Tag: Gina McIntyre

The sun was just about to set over Lake Pontchartrain on a humid Louisiana day last May when Abraham Lincoln was summoned into action in a grassy field to wrestle to the hard, unforgiving ground the murderous nemesis who took the life of his mother years earlier. Lincoln bellowed with sorrow and rage, pinning an enemy beneath his considerable weight. This was not the weathered president struggling to bear up under the agonizing grief of a bloody and brutal Civil War. This was a young man primed for a fight to the death. Funny thing, though — no one in the assembled crowd of onlookers seemed to bat an eye that Honest Abe was facing off against a vampire. Such is the straight-faced approach to the somewhat ridiculous-sounding “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” Fox’s 3-D adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel due ...

He’s been called Italy’s answer to Alfred Hitchcock, but horror master Dario Argento exists in a baroque and brutal world entirely his own. This weekend, the seventh Los Angeles Italia — Film, Fashion and Art Fest will pay tribute to the 71-year-old writer-director famous for his surreal, graphic Grand Guignol aesthetic with a retrospective of some of his best-known films at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. “He’s a master; he’s one of the Italian kings of contemporary movies,” said festival producer Pascal Vicedomini of Argento. “He’s definitely one of the most beloved Italian directors worldwide. He’s been an important inspiration for Quentin Tarantino, for anybody who does movies connected to horror or thrillers. Argento, it’s a brand. It’s a brand of horror. It’s a brand of quality. It’s a brand of Italy.” On Sunday, Argento will be on hand ...

Sitting in the dark with “A Clockwork Orange” is a rite of passage for many moviegoers and young Tim Burton was no different. “It looms quite large,” Burton said of Stanley Kubrick’s dark 1971 classic. “I remember I saw that movie at a drive-in on one of the first dates I ever had. It was a double bill of ‘Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Deliverance.’ My girlfriend got drunk, and I remember watching ‘Clockwork Orange’ and her throwing up the backseat while I just sat there and watched the movie.” This year marks the 40th anniversary of the transgressive film that starred Malcolm McDowell. Friday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will screen “A Clockwork Orange” at a sold-out tribute to McDowell. (Hero Complex’s own Geoff Boucher will be interviewing the actor on stage before the screening.) The film was ...

With great power comes great responsibility, and maybe that’s why Andrew Garfield’s expression alternated between somber and seasick an hour before he faced the spotlight glare of Comic-Con International. “We all know how big a deal this is,” said the 27-year-old British-bred actor who will wear the mask in “The Amazing Spider-Man” next summer as Sony Pictures tries to reboot the franchise that has earned close to $2.5 billion at the box office. “We don’t need to talk about it. We know what is at stake. We know the fans are everything.” That’s the potential burn — and signature sizzle — of Comic-Con, the annual, four-day San Diego pop culture expo that concluded Sunday. Dating back four decades, the event has grown from its scruffy comic-book swap meet beginnings into an extravaganza attracting 120,000 people, and Hollywood has come to ...

For someone who hasn’t actually made a film in three years, Guillermo del Toro is one of the busiest guys in Hollywood, writing and producing a slew of upcoming projects and readying his next directorial effort — “Pacific Rim” — now that “At the Mountains of Madness,” his big-budget, R-rated H.P. Lovecraft dream project, appears to be on indefinite hold (or at least until those pesky budget/rating issues can get resolved). But when Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre spoke to the filmmaker last week about the upcoming horror movie “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” which he co-wrote and produced, she couldn’t resist asking him about “Maleficent,” the retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” from the vantage point of the sinister green witch who transforms into a majestic black and purple dragon that Disney has in the works. Tim Burton had been ...

Baby vampire Jessica Hamby might not appear in any of Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse mystery novels, but there’s no question the character, as played by actress Deborah Ann Woll on HBO‘s vampire series “True Blood,” fits seamlessly into the multidimensional world show-runner Alan Ball has crafted from the work of the bestselling author. Playing the good Christian girl turned angsty adolescent vamp gives the USC grad (and self-professed horror fan) plenty to explore week to week. Woll recently spoke by phone to Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre about the upside of portraying an impulsive young woman struggling to find herself — who just happens to have a taste for human blood — and what fans can expect from the striking redhead in the series’ upcoming fourth season, which begins June 26. GM: What can you reveal about Jessica’s story arc ...

A jet-lagged Tim Burton hit Los Angeles this weekend and Los Angeles hit back — well, more precisely, the art critic for the Los Angeles Times hit back with a brutal review of the huge new exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art  that is titled, simply,”Tim Burton.” Critic Christopher Knight essentially gave the exhibit a review so harsh that it might even have made the ever-optimistic Ed Wood cringe. Knight wrote: “Tim Burton,” the big, poorly organized traveling show from New York’s Museum of Modern Art that surveys the genesis and development of the Hollywood director’s distinctive visual style, opened Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It should be effervescent. Instead, the show is a monotonous plod.” The critic also weighed in on the exhibit’s propensity for props: “In an art museum, do we really need to see ...

“True Blood,” HBO’s sexy, soapy vampire series based on the bestselling novels from mystery writer Charlaine Harris, returns for its fourth season June 26, and while creator Alan Ball is staying mum on details about the twists and turns the story line will take, he did confirm earlier this week that the hit show is experimenting with the stereoscopic technology that’s all the rage at movie theaters these days. “We did a scene in 3-D this season just to take a look at it,” Ball said in an interview. “HBO asked us to do one. It was pretty cool. I don’t think it’s going to air. We just did it as an experiment, because I don’t know if they’re going to want to take the show 3-D at some point, maybe like a season premiere or a season finale or ...

In his new 3-D action film “Priest,” Paul Bettany plays a laconic warrior with a cross tattooed on his face, a man who channels divine power to combat the vampire menace that terrorizes the citizens of a post-apocalyptic realm. But it’s not entirely new territory for the English actor, whose résumé includes “A Knight’s Tale,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” In last year’s “Legion,” Bettany starred as an avenging archangel determined to protect the life of an infant as doomsday dawns, and in the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code,” he portrayed a murderous albino monk whose extreme faith demands he whip himself bloody to atone for his sins. So what exactly is it that draws Bettany to such dark, religious-themed fare? “It’s entirely coincidental,” Bettany, 39, said on a recent Friday afternoon, ...

“Dead Reckoning,” the 11th installment in author Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse mystery series, is set to arrive this May — not long before the hit TV series inspired by the franchise, HBO’s “True Blood,” returns for a fourth season — but the novelist now is looking ahead to the conclusion of her long-running saga. [FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this post misstated the numeric place of  "Dead Reckoning" in the Harris series.] “Truthfully, the next two books will probably be the last two books in the series,” Harris said last week. “I still love Sookie, but I’m beginning to want to write something else, and Sookie’s kind of taken over my life. I was able to write other things for the first few years I was involved in Sookie, but then after the start of the television show ...