Midnight Son is an Indie Vampire Film You Should Know About

If you’re a hor­ror fan like me who enjoys vam­pire sto­ries with a dose of real­ism (a’la Let the Right One In ‚ The Reflect­ing Skin, Grace), then Mid­night Son should be on your radar.  It’s an inde­pen­dent film with a lim­ited release from writer/director/producer Scott Leberecht.

If first heard about Mid­night Son on Twit­ter ( @MidnightSonFilm ), which promises to be “a gritty, real­is­tic new look at the vam­pire genre.”  Of course it got my atten­tion right away.

Here’s the trailer:

From the film’s web­site :

MIDNIGHT SON is the story of Jacob, a young man con­fined to a life of iso­la­tion, due to a rare skin dis­or­der that pre­vents him from being exposed to sun­light. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bar­tender, and falls in love. Trag­i­cally, Jacob’s actions become increas­ingly bizarre as he strug­gles to cope with the effects of his wors­en­ing con­di­tion. Forced by the dis­ease to drink human blood for sus­te­nance, he must con­trol his increas­ingly vio­lent ten­den­cies as local law enforce­ment nar­row their focus on him as a sus­pect in a series of grisly mur­ders.

If you want to see this film as much as I do, you can help out by click­ing here to demand Mid­night Son in your area.

LOTR Fan Film: $3,000 of Awesome

What can you do with $3,000 and a group of ded­i­cated LOTR fans?  Make a kick-ass fan movie, that’s what.   The Hunt for Gol­lum  is a 40-minute fan-made film based on the Lord of the Rings books and movies.  And more impor­tantly, it’s good.   Sur­pris­ingly so.

Based on Tolkien’s appen­dices,  The Hunt for Gol­lum  remains true to its source mate­r­ial and fits in nicely with the three offi­cial Peter Jack­son films.  The story is a pre­quel of sorts that fol­lows Aragorn on his quest from Gan­dalf to track down and cap­ture the crea­ture Gol­lum, who knows the where­abouts of the One Ring.  It takes place before Gan­dalf returns to The Shire, to warn Frodo of the dan­gers of his burden.

Every­thing from the cos­tumes and make-up to the film’s score and act­ing is well done, and closely mim­ics Jackson’s style of direc­tion and visual effects.  The fight scenes were epic and well choreographed.  

Even Gol­lum looks and sounds great:

It’s an impres­sive accom­plish­ment for such a lim­ited bud­get (the entire cast and crew worked for free).  Huge props to the film­mak­ers, who are as tal­ented as they are ded­i­cated.  The film was released today, May 3rd, and is avail­able to watch free online.  You can also check out the mak­ing of this epic under­tak­ing here.  Visit www.TheHuntForGollum.com , or click  the ban­ner below.  If you’re a LOTR fan, I highly rec­om­mend you go watch it—NOW!

The Greatest Movie Quotes Have Six Words

I’m not sure what tear in the space-time con­tin­uum enabled me to notice, but the great­est movie quotes have only six words.  Don’t ask me why!  What I do know is that it was fun to go through all my DVDs to dig up these awe­some screen­shots for you.

“May the force be with you.”

What can be said about this quote that hasn’t been said already? Every time Han Solo utters these epic words to Luke Sky­walker before going on his mis­sion to destroy the Death Star, every Star Wars fan­boy gets a lit­tle wood.  Admit it.

“No time for love, Dr. Jones!”

Mon­key brains, a dude that rips people’s hearts out of their bare chests, kamikaze rope bridge maneu­vers, Har­ri­son Ford when he was still hot—this movie had it all.  And it also had the great­est side­kick ever, Short Round, played by Jonathan Ke Quan, before he went on to yet another stereo­typ­i­cal Asian role involv­ing booby­traps: Data from The Goonies.

Speak­ing of which…

“Man…you smell like Phys Ed!”

Baby Ruths bring even the unlike­li­est of friends together.  Who knew annoy­ing fat kids and smelly deformed mutants could be BFFs?

“Eng­lish, moth­er­fucker, do you speak it?!”

Samuel L. Jack­son doesn’t like it when you say “what,” espe­cially mul­ti­ple times.  But he loves dar­ing you to say it again.

“I have to return some videotapes.”

That’s Patrick Bateman-speak for mur­der­ing yup­pies and hook­ers with an axe.

“I don’t appre­ci­ate your ruse, Ma’am.”

Ruse (rooz)  [Mid­dle Eng­lish] : A cun­ning attempt to trick Ran­dall Graves, RST Video’s under­achiev­ing Employee of the Year.  There’s noth­ing more exhil­a­rat­ing than point­ing out the short­com­ings of oth­ers, is there?

“You remind me of the babe!”

“What babe?” you ask.  Why, the babe with the power, of course.  The power of voodoo—well you know the rest.

And last but not least…

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

The most pro­found six words ever com­mit­ted to film.

Bonus 5-word hon­or­able men­tion :

“Never rub another man’s rhubarb.”

New Documentary for Disgruntled Star Wars Fanboys (and Fangirls)

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with George Lucas.  I sus­pect we all do.  On the love side he has given us mas­ter­pieces like the orig­i­nal Star Wars and Indi­ana Jones films, and on the hate side he’s shit out things like Jar Jar Binks and The King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull.

So nat­u­rally my inter­est was peaked when I heard about upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary film The Peo­ple vs. George Lucas , that “explores the unique, ambiva­lent, and some­times con­flicted rela­tion­ship that Star Wars fans, for the past thirty years, con­tinue to enjoy with the Star Wars fran­chise and its cre­ator, George Lucas.”

I don’t know if “enjoy” is the right word, but “con­flicted” is true enough.  Haven’t we all had those moments of quiet reflec­tion upon our 85th re-watch of The Empire Strikes Back where we think to our­selves how life was some­how bet­ter in the days before George “per­fected” his vision?  Anyone?

The doc­u­men­tary will voice opin­ions from fans on both sides of the Lucas love/hate dichotomy, and is cur­rently solic­it­ing contributions–in the form of self-interview video submissions–from Star Wars fans around the globe.  Some lucky fans may even end up star­ring in the film–how cool is that?  The film’s web­site has a link to a detailed sub­mis­sion guide­lines PDF (and of course a release form).

So if you’re an opin­ion­ated Star Wars fan, now’s your chance to grab a video cam­era and air your com­plaints and griev­ances and/or undy­ing love for George Lucas.