The term “Grand Guignol” – slathered as a descriptor onto genre films which delight in over-the-top gruesomeness – originated at the turn of the 20th century at a Paris theatre famed for creating grisly, realistic horrors on stage. The Grand Guignol tradition lived on in France’s VHS covert art, a gallery of which can be found below. Continue Reading ›
Deep Fried Movies presents a look back at the Academy Awards’ Best Picture winners through their posters. While compiling this collection, I was shocked by how little passion I have for so many of the films anointed with this highest Oscar honor. The Academy Awards don’t tend to hand out little gold statues to the movies that move me the most, which is why I tend to spend Oscar night otherwise engaged. Continue Reading ›
If one were to imagine a “degree of difficulty” scale for costume designers, on one end of the scale you might find something like a two-character chamber piece set over the course of a single evening. Then all the way at the other end of that scale, you’d find The Spierig Brothers’ twisting time travel sci-fi Predestination (2014).
Bounding from the 1940s to the 1990s and stopping at every decade in between, Predestination taxed costume designer Wendy Cork with creating period looks for a half-dozen distinct epochs, each slightly skewed through the prism of science fiction and featuring an androgynous lead who switches genders halfway through the proceedings.
Cork spoke to Deep Fried Movies about grappling with Predestination’s preternatural degree of difficulty, looking to David Bowie and Keith Richards for inspiration and the impact of digital cinematographer on her work. Continue Reading ›
Bogie leads a multi-cultural tank squad against the Nazis in North Africa in this World War II-era propaganda piece. Though set in the titular desert, the movie was actually filmed in California’s Borego Desert.
Jeff Bridges’ latest, Seventh Son (2015), hasn’t been treated kindly thus far by American movie theater audiences or critics. But that doesn’t make Bridges’ on-set photos any less spectacular. Here’s a few Bridges pics the actor posted to his Twitter account.
When Da Sweet Blood of Jesus hits limited theatrical release and VOD this Friday, the narrative surrounding the film will largely focus on director Spike Lee as the most prominent filmmaker yet to make use of crowdsourcing to fund a project. The movie – a remake of Bill Gunn’s 1973 film Ganja & Hess – raised $1.4 million on Kickstarter, including sizable donations by Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.
But further down in the credits, below the line where you find the name of cinematographer Daniel Patterson, lies an equally compelling narrative. The story of a kid who grew up in the boroughs of New York just like Lee, followed the director’s path to success step-by-step and now finds himself working alongside the very man who inspired him to pursue filmmaking.
Patterson talked to Deep Fried Movies about the journey that led him behind the camera on the latest Spike Lee Joint. Continue Reading ›
Danish poster for The Night of the Hunter (1955), the only directorial credit for three-time Oscar nominated actor Charles Laughton. Courtesy of the fantastic poster blog Discreet Charms & Obscure Objects.
A few set pics from John Ford’s take on the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday legend, My Darling Clementine (1946). Henry Fonda stars as Earp. Though not associated with the genre in the same way as John Wayne or Glenn Ford, Fonda made some of my favorite Westerns including The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Fort Apache (1948, again working with Ford) and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
Pics courtesy of The Criterion Collection’s website. Continue Reading ›
