THE INSIDER: SFF Sideways Cinema - Landis, Giamatti, Dunst, Wilson!
News flash! Wild and provocative genre films are becoming a staple of film festivals worldwide and SFF is no exception. In recent years we've brought you Another Earth, Trollhunter, Don't Go in the Woods, The Oregonian, and others. SFF Sideways Cinema is here to give you the heads up on more edgy and cool titles — including one featuring this guy!
Number one at the box office this week is Chronicle, the teen superpowers movie written by Max Landis, son of SFF alum John Landis (director of The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Coming to America, Burke and Hare). Max has written for his dad in the past (Masters of Horror: The Deer Woman), so fingers-crossed he'll do it again and one day we can have 'em both at SFF. (Hey, I can dream...)
For fans of last year's Another Earth, here's a visually stunning, mind-bending romance set on alternate earths starring Kirsten Dunst (fresh off Lars von Trier's Melancholia) and Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe). It's called Upside Down and it's a Romeo and Juliet-style SF-action-romance that has to be seen to be believed. So take a look!
So, you didn't get enough William S. Burroughs when we had both the documentary about his life and a staged reading of Queer performed here by an all-star cast? Well, John Dies at the End isn't Boroughs, but the influence of Boroughs and Phillip K. Dick sure can be felt in this tale of a drug with the street name soy sauce that promotes out of body experiences.
One of the craziest things about John Dies at the End is that I can actually (if by a very slim thread) link it back SFF. Paul Giamatti is featured in this wacked-out weirdfest (and I mean that in the most admiring way possible) and he starred in American Splendor, a film co-directed by SFF alums Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulci, who were here for their film The Extra Man.
Yup, for all around eye-poppingly "did I really just see that?"-style craziness, definitely keep an eye out for John Dies at the End based on David Wong's gonzo novel. Watch the trailer!
John Dies at the End was directed by legendary genre master Don Coscarelli, who brought us the Phantasm and Beastmaster movies along with Bruce Campbell's turn as a geriatric Elvis fighting an ancient mummy in a retirement home in Bubba Ho-Tep (based on Joe R. Lansdale's short story). In fact, it was Giamatti's love of that film that brought him together with the director and the two have been attempting for some time now to mount a sequel Bubba Nosferatu.
So our next tidbit is that Insidious is getting a sequel. This is not super-surprising. The movie cost 1.5 million and grossed 150 million. You don't need to be a CPA to do the math here. Now this doesn't directly relate back to SFF, but there is a little watercooler bit that I can share with you about the film's star Patrick Wilson (A Gifted Man, Watchmen). He has family in Tampa. In fact, both his dad John and his brother Mark are news anchors for Fox affiliate WTVT. Now if only Patrick would just happen to come down for a family visit during the dates of one of our festivals... :D
—The Insider
Wanted by motion picture executives for revealing industry secrets to a public with the Right to Know, "The Insider" has spent over 15 years working behind the scenes in almost every aspect of "The Biz" developing a secret network of contacts, spies, moles, and highly trained counter-intelligence operatives and movie ninjas whose only goal is to inform and entertain you-and help you make this the best year of the Sarasota Film Festival ever!
