By Daniel Robert Epstein

Back in ’70’s Wes Craven turned the movie world on its ear with horror films such as Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. He had even greater success in the ’80’s with A Nightmare on Elm Street. But unlike many of his contemporaries who have fallen on hard times and made crappy film after crappy film, Craven has had great success in the past 10 years with the Scream franchise and his first mainstream thriller, Red Eye.

Red Eye is a very tense movie that eschews all the trappings of a traditional thriller. Lisa Reisert [Rachel McAdams] hates to fly and moments after takeoff her seatmate, Jackson Rippner [Cillian Murphy] reveals the real reason he’s on board: He is an operative in a plot to kill a rich and powerful businessman and Lisa is the key to its success.

I got a chance to talk to Craven about the extra packed DVD of Red Eye, the new remake of The Hills have Eyes and much more.

Read our exclusive interview with Wes Craven on SuicideGirls.com.

by A.J. Focht

Superheroes are taking back Saturday mornings. A few weeks ago, Cartoon Network announced they were doing a new block of programing called DC Nation that would feature the DC heroes. Now its Marvel’s turn for the kind of cartoon resurgence we’ve been waiting for ever since Disney bought them out. The mouse-eared company will be starting their own superhero programming block called Marvel Universe. It will provide exclusive Marvel content including series of The Avengers, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor. They will also be doing a Spider-Man series based on the Ultimate Spider-Man line, but it will feature Peter Parker, not the new Miles Morales.

Thor 2 has seen a lot of trouble pre-production, but they’ve finally settled on a writer. Robert Rodat, whose previous credits include Saving Private Ryan, will be penning the sequel to the Marvel blockbuster. The script needs to be completed pretty soon as they plan to start filming this summer.

The live action Star Wars television series is not just a myth, and now it has a name. In a recent interview with IGN, Rick McCallum, producer and right-hand man of George Lucas himself, announced the working title for the series is Star Wars: Underworld. There is no sure date when it will launch; they are apparently waiting until they can economically produce it for $5 million an episode.

Star Trek 2 has added a new cast member in the form of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch. While his exact role has not been named, it is widely considered he will be a new villain in the J.J. Abrams sequel.

There is a new face to Ash William from the Evil Dead series, and she looks nothing like Bruce Campbell. Lily Collins (The Blind Side) is the first official member to join the cast of the new incarnation, taking the lead role. Now, to be fair, she will not be Ash, her name will be Mia. She will however being playing a part very similar to that played by Campbell in the 1981 original. I hope her name is actually Michael or something of the like just as a throwback to Ashley (Ash) Williams.

While were thinking about zombies, is this a good time to mention that World War Z will be a trilogy. After a chorus of complaints about the first one taking place during the actual Zombie War and not after like the book does, this may be Paramount Pictures way of making up for that, or more likely just a way to capitalize on the fad. Either way, we can hope the second and third movie will do the book some justice where it looks like the first will fail.

AMC is on a roll with innovative programming like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, and now they are bringing a mafia classic back to life. The company is producing a cable series based on the Martin Scorsese 1990 mobster classic, Goodfellas. To make the news even better, Nicholas Pileggi, writer of the movie and the original non-fiction book it was based on, Wiseguy, is set to co-write the series.

We have another classic being brought back to life, albeit in a different medium. After twenty-five years as a cult favorite, The Labyrinth will be getting a prequel in the form of a graphic novel. The long rumored project will explore the story of how Jareth, the guy played by David Bowie, comes to the Labyrinth for the first time.

Finally, just a friendly reminder to everyone wanting to attend San Diego Comic-Con 2012, they have changed their registration system. If you would like to register for a ticket to go, you first have to preregister for a Member ID. You can start this process now via the Comic-Con website. Just don’t get stuck being unable to snag a ticket the day they go on sale because you didn’t preregister.

By Fred Topel

Vincent D’Onofrio has been a memorable character actor for 25 years. The first role most people remember was Pvt. Pyle, the marine cadet driven insane by a drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket. From other dark roles like a serial killer in The Cell and a meth dealer in The Salton Sea to high comedy as a farmer possessed by an alien in Men in Black, D’Onofrio may be unrecognizable between roles, but is always distinct.

D’Onofrio moves behind the scenes as director with the horror musical Don’t Go In the Woods. That’s right, horror musical. The conventional slasher movie gets a twist when a band goes on a forest retreat to write songs, and breaks into song as they’re being chased by a killer.

Sam Bisbee and Bo Boddie wrote the music for the film and most of the actors are first timers, so if you like them you can’t see any of their previous work. I sort of fell in love with Kate O’Malley so it’s a bummer she hasn’t done anything else. D’Onofrio had previously directed a 30 minute short, but Woods is his feature debut.

On the phone from New York, D’Onofrio sounded as intense as I expected, and hoped he would be. Not intimidating, mind you. It was a friendly conversation, going into depth about his process on both sides of the camera, and touching on some of the filmography I love. Don’t Go In the Woods is now available for download on VOD, it opens in New York theaters Jan. 13 and comes to L.A. in February.

Read SuicideGirls’ exclusive interview with Vincent D’Onofrio on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Few would argue about the fact that Anthony Hopkins created one of the greatest villains in movie history with Hannibal Lecter. But since reprising that indelible role in the sequel Hannibal and the prequel Red Dragon, many have felt that Hopkins hasn’t stretched himself. All that will change when people see his portrayal of Burt Munro in The World’s Fastest Indian. Already a New Zealand legend, in 1967 Munro set off to test his bike at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. With all odds against him, he set a new speed record, which remains unbroken today.

Read our exclusive interview with Anthony Hopkins on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Todd McFarlane is one of the most popular and controversial comic book creators ever. He established his popularity in the late ’80’s drawing Marvel superhero books such as The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man. Then in the early ’90’s, in a uproarious and unprecedented move, McFarlane and a few of the hottest Marvel creators stopped doing Marvel books and formed their own company, Image Comics.

Riding a new wave of popularity for comic books, Image rolled out book after book which broke records including McFarlane’’s Spawn, which for a time was the best selling independent comic book, shifting 1.2 million copies of the first issue. The popularity of Spawn created a whole industry for McFarlane with comic books, a movie, a hit cartoon, and a line of extremely popular toys. Now you can relive your more pimply days with the Spawn Collection Volume 1 which reprints issues #1-8, 11, & 12.

Read our exclusive interview with Todd McFarlane on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Zooey Deschanel is as beautiful, funny and charming in person as you all expected. Even though she comes from a family of movie people, her father is legendary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Zooey seems as down to earth as anyone. I got a chance to talk with her at the Toronto Film Festival where Winter Passing, her newest independent film, premiered.

Winter Passing has Deschanel playing a young actor who returns home after a seven-year absence to her famous alcoholic father [Ed Harris] and a house full of strangers that include a religious wandering loner [Will Ferrell] and one of her father’s former students [Amelia Warner].

Read our exclusive interview with Zooey Deschanel on SuicideGirls.com.

by A.J. Focht

The New Year is off to a good start as nerd rage scores one over the film industry. After the massive amount of complaints surrounding Bane’s voice in The Dark Knight Rises, Warner Bros. has cracked and made it easier to understand in the audio mix. While Christopher Nolan had no intentions of changing the voice, the studio’s fear of the fan outrage won out.

That wasn’t the only news from The Dark Knight Rises to break last week. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Anne Hathaway released some previously unknown details about scenes in the film. As if that wasn’t enough, the forty second montage from the prologue was leaked last week, and promptly removed.

Marvel Studios has released a new movie poster for The Avengers. The poster taps into the recent fad for classic looking movie posters. While the art style rather interesting, the poster is just about what you would have expected.

After five years of legal wrangling, the courts have made a decision as to the proper owners of Ghost Rider. No shocker, but Marvel will retain the rights. The case was brought to the court by Gary Friedrich, the modern re-creator of Ghost Rider. Marvel commissioned him to update their original Ghost Rider, a cowboy, and he delivered with the well-known skeleton motorcycle rider. Unfortunately for Mr. Friedrich, he signed over all rights of his character to Marvel, twice. It was on this grounds that the court decided that Marvel would keep all rights, and Friedrich, whose complaint stemmed from being cut out of the profits from the first movie, won’t be seeing profits from the upcoming sequel either. Just a good reminder to all artists to make sure they keep track of their intellectual rights.

Some more legal bullshitting coming out of Marvel; their lawyers are now proposing the case that the X-Men are not human. While the Mutant versus Human status has long been an issue in the comics, this time it’s being used in the real world for capitalistic gain. Certain countries tax less on figures that are not human, and thus, Marvel must insist that the X-Men are not humans. Perhaps these countries should change the wording to ‘humanoid’ to avoid confusion.

The largest scale model of Serenity has been found in the depths of the Universal Archives. The replica builders at Quantum Mechanix came across the model used in the Firefly series and had a chance to take several photos. Someone really should consider rescuing this piece and putting it some sort of science fiction museum, lest it disappears again into the depths, never to be seen again.

One last bit of news, Netflix has released a three minute trailer for their first original series Lilyhammer. It follows the story of an ex-mobster who enters the witness protection program. Sopranos veteran Steven Van Zandt plays the role of the protagonist, Frank ‘The Fixer’ Tagliano. This is the debut original series to come from Netflix, but they have several others in the works, including the final season of Arrested Development.