Supermassive Games to release HIDDEN AGENDA
One of my favorite PS4 games is Until Dawn, Supermassive’s cinematic horror adventure from 2015. The game took Heavy Rain’s branching story structure and applied it to a self-aware slasher tale, which felt like a much more natural fit — even if you made the wrong call and let a character die in an gory instant, the story would just keep going. And though it was a single-player game by design, it turned out to work really well with a bunch of people on a sofa yelling frantic instructions to the player. For Supermassive’s next game, the British studio is expanding on that idea. Hidden Agenda is a new narrative-driven PS4 crime thriller that’s designed to be played with multiple players collaborating on the characters’ decisions and actions. The really neat step is that each person uses their smartphone as a controller, letting them vote on options and act on information that may not be available to everyone else.
E3 announces Until Dawn VR prequel “The Inpatient”
From Gamespot:
One of the cool surprises from Sony’s E3 2017 briefing tonight was the PlayStation VR game The Inpatient. More details for the psychological horror game have now come to light, including the fact that it’s a prequel set 60 year before Supermassive’s previous game, Until Dawn.
Supermassive worked with Until Dawn writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick on the story for The Inpatient. The Inpatient is one of two PlayStation VR games from Supermassive that was announced today during Sony’s E3 briefing. The other is a crime thriller called Hidden Agenda.
FSR: In Praise of Shudder
As Fessenden embarks on the second annual Shudder Labs Outing in Upstate NewYork with GEPals Peter Phok, Jenn Wexler, Clay MacLeod Chapman, Shudder host Sam Zimmerman and a team of horror lovers, Film School Rejects posts and aptly timed article on the streaming service. What are you waiting for?
Streaming and live-streams, and scares—oh my!
Like any self-respecting content consumer, I subscribe to an embarrassing amount of podcasts. As a result, I’ve heard my fair share of gotta-keep-the-lights-on adverts, but I’ve never been bothered to use a promo code, let alone google or buy a product. That is until I heard Elijah Wood sing the praises of Shudder, a niche, subscription-based streaming service geared to horror nerds. I’ve never opened a search bar so fast.
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Shudder has been able to provide more than just recycled titles and low-quality indie fare. They’ve made available films that were otherwise hard to come by through the regular channels; from Larry Fessenden’s Habit to classics from F.W. Murnau. Perusing Shudder feels like being let into a fallout vault, well-stocked with everything from old favorites to genre classics, to challenging new fare.
NY Times: WENDY AND LUCY one of 25 Best Films of the Century
Kelly Reichardt’s film WENDY AND LUCY starring Michelle Williams makes the grade: the Glass Eye Pix production named one of 25 Best films since 2000. From The New York Times:
In Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy,” a young woman named Wendy passes through a Pacific Northwest town on her way to Alaska, where she hopes to find work. She has a little bit of money, an unreliable car and her dog, Lucy. This stripped-down tale of desperation and hope in hard times – a Raymond Carver story for the Great Recession – stars Michelle Williams, who talked with A.O. Scott about the experience of making it.
How did you first come to work with Kelly Reichardt?
Michelle WilliamsMutual friends. Laura Rosenthal, the casting director – we used to live in the same neighborhood and she stalked me at the local coffee shop. And then I watched “Old Joy” [also by Ms. Reichardt] and I knew that Kelly was making the movies that I wanted to be a part of.
Was there a challenge for you in getting into that character?
Kelly is very clear about what she wants. She is a really easy collaborator because she is so precise, so things happen very quickly. You understand the place and the person very quickly because she’s very specific about what she wants. She’s still open. I would shoot her ideas and she would say, “Come back in a week when you’ve honed that thing down from your garish, stupid, big idea to something that I might actually like, Michelle.”
Her characters aren’t very expressive or easy to read. That has to be a challenge for an actor.
I find Kelly’s characters get to maintain a lot of dignity and self-respect because they aren’t always giving themselves away. And I find that kind of tricky. It’s an incredibly fine line to walk. Is anybody going to know me? Is anybody going to understand who I am as this person? Are they going to care? Is there going to be a there, there?
And for Kelly’s language, for her sensibility, there is. These characters don’t feel compelled to explain themselves. You have to sort of train your ear and your eye and get to know them slowly. It’s like not sleeping with someone on the first date when you watch her movies. You’re like, let me take a little time to get to know you and absorb you.
“Wendy and Lucy” came out at the end of 2008, right in the middle of the election campaign and the economic collapse. There’s a powerful sense that while the movie is very much about this one young woman and her situation, it’s also about a lot more than that.
All of Kelly’s movies are political, but you would have to maybe have been told that to be aware of it. She’s able to slip it into everything she does, but it’s never didactic or heavy-handed. It’s an essential part of who Kelly is. She’s interested in a lot of genres, but the backbone of it is, how do people get along? How do people get by?
GEP Pal Eric Pennycoff heads into production on SADISTIC INTENT
All the news on the production here: Rue Morgue, Dread Central
INDIEWIRE: Jack Fessenden one of 11 Indie Filmmakers 30 or Under You Need to Know
Over the years, young Jack has received a first class nuts and bolts film education, but he is not simply a chip off the old block. What’s most impressive about “Bullets” is not simply how assuredly and economically the young filmmaker handles the choreography of violence, but how he finds subtlety and depth in the film’s quieter moments.
411MANIA: Stake Land 2
From The Archives: MY SHEROES, MY SHEROES
In honor of Hollywood’s WONDER WOMAN woke bro moment, Glass Eye Pix dusts off an old classic,
MY SHEROES, MY SHEROES
by David Leslie & Larry Fessenden. 1993/Glass Eye Pix

tiled with a grout of humor and pathos, this is woman hear her roar…
are known for their visceral and pyrotechnical pokes
into the world of hyper-myth and media. Their decades-long collaboration,
started in 1986, have been presented at venues throughout the world.

rock on, sisters.
Larry & David


































































































