JOHN CARPENTER VS. ROB ZOMBIE
UPDATES
Like Rob Zombie I'm a huge fan of John Carpenter's work. Carpenter is one of the few people whose movies I bought on VHS, then DVD and am currently supplanting with BLU-RAY. I'll no doubt be a sucker for these movies with their 4K iterations and whatever other superior media comes down the pike.

However, out of nowhere and for reasons I cannot explain, Carpenter recently called Zombie a piece of shit for apparently telling a lie about John regarding a supposed conversation the two had over the movie HALLOWEEN. John says it went like this,

But this is what I remember Rob saying back in 2006,

Continued at Feo Amante/John Carpenter vs. Rob Zombie.

NOW PLAYING IN FEO AMANTE THEATER
John Smith's excellent STONE: A Doctor Who POV Short Film.

Look for John Smith at Facebook.

Not finding a poster online to use as an anchor image for this page, I made one using what stills I could get from his movie. On April 5, 2014, John saw my poster and had this to say,

"I LOVE the poster design. Elegant and creepy. Thanks!"
- John Smith, VFX

There are more movies at the Feo Amante Theater.

Go to NOW SHOWING!

MONSTER TRUCKS
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
Originally scheduled for a May 2016 release, and now pushed back to a January 2017 release, Paramount Pictures is treating their $115 million budget movie, MONSTER TRUCKS, like it's a flop.

I guess Paramount should know when they have an overpriced pile of crap on their hands. After all, they've been releasing one tentpole piece of shit TRANSFORMERS and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie after the next since 2014 like they were desperately trying to butcher the franchises and murder all their progeny. And since Paramount is still dry humping the skeleton of FRIDAY THE 13th with yet another reboot (also set for a January 2017 release - because Paramount executives have no confidence in this one either), you could easily make the case that the current Paramount Pictures ex's are as expert in incompetence as, say, the demented monkeys running Asylum Pictures.

So yeah, maybe MONSTER TRUCKS is as bad as Paramount thinks. But you know, I'm just asking, why does it have a mindblowing cool trailer that looks more awesomely fun than anything Sony could cough up for their GHOSTBUSTERS 2016?

For that matter, why does MONSTER TRUCKS have a wildly cooler trailer than the 10 second belches Paramount burped for their other uber expensive tent pole, the live-action GHOST IN THE SHELL reboot?

Then get a load of these anti-audience trailers for what might be Scarlett Johansen's career killing turn in GHOST IN THE SHELL.

Ghost in the Shell teaser trailers: Scarlett Johansson and the five bald truths
Continued at TheGuardian.

First footage from 'Ghost in the Shell' shows Scarlett Johansson's cyborg side
Continued at LATimes.

Read my review of the original GHOST IN THE SHELL.

QUICK BITES
How 'Akira' Has Influenced All Your Favourite TV, Film and Music
By Tom Usher
Whenever classic films are discussed, there's always that one guy. The guy who makes an audibly moist noise when he talks, whose homepage is a YouTube tutorial video on "How to Blow the Dankest Vape Clouds (3/6)".

You're not allowed to think Aliens is any good because the original Alien is far superior. Avatar isn't worth watching because it's just a frame-by-frame rip-off of Dances with Wolves, but blue. You shouldn't enjoy Let Me In because it's based on the superb Danish Let the Right One In, and if you knew ANYTHING about film you'd appreciate that all Hollywood remakes are horrible, ugly disappointments.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the classic 1988 Japanese anime film Akira, I am that guy.

Continued at Vice.

AND

Man asks Indian government if it is prepared for zombie and alien attacks
By Manish Singh
Is India prepared to put up a fight in an event of invasion by aliens and zombies? Can the country win its battle against extra dimensional bodies without the assistance of Will Smith? These are some of the questions the Indian government was asked via a Right to Information (RTI) request.

Mumbai resident, Ajay Kumar, filed the RTI application asking the Indian government if it has plans in place for protecting the citizens of the nation when brain-dead walkers begin walking the streets.

Continued at Mashable.

FeoNote: Believe it or not, the Government of India paused to give this goof his desired attention. And now the government of India may blow this farce further out of proportion by issuing a warrant for my arrest for having called this citizen a "Goof".

PLUS

12 Thought-Provoking Quotes from H.G. Wells
By Stacy Conradt
As one of the founding fathers of science fiction, Herbert George Wells certainly had a lot to say about the human race. From mankind's fondness for war to our place in the universe, Wells certainly didn't shy away from sharing his opinions. In honor of what would have been his 150th birthday, here are a few of H.G. Wells's greatest hits.

Continued at MentalFloss.

ALSO

Netflix Knows Exactly When You Got Hooked on Stranger Things
By Laura Bradley
Netflix might not like to divulge much viewership data, but know this: it's sitting on plenty. The streaming giant knows which series get binged through the fastest, and has its theories as to why. It knows Orange Is the New Black is one of its most re-watched shows. And, as we found out last year, it knows which episode of any given show got its users hooked on everything from Orange Is the New Black and BoJack Horseman to Gossip Girl. Now, the streaming giant has revealed the stickiest episodes of other shows, including originals like Stranger Things, Fuller House, and Master of None, as well as other streaming fare, including American Horror Story and Gilmore Girls.

Continued at VanityFair.

WASSMOR

The Mr. Meeseeks' Box-O'-Fun game will ruin your friendships
By Marisa Losciale
Recreate "Meeseeks and Destroy" from Season One of your favorite adult cartoon with the Rick and Morty Mr. Meeseeks' Box-O'-Fun.

To play the game, each player draws a Request card. The cards have ridiculous tasks on them like "Make me a sandwich" or "I want to be a More Complete Woman." Roll the dice to see if you complete the request. If you don't roll the same number as printed on the card, players must press the button and summon a Mr. Meeseeks card until the Request has been completed.

Continued at DailyDot.

NOW PLAYING IN FEO AMANTE THEATER
Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta's
SMILE.

For awhile, little was known about Smile creators, Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta. They had a website once called LionInZion.com, which is a mess to visit and is questionable (it wants you to download the site to see it). This film was made as a student project in 2005.

Currently, Yuval Markovich and Noam Abta have created the websites, AniBoom (NSFW: on some pages, naked or scantily clad women, allegedly local to your IP, pop up and ask you to call them for a good time.) and Nitako. Mac Gaming did an email interview with Noam in March 2011.

Continued at Feo Amante Theater/SMILE.

PASSENGERS TRAILER HITS THE FLOOR - RUNNING

QUICK BITES
Nathan Fillion Isn't Sure About A 'Firefly' Reunion — But His Co-Stars Are
By Nicole Massabrook
"Firefly" was canceled in 2002, but the enthusiasm for the series has only grown in the era of Netflix. With "Avengers" director Joss Whedon's short-lived sci-fi series gaining more and more fans, it's impossible to avoid talking about a reunion. The stars of the series, who often work together on other projects, revealed how they feel about a revival. They might not all be on the same page.

Nathan Fillion, who played Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, said that he isn't sure they'd be able to recreate the magic of the original. He emphasized that "Firefly" was his "dream job" and had a great experience — one that might be impossible to recreate.

Continued at IBTimes.

AND

Netflix sci-fi series 'bigger than Game of Thrones' ready to move into Surrey film studio
By Scott Brown
Skydance Media, the California-based film and television production company behind big-budget Hollywood fare like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Star Trek Beyond, which were both filmed in Vancouver, converted the former Pacific Newspaper Group's printing press building in Kennedy Heights (12091 88th Ave.) into a five sound-stage studio that can accommodate a production staff of up to 400 people.

The first major production to take up residence in the facility will be Altered Carbon, a 10-episode Netflix series adaptation of author Richard K. Morgan's 2002 cyber-punk science fiction novel of the same name.

Continued at VancouverSun.

PLUS

Blair Witch marketing stunt haunts Austin residents
By Nick Romano
Some studios go to great lengths to promote their films – look at Ant-Man, Sausage Party, and Carrie – but Blair Witch put its own spin on the process with a recent marketing stunt in Austin, Texas.

Spearheaded by Fons PR to promote the film's opening day in the city, various locations on South Congress street were decked out with those creepy stick figures from the film.

Continued at EW.

ALSO

Australian Sci-Fi Thriller RESTORATION Unleashes New Trailer
By Hugo Ozman
Critically-acclaimed Australian science fiction thriller Restoration has premiered on leading Australian subscription video-on-demand service Stan in addition to Virgin Australia's inflight entertainment platform for the airline's domestic and international flight routes.

Continued at ScreenAnarchy.

AFTER NEARLY 40 YEARS, ALIEN REMAINS ON TOP

SEP. 13
QUICK BITES
Brad Bird explains why 'The Iron Giant' bombed at the box office
by Tim Greiving
Today, many kids and grownups alike consider the animated movie "The Iron Giant" a classic — but when it came out in August 1999, it was a box office bomb.

Directed by Brad Bird, who went on to direct "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" for Pixar, the movie was based on a novel by the British poet Ted Hughes. Critics liked it, but when it only made $23 million on a budget of $70 million, it helped nail the coffin on Warner Brothers' short-lived attempt to compete with Disney in the traditional animation game.

Continued at SCPR.

AND

Benicio Del Toro In Talks To Star In 'Predator' Reboot
By Mike Fleming Jr.
EXCLUSIVE: Benicio Del Toro is in early talks to star in Predator, the reboot of the franchise in the works at 20th Century Fox. Shane Black is aboard to direct. The Nice Guys and Iron Man 3 helmer was actually co-starred in the 1987 original alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing a member of Arnold's team...

Continued at Deadline.

FeoNote: Well, here's hoping that Benicio learned something from his producing and acting in Universal Pictures' 2010 miscarriage, THE WOLFMAN.

PLUS

Original RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven says the reboot was 'much too serious'
By Devan Coggan
In 1987, director Paul Verhoeven introduced us to the police officer Alex Murphy and his eventual transformation into the cyborg RoboCop. The gory, R-rated action flick was a box office success, earning $53.4 million domestically on a $13 million budget and spawning multiple sequels. In 2014, director José Padilha signed on to revisit the franchise, rebooting the project with Joel Kinnaman as the titular cyborg. With a production budget pegged at almost 10 times the original, the new RoboCop was both a critical and popular dud, making only $58.6 million domestically.

Continued at EW.

ALSO

Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo opens up about 'very difficult, one-in-a-million disease' cleidocranial dysplasia
By Danny Walker
Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo has opened up about living with a "one-in-a-million" disease, cleidocranial dysplasia.

The actor plays Dustin in the hit Netflix series and has captured the hearts of millions, despite life with his condition that can be "very difficult" for some.

Cleidocranial dysplasia is a rare condition that affects how bones and teeth develop and can delay development of adult teeth, which may be result in peg-like fangs, and underdeveloped or often absent collarbones.

The illness can also affect shoulders and delay the closing of the skull (fontanels).

Continued at Mirror.

WASSMOR

168 years after sinking in the Arctic, the HMS Terror has been discovered
By Andrew Liptak
In 1845, Sir John Franklin set off with two ships on an expedition to try and discover the Northern Passage — only to vanish. Now, 168 years after it disappeared, the ship HMS Terror has been discovered, according to The Guardian. (The other, the HMS Erebus, was found in 2014.)

Continued at TheVerge.

FeoNote: Seriously. With a ship's name like that, how can it not inspire 100 great stories?

QUICK BITES
A History Of Violence: The Terminator makes Arnold a star—and changes action cinema forever
By Tom Breihan
THE TERMINATOR (1984)

The 37-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger was a human special effect. His physique was obviously just this side of inhuman, but it wasn't just that. His face was hard and planar, all flat surfaces and sharp angles. He had a way of mangling English words, but his voice was authoritative and mysterious, and it seemed perfectly plausible that the Austrian accent could've been the result of an underdeveloped speech module. In The Terminator, James Cameron filmed him at night, under blue lights, with a clammy sheen on his skin. He looked terrifying. He did not look the way people are supposed to look.

Continued at AVClub.

FeoNote: Yeah, Justin Morrow over at NoFilmSchool said it was ALIENS that changed action cinema forever, where Tom here says THE TERMINATOR did it. We all know what these two movies really have in common, don't we?

AND

First look: Anne Hathaway takes on a mysterious monster in Colossal
by Devan Coggan
Last year, news broke that Anne Hathaway had signed on to star in Colossal, a mysterious project from Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo described as a cross between classic kaiju monster flicks and quirky small-town drama.

Now, Colossal is ready to make its premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, and even now, Vigalondo says he's not always sure how to best explain the concept to people.

Continued at EW.

PLUS

Skeleton key: London railway unlocks Great Plague DNA
By Michelle Starr
The last time the plague hit England on any sort of scale was 1665. It was nowhere near the scale of the Black Death, but the Great Plague still wiped out some 100,000 people in London over a period of two years, almost a quarter of the population.

However, while there are extant records and accounts of the plague, until now there had been no direct DNA evidence of it.

Continued at CNet.

FeoNote: Enough real world inspiration to ignite the imagination for 100 great Horror stories, though there may be none.

ALSO

Alan Moore confirms he is retiring from creating comic books
By Sian Cain
After writing some of the most famous and critically acclaimed comic books of all time, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Alan Moore has confirmed that he is retiring from the medium.

At a press conference in London for his latest work, Jerusalem, a weighty novel named after William Blake's poem exploring the history of Moore's native Northampton through several lives, Moore said he had "about 250 pages of comics left in me".

Continued at TheGuardian.

FeoNote: So stop pestering Grandpa, fanboys. He fought the good fight and now he needs his rest.

QUICK BITES
How 'Aliens' Gave Birth to the Modern Action Movie
By Justin Morrow
Aliens wasn't just a kickass sci-fi flick; it was also a template for modern action heroines.

Back in the mid-80s, action heroes were predominantly (if not almost completely) male. But in this video essay by Fandor's Leigh Singer, we get to explore how Aliens, James Cameron's pluralized sequel to 1979's classic is arguably, the mother of all action movies, and the protagonist, Ripley, the mother of hardcore action heroines.

Continued at NoFilmSchool.

AND

The 'Hail Hydra' meme runs deeper than any conspiracy
By Gabe Bergado
One of the oldest and most insidious organizations of comic book villains also happens to be connected to one of the more everlasting memes to have graced the internet: Hail Hydra.

You've most definitely seen the meme floating around since its initial popularization in 2014. The phrase "Hail Hydra" is paired with an image of one person whispering something in another person's ear.

Continued at DailyDot.

PLUS

FeoNote: From the Department of Worst Marketing Strategy Ever!
Why Bad Moms Succeeded Where Ghostbusters Failed
By Kieran Corcoran
This past weekend Bad Moms passed $95 million domestically, continuing on a trajectory that will surely have it clearing $100 million by this time next week. Soon to join it is the unabashedly juvenile Sausage Party, which finished this weekend at $80 million. No matter where the two movies wind up, their box-office yields will be seen as huge wins for their studios, since both films cost about $20 million to make. In a summer of flops, their success is noteworthy, especially when compared to the relative failures of two of the year's most-hyped comedies: Neighbors 2 and Ghostbusters. What that contrast reminds us is that few things are better friends to comedy than low stakes.

Continued at Vulture.

ALSO

FeoNote: Of course the headline is misleading. It's io9!
James Gunn is Sick of You Asking Where the 'Goddamn' Guardians 2 Trailer Is
By Beth Elderkin
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 director James Gunn has had enough of your shit, people.

The director took to Facebook to request Guardians fans stop asking him when the Guardians 2 trailer is coming out, like, all the time. He said the marketing team is working on the upcoming trailer, and he's heavily involved too. But, you know, these things take time.

Continued at io9.