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This Just In! American Horror Story Coven Cast: Angela Bassett and Patti LuPone Join Season 3 – TVLine

Well, I guess that’s the major news, but if you want more, click on the big red link below and get the whole story from Michael Ausellio at TVLine:

American Horror Story: Coven Cast: Angela Bassett and Patti LuPone Join Season 3 – TVLine

 

 

 

AAAARGH, just did the math and realized they’re only in pre-production! How are we supposed to wait until October, dammit?

 

Special Effects Delivers Gore Galore in New Netflix Show 'Hemlock Grove'

Reblogged from Variety:

Click to visit the original post

How do we make it more disgusting?”

This was the question constantly being fielded by the f/x artists tasked with turning man into beast for Netflix’s new horror thriller "Hemlock Grove," which bows April 19.

(From the pages of the April 16 issue of Variety.)

The result pushes the boundaries of a transformation that has been a fixture of werewolf-themed movies and TV series going back decades.

Read more… 502 more words

KNB EFX - still the best, and out favorite, in practical gore effects (going back to Nicotero's work in Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn...actually, before that). What's "gore galore" to most might be a medium amount of gore for us (and we're also far from 'squeamish'), but we agree 100% with the "raw, visceral" part. Plus, the eyeballs were a great touch. Check out the cool concept art!
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Watch This Eye-Popping Werewolf Transformation Clip From Hemlock Grove ASAP (NSFW)! (HD)

Let’s start with a quote from an interview with Eli Roth (read it here), who seems to be the main face/name for the Netflix series Hemlock Grove.* This despite the fact he only executive-produces three episodes; (one of which he does have directing credit, the premiere with the fun title “Jellyfish In the Sky”) and didn’t in fact create the series – Hemlock Grove is based on a novel of the same name by first-time author Brian McGreevy (released on March 27, 2012). Even if Roth has little participation, the below quote was  more or less exactly what we wanted to hear!

 I thought about the average viewers that have watched Twilight and seen the transformation of a shirtless guy walking by a tree and transforms*.  Our idea of a transformation is Rick Baker and Rob Bottin.  So, we’ve got to do something modern that’s in the classic tradition.  It has to be a violent birth, I want it to eat its placenta after and Deran was into it.  It should shake off all of the blood and goo.  And that’s how we approached all of the kill scenes.

-Eli Roth, on his vision for Hemlock Grove‘s werewolf transformations

Check out the clip of the grisly transformation below (which appears in one of the six episodes directed by Deran Serafian; his first directing credit is episode three, titled The Order of the Dragon), and decide for yourself if they hit their goal. It IS a pretty ugly, painful “violent birth”…

Novel synopsis (official): A young girl is brutally murdered and found near the former Godfrey steel mill. As rumors mount, two of the suspects in her killing—Peter Rumancek, a 17-year-old Gypsy trailer trash kid rumored to be a werewolf, and Roman, the heir to the Godfrey estate—decide to find the killer themselves.

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The novel’s author Brian McGreevy wrote five of the episodes, which include the premiere and the finale. The episodes will also mark his screenwriting début.

We love the cut-aways; Lilly Taylor’s character is just smiling calmly to herself like she’s watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon, while the other character watching looks shocked and horrified:

"You've got to be fucking kidding..."

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…”

He’s pretty wide-eyed as he gapes at Peter’s wolf transformation, but hey, it could have been worse:

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Hemlock Grove will be available on Netflix this Friday …all thirteen of them will go up at once. Let’s cross our fingers that the show will have us so hooked that we mainline all of them in one (or two to three, since we have to eat and most of us have to work) greedy marathon/s. We don’t exactly have a busy social calendar this Friday, and no deadlines coming up, so let’s hope is turns out to be addictively entertaining!

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HOAH!

*BOOOOO! on the candy-ass movie series and the technique! With the exception being Joe Manganiello (AKA “Sexiest Goddamned Werewolf Alive”) stripping naked down to his cock sock “modesty sock” on True Blood and the bonus of seeing his bare ass for a second before he shifts. And the way he growls is just so …OK, we better just shut this footnote down right now.

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Exactly how does Peter turn back into a human when the time comes?

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Check Out Entertaining, Twisted New “Hemlock Grove” Red Band Trailer – NSFW, HD (Toothbrush Not Included)

“From director Eli Roth, developed by Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, with Famke Janssen (“X-Men”), Bill Skarsgård (“Simon & The Oaks”), Landon Liboiron (“Terra Nova“), Penelope Mitchell (“6 Plots”), Freya Tingley (“X”), and Dougray Scott (“Mission Impossible II“). Sexy, gripping, emotional and twisted, Hemlock Grove is unlike anything else you’ve ever seen.”

We don’t know about that, but after seeing this we’re sure going to give it a chance.

Well! Hemlock Grove suddenly looks a lot more watchable than the first trailer we saw several months ago, despite the always-entertaining Famke Janssen playing another fun femme fatale and the promise of “a small town filled with secrets”.

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Now we’re talking flesh covered in maggots (see horrific photo in gallery below),  a young guy enthusiastically doing blow off a glass coffee table, screaming characters covered in their own blood, intense sex scenes that look like they might be on the verge of turning animalistic, grisly werewolf transformation shots, a chick suddenly vomiting up a gallon or so of some unnatural-looking mealy white goop including a live maggot, a girl kissing the upper half of a female corpse (the bottom half is raggedly torn off and nowhere to be seen), Nazis exhuming a corpse*, two good-looking (and very alive this time) young women making out, even a couple of lines showing a sense of humor, including a nod to one of the most well-known lines from John Carpenter’s The Thing (you’ll know it when you see it).  Wow, House of Cards ( the most recent other Netflix Original Series) might have had the sex and some substance abuse, but only metaphorical back-stabbing and ripping to pieces. Check out the new HD trailer below- it’s much more flashy –and splashy– than the teaser, we’ll give it that! In case the descriptions above didn’t clue you in (pretty sure 99% of readers already got the gist) it’s definitely NSFW.

Though Eli Roth’s name is featured prominently in all the advertising, making it seem like he created all aspects of Hemlock Grove and was involved in every episode, IMDB shows that technically, his involvement is limited to executive-producing three episodes. Well, we’re more interested in his next project being Green Inferno than we would a series.

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Doesn’t mean it’s all bad, though. And if it is good, you can wolf down mainline all 13 episodes starting this Friday, April 19th on Netflix.

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Check out the gallery below for a few more screencaps…

*or apparently a corpse, they’re climbing down into a freshly dug-up grave and opening a coffin, looking very interested.

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Eli Roth On Hemlock Grove’s Werewolf Transformation, Italian Horror Connection, and Mainstream Gore (Shock Till You Drop)

 I thought about the average viewers that have watched Twilight and seen the transformation of a shirtless guy walking by a tree and transforms.  Our idea of a transformation is Rick Baker and Rob Bottin.  So, we’ve got to do something modern that’s in the classic tradition.  It has to be a violent birth, I want it to eat its placenta after and Deran was into it.  It should shake off all of the blood and goo.  And that’s how we approached all of the kill scenes.

-Eli Roth, on his vision for Hemlock Grove‘s werewolf transformations

Ryan Turek does a great interview (as usual) here with Eli Roth, as quoted above. We fucking agree!*   Yeah, that’s exactly what werewolf transformation scenes should look like. Click on the big red link below to read the Shock Till You Drop WonderCon interview with Roth, and get a little info on the Green Inferno cannibal flick!

WonderCon Interview: Eli Roth On Hemlock Grove’s Werewolf Transformation, Italian Horror Connection & Mainstream Gore / Shock Till You Drop.

Make up artist Rick Baker (middle) at the 2011...

Make up artist Rick Baker (middle) at the 2011 Saturn Awards (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

*OK, so personally, Mrs. HB isn’t going to complain about Joe Manganiello on “True Blood stripping off his clothing until he’s just wearing a ‘modesty sock’, then quickly morphing into an actual wolf, but that’s because GOOD LORD what a fine, fine hunk of a man. OK, uh, anyway, that’s an exception for personal reasons…

 

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Showrunner Steven S. DeKnight breaks down who survived and who died in the 'Spartacus' series finale and why

Reblogged from Inside TV:

[SPOILER ALERT: Read on only if you have already watched Friday’s series finale of Spartacus: War of the Damned.]

Would he live or die? That was the question heading into the series finale of Spartacus tonight. While history tells us the titular hero and his rebel forces were defeated by the might of Rome, some historians have claimed Spartacus’ body was never actually found, lending a glimmer of hope that the gladiator slave turned rebellion leader (originally played by the late Andy Whitfield and then by Liam McIntyre) might actually make it out of the series alive.

Read more… 1,701 more words

We're just now picking our jaws up off the floor...  Gratitude, Steven DeKnight and Rob Tapert, for a series I'll never forget.*     Just another day at the office for the House of Batiatus... *even if I'm still SUPER-pissed at DeKnight for teasing a Gannicus/Caesar spinoff. Grrrrr.
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New Cool ‘Dexter’ Season Eight Trailer Teases The Endgame (We Hope- Screencrave)

Well, all good things must come to an end, even though in retrospect (lately we’ve been re-watching Dexter, the first few seasons, on Blu Ray and only consider owning S1-4, and the difference in quality and viewer entertainment  between the first seasons is even more striking compared to the most recent), we think it would have been wise to end with S5… and S4 would have been an even stronger time to end. Now that would have been ballsy. You can see the teaser for what has been called by the network president the final season; though the promos aren’t calling it “The Final Chapter”, “The End of Dexter”, “The Epic Ending Season” or anything we’d expect them to. We’d really like an official Dexter PR campaign–or Michael C. Hall- confirming it, but this promo shows promise and hints at it. Even though there is no new footage of scenes from the show (airing this summer on Showtime instead of the traditional Fall premiere, so they’ve been shooting), we liked it enough to point you its way on Screencrave.com – just click the big red link below.

 

‘Dexter’ Season Eight Trailer Teases The Endgame

 

 

If we get any updates on A. a grudging announcement officially given out by Showtime (or Michael C. Hall, or Jennifer Carpenter) or B. a trailer (or even some cool photos) showing official footage, you’ll be the first to know.

HEY! LAST-MINUTE UPDATE: A few weeks ago, Michael C. Hall himself confirmed this will indeed be Dexter’s final season. There’s a link under Related Articles below for you to read more.

What pains us is that the first half of Season 7 showed such promise that we actually thought there’d been a changing of the guard at Showtime* (new writers, a new show-runner, etc.) Maybe the episodes up until Dexter decides to start banging Hannah were done by a team of people behind the scenes who took matters into their own hands. Who knows, maybe the writers that gave us the show we loved back were secretly in some kind of pact, got a plan in place and started drugging the staff responsible for Season 6 (the season nicknamed Hello Whore by the Onion AV Club) with roofies and had taken over the show. Then, midway through, the S6 writers started to catch on and by the last third of the season, took the show back, and well… it was nice while it lasted. Then the wheels started coming off, but we still held out hope.

It’s almost worse than an entire shitty season, to have become cautiously optimistic after three consistent quality episodes, then more confident, then around episode seven see a couple of red flags (Quinn’s already mediocre “subplot” going downhill with expected yet still alarming speed, Dexter deciding to totally trust Hannah instead of following through with the kill), then with every episode hoping it was just a temporary glitch and the wheels weren’t coming off the whole damn thing …even up to the finale we held out a sliver of hope. Well, surprise, motherfucker! Sigh.

Dexter's Blood on the Street

Dexter’s Blood on the Street (Photo credit: The Bay Harbor Butcher)

That’s enough on that subject before this turns into a multi-part essay, but here’s a review from the A.V. Club of the episode where Team Hello Whore apparently returned for good; I believe it’s subtitled Well, It Was Nice While It Lasted.  The reviewer is skilled at pointing out what went wrong and why we all wish it had gone differently (no-one wants to hate this show). In fact, all the reviews for S7, and S6 for that matter, are worth a read if you have some time to kill.

English: Actress Jennifer Carpenter – Comic-Co...

Actress Jennifer Carpenter at Comic-Con 2009 – San Diego, Calif. – July 23, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

*we weren’t the only blog/publication that got that impression from the superb season premiere, especially the final scene, either… but it turned out not to be the case.

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'The Walking Dead': 'The Governor is still out there. The war is not over.' -- Exclusive season 4 preview video!

Reblogged from Inside TV:

[SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading now if you have yet to watch the season 3 finale of The Walking Dead.]

The Walking Dead finished season 3 with a lot of people dying and relocating. But what does it mean for what happens next in season 4? Well, we have the first bits of intel for you right here and right now!

Read more… 335 more words

Let's keep our fingers crossed for Season 4 of The Walking Dead. "Only going to get meaner?" More of Michonne's back story? This is a great video exclusive from EW.com to check out! Screen shot 2013-04-03 at 9.13.52 AM
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'Walking Dead': Dallas Roberts talks about Milton's big moment and the original scenes with Andrea we DIDN'T see

Reblogged from Inside TV:

[SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading now unless you have already watched Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead.]

Mild-manned Milton was obsessed with learning how zombies act and what they think after being turned. Well, he got some first-hand experience on The Walking Dead’s season 3 finale after being stabbed by the Governor, bleeding out, dying, turning into a zombie, and then biting Andrea (forcing her to kill herself before she turned as well).

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We'll try to make this our last "the scenes with Milton and Andrea you didn't see" piece. New, added information in this one, though... with a twist that would have REALLY been brutal, involving a ghastly mercy killing. DAMN. Check it out!   Screen shot 2013-04-02 at 3.43.05 AM  
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The Good, The Bad and The Worse: The Walking Dead Finale

Reblogged from sarah on the go!:

Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post

Welcome to the Tombs

Milton turning into a walker was fantastic. The opening scene, panning from the one eye of evil and setting up a scenario straight out of hell was even better. The rest of last night's finale episode of The Walking Dead was underwhelming.

We had been given so much build up for a prison war for the better half of season three, then the Governor and his gang roll up to an empty house.

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Yep. Sarah hit about every point I wanted to make in my list of reasons why the finale felt unfinished. Robert Kirkman also promised "the whole prison story arc will be resolved, we'll see closure as it's time to move on." Really? I know Kirkman isn't going to give out spoilers and not even get anywhere near them, but that was just insulting. Rumor is that he's the one that made an 11th-hour change to the script to kill off Andrea, which lead to conflict with Glenn Mazzara, which lead to him getting pissed off enough to part ways with the show. Or, he could have gotten the rug yanked out from under him just like Laurie Holden did. Again, major props to her talent for keeping the character likeable (to us, anyway) and being gracious about her exit, even though it was a shitty situation.

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"Your reasoning was bullshit before. 'Everyone you care about dies?' Get in line. Who can't say that? So we just resign ourselves to be miserable? I've lost people, we all have. We would just see whose curse is stronger, if mine kills you before yours kills me. We're all going to die, Rick...that was true before the turn. I guess what I'm trying to say is...I'm glad you decided to stop being such a pussy. Tomorrow is a new day--and for the first time in a long time, I'm actually looking forward to it. So thanks."
—Andrea to Rick in The Walking Dead comic... where she lives on.