New York Comic Con sold 169,000 badges to the 2015 convention, according to a report by Publisher Weekly. The show runner, Lance Fensterman commented on the growth from 2014.
The 2015 edition of the New York Comic Con was the biggest yet, with 169,000 tickets sold–up from 151,000 in 2014. Along with even more people, the event—held October 8-11 at the Javits Center–saw more venues used, and the increased presence of branded sponsorships for products far beyond those associated with the world of comics and cosplay,” said Fensterman to Publisher Weekly.
San Diego Comic-Con sells 135,000 tickets to their event. Forbes reports that SDCC puts a name on every ticket sold so the convention knows exactly how many people attend the event.
“The reality is we have well over 130,000 attendees to our show (our badges have names on them) so a four-day badge holder is counted as one unique attendee. This was considered a benefit to exhibitors because it would let them know how many people they could encounter over the course of the event. If we counted unique attendees per day, our number would be way in excess of 300,000 attendees,” said David Glanzer, Director of Marketing and PR for San Diego Comic-Con to Forbes.
ReedPop the promoters behind NYCC count badges sold, whether they are 3-day, 4-day or single day tickets.
Example: Mike buys 2 one-day passes to NYCC, he is counted as 2 different people. Cara buys a four-day pass to SDCC, she is counted as 1 person.
ReedPop and San Diego Comic-Con will need to disclose what type of tickets are sold to determine which convention is larger.
“It was my understanding that there would be no math.” (5:30 mark)
Anthony Mackie is busy promoting his latest film, Our Brand Is Crisis, and during an interview with The Daily Beast, Mackie commented on who should direct Marvel’s Black Panther film.
“I don’t think it’s important at all. As a director your job is to tell a story. You know, they didn’t get a horse to direct Seabiscuit! The thing is I don’t think the race of the director has to do with their ability to tell a story. I think it’s all about the director’s ability to be able to relate to that story and do it justice. I think men can direct women, and two of my greatest work experiences were with female directors. So I think it all depends. May the best man—or woman—win,” said Mackie.
Ava DuVernay had conversations with Marvel to direct Black Panther but walked away from the deal over creative differences. Creed director Ryan Coogler is now in talks to direct the film.
Chadwick Boseman has been cast in the lead, Black Panther is set to be released on February 16, 2018. Boseman will make his first appearance as Black Panther alongside Mackie’s Falcon in Captain America: Civil War on May 6, 2016.
Sorry Donald, that wasn’t an endorsement. Just a bad attempt at a joke, I guess?
Batman v. Superman director Zack Snyder recently discussed his vision for The Dark Knight at a Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony honoring Batman co-creator, the late Bob Kane. Snyder goes into detail about Batman’s allure, and what he wanted in his new version, and the decision to skew older with the casting of Ben Affleck.
Comic Book Resources covered the presser. Snyder went into some detail about his inspiration for his Batman creation, and how it was spawned directly from Kane:
“He wasn’t really the Batman I had imagined. Bob really had put him there in my mind, through years of TV shows, comic books, movies. I realized that we all — every single one of us — has a Batman, an imaginary Batman, in our minds, lurking in the shadows.”
Zack Snyder also discussed what makes Batman stand out, and goes on to discuss his desire to make a more “fabric-based” Dark Knight:
“Batman, unlike Superman or Wonder Woman or Flash, is a guy without powers,” Snyder said. “He’s a man. He’s all of us. I think that’s it. We all carry around a hero inside of ourselves every day. It’s that guy. It’s Batman. I thank Bob for that. We all owe him a debt of gratitude. In that hero that we carry around, we realize that the hero is us, because he’s just the man. In truth, we are all the Batman.”
“I had a really strong idea about what I wanted to do — I really wanted to do sort of a fabric-based Batman; not what’s become the more normal, armored Batman. That’s how we evolved it.”
I like the fabric-based description of Snyder’s Batman, and it will be nice to see a more mythological creation this time around as a departure from Christopher Nolan’s own vision. Nolan had his moment, made some brilliant work, and now with the DC Universe cranking up, it makes sense to see an older, different version of Batman head off in a different direction.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice hits theaters March 2016.
George Romero has apparently uncovered nine minutes of never-before-seen footage from his 1968 seminal horror classic, Night of The Living Dead. Apparently, he is working with none other than Martin Scorsese to restore the film and add the footage for a new home release.
The original report from Bloody Disgusting details Romero’s discovery. The nine minutes is actually one long extended zombie scene that was cut from the picture. And now, Scorsese, who has always advocated for restoration and preservation of cinema classics, is restoring the film from all the 16mm negatives, including this “new” nine-minute scene.
Odd note about Night of The Living Dead: it’s in the public domain. There was never any copyright law put into place on the film when it was released in 1968. Weird.
Night of The Living Dead was a groundbreaking cinematic achievement in 1968. Forget about that flaccid 90s remake, if you haven’t checked out George Romero’s original film, do yourself a favor and find a copy. It should be able to dig one up fairly cheap, what with that whole public domain thing and all.
Fandango released a Creed featurette titled ‘Generations’ in which Sylvester Stallone and director Ryan Coogler talk about the process of developing the film, using the past for inspiration, and taking the story in a new direction.
Coogler made his name with Fruitville Station and is rumored to direct Black Panther for Marvel Studios.
Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) never knew his famous father, world heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, who died before he was born. Still, there’s no denying that boxing is in his blood, so Adonis heads to Philadelphia, the site of Apollo Creed’s legendary match with a tough upstart named Rocky Balboa.
Once in the City of Brotherly Love, Adonis tracks Rocky (Stallone) down and asks him to be his trainer. Despite his insistence that he is out of the fight game for good, Rocky sees in Adonis the strength and determination he had known in Apollo—the fierce rival who became his closest friend. Agreeing to take him on, Rocky trains the young fighter, even as the former champ is battling an opponent more deadly than any he faced in the ring.
With Rocky in his corner, it isn’t long before Adonis gets his own shot at the title…but can he develop not only the drive but also the heart of a true fighter, in time to get into the ring?
Creed also stars Tessa Thompson as Bianca, a local singer-songwriter who becomes involved with Adonis; Phylicia Rashad as Mary Anne Creed, Apollo’s widow; and English pro boxer and former three-time ABA Heavyweight Champion Anthony Bellew as boxing champ “Pretty” Ricky Conlan.
Ryan Coogler directs from a screenplay he wrote with Aaron Covington, based on characters from the “Rocky” series written by Sylvester Stallone. The film is being produced by Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler, Charles Winkler, William Chartoff, David Winkler, Kevin King Templeton and Sylvester Stallone, with Nicholas Stern executive producing.
Joining Coogler behind the scenes are director of photography Maryse Alberti and costume designers Antoinette Messam and Emma Potts, as well as his “Fruitvale Station” team: editors Michael P. Shawver and Claudia Castello; production designer Hannah Beachler; and composer Ludwig Göransson.
The Horror Advocate makes cases for the under-appreciated cinematic treasures that lurk just beneath your bed. If your horror film is publicly derided, undeservedly ridiculed or generally forgotten, you may find yourself in need of… The Horror Advocate.
Resolved: The Crazies(2010) is a lean, mean, yet human piece of cinema anchored by an unnecessarily genius performance from Timothy Olyphant.
In the midst of a battle between the living and the homicidal diseased, the real horror of The Crazies is the innate fear of an overruling body taking supreme control of its citizens with no regard for due process. Numerous residents of the quiet, country town of Ogden Marsh are succumbing to a sickness and turning violent against anyone in their paths, including and especially their loved ones. As the government, being wholly responsible for the accidental release of the toxins, descends upon the town we only see them in flashes — SUVs careening out of sight, squadrons rolling up in the dark — even up through the corralling of the town into quarantine zones. Their faces, covered by gas masks, are indistinguishable and representative of a faceless overlord.
And then the masks come off. Behind these visages, we see there is a human underneath, as confused by the situation as any of our heroes. We get only a couple of brief moments with these people wearing government clothing, within which we see the humility and willingness to help despite the orders they’re following.
In a barn where our possibly infected heroes are trapped, the government search teams scour for their existence. One soldier missteps and is overtaken by the group. They remove his mask and he’s immediately sure that he’ll die just like the rest of the town because now he’s breathing it all in. As an audience, we haven’t been shown this not to be the case, but we have no reason to believe it is so. Just as the lack of information is present within the town’s residents, it is also present in those who have come in to “clean up”. The movie presents not the human at fault for the crisis, but the machine.
The Crazies is bookended with satellite shots from an unknowable source letting us know that there is something seriously wrong with the town pictured. First, it’s Ogden Marsh and the site of the plane crash (Technical difficulties? Faulty wiring? This might not have been the pilot’s fault?) then it’s Cedar Rapids which will now be host to the same “containment protocol” as the first town. We found out from a second government official our survivors encountered that the toxin was a biological weapon, code-named “TRIXIE” which was taken to be incinerated and destroyed. TRIXIE had other plans. Man created something it couldn’t handle and nature, or man’s technological creations to oversee themselves, took matters into its own hands to restore the balance. This isn’t a new idea to the sci-fi/horror landscape, but The Crazies presents the idea taking into account the fragile humanity of it all.
That fragile humanity, exemplified though some horrific gore and tense set-pieces is personified by Timothy Olyphant’s turn as Ogden Marsh’s sheriff, David. When I say that his performance is “unnecessarily” good, I mean that with the best of intentions. Modestly-budgeted sci-fi/horror isn’t the go-to for actors’ showpieces and they don’t need to be! Often times, a good horror synopsis gets people in the seats regardless of the thespian pedigree onscreen. On the page of The Crazies, the character of David isn’t anything we haven’t seen before either. He’s a smart, rugged, yet worried husband and father-to-be who just wants the best for those around him. What Olyphant does, and what makes the performance great, is almost entirely off the page and within his face and delivery.
Olyphant is a man’s man, with a wiry, trustworthy frame and a no bullshit attitude. He knows exactly what kind of movie he is in and instead of looking down at it, he respects it. When a mechanical handsaw comes whipping right next to his face and nether-regions, he believes it and you believe he’s scared of it. This might sound like strange praise to give an actor for doing their job, but the amount of emotion Olyphant puts into his eyes and his drawling delivery is invaluable to a character. His wry sense of comic timing (That car wash scene!) perfectly leavens the stress built up by director, Breck Eisner (who’s next film, Vin Diesel‘s The Last Witch Hunter, opens this weekend), and his delivery of some unintentionally corny lines to and about his wife come off as sincere and heartbreaking.
The Crazies is often overlooked as being a part of Hollywood’s remake culture of the 2000s. Yes, it is a remake. Yes, it was probably brought forth as an idea because it was existing IP created by a master like George A. Romero (who served as Executive Producer here). But there is more to this than the story of its inception. Breck Eisner took what may have been a cash grab and turned it into a very poignant portrait of humanity in its death throes. To add to the mix, the film is awesomely gruesome and features one of the best horror lead performances in recent memory. Now, go ahead and fancast Timothy Olyphant in everything. He would be absolutely perfect for it.
Marvel Studios is in negotiations with Peyton Reed to return as director of Ant-Man and the Wasp, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Reed pulled together a film that seemed lost after Edgar Wright left the project. His film was the little engine that could at the box office with a modest $57 million opening weekend but impressed with a $454 million worldwide box office take.
Ant-Man starred Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Peña, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and Judy Greer.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is set for a July 6, 2018, release.
Brian De Palma loves making us feel like perverts. The director’s signature voyeuristic style puts the audience in salacious situations at times, creating discomfort and unease, and this is no more pronounced than in the opening scene of his breakout 1976 masterwork, Carrie. Here we are, in a high school girl’s locker room. Only it isn’t a real locker room, this is the fantasized notion of frolicking teens interpreted through the male gaze. Girls are topless, popping each other with towels, doing everything short of soaping up each other in the shower. As the softcore lighting and synth strings lure us in, De Palma’s camera drifts past the girls into the steam, where we see young Carie White (Sissy Spacek) showering. It’s even more salacious in its voyeurism, until everything goes horribly wrong.
Carrie’s first period comes while she’s showering, upending this serene, boyish fantasy with the most horrifying thing that could ever happen to a young girl who has no idea what’s wrong with her. Carrie is mocked, ridiculed, pelted with pads and tampons as the softly-lit locker room transforms into a sharply-lit, waking nightmare.
This opening scene sets the stage for a film that thrives on a false sense of security. Carrie takes us on a journey to the top of a beautiful mountain, then repeatedly pushes us off the cliff into horror. Once the opening scene ends – mercifully so – De Palma once again settles into a certain gentleness. Young Carrie is an outcast, a shy, beautiful girl who hides behind her blonde hair and lives in her troubled mind more than in the classroom or among her peers. She is bullied by the popular girls, led by Nancy Allen’s Chris Hargensen – the true monster of the film – but she finds an ally in Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), the gym teacher. The scenes following the opening lure us in once again, and they make us feel safe. That is until we meet Carrie’s mother, Margaret.
Piper Laurie’s Margaret is a horrifying creation. No doubt wounded by men in her past, obsessively religious, Margaret forces Carrie into a closet to pray when she discovers Carrie got her period at school. “First comes the blood,” she says, “and then the men.” The statue of Jesus in the closet, bloodied, broken, it’s gaze fixed through cold-dead white eyes, is deeply unsettling. And once again the gentleness of the picture is flipped, we are in the throes of true horror once again.
The central story here involves Tommy Ross, implored by his girlfriend Sue (Amy Irving) to ask Carrie to the prom. Not for malicious purposes, but out of pity. Only Tommy doesn’t see it that way; Tommy may genuinely like Carrie, and after some prodding she agrees to go with him. The invite sets the stage for the final bloodletting at prom, but as it happens everything once again feels okay. Carrie is beaming, happy, standing up to her insane mother, blossoming. Her hair no longer hides her face, she is confident for the first time in her life. But of course this cannot last.
A parallel storyline focuses on Chris and her dolt of a boyfriend, Billy, played by John Travolta. Billy and Chris hatch a plan, one we don’t quite understand until the end, but one that involves pig’s blood. This gets us to one of the more ghastly scenes in the film. Chris, Billy, and their hoodlum friends go to a pig farm one night to get their blood. Only nobody wants to kill the pig. Because it’s fucked up, the senseless murder of a pig for its blood to pull off a nasty prank. Once again, we are put ever-so-slightly at ease as it appears the pig murder won’t happen. But then, inexplicably, Billy hops the fence and brutally massacres a pig with an axe. It not only delivers the necessary shock, but it heightens the villainy of the picture. These kids are no longer kids, but real monsters, dedicated to exacting their revenge against Carrie, who never did anything to them in the first place.
The prom scene is the sequence where De Palma’s stylistic mastery is on full display. It’s the playbook for De Palma. The camera sweeps and spins, the lighting is soft and inviting, Carrie has transformed form misunderstood telekinetic freak into the belle of the ball. Literally. She and Tommy appear to really form some sort of bond. There is no sexual tension per se, because Tommy does still care for and want to be with Sue. But it’s an honest friendship, and it once again eases the audience into something pleasant. Carrie is reluctant to dance, but she does eventually, and she enjoys herself. And then she and Tommy inevitably win prom king and queen, albeit through a little manipulation. You can feel the tension build, almost physically as the camera slows and the dreamlike camerawork pulls us deeper into Carrie’s renaissance.
And then, through some genius cuts and a steadily growing apprehension, everything is once again completely upended. The pig’s blood spills from the rafters and douses poor Carrie. It is a horrific moment, maybe even more unsettling that Carrie’s vengeance. Spacek’s face, the way the soft prom lighting transforms from easy and welcoming to garish, red, and vile, all sharpens. It’s everything wonderful spinning down and concentrating into the base of a funnel of horror. The revenge is welcome for the audience, but no less horrific in the fact that Carrie’s biggest advocate, Miss Collins, is collateral damage. For all the delicacy De Palma employed in his camera leading up to this finale, his ability to flip the coin so drastically is what makes Carrie a horror masterpiece.
Brian De Palma has always been marginalized for his perversions, his tendency to employ the Hitchcockian method of exploiting females in his films. He does it in the name of style, and he does it for specific reasons. But Carrie is nothing of the kind. Here, De Palma’s watchful camera pushes the onus on the audience, making them feel the guilt and shame of this young girl whose life is ruined. The horror almost seems secondary to the nature of bullying and how nothing is as safe as it seems.
