Connect with us

News

Neo-Noir ‘Dreamland’ Trailer Stars Henry Rollins, Stephen McHattie

Published

on

Dreamland

A71 Releasing Inc. is pleased to announce the Canadian release of beloved cinematic visionary Bruce McDonald’s latest picture, Dreamland, hitting Apple TV, Bell, Cineplex, Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus l on May 29th, 2020. The release follows a busy festival tour which began with a riotous world premiere at the Brussels International Fantastic Festival in 2019, followed by the Fantasy Film Festival in Germany, the Torino Film Festival in Italy, and a thrilling North American premiere at the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Reuniting McDonald with collaborators from the 2008 cult favorite Pontypool, Dreamland is written by Tony Burgess and Patrick Whistler. The film features a searing Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle, returning to characters introduced in the post-end-credits coda of Pontypool, Johnny Dead Eyes and Lisa the Killer. McHattie and Houle are joined on screen by Juliette Lewis – who starred in McDonald’s storied Picture Claire – and iconic punk rocker, poet, and pundit Henry Rollins.

Dreamland

via A71

A surreal, darkly comic vision blending horror and fantasy, Dreamland follows reluctant hit man Johnny Dead Eyes (McHattie) who – on the orders of diabolical underworld kingpin Hercules (Rollins) – must cut off the pinkie finger of his jazz legend doppelgänger The Maestro (also McHattie). Johnny makes his way through a neo-noir cityscape populated with street urchins, vampires, and a crime queen called The Countess (Juliette Lewis), while – like all movie hit men – contemplating getting out of the game. But first he’s got to set a few things right…

The Pontypool team had long wanted to get the band back together and McDonald felt strongly about creating a project for Stephen McHattie.

“Once in a while, in this movie game, we connect with people who are stars – and we are inspired to create just the right movie for them. This one is for the great Stephen McHattie,” says McDonald. The writers began with the Pontypool coda characters in mind and were also inspired by a short McHattie starred in which he played Chet Baker in the last minutes of his life, The Deaths of Chet Baker.

McDonald, speaking to inspirations for the film, adds, “Making the movie, I encouraged the team to embrace the Dream in Dreamland. We tried to keep a hatch always open to the subconscious. We tried to have instincts rule over logic. We embraced the guiding spirits of filmmakers Louis Bunuel, David Lynch, Peter Mettler, Bruce Weber, Rainer Werner Fassbinder – of poets Jim Carrol, Richard Brautigon – and of writers Williams S. Burroughs and Raymond Chandler – of musicians Chet Baker, The Eurythmics and Alice Cooper.”

Dreamland

via A71

Dreamland was shot in Luxembourg and Belgium with Director of Photography Richard Van Oosterhout, Production Designers Florence Vercheval and Eugenie Collet, and Costume Designer Magdalena Labuz. The moody jazz score, a character in its own right in the film, was composed by Jonathan Goldsmith (Away From Her, Take This Waltz).

“We are very excited to bring this movie to audiences across Canada while people are looking for new content,” says A71 Releasing Inc. CEO Justin Rebelo. “Dreamland is the work of a director with complete command of his craft and relentless in his pursuit of artistic risk – and it carries on the genre legacy established by these collaborators with Pontypool.”

The film is executive produced by Rob Merilees, Michael Robson and Jim Sherry, alongside Morris Ruskin. Producers on the film are Amber Ripley of Vancouver’s Goodbye Productions, Jesus Gonzalez-Elvira of Luxembourg-based Calach Films, and Sebastian Schelenz of Belgium’s Velvet Films.

Dreamland is produced with support from Telefilm Canada, Film Fund Luxembourg, BNP Parabis Fortis Film Finance, Wallimage and VOO & BE TV with development support from Telefilm Canada and Creative BC.

You can check out the trailer and character posters below

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

on

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the SĂ©bastien VaniÄŤek upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

on

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

on

Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading