Could there be a connection with the types of scares made with Creepy Bits and Corman? Probably not with Night of the Blood Beast, but for the second film, read on to find out!
The Film Masters latest double-feature is showing what producer Roger Corman loves about horrors from space and undersea. In Night of the Blood Beast (1958), humanity has to face off against some alien parasite that’s reanimated a dead astronaut. This pilot was aware something hit his craft, but when he aborted the flight, little did he know he had a rider back to earth!
I like to think of this film as a precursor to the way the 94 Spider-Man animated series introduced Venom. The tales are wildly different, but I couldn’t get that image off my mind! As for what’s special about this release is that it’s the most ‘complete’ of the releases. This includes the Mystery Science Theatre 3K episode where this film gets riffed upon. It’s a nice add-on for fans of this series.
One thing that’s for certain is that everyone in one of Philip J. Cook’s film projects are passionate about what they do and are invested from start to end!
The big difference between one of Philip J. Cook‘s early films, like Despiser, to a recent one, namely Ghost Planet, is in how well he can blend in the special effects. He uses a blue/green screen for most of his wide angle shots, and these days, they’re in those closeups too! With modern-age computer technology, he can truly create those exotic worlds, and while his skills as a storyteller haven’t changed much, what makes his films unique is that he will micromanage. That is, he’s an auteur.
Although most of his tales are populated with characters in familiar roles, I can’t fault him for his choices after watching more than these two works. He wants to make his works accessible. What I’m recognising from Despiser reminds me of Buckaroo Banzai and I had to check out the bonus features first before attempting to watch the film. They’re quite good at getting me primed at what to expect instead of tuning it out.
The challenge with artificial intelligence is that will the creators allow it to evolve and grow, and back when the anime Time of Eve first came out (2009), not everyone felt too concerned. Not everyone may have been aware about this web series; these days, the concern with what machines can do is cause for concern. There’s consequences, which many documentaries have explored, and the can of worms that various works of entertainment have opened up suggests many possible ways machines can go renegade!
Now, anime distributor AnimEigo and parent company MediaOCD are bringing this series for all to discuss and examine with the upcoming blu-ray release. That’s because there’s an all new featurette which may delve into the discourse too!
From the Press Release:
An auteur independent work from director Yasuhiro Yoshiura (Patema Inverted, Sing a Bit of Harmony), Time of Eve is a critical darling that won the 2010 Tokyo Anime Award for Original Video Animation. This new edition from AnimEigo contains the feature film version in English and Japanese, along with the original 6-episode web series from which it was assembled.
Time of Eve is set during a time when humanoid robots are everywhere, and every home has one as a servant. Some people treat them with contempt, while others become obsessed. One day, two high school boys stumble across a mysterious café that offers a third option: talk to them, free of prejudice, or even full knowledge of who’s a robot and who’s human. Shocked and rattled by the experience, the boys find themselves learning more about the world and themselves than they ever could have imagined.
Steve Kostanski always loved the magic that film offered at an early age, and when he was creating stop motion films in the garage, little would he know it would lead to a career in the special effects industry. While some people think of him as part of the Astron-6 collective, where they create 80s-centric, no-budget, mixed-genre movies, they have done independent works too, like this filmmaker has with Freddie Freako, to realise they’re a tight group says it all. His name is also there in The Void and Manborg, where he has co-director credit.
His efforts are to be commended since he loves the medium; he watched shows like Mega Movie Magic (1997-2004) on Discovery Channel to learn how film effects were created back then. And on that fateful day where he and his buddies saw Army of Darkness, he knew what he would do for the rest of his life!
“That was when it really clicked,” said Kostanski, as I interviewed him via Zoom. “For me, it seemed like they were normal guys having fun goofing around; except somehow it became accessible. What they made stopped being this nebulous idea from Hollywood and that led to me to seriously want to make it in the film industry.
Just how many “levels” exist in the cyberverse depends on who you ask, and who is your maker? Thankfully the theology doesn’t bog this sci fi whodunit down, and you’ll have to wonder too!
Playing nationwide at select theatres in Canada Please check local listings
Adam Stern, in his debut as a filmmaker, knows just how many Levels of existence there are in this multiverse. Whether that hides in the code or is answered in plain sight, that will depend on how folks will want to interpret the material offered in his movie. He not only penned the screenplay but also directed this rather smart and selective sci-fi thriller about Joe (Peter Mooney) wanting to find out who murdered Ash (Cara Gee), the love of his life, in cold blood. That’s because nothing is truly real. There are faces he recognizes during his investigation, and he doesn’t know why.
In a tale that’s inspired from movies like TRON, Inception, Free Guy and The Matrix (the special effects mostly), what’s presented focuses on an element of spirituality that’s always fascinated me–what if it’s all a simulation? But there’s also another question: who would want to kill this woman? As our hero learns there’s a secret cabal who created a virtual reality that is really indistinguishable from our own, there’s a concern: how can we escape from it? Is what’s imagined in one simulation better than another? The answer is simple: don’t get too emotionally attached.
One of Doctor Who’s greatest foes needs more than a makeover. Instead maybe The Master just needs writers who cares to give him what he wants for once, and show how The Doctor attempts to reverse the damage.
The Master was once an exceptional villain in the Doctor Who series, but after revisiting some recent material during the Canadian Thanksgiving, I couldn’t help but consider one unsettling fact. Just how many lives (regnerations) does he have left? Lately, ever since this series returned to the airwaves back in 2005, he’s been burning through his regenerations quite fast and he’s no longer the Wile E. Coyote he once was.
After stealing the body of Tremas, he basically was at his last regeneration until this full on material swap broke the mold. The Time Lords offered a new set to take advantage, but what has changed? How have the rules been altered? While everything has evolved for The Doctor now in his/her 15th incarnation, I got curious and had to revisit past episodes, consult a few guides and figure out what went wrong.
The big difference between one of 
Playing nationwide at select theatres in Canada
The Master was once an exceptional villain in the