Thoughts I Had While Looking at the Miss Peregrine... Poster

Just in time for the kiddies' spring break movie fever, we've started to see teases for the new teen-targeted Tim Burton feature Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Based on the young adult book series by Ransom Riggs, there's a feast of spooky oddities that fit right into Burton's sensibilities. However, the first looks suggest that he's playing into his current era's weaknesses. The trailer and some thoughts I had staring at the new poster after the jump...

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Lick It Up, Baby. Lick It Up

“F*ck me gently with a chainsaw,” it looks like Daniel Waters 1989 cult classic Heathers (starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty among others) will be getting the small-screen treatment in a new anthology series on TV Land. This reincarnation will take place in present-day and feature a modern permutation on the three central “Heathers”. One is a black lesbian, another is a gender-queer male and the third is said to resemble the beleaguered Martha Dumptruck from the original film.

This is not the first cult-classic in recent years to be adapted for television. MTV’s “Scream” (largely eclipsed by “Scream Queens” in the public consciousness) is set to begin its second season May. TV Land itself has also picked up a television adaptation of The First Wives Club set to air next year.

Adaptations of movies into television series is hardly anything new. And there’s certainly precedent of it leading to a TV series that far surpasses the film its based on. Maybe “precedent” is a strong word. One shining example would probably be a more accurate assessment. The point is, for every generation-defining “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” we get about five or six middling “Dangerous Mind” or “Clueless” level retreads (remember these TV adaptations? Yikes.)

Whatever your feelings, qualitatively about high school hierarchy satire, its iconic status is hard to deny. Make no mistake—without Heathers, there would be no Clueless, no Mean Girls, probably no “Beverly Hills: 90210” whatever that means to you in any case. It’s easily the year zero of the high school queen bee sub-genre. Entertainment Weekly even teased the story with the headline “TV Land has picked up this Mean Girls-esque ‘80s cult classic.” Heresy. No one is set to reprise their original roles, which makes sense if you’ve seen Heathers. Here’s hoping that it retains at least some of the biting, note-perfect tone of the original.

Also, Martha Dumptruck did survive the original film, so maybe her return isn't out of the question. You know you're wondering what she's up to.

Will you be watching?

Lizzy Caplan and Amanda Seyfried: Mean Girls No More

Murtada here. Mean Girls alums Amanda Seyfried and Lizzy Caplan have announced upcoming projects. Amanda will star with Clive Owen in Andrew Niccol’s sci-fi thriller Anon. Niccol, the director of Gattaca (1997), and Seyfried have previously made the very forgettable In Time (2011) together. Caplan is joining Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard in an untitled period spy thriller directed by Robert Zemeicks. Set in 1942, the film follows a spy (Pitt) who falls in love and marries a French agent (Cotillard) during a dangerous WW2 mission in North Africa. Caplan will play Pitt’s sister.

More Lizzy and Amanda after the jump......

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Interview: 'Take Me to the River' Director Matt Sobel and Stars Robin Weigert and Logan Miller

Jose here. When Ryder (Logan Miller) and his parents Cindy (Robin Weigert) and Don (Richard Schiff) arrive in Nebraska for a family reunion, things spiral out of hand when the teenager is implicitly accused of molesting one of his younger cousins. Tensions rise, and family secrets come to the surface, and yet nothing in this plot description makes justice to the uniqueness of Take Me to the River. Matt Sobel’s debut feature combines the eerie mood of a horror film, with the droll work of the best Finnish masters, to create a dreamlike experience that creeps under your skin. I sat down with director Sobel, and stars Weigert and Miller to discuss the film’s mood, their approach to the enigmatic screenplay, and the reaction the film sparks in audiences.

JOSE: Take Me to the River feels like it’s always a second away from turning into a horror movie. How did you set up that mood with your cast and crew?

MATT SOBEL: Years before making the film I was describing what I wanted to do to a friend, who said it sounded like I wanted to do something “uncanny”. I said it was more than just strange, so my friend suggested I looked up the definition of the word in the dictionary, and he was exactly right, the very specific meaning of it is: something that is simultaneously familiar and welcoming, and off putting and unfamiliar. That dissonance creates a very strong feeling of discomfort in everyone, so I spoke to my DP about how to achieve this every step of the way.

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Screening Room Attempts to Recreate Theater Experience In Your Living Room By Subtracting Everything That Makes It A Theater Experience

Daniel Crooke, here. In one corner: art house cinemas, regional and independent theater chains, and the flickering hope that sitting in a dark room while watching strangers’ problems projected onto a screen will warm you from the inside out. In the other: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, Justin Timberlake in The Social Network and the redheaded squirt from The Andy Griffith Show. Somewhere beyond the ropes, off in the stands, or wherever spectators chill in a sports metaphor: you, the audience, wondering how the hell you can just lean back and watch a damn movie. The fight: whether Sean Parker’s in-home moviegoing composite, Screening Room – which offers the chance to stream day-in-date releases of top shelf studio releases in the comfort of your own home – accessibly accessorizes or fundamentally destroys movies as we know, watch, and profit from them. Is it a forward thinking, easy-making application or Napster’s file sharing, older sister with a Friedkin poster on the wall? A brave new venture or a brave new world?

Doomsday scenarios and potential benefits after the jump...

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