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‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Blu-ray Giveaway!
I’m very excited to announce that I have Five (5) Blu-rays of Sonic The Hedgehog up for grabs. The discs, all of which are sealed, also come with the Digital Code and the DVD! Entry details are below!
‘Beware Boiúna’ Director Mike P. Nelson Reveals Surprising Movie That Inspired His Giant Snake Film
Beware Boiúna may feature a giant snake, but filmmaker Mike P. Nelson did not look to another creature feature as his primary inspiration. For Nelson, the creative doorway into Beware Boiúna was William Friedkin’s Sorcerer. On a selfish note, both Sorcerer (and its predecessor The Wages of Fear) are among my favorite films of all time. During the interview with Nelson, he confirmed that Sorcerer was a big inspiration. “You f**king got it, man,” said Nelson, who directed 2025’s Silent Night, Deadly Night. “Sorcerer was literally my in to get into this. It wasn’t a creature feature, it was Sorcerer.”
Read more: ‘Beware Boiúna’ Director Mike P. Nelson Reveals Surprising Movie That Inspired His Giant Snake Film
Mike P. Nelson’s idea was to take that foundation and mix it with several of cinema’s most memorable genre films. “What if we add elements of Jurassic Park and Alien and Jaws and Tremors and do all that fun stuff within that structure?” said Nelson.
Shooting the movie in the Amazon also became an adventure of its own. Nelson said some members of the Colombian crew had not previously filmed in some of the areas used for the production.
“We were down there, and we didn’t know how we were gonna make this happen,” said Nelson, who made sure to work with and not against their environment. “They had some ideas, and we kept our eyes and ears open, and followed their lead. We had to work with the jungle, man. She doesn’t care if you’re making a movie there, but we were very fortunate. She blessed us with many, many good days of shooting.”
The filmmaker also had little interest in delivering a straightforward creature feature in which the giant snake dominates the narrative from beginning to end.
Starring Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe and Logan Marshall-Green, the horror film does have a snake and there is a healthy amount of action (and kills). The narrative, however is 104 minutes, and there are more layers behind the tale. “I didn’t want to go in just doing the giant snake from start to finish,” Nelson said. “It just, that wasn’t interesting to me. What was interesting was a really great setup, immersing yourself with characters. What happens when those characters are put in a situation then where there is nothing they can do but just fight to survive, just constantly?”
Nelson’s experience making Beware Boiúna has even changed his relationship with Sorcerer. After researching William Friedkin’s film and then experiencing the challenges of his own production, Nelson sees the classic from a different perspective.
“Sorcerer was a movie that blew me away the first time I watched it,” Nelson said. “But after all the research I’ve done on the movie, what they went through to make that movie, what I went through to make our movie, like, yes, it does feel different.”
***I review Beware Boiúna on this week’s CinemAddicts:
Nelson stressed that he was not comparing the two movies in terms of quality. Rather, Sorcerer served as a creative north star for several years while he attempted to craft a singular narrative to add to his filmmaking resume.
“I lived looking to that movie for inspiration for several years,” Nelson added. “It does feel different now that we were able to kind of explore and attempt to make my own version of something like that.”
***Full interview with Mike P. Nelson:
Have you seen Sorcerer and will you be watching Beware Boiúna? Share your thoughts on the movie (now playing in theaters) in the comments!
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
Michelle Gomez Calls ‘The Incomer’ “Soul Food” And Reflects On Falling “In Love” With Scotland
For Michelle Gomez, The Incomer offered more than the chance to be part of an unpredictable and refreshingly resonant movie. Writer/director Louis Paxton’s debut feature also brought the Glasgow native back to Scotland, where reconnecting with the community and landscape became a rewarding part of the experience. The Incomer, now playing in theaters, co-staring Domhnall Gleason, Gayle Rankin, and Grant O’Rourke, is now playing in theaters. Check out our full video interview with Gomez in the post!
Read more: Michelle Gomez Calls ‘The Incomer’ “Soul Food” And Reflects On Falling “In Love” With ScotlandSet on a remote Scottish island, The Incomer centers on a by the books council worker (Domhnall Gleason) who is tasked with removing two siblings (Gayle Rankin, Grant O’Rourke) from their domicile. Living in the area since their youth, the two have formed an attachment to their home, and they will not leave without a fight.
Although the tale has its share of bittersweet and dark moments, it is ultimately a feel-good story that does not go the saccharine route.
“It’s soul food, right?” said Gomez, who plays the council worker’s mean spirited boss. “It’s a really heartwarming, beautiful movie, and you leave feeling great. It’s uplifting. It’s really funny and kind of like you’ve not seen anything like it before.”
That sense of discovery was a big part of the movie’s appeal. With so much entertainment at our fingertips, finding something that surprises us is not always an easy proposition. Gomez believes Paxton manages to deliver that experience with The Incomer.
“So it’s very original,” said Gomez, who starred in the TV series Doom Patrol. “And that’s hard to do these days ’cause I feel like we’ve, you know, we’re all pretty jaded, and we’ve all feel like we’ve seen everything, right?”
Gomez’s own connection to the project went beyond appreciating its humor and storytelling. Having left Scotland many years ago, she welcomed the opportunity to become immersed in that community again.
She described the difference between growing up in a city and spending time alongside Scotland’s rugged natural landscape.“It was lovely being right on the edge of, like, the rugged Scottish landscape that just takes your breath away,” said Gomez. “And so I was just filled with pride.”
Working on The Incomer gave her a renewed appreciation for her home country: “I completely fell in love with Scotland.”
CinemAddicts co-host Eric Holmes and I love The Incomer. Check out our review:
Feel free to share your thoughts on The Incomer, now playing in theaters, in the comments!
Aaron Holliday Embraces Acting Transformation And Indie Filmmaking With ‘Appofeniacs’
Not every actor gets to have two films coming out on a Friday, but that is an honored bestowed upon Aaron Holliday. He reunited with The Wilderness filmmaker Spencer King for the new drama-thriller Nickels and he also stars in the value added and insightful Chris Marrs Piliero tale Appofeniacs. Holliday talked ot Deepest Dram about his passion for indie filmmakng and why Appofeniacs is a unique cinematic experience.
Read more: Aaron Holliday Embraces Acting Transformation And Indie Filmmaking With ‘Appofeniacs’
Appofeniacs centers on a group of people whose lives are negatively impacted by deepfake videos and artificial intelligence. Aaron Holliday is Duke, a vengeful guy who knows how to use AI to his advantage. His amoral actions lead to a domino effect of violence and overall misery. Sean Gunn co-stars as Clinto Bingo (Sean Gunn) a talented artist in the cosplay industry who ends up being one of the victims of Duke’s wrath. Paige Searcy is Lazzy, a stranger whose argument with Duke at a coffee shop places her in a dire position.
I really enjoyed Appofeniacs, and unfortunately I did not get the chance to see Nickels. Both films are now playing in theaters. “I’m not gonna play it cool,” Holliday said. “It’s definitely a pinch-me moment. They’re both these fantastic indie films. I love indie films. I’ve learned so much about myself, about this career that I’ve chosen, and, you know, would say chosen for me.”
APPOFENIACS
, a Magenta Light Studios
release. Photo courtesy of Magenta Light Studios.
Acting is more than a profession for Holliday. It is something he has wanted to pursue since childhood, even though he did not grow up in an entertainment industry household.
“Ever since I was as young as I can remember, it was just in me,” Holliday said. “I would look at the TV and just have thoughts of, ‘Why am I not on here? Like, I wanna do this.’ It just came very naturally to me.”
Holliday was homeschooled and described himself as relatively sheltered during his childhood. No one in his family worked in entertainment, and he was not a cinephile at an early age. That said, Jurassic Park, Jaws and Alien made a lasting impression and influenced his career path.
“The fact that I saw this and knew that this is what I wanted to do, I just think it’s that testament of, you know, the universe guiding you,” Holliday said. “Me choosing it for me, but it also just in that way felt very ordained.”
Aaron Holliday Wants Actors To Take Big Swings
For Holliday, disappearing into different characters is part of the fun.
“I want to encourage sort of a level of character acting, going outside of yourself,” Holliday said. “I’m very passionate about that, about transforming, about sort of becoming a different person.”
Holliday believes performers inevitably bring something of themselves to each role, even if the actual part is seemingly far from their own persona.
“Every role you have, you add yourself, right?” Holliday said. “You can be a psychopath and still have yourself in that. That’s the only reason why we have these iconic characters, because those specific people played them. I think I’d like to see more people not be afraid to not just play themselves, and to go outside and take some big swings and get a little kooky crazy.”
‘Jurassic Park’ Helped Shape Holliday’s Acting Dreams
One of Holliday’s earliest inspirations remains Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.
“I could get emotional speaking about it,” added Holliday. “It was the hand that held me. It was, I think, my first inspiration, my first dream sequence, my first excitement about this whole thing that we do.”
Laura Dern’s performance also connects with Holliday’s own approach to acting.
“She’s one of those too that I look [at], talking about taking the big swings and being that sort of larger-than-life actor who transforms,” Holliday said. “That was somebody who definitely set the precedent for me.”
Years after watching Jurassic Park helped ignite those childhood dreams, Holliday now finds himself with two movies arriving on the same day.
“To have it end up on the same weekend, both in theaters, it’s a dream come true,” Holliday said. “I’m sort of still processing it.”
Appofeniacs and Nickels are now playing in theaters.
Full interview with Aaron Holliday:
Aaron Holliday also talks about a Pivotal scene in Appofeniacs in relation to his character. I will be posting an Appofeniacs spoiler write-up on Monday. The Spoiler video with Holliday, however, will be available for our CinemAddicts Patreon members.
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Road House,’ ‘Maniac,’ ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ (PM Weekly Issue #13)
There is a video store in Salt Lake City that nobody has been inside since March 2020, and it is still growing.
The Tower Theatre on Ninth and Ninth opened in 1928 and has been shut since the month the pandemic arrived, which in Utah was also the month a magnitude 5.7 earthquake hit Magna, just west of the city. When the Salt Lake Film Society went in afterward they found structural problems serious enough to threaten the building’s ability to reopen at all. The façade is being taken apart right now.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Road House,’ ‘Maniac,’ ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ (PM Weekly Issue #13)Downstairs from the screen there was a rental counter, and behind it an archive the Salt Lake Tribune has called the largest video and DVD collection around. In 2013 somebody counted roughly eleven thousand titles on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray, with only three or four thousand of them out on the shelves at any one time and the rest rotating up from the back. The Film Society’s then director called it the rarest collection in five states. It has been in storage for six years.
On the sixteenth of September the Film Society announced the Tower will reopen in 2028, the building’s hundredth year, with the celebration itself landing in late 2028 or early 2029. The plan has three micro cinemas in it, an exhibition space for film memorabilia, independent and festival programming, and one more line, which is the line this column cares about: improved access to the film society’s video archive.
Two days later, in the lobby of another theatre they run, they held a media swap. About sixty people came and brought discs and tapes, and went home with other people’s. The point of it was not nostalgia. It was acquisition. They are building the collection up while it sits in the dark, ahead of a reopening still two years out.
Here is the honest part, and it is the reason this is a story rather than a press release. Improved access to a video archive is not the same sentence as the video store is coming back. The Film Society’s programs director has said the collection is in storage and that they are actively exploring options to make it available to the public once again, which is a careful way to say it. Nobody at the organization has committed, on the record, to a rental counter. The number has moved too: the figure now given is about sixteen thousand titles, against eleven thousand in 2013, which either means the collection grew by five thousand in storage or that somebody has counted differently. Both are possible and neither has been reconciled in print.
What is not in doubt is that a nonprofit which could have quietly let eleven thousand discs go to a liquidator in 2020 instead paid to keep them in a room for six years, is still adding to them, and has put the archive in the plan for the building. Everything else about this is unsettled. That part is decided.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Forbidden Planet (1956), 4K UHD and Blu-ray Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Go (1999), 4K UHD Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Days and Nights in the Forest (1970), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Criterion
- Three Films by Leos Carax, 4K UHD and Blu-ray collector’s set, Criterion
- Dead Poets Society (1989), 4K UHD, Touchstone
- Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), 4K UHD, 20th Century Studios
- Frankenstein: The Complete Legacy Collection, eight films on 4K UHD, Universal
- The Wolf Man: The Complete Legacy Collection, seven films on 4K UHD, Universal
- Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Kino Lorber
- Bullet in the Head (1990), 4K UHD Limited Edition SteelBook, Shout! Studios
- Anthropophagous (1980), three-disc 4K UHD, Severin Films
- Absurd (1981), two-disc 4K UHD, Severin Films
- Maniac (2012), two-disc 4K UHD, Severin Films
A correction, and it is ours. Last week this column said Severin’s Maniac, the 2012 Franck Khalfoun film, was coming on October 13. It streeted Tuesday with everything else, a North American 4K premiere with a limited slipcover, and it is in stock at Severin now. Two weeks ago we caught that the listing was for the wrong film, corrected it to the right one, and then printed the wrong date for it anyway. HD Report still has it on the thirteenth.
Next Tuesday, October 6, is heavier: Little Shop of Horrors at forty with both the theatrical and the director’s cut, An American Werewolf in London at forty-five with a new restoration and a new Atmos mix, a ten-disc Aces Go Places box from Shout, Criterion’s Welcome II the Terrordome, and Kino’s Death on the Nile, which is the 1978 one and not the Branagh. Warner Archive’s Ryan’s Daughter, scanned at 8K off the 65mm negative, is either the sixth or the thirteenth depending on whether you believe Warner’s own press release or HD Report’s calendar, and we will say which once somebody has it in their hands.)
MARKET SIGNAL
Ten American subscription streaming services were phased out or folded into something else in a single quarter.
That is Parks Associates, counting the three months to the end of June, out of the roughly three hundred and seventy US services it tracks. BET+ was retired by Paramount and its library moved into Paramount+ under a BET hub. CTV Throwback and CTV Movies went into Crave. FIFA+ went into DAZN. FanDuel Sports Network shut down its television channels and its streaming operation together. RidePass is advertising-supported only now.
None of those is a scandal and most barely made the trade press. A service consolidating into a larger service is the most ordinary event in this business, and every single one of them was announced as an improvement: more in one place, simpler for subscribers, a better experience. What none of them came with was a list.
That is the whole thing. When a library moves from one service to another, somebody has to decide title by title what comes across, and the deciding factor is what it costs to carry each one. The films with clean rights and a current audience migrate. The ones with a complicated music clearance, or a co-production partner who has stopped answering, or an audience too small to justify the paperwork, are the ones at risk. Nobody publishes the difference, because publishing the difference would require admitting there is one.
Compare it to the version that did make the news. On the first of September, Sony deleted five hundred and fifty one purchased StudioCanal titles out of PlayStation libraries, with no refunds, and people were furious, correctly. That was visible because it happened to things individuals had paid for and could see vanish from an account. Ten services closing is the same loss conducted at the level of the catalogue, where there is no account page to check and no number to be angry about.
The useful question for anyone who buys discs is not whether the big deletions keep happening. It is how much goes quietly, in the ordinary course of corporate tidying, in a quarter nobody wrote about.
STORE OF THE WEEK
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Facets (Chicago, IL)
Facets has been at 1517 West Fullerton Avenue since 1977 and in existence since 1975, when Milos Stehlik started it. In a 2003 interview he credited the founding jointly with Nicole Dreiske. The first screenings were in a Lutheran church.
The rental library came later, in the eighties, which is a distinction worth making because the two things get collapsed. Facets’ own history puts it plainly: as home video emerged in the 1980s, they expanded access to cinema beyond the theatre through the videotheque, a mail order rental catalogue, VHS and DVD distribution, and the famed Facets Catalog. By their own count there are now over sixty five thousand titles, a figure which has sat in their copy for a long time and which I would attribute to them rather than state as fact. You can rent by post or in person, on Blu-ray, DVD and VHS, and you need a membership to do it.
What makes Facets worth the space this week is the structure rather than the stock. It decided fifty years ago that screening films and lending films were the same job, and then built a cinema, a rental library, a mail order operation, a distribution arm and a set of film camps for children into one building to prove it. Nobody designs that now. You get a cinema, or you get a shop, and the two run on different money.
Last week’s store was a collection that outlived the business around it, rescued by volunteers after the shop closed for good. The Tower’s archive at the top of this issue is a collection waiting in storage for a building to be made safe. Facets is the version where none of that happened, because the thing holding the collection was never a business in the first place. It is the oldest answer to the question this journal keeps asking, and the answer is that if you want a film to still be available in fifty years, the organisation that holds it probably cannot be trying to make money from it.
(Next week: Orbit DVD in Asheville, which has been on Haywood Road since 2003 and publishes the street-date calendar this column keeps checking its own work against.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Road House (1989) Format: Blu-ray and DVD, 2 discs, MGM, June 2009 Bonus Features: audio commentary by director Rowdy Herrington; audio commentary by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier; “What Would Dalton Do?” (12:23); “On the Road House” (17:20); trivia track
This is a bad disc and I have never gotten rid of it.
MGM put it out in June 2009 on a BD-25, encoded in MPEG-2 at an average bitrate of about eighteen megabits, which was a low number for Blu-ray in 2009 and is a shocking one now. DVDBeaver’s review is the only serious one anybody wrote and it is blunt: MGM really skimped, the disc’s producers decided this cult classic did not deserve more than an MPEG-2 encoding, there are telltale signs of noise reduction throughout, and this is not the transfer that this film deserves. The extras are all standard definition, and MGM did not even put them on the Blu-ray. They are on the DVD in the case.
It is still on the shelf because of the second commentary. Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier sat down with Road House, and the result is two men who love a film explaining, for two hours, why many film critics hated it in 1989 although it’s one of the most watchable things ever made. Hal Hinson in the Washington Post called it full of gratuitous mayhem. It got five Razzie nominations, including Worst Picture and Worst Director. Ebert gave it two and a half and said it sat right on the edge between the good-bad movie and the merely bad.
And then look at what happened to it. Shout did a Collector’s Edition in 2016 from a new 2K scan of the interpositive, supervised and approved by Dean Cundey, who shot it. Vinegar Syndrome did a 4K in late 2022 from a new scan of the original camera negative, three discs, roughly five hours of extras including a sixty-three minute making-of and five new interviews with stunt performers and supporting cast, then reissued it this May in a slipcase limited to two thousand. Arrow put out a 4K in Britain in June 2025 with Dolby Vision. Via Vision did a SteelBook in Australia in July. Four labels, four restorations, one film that everybody agreed was junk.
Now the other one. Doug Liman’s Road House, with Jake Gyllenhaal, went to Prime Video on the twenty first of March 2024. Its entire theatrical release was seventeen military base cinemas five days earlier. It drew a reported fifty million viewers worldwide in two weekends, a record for the service. Liman had published a column in January saying he would boycott his own premiere, and the line everybody quoted was this one: Amazon asked me and the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas, and then they turned around and are using Road House to sell plumbing fixtures. He went to the premiere in the end.
There is no disc. Not a Blu-ray, not a 4K, not a DVD. Two and a half years on, blu-ray.com lists digital outlets for it and nothing else, and no label has announced one. Alliance Entertainment became Amazon MGM’s exclusive physical media distributor for North America in January, with a remit that explicitly covers catalogue revitalisation and collector editions. Road House is not named anywhere in it.
So the 1989 film, the one nominated for Worst Picture, has been scanned from the negative, restored, documented and pressed four separate times by four separate companies, and I can put my hand on a copy right now. The 2024 film, which broke a streaming record, exists only for as long as one company finds it convenient to keep serving it. The thing that saved the bad movie was that somebody could sell it to you.
SIGN-OFF
That is Issue #13. Sixteen thousand tapes in a storage unit in Salt Lake City waiting on a building that opened in 1928, ten streaming services folding into other streaming services with nobody publishing what did not make the move, a Chicago nonprofit that worked out fifty years ago that lending films and showing films are the same job, and four restorations of a film the Razzies nominated for Worst Picture against none at all of the one that broke Prime Video. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Sean Reid
Film & TV Production
RHONY Episode 3 Recap: Daisy Toye’s “Seder In Brooklyn” And Popcorn Ceilings In Battery Park!
Popcorn ceilings may not impress every Real Housewife (especially ladies from The Big Apple!), but Deepest Dream Podcast co-host Deandra Miranda had a different reaction to Daisy Toye’s Battery Park apartment. Having lived in New York for years, Deandra saw something worth appreciating beyond the decor: a home in a desirable location that Daisy Toye’s described as rent controlled. Popcorn ceilings and Toye’s Seder are among the more memorable aspects of The Real Housewives of New York City Episode 3. Check out our Video Recap below!
Read more: RHONY Episode 3 Recap: Daisy Toye’s “Seder In Brooklyn” And Popcorn Ceilings In Battery Park!Episode 3 of The Real Housewives of New York City, “A Seder in Brooklyn,” gave us apartment shade, a family gathering, and another reminder that Daisy is becoming one of our favorite additions to the show. Deandra’s own New York experiences added a little perspective to Daisy’s domicile.
“You do not need a fancy ceiling or doorman,” said Miranda. “She lives in the heart of the city – Battery Park. It’s beautiful. It’s near the water.”
Jessel Taank and Erika Hammond’s comments about the ceiling made for a funny moment, although I wondered if the jokes went a bit too far. Deandra understood that they were all joking, but she would have loved to see Daisy offer a little shade of her own in return.
The bigger point, for Deandra, was that an apartment like this is nothing to be embarrassed about. She recalled her own less than ideal experience in a place she described as rent controlled, complete with a fifth-floor walk-up and mice. Daisy’s situation looked considerably more appealing!
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Miranda. “I wish I had that. That, that’s just amazing. That’s goals.”
Daisy’s appeal also extends beyond her address. During our conversation, I mentioned how much I am enjoying her family story and her ability to move among the Housewives. Deandra sees someone whose connection to New York feels natural.
“Daisy reminds me of a girl who I would actually hang out with and I’m friends with,” said Miranda.
Her work, her friendships, and her Brooklyn roots all contribute to that impression. Deandra also enjoyed Daisy’s relationship with Martha Stewart, particularly the ability to call her for cooking advice. That is a pretty impressive contact to have when you are preparing a meal!
“You could tell that it’s a real relationship even outside of working,” added Miranda.
The episode’s Seder, which took place at Daisy’s parents’ home, brought another side of that world into focus. Although Hailey Glassman gave the gathering a C-minus, Deandra did not agree with the grade. She appreciated the food, the effort, and the fact that the women came together to participate.
“The food looked amazing. You could tell she, she cooked all day,” said Miranda.
Even Jessel’s late arrival prompted a conversation that went beyond the usual Housewives etiquette debate. Deandra was clear that she values punctuality, but she could also relate to the effort involved in traveling across New York to the depths of Brooklyn for the gathering.
“It does take a long time to get from point A to point B, and sometimes you are like, ‘Is it worth it?’” she said.
That mix of friendship, city life, and a little attitude is helping this season connect with her. The apartment tour and Brooklyn gathering gave us plenty of drama, but they also offered the everyday details that Deandra enjoys seeing on RHONY.
“They interact and are like every other New Yorker out there,” said Miranda. “And I’ve always had a soft spot for RHONY because this is literally how your colleagues, your friends, your neighbors all interact.”
Watch our full Episode 3 conversation on the Deepest Dream YouTube channel. What did you think of Daisy’s Seder, and what do you think of the popcorn ceilings? Let us know!
The Real Housewives of New York City airs Wednesday evenings on Bravo (8/7c) with a new episode streaming on Peacock the next day.
Dave Boyle Explores Japanese Ghost Stories With Gripping ‘Never After Dark’
Now playing in theaters, Never After Dark centers on Airi (Moeka Hoshi), a solitary medium whose job is to take restless spirits out of the physical world and send them back to the other side. For Dave Boyle, the writer and director behind the feature, Japanese horror and its ghost stories served as a direct influence for Never After Dark.
Read more: Dave Boyle Explores Japanese Ghost Stories With Gripping ‘Never After Dark’
Airi (Moeka Hoshi) lives a solitary life, and her only regular source of contact is her late sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki). When Airi is hired to investigate a haunted house that may have a malevolent spirit (Mutsuo Yohshioka), she may finally have met her match. Tae Kimura co-stars as Teiko, the woman who hired Aira, and Kento Kaku (who also produced the film with Boyle) plays Teiko’s skeptical son.
Dave Boyle’s interest in Japanese cinema began at a high school English class. While studying Macbeth, Boyle checked out Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic epic Throne of Blood. That film changed his cinematic point of view.”
“That movie just really blew my mind,” Boyle told Deepest Dream. “(It) opened my mind to what the possibilities that cinema had to offer. I’m generally a big fan of world cinema. It was a sharp left turn in life that introduced me to Japanese culture and speaking the Japanese language. I would say I’m highly influenced by Japanese storytelling, structure, and some of the things we’re depecting in Never After Dark.”
With his latest movie, Boyle wanted to play with what audiences might expect from a Japanese ghost story.
“A lot of the story structure and some of the things that we’re depicting in Never After Dark are a deliberate experiment to kind of reverse some of the norms of what a Japanese ghost story would ordinarily offer,” said Boyle, who created the hit Netflix series House of Ninjas and directed the acclaimed feature Man From Reno.
Full interview with Dave Boyle and Moeka Hoshi:
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***I review (and highly recommend) Never After Dark on the latest CinemAddicts:
Sandra Guldberg Kampp Reflects on Acting Journey And Being “Proud” Of ‘Bloody Tennis’
Sandra Guldberg Kampp had an early taste of working on a film set when she was 11. At the time, she could hardly have imagined that she would one day lead an English language film or join an Assassin’s Creed production. Kampp talked to Deepest Dream about her work in Bloody Tennis, a horror tale that is now streaming on Shudder.
Read more: Sandra Guldberg Kampp Reflects on Acting Journey And Being “Proud” Of ‘Bloody Tennis’
Bloody Tennis centers on Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp), a young American woman who is sent to a tennis academy in the South of Europe. The academy has its share of hungry and opportunistic tennis players, and the environment is run by the stern hand of unpredictable supervisor Mary (Elina Löwensohn). Sophie discovers that to be the best she must sacrifice her sense of comfort and overall sanity. It’s a kill or be killed (literally!) atmosphere, and Sophie is put through the ringer.
Kampp’s love for acting developed as a child, and she never thought she would get to this level in show businees. “I would’ve never dreamt about being here,” said Kampp.
Her first film experience lasted only a few days, and years passed before she acted on a set again. Theater at school helped bring the possibility back into focus. Someone told her she was good at it, and that encouragement stayed with her.
Kampp also remembers being a child with a vivid imagination, and when positive feedback came her way about acting, the dream took shape
“When you’re a kid and somebody says you’re good at something, you’re like ‘Okay,'” said Kampp. “Then I got the few days on set and I found out you can actually make money from it. That’s how I got the idea, I guess. But I was always a very wild kid running around, playing in my parents’ garden. That was sort of an epiphany – that acting could actually be a job.”
Bloody Tennis marks her first lead role in English. Kampp prepared for the film with roughly two months of tennis training before production, followed by more practice on location. She also worked out extensively to meet the physical demands of the role. That said, being a master at serving takes a bit more time. “I was told that it takes years, if you ever get it, actually,” added the actress, who previously starred in the Apple TV series Foundation. “So mine isn’t great (and) I got good at pretending. The whole timing with the ball – that’s something I should probably work 10 more years on to get that right.”
As for her thoughts on Bloody Tennis, Kampp saw the movie when it premiered at Locarno Film Festival. “I still haven’t taken it in,” said Kampp. “There’s a lot of things happening, and I was very pleased at how funny it is as well. I was a bit scared that it would become too intense, but I’m proud of our work. I still need to watch it again because it’s always weird watching yourself and forming an opinion looking at yourself.”
Full interview with Sandra Guldberg Kampp:
Bloody Tennis, co-starring Elina Löwensohn, is now streaming on Shudder.
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***I review Bloody Tennis on the latest CinemAddicts episode:
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Forbidden Planet,’ ‘Days and Nights in the Forest,’ ‘Sons of Anarchy’ (PM Weekly Issue #12)
Somewhere in Sagamihara there is a building kept at between two and ten degrees, at thirty five to forty percent humidity, twenty four hours a day, and inside it are ninety thousand eight hundred and seventy five reels. On Wednesday night at eleven o’clock, the people who run that building finished raising the money to keep the air conditioning on.
The National Film Archive of Japan spent the summer crowdfunding. Not for a restoration, not for a title, not for a project with a poster and a premiere. For its operating budget. The campaign closed on the twenty third with a little over 154 million yen from 5,522 people, against a first goal of 100 million that it passed in the middle of August.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Forbidden Planet,’ ‘Days and Nights in the Forest,’ ‘Sons of Anarchy’ (PM Weekly Issue #12)
Here is the part that makes it worth the top of this column. Nobody cut the archive’s budget. The Agency for Cultural Affairs said so publicly, and it is right. The grant to the archive’s parent body, the National Museum of Art, went up this year by around 320 million yen, to 8.46 billion. What happened is that the parent body rebalanced its allocations across its seven museums, and the archive’s share of that grant fell to 358.56 million yen from 682.92 million two years ago. The rebalancing follows a target requiring these institutions to cover more of their costs from their own earnings.
That target is reasonable if you run a museum. A museum has a front door, a ticket, a gift shop and an exhibition that people queue for. An archive’s core work has none of those things, because an archive’s core work is that nothing happens. Film sits in the dark a few degrees above freezing and does not decay, and there is no version of that which shows up as revenue. The archive’s fixed costs alone, the power and the building and the fixed-term staff, came to 441.72 million yen. Its allocation was 358.56 million. The gap is not a funding crisis in the dramatic sense. It is an accounting definition, applied evenly, landing on the one institution in the group whose product is an absence.
The archive has never once called it a cut. Its own language is “diversifying and expanding income.” Its director, Akira Tochigi, put the question and answered it himself on the campaign page: why is the National Film Archive doing this? The answer is clear, he wrote, because continuing stable activity requires diversifying and expanding income. That is an institution being careful about who it blames, which tells you something about what it costs to say the other thing.
It has crowdfunded once before, in 2021, for a defined project: digitising a hundred and ten magnetic tapes of a filmmakers’ interview series. It raised five and a half million yen. This time it asked strangers for the electricity bill and got thirty times as much. The only real precedent in Japan is the National Museum of Nature and Science, which went to the public in 2023 over its heating and lighting and came back with about 920 million yen from roughly fifty seven thousand people.
Count what those ninety thousand elements are for a moment. That number is not ninety thousand films, because one film can exist as a negative and a fine grain and three prints of varying completeness, and the archive is careful to say so. It is the raw material. It is what a restoration starts from and what a Criterion or an Arrow or a Radiance disc of a Japanese title eventually traces back to, two or three licences down the chain. Around nine in ten Japanese films made before the war are believed to be gone already. The ones that are not are in rooms like that one, and the rooms cost money whether or not anybody is looking.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
This Week on Disc
- Forbidden Planet (1956), 4K UHD and Blu-ray Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Go (1999), 4K UHD Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Days and Nights in the Forest (1970), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Criterion
- Three Films by Leos Carax, 4K UHD and Blu-ray collector’s set, Criterion
- Dead Poets Society (1989), 4K UHD, Touchstone
- Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), 4K UHD, 20th Century Studios
- Frankenstein: The Complete Legacy Collection, eight films on 4K UHD, Universal
- The Wolf Man: The Complete Legacy Collection, seven films on 4K UHD, Universal
- Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Kino Lorber
- Bullet in the Head (1990), 4K UHD Limited Edition SteelBook, Shout! Studios
- Anthropophagous (1980), three-disc 4K UHD, Severin Films
- Absurd (1981), two-disc 4K UHD, Severin Films
Market Signal
Paramount settled on Sunday. Twelve state attorneys general and the Writers Guild had been suing to block its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a trial was set for March, and the whole thing has now been resolved by agreement instead.
The terms are about supply. Paramount commits to thirty theatrical films a year for two years and thirty two a year for three after that, at least four of them independent, plus an additional three hundred million dollars a year of American production spending over five years and nine and a half million a year on workforce training. There are editorial independence boards at CBS News and CNN. There are no divestitures. Nothing is being sold off to anybody.
The demand that this column has been circling since Issue #9, that the states and the guild post a bond of 1.88 billion dollars before being allowed to keep suing, died in the same filing. The parties jointly asked the court to take Thursday’s hearing off the calendar and the judge did. It was never ruled on. It was a lever, it worked, and it went away with the thing it was levering. The consent decree itself has not yet been approved, so nobody should write that this deal is finished, but the ticking fees Paramount owes Warner shareholders start at seven million dollars a day on the first of October and the chief executive has told staff he expects to close in about two weeks.
Now read the terms again for what is not in them. Warner and Paramount hold the two libraries that most of the 4K catalogue market runs on, and most boutique licensing besides. Arrow, Criterion, Shout, Vinegar Syndrome’s Iconoscope, all of them are licensing against one or both. The settlement obligates how many films get made and where the money is spent making them. It says nothing about catalogue licensing, nothing about physical output, nothing about preservation, nothing about what happens to two vaults becoming one. That is not an oversight and it is not a scandal. It is that the people at the table were arguing about production and jobs, which are the things antitrust law is comfortable arguing about. What is in the buildings was never a subject anyone was required to raise.
Store of the Week
We Luv Video (Austin, TX)
The store at 100 East North Loop Boulevard holds roughly a hundred and thirty thousand tapes and discs, and almost none of it was bought new.
I Luv Video ran in Austin from 1984 and at its height had five locations. It closed in September 2020, in the part of the pandemic when a lot of things closed and nobody pretended there was a plan. Conrad Bejarano, who founded it, has said the obvious thing about that: when the doors are shuttered, what other option is there. What made this different from every other store that went that year is what happened to the shelves. The collection did not get auctioned off in lots or sold to a liquidator. It went into storage, and in July 2023 a good deal of it came back out.
We Luv Video is a registered nonprofit, run by volunteers, started by Macy Cotton and her husband Ryan Teel. Membership is ten dollars a month, five for students. It opens six to ten Monday through Thursday, four until midnight on Friday, and noon until midnight at the weekend, which is a schedule written by people who understand that a video store is an evening business. It runs as a microcinema too, with screenings and tape swaps. Its motto is that the revolution will not be streamed. Bejarano is still adding stock out of storage, which means the collection is still growing three years after the store that built it closed.
The detail that gets me is the one Cotton mentions. There is so much weird stuff in there, she has said, and a lot of the cases still have I Luv Video’s own staff notes inside them, which they have kept. Somebody who worked a counter in Austin in 1994 wrote something on a card about a film, and the card is still in the box, and it is in the box because a volunteer decided not to throw it away.
CineFile last week survived because one man who already owned a shop on that street decided a second one was not going to close. We Luv Video is the other case entirely. The store did close. It closed completely and it is not coming back. What survived was the collection, and what saved it was a nonprofit and a rota of volunteers, which is the same answer Japan arrived at this week at a hundred times the scale. When there is no business model for keeping something, what is left is people agreeing to keep it anyway.
(Next week: Facets in Chicago, founded in 1975, which has been lending films since the video era and treats a rental counter as a public library.)
The Stack
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Sons of Anarchy: Season One (2009)
Format: DVD, 4 Discs
Bonus Features: audio commentaries on “Pilot,” “The Pull” and “The Revelator”; 35 minutes of deleted, extended and alternate scenes; “The Making of Sons of Anarchy Season One”; “The Ink”; “The Bikes”; “Casting Sons of Anarchy”; and a gag reel, “Anarchy on the Set”
Fox put this out on the eighteenth of August 2009, four discs, thirteen episodes ($49.98).
Every one of those episodes is currently on Hulu and on Disney+. You can be watching the pilot in about nine seconds. You can also buy the season digitally for fourteen ninety nine, which is cheaper than the disc was and cheaper than the disc is now.
None of those places has the commentaries. Kurt Sutter sits down on the pilot with Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman and Katey Sagal. He does “The Pull” with the director Guy Ferland, Hunnam and Maggie Siff. Then he does “The Revelator,” the season finale, with most of the cast in the room at once, and by every account of it that I have read it degenerates in the way those things do when nobody has anything left to promote. That is three hours of the people who made the thing talking about making it, recorded in 2009, and it exists on a disc and on nothing else. Hulu does have an Extras tab for the show. What is in it is promotional material made for the series finale in 2014. Not one item from this set is on it. Disney+ lists no extras at all.
There is a second difference and I want to be careful about it, because I can only prove part of it. The discs carry extended, uncensored cuts of the episodes and the streaming versions are the broadcast cuts. That is documented properly for season three, where somebody has gone through an episode shot by shot and found nearly six minutes of difference. I have not found an equivalent comparison for season one, so I will say only that the disc and the stream are not the same edit of this show and leave the exact figure for the season alone.
And the set is effectively gone. Best Buy lists it as no longer available new. Walmart has one, from a marketplace seller. Nobody is manufacturing it, because why would they, when the show is right there and doing fine.
This is the same shape as the story at the top of the issue, at the smallest possible scale. The film is safe. The show is safe. The record of how it was made is on four discs in my house and in a couple of thousand others, and there is no line item anywhere that pays for it to be anywhere else.
Sign-Off
That is Issue #12. A national archive raising its own electricity money from strangers because the accounting says a vault should earn its keep, a merger settling on everything except what happens to the vaults, a hundred and thirty thousand tapes in Austin kept alive by volunteers and a store that no longer exists, and three hours of commentary that only a 2009 DVD still has. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Sean Reid
Film & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
Patrick Brice Talks ‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 3 And Finding Cinema In The Mundane
Filmmakers/writers Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass have been living in the immersive, unsettling world of Creep for over a decade. What began with 2014’s Creep, an intimate found footage feature built from a five-page outline, has evolved into The Creep Tapes. The just released third season expands that canvas, but Brice’s challenge remains deceptively simple: How do you make the mundane cinematic?
Read more: Patrick Brice Talks ‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 3 And Finding Cinema In The Mundane
“That is something that I am constantly thinking about,” said Patrick Brice, who directs the series and co-created it with Mark Duplass. Creep 2, directed by Brice (he co-wrote the script with Duplass) came out in 2017.
The filmmaker points to the upcoming Season 3 episode “Greg” as an example (it premieres September 29th). The story unfolds inside an intentionally nondescript apartment occupied by a solitary man who’s either watching TV or doom scrolling his smart phone. There isn’t much on the walls and the surroundings are purposely barebones (exceput for Peachfuzz, who’s hiding in the apartment!). For Brice, those limitations became an opportunity.
“I liked that challenge of saying, ‘Okay, this is like a truly blank canvas. How do I make this space feel dynamic in some way,’” said Brice, who also directed the features Corporate Retreat and The Overnight.
Part of the answer comes from staying true to the show’s characters. Instead of imposing a conventional cinematic style onto The Creep Tapes, Brice allows the characters’ decisions to dictate the respective episode’s visual language. Case in point is the frenetically shot New York episode “Mo,” which has Peachfuzz consistently ingratiating himself to the titular character.
“For me it’s really thinking about the visuals and thinking about the cinema of it all and how it works together,” Brice said.
Meanwhile, Duplass remains deep locked into his complex, serial killer character. More than a decade into their collaboration, Brice continues to be impressed by what his creative partner brings to the role.
“It’s amazing to be 12 years into this project and him just still completely blow me away with what he’s capable of in terms of performance from both an emotional and a technical standpoint,” Brice said.
Brice recalled that the original Creep was made from a five-page outline without dialogue. He and Duplass improvised the movie and spent roughly a year shaping the feature through additional shooting and editing. Since then, things have evolved in the Creep universe. “We’re definitely allowing ourselves to deviate from the dialogue and sometimes alter the scenarios and what’s happening based on what we’ve already shot because we do shoot these episodes in continuity,” Brice said.
Along with the varied and first rate storytelling in Season Three, The Creep Tapes‘ visual language is its most underrated aspect. ”It was funny ’cause while we were making the first Creep. It was a nuisance to me because I loved the idea of making beautiful composed shots and working with the lighting and DP (director of photography) to craft cinema,” said Brice. “I’ve been able to do that on a few projects. But Creep was one where it was really entirely reliant on me and Mark’s shoulders. Mark is usually having to act, so it’s really on me thinking about that element into the project. It’s something that’s super important to me.”
***Full interview with Patrick Brice:
What do you think so far of The Creep Tapes season three? Share your thoughts in the comments. The Creep Tapes is now streaming on Shudder and AMC+!
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***We review The Weight and The Oldest Person in the World on the latest CinemAddicts episode:
RHONY Favorite: Hailey Glassman Is A “Breath Of Fresh Air” On ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’
It didn’t take long for Hailey Glassman to make an impression on The Real Housewives of New York City. For Deepest Dream Podcast co-host Deandra Miranda, Glassman is one of the reasons this RHONY season has a different vibe. “I think that Hailey is a breath of fresh air,” Miranda said. “I think she’s funny and quirky. She doesn’t seem like she’s trying for TV.”
Read more: RHONY Favorite: Hailey Glassman Is A “Breath Of Fresh Air” On ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’
“She is authentically her,” Miranda said of Glassman.
Miranda also believes Glassman’s candid and open demeanor may stem partly from having already experienced tabloid attention. That history, in her estimation, has given the RHONY newcomer a thicker skin and seemingly less reason to manufacture a reality television persona.
Glassman’s description of Erin Lichy as “strawberry jam” was one of my favorite lines from Episode 2. Glassman followed that observation by joking that she would rather read a book than hang out with Erin — and then took the joke one step further by saying she’d rather read Carole Radziwill’s book What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love.
“She’s very open and honest,” Miranda said. “She’s obviously been through public scrutiny where she has some thick, tougher skin.”
That quality could heighten as the season progresses. RHONY doesn’t need Glassman to create conflict when her humor and eccentric personality naturally stand out. Whether she’s blading down a crowded New York street or casually admitting how stoned she was during an earlier get together, Glassman is really one of a kind.
Is Hailey Glassman one of your favorites on RHONY Season 16? Share your thoughts in the comments! Catch The Real Housewives of New York City on Bravo Tuesday nights at 8 pm et/pt (new episodes stream on Peacock the following morning).
Check out our latest RHONY (specifically episode two) recap on the Deepest Dream podcast. Listen via Apple Podcasts or Spotify:
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!