for example the season two episode, “The Wanna-Be Ranger” with Primator, the white ape that can disguise himself as a Power Ranger. In the episode, Jason (Red Ranger) goes one-on-one with Primator disguised as the Red Ranger. Two Red Rangers fight and one of them — in true tokusatsu fashion — gets beaten and rolls over to his team-mates. Primator, as the fake Red Ranger separate from the others, quickly warns his “friends” that the Red Ranger with them isn’t the real one. The Rangers freak out — and now for some reason Kimberly (Pink Ranger) is now on the ground — and Primator taunts them and blasts them with laser eyes. That’s how the episode was edited.

Now check out the raw footage: Turns out, the rolled-over Red Ranger was Primator, and Jason was separate from his group. There is a whole fight sequence that Saban didn’t use! And it explains why Kimberly is down on the ground.

By far the coolest example of an unused fight happens with “The Power Stealer” that had the Octophantom. In the episode, the Rangers were taken prisoner by Lord Zedd and tied to posts on a rock quarry. Jason, once again, fights the Octophantom with the help of a mirror shield Billy (Blue Ranger) made. While Jason takes on the Octophantom, Billy leaps up to the quarry and frees the other Rangers, including a weakened Tommy (Green Ranger).

Billy freeing the other Rangers was American footage.

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A little on the BDSM side, but still innocent enough for kids to understand and parents to not be offended by.

Now check out the shit Japan shot:

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THE POWER RANGERS ARE BEING FUCKING CRUCIFIED. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was infamously under heavy fire from parents and TV censors for violence and inappropriate content, never mind you could probably see the same amount of violence in any Disney movie. Japan, probably unaware of the ruckus Power Rangers was making with Christian parents and slightly indifferent to religious symbols, shot this thing. I’m trying to imagine the heart attack the producers had when they saw this.

Also notable: MEGAZORD FIGHTS! Season two started with a massive change in merchandising, namely the giant Megazords the Power Rangers end their climactic fights with. The story behind this is another tale for another time, but season two started with brand new mecha, the Thunder Zords, from the series Gosei Sentai Dairanger. However, that was not planned during the production of these scenes, so there are some original Dinozord fights with season two monsters! For true Power Rangers buffs, that should be enough to want to see this video.

But the greatest thing about these clips is how much the Japanese production put effort into abiding by the characters established in Power Rangers and actually create some interesting filmmaking. The Power Rangers were radically different from the Zyurangers, and it is wonderful to see how the Japanese made sure that was reflected in these scenes. In the clips for “The Power Stealer,” Billy — who you remember, is the techy brainiac — invents his mirror shield device and struggles to carry it to the battlefield. The thing is heavy for him, he can barely run two feet without having to set it back down. When Jason, the powerful meathead jock, takes it he carries it like it’s nothing. That’s incredible. Toei could have skimped on the scenes and be as straightforward as possible. But they colored the scenes with not only character, but with awesome pans, zooms, punch-ins, dutch angles, and other stuff that wasn’t asked for. No other kids’ show had ever been filmed like this. They could have shot this in an afternoon and collected Saban’s money, but there was a ton of effort top to bottom. It’s no wonder American audiences were enamored with the Power Rangers. There was really nothing like it.

Importantly, credit must be given to the costume actors and stunt men. Imagine being on set and having to act out for lines that haven’t been written yet in a costume where no one can know what you’re saying. The Japanese stuntmen are some of the most unsung heroes in the show’s production. What they do transcends acting into a weird form of postmodern art that not even the snobbiest of film critics could understand. With things like Billy’s shield, the body language necessary to communicate is extremely difficult on a sublime level.

I’m kicking myself for totally missing this, because it’s been uploaded since February. But big thanks to Jeff Pruitt for sharing all this wonderful stuff. I speak for all the so-called “’90s kids” when I say this is fucking awesome. You can see more cool stuff, including a look into the making of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on Pruit’s channel here.

4 Reasons Why You Should Be Watching ‘Constantine’ on NBC

by Eric Francisco

Looking at both San Diego Comic-Con and the New York Comic-Con, one would be correct to assume NBC’s freshman series Constantine, based off the DC Comics series Hellblazer would be a smash hit. It had all the promotion a show could ever need and had enough pre-premiere buzz to warrant a sure bet it would last the season until the inevitable renewal. In fact, the night of the premiere it seemed all but assured.

And then the next week happened, and almost everything went to hell.

The showed dropped significantly in the ratings, and any sort of fire and passion amongst geeks went ice cold almost instantly. I can’t tell you what happened, because I don’t know. I would guess that Halloween is basically a really awful time to premiere or release anything because who the hell stays indoors on Halloween? And then I remember The Walking Dead and realize nothing is sacred.

Either way, no matter the reason I will be damned if a show as fun as Constantine gets the boot during the age when a TV show like it should be thriving. Here are four solid reasons why you should be tuning in or setting your DVR on Friday nights.

http://youtu.be/1okpAwCSQM0?list=UUwLw7wMt6ra3yIdSd8EK8FQ

1) We’re exploring another corner of the DC Universe.

Back at the New York Comic-Con, executive producer David Goyer said Constantine is comfortably exploring the occult corner of the DC Universe. Is this ambiguous statement meaning they’re open to a crossover with other DC series like Arrow or The Flash? Unlikely, although I’m sure those discussions have happened behind closed doors. But dwelling on what Goyer said, Constantine serving as a platform to explore the weirder underbelly of DC means all eyeballs should be on the show. While the blockbuster Arrow and the freshman The Flash have superheroes covered like a blanket, DC has a whole other side where the supernatural lives and breathes. Constantine — should it be successful — is where we can maybe see Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and the Justice League Dark come to life. We just got Papa Midnite, and his clashes with Constantine alone should get anyone excited. Who wouldn’t want to see more?

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This can be your television. Why would you NOT want to see this?

2) It’s already the most visually unnerving show on broadcast television.

It’s been toned down just a tad since the pilot, but the Friday night slot has proved beneficial to Constantine in a way no other show could take advantage. Taking a page off Hannibal, Constantine is primed to bring some super fucked up darkness to broadcast TV, which I stress could only have happened in this current television age. Right in the pilot, besides the standard creepy corpses and nasty cockroaches, there were some great scares and demonic creatures that show up which makes it hard to believe this is the same channel Jay Leno used to tell jokes on. The episodes since have relaxed on these scares, but there is no doubt that should they get the audience they want, there is nothing stopping them from going berzerk.

3) It’s faithful to the source material.

While of course it isn’t word for word, and in fact the show began introducing a character who has never existed in the Hellblazer titles before, Constantine is presenting a rather faithful recreation of the source material while making smart, creative liberties necessary in any adaptation. Star of the show, Matt Ryan, downright looks like Constantine and, most importantly, is British! His primary motivation — redeeming Astra’s soul — is almost taken for word from Hellblazer. And, to reiterate the last point, if they continue it’s possible they will reveal more about that fateful night Astra was taken which will present dark material unheard of on broadcast television.

But even if it doesn’t, take a look at everything else! Zed IS Zed, Chas IS kinda Chas, and Constantine is definitely Constantine.

4) The freaking Sex Pistols.

In the most recently aired episode, Constantine hunts for a possessed vinyl record that plagues anyone who hears it agonizing pain until death. Constantine puts on an MP3 player and cranks up the Sex Pistols. According to David Goyer at Comic-Con, this was the first time the Sex Pistols was heard on broadcast TV.

http://youtu.be/P6LBn9r8xvs

OK, maybe that last one isn’t too much of a solid reason, but Constantine, despite all warts — and believe me, there are warts — has demonstrated it can be and is a fun romp through the supernatural. It’s not a unique premise, sure, but the source material Constantine derives from is rich with potentially fantastic arcs that can be portrayed wonderfully through the TV storytelling form. The show, proven how it can faithfully and intelligently adapt material, should be on everyone’s radar since all the great Hellblazer stuff can finally make its way to TV. Who wouldn’t want to see Swamp Thing on the same network that had Johnny Carson? Constantine has a fun world, a great central character, and a core cast with chemistry improving with each passing episode.

The episodes individually, I will admit, have not demonstrated excellent television storytelling. The second and third episode are exceptionally mediocre, but altogether — thanks to the strength of the pilot — will have you convinced to stick with Constantine. And if the previews are to be believed, it will get better.

Don’t let this potentially great show slip. If it died, that would be bollocks and I would damn you all to hell.

Constantine airs on NBC, Fridays at 10 PM EST and 9 PM CT. I am not sponsored or reimbursed by NBC or Warner Bros. in any way, I just want you to watch the damn thing.

Amy Jo Johnson, Original Pink Ranger, Open For A Role in New ‘Power Rangers’ Movie

by Eric Francisco

Full disclosure: The video below is from Power Rangers fan blog No Pink Spandex, which is run and operated by a friend of mine, Lisa. I helped her film footage of Amy Jo Johnson performing at New York City’s The Bitter End.

In a new video series from No Pink Spandex, which will showcase artists pursuing current projects outside of Power Rangers, Amy Jo Johnson opens up about going to her first convention at this past Lexington Comic-Con and performing at The Bitter End in New York for the first time in ten years. The one thing that’s lighting the internet on fire, however, is that she admitted she would be open to a role — whether it’s starring or a cameo — in the upcoming Power Rangers movie from Lionsgate.

Literally nothing else except the title, the screenwriters, and the fact that one of the biggest-name producers left is known about the new Power Rangers film, so understand that Amy Jo hasn’t been offered a role that we are aware of. Or anyone else from the original cast. I’m sure there have been calls to the Jason David Frank estate once or twice, but who knows.

Amy Jo Johnson made a comeback in the pubic consciousness this past weekend when she performed on a street corner in Toronto, busking in a Pink Ranger costume. Don’t worry, it was not a depressing episode of a one-hit wonder on hard times. It was in fact, a celebration. Fellow Power Rangers co-star David Yost dared Amy to perform in the outfit should she meet her fundraising goal for her first feature film, The Space Between, which led to the internet going bananas.

Amy Jo’s career post-Power Rangers has been varied, nabbing leading roles in television dramas like Felicity and Flashpoint and carving out her name in independent music and film. She clearly has a passion for the arts, often making personalized videos of her singing to fans who pledge her film projects. Welcome to 2014, where your childhood crush will sing to you over the internet.

I’m excited and happy for Amy Jo. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her yet — after filming at The Bitter End, she was swarmed by fans so I couldn’t even shake her hand — but not only does she seem to be happy, she’s given the opportunity to make art that she wants. Not many people have the privilege to say that. Furthermore, she’s a woman director. Hollywood is devoid of the female perspective, so if a former Power Ranger wants to blaze a trail, I will totally support her.

I for one would absolutely be welcome to seeing Amy Jo Johnson back for Power Rangers, if only briefly. What say you?

CM Punk Will Rock Marvel With ‘Thor Annual #1’

by Eric Francisco

I met CM Punk at the first, and last I recall only Wizard World in New York City last year. I always heard he was a bit of a grump, and should you encounter him at a Chicago Blackhawks game with his wife he’ll for damn sure give you the cold shoulder. But at Wizard World, where you pay obscene dollars to have TV stars smile at you for five minutes, he couldn’t have been nicer while I rambled why being straight-edge in high school allowed me to graduate with honors. Cool guy.

But before that, of course I’ve seen him wrestle for years on television, and a few times in person (WrestleMania 29!), so yeah, I’m a fan. I was delighted to learn that he has more or less found a new career after infamously walking out of pro wrestling for good: Comic book author! He might be a millionaire, but the guy has to still pay the bills.

In February, CM Punk (real name Phil Brooks) will kick (your head in!) start his career in comics with “Thor Annual #1.” His story will be of an early, younger Thor, when he was brash and arrogant and wanted to prove to the world he had what his takes. I wonder where he’s getting this character from?

From Marvel.com:

So the idea was, let’s do a story about young Thor as kind of a brash, bratty teenager who’s like, “I’m totally worthy of this hammer. My dad’s full of [expletive]. I don’t know why I’m not ‘worthy’ of the hammer. Look at all this cool stuff I did.” And it’s more or less like a drinking story. He’s gonna be sitting around with a few choice characters from the Marvel Universe, and they’re all gonna be drinking, and Thor’s gonna basically be complaining about essentially why his dad won’t give him the keys to the car.

It’s no secret CM Punk is a nerd in cool guy’s clothing. But in the aftermath of his tiff with WWE, fans were left to wonder what their favorite grappler would be doing. I thought he would fade into obscurity and lead a quiet life, going to Cubs games, train in jiu-jitsu with the Gracies, and do fun stuff for Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist every blue moon. Comic book writing? That’s a damn near perfect fit.

I’m happy for the guy. Yes, he was my favorite pro wrestler, but when you’ve lost your passion for what you do, fucking quit that shit. Especially with something as dangerous as pro wrestling. When your head isn’t in the game, you not only perform to a lower standard, you’re also a liability and a danger to who you work with. CM Punk leaving means someone might not be paralyzed right about now.

The man has burned a lot of bridges in the world of pro wrestling, so even if he wanted to come back, he probably wouldn’t be welcome. Even Chris Jericho can’t get a single text message from him. So the nerd-friendly world of comic books is not only a great next step, but a logical one.

“Thor Annual #1” releases in February 2015. Other star writers are attached to the title, but I’m confident none of them have told off Vince McMahon like he has.

If you’re unfamiliar with the man they call CM Punk, see why he made such a splash a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2JC8saqnEA

New ‘Evil Dead’ TV Series Greenlit By Starz, Bruce Campbell To Star

by Eric Francisco

Bless the modern television landscape. Starz has ordered a new television series of The Evil Dead starring Bruce Campbell. Groovy.

Sam Raimi, the original franchise director, will be writing and directing the pilot along with Rob Tapert in the role of executive producer. And yes, you’re reading this correctly: Bruce Campbell, the only man alive that can utter the line “This is my boomstick!” in a dark medieval fantasy movie and make that work, will be returning to star.

The show’s logline, provided by Entertainment Weekly:

“Bruce Campbell will be reprising his role as Ash, the stock boy, aging lothario and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons –personal and literal. Destiny, it turns out, has no plans to release the unlikely hero from its ‘Evil’ grip.”

Rumors went around about a new entry in the Evil Dead franchise. There was talk amongst insiders at this year’s SXSW, and Sam Raimi made it pretty clear at San Diego Comic-Con that he was trying to make this happen. Well, it’s happening!

Not much is known beyond this initial information. Any ties into the new Evil Dead movie — if at all — is also unknown, but seems unlikely. As a devoted Evil Dead fan rest assured I will be on this show like hotcakes, so keep checking back here for updates.

The series is set to air on Starz in 2015. How excited are you? Keep in mind the only acceptable answer should be anything north of “Very.”

‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ Official Trailer Released!

by Eric Francisco

Funny that on the same day we get some rather important news about the next Star Wars film, we also get the trailer for — AT LAST — the final installment in the seemingly never-ending film series of The Hobbit. Behold, for your viewing pleasure: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. (The trailer, that is.)

As much as I tried to like The Hobbit films, I can’t. They’re an ugly mess. At least the equally messy X-Men movies have ounces of fun in them. But here it is at last. The last movie in what shouldn’t have been a trilogy in the first place. We’re almost done!

Side note: Only The Hobbit movies could get away with releasing a trailer just a little over a month before it actually hits theaters. This is a gigantic movie, a CGI fantasy onslaught with a $250 million budget, and only now we get the trailer? I get that they announced the films would be released consecutively so we probably should have penciled in these dates years ago, but still.

Will you be seeing this movie when it theaters? Of course you are, and you’ll hate yourself for it. But comment below!

Geekscape Home Video: ‘LFO’ DVD Review

by Eric Francisco

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At different, very random times in my life, I’ve been asked a simple, hypothetical question: If you could have a superpower, what superpower would you have? I’ve heard every answer you can think of. Super speed? You can get anywhere without paying for gas. Super strength? Bet and win every arm wrestling match at the bar. Mind reading? Find out if that person you have a crush on likes you too. But the one I rarely hear as someone’s answer: Mind control. I’ve never thought much of it, but I think I know now. LFO has shown me why.

Antonio Tublén’s second feature film, LFO, is a dark, moody, and sometimes hilarious sci-fi drama that examines the boundaries of the human condition. A meditative descent into one man’s twisted head, it has a scope so ambitious and large that you might forget the film takes place entirely in one house. It also looks pretty too.

Robert Nord (portrayed by the excellent Patrik Karlson) is a loser stuck in an unhappy marriage and a mediocre life. He’s an avid audiophile, and has been exploring uncharted territory in sound waves with some pals over the internet. Eventually, Robert finds a way to use sound to lull unsuspecting people into a hypnosis, and he quickly takes advantage to make the people around him — in particular his new neighbors, Linn (Izabella Jo Tschig) and Simon (Per Löfberg)– his puppets.

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The film wastes zero time in doing exactly what you expect. Instead of prolonging the inevitable and being a predictable comedy of errors, Tublen goes into overdrive and exhausts every simple expectation within the first act. What is left is an unpredictable, sometimes funny, consistently haunting tale of a sick, disturbed man who has twisted society’s morals to play in his favor.

Robert is a true son of a bitch. It goes beyond hypnotizing people into having sex or cleaning your house. His hots for Linn was expected from the get-go, but the way Robert infects the lives of his neighbors like a disease drives the film forward. It’s not just Linn he gets involved with and waves his hand to make her husband Simon go away, Simon is in along for the ride! His obnoxious intrusion into the intimate lives of his neighbors, twisting them to fit his own image of a perfect sitcom family or becoming their goddamn therapist, is supremely discomforting. The film proposes the thesis that every man’s moral compass shapes their worldview, but that their worldview directs their compass. Morality is ultimately subjective. Right and wrong can mean different things to different people. And for Robert, he can provide a convincing argument for a bunch of the awful shit he does, no matter how much you disagree with him. I vehemently hated every action Robert took, but somehow this almost supervillain manages to get what he wants. Which, when you can easily manipulate people like they’re your living Sims, isn’t very hard.

The scope of the film is large and ambitious, thematically and actually quite literally, despite the incredibly limited physical space. Robert’s house is the Garden of Eden, and Simon and Linn are Adam and Eve. It’s not a subtle metaphor, but eventually the experiments of Robert spread to the entire world, and without giving too much away, it’s all pretty terrible.

I can’t give away too much about Clara, Robert’s wife, who is played by the totally awesome Ahnna Rasch. She’s suffocating in her marriage to Robert, and she exerts a tired energy that makes you feel for her. But her presence is soon revealed to be something else, and thankfully it’s revealed relatively early-on so there’s no bullshit “twist endings” here, for the simple fact it’s not part of the ending. Although it does have a closing scene at the end, and that one nearly broke me.

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LFO, under a different direction, could have been a supervillain origin story. Under Tublén — whose other work I admit I’m unfamiliar with — it remains a quiet, realistic sci-fi soap opera about loneliness, desire, and the ambitions of a mad genius. Robert treats his work like an artist. He morphs science into something abstract, something that can be created and understood interpretively. He’s also arrogant and pretentious. He mocks up his Nobel Prize speech in his basement. He believes he can change the world — and he can! It’s incredible what he’s invented — but he immediately withholds his power to himself for obvious reasons. Better in his hands than someone else’s, he reasons. I truly believe Robert is just inches away from being a supervillain from a (good) ’90s comic book.

Technically, the cinematography is top-notch. I’ve seen hundreds of modern, low-budget films take a vertie approach and I’ve been exhausted of that style for a long time. LFO is a wonderful breath of fresh air. Expert picture composition and steady shots (with maybe a few harsh pans here and there) make for a clean, crisp aesthetic that is ultimately pleasing to look at. No one in the film is Hollywood beautiful — they look like real people — but the film is nice to the eye. Although a moody film, it’s bright and appropriately lit at the right times.

A word about the framing. Many times the LFO breaks conventional coverage rules only slightly for a unique frame. Heads are cut off, eyes are looking up at nothing but space, and views are obscured. It’s not off-putting in the slightest either. In key scenes this framing happens, and though it’s a novelty that I might get tired of if abused, for now it makes LFO totally unique.

A movie where the entire premise is built on sound would be remiss to trip over its soundtrack. The film’s audio skeleton sounds like it came from Trent Reznor scoring Screech’s room in Saved By The Bell. It’s neither techno or EDM, side-stepping predictability and going instead for novelty. That novelty is the form of atmospheric bleep bloops from the Atari age, and it’s a treat but ultimately empty. Collecting film soundtracks is a fun side hobby of mine, and I don’t think LFO has what it takes to warrant a listen when I drive or write. Part of the fun of remembering a movie is in its soundtrack, to relive the film on a more sublime level. LFO‘s soundtrack, whether it’s released or not, isn’t making me care enough to even look up if it’s available. It fits the movie perfectly, but I don’t care for it separately.

I think I know now why mind control isn’t a totally favored superpower. Granted, I’m sure there are thousands of people who would answer “mind control” to the question of what superpower would you be armed with. But there are thousands more who wouldn’t, and I suspect the burdens that come with it are far heavier than benching a truck. It’s an ugly responsibility to play God, one that humans have no right to and are too stupid to handle. LFO is a fun, dark demonstration as to why the superpower remains quietly unspoken.

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The DVD

About as bare-bones as can be. Aside from the trailer, it comes with a medium-sized behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews from Tublén, the actors, and producers. It’s a light, ordinary mini-documentary you’d come to expect that provides some insight into the film’s themes and characters. However, it gets points from me for showing a nice look at the film’s premiere at the 2013 Fantastic Fest, the Austin film festival I’ve been dying to go to. Other than that, there isn’t much of anything. The audio set-up has only a subtitle feature, and the only language available is English. There are no dub tracks, only the original audio, which I’m perfectly okay with. The picture remains gorgeous, which surprised me. I have altogether stopped buying DVDs, but there were times watching this when I couldn’t tell if this was a Blu-ray or DVD (I admit it helped that I watched from a reasonably far distance, allowing me to miss any image imperfections as a result of the older format). Someone with better expertise, please let me know if it was a result of the use of Blackmagic Cinema Cameras during production.

LFO gets 4/5 stars. It’s a gripping exploration of one mad man’s abuse of power and exploitation of human weaknesses that shouldn’t be missed. The DVD gets a 2/5 stars, it has a nice behind-the-scenes featurette and nothing else.

LFO is available now on video on demand and DVD.

Geekscape Interviews: Jeremy Bernstein, Author of ‘Santa Claus: Private Eye’

by Eric Francisco

What does Santa Claus do on the other 364 days of the year (365 on leap year)? Dude has gotta eat somehow. How does being a private detective sound?

Jeremy Bernstein is a screenwriter and game designer known for his work on Dead Space 2, the Pretty in Pink video game (yes, really!), and the popular television series Leverage. Now, Jeremy and his team are behind the new digital comic series, Santa Claus: Private Eye, available now on Thrillbent.

Primed to be a cult hit, Private Eye has jolly old Saint Nick moonlighting as a detective in the seedy underworld of crime and corruption. How much can the big red man who judges the naughty and the nice take before he breaks?

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I have so many questions, but I only have one that I really need answered: Why Santa Claus?

Jeremy: [laughs]

Because cultural myths are a lot of fun to imagine in wholly different lights. But why detective noir and why Santa Claus? What inspired this particular story?

Jeremy: Honestly, I was looking to write a supernatural detective show. As a TV sample. And I was just trying to come up with a supernatural detective that I haven’t seen. The genre has been done so often: There’s teen vampires, teen wizards, what’s a supernatural creature that hasn’t been done as a detective? And there was a little voice in the back of my head that went, well, there’s always Santa Claus. To which I said, haha nice, very funny. But no, seriously, what are we gonna do?

That damn little voice.

Jeremy: I know! That snarky little bastard. But the more I thought about it, [it made sense]. Well, he knows if you’ve been naughty or nice, which is a really useful skill for a detective to have. He can climb down the chimneys, right? So he’s really good at getting into places to sneak around. If Santa Claus had to moonlight, private eye is not the worst job in the world for him. So, then I started thinking, “All right, but why?” Like, why does Santa Claus have to become a private eye? And as I started going down that road, that’s when I really started focusing on the character and thinking about what’s this take on Santa, and as you said, it became a chance to really deconstruct the myth. And when you look at that myth, of the person who brings joy to everyone, the one everybody counts on to make them happy, what makes him happy? Who brings him joy? That became a really interesting question to me.

So once I looked into that I was sort of like, all right, I was trying to come up with an idea for a TV show. Nobody is going to make this TV show. It was too big of a swing. But I need to tell this story. I need this out there. It’s not enough for me to write it and [have it] sit on a shelf. This is one I need people to see. So, then I started thinking about comics. Self-publishing a comic is a viable goal in a way that self-publishing a TV show, while getting there more so, it’s still a much harder undertaking. So that was the genesis, really. And once I had the sort of depressive Santa, so clearly he’s a noir detective, right? That fits with the noir genre where he’s down on his luck and it’s all about the seedy underbelly of being Santa Claus. I want to read that.

You said before that Santa Claus is the judge of naughty and nice. In film noir, no one is naughty or nice, especially the protagonists. In your vision of Santa Claus, there’s something morbid about him. What do you think is bugging him?

Jeremy: That’s a tricky question. Because I know the answer, but I don’t want to say too much without spoiling stuff that’s coming down the pipe. I will say, the secret origin of Santa Claus: Private Eye, of how he decided to take up this Nick Santana identity and why he decided to do that, is something that will be answered in the course of the run. But, it gets at that very fundamental question of how thankless a job Santa Claus has.

The premise is admittedly absurd. When I first heard it, I thought it was a comedy. I then read the previews and though it started as campy-dark, it went Hitchcock almost immediately. What made you want to play it straight?

Jeremy: I’ve seen campy Santa. Once I looked into this character, and who he was, it became very serious. And I wanted to treat that character fairly. That said, and it’s one of those things that I personally really enjoy about it, is it is very serious, but there’s an inherent absurdism to it. And my goal was to write something that if you did a search and replace on Santa Claus, and swapped it out with Sam Spade, it would read perfectly reasonably. And yet at the same time, it’s not Sam Spade, it’s Santa Claus. And so it can’t help but be comedic on some level, and then the more seriously you take it, the more interesting it becomes.

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This is your first foray into comic books. What led you to this medium, aside from it being creator-owned? What freedoms do you like about the comic book medium that you haven’t experienced in movies, video games, and TV? 

Jeremy: I think the biggest freedom is that the teams are so small. In TV and video games, you want to be as involved as you can, but there are very few people who know everything that’s going on and get to keep an eye on every part of the process. And then on top of that — not to say it doesn’t exist outside the constraints of a comic book — it’s much easier to actualize your vision in the way you want it. It will always happen [like], oh gosh this prop isn’t exactly the way I wanted it, or jeez, we’re shooting in this location which isn’t exactly the way I thought it, so we’re going to have fudge this or that.

There’s always something that doesn’t quite manage to be what you wanted. In comics, it’s much easier to have everything the way you want it. And honestly when you’ve been working with people as talented as the guys I’ve been lucky to work with — Mike Dorman, my artist, Rob Schwager, my colorist, and Troy Peteri, my letterer — everything got turned around so much better than I even expected or envisioned. So that to me is the big freedom, like that is the one where the only constraints are how good the team is, and the team was so good there were no constraints as far as I was concerned.

You’ve developed a reputation for traversing genres like it’s Middle Earth. You’ve done Dead Space 2…

Jeremy: [a really big laugh]

…the Pretty in Pink game, and TV shows like Leverage. Now you’re doing noir comic books. I speak as someone who loves genre benders, but is it difficult to remain tonally uniform when working on a particular property? Do you find yourself tempted to throw in a joke when you’re working on something super dark, or vice versa? 

Jeremy: Yes. [laughs] It can be very frustrating. My very first draft script for Dead Space 2 had a lot of one-liners in it that would have felt in place in the 80’s Arnold Schwarzenegger version of Dead Space 2. And you know, the hardest part of Dead Space 2 was giving Isaac a voice. Because, here’s a character that people are already attached to, but he’s a silent character in the first game, and he speaks in the second. So there was a lot of back and fourth between me and the producers and the whole team trying to figure out what that voice was.

 

I like a little levity in pretty much anything that I do. And you know, I salted in a little too much levity in that first draft, obviously it went by the time we delivered the final product. So yeah, I am often tempted to lighten up dark things or darken up light things.

I had a couple Leverage pitches too that the showrunners were like, “That is too dark for this show. That is not a place we want to go to.” But I think part of the fun of writing is the iterative process. You take your first swing, and you see what works and you see what doesn’t. You see what’s success and what’s not and what people respond to. And you refine from there. That’s why editing is such a critical part of the process. Personally, the only way I learn where the line is, is by running into it head-first. So, I would much rather push something too far and say, “Okay, that’s too far. That’s where I cross the line,” and have to pull it back, than always wonder if I could have done more.

That’s just artists exploring creative boundaries. It’s a disservice to limit oneself. As I said, you’re a genre bender, but I gotta dwell on the Pretty in Pink game. That’s like, out of left field.

Jeremy: [laughs]

What mediums and what genres do you want to tackle next? Do you look at a particular genre and say to yourself, “I’ve got a story in me that I can do.”?

Jeremy: Oh God, I’ve got a list. I’ve got a list on my white board, right here. I’m working on a sample right now that is a — god, I don’t even know how to describe it. Sci-fi, political allegory? It’s a big, deep, sort-of Babylon 5-ish sci-fi story.

Oh man, I love Babylon 5!

Jeremy: You know, The Sopranos is the show that gets all the press, but I will argue with my dying breath that Babylon 5 is the show that gave us the current golden age of television.

Totally agree.

Jeremy: When the final history book is written! But yeah, so I’ve been working on that. I have a sort of backdoor superhero story that might become a comic. You know, you’re not wrong, I’m all over the map! [laughs] And you know what, I was just thinking about a medical show recently. Which is a lot more mundane than what I’ve done, but as long as there is a strong character and something interesting to say, either about that character or about the form, about the medium, then those are the kinds of stories that really draw me in.

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I think you should expand your universe with Santa Claus: Private Eye. The Easter bunny is his doctor, or his therapist.

Jeremy: [laughs] Well, if this does well enough and we end up doing more of these, which I’m hopeful, Mrs. Claus makes a brief appearance via phone but I’ve definitely got some plans for her. And there’s a Tooth Fairy out there that I have some ideas about as well.

Ultimately, with Santa Claus: Private Eye, it’s a small digital comic, but every comic is a story with a big thematic idea. What is it that you want to say with Santa Claus: Private Eye? You said before, you want this story told and not just sitting on a shelf. What is it about this story you want the world to know?

Jeremy: That’s a really interesting question. I think a lot of it asking about why we do the things we do. Do we do them because it’s what we want to do? Or do we do them because it’s what’s expected of us? And what comes out of that in the end? Where does that leave you? How do you find happiness when you feel like you’re not really living for yourself?

That’s resonant. 

Jeremy: That’s a really good question, I’ve never really had to articulate that in quite the same way before, but I’m glad I did.

Santa Claus: Private Eye is now available on Thrillbent! You can also follow Jeremy on Twitter!

‘Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger’ Shout! Factory DVD Art Revealed!

by Eric Francisco

As most of you Geekscapists know, I am a die-hard Power Rangers fan. No matter what ridiculous decisions surround the upcoming 2016 movie, I will stand by it for no good reason other than just because. So I’m pretty excited for this.

At the San Diego Comic-Con this year, Shout! Factory, the renowned home video distributors of your childhood memories, announced they will be releasing — for the first-time ever on American soil — the complete Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger series on DVD! And today, they unveiled the official cover on their Tumblr page:

 

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Not at all what I expected! The DVD cover is, in a word, risky. You would think to sell the DVD, they would put up the Zyuranger/Mighty Morphin’ costumes front and center, but nope! It’s a crystal clear image of the original actors, which I think is amazing. It’s about time their faces become more well-known after the phenomenon of Power Rangers all but erased them. Furthermore, there isn’t one single sight of the Power Rangers logo anywhere. There’s just the easy-to-miss “Before Power Rangers there was…” line at the top.

Also, isn’t it a little confusing? They have at the top “Before Power Rangers there was” and then “SUPER SENTAI” in big-ass letters, only to have “Zyuranger” spelled out in English at the bottom. The hell? Fans know exactly what this is, but to the less informed they don’t know what this thing is called.

Having seen Zyuranger, I’ll be buying this purely to support North American-released Super Sentai, which only could have happened in our dreams before the current geek landscape. Truthfully, Zyuranger is not a very good series. There are almost no interesting characters, awful pacing, ridiculous storylines (even given the genre!), and a gigantic lack of any meaningful arcs. Yes, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers has better storytelling. You can believe that or not. Aside from the obvious cool factor of seeing Power Rangers before they were, you know, Power Rangers, there is little reason to give Zyuranger any real attention. The action choreography is pretty great, though.

That said, I did have a wonderful time moderating the Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger panel at the Power MorphiCon convention this past summer. Jealous?

An official release date and price is still unknown.

Will you be buying the DVD set? Comment below!

‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ Trailer Now Online, Officially!

by Eric Francisco

LITERALLY NONE OF THESE WORDS MATTER. THESE ARE JUST WORDS. WHAT YOU WANT IS BELOW. But play along, please?

Earlier tonight the the much-anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer was leaked online. It was supposed to air during next week’s Mavel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But because this is 2014, of course it didn’t! After a pretty amusing, self-deprecating tweet, Marvel has decided “eff it, let’s just do it.” The trailer is now on their official YouTube page, in crystal clear high-definition.

The trailer has all the neat stuff I kept hearing about from San Diego Comic-Con this summer. The Hulkbuster, an Avengers party, Ultron himself. It’s all really neat.

My favorite part, though, is what James Spader’s Ultron (and it’s so unmistakably him) says in the trailer: “You want to protect the world. But you don’t want it to change.” There is an ongoing, neverending debate that I love getting into about the true nature of superheroes. As protectors of the status-quo, what is their role when the world needs changing? Not that I expect Age of Ultron to be political in any shape or form, but the movie (I hope) will continue to change the superhero genre and begin to ask questions we, the dedicated superhero nerds who hold up this art to a higher level than most, might be uncomfortable to answer.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron will be released in 2015 and it will make so much money.

NYCC 2014: Interview with ‘Sleepy Hollow’ star Sakina Jaffrey and executive producer Mark Goffman!

by Eric Francisco

My adventure at the Sleepy Hollow press room continues! At the monstrous 2014 New York Comic-Con, I was joined by actress Sakina Jaffrey and producer Mark Goffman about what’s to come this season on FOX’s smash hit, Sleepy Hollow.

Sakina Jaffrey, who plays newcomer Leena Reyes, the replacement of disgraced Irving at the Sleepy Hollow Police Department, is utterly cheerly and bright, a contrast to her no-nonsense demeanor on the series. She notes that the press round tables are like speed dating.

“Okay, so who are we going to date?” she asks, to the delight of the press table.

Joining her immediately after is showrunner Mark Goffman, one of the show’s executive producers.

(Note: The following interview was conducted on a press room round table. Not all questions were mine, but all questions have been slightly paraphrased and edited to fit an easy-to-read Q&A format, as much of the round table happened conversationally. No drastic changes were made in the questions and the meaning and integrity of each question has been retained.)

For Mark, going into season two, what were some of the things from season one that you wanted to build upon?

Mark: Once we introduced John Noble’s character, Henry as this mastermind, was really fun and we wanted to do more with that. So in season two, he’s in every one of the first eleven episode episdoes and just so much fun and really getting to have a character who thinks so far ahead and is so brilliant is a lot fun to kind of craft and weave into our story. For Crane and Abbie, I wanted them to get a little bit more ahead of the game. I feel that season one was so much more about just catching up to this incredibly crazy world they find themselves in that for them to get a handle on it and embrace it, I think is a lot of fun for sesaon two. So as crazy as it is or it became in season one, it gets crazier and they try to get a jump on that.

For Sakina, what is it going to take for your character to believe?

Sakina: I think the only point of vulnerability that you see with Sheriff Reyes is the fact that she has a connection to the [main characters as] children, to the kids. And it’s something that only happens when you encounter vulnerable children. And they stay with you. And I feel that all these characters — the questions of who the parents are, who’s the mother? Who’s the father? Who’s the guardian? — I think Leena thinks she’s taking care of this community. And she takes care of the girls. I imagine if there’s a point of entry it would be with Abbie, but I have strong feelings of wanting to care for both the girls for sure. And on that John Noble thing, having done scenes with Kevin Spacey, I thought, “Oh, I’ll never get this again.” And then I’m in a scene with John Noble and that sort of, not Machiavellian thought and so smart, and the way he handles language. I thought, “Oh, I have to be on this show. It’s too much.”

What was it like coming in as a fresh face onto such an established series?

Sakina: As I said, I was surprised to be the resident evil. I didn’t expect I was going to be this huge party pooper. But, that was a little bit of a shock! Because I read it and I thought, “Oh my God. Yeah!” [laughs] I was so excited to be here! They gotta respect me and it’s like, oh no, not really. I like playing these very ballsy women who have the courage of their own conviction who believe they are doing the right thing. And if you look at a situation where you got this girl with a gun and this guy with the uniform, and it’s all chaos. And I need to put an end to that.

But on a personal note, people were really sweet. It’s a really loving set. The cast and crew work so hard. I look at Nikki and Tom, and the weight they’re carrying, I mean you guys get to see all the fun, but they’re working their tails off. And I have such respect for their acting, but also that they’re carrying such a tremendous load. And I love the writers. I didn’t think that I would find a show where it’s so smart. And I think we all want really smart material. So have the humor and the horror, but also it’s so psychologically grounded. So you’re not in Neverland, you’re actually completely grounded and these characters as manifestations of a psychological moment in the lives of these characters really come to life.

Fans’ response to Reyes as been mixed, to say the least. How do you feel about playing such a divisive character? 

Sakina: As I think was intended! Yeah. Ask him. [points to Mark] I want to know! I just want them to believe she has as much, not reason for being, but I think she thinks she’s doing the right thing. And when you see her come up against these characters, of course you’re going to feel for your beloved characters, your hero. But I think everyone is on a mission. And she’s on a mission that has merit. Let’s just say that. What do you think? Tell me, Mark.

Mark: Save for the demons, she’s absolutely right. About everything. If it weren’t for the apocalypse. But I believe that and introducing her as somebody who is not in that world, also gives us an access for the audiences who — you know, she’s someone who can come into this show and say, “This world is insane.” And I believe that, and everything I’m seeing [from her] there’s a justification for. Her interaction, the fact that she knew Abbie and Jenny’s mother, is going to factor in to the rest of the season. I think it will make an interesting bond there. Even if it cuts against her grain as a soldier, a warrior, in this war against evil. I think there’s a really fun arc she’s going to go through this season. I’m excited to let you see that!

Sakina: Yeah, all of them are great characters and you have no idea [each] week from the next which character is going to be doing.

What is it like being one of the leads of a show that has such a powerful female presence?

Sakina: It was nice actually, for me, to come in immediately at a point of authority rather than have to win it over or to prove myself. In fact everybody has to prove it to me, what their worth is. And that’s pretty much a luxury. I mean, I walk around with a stick up my ass [laughs] but I don’t mind! I don’t mind. What I love, with Nikki and I combined, we’re probably not much more than ten feet. We’re tiny, but don’t trifle with us. Thank you Mark for making short women powerful.

Mark: I believe it. She comes in and, you as an actor, you have such authority that it’s really, I think, exciting. It’s really organic to the world of the show. We weren’t trying to make a point, like “Look, another powerful woman.”It’s, here’s another person, a character, who’s very powerful and authoritative, and happens to be a woman.

Sakina: And is on a mission! Like every single character on this show. And like I keep talking about and find so interesting, is the idea that every character has suffered loss. And how they carry that burden. And, in the history I was given of Leena Reyes, there’s some loss in her life too. We all carry it differently and it’s sort of a reflection of a lot of interesting things that are played out in season two.

Mark: We’re going to get to know more about that this season as it plays out.

Sleepy Hollow has gained a reputation for having one of the most racially diverse casts in network television. Did you expect to have that reputation? How do you feel about having that responsibility, and did you ever intend to?

Mark: We never set out to like, part of the mission is to create a diverse cast. Let’s cast the most interesting characters, let’s cast the most interesting actors that we can find.

Sakina: I was so hoping he was going to say that.

Mark: But it’s true! I was lucky when I saw House of Cards. That’s when it really became, you know, recently familiar with your work. I said, “That’s who we want for this role.” And we went after her. And we’ve done that with Orlando, Lyndie, they’re just phenomenal actors and talents. That’s waht we looked for in casting the show. But we did want it to look like America. Part of the fun of this show is the character Ichabod Crane, who’s from 1776 from the Revolutionary War, is showing him what America looks like today.

Sakina: Look around the table. Sorry. This is it. Hello! This is Sleepy Hollow!

Will we be seeing any more Horsemen?

Mark: Good question. Well, two is a lot. So I feel that [we will] explore them for awhile. We are ramping towards an apocalypse. The Bible says there’s going to be at least four. I hope that if the show does one thing, it surprises, so I wouldn’t have any expectations. Just let it come. But, yeah, I hope we’ll surprise you with the way the whole apocalypse plays out.

One of my fellow press writers tells the table they did not expect to see Henry be the Horseman of War.

Sakina: That was the most ingenious thing ever.

Mark: We came up with that fairly early. And like for this season, we know how it’s going to end, and we knew before we started the series. So getting to plan that really helped us in laying these Easter eggs throughout the season. And it was hidden well, in the fact that Henry is so much older and, you know, we worked hard to hide the fact that he was his son.

Sakina: Did you tell the actors? John knew.

Mark: Oh yeah. John knew.

Sakina: Did the others?

Mark: Yeah we told them halfway through. This season we have another surprise coming in our midseason finale in December. Which I hope will be as suspenseful and as interesting as we have before.

Sakina: What’s interesting is that when you look back, you’re like, “Oh right, that, that, that, and that.”

As the session comes to a close, Sakina has a bright idea. She asks again. “Okay, so who are we going to date?”

Sleepy Hollow airs Mondays at 8 PM EST on FOX.

Check out our interview with “Sleepy Hollow” stars Orlando Jones, Lyndie Greenwood, writer Raven Mentz, and executive producer Len Wiseman from New York Comic-Con 2014!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyl95obG0ac

NYCC 2014: ‘Sleepy Hollow’ stars Lyndie Greenwood, Orlando Jones, writer Raven Metzner, and executive producer Len Wiseman!

by Eric Francisco

When I think of the great genre television shows that garner beloved fandoms, I think of one thing: The worlds they build. Whether it’s the Babylon space station, Westeros, or even just Sunnydale High School, fantasy is an escape and to build a world that feels real enough to make you want to journey through it is a magical thing. While the real city is a lot smaller and not populated by demons, the titular town of FOX’s Sleepy Hollow is a quaint little New York mountain town that has become ground zero for the Biblical apocalypse. I’ve been anxious to get to talk to the awesome, wild people who inhabit it and the creative geniuses who built it. At the 2014 New York Comic-Con, I did just that.

FOX’s Sleepy Hollow has been a major success and with only one complete season out there, it is bound to go down as a classic should the creative forces keep the momentum going. At the New York Comic-Con press room, a secluded area away from the chaos of the convention, I sat down on a roundtable with actors Lyndie Greenwood (Jenny) and Orlando Jones (Capt. Frank Irving), writer Raven Metzner, and executive producer Len Wiseman.

(Note: The following interview was conducted on a press room round table. Not all questions were mine, but all questions have been slightly paraphrased and edited to fit an easy-to-read Q&A format, as much of the round table happened conversationally. No drastic changes were made in the questions and the meaning and integrity of each question has been retained.)

The first to join us at the table was actress Lyndie Greenwood, who plays the tough-as-nails sister of Abbie, Jenny, and series writer Raven Metzner.

Sleepy Hollow has been a runaway success. With you guys personally, what is going on internally as the show ramps up for season two?

Raven: I wasn’t on the first season, but I was a giant fan of the show. So it’s extremely exciting to not only write and create on the show, but as a fan just watch it.

Lyndie: Excited and nervous. All of those things.

What’s it like joining a show that was full steam ahead already? Was it intimidating?

Raven: The first season was such a high bar all the way across. The great relationships, the amazing monsters, the great twists, the challenges and the bar of just trying to get above it.

For Lyndie, what’s it like for Jenny to finally start kicking some ass?

Lyndie: I feel like Jenny, the first scene you see her in season one, she’s doing chin-ups and push-ups, and is kicking ass from the beginning. It’s nice to have a team, to be a part of a team, and to be working towards the same goal, and to finally have people believe Jenny, which she’s been saying all these years. So, it’s gratifying to see her go through that.

So, Abbie and Jenny have had some tiffs. They’ve gotten over some of them, but they’ve been introduced to a new one: Reyes, and their mother. Can you tell us about how Jenny and Abbie will face those challenges?

Lyndie: We’re definitely going to learn more about the mother. And that is just an insane story. I think people will enjoy it, it was very fun to shoot too. And yeah, the sisters, they have tried so hard and they’ve worked so hard to be back in each other’s lives, you know Jenny has all these trust issues and she’s trying to work through them. But then they’re constantly hit with challenges of the apocalypse. [laughs] So it’s really cool to see them try to work this relationship out in this setting.

Do you think there’s something else? Once they do work through Reyes or even the apocalypse, that will eventually get in the way? Or is this the biggest hurdle they have to go through?

Lyndie: I just think life will throw things your way. Just by the nature of relationships you have to constantly work at them. So I think the sisters will have many, many challenges.

Raven: Also, the stakes are so high. I mean, its the apocalypse. The challenges they face are so monstrous, it puts all these characters into situations they never thought they’d be in before, and it makes them pushed up against choices they never thought they’d have to make and I think that you’ll see that coming up a lot this season.

How do you think Jenny feels about being out in the world when the demons that threw her in confinement are still out there? What’s her headspace like?

Lyndie: In a sense, she probably doubted herself at times. But now, she has other people backing her. She has that confidence within herself and is backed by people she’s starting to trust. So in a weird way, it’s probably satisfying. It’s kind of like, I told you so! In the worst way.

Filmmaker, producer, and screenwriter Len Wiseman swaggers over to our table and pops a seat next to Raven. Wiseman, mastermind behind the Underworld series, is among the helmers of Sleepy Hollow here at the New York Comic-Con.

You guys have crafted one of the most unique corners in genre horror. What exactly was the inspiration to mash up colonial America, modern America, and the Biblical end of days?

Len: You know, actually, here’s where it came from. When we did the research on the Washington Irving story, the original story of the Headless Horseman, [it] was created on the battlefield of the Revolutionary War. So, that had never been portrayed before. So that’s where the Revolution aspect came from. So it started there. And placing Crane there, being the one that was actually responsible for cutting off the head, creating the Headless Horseman, it then took us down the path of American history. With that character. And blending that with the Headless Horseman who happened to be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which was so fun to pitch because when you pitch “the Headless Horseman is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” it just sounds correct! When we were pitching it to the studios, people were like, “I didn’t realize that.” You know? No, it’s not real, but it sounds so good.

What monsters have you guys enjoyed fighting the most, out of what we’ve seen so far?

Raven: I can say that my favorite monster is coming up in two weeks. Her name is the Weeping Lady, and she’s my favorite monster, because I made her! With the help of Len Wiseman and of course the rest of the writing crew.

Len: She’s a really cool monster.

Raven: I’m really, really excited about her.

Lyndie: One of my favorites is coming up too but I guess I’m not allowed to say. It’s the one after yours. And I’m not allowed to say! [laughs]

Raven: Nope! Nope!

Orlando Jones, who plays the hard-boiled cop turned institution patient Frank Irving, joins our side at the press table. We all have our iPhones, sound recorder, DSLRs, laptops, and camcorders scattered around the table. Jones, dressed like he just finished a GQ photoshoot, whips out his phone and becomes one of us. He could have had a fedora with a note that says “PRESS” and it would have been damn-near perfect.

Orlando Jones: What’s coming up midseason that you can reveal to us?

Lyndie: I told you to get out of here. I’m not answering your questions. Can somebody remove this man?

Raven [to Jones’ camera]: Irving gets naked!

Orlando Jones: Does Irving ever get naked with Benjamin Franklin?

The table laughs. I was told the Sleepy Hollow cast and crew have a warm work environment and that everybody there has a good time. Being up close in person to just a few of the actors and creatives, I wish I could be a fly on the wall on set.

Lyndie: You know what one of my favorite monsters was? Demon Jenny.

Len: Demon Jenny was awesome! When the dailies of that came in of that, you were so awesome in that. That was really creepy. And the final product of that, you with the eyes, with the voice, with everything, that was always for a director or producer, those elements are potentially very cheesy. Somebody gets possessed, and they do the demon voice, there’s always a high potential of failure for that there. And Lyndie pulled it off amazing. That was one of our creepiest moments.

One of the other reporters tells the table that she couldn’t sleep after Demon Jenny.

Lyndie: [laughs] Thank you so much! My friends and I when we were growing up, we used to find out who would do the most Satanic smile. Let me try.

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We all freak out.

Len: I think the best demons we’ve had have been Jenny and Brooks, John Cho. That was amazing too. Those two moments I think were — creatures aside — were I think some of my favorite.

When is Irving going to break out?

Lyndie: Yeah, when are you getting out?

Orlando: [to Lyndie] Listen, I don’t like your tone of voice. [laughs] You know, it’s gonna be a slow burn. And rightfully so. Right now he’s facing a different set of circumstances. Right now he’s estranged from his family, he just sold his soul to the devil, [he’s gotten] people killed … his family, [his] daughter in particular, thinks her father is a murderer. So, he’s in a bad way. Abbie, fortunately, gave me the advice to move to the psychiatric ward and get out of the prison to get greater access which makes sense given Jenny was able to do so much while she was there. So, it’s gonna be an interesting season. There are a lot of eyes on him. He’s in a very difficult post. He’s in harm’s way.

How do you think Irving feels about being banned from Crane and Abbie?

Orlando: He’s not aware of that. He didn’t know he was signing a contract with the second horseman, so he has no clue that visitation is being controlled by his lawyer At present he thinks that this is who his wife thinks should be his attorney, and that his wife has faith — his wife is an attorney — so he has no reason not to accept her her expertise. So, it’ll be an interesting Monday, I’ll promise you that. [laughs]

Irving sort of mirrors Ichabod, in the sense that he has both ties to his family and his higher duties. But Frank we saw in the finale do a really noble thing. And now he’s in a place where has to choose between his family, his protection, and doing his job. What is that struggle going to look like in further episodes?

Orlando: It’s interesting you say that. Tom and I were literally just talking about that two nights ago. In season one, we realized that we were captain to captain and having a conversation. [We were] two people who had been in military ranks as it were, and had committed to a structured environment, and now we’re fish out of water. Him being here and me understanding what he’s brought to this world with the war raging. It’s gonna be, I think, topsy turvy for him, because I don’t think he has his sea legs yet. He doesn’t know yet a lot of things that are still happening. But I think that his journey is still very clear to him. It’s to protect his family and do what he can as a disciple in this war. I see him very much as a disciple. He’s a man of faith, he’s a man who believes, and I think he’s a man who wants to try and leave the world a better place and whatever he has to do to do that, he’s willing to do.

Sleepy Hollow has garnered a lot of praise for being one of the most racially diverse cast on television today. People are now eyeing Sleepy Hollow as one of the most progressive shows out there. How do you feel about developing that reputation? Was that at all intended from the beginning?

Len: Not by design. It was not something that was in our plan whatsoever. Our script changed quite drastically throughout the process when we were writing. Abbie was, for instance, not written as African-American. And Ichabod wasn’t written [for] a British actor. So everything just came organically from what was fitting through casting. And, so, it wasn’t anything by design. John Cho was a favor. When the show was [when] no one knows what it’s going to be, when we were putting the pilot together, I called John because I worked with him before, I thought it would be great to have — you know, nothing to do with his ethnicity — it had to do with the fact that I wanted somebody people would freak out if he died in the end.

Good choice!

The table laughs. This isn’t Sunday at Comic-Con. This is a Sunday barbecue.

Len: I called him up and I said I want people to, at the end, [make them] say, “Did they kill John Cho?” And we can say, “Yes we did. We killed John Cho.” So that was it.

I don’t know what’s worse: The betrayal or the killing of Cho. I think it was the betrayal. It was, “No John Cho, no!”

Len: The head on the back wasn’t pretty either.

Orlando: But what’s really cool about the show, as Len said, was that wasn’t an agenda. And that the show became multi-cultural based on absolutely no choices about that. Just, who’s who we’re casting, who feels right for who, so it’s always interesting to read people on the internet go, “Oh, these people are so racist.” I’m like, you got it totally wrong! These are the last racist people ever. Because they didn’t cast it based on a grid. It was cast based on who was right for the role. And there is nothing truly better than that. To look at Hollywood today, and to have that happen in Hollywood today, given what Hollywood was just not a very long time ago, is a major step and kudos to our creative crew.

Sleepy Hollow airs Mondays at 8 PM EST on FOX.

Check out our interview with Sakina Jaffrey and executive producer Mark Goffman from New York Comic-Con 2014!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyl95obG0ac

Geekscape Interviews: ‘See No Evil 2’ Directors Jen & Sylvia Soska, the Soska Twins!

by Eric Francisco

Hailing from North Vancouver, twin sisters Sylvia Soska and Jen Soska are carving out their names as rule-breakers in the horror movie genre. Raised by ’80s slashers, X-Men comic books, and pro wrestling, the Soskas are among the few to represent the next generation of scary movie storytellers. Their first feature, the hilariously-titled Dead Hooker in a Trunk, was a super indie grindhouse film that got them the props of horror masters like Eli Roth. The Twisted Twins, as they call themselves, are now challenging for the belt as they prepare to unleash their first studio film, See No Evil 2, from WWE Studios and Lionsgate.

In the overwhelmingly male-dominated movie industry, it’s always exhilarating to see cool, badass women take charge to create movies and art we all can enjoy. And that’s just who the Soskas are: cool, badass women.

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You two are some of the more prominent names in genre horror, especially given that you are women in an (unfortunately) male-dominated field. Have there been any obstacles you’ve faced that maybe your peers haven’t had to?

Sylvia: There is constantly, every day, from when I very first started to now, and I think it’s a lack of education about women’s roles within film. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Alice Guy-Blaché but she was the very first director of fiction cinema. But because it’s just such a male-dominated industry, a lot of her work was connoted with her male partners. Because they were all, oh, a women couldn’t possibly do this, but she was actually the one who opened the Solax company on the east coast, the only company to rival Hollywood and she did over seven hundred films.

Whoa.

Sylvia: She was kind of a role model for me. Like, if she could do it, I could do it.

Jen: Absolutely people look at our work differently. We’re four feature films in and dozens of shorts and people are still thinking, “Oh, do you think the Soskas going to be directors?” By that definition we are working directors. Although when somebody doesn’t like our films, the review slams us and not slamming the film. They’ll go into very personal details just attacking us. It’s like being in high school.

Sylvia: But it’s nice to stir up that kind of passion in people. I read a review yesterday that said we were disgusting and that we were ruining horror. I didn’t know I had so much power. Fuck yeah!

You made a name for yourselves for making Dead Hooker in a Truck for less than three grand, and you’re frequently cited in DIY filmmaking discussions. How do you feel about being examples for aspiring film students wanting to make their art?

Jen: It’s absolutely an honor, and if it wasn’t for directors like Robert Rodriguez we weren’t be where we are today. I owe huge amounts to Jason Eisner and his Hobo With a Shotgun. We dropped out of film school and we were going to see Grindhouse over and over again, because seeing the film that you love is really the best education. And we walked out one day and I said, “So, Dead Hooker in a Trunk?” And [Syl’s] like, “Dude, what the hell is that?” I said, “That’s our movie. We’re gonna make a movie called Dead Hooker in a Trunk.” And we didn’t have any movie up until then.

Actually, Syl and I are super active. If a student approaches us — and they [usually] write, “I know you’re too busy, I’m never going to hear back from you” — we always respond to those emails because you need to take a chance. In this industry, either you sit there and wait for it to happen for you, and it may or it may not and it likely won’t, or you can take the initiative. And you need that independent fighting filmmaking spirit, even when you go up into the studio system.

Sylvia: And it’s so important to pay it forward. The reason Jen and I were able to move this forward as we did is because other people supported us. When Dead Hooker in a Trunk came out, we would send it to festivals and they would reject it on title alone. And because it was so inspired by the multi-collaborative Grindhouse, we sent the trailer to every single director involved with that. Two days later Eli Roth got back to us and he said, “This is amazing, send me the movie.” After that, he started mentioning us in interviews. All of a sudden, festivals were like, “Oh, what’s that movie you sent to us? We were really excited about playing it!”

That’s why we always seek out independent films before they’re released, and if they’re good we try to help set them up with distribution. If they’re open to it, we’ll give them notes and advice on where we find there’s some challenges where the film can be improved in ways that don’t cost money or reshoots. And we tell people about it! Because it’s the very least that we can do.

Jen: But it’s not because we’re nice people. Selfishly, we just want to see really cool movies being made.

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Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook

How different was making See No Evil 2, a studio film, as opposed to your previous independent works? Did you have more freedom or more red tape?

Sylvia: It’s so funny, there is so, so much more freedom. Dead Hooker in a Trunk was INDIE, guerilla, we-should-have-been-arrested-a-hundred-times, we-were-running-from-the-cops filmmaking. American Mary was more intermediate, but it wasn’t [with] people that usually make films like that, so there was a lot of fighting and Jen and I struggled so much to get that movie made. The only reason it did was because our parents mortgaged their house. So we have them as investors.

What?!

Sylvia: I know! Thank God mom and dad didn’t lose the house! Thank God people liked the movie! [laughs] And then everybody warned us [about the studio]. The studio is going to do this and this. I have never been more supported in our bat-shit crazy ideas. It was like, all of a sudden, I have an army behind me, and not only do they want us to do a great job, they pushed us more out of our comfort zone to do stuff we haven’t done before.

Jen: And they have the creative and financial support. Independent filmmaking is always going to be in our blood. We’ll do a couple studio movies, and then we’ll do a little guerilla-style movie that’s just with our friends dicking around. But there are some things you need money to be able to accomplish. On See No Evil 2 we got to shoot the Phantom camera, and Syl being the biggest Lars von Trier fan in the world…

Sylvia: Yup!

Jen: It’s been a huge aspiration of hers to be able to shoot with the camera. And she thought that it was going to be a big battle to get the camera because it’s about ten grand a day. And the studio? [They said] “No problem. You need this camera? We’ll take care of it. It’s yours. You’ll get it in one day? Do you just need it for one day?” It was amazing.

Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook
Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook

The first See No Evil was a surprise success, and I was personally excited to see a sequel announced. What’s different the second time around? What can we expect to see? How has the film evolved?

Sylvia: Well, it almost, to me, feels that now See No Evil is almost like a prequel of the character, Jacob Goodnight. Because the killer was really his mom, and at the end of the film he kills her. And it’s very B-horror schlock. Jennifer and I are so inspired by European cinema, and we’re very arthouse. So it’s a lot of homages to the ’80s slasher films, the movies we grew up on. And we take a lot of stereotypes and turn them on their heads. But at the same time it’s a love letter. It’s so different. It’s a great jumping off point. There are so many things we did just to define him. Before he was wearing slacks and a t-shirt. You can’t cosplay that! We need to make this guy something scary, like if I woke up in the middle of the night and saw this guy standing at the foot of my bed, I would shit myself.

Jen: It was very important to reintroduce him to not only the people that already knew and were familiar with and love Jacob Goodnight, but to a whole new array of audience. That is very much why we decided to make it like a 1980’s slasher. He has his own theme music now, he has an array of weapons, and not only does he have his own [musical onomatopoeia], he’s got a full orchestra! Different pieces of his music show up when Jacob shows up, which is just so cool.

Sylvia: And a big shout-out to the Newton Brothers that composed the hell out of this movie. They’re just absolutely fantastic.

Jen: Also, you are going to love every character in the film. I hate going into a movie and being like, “Well I never caught his name, so he’s going to die,” or “Well, he’s the black guy, so he’s done,” or “That person is definitely done.” You’re going to love the characters and if any of them survive or any of them die, it’s not going to be a very obvious set-up.

Sylvia: The first fifteen minutes are a John Hughes movie, and by the time you have feelings it turns into a hardcore horror slasher.

I am far more excited for this movie now than I was just ten minutes ago.

Jen and Sylvia: [VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF LAUGHTER]

Jen: Everyone loves John Hughes and slashers.

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Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook

I understand you grew up as hardcore pro wrestling fans. What was it like getting to direct the Big Red Monster himself, Kane? Please tell me he’s going to chokeslam somebody.

Sylvia: Oh my God! Okay. There is definitely a chokeslam in there, and it’s amazing because a lot of the cast are huge wrestling fans, and if they weren’t they have all started watching. Glenn is absolutely phenomenal. Jen has this great saying that we went in as Kane fans and we came out as Glenn Jacobs fans. He is such a fantastic gentleman. He is so, so cool to work with. Like, we started watching wrestling when the Kane storyline was introduced, so the fact that we got to work with him, it was ridiculous! We used to be 14-year-old girls sitting on the floor when they had the house shows coming through Vancouver and I would be screaming, “Oh my God! It’s Kane! It’s Kane!” And now if I want to talk to Kane, I just text him. And he’s just like, “Hey, what’s up Sylvia?”

Jen: It was incredible. Karma, instantly, for the two girls who were bullied and beaten up in high school, now all our friends are professional wrestlers. It’s incredible.

Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook
Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook

As die-hard horror fans, what is it about the genre that allows your imaginations to run wild that other genres do not?

Jen: I really attribute it to my parents who never discouraged me from the things that I loved. I didn’t think it was weird to like horror. I guess we all grew up like Addams children, playing with spiders and not like little tiny ones, but tarantulas. We just absolutely love it. There’s so much fun in horror, and you really see that when you go to the conventions and festivals, because there aren’t any romantic comedy conventions. There aren’t even any Oscar film conventions. People who love horror just wear it on their sleeve, and they’re so passionate and so nice. And it’s a cheap thrill! And psychologically, you come as close to dying and face your fears in a safe environment and come out laughing on the other side.

Sylvia: And it’s such a fun way to tell a story. You can have such highly political messages, you can make commentaries on everything. You have one foot in reality, one foot in the fantastical, and you can tackle almost anything. And you could do so much more with it because you’re not being preached at. You’re watching people being fucking murdered! It’s a thrill.

From WWE Studios and Lionsgate, See No Evil 2 is available now on Digital HD and VOD and on Blu-ray October 21!

You can keep up with the Soskas through their official website, Twisted Twins.

Check out my interview with the star of See No Evil 2, WWE superstar Kane!

Geekscape Interviews: WWE Superstar Kane on ‘See No Evil 2’!

by Eric Francisco

He is the Big Red Monster. He is the Devil’s Favorite Demon. He is also really cool!

He is Kane, former WWE Champion, World Heavyweight Champion, ECW Champion, and the star of the new horror movie from WWE Studios and Lionsgate, See No Evil 2.

On a lazy July night in 2003, I sat down on my living room couch in a state of total boredom. I was 11-years-old and I channel surfed until I got to the start of a live WWE RAW broadcast. I used to belittle pro wrestling and thought lesser of my classmates who did, but I was so bored I thought, what the hell? Why not.

What the hell indeed. That night, I saw Kane set fire to announcer Jim Ross. I was hooked.

Arson, sadism, and the belittlement of human life wasn’t what got me into pro wrestling, but it was the spectacle, the pageantry, and the utter absurdity. I’ve been a dedicated pro wrestling fan since that day, and so it was a personal achievement that I had the opportunity to interview Glenn Jacobs, better known to WWE fans as Kane.

A veteran of the industry, Kane has been dominating the WWE ring for almost two decades, chokeslamming and piledriving poor sons of bitches straight to hell. The summer I started watching pro wrestling, Kane removed his intimidating red and black mask — a signature of his for years at that point — and unveiled an even more hideous, scarred visage underneath. It was the biggest storyline of that summer.

In 2005, Kane transferred his Monday night terror onto the big screen when he became Jacob Goodnight, the big bad of WWE Films’ first horror movie, See No Evil. Now, Kane has stepped back into the shoes of Jacob Goodnight and is ready to bring the pain once again.

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You have portrayed Kane for well over a decade and you have built a career igniting fear to audiences worldwide. Including me! I was terrified of you as a kid. With your role of Jacob Goodnight added to your list of personas, what has been the most fun aspect about playing monsters?

Kane: The thing about playing monsters is you basically get to do things you can’t in real life. That’s what’s the most fun. People ask me, in wrestling, would you rather be the good guy or the bad guy? Well, I always wanna be the bad guy! There really are no rules as to what the bad guy can do. Good guys have a certain moral code they have to stand by, deep down. Even if it’s a guy like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who is not necessarily who you’d think as the conventional good guy, he’s still has certain things he can do and certain things he can’t do. When you’re a bad guy, you can do anything. And that’s what’s really fun.

See No Evil was an early success for WWE Studios. What’s it like to return to the Jacob Goodnight role?

Kane: It was a lot of fun, basically because I worked with such great people. I worked with the Soska twins, the rest of the cast was great, and the rest of the crew were very experienced. We shot it in Vancouver, where there’s so much going on. So, I really had a good time because of the people I was surrounded with.

The Soska twins raved about you when I spoke to them. 

Kane: They’re great, they’re awesome. I’m gonna rave about them too! [laughs]

As an actor, how different is playing Kane from Jacob Goodnight? On the surface they’re similar, but how are they different psychologically?

Kane: Kane is actually much more evil than Jacob. Because [with] Jacob, his mother controls him. Jacob is almost like an inanimate object. He’s an instrument of her. He’s her weapon. Kane is his own weapon. He loves being evil. He’s fully cognizant of what he’s doing and he glorifies it. Despite the fact that he doesn’t do as nasty things as Jacob does, that’s what makes Kane much worse. Kane is like the sort of Hannibal Lecter-ish character who is really aware of what he’s doing and is intelligent, and cognizant, and self-aware of his evil and basks in it. Whereas Jacob, really doesn’t have that much choice in what he’s doing. He’s a victim of his own circumstances.

How difficult is it for you to constantly be in the headspace of sadistic monsters? Do you do anything to relax that separates you from Kane or Jacob Goodnight?

Kane: It really isn’t that difficult, you know, for me. Because I don’t get self-absorbed into the characters at all.

Oh, wow.

Kane: Yeah, no. It’s not like, I become the character. It’s definitely a difference for me.

That’s fascinating to hear, I always hear about actors who “become their character.”

Kane: Now, granted, some of the things you do in particular, [like what I’ve done] as Kane, that stays with you for a little while. But then I think just to get my mind off of it. Just think about something else.

Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook
Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook

What influenced the look and aesthetic of Jacob Goodnight? What dictated your portrayal of him? Did you see something in a movie or in your life that you poured into Jacob?

Kane: Not really. First of all, Jacob — I think — is unique among the movie monsters. Because, yes, he’s like Jason Voorhees, yes he’s like Michael Meyers, but he’s also very different, in that those guys are forces of nature. They’re instinctual. Jacob is very emotional. Which I think comes out a lot more in See No Evil 2. By the end of See No Evil, because he’s had it really rough, he’s had this terrible mother, as bad of a childhood as you could possible imagine. So by the end of See No Evil you’re like, “Aww man, I feel really bad for him.” Because it’s not his fault.

But by See No Evil 2 his mother is gone, the biggest influence of his life, so now you have a psychopath going through a psychotic breakdown on top of it, if that’s even possible. So he’s just different, and for that reason, I don’t think there’s anything I could look at. Yeah, certainly you do with Michael Meyers and Jason Voorhees, the classic slasher monsters, you certainly have that influence. Jacob never runs. Always walks. [laughs] That sort of stuff. But some of the other things, I just don’t think there’s a template for him.

Aside from being evil, you’ve also done incredibly well with comedy. During your tag team runs with the Big Show and Daniel Bryan, you showed the world that you have a funny bone. After See No Evil 2, would you like to pursue other genres? Would you ever do a comedy?

Kane: Yeah! I attribute a lot of my longevity in the WWE to the fact that I can reinvent myself. And when you look at WWE, at the guys who have been around for a long time, that’s the way it is. Even though The Undertaker has always been The Undertaker, he’s been different incarnations. He’s been different. Same with Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels changed over the years. That’s the same with me. And also the fact, of course, I’ve been surrounded by great people the whole time. But when you actually look at whatever characteristic that we share in common, it’s that versatility, that ability to reinvent ourselves.

And I think, as an actor too, you do get stale when you play the same character for a long time. Because then you’re not acting anymore. Then it becomes doing something by rote. You’re not challenged intellectually. So yeah, I would definitely love to do some other things. The horror genre is my favorite genre, because just the fact that it’s escapism, it’s fantasy. For the stuff that I’ve done anyway. But I would love to do some other things as well. Because I look forward to that challenge.

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Photo: Twisted Twins Productions on Facebook

In the pantheon of horror, from Jekyll & Hyde to Freddy Krueger, you’ve become an icon amongst pro wrestling and horror fans. How do you feel about leaving your mark on pop culture? What has been the most rewarding thing about your career in spreading fear?

Kane: [laughs] We had the premiere of See No Evil 2 out in L.A. And, as an entertainer, seriously the most rewarding thing is just when you get to see people enjoying the product. No matter what it may be. That’s why you do what you do. To bring people pleasure and to bring people enjoyment. And not just by scaring the hell out of them! [laughs] Other times it’s making them laugh. But that’s the most rewarding thing. The fact that in some way you’ve impacted people’s lives for the better. Whatever platform or venue it is, that’s why we do what we do.

See No Evil 2 is available now on VOD and Digital HD, and on Blu-ray October 21th!

Check out my interview with the directors of See No Evil 2, the “Twisted Twins” Jen and Sylvia Soska!

NYCC 2014: We Interview ‘Constantine’ stars Matt Ryan, Angélica Celaya, and executive producer David S. Goyer!

by Eric Francisco

The 2014 New York Comic-Con had attendance that far surpassed that of San Diego (according to NYCC, but we’re still skeptical). While the multi-billion dollar movie industry still dominates San Diego, this makes New York Comic-Con the largest pop culture event in the United States in cold numbers. And inside this leviathan of an event housed in one of the busiest cities in the entire world, I managed to have a relaxing little chat.

Constantine, the newest DC/Vertigo show, will soon hit broadcast airwaves in a little under ten days. Show stars Matt Ryan, Angélica Celaya, and executive producer David S. Goyer sat down with me for a few minutes and answered questions after I asked them, because that’s how these things work, you see.

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The show is housed on a kind of left-field network: NBC. While the channel has had varying degrees of success with genre shows — from Heroes to Hannibal — it’s still hard to imagine Constantine being in the house that Johnny Carson built. Constantine seems destined to be the next hot item, but what’s standing in its way?

“I mean obviously there are some constraints you have to deal with on network that you don’t have to deal with on pay cable,” says executive producer David S. Goyer. “But having said that, we’re on on the same network on the same time slot that Hannibal also inhabits and … I’m shocked by some of the things they do on Hannibal. So, I don’t think we’ve toned it down that much actually.”

How did NBC become the choice for Constantine anyway?

“We have an executive at NBC, Perlina, whose been a fan of the character even when she used to work at Showtime with Bob Greenblatt, so she’s been wanting to do a Constantine show ever since then. And Bob Greenblatt came over from Showtime and they came from pay cable sensibility, and watching what’s been happening with cable versus network and clearly network has had to change so I think it’s a comfortable fit. Of all the networks, it’s hard to imagine Constantine working on any of the other networks.”

In the last few years pay cable has certainly raised the bar for what audiences perceive television storytelling to be. But what of that story? What are we going to get with Constantine? Constantine isn’t Batman, but he still has a passionate fanbase that knows his stories well. “Any adaptation of something in a different is going to change a little bit but it stays very closely,” says Goyer. “I think by the time people watch the first twelve or thirteen episodes, they will be shocked at how much of that original Hellblazer milieu is embodied in the show … We’ve already adapted some specific issues within the first season.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQauGK0AeS4

Constantine himself has got a ton of signatures: The trench coat. The smoking. The tie. The punk rock music? “We do kind of have a punk soundtrack. We have Buzzcocks on the show, Ramones, and I’m incredibly proud to say, in episode 3 — this may be the first time it’s happened in network television, I could be wrong — I got them to license a Sex Pistols song. So John is listening to the Sex Pistols in that episode, in a scene in which Papa Midnite shows up.”

Judging only by the trailers, it appears Constantine is kind of stuck in a few certain locales. According to Goyer, Constantine will be up and about a lot more than one might think. “The show will ultimately take place all over the world. Even in the first season we’re out of America for some of the show. We’re not in London yet, but … if you think about [it], when John was first introduced, it was in America. “American Gothic” took place in America. But we’ll go back to London at some point. And we’ll be dipping back into what happened in New Castle.”

In 2005 a big-budget film starring Keanu Reeves was released to a lukewarm reception. Personally, I enjoyed it, but it’s hard to deny the somewhat lethargic effect it had on mainstream audiences. How much of the movie influenced the decision to produce the show? Were they worried at all about the less-than-stellar first impression the movie made? “Not at all,” says Goyer. “I think to a certain extent people are used to there being different iterations of things. Lord knows there have been multiple iterations of Batman and Superman and whatnot. The movie was polarizing, I enjoyed it for what it was, but first and foremost we cast a British actor to play a British character.”

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Matt Ryan as “Constantine”

Matt Ryan is certainly one of the more exciting factors for Constantine. “And I know people that have seen the show, almost to a man or woman, feel that Matt has completely embodied John Constantine,” says Goyer. And he’s right. Matt Ryan, dressed in all black with a leather jacket and unbuttoned boots, swaggers to my table like he actually just finished fighting off a demon and had a smoke outside the Javits Center like it was no big. The first question someone asked: Did you ever do the Mumbles Mile? “I’m from Swansea. I can’t remember doing the Mumbles Mile, but that’s the whole point. We used to do a beer and a shot in every pub.”

Everyone in the press room had been working (which involves lots of waiting, and waiting) throughout the convention, but Ryan’s presence put everyone at ease. And he’s the one playing demon hunter. But what is it like being Constantine? What dictated his decisions as an actor who John Constantine was? “It’s interesting because there are so many different writers that write him and artists that draw him, but what’s great is that there are so many things you can pick out for different episodes and different storylines,” says Ryan. “It’s like this canvas of stuff,” he motions with his hands, circling them around. “You’re never lost for ideas. You can just dip in and go, ‘Oh, I can use that.’ [But we’re] keeping the core DNA of the character there consistently, and then using the rest of it then as you see fit.”

Ryan says the most fun he has playing Constantine is “when he’s just a real bugger … And he does it with a smile.” And why? “You don’t get to do that in real life. You get slapped and knocked out.”

No matter your thoughts on previous portrayals, for many it was great to finally hear Constantine speak in a British accent. But there was more to it than just that. “What was important to me was kind of trying to get the essence of the character, rather than just playing a Scouse accent and going ‘Okay, this is my John Constantine and he’s a Scouse.’ I was just trying to get the the DNA of him and be true to him. And I also wanted to do something accessible to a broad audience. He’s kind of like a northern, you know he’s from the north, but I’m not going too Scouse with it. I kind of just concentrated on really getting under his skin and getting the essence of it.”

The heaviness of Constantine is taxing for any one man to play. It’s not uncommon to hear about roles leaving their mark on the actors who portray them, so how does Ryan deal with it? “It’s weird, because I don’t know, I just play him. I try to dip into a comic before going to bed, but some days you work fifteen hours a day, and then you decide to read a comic and you just give yourself nightmares. So some nights I listen to nursery music.” The whole table erupts in laughter. “It’s quite taxing, but it’s fun and great.”

“God is he funny,” Goyer says about star Matt Ryan. “I’m excited for you guys to see subsequent episodes because what you hope for a show is they get better and better with each subsequent episode, and episodes three, and four, and five, six, seven, it just ramps up and ramps up. And he is just mainlining John Constantine. We saw over 500 people and it’s really hard because we had this sort of impression in our minds who John should be. Matt did a self-tape, he was on stage in London with a giant beard. He looked like Sasquatch. And I said, That’s the guy.’ Showed it to the studio and they said that’s not the guy. I said, ‘That’s the guy!’ I said to our casting lady, don’t let him out of his option. We kept on seeing people and I did my best to sabotage all those auditions. Eventually, Matt finished his run, shaved the beard, and I said, that’s the guy. And eventually we cast him.”

Did Matt Ryan live up to the original vision of what Constantine was? “I wanted someone to look like he leapt off the page, from the Delano comic books. Or Tim Bradstreet covers. And Matt looks like John Constantine! And acts like John Constantine! And so for all these years, decades, I’ve had this kind of idea in my head, and to actually cast someone who brings that to life is amazing.”

Constantine isn’t the kind of character you’d expect to headline a network show. He’s compelling, sure, but there was a reason why he was created in late-80’s comic books and not immediately for mainstream television. Goyer and his team knew that. “He had to be a bastard,” he says. “Sometimes a real asshole. That’s just who he is. Snarky and he lies. He’s terrible to the men and women he sleeps with. He’s not your first choice when you think of somebody to save the world, unfortunately he’s the guy we’ve got. And that’s what makes him so fun. And we said those things to NBC. We said in the beginning, if you can get behind this guy — he’s not a shiny, matinee idol guy — then we’re good. And they’ve embraced that.” There was something akin to a grocery list of who Constantine had to be. “He had to be British. He had to have the trenchcoat, skinny tie, and even though he’s on network he had to be a smoker. There was some negotiations to that, because that’s just part and parcel to his character. We all know he gets cancer later on and that’s something we wanted to give a nod to.”

The show is called Constantine but he’s not the only one playing in this weird-ass universe. Enter Zed, portrayed by the excellent Angelica Celaya. “She comes from the Hellblazer world,” says Celaya. “She’s sensitive, she gets visions, she’s always within the arts. She’s spray painting or drawing, and that’s how she translates her visions. And she’s running away from situations in her life. And within the show we see her running with walls, not really trusting, scared, but through being scared she becomes tough. That’s what Zed is. It is based on Zed from Hellblazer. It is 100%. And we’re not shying away from her at all.”

Angelica Celaya as "Zed"
Angelica Celaya as “Zed”

Zed’s presence has come as a surprise. The pilot introduced us to Liv Aberdine, who was portrayed by actress Lucy Griffiths. After the pilot, the producers sought a different direction and took another character from the Hellblazer universe, Zed. How did she prepare on such short notice? “They gave me a stack of books, and they were like, here you go. And that’s where I got she was extremely sarcastic, so funny, refreshingly sarcastic. And then I realized, I get to be her!”

But who is Zed? What is she in this universe for? “She really really wishes that her family could be a real family,” muses Celaya. “She really wishes love was love, and protection was protection. That’s why she runs to Constantine in this badass world, because in a way that’s protection.”

 

So if Constantine is protection, is Zed a damsel in distress? Hell no. “Oh my God! I am blessed!” screams Celaya from excitement. “I don’t know how to play the damsel in distress! I’m a big Mexican! My mother taught me, if there’s trouble fix it. You cry? No honey. You dry you tears and you fix the problem. There’s no crying in baseball.” 

I was thrilled to learn that Zed wouldn’t be a damsel in the show adaptation. But how will she still measure against the con man himself? “She can be physical, but toe-to-toe with Constantine? You know besides a master of the dark arts, he’s also the master of saying all this stuff and manipulation, and running around ten times without you even noticing. That’s what he does. And Zed is like, no. Cut it down. Okay, you said all that? You mean this. So that’s going toe-to-toe, and Constantine trying to push Zed away, and Zed is going, ‘What? Excuse me? No.'”

Diversity in genre media has been a hot button topic in the last several years. Sleepy Hollow, among other shows, have gained a solid reputation for proving (gasp!) diversity and compelling characters mix well. Super well. Marvel, meanwhile, has been celebrated for introducing superheroes of color and bending genders in their comic books. But while the mediums at large still remain largely colorless, Constantine is amongst the few genre programs leading the way. “They casted it so that she happens to be Latina … and I give John Constantine a little run for his money when I talk Spanish,” says Celaya. “You know, give it a little sass there.” She snaps her fingers. “[And] I love it. I love the fact that she’s Latina, and that she happens to be Latina! Not that she’s, you know, showing her butt or her breast. It’s like, no, no stereotypes here. She just so happens to be Latina as all Latinas are. They didn’t choose to be! And it’s a big step forward. I’m so blessed and honored to be given that. I couldn’t ask for more.”

Her influence in portraying Zed is equally exciting and intriguing. “I based her and what I did with girls I grew up around seeing who were running away from family and who were running away from home and who wished they had a solid ground to be embraced, and the consequence of that is they become a little rough, they become a little protective.”

The DC Universe may not have the cinematic presence that its competitors do, but it has surely taken over television in a big way. Does Constantine fit into the larger DC television multiverse? Yes, and no. “We’re safe in the occult corner of the DC Universe,” says Goyer. “We have access to those characters, those characters are kind of reserved for us. The longer we’re on, the more we’ll be introducing.”

Constantine premieres October 24, 2014 on NBC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYYWMtj1Ag

36 Great Halloween Marathon-Worthy Movies (That Aren’t Horror)

by Eric Francisco

I don’t even need to describe how popular it is to watch horror movies during this time of year, do I? You do it. Your friends do it. You probably do it with your friends. You might even do it with your parents if they’re cool. I need to work on phrasing, but especially in the Age of the Binge-Watch, Halloween movie marathons are a popular modern ritual.

Although it makes all the sense in the world to indulge in horror movies during the one month you’re pretty much obligated to, there’s no reason you can’t change things up a little bit. There exists countless horror-ish films that would be perfect for a Halloween binge-watch to throw in between A Nightmare on Elm Street and pretty much any Stanley Kubrick movie. From dark genre movies, visceral documentaries, to grim comedies, here’s a fun list of movies to select from if you don’t feel like watching the later Friday the 13th movies for the bazillionth time.

Also, I chose not to include some of the more obvious choices. The idea is to change things up a bit more. So no matter how much you love them, I have not included Van Helsing, nor American Psycho, or Ghostbusters, Shaun of the Dead, Freddy vs. Jason, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Zombieland, or even Hocus Pocus. You probably already watch Hocus Pocus anyway.

You don’t need to watch everything here. Take one or two to spruce up your Halloween marathon. You might be pleasantly surprised.

This is also by all means not a complete list. These are just suggestions.

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The Crow (1994, dir. Alex Proyas)

An amazing film was created for almost $15 million in 1994. $8 million was added for tragic reasons. On Devil’s Night in Detroit, rock star Eric Draven and his fiance Shelly are murdered. One year later, Eric rises from the grave for revenge.

Although kind of an obvious choice given its grim aesthetic, this film is largely undiscussed during Halloween, and that baffles me. It came at the right time: smack dab in the grungy 90’s, when comic books started overcompensating for their campy roots. The Crow is rightfully celebrated for being a weird, stylish gothic action film. Eric Draven is such a cool character, I mean just fucking look at him. It’s no wonder Sting modeled a look right after him in WCW (and has kept that look ever since). Have you ever listened to the soundtrack? Listen to it. It’s a great collection of grunge-gothic rock from the only decade that kind of music could ever exist.

Sadly, the film’s production was troubled; the death of its star, Brandon Lee, was killed under freaky circumstances during filming. It’s far more haunting when you consider his father, the legendary Bruce Lee, also passed away during production of The Game of Death. Although incredibly unfortunate, it has made this awesome, kick-ass movie otherworldly.

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Gojira (1954, dir. Ishiro Honda)

Casual filmgoers scoff at Godzilla movies. It’s the bad special effects and awful dubbing which relegate the films to the schlock B-movie category. Well if they ever do that to Gojira, those people are idiots and they can go fuck themselves. Gojira is superbly grim, and nothing like the silliness (and, let’s be honest, total awesomeness) that followed. Coming almost ten years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II, Gojira remains a visual poem to the dangers of nuclear war. The attraction might be a gigantic lizard terrorizing Japan, but at its heart Gojira is very human, as the people who can stop the monster struggle with their own inner demons and ask questions no one is willing to answer. The black and white cinematography add to Godzilla’s mystique and his grotesque form is made stranger with the less you see. You can pick a later Godzilla movie and laugh and cheer at the G-man. You watch this one, however, and you’re terrified but awe-struck by his destructive elegance.

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13 Assassins (2010, dir. Takashi Miike)

One of the most thrilling samurai epics in recent film history, horror master Takashi Miike explores other genre territory but brings along the tools he knows best in 13 Assassins. A lord with unlimited power wreaks havoc at will, and so a gang of samurai band together to put an end to his madness. Although very much a samurai film, Miike’s signature gore and macabre visuals are in full display; vivid red blood pours out of a man’s belly from ritual suicide, a woman in ghostly white geisha make-up is left without limbs, a monster of a ruler target practices his archery against children. It may not be a horror film, but it can be pretty damn close. Watch for the climactic showdown. It’s a whopping 50 minutes.

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The Animatrix (2003, dir. various)

I love The Matrix. Even if Reloaded and Revolutions aren’t well-favored by most, its ambition and imagination still exceeds even some of the more revered films out there. I could put the entire trilogy on this list, but you’ve already seen them and you’re probably one of the many who hate the sequels. But I also don’t need to, because The Animatrix exists and believe it or not, it’s pretty fucking terrifying. This anthology brings together some of the biggest names in anime, and serves as a wonderful exercise on the auteur theory. Each short is wildly different from the next, and its scope is boundless despite being no more than maybe ten minutes each. My personal favorite is “A Detective Story” (pictured) but you absolutely need to watch “The Second Renaissance.” In fact, I’ll allow you to skip most of the film if you must (although you shouldn’t), but “The Second Renaissance” is mandatory viewing.

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Dredd (2012, dir. Pete Travis)

I liked Dredd but I didn’t love it. Still, as a throwback to super violent 80s/90s action movies (and a dash of sci-fi), with modern special effects, grungy locales, and an antagonist straight out of a prog-rock album, it’s worth watching. Especially on Halloween, if you find yourself tired of helpless teenagers, it will be refreshing to watch someone totally capable of kicking ass. I’m hoping for a sequel that far exceeds the quality of its predecessor, but until then, Dredd isn’t a bad choice.

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Room 237 (2012, dir. Rodney Ascher)

If The Shining isn’t a part of your Halloween marathon, you’re a complete failure. It truly is one of the best films, period, we’re not even talking horror. However, a fantastic companion piece is the documentary Room 237 that delves into some of the most bizarre critical theories about this wonderful, weird movie. Turn off the lights and turn up the volume. Some of the revelations — whether you agree or not — can be just as terrifying.

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Bunraku (2010, dir. Guy Mosche)

No one watched Bunraku. No one. Which is why you should at least check it out, especially this time of year. Costumes and intricate sets galore in this weird, all substance and no style, wacky mish-mosh of jidaigeki and westerns all made by a guy who played a lot of Nintendo growing up. The setting is a total novelty, a vaudeville romp with costumes you’d love to wear to a party. I don’t think it’s particularly good, but I love it. Woody Harrelson plays a mentor figure of sorts, and Ron Perlman plays the villain. You should be sold now.

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The Act of Killing (2013, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer)

Nothing is more terrifying than real people doing evil things. No amount of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krugers can match up to war criminals, corrupt dictators, serial killers, sex criminals, and racists. Enter The Act of Killing, the Oscar-nominated documentary on the 1965-1966 mass killings of suspected communists in Indonesia. 500,000 people were horrifically murdered for even remotely being associated with communism, and these acts and the people who committed them are celebrated in Indonesia today as something of a folk tale. Tons of people who worked on this movie withheld their identities for fear that they will be killed by these monsters who are still alive today. A powerful examination on the human condition and a surreal peek inside the mind of a mass murderer, it is an audacious work of filmmaking and far more paralyzing than any horror movie. Make this movie the last to watch for the day. If you’re still human, you don’t want to go on.

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Man of Tai Chi (2013, dir. Keanu Reeves)

Probably the least qualified to be on this list, Man of Tai Chi makes it because Keanu Reeves as a kung-fu villain is too good to pass up. Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut is one hell of a action film with excellent choreography and enough of a creepy, sterile setting that feels like it came from a totally different movie. Dramatic lighting, bad ass fights, and exotic locales makes this worth watching if you’re tired of cabins in woods.

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Detention (2010, dir. Joseph Kahn)

I’m kind of breaking my own rules here because Detention is technically a horror movie, but way, way, way more people need to see this kintetic teen rollick. A true groundbreaker in genre filmmaking, Detention‘s plot is kind of hard to sum up, but it involves a horror slasher come to life, high school, time travel, a bear, UFOs, and a super meta examination of modern teen movies. Joseph Kahn’s ADD-filled tribute to 90s culture is like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for the click-bait crowd, but that crowd is a little too stupid to appreciate this awesome, kick-ass flick. And you’re not stupid, so watch Detention.

If there is ONLY one movie to take from this list, make it Detention.

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Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013, dir. Isaac Florentine)

Ninjas are a popular costume for people like that asshole Jake who is going out with your ex-girlfriend. So cleanse your palette and watch real ninjas like Scott Adkins and Kane Kosugi kick total ass that douchebags like Jake can’t because he’s a douchebag. Ninja: Shadow of a Tear gets bonus points because Scott gets his ninja costume FROM A GRAVE. So that’s kinda Halloween.

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Super (2010, dir. James Gunn)

James Gunn went from indie rock filmmaker to Super Bowl halftime after this year’s Guardians of the Galaxy, so if you’re unfamiliar with his work the time to check him out was six months ago. He has a more Halloween-appropriate comedy/horror flick in Slither but since the goal of this list is to branch out, Super is appropriate. It is strictly a superhero movie, but it contains such dark humor you’re left laughing uncomfortably. “You can’t walk anymore!” yells Ellen Page in a superhero costume to a criminal she crippled. When it’s not making you laugh, it can be just as dark as a Stanley Kubrick movie.

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Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993, dir. Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm)

Heads up: There are three Batman films on this list, but don’t worry: none of them are helmed by Christopher Nolan, or even Tim Burton (and Joel Schumacher). Originally planned as a direct-to-video release, it strangely got a total theatrical release and consequently bombed due to short notice. But who cares, because this is arguably one of the best Batman movies period. A strange vigilante has shown up taking out criminals and the police mistake him for Batman. Batman then tries to clear his name while finding out who is the strange new crime fighter. Dark, smart, and beautifully animated, it’s appropriate being the film coming from the best cartoons ever made.

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Batman (1966, dir. Leslie H. Martinson)

Because there really are some days you can’t get rid of a bomb. Here’s a tip: Don’t be a loser and watch The Dark Knight for the umpteenth time. The pro-Men’s Rights guy that you argue with on Facebook sometimes is watching The Dark Knight. Don’t be that guy. Indulge on the utter nonsense that was the 1966 Batman, arguably the best Batman we’ve ever had.

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Batman: Under the Red Hood  (2010, dir. Brandon Vietti)

Batman: Under the Red Hood just might be one of my favorite Batman movies. This tight, emotionally-wrenching animated film about Batman crossing paths with the Red Hood is super fitting for Halloween. While legendary Kevin Conroy does not voice the Dark Knight, Bruce Greenwood does an excellent job, as does the rest of the cast of this great piece of animation. John DiMaggio exceeds as the Joker, which is shocking because I never thought his deep, scruffy voice would ever fit the clown prince. Just look at that image above. You can tell you’re not in for your usual after-school cartoon.

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Dogma (1999, dir. Kevin Smith)

I’ll try to defend Kevin Smith as much as possible, but even I can only go so long. While Tusk and Red State may be actual horror movies, Dogma is the one with actual devils and supernatural beings. Two exiled angels attempt to re-enter heaven thanks to a holy loophole, and doing so can unmake the very fabric of reality. It’s got demonic shit monsters, evil hockey players, the thirteenth apostle, and a truckload of dick, weed, and fart jokes. Watch Dogma and indulge on irreverent comedy back when Smith made sense.

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Drive (2011, dir. Nicholas Winding Refln)

Drive was a festival darling when it first came out, and since then it has kind of lopsided in its relevancy. People just kind of stopped talking about it. It’s become something of a new Donnie Darko: a dark, gritty movie that seemed cool but is now almost something of a joke. I say almost because once in awhile, when the stars align right, you can still see the kick-ass B-movie, pseudo-horror action noir that everyone else saw that summer in 2011, and not the movie your jerk roommate won’t shut up about. The amazing 80s-centric techno soundtrack is a standout. “Nightcall” by Kavinsky could have opened an 80s horror movie.

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Masked Rider The First (2005, dir. Takao Nagaishi)

Even some hardcore genre film fans barely watch tokusatsu, so introduce yourself with this kind of bad, kind of awesome package of B-movie sci-fi/superhero with a touch of horror. Kamen Rider has been a staple of Japanese sci-fi for almost forty years, and this film reboots the jump-kicking grasshopper into a darker hero. There are much better Kamen Rider movies and shows to watch — Ryuki, Kabuto, W, Gaim — but I suspect there’s a chance most of you don’t even know what I’m talking about. So start with, appropriately titled, The First.

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Lo (2009, dir. Travis Betz)

Just look at that motherfucker. I’m once again breaking my rules because Lo is still considered kind of a horror movie, but it’s less that and more of an experimental film examining love and loss. Justin has lost his girlfriend, so he summons a demon and tasks him to find her in Hell. Lo is a total dick and a riot, and solid reason why you should watch this, at least if you’re stoned. It might be a little too out there for some people, and it can be eye-rollingly arthouse — some of it takes place on a stage — but there’s enough weirdness to make it a refreshing piece to any Halloween binge-watch.

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Following (1998, dir. Christopher Nolan)

When I think Christopher Nolan, I want to think the guy who made Inception and Memento. I hate thinking about the guy that made The Dark Knight Rises. I’m so stoked for Interstellar because Nolan is a masterful, visual storyteller who belongs in cinema, I just hate he had to waste a solid nine years doing Batman. Check out Following to see the sensei when he was a journeyman, and you’ll see he had talent all along. His first film is an claustrophobic noir thriller excellent for this time of year.

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Hellboy and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, or pretty much anything from Guillermo Del Toro (2004 and 2008, dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Ron Perlman plays the candy-bar eating, TV-watching demon who fights and investigates paranormal threats in service to a dedicated government agency. The film adaptations are smart, funny, imaginative, utterly strange, and everything you would want in a dark fantasy blockbuster. The creatures and set designs are signature del Toro, and while you could also watch his other work — The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth — it’s the Hellboy movies where you’ll have the most fun.

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Knights of Badassdom, (2013, dir. Joe Lynch)

Wikipedia classifies Knights of Badassdom as a comedy-horror, and while it’s not entirely wrong it’s definitely far more comedic than horror. In fact, I’d call it comedic dark fantasy. Best friends participate in a LARP (live-action role play, aka something I’m dying to do) and accidentally summon a succubus and it terrorizes the whole park. The production of the film had some trouble; filming started in 2010 but wasn’t officially released until 2013. It stars, among others, the now A-list Peter Dinklage, who has become a household name in Game of Thrones. But before that, the dude was drunkenly swinging rubber swords in what I think is a rather fun, pretty dumb little movie.

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Men in Black (1997, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld)

A lot of Will Smith movies are actually watchable on Halloween. I Am Legend stands out, and if I wanted to I’d say Independence Day but we all know when to watch that. But I often forget how good Men in Black is. The sequels have diminished the series, but the first film stands as a tight, fun, wacky sci-fi movie that totally gives the middle finger to paranoid conspiracy theorists who have always feared nameless government agents. The cockroach monster is remarkably terrifying in design.

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Mortal Kombat (1995, dir. Kevin Droney)

You’ve just heard the gong and now the music is playing in your head. Based on the video games that have freaking zombie ninjas, Mortal Kombat is probably one of the best film adaptations of a video game, period. While still reeking of B-movie mediocrity, its top-notch fight choreography, practical dark fantasy sets, and 90s camp make Mortal Kombat a total winner for Halloween marathons. It even includes a totally awesome fight scene with Reptile, who has nothing but a coding joke in the first game.

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Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue (2009, dir. Andrew Monument)

This gripping documentary traces the history and evolution of the American horror film as a genre and reflection of the cultural psyche. Tightly edited and chillingly narrated by Lance Henriksen (Admiral Hackett in Mass Effect), it’s an educating and entertaining college course condensed into ninety minutes.

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Oldboy (2003, dir. Park Chan-wook)

I don’t even know where to begin. Easily in my personal top five, this psychological thriller is a testament to what is possible in cinema. Five-star acting, expert directing and storytelling, haunting cinematography, and a hypnotic soundtrack, Oldboy is a great movie to watch any day of the week all-year long. If you haven’t seen this movie, you’re a failure, but you can redeem yourself if you watch it the one month where you’re allowed to see something fucked up. You won’t see the ending coming.

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Pacific Rim (2013, dir. Guillermo del Toro)

I already listed “anything by Guillermo del Toro,” but I need to single out Pacific Rim. I cannot talk about this movie enough. Legitimately one of the best and most imaginative sci-fi movies ever, the film acts as both a loving tribute to kaiju movies, tokusatsu, and anime, and as a flag-planter embarking on its own legacy. Featuring one the most beautiful, haunting, and utterly elegiac sequences in cinema — a child runs alone from the gigantic monster chasing her — is a poignant, truly scary picture of destruction and innocence. Also it’s wonderfully light and funny, a welcome feeling from the summer that brought us the stupidly dark Man of Steel. Pacific Rim is everything you want in a big blockbuster and why you should still go to the theaters. Gigantic kaiju monsters and robots are perfect on Halloween, and this is kaiju at its best. Anyone that looked at this movie, saw giant robots fighting, and scoffed at the notion can rightfully go fuck themselves. Those people lack imagination and should not be bothered with.

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Road to Perdition (2002, dir. Sam Mendes)

Breathtaking cinematography, top-notch directing, cool characters, and a gritty aesthetic make Road to Perdition far different than anything you can watch on Halloween. Tom Hanks plays an ex-mobster and father who seeks vengeance for the death of his family. The creepy assassin played by Jude Law is a woefully underrated movie villain.

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Soylent Green (1973, dir. Richard Fleischer)

The ending line to this dystopian sci-fi movie is one of the most iconic lines in movie history. And while it’s pretty much a spoiler, it’s still worth watching. You knew Darth Vader was Luke’s father anyway, and you still watched Star Wars. So check out Charlton Heston get freaked the fuck out over what soylent green actually is. It’s a horrific revelation — so, great for Halloween.

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Super 8 (2011, dir. J.J. Abrams)

I envy J.J. Abrams. That dude grew up watching Steven Spielberg and Star Wars and what is he doing now? Having movies produced by Steven f’n Spielberg and doing Star Wars 7. Super 8 has been appropriately described as Cloverfield meets Stand By Me. A group of kids making a movie in a small-town in 1979 America witness a dangerous entity unleashed from a train accident. It’s both sci-fi and coming-of-age, so check it out when you’re gorging on candy corns.

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Princess (2006, dir. Anders Morgenthaler)

A missionary comes home after his sister, a prominent adult films star, dies of drug abuse. With her 5-year-old daughter left behind, he adopts her and sets out on a vengeful quest to destroy all remaining pornographic materials of his departed sister. The animation — which given the premise, makes the juxtaposition that much stronger — is slightly low-quality, but the storytelling is gripping. Feel free to categorize this under “totally fucked up movies” to watch with bros. It truly is a totally fucked up movie, and on a subversive level not even The Human Centipede can match. Trust me.

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Throne of Blood (1957, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Almost any film adaptation of Macbeth is fitting for Halloween. Witches and demons are everywhere, and on a meta-level the superstition of even naming the play has existed for centuries. Kurosawa’s adaptation of the Scottish play and morphing it into feudal Japan is a haunting, terrifying ride of using evil to rise to power. Toshiro Mifune is always a treat to watch — the man was almost Obi-Wan — and to watch him totally get fucked up is a cinematic thrill. Lady Asaji Washizu — aka Lady Macbeth, portrayed by Isuzu Yamada — has one of the eeriest scenes ever filmed.

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V For Vendetta (2006, dir. James McTeigue)

The use of the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of millennial, post-9/11 rebellion never ceases to amaze me. I’m excited to read the eventual, inevitable book about the phenomenon. But regardless of your feelings of Anonymous, V For Vendetta remains a powerful piece of dark dystopia with one of the most enigmatic characters ever in fiction. I actually liked the changes made to V in the film, seeing him goof off and cook eggs makes an excellent, fun character. Still rather smart after all these years, its grim and stylish swagger makes V For Vendetta a refreshing Halloween marathon movie. Be honest: If you see V show up in your home, you’d shit your pants.

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Watchmen (2009, dir. Zack Snyder)

One day I’ll live in a world where Watchmen is a far more appreciated film than it is right now. But today is not that day. It is still the best film adaptation we could have ever gotten, and it’s an achievement it even exists. The origin of Doctor Manhattan remains one of the most beautifully-shot and chilling sequences in modern filmmaking today. If you can, watch the Ultimate Cut; it is combined with the animated horror short, Tales of the Black Freighter, which solidifies Watchmen a worthy entry into any Halloween binge. Just make it the last one, the Ultimate Cut is almost four hours long.

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Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (2009, dir. Frank H. Woodward)

H.P. Lovecraft is horror. His influences knows no bounds. From Guillermo del Toro to Neil Gaiman to even freaking Pirates of the Caribbean, the man established so much of what we know as horror today. This appropriately eerie documentary on the man himself is chilling, haunting, and incredibly informative.

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Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Alfred Hitchcock rightfully holds the championship title of the “Master of Suspense.” Plenty of his movies set the bar for what we consider horror today, even if the majority of his films more correctly can be considered suspense thrillers. Yet movies like Psycho and The Birds have influenced generations of horror filmmakers, and no one could teach this kung-fu better than ol’ Al. For this year’s Halloween, if you haven’t already, check out one suspense thriller that is just two steps away from being proper horror: the classic Rear Window. The showdown with the film’s antagonist — a true son of a bitch that could have been a horror movie slasher in a parallel universe — is shot and edited wonderfully that is as terrifying as any top-tier slasher. Any horror fan can watch Psycho. True horror fans will see the terror in Rear Window. 

Know of any other non-horror horror movies to watch? Comment below! I’m sure I left out a couple dozen.

Geekscape Interviews: ‘Inner Demons’ Director Seth Grossman

by Eric Francisco

Seth Grossman’s newest horror movie, Inner Demons, follows the production crew of an Intervention-style reality program and their subject, Carson, a troubled teenaged girl addicted to drugs. Oh, and she’s also possessed by the devil. Forgot about that part.

A veteran of reality television, I talked to Seth Grossman (The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations, $50K & a Call Girl) about the verite style, the production of Inner Demons, his time working on Intervention, and just how involved documentary filmmakers should be.

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Your experience in reality TV obviously provided the background for the film. But what inspired you to take the reality show format and use it to tell a horror story?

Seth: I’ve worked in reality television between feature film jobs for the last eight years. I made my first movie The Elephant King in Thailand in 2006, and since then I’ve made three other films and between movies I’ve done reality to make a living. And I feel like the aesthetic of reality programming create a visceral response in the audience and make you feel that things are really happening in front of you in a way that can be really emotionally effective.

I totally agree, it’s not unlike documentaries.

Seth: There’s something about movies that are shown from a handheld point-of-view. The sort of editorial style of reality, the kind of coverage you get in reality shows, it lends a level of reality to the picture. And I wanted people to respond to Inner Demons as thought it were happening right before their eyes. I’ve made movies with the more formal, traditional approach using dolly shots, cranes, and things like that. But I felt like this kind of story, because this was about the relationship between this reality production crew and the addict and who family that they’re filming, and how that relationship evolves and leads to ultimately tragedy, because it was about that relationship I ultimately wanted to show it from the point of view from the reality crew that was capturing it on the ground.

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I always say that found footage is fertile ground and the genre has yet to take full advantage of its limits. In your opinion, what is it about verite horror that works? What doesn’t work?

Seth: Verite horror works when it immerses people in the perspective of the camera’s point of view, through the eyes we’re watching the events unfold. But the crucial thing about found footage that really makes or breaks a movie and really determines whether it gets released at all is performances. I think that when you’ve got performances that are believable and feel real, that lends credibility to the documentary-style format. When the performances read false, I think it immediately makes the whole thing feel contrived.

Apparently Jason Blum, who does every horror movie on the planet, has tens of thousands of found footage movies lining the walls of his office that are never gonna see the light of day. And the thing I’m most proud of when with Inner Demons is that I was working with non-union actors, some of whom were working on their first feature film, and I feel like I got performances out of them and it’s a real testament to the casting director Ricki Maslar, and the dedication of the performances. I feel like I got performances out of them that feel the equivalent of any big budget horror movie out there. I mean, I feel like they really brought it in terms of the tears, the dramatic moments, the fears, the demonic transformation that Carson undergoes, the humor of the crew, it all felt very real. And that’s what I’m really happy about.

I had no idea you had non-union actors. You did a good job with them.

Seth: Thank you! We put a lot of work into it, it’s a huge challenge to work with relatively green actors and give those kinds of performances. We rehearsed for a long time. I worked with an acting coach that I worked with a lot on the demonic transformation when she really turns into the demon, and we watched a lot of videos together, and we just formed a real circle of trust around one another. I took full advantage of every tool in the director’s toolchest to bring out the reality of the performances.

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Jason gets a lot of abuse! I was a film student, I’ve done PA work before. 

Seth: Me too!

What led you to decide that he should be the center of the film?

Seth: I think he was the one who wasn’t jaded. He was the only one in the crew who hadn’t been on a lot of these Intervention shoots already. I think there is a certain gallows humor that the other producers share that he doesn’t really participate in. He’s sensitive. He feels the pain that Carson and her family are going through. He empathizes. He’s emotionally intelligent. He gets it. He really identifies with her in a way. He’s also an outsider. He feels like nobody understands what he’s going through. I think that his identification with Carson is almost tragic. Because he’s not being professional. As much as I like him and I think he’s the most empathic person on the crew, when he shoots her up with heroin because he believes that’s the only way he can help her and protect the people she’s surrounded by, that sort of sets off the movie’s descent into the third-act chaos.

He also displays some stalker-ish behavior.

Seth: He’s got the hots for her!

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The characters working on the show — the producers, the directors — they were kind of awful people. Considering your background, did you write them as people you’ve hated working with? Or did you have them be antagonistic just for the film’s sake?

Seth: That’s a really good question, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Because I was recently talking to the executive producer of the show Intervention . I was the field producer and he was my boss. And I was telling him about some of the tension I felt on the show, manipulating people to get “the goods,” to draw out a performance. And he said, “I don’t think you’re manipulative. You’re helping them. You worked really hard and these people went to rehab because of the show you helped to make.” So, I think those characters — Suzanne, the lead producer, and Tim, the cameraman — I think they’re jaded, they’re tired from being on the field for a long time, they’re tired of being away from their families, they’re insensitive as a defense mechanism. They want to keep the trauma of what they’re documenting at a distance. Keep it at arm’s length so they don’t have to feel it too much.

And you have to have antagonists in a horror movie. That’s the way they were written. They were actually written as being more exploitive than what they wound up being in the final version. But, they’re definitely part of the problem and not the solution.

And I just want to say for the record, it’s not a reflection of the production staff were on Intervention. In fact the people who worked on Intervention really cared about the subject of the show, and most of the time when I was filming an actual intervention, when their families are breaking down and crying, and telling their loved one to get help, I would be watching my handheld monitor with tears in my eyes. Because what they were going through affected me so much. This is the horror movie of those kinds of characters, and they need to be that way to push the story it goes in.

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As a documentary filmmaker who has done verite-style shoots, how important is it for filmmakers to intervene? How do you feel about crossing that line?

Seth: That was a question we asked ourselves a lot when I worked on Intervention. Because you would get in situations sometimes when someone was gonna potentially hurt themselves or someone else. And you have to ask yourself, when do I put down the camera and step in and stop this from happening? Or call the police and stop this from happening? If someone was in danger of hurting a child, we would always call the police and Child Protective Services to make sure that didn’t happen.

There was one situation where I was shooting an episode with a young woman named Christina in Riverside, California. She was a meth addict who thought she had bugs crawling under the skin in her face. She had meth-induced psychosis. And she asked her mother to bring her a sterilized knitting needle so she could dig the bugs out of her face.

Oh my God.

Seth: This was a beautiful young girl with great skin and it’s something that would have happened and has happened when the Intervention crew was not there. And we knew it would happen if we were to stop her, it would just happen as soon as we left. Because she was freaking out about these bugs. So we documented it, and part of the reason we documented it and justified it was that we’re not making this show to help Christina. We’re making this show to help the millions of people who watch it, who may be wondering the effects of meth and what it can do to people.

In terms of creating a memorable image that will probably stop someone from ever experimenting with meth, a meth addict digging her face with a needle looking for bugs is definitely a powerful image to prevent people from trying. So it’s not easy to answer that question and everyone who produced that show answers it differently in terms of when to put the camera down and help somebody, but it’s a question we asked ourselves a lot. And it’s interesting in Inner Demons , the climax of the film is when Jason is seeing Carson struggle with her possession, and he does put down the camera and he goes to her, hugs her, tells her he loves her and that he wants to help her. That’s when everything changes.

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You kind of bring in another question about adolescence and bullying. Carson’s demonic origins start with this. What do you think of young people today in the face of rapidly changing technology redefining their daily life? Are they more empathetic or more cruel?

Seth: I think they’re pretty much the way they’ve always been. They understand bullying more as a cultural phenomenon, so they know more resources to deal with it when it happens instead of just this unique thing that is only happening to me. They can take a step back and go, “This is something, there’s resources online, there’s a lot of people in the world who are aware of this, this is something that happens to people, and here is more ways to deal with it.” But with the resources to address bullying, there is a lot more ways to bully somebody.

So, bad kids will be bad kids and will use all the tools to ridicule someone. I think adolescence is a period where people are unsure of their social identity. So the best way to form an identity is to ridicule somebody else and kind of define who you’re not. It also helps groups to cohere and to have a common enemy. So I think when people see someone bully someone it gives them a satisfying feeling of being a part of something. “We all hate this one person! So that makes us feel like we’re a team!” Unfortunately that’s just a relative human evolution, and it’s something we always have to deal with. But it’s good there’s an anti-bullying movement because it gives somebody an option when they face an attack.

Inner Demons is out now from IFC Midnight.

Geekscape Movie Reviews: ‘Inner Demons’

by Eric Francisco

Reality television is easy to criticize, and sometimes that dirt isn’t unjustified. The form should be groundbreaking. A hybrid of episodic storytelling and documentary form, at its best the reality show format educates on a lifestyle or occupation not common in the everyday. But because we’re humans and we mess up, the form has become low-brow and shows about vapid, narcissistic individuals provide enough ratings to last for eternity. The genre draws apathy from even the most casual of cinema and television buffs and your grandmother who can’t stand young people today. Yet you at least know someone who is still keeping up with those Kardashians.

Which is why I found Seth Grossman’s Inner Demons kind of fascinating. It’s also not fun. A veteran of reality television, Grossman has jumped into fictional storytelling feet first using a kung-fu style he knows best. Much like As Above, So Below from a few months ago (check out our review here), Inner Demons experiments with the verite form in novel ways largely not explored, but succumbs to cliches and a nauseatingly predictable “twist ending” that leaves a nasty taste as the credits roll.

Inner Demons is about an Intervention-style reality show who follow Carson (Lara Vosburgh), a former straight-A, devout Catholic schoolgirl turned angry, unstable drug addict. Carson, however, believes she’s possessed by the devil, which is predictably scoffed at by everyone except the whipping boy production assistant, Jason (Morgan McClellan). Only Jason believes her, and thus begins the nightmare.

Morgan McLellan, who plays “Jason,” is a likeable center and is the poor whipping boy of the reality show’s production.

A unique question the film asks — and I’m glad it does — is something I expect most documentarians can have daylong conversations about: As filmmakers, how much do we interfere with subjects? Speaking as someone who has worked on documentary and news projects before, I believe we shouldn’t unless necessary. Philosophies wildly vary in the community but the oft-agreed upon standard is to interfere as little as possible, much more so and strictly in journalism. The filmmakers behind Hoop Dreams became very involved in the lives of their subjects, as did the filmmakers behind the excellent and haunting The Act of Killing. On the other side, there are films like Salesman and The War Room where the filmmakers are almost nothing but flies on the wall.  In Inner Demons, Jason crosses a line that exists between documentarian and subject in the most offensive, unforgivable ways… But it begs moral questions that aren’t easily answered. Is it okay to stalk your subject if it means their well-being is in jeopardy? Is it okay to satisfy their addiction? Disgusting actions, debatable results. But it’s a fantastic thing to ponder that I’m so happy the film left me with.

Elsewhere, Inner Demons is almost a genre-bending ride but it doesn’t quite reach the heights you wish it could. You could admire it for morphing over its running time, but to me its clumsy and schizophrenic. It is first and foremost a horror movie, but it starts in typical found-footage fashion reminiscent of Cloverfield (complete with the title on black screen as if we’re watching on a government-issued DVD). Then it flip flops between reality show and found footage to Paranormal Activity-style surveillance with non-diagetic music (its found footage, where is that stuff coming from?) before finally settling into just found footage. A consistent form could have truly salvaged the film and warranted multiple viewings, but instead it’s an unremarkable one night stand. The premise gives way to imitating a reality show, and when it does it’s almost amazing. I was laughing, but not at the expense of the film. I was awed whenever they almost nailed the cliche beats of a trashy, corny reality program. It was almost too good. And then it nails the cliches of horror movies and I was left bummed out.

I said almost a lot because almost is the best way to describe Inner Demons. It is almost a worthy movie.

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One thing Inner Demons isn’t just “almost” at and excels in are its central characters’ performances. The main, core cast (and only them, everyone else is expendable and cardboard) range from excellent to excellently campy. The centers of the film, Jason and Carson, played by McClellan and Vosburgh respectively, absolutely command the screen. Vosburgh had a tough job: from high on heroin to straight up being the devil, she’s got some range. If there’s one thing to watch it’s her remarkable ability, and for being such a young actress I have high hopes for her. McClellan equally succeeds in being an empathetic, likeable wise youth who hasn’t been tainted by pessimism like the adults and so-called professionals. He’s a good vehicle for the audience. Jason will gain sympathy from fellow young filmmakers working the lowest rung of production as the bullied PA; the teasing he endures, although it may be too exaggerated, succeeds because the reality show producers are total dicks. You can’t wait to see them get offed. Most of the time it’s dished far too heavy, lame, and humorless — at one point they call him “Craigslist” and my eyes rolled — but sometimes it’s subtle and fantastic. Anyone who has worked as a PA can and will relate.

But how is it as a horror film? Admirable, but largely a failure. Carson is possessed by the devil. There’s no doubt, and that kind of sucks. There’s nothing to mull over. Every exorcism movie is usually a confirmed thing: This person is possessed. There’s nothing to have fun with. Can we ever have ambiguity? The scares are appropriately creepy and startling, but every move is telegraphed. In fact, the camera suffers a technical error anytime the devil’s presence is there. When the body count starts rising in the climax, you see everything. You know everything that is coming, and the only way you’ll truly be scared is if you’re looking on your phone and you’re startled by a screech. The ending of the film is almost an exact replica of Paranormal Activity and I just about had it.

Lara Vosburgh as "Carson." The film suffers from cliche and may remind you too much of other, better horror movies.
Lara Vosburgh as “Carson.” The film suffers from cliche and may remind you too much of other, better horror movies.

Its failure at being a true horror movie is probably the largest misstep by the movie. It paints by numbers and isn’t fun. The humor does not work. The scare beats are predictable. It can’t tell its story consistently, and its messy without reason. You could argue that by after the first act of the film the reality show format is lost because its still in production, but then why bother cutting it like so in the first act?

I like Inner Demons in theory. Playing with genre is something that can easily win points for me, but that isn’t enough to carry the whole film. It left me pondering a worthy moral dilemma, but nothing else from the film stuck. It’s a horror movie and I am not thinking a single thing about that.

Geekscape gives Inner Demons a 2/5 stars.