Trailer: Escape from Tomorrow

I haven't been able to shake Escape from Tomorrow since seeing the trailer last week. Randy Moore's debut film is one unique beast. An impressive feat of guerilla filmmaking, this surrealistic horror flick was shot on location at Walt Disney World and Disneyland without any permission from Disney. After shooting - with a cast and crew who did their best to remain incognito - Moore apparently took the film to South Korea to edit it in secrecy just in case Disney caught wind of what he had done. So far it's screened at Sundance to positive reviews and Disney are "aware" of its existence, but no legal action has been taken. Click below to see Disneyland as if imagined by David Lynch (or something):

Mockbusters 101

Last Thursday Twitter went berserk over the screening of a TV movie called Sharknado in the States. I don't think it's too difficult to guess what Sharknado is about but in case you're wondering here's the trailer:
So it's basically a movie about sharks falling from the sky. And it apparently led to 5,000 tweets-per-minute during the busiest period of the tweet-storm. Many celebrities contributed the frenzy too, including Mia Farrow (!), Olivia Wilde and screenwriter Damon Lindelof.

We haven't got Sharknado in our library yet (it will probably come soon), but do carry many of these "mockbusters", most of them produced by The Asylum studio. Surprisingly these titles get rented (which is why we continue to stock 'em)....but unsurprisingly they lead to bad customer reviews, like this one of Super Shark:

I have to ask though, what do you expect when you rent a movie called Super Shark??

Anyway, Total Film just compiled a useful list of these laughable knock-offs; for the curious who've never seen a mockbuster before you can rent these ones from us:

The Day the Earth Stopped
Mega Piranha
Princess of Mars
American Warships
6 Guns
Street Racer
Titanic II
The Amityville Haunting
I Am Omega
Alien Origin
Monster
Transmorphers: Fall of Man
3 Musketeers
2012 Supernova
200 MPH
The 7 Adventures of Sinbad
The Terminators
Nazis at the Center of the Earth
Jack the Giant Killer
Allan Quartermain and the Temple of Skulls
Bikini Spring Break
Alien vs Hunter
Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies
Grimm's Snow White
Almighty Thor
Paranormal Entity
Battle of Los Angeles
Snakes on a Train
Transmorphers

Short Film: The Raven

Ok here it is, the latest web short film sensation thing that's probably on the way to create some District 9-like buzz soon. Apparently Peruvian director Ricardo de Montreuil made it for only $5K. There seems to be a growing trend with these "calling card" shorts: show how much bang you can deliver for a small buck and you'll have studios lining up to make you offers (also related: the declining need for A-list names). And sure, The Raven is a glossy, polished product with impressive special effects, but also terribly derivative and not the least bit interesting. It falls in the same boat as Panic Attack! - no matter how fancy the CGI is, it looks like dozens of other films (clue: aliens/robots/end-of-the-world etc).

I should add that Montreuil isn't some newbie but already an established filmmaker in his home country with many commercials, music videos and at least two features under his belt. So it's not a "calling card" for a young filmmaker as such, but it is one for Hollywood, who're all about the kind of blockbuster-ready spectacle which The Raven so slickly provides in bitesize form.

THE RAVEN - 720 HD from THE RAVEN FILM on Vimeo.

Trailer: Paranormal Activity

There's so much buzz surrounding this low-budget horror flick it's too bad that seeing it might not be that easy. The backstory to the release of this Blair Witch-y movie is a knotty one: made two years ago by Oren Peli, it was originally picked up by Dreamworks, who didn't really know what to do with it but had plans to remake it, only to back off when industry insiders who saw it gave it the thumbs up (among them Steven Spielberg apparently). The film is now being handled by Paramount, who is giving it a limited release in the States (IMDB has NZ's release date as January 2010, but who knows if that'll stick at this stage?). Unfortunately they - or whoever organised the event - totally made a mess of a free screening of the film in New York that has angered a lot of people. Read about this horror story here.

Interestingly, they've devised an interesting strategy to gauge interest by allowing fans to "demand it" on this website. So if you want to see Paranormal Activity in your town - and if you're a self-respecting scary movie fan you will want to - please register your vote! Here's the trailer complete with night-vision audience reactions and all: