Wes Craven Working on Upcoming Graphic Novel, "Coming of Rage"

WES CRAVEN & STEVE NILES PARTNER ON NEW LIQUID COMICS PROJECT "COMING OF RAGE"

Prolific filmmaker of ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ & ‘Scream’ partners with the creator of ‘30 Days of Night’ to Launch His First Graphic Novel

Liquid Comics announced today a new graphic novel in production, “Coming of Rage,” created by legendary filmmaker Wes Craven (Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street) and written by acclaimed graphic novelist, Steve Niles (30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Wake the Dead).

"I'm thrilled to be working with Steve Niles, since I've admired his work for so long. And the concept behind ‘Coming of Rage’ is one I've been dying to explore. Steve has raised it to a whole new level with his script, and the folks at Liquid Comic are now bringing it to life with their incredible artwork. I can't wait for you all to see and read it!” commented Craven.

“Wes Craven is not only a great writer, producer and director, he is one of the most knowledgeable people I've had the honor to work with. I not only had fun working on ‘Coming of Rage,’ I also learned a great deal," added Niles.

Details on Craven’s story have not yet been released and Liquid plans to launch the project as a five issue comic-book series and subsequent collected graphic novel, starting early next year. In addition to print, Liquid will launch a number of digital initiatives allowing Craven’s fans to experience his graphic novel story across a variety of platforms including online or through their iPad, iPhone and other mobile and gaming devices.

Producer Arnold Rifkin of Cheyenne Enterprises (Hostage, 16 Blocks, Live Free or Die Hard) and Liquid Comics Co-Founder & CEO, Sharad Devarajan are working with Craven on developing a feature film adaptation of the graphic novel.

“Wes Craven and Steve Niles are masters of the horror genre. The opportunity to bring them together for Wes’s first graphic novel project is my fanboy dream come true,” added Devarajan. “Each of them alone has terrified audiences for decades, so we can only imagine what horrors await as they finally team-up on ‘Coming of Rage.’”


ABOUT LIQUID COMICS:
Liquid Comics is a digital entertainment company focused on creating cinematic and mythic graphic novel stories with filmmakers, creators and storytellers. The company was founded by entrepreneurs, Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra and Suresh Seetharaman and uses the medium of digital graphic novel publishing to develop properties for theatrical live-action films, animation and video games. Liquid has created and is creating original graphic novels with acclaimed filmmakers and talents including John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Grant Morrison, Shekhar Kapur, Deepak Chopra, Dave Stewart, Marc Guggenheim, Marcus Nispel, Jonathan Mostow, Edward Burns, Nicolas Cage, John Moore, Wes Craven, Barry Sonnenfeld and others. The Company currently has a number of film and television projects in development based on their properties.

www.LiquidComics.com

New "Nightmare on Elm Street" Scary for Real

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 29 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux


A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Running time: 95 minutes (1 hour, 35 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong bloody horror violence, disturbing images, terror and language
DIRECTOR: Samuel Bayer
WRITERS: Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer; from a story by Wesley Strick (based on the story and characters created by Wes Craven)
PRODUCERS: Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Bradley Fuller
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jeff Cutter (director of photography)
EDITOR: Glen Scantlebury

HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, and Clancy Brown

The new film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is, of course, a remake of the 1984 horror classic of the same title. While people unfamiliar with the original can certainly enjoy this film (and will), I think that it is better if you have seen the original because you can better appreciate the new ideas. The 2010 return to Elm Street is less a remake than it is a re-imagining or retelling of a beloved ghost story in a way that adds fresh fear to boogeyman.

After the peculiar death of a classmate, a group of teenagers in suburban (and fictional), Springwood, Ohio, discover that they have more in common than they ever imagined. First, a horribly disfigured killer is hunting the teens in their dreams. Secondly, he may a mysterious man named Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), a dark figure from a shared past they didn’t even know they had. When one of them, Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara), discovers that she is of particular interest to Freddy, she joins forces with the smart kid, Quentin Smith (Kyle Gallner), to stop Freddy before he kills them all.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 could have dutifully grinded out the usual thrills of a routine horror movie – people jumping from around corners, monsters suddenly sliding into view from outside the picture frame, pets knocking down knick-knacks to make sounds that chill the blood, etc. This new Nightmare is more thoughtful, and the familiar scare tactics have a delightfully, chilling new edge to them. That’s not just because CGI can exploit the landscape of dreams and nightmares and do things that writer/director Wes Craven could not have done in the original film.

As the new Freddy, Academy Award-nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) is so malevolent and menacing as Krueger that he actually seems to embody the remorseless killer. Haley is able to do something that the original Freddy, Robert Englund, was probably not allowed to do – make it obvious that Freddy has a hard-on for murder and a taste for slashing up mommy and daddy’s pride and joy. Freddy’s murderous impulses aren’t just about revenge; they’re also about perversion.

This movie feels like everyone involved – the filmmakers, the creative crew, and the cast – really wanted to make a good film. Director Samuel Bayer (who directed the music video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” among many others) explores the range of color, sound, design, movement, staging, etc. and creates a scary moving picture that is genuine unsettling. Bayer’s A Nightmare on Elm Street is like a bad dream that you want to leave because you know that there is absolutely going to be some screwed up stuff happening. If a director wants to get fans off his back about remaking a beloved horror flick, this is the way to do it; give them a brutal bonbon like this new Nightmare.

Bayer had a good script from which to work. Writers Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer bring more dark magic to Freddy Krueger, presenting new ideas about how Freddy can stalk and kill even when his victims are not sleeping.

Ultimately, what really sells this movie is the young cast playing the teens. Maybe no one told them that the Screen Actors Guild is unlikely to hand out an “Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture” nomination (let alone a win) to the cast of a horror movie. As an ensemble, however, I believe they were as earnest and as hard working for Bayer as they would be for Martin Scorsese. This is the art of the convincing performance.

I wouldn’t put A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 next to an outright horror masterpiece like The Exorcist, but this suspenseful, blood-freezing treat is the real deal in horror flicks.

7 of 10
B+

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Second Elm Street, "Freddy's Revenge," Poor Follow-up to Classic

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 127 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux


A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Running time: 87 minutes (1 hour, 27 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Jack Shoulder
WRITER: David Chaskin (based on the characters created by Wes Craven)
PRODUCER: Robert Shaye
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jacques Haitkin and Christopher Tufty
EDITORS: Bob Brady and Arline Garson

HORROR

Starring: Robert Englund, Mark Patton, Kim Meyers, Robert Rusler, Clu Gulager, Hope Lange, Marshal Bell, Melinda O. Free, and Tom McFadden

With Freddy Krueger, the boogeyman of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films, set to arise again in the upcoming Freddy Vs. Jason, I thought I should see one of the two “Elm Street” films that I hadn’t seen, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. In this the first of many sequels, Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) and his family move into the home that Freddy’s (Robert Englund) evil spirit haunted in the original film. Freddy’s uses Jesse’s body as his new conduit into the real world where he can get at a fresh batch of Elm Street teens. You see it was the parents of those Elm Street kiddies who, in an act of vigilante justice, murdered Krueger, a child killer who’d evaded the law. Years later, Freddy, the embodiment of evil, comes back as a malevolent spirit who haunts the dreams of his murderers’ offspring and kills them in their sleep.

Freddy’s Revenge isn’t so much an entire movie as it is part of a movie. As an entry in a long running series, it’s barely a chapter. The movie begins with a lot of poorly constructed setup. It’s boring because we don’t need to know the history of Elm Street. The audience knows Freddy will come; drop the bull and bring on the bad guy. Instead, we get a lot of scenes of Jesse having difficulty adjusting to school and to life as a teen, although he does have a girlfriend. Jesse’s role as a teenage misfit is mostly boring, and I couldn’t care less about the rest of the cretins who populate his high school world. The show doesn’t really start jumping until you-know-who shows up, but by the time Freddy really busts out, the movie is about over.

Clearly the writer and the director of Freddy’s Revenge didn’t have a grasp of the character like original writer/director and Freddy creator Wes Craven did. They did keep Freddy carefully cloaked in the inky darkness of night, his face mostly hidden in shadows, a creepy and convincing bogeyman (gleefully played by Englund), but they didn’t let Freddy run amuck enough. The great thing about the original was that Freddy really got to let loose. He was a truly frightening monster, especially when we couldn’t see him, but we knew he was there. There are some interesting moments here, mostly to do with Freddy. I must say that this film isn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but it’s really a clunky film. It’s feels like what it is – a sequel the studio rushed out to catch some of the good buzz left over from the first film. It’s cynical, cheap, and sad, because if they’d taken their time, the filmmakers had enough good ideas to at least make a really good scary movie.

3 of 10
C-

Original "Nightmare on Elm Street" IS a Classic

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 28 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux


A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Running time: 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Wes Craven
PRODUCER: Robert Shaye
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jacques Haitkin
EDITORS: Pat McMahon and Rick Shaine

HORROR

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, Charles Fleischer, and Robert Englund

Originally released in 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street was a film written and directed by legendary horror auteur, Wes Craven (Scream). A low-budget horror flick, A Nightmare on Elm Street launched a film franchise, a television series, merchandising, and imitators, but the film is a classic scary movie because of its penchant for blurring the border between dreams and reality. Most importantly, A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced one of the very best screen villains ever, Freddy Krueger.

Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) has a dream in which she is stalked by a mutilated man with a second distinctive feature, razor-sharp knives attached to the fingers on his right hand. Her friend, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), has experienced a similar dream involving the same sinister figure. Even Tina’s estranged boyfriend, Rod Lane (Nick Corri), has dreamed of this creepy man.

After Tina is murdered and Rod is blamed, Nancy discovers that Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a child murderer killed by a mob of angry parents, is the man in her dreams. Krueger has returned to haunt the children of his killers, using their dreams to get his revenge from beyond the grave. When local teens fall asleep, Krueger attacks and kills them in their dreams, which also kills them in the real world. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp, in his screen debut), hatch a plan to drag Krueger into the real world, but will that help them or make things worse?

In spite its low budget, A Nightmare on Elm Street delivers the thrills, chills, and scares of a movie with many times its budget. This first installment of the franchise has a high creepy factor because the narrative muddles reality with surreal moments in which imagination and the dream world intrude on everyday reality. One could make an argument that all or most of the movie is a dream, and that neither the narrative nor its characters are reliable.

Plus, in Fred (eventually Freddy) Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street has a villain who can terrorize his victims in their dreams and occasionally wreak havoc in the real world, which strengthens this story’s unsettling atmosphere. He is a bloodthirsty demon with a wicked sense of humor, and his glove, with its sharp knives, is one of the great weapons in horror movie history and in cinematic history, in general. Practically all the credit for Freddy Krueger’s fame belongs to character actor, Robert Englund, who achieved a rare feat – creating movie monster whose fame spans generations and who has international appeal.

The film’s target audience – the audience that first saw it back in the mid-80s – and likely many that see it now, can identify with Nancy and her friends. Adults don’t take them or their fears and concerns seriously, leaving them at Krueger’s mercy, which is ironic considering that the adults killed Krueger in order to protect their children. The teens are on their own, unable to discern the shifty reality that has become their existence. Like them, we are left alone to figure out this crazy, scary dream world, and A Nightmare on Elm Street delivers. It is the real deal in scary movies, and Freddy is a fictional serial killer who seems almost real.

7 of 10
A-

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Freddie Vs. Jason Simply Bad

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 128 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux


Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)
Running time: 97 minutes (1 hour, 37 minutes)
MPAA – R for pervasive strong horror violence/gore, gruesome images, sexuality, drug use and language
DIRECTOR: Ronny Yu
WRITERS: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (based upon characters created by Wes Craven and Victor Miller)
PRODUCER: Sean S. Cunningham
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Fred Murphy (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Mark Stevens
COMPOSER: Graeme Revell

HORROR/FANTASY/ACTION/THRILLER

Starring: Robert Englund, Monica Keena, Ken Kirzinger, Kelly Rowland, Jason Ritter, James Callahan, Brendan Fletcher, and Lochlyn Munro

There’s little reason to say a whole lot about the long-awaited film showdown between two venerable movie maniacs, Freddy Krueger of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films and Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films. It’s not simply a question of loving or hating it; when you get down to the bare bones, Freddy Vs. Jason is a truly awful film.

Freddy (Robert Englund) is in hell, fuming because he can’t get at the children of Elm Street in the town of Springwood. The parents and town leaders have found a few ways of keeping Freddy from the minds and dreams of their children. Thus, Freddy resurrects Jason (Ken Kirzinger) in hopes that Jason will scare up memories of Freddy. Of course, a plot, even a silly one, between two undead, homicidal maniacs is bound to fall apart. Jason gets out of hand, taking all the kills for himself, so Freddy decides to take him out of the equation.

Ronny Yu, who breathed new life into the Child’s Play series with Bride of Chucky, can’t do a damn thing for Freddy Vs. Jason, and I totally blame the manically lame script. Whereas Bride was perverse, funny, and perversely funny, Freddy is clunky, dull, and painfully dry. I think the writers, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, instead of telling a good story, used too much of their script to shoehorn into this new film all the continuity and characteristics of the two original series. Because of this, more than half of Freddy Vs. Jason is without a story beyond what amounts to preflight commentary. There are quite a few good moments in the film, but everything else is, to speak plainly and crudely, crap.

Although the film as some imaginative effects, it’s not nearly as imaginative as the original Nightmare films, which all surely had smaller budgets than this film. Oh, it does have its moments, but it’s cursed by all the things that typically make horror movies bad: poor acting, weak plot and script, and lack of imagination. As far as horror films goes, most fans are willing to overlook all those problems if the damn thing is scary, and Freddy Vs. Jason isn’t, not even close. It’s just vile and violent, mostly a self-parody that exudes an air of cynicism about itself and the audience.

We, who loved the originals, were programmed to come, despite the misgivings we had from the moment we first heard of that “they” were making a Freddy Vs. Jason movie. Some of us just can’t resist, so we deserve the occasional cow patty thrown squarely in our mugs. The real tale will be told when we see how many of us come back for more, because in the end we deserve a much better film than this.

2 of 10
D

World Premiere of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" Remake, April 27th

Warner Bros. Pictures News: Save the Date for World Premiere of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Tuesday, April 27


--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Warner Bros. Pictures:

WHAT:
Red carpet arrivals at the world premiere of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET on Tuesday, April 27th at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

WHO:
From the film: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Rooney Mara, Thomas Dekker, Connie Britton, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, and director Samuel Bayer. Celebrity guests to follow.

WHEN:
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

WHERE:
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, 6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood


Crew Arrivals: 5:00PM
Celebrity Arrivals: 6:00PM
Screening: 7:00PM

About the film:Nancy, Kris, Quentin, Jesse and Dean all live on Elm Street. At night, they’re all having the same dream—of the same man, wearing a tattered red and green striped sweater, a beaten fedora half-concealing a disfigured face and a gardener’s glove with knives for fingers. And they’re all hearing the same frightening voice…

One by one, he terrorizes them within the curved walls of their dreams, where the rules are his, and the only way out is to wake up.

But when one of their number dies a violent death, they soon realize that what happens in their dreams happens for real, and the only way to stay alive is to stay awake. Turning to each other, the four surviving friends try to uncover how they became part of this dark fairytale, hunted by this dark man. Functioning on little to no sleep, they struggle to understand why them, why now, and what their parents aren’t telling them.

Buried in their past is a debt that has just come due, and to save themselves, they will have to plunge themselves into the mind of the most twisted nightmare of all… Freddy Krueger.

New Line Cinema presents a Platinum Dunes Production, “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” a contemporary re-imagining of the seminal horror classic, starring Academy Award® nominee Jackie Earle Haley (“Little Children,” “Watchmen”) as Freddy Krueger. The film is directed by award-winning music video and commercial director Samuel Bayer (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”), marking his feature film directorial debut.

A talented ensemble of young actors play the teenagers now taking on Freddy Krueger, led by Rooney Mara (“Urban Legend: Bloody Mary”) as Nancy, Kyle Gallner (“The Haunting in Connecticut”) as Quentin, Katie Cassidy (“Taken,” TV’s “Supernatural” & “Melrose Place”) as Kris, Thomas Dekker (“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) as Jesse, and Kellan Lutz (“Twilight,” “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”) as Dean.

The parents of the Elm Street kids are played by a talented supporting cast featuring veteran actor Clancy Brown (“Highlander,” “The Shawshank Redemption”), Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights”), and Lia D. Mortensen.

Bayer directed “A Nightmare on Elm Street” from a screenplay by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer, story by Strick. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is based on characters created by Wes Craven in the 1984 sleeper horror hit of the same name. That film went on to become one of the horror genre’s longest-running, most successful and innovative film series.

The film is produced by Platinum Dunes’ Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, whose company has enjoyed tremendous success with a host of re-imagined horror franchises, including “Friday the 13th,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and “The Amityville Horror.” The executive producers are Mike Drake, Robert Shaye, Michael Lynne, Richard Brener, Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter, with John Rickard serving as co-producer.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET has been rated “R” by the Motion Picture Association of America for “violence, disturbing images and some sexuality.”

http://www.nightmareonelmstreet.com/

New Line Cinema presents a Platinum Dunes Production, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, being released on Friday, April 30, 2010 by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.