Film Buffs

With Guillermo del Toro’s announcement that he’s no longer directing the Hobbit films, the writer, director, and producer is freed up to follow more of his own properties. Many fans are hoping these will include Hellboy 3, which del Toro says he has definite plans for, but isn’t on his list of upcoming projects. Instead, the always-interesting filmmaker is involved with a variety of films across several genres. The most recent of these, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, premiered at San Diego Comic-Con last month.Del Toro’s influences have always included classic horror and weird fiction like H.P. Lovecraft’s. His previous films like Hellboy and Pan’s Labryinth pop with eye-catching creatures and old-fashioned scares. With Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, he takes his first shot at actually updating such a sourcein this case, a 1973 made-for-television film of the same name. Read more »

Comedian Zach Galifianakis is best known as Alan, the guy with the beard from “The Hangover.” But before his performance as a satchel-toting, one-man wolf pack helped secure the summer 2009 blockbuster the 2010 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture- Musical or Comedy and starred in a Kanye West music video, he hosted his own late-night show on VH1 in spring of 2002 and played a serious and socially awkward morgue attendant on a FOX series.The short-lived “Late World with Zach” featured typical late-night talk show elements like monologues set to piano and skits, including one in which he practices stand-up at a preschool sans beard. It aired for nine weeks and then he landed a role as Davis, a sidekick to his psychic morgue co-worker played by Eliza Dushku in “Tru Calling.”Recurring TV roles aside, Galifianakis has also played in several web comedic shorts like his “Between Two Ferns” on FunnyorDie.com, in which he ungraciously interviewers actors while they’re sitting in arm chairs on a stage between two ferns. Past guests include Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Jon Hamm and his “Hangover” co-star Bradley Cooper. Read more »

While there are a lot of esteemed American directors out there, none is quite like John Waters. Unlike your Scorcese or your Coppola, Waters doesn’t deal in the gritty and melodramatic stories of war, nor does he focus on the turbulent underbelly of organizations and cities alike in our United States. No, John Waters does something entirely different. He really gets into the underbelly of what it means to be suburban, knowing exactly what can be said to truly set off those who are wound a bit more tightly, but without ever actually becoming overtly offensive.Or at least, that’s how he has been in his later years. John Waters has far from settled–it’s more that the pop culture landscape seems to have caught up with him a little bit more. With his merry cast of characters, many of whom have now since passed away, Waters started out with little more than a Super 8 camera and a dream. He cast his childhood friend as the female lead in many of his films, and collected a number of different collaborators along the way in the 1960s, when he spent a lot of time making fun of hippies. Read more »