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By Ryan Fleming. All Eyez on Me, Tupac Shakur's last album released while he was alive and shortly after he first wrote Live 2 Tell. Image courtesy wikipedia, under fair use. Musicians dabbling in acting was nothing new by the 1990s. Sometimes the musician didn’t even need to have any acting ability whatsoever and the roles would be written around them, as was the case for almost all of Elvis Presley’s film career. Other times, acting can become a bona fide second career to w

By Ryan Fleming. Release poster, image courtesy wikipedia. The notion of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg collaborating on a film feels like something from an alternate history. It happened, however, at in the year Stanley Kubrick had made famous, with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Perhaps sometimes we forget this was the case because of Kubrick’s death before the film finally entered production. Without knowing the long production history, and how long Spielberg h

By Ryan Fleming and Charles E.P. Murphy In our world, this show does not exist - but in another world, you can find DVD boxsets right...

By Ryan Fleming. Cover courtesy Amazon. “Is Alternate History a genre or a setting” is an oft-debated topic in the genre (or the...

By Ryan Fleming. The infamous dino-humanoid concept art by Carlos Huante that made it online after the news of the script broke. Picture taken from the Jurassic Park wiki. In Hollywood, a decade is an eternity. The exact same film can be in development for that entire time and wind up radically different from how it was initially envisioned. Such was production on the third sequel to Jurassic Park (1993). That film would eventually be released as Jurassic World (2015), but

By Ryan Fleming. The 'ghost with the most', image courtesy Amazon Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was released in 2024 to box office success and a mostly positive response. It reunited much of the cast of the original film, no easy feat coming thirty-six years after Beetlejuice (1988). It was not meant to take that long to generate a sequel: one was commissioned almost as soon as Beetlejuice proved successful. There were multiple scripts and ideas, but the one that saw the most

By Ryan Fleming. The writing of Reid in Braid was ultimately inspired by seeing the 2003 German film Good Bye, Lenin! for the first...

By Ryan Fleming. Cover for the audiobook; picture courtesy Amazon. An odd habit from some in recent years is the complaint about the...

By Ryan Fleming. Vincent Price stumbles through the end of the world (taken from Last Man on Earth). Since the birth of film censorship, the relationship between censors and film production companies has veered from vitriolic to chummy, depending on how intertwined the censors are to the industry and how much capital the production company commands. Even at the most contentious of relationships, however, it is very rare that a film can be completely abandoned by a production

By Ryan Fleming Ridley Scott doing a Q&A in 2015, picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. There have been many attempts to adapt Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel Dune . Most of them have spent much time in development hell. The most famous was the mid-1970s attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky, chronicled in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013). We’re not going to talk about that one. The first successful adaptation of the book, David Lynch’s Dune (1984), had its own t

By Ryan Fleming. The original 1963 cover for the book; image courtesy Wikipedia, under fair use Hollywood is a very superstitious industry. Perhaps not overly so compared to others but given its sheer scale of self-promotion, even these superstitions are given the limelight. In some cases, it is an actual film that is the subject of superstition. Atuk is one such film. Despite remaining unfilmed, it is supposedly responsible for the deaths of many associated with its develop

Review by Ryan Fleming. There's no doubt. The title tells you what the book's about. Picture courtesy Amazon. Amongst the many...

By Ryan Fleming. Nosferatu, 1922. One of the earliest classics of the genre. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. It seems appropriate for...

By Ryan Fleming Will Smith (left) in I Am Legend. Picture courtesy Wired. I’m afraid I have some sad news. This is the last article in this series. Ryan has reached the end of his material. I suspect that there will be an upsurge in withdrawal symptoms in the near future. The last in this series. Appropriately, it is entitled I am Legend : ***** It takes a lot for a film to become legendary. One thing that is not required, however, is for a film to actually be made in o

By Ryan Fleming. Villa Diodati, the birthplace of both Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. As...

By Ryan Fleming. A publicity poster for On The Waterfront. It could equally have been used for The Hook. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Sometimes, a film can be made at the wrong time. It can come either too early or too late to resonate properly with audiences than it might have done had it been made at a more appropriate time. This might be frustrating to the writers of those scripts. Imagine how frustrating it must be, however, to have an idea seemingly not appropriat

By Ryan Fleming. Going viral - The Blair Witch Project. It could only have been made in the early Internet period. Picture courtesy...

By Ryan Fleming Cross. Holy Water. Garlic. Stakes. Cheese Sandwiches. Just another day at the office for Van Helsing. Picture courtesy...

By Ryan Fleming Idris Elba looking out of place. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. As film development drags into the dreaded development hell, there usually comes a point of no return. The point at which, no matter what, a film must be made, because so much effort (and, more importantly, money) has been sunk into the project. This is especially true in the modern days where news, rumours, and filmmakers are so readily accessible, and interactive, to the potential audience.

By Ryan Fleming. Onryō; Japan's spirits of vengeance. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This is, I am given to understand, the...