The Last Voyage of Demeter – An update on the film about the ship from Dracula

Way back in May last year I mentioned that Marcus Nispel could possibly be directing a film called The Last Voyage of Demeter. This is the tale about what happened on the ship that Dracula sailed on to get to England in Bram Stoker’s classic novel. This is such a great idea for a film. I love it when they take secondary characters or situations and spill them out into a new movie. Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead is a great example for this kind of thing.

IMDB is still saying Nispel is attached, but he will be busy directing the new Conan the Barbarian movie starring Jason Momoa so not sure if he will be changed.

However, the Demeter is still ready to sail and producers Mike Medavoy and Brad Fischer provided an update to FEARNet

Fischer: When I picked up the script, it just struck me as such a great idea. Because I’d always been a fan of the Stoker novel, and the Dracula mythology and lore. And that chapter, which – if you go back and look at the Stoker novel – is basically told through the captain’s diary, from when he was on the boat. The boat was chartered to go from Varna to London, and there were these boxes of earth that were being put on it, and one of these boxes of earth was Nosferatu himself; and he was feeding off of the crew members as the boat made its journey. The captain’s log – the way that it’s structured in the book – it actually starts off with someone who was a journalist, who is among this group of people when the boat crashes into the rocks at Whitby. And he finds this water-soaked log book. Just by reading these entries, which grow – starting off with descriptions of an “unsettled feeling among the crew that there’s a presence on the boat, someone who can’t be accounted for” – into varying increasing degrees of paranoia. Crew members go missing; no one had actually dramatized what happened on the ship. And Bragi Schut, who wrote Season of the Witch – this was actually his first script that he wrote, before Season of the Witch – he came up with this idea to tell the story of what unfolded. It’s told from the point of view of a guy who’s just desperate to get to London. And he just gets on the wrong boat basically.”

Medavoy: I’m really excited about it. The question is getting some converts out there together with me. I just find the idea of telling a classic story from the point of view of something that happened out of the logs, and all of it taking it place on a shop, visually really interesting. And character-wise it’s really interesting – the characters are on the boat, and the fact that you think all of them had died; and we don’t tell whether somebody did survive or not… That intrigues me.

Venn Diagram for Jesus Christ

Source: GeekForceFive

Cool Poster Mashups

Source: io9

Dracula: The Un-Dead – Official sequel to the daddy of all Vampire novels is out soon

I first mentioned this sequel to Bram Stoker’s classic way back in October 2008. Written by an official descendant, Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt Dracula: The Un-Dead is out on 13th October.

Rumours are also knocking about that it is being possibly developed into a movie but that is still a long way away.

In the meantime have a read of the official synopsis. It all sounds divinely macabre in a very meta kind of way – author appears in his own work, conspiracies, undead and so on and so forth.

Dracula The Un-Dead is a bone-chilling sequel based on Bram Stoker’s own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads excised from the original edition. Written with the blessing and cooperation of Stoker family members, Dracula The Un-Dead begins in 1912, twenty-five years after Dracula “crumbled into dust.” Van Helsing’s protégé, Dr. Jack Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school for the London stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of “Dracula,” directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself.

The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents’ terrible secrets, but before he can confront them he experiences evil in a way he had never imagined. One by one, the band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century ago is being hunted down. Could it be that Dracula somehow survived their attack and is seeking revenge? Or is their another force at work whose relentless purpose is to destroy anything and anyone associated with Dracula?

Check out more on the official site.

Will The Eternal find peace?

Another Vampire film but I like the story behind this one. Kind of like Dracula and Highlander mashed up.

Samuel Gradius has lived too long. In his 500 years on earth he has seen empires rise and fall, changed the course of history with his bare hands and experienced countless revolutions first hand. Samuel Gradius is a vampire, perhaps the only vampire, and he’s had enough. He wants to die. No longer content with the idea of simple suicide, he makes the decision to go out in the ways of old. He wants a warrior’s death. The Eternal follows Samuel on the pursuit of his own personal oblivion, he hopes, at the hands of someone worthy.

Apparantly their is a graphic novel prequel:

“The Eternal: Final Dawn tells the life (and undead) story of Samuel Gradius, born in 1463 Scotland as Samhairle Greme. Twelve chapters tell his journey, from birth until 2009, and the first moments of the feature film The Eternal. Set against the backdrop of real history and known myth, the horrific, tragic and humorous collide in The Eternal: Final Dawn. Welcome to Samuel’s world – we can’t guarantee your safety.”

The graphic novel represents the first step in offering a unique immersive experience for an independent film, as out of the twelve total issues, the first six will be offered online in monthly installments, entirely free. The first issue is expected to be offered online later this year, and will be previewed at the upcoming Rue Morgue Festival of Fear in Toronto. You can view the teaser issue here.

Check out the official site.
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Freddy, Darth, Jason, Dracula, Chucky, the ghost from Ring and more all love TV

This advert is a little bit mad and a little bit funny.

Leave a comment on this post below.

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I, Frankenstein – The monster is a Private Dick, Dracula is the Kingpin. Someone call the Monster Squad

I, Frankenstein is a Darkstorm comic book created by Kevin Grevioux (Underworld) that combines the stories of Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man, Dracula and other iconic literary creatures into one and places them in the all-new context of Dark Haven. The Monster, for example, has evolved, learned how to control his anger and now acts as a private investigator. Dracula, meanwhile, is a kingpin of crime, and the Invisible Man is a secret operative.

Death Ray Films, director Patrick Tatopoulos and Grevioux have teamed up to develop the story for the big screen. It’s also a comic series from Darkstorm Comics, set for release later this year.

Speaking to Sci Fi Wire, Grevioux said that his prescription for success is to take the source material seriously rather than reduce it to a reference or punch line. “These things could work together, given the proper execution and respect for the material,” Grevioux said. “If you look at it more realistically, and look at it in a cooler sense, I think you’re really going to get more out of it. Looking at what is traditionally considered silly or sophomoric by the public at large, I think you could take and make them very serious and get a really cool action-adventure piece out of it, and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

“Like with Underworld, my inspiration has always been the classic horror movies, in particular House of Frankenstein, which had Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and Dracula all in one film. Looking at stuff like that, I conceived building a world where all of the classic … monsters of literature lived in the same city, called Dark Haven. So I thought it would be cool to put them in a modern film noir kind of setting, where the public is completely unaware that these creatures of legend actually exist. I thought that would be interesting, and have Frankenstein as the star, so it was kind of cool, it was kind of fun. Like, one of the things that I’ve always wanted to see is Frankenstein versus the Mummy, so in a sense we’ll get a little bit of that, things like that: pairings of different monsters, how they would interact in this city.”

This all sounds like excellent stuff, but could easily go the wrong way as the not very good Van Helsing did. However, the whole premise does seem as if it could work and I do like the updating of all the characters. I also like the fact that Frankenstein’s monster is the hero. Grevioux had this to say about the reason why the monster was chosen as the lead.

“I guess because he’s just the classic motif of an action hero: He’s big and strong. Also, I guess if you want to get down to a more, I don’t want to say existential sense, but he was the first sci-fi piece that ever existed. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is what kicked all of this off. Using Frankenstein and looking at the original novel, this was a very intelligent creature. He was smart, he was cunning, he asked questions about his existence, things like that. There is a lot of mythology there that you can pull from in terms of his motivation—why he is like he is right now—and I like that.”

What do you think of this? Has the Wolfman got nards?

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Sequel to Dracula – The Un-Dead

News from STYD that a sequel and film adaptation to the iconic “Dracula” story by Bram Stoker is in the works, titled The Un-Dead. I know we all think sequels can usually be the death of a story, but this doesn’t sound bad at all. Apparently Stoker’s great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker and “award-winning Dracula documentarian and historian,” Ian Holt, have sold the North American rights to the follow-up novel. The book is scheduled for an October 2009 release, while the film is expected to start production in June.

Source: First Showing

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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 2003. DVD Review

Director: Stephen Norrington
Starring: Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, Richard Roxburgh, Max Ryan.
Running Time: 110 minutes

Score: 3/10

People who know me will be aware that am a big fan of comic books and comic book movies. In particular I enjoy those comics written by the genius that is Alan Moore (Watchmen, The Killing Joke, Swamp Thing etc) who wrote the mini-series upon which this movie is based. I could review this film by comparing it to the comic book, but I won’t as the differences are too many and painful to list.

When I first watched this when it first came out I really enjoyed it. There was a pulp novel sensibility to the proceedings and the many characters meant there was always something else to look out for. However, having it watched it again on DVD (for the purposes of later comments I’ll mention the fact it was a normal DVD played on an Upscaler DVD player and viewed on an LCD TV) I realised that it is an absolute travesty of a movie.

Basically, a few fictitious characters (Allan Quartermain, Capt. Nemo, Mina Harker, an Invisible Man, Mr Hyde, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer) are recruited by the British Empire to combat the villianous plans of the mysterious Fantom (Richard Roxburgh).

The characters are all introduced bit by bit and say something humorous and then an bit of action happens. All the characters appear to speak with the same voice with a constant quipping at every encounter. Their lines could be pretty much interchangeable. There is also no consistency with their characterisation. For example, Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) is at first all distant and mysterious about what happened then at the first sign of trouble she Vamps up and rips out the neck of a generic guard. She then whackily licks the blood off her hand while tidying herself up in a compact mirror. There is a tiny bit of exposition about this and then on with the story as if nothing much happened. It just doesn’t make for a convincing character portrayal. The characterisation of all the characters is similarly poor.

Then there is the all pervading presence of Allan Quartermain (Sean Connery) who basically sorts everything out while the rest of the team don’t do much apart from take out the generic guards and be the source of copious amounts of exposition.

The effects, particularly the CGI, are pretty much rubbish and stick out like a sore thumb which good effects should not do. The compositing of the building blowing up near the start of the film is atrocious. As for the Mr Hyde costume/effect, at first you think it is pretty well done, then the more you watch it the more you realise how embarrassingly stupid it really is. It looks like a load of balloons covered in skin. The Invisible Man (Tony Curran) effects aren’t too bad until you notice that the white face paint he applies to make himself visible keeps changing from a few bits slapped on his face to his whole head being covered and then back again (plus if he is naked when invisible why does he leave bootprints in the snow?)

The sets themselves are okay and quite detailed, particularly the portraits in M’s meeting room that show previous incarnations of The League. However, Dorian Gray’s (Stuart Townsend) library appears to have been designed purely for the arrival of gun toting generic guards to stand in the gaps between the bookshelves. This is lazy plotting and design to make the environment fir the fight scene. Just one of those faults that niggles at you.

All of this could maybe have been lifted if the bad guy had been a great one. They don’t really come much better than the criminal genius of Professor Moriarty, but this film would make you think the total opposite. At first Richard Roxburgh plays him as The Fantom a basic 1 dimensional scarred bad guy and then shows no menace whatsoever when he shows his true face. I assume this was the start of Mr Roxburgh’s career suicide which was completed during his camp portrayal in the dreadful Van Helsing movie.

I could go on about how Tom Sawyer (Shane West) was shoe horned in to give Allan Quartermain a surrogate son and also appease the American audience by giving them an American hero, or how they wasted the character of Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) by having him do a bit of kung fu but whose basic function is to get the team from point A to point B. I could go on but I won’t. I think you get the picture.

Needless to say the reported conflict between Sean Connery and the director during the making of the movie will have contributed to some of the disaster that appears on screen, but the scriptwriter, effects people and other actors must take some of the blame.

Phil