The actor plays a dull academic whose image somehow arrives in millions of sleeping minds in a combination of Freddy Krueger and Leonard Zelig
Nicolas Cage has perhaps never been Nicolas Cagier in what could be his Nicolas Cagiest performance ever. This is a surreal fantasy-satire about the unsafe space of social media and the nature of viral fame, something to be aspired to – or dreamed of – by everyone: the democratised and accessible stardom that can happen to anyone, despite or in some way because of their lack of achievement. This kind of fame can be alchemised from ordinariness, a fame produced and consumed on smartphones and capable of getting inside people’s heads because they can imagine, in fact want to imagine, the same thing happening to them.
Cage plays Professor Paul Matthews, an academic with a decent but unexciting career lecturing on biology and how animals evolve to...
Nicolas Cage has perhaps never been Nicolas Cagier in what could be his Nicolas Cagiest performance ever. This is a surreal fantasy-satire about the unsafe space of social media and the nature of viral fame, something to be aspired to – or dreamed of – by everyone: the democratised and accessible stardom that can happen to anyone, despite or in some way because of their lack of achievement. This kind of fame can be alchemised from ordinariness, a fame produced and consumed on smartphones and capable of getting inside people’s heads because they can imagine, in fact want to imagine, the same thing happening to them.
Cage plays Professor Paul Matthews, an academic with a decent but unexciting career lecturing on biology and how animals evolve to...
- 11/10/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Have you seen The Empty Man? For a while there, Fox was probably hoping you would. Probably when it acquired the rights to the graphic novel from Boom! Studios. Probably when it gambled millions of dollars on David Prior’s big-screen horror debut. Probably before it knew that The Empty Man would be the last film to accidentally feature the original 20th Century Fox logo. Probably way before some very particular world events affected the global theatrical release schedule as we knew it.
Probably before all of that.
Have you seen The Empty Man? Prior and the former executive vice president of production at Fox, Mark Roybal, really wanted you to. The pair knew they were embarking on delivering a unique and ambitious horror movie, and Roybal was its studio champion – instrumental to getting that important initial greenlight. But during the final week of production when filming had to be halted due to bad weather,...
Probably before all of that.
Have you seen The Empty Man? Prior and the former executive vice president of production at Fox, Mark Roybal, really wanted you to. The pair knew they were embarking on delivering a unique and ambitious horror movie, and Roybal was its studio champion – instrumental to getting that important initial greenlight. But during the final week of production when filming had to be halted due to bad weather,...
- 7/23/2021
- by Kirsten Howard
- Den of Geek
If you have been living and routinely interacting with other human beings over the last month, you’ve probably heard one or two words involving this year’s Academy Awards and the heated controversy over the startling lack of both films and people of color among the nominees. Personally, I think that the real focus of concern ought to be less on the back end-- awards handed out for films which were financed and/or studio-approved, scheduled for production and filmed perhaps as much as two or three years ago-- and more on addressing the lack of cultural and intellectual and experiential diversity among those who have the power to make the decisions as to what films get made in the first place. This is no sure-fire way to ensure that there will be a richer and more consistent representation of diverse creative voices when it comes time for Hollywood...
- 2/6/2016
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
What's in Netflix's '80s grab bag? Swoony Merchant-Ivory films; a trio of John Hughes romantic comedies; early films with Sean Penn and Matt Dillon; Oscar-winning turns by Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster and Daniel Day-Lewis; and a few classics you already know by heart.
Mixed in are probably a few critically acclaimed films you've never seen but always meant to, whether it's B-movie fun like "Big Trouble in Little China" or ultra-arty Nc-17 fare like "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover."
(Availability subject to change. DeLorean and pink prom dress not included.)
1. "A Room with a View" (1986) Nr
Helena Bonham Carter is torn between freethinker Julian Sands and stuffy fiancé Daniel Day-Lewis in this sumptuous (and very funny) Merchant-Ivory period romance.
2. "The Accused" (1988) R
It's tough viewing, but Jodie Foster is mesmerizing as a rape victim who faces down her assailants in court.
3. "Bad Boys" (1983) R
Sean Penn...
Mixed in are probably a few critically acclaimed films you've never seen but always meant to, whether it's B-movie fun like "Big Trouble in Little China" or ultra-arty Nc-17 fare like "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover."
(Availability subject to change. DeLorean and pink prom dress not included.)
1. "A Room with a View" (1986) Nr
Helena Bonham Carter is torn between freethinker Julian Sands and stuffy fiancé Daniel Day-Lewis in this sumptuous (and very funny) Merchant-Ivory period romance.
2. "The Accused" (1988) R
It's tough viewing, but Jodie Foster is mesmerizing as a rape victim who faces down her assailants in court.
3. "Bad Boys" (1983) R
Sean Penn...
- 12/22/2014
- by Sharon Knolle
- Moviefone
*a screener of this film was provided by Gravitas Ventures.
Director: Leonard Zelig.
Writers: Leonard Zelig and Osvlado Benavides.
subHysteria is a dramatic thriller that was shot in the underground of New York City. This is an improv' film where the actors adlibbed their dialogue. Director Leonard Zelig only gave the actors an outline of the plot and that plot is very, very thin. This film is one of experimentation inside the four walls of a trapped subway car. The results are only partially appealing.
The story is simple. Sixteen passengers are trapped in a subway car after an accident on the rails. They cannot leave the confines of their space as electricity is lighting a nearby pool of water. The next eighty-five minutes involve conflict over race, sex, gender and religion. It is kind of like a family dinner, except everyone hates each other.
And those that hate each other are numerous.
Director: Leonard Zelig.
Writers: Leonard Zelig and Osvlado Benavides.
subHysteria is a dramatic thriller that was shot in the underground of New York City. This is an improv' film where the actors adlibbed their dialogue. Director Leonard Zelig only gave the actors an outline of the plot and that plot is very, very thin. This film is one of experimentation inside the four walls of a trapped subway car. The results are only partially appealing.
The story is simple. Sixteen passengers are trapped in a subway car after an accident on the rails. They cannot leave the confines of their space as electricity is lighting a nearby pool of water. The next eighty-five minutes involve conflict over race, sex, gender and religion. It is kind of like a family dinner, except everyone hates each other.
And those that hate each other are numerous.
- 4/4/2012
- by noreply@blogger.com (Michael Allen)
- 28 Days Later Analysis
Woody Allen was back on form in 2011 with Midnight in Paris, and this week sees the welcome return to the big screen (though initially only at BFI South Bank) of two of the five masterpieces he made in consecutive years during the mid-1980s. Zelig (1983) is a brilliant riff on America's permanent identity crisis, the national belief in the ability to reinvent the self, and it takes the form of a wholly fake, but completely convincing documentary of a fictive inter-war celebrity, Leonard Zelig, known as "the human chameleon". Shot in black-and-white except for the commentaries on the Zelig affair by Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, Irving Howe and Bruno Bettelheim, it's also a brilliant satirical history of America in the 1930s and 40s.
Arguably Allen's wittiest disquisition on life, love and death in Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) is beneficially influenced by Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. One of his most subtly plotted pictures,...
Arguably Allen's wittiest disquisition on life, love and death in Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) is beneficially influenced by Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. One of his most subtly plotted pictures,...
- 1/1/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Woody Allen was back on form in 2011 with Midnight in Paris, and this week sees the welcome return to the big screen (though initially only at BFI South Bank) of two of the five masterpieces he made in consecutive years during the mid-1980s. Zelig (1983) is a brilliant riff on America's permanent identity crisis, the national belief in the ability to re-invent the self, and it takes the form of a wholly fake, but completely convincing documentary of a fictive inter-war celebrity, Leonard Zelig, known as "the human chameleon". Shot in black-and-white except for the commentaries on the Zelig affair by Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, Irving Howe and Bruno Bettelheim, it's also a brilliant satirical history of America in the 1930s and 40s.
Arguably Allen's wittiest disquisition on life, love and death in Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) is beneficially influenced by Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. One of his most subtly plotted pictures,...
Arguably Allen's wittiest disquisition on life, love and death in Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) is beneficially influenced by Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. One of his most subtly plotted pictures,...
- 1/1/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Woody Allen's flawlessly realised fantasy about a 1920s man with "chameleon disorder" looks even more prescient and brilliant today
Released in 1983, Woody Allen's mockumentary drama Zelig was in some quarters regarded as a one-joke technical novelty. But in 2011, it looks like a masterpiece: a brilliant, even passionate historical pastiche, a superbly pregnant meditation on American society and individuality, and an eerie fantasy that will live in your dreams. Most unsettling, somehow, for me, is the still image of Allen reconstituted as a speakeasy gangster, the "tough hombre" remembered by an elderly waiter decades after the event.
Using spoof and real newsreel footage, deadpan modern-day talking-head interviews and some tremendous special effects that hold up triumphantly in this digital age, the movie tells the story of Leonard Zelig, the little 1920s Jewish guy with a "chameleon disorder" enabling him to resemble anyone in whose company he finds himself. Mia Farrow...
Released in 1983, Woody Allen's mockumentary drama Zelig was in some quarters regarded as a one-joke technical novelty. But in 2011, it looks like a masterpiece: a brilliant, even passionate historical pastiche, a superbly pregnant meditation on American society and individuality, and an eerie fantasy that will live in your dreams. Most unsettling, somehow, for me, is the still image of Allen reconstituted as a speakeasy gangster, the "tough hombre" remembered by an elderly waiter decades after the event.
Using spoof and real newsreel footage, deadpan modern-day talking-head interviews and some tremendous special effects that hold up triumphantly in this digital age, the movie tells the story of Leonard Zelig, the little 1920s Jewish guy with a "chameleon disorder" enabling him to resemble anyone in whose company he finds himself. Mia Farrow...
- 12/23/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Woody Allen's flawlessly realised fantasy about a 1920s man with "chameleon disorder" looks even more prescient and brilliant today
Released in 1983, Woody Allen's mockumentary drama Zelig was in some quarters regarded as a one-joke technical novelty. But in 2011, it looks like a masterpiece: a brilliant, even passionate historical pastiche, a superbly pregnant meditation on American society and individuality, and an eerie fantasy that will live in your dreams. Most unsettling, somehow, for me, is the still image of Allen reconstituted as a speakeasy gangster, the "tough hombre" remembered by an elderly waiter decades after the event.
Using spoof and real newsreel footage, deadpan modern-day talking-head interviews and some tremendous special effects that hold up triumphantly in this digital age, the movie tells the story of Leonard Zelig, the little 1920s Jewish guy with a "chameleon disorder" enabling him to resemble anyone in whose company he finds himself. Mia Farrow...
Released in 1983, Woody Allen's mockumentary drama Zelig was in some quarters regarded as a one-joke technical novelty. But in 2011, it looks like a masterpiece: a brilliant, even passionate historical pastiche, a superbly pregnant meditation on American society and individuality, and an eerie fantasy that will live in your dreams. Most unsettling, somehow, for me, is the still image of Allen reconstituted as a speakeasy gangster, the "tough hombre" remembered by an elderly waiter decades after the event.
Using spoof and real newsreel footage, deadpan modern-day talking-head interviews and some tremendous special effects that hold up triumphantly in this digital age, the movie tells the story of Leonard Zelig, the little 1920s Jewish guy with a "chameleon disorder" enabling him to resemble anyone in whose company he finds himself. Mia Farrow...
- 12/22/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Pseudo-documentary charting the story of a man whose physical appearance changes so he resembles those around him.
Have you ever been talking to people from a different place and noticed your own accent start to shift? Have you found yourself keeping quiet about your opinions in order to fit in, perhaps to the point where you become less certain what you do believe? These things can happen to anyone, but for people who lack confidence or a strong sense of their own identities, they can be dramatic. For Leonard Zelig, the experience is so dramatic that even his physical body undergoes...
Have you ever been talking to people from a different place and noticed your own accent start to shift? Have you found yourself keeping quiet about your opinions in order to fit in, perhaps to the point where you become less certain what you do believe? These things can happen to anyone, but for people who lack confidence or a strong sense of their own identities, they can be dramatic. For Leonard Zelig, the experience is so dramatic that even his physical body undergoes...
- 12/14/2011
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
A film that was shot mostly improv' "subHysteria," is currently finishing in post production with sound editing being director Leonard Zelig's focus. Although not finished and ready for fans the "first 11 minutes" of the film has been completed and shown at the Venezuelans on Broadway, a group of artists/filmmakers, and "all the people like what they saw." Moving towards a distribution date shortly the first teaser and one sheet is available for fans. Have a look at the actor's reactions in the clip as neither they nor the audience know what will happen next.
A synopsis for "subHysteria" here...
"Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours, without communication, food, way to escape, and a fatal sensation that they are going to die.
A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death (Sub...)."
Director: Leonard Zelig.
Writers: Leonard Zelig, and Roberto Alcazar.
A synopsis for "subHysteria" here...
"Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours, without communication, food, way to escape, and a fatal sensation that they are going to die.
A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death (Sub...)."
Director: Leonard Zelig.
Writers: Leonard Zelig, and Roberto Alcazar.
- 6/11/2009
- by Michael Ross Allen
- 28 Days Later Analysis
Dear Latin HORRORphiles:
I wanted to take a moment and Thank everyone who came out last night and helped make "The HORRORphiles #2 - Scaring up a Revolución" such a Bloody enormous success!! We had a packed house and once again we had an incredible vibe going that's hard to describe. The closest would be: Solidarity. And I'm hoping there's more to read into the kinship than just extremely spiked Bloody Mary mix :)
I also want to thank you all for coming out and putting $6 on the barrelhead during this wacked out economy to support the Anthology Film Archives and the filmmakers whose films we showcased. Please know that those hard-earned $ go a long way in keeping the Anthology up-and-running. It is the Only venue of its kind left in New York and is entirely administered by filmmakers, for filmmakers. I'm honored to have been associated with the screening space for the last 7-years,...
I wanted to take a moment and Thank everyone who came out last night and helped make "The HORRORphiles #2 - Scaring up a Revolución" such a Bloody enormous success!! We had a packed house and once again we had an incredible vibe going that's hard to describe. The closest would be: Solidarity. And I'm hoping there's more to read into the kinship than just extremely spiked Bloody Mary mix :)
I also want to thank you all for coming out and putting $6 on the barrelhead during this wacked out economy to support the Anthology Film Archives and the filmmakers whose films we showcased. Please know that those hard-earned $ go a long way in keeping the Anthology up-and-running. It is the Only venue of its kind left in New York and is entirely administered by filmmakers, for filmmakers. I'm honored to have been associated with the screening space for the last 7-years,...
- 4/5/2009
- by noreply@blogger.com (LATIN HORROR)
- Latin Horror
On a freezing Wednesday night in New York City I had the pleasure of speaking with the creative team behind the upcoming and improvised claustrophobic subway thriller Subhysteria (see here for teaser and further details). In a tiny editing room I met with Leonard Zelig (Director), Javier Perez-Karam (Producer), Robert Alcazar (Executive Producer), and Gustavo Bernal (Editor) and talked with them about everything from finding permits to film inside a subway car in a post-911 NYC, guerrilla filmmaking, and the pros and cons of not telling your cast anything concerning what they are about to be acting in.
Jumping right in…
R: One of the actors in the cast is an Indian guy whom we cast because he worked perfectly for what we were doing. He was a good actor, you know. So at some point I ask, “What else do you do?” and he says, “Oh, well I’m a fashion model.
Jumping right in…
R: One of the actors in the cast is an Indian guy whom we cast because he worked perfectly for what we were doing. He was a good actor, you know. So at some point I ask, “What else do you do?” and he says, “Oh, well I’m a fashion model.
- 1/20/2009
- QuietEarth.us
Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours, without communication, food, way to escape, and a fatal sensation that they are going to die. A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death. Directed by Venezuela's Leonard Zelig, "Subhysteria" is a drama-thriller that looks like it may qualify as a horror movie. Watch for it at a film festival near you. Check out the "Subhysteria" site here. . . .
- 12/31/2008
- ESplatter.com
One of the most dreadfully boring things that I can imagine is being stuck on a subway train. Nothing happens, no one talks to one another, and you rarely get updates from the operators. It’s just dullsville. But what if you throw some terror and murder into the mix? Now we’re talking excitement!
The boys over at Quiet Earth gave us a heads up about the teaser trailer for Leonard Zelig’s SubHysteria, the plot for which goes like this: Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours without communication, food, or a way to escape and with a fatal sensation that they are going to die. A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death.
Man, now that would make for an interesting day! A graphic novel is being planned to tie in with SubHysteria’s release, which should...
The boys over at Quiet Earth gave us a heads up about the teaser trailer for Leonard Zelig’s SubHysteria, the plot for which goes like this: Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours without communication, food, or a way to escape and with a fatal sensation that they are going to die. A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death.
Man, now that would make for an interesting day! A graphic novel is being planned to tie in with SubHysteria’s release, which should...
- 12/30/2008
- by Johnny Butane
- DreadCentral.com
I do love it when we find little gems in our inbox. Take this one for instance: subHysteria which is now in post, is poised to take full advantage of the subway car situation in New York, post Midnight Meat Train. While the story seems nothing like that, the photography and claustrophobia make this something I definitely want to see.
Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours, without communication, food, way to escape, and a fatal sensation that they are going to die. A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death.
Teaser after the break.
Official website...
Sixteen people get stuck in a subway car in NYC for 36 hours, without communication, food, way to escape, and a fatal sensation that they are going to die. A raw display of human behavior when one confronts the possibility of death.
Teaser after the break.
Official website...
- 12/30/2008
- QuietEarth.us
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