2015, Jeremy Gardner and Taylor Zaudtke on set of THE EGG AND THE HATCHET,
a short film directed by Chris Skotchdopole.
April 18, 2019
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TBT: The Egg and The Hatchet
April 14, 2019
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GEP pal Jesse Locascio in NYT
GEP stalwart Jesse Locascio (Camera AC on LATE PHASES, PRANKS, STRAY BULLETS, THE RANGER, LIKE ME, DEPRAVED) featured in New York Times article celebrating the art of the film projectionist:
How a Movie Projectionist
Keeps the Dying Art of Celluloid Alive
For the 9:20 p.m. movie, Jesse Locascio threaded film through the projector. This was after he had sprayed compressed air on the sprockets and rollers, blowing out dust that could show up as black dots on the screen.
“This is not how they do it at the multiplex,” he said. “Not even close.”
Not in the digital age.
Mr. Locascio, 28, is a movie projectionist who can do things the old-fashioned way, operating projectors with big reels of celluloid. Projectionists, he says, are a dying breed and he learned much of what he knows in a long, narrow room of clattering machinery: a projectionist’s booth at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, N.Y.
The Jacob Burns, as it is known, operates a media arts lab that teaches digital literacy as well as a nonprofit art house that was screening “Where’s Poppa?” — a 1970 comedy directed by Carl Reiner — at 9:20 in theater two. But it also trains projectionists, and in an art house, that means learning to handle more than digital files.
It means learning to handle celluloid.
“It was a whole new education,” said Jesse Modica, who as the center’s technical director is Mr. Locascio’s boss. Mr. Modica had worked in commercial theaters before he arrived at the Jacob Burns in 2007.
“My previous training didn’t include any of the nuances,” he said, but he learned from the projectionists at the Jacob Burns. And now Mr. Modica trains newcomers like Mr. Locascio in the mechanics of showing film.
Training a projectionist is “like giving somebody private lessons,” Mr. Modica said. “A lot of this is muscle memory. Once I teach someone, ‘O.K., this is how you inspect the film, this is how you get the sound to work, this is how you make sure you’ve got the right aspect ratio,’ they’ve got to remember come showtime. It’s like someone taking karate. You can learn all the karate you want in the dojo, but are you going to remember when you’re being attacked in an alley?”
Read Whole Article HERE
April 12, 2019
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Weekends with GEP: Graham Reznick’s DEADWAX
While you wait for your Holy Mountain Printing exclusive vinyl of THE GRANDFATHER
to arrive in the mail, why don’t you binge watch Graham Reznick’s masterwork DEADWAX.
Now streaming on Shudder.
April 12, 2019
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Tales From Beyond The Pale: THE GRANDFATHER now on Vinyl LP! A Holy Mountain exclusive
Our pals at Holy Mountain Printing release vinyl of
Graham Reznick’s THE GRANDFATHER, featuring Angus Scrimm.
Available on glow in the dark or split blue/green 12″ vinyl.
This release is limited to a total of 500 pieces.
April 12, 2019
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Slash Film: WENDIGO “The Best Movies Streaming Right Now”
Wendigo Now Streaming on Amazon Prime Video
If you saw the new Pet Sematary, and were intrigued by the legend of the Wendigo that’s mentioned briefly in the film, you might want to check out Larry Fessenden‘s Wendigo. A low-budget affair, Fessenden knows exactly how to stretch his budget and create an effective, creepy chiller. Jake Weber, Patricia Clarkson and Erik Peter Sullivan play a family who decide to take a vacation from Manhattan and head to a cabin in heavily wooded upstate New York. The trip runs into trouble almost immediately, when the family runs afoul of a group of rude, confrontational hunters. Once everyone gets to the cabin, things only get weirder, as some sort of malevolent presence seems to be lurking about. Is it all in the heads of the characters, or is there something supernatural afoot? You decide.
April 11, 2019
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TBT: We Are Still Here
2015, Fessenden, Barbara Crampton, Andrew Sensenig, Lisa Marie and
director Ted Geoghegan on set of WE ARE STILL HERE.
April 11, 2019
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PopHorror: Review Of Larry Fessenden’s Contemporary Frankenstein Tale
From PopHorror: “In Depraved, we get a look at Frankenstein’s monster in the way that Mary Shelley always envisioned… a desolate, confused creation rebuilt out of other people’s parts that only reacted to what he had learned in his short, miserable life…
… On the surface, the film is about a broken doctor named Henry (Call) who gets in over his head after agreeing to try out his friend, Polidori’s (Leonard), reanimation drugs on what is essentially a pieced together cadaver. He has this being before him that he is pressured to teach the most basic bodily functions and how to respond in society, all in the quickest way possible. Imagine being in his situation, one of responsibility and doubt, pressured to do more by his peers but feeling deep sympathy and even love for his subject.
But dig deeper and you find the tale of a paradigm who has no one in the world that he can relate to. Adam (Breaux) has memories of things he never did and people he’s never met. He looks in the mirror and sees a shattered face – both literally and figuratively – that he does not recognize. His body is pieced together, and not one of those pieces are originally his. Adam is a full grown man who has no control of his bodily functions or even the simplest tasks, like a newborn baby in a man’s body. He was never born; he just became. His wretched heart knows no mother or father, no name or identity. If you’re made up of other people’s parts, who are you? Is the brain in your head even yours? Do you even have a soul?“
April 9, 2019
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Fessenden joins new advisory board for Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies
As our friends at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies continue to grow and aspire to further the intellectual and studious side of the horror genre, their growth requires more collective brain braun.
It is important for any organization to be present for the genre’s movements and it’s reflections of currents in societal tides, yet still be reverent to its foundations. With its rise in power Miskatonic founder Kier-La Janisse began assembling an advisory board that will be consulted on the institute’s operations. She has gathered as fine a collection of horror icons, writers, directors, producers, festival programmers & program directors, and horror enthusiasts as we will ever see.
Horror filmmakers and icons Mick Garris, Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, Buddy Giovinazzo and Sean Hogan bring their filmmaking and acting experiences to the table.
April 9, 2019
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Looper: WENDIGO “After you see Pet Sematary, watch these movies”
Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo doesn’t share any talent with Pet Sematary, but you could argue that it shares a villain. The Wendigo is a demonic creature from Algonquian mythology. Living in the woods of the North Atlantic region, it eats people, and in some versions of the story possesses people and causes them to eat each other. Like Pet Sematary, Wendigo focuses on a family that leaves the city behind only to find that there’s a terrifying presence in the New England woods.
George (Jake Weber) wants to relax in a cabin with his wife Kim (Patricia Clarkson) and young son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan), only to end up facing an evil presence bearing down on them. Miles encounters a Native American shop owner (Shelly Bolding) who tells him the legend of the Wendigo, and Miles becomes convinced that’s what’s in the woods — and perhaps inside his father as well. As the wall between reality and myth appears to collapse, the Wendigo eventually appears onscreen far more directly than in Pet Sematary.
