Horror Costuming: Black Swan (2010)

by Cláudio Alves

Unintentionally, this year's Horror Costuming miniseries has featured a lot of designers' partnerships. In both Hellraiser and The Cell, we explored how one person created a fantasy world while another cared for the mundane existence and its subtler evils. Those films showed how exemplary collaboration could produce unforgettable movie wardrobes. Now, with Black Swan, we arrive at a more disharmonious sort of alliance, one that fell apart after the fact, as the media celebrated some designers' work while ignoring the other, and the awards bodies did the reverse. It's a pity how much the controversy came to dominate conversations on the film's costumes. But, beyond the acrimony and scandal, Black Swan is a superbly designed horror movie whose costumes deserve analysis, applause, awards too…

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Happy Halloween!

We're laying low today but will surely pick something scary to watch tonight. If you need something frightening to think about to get you in the holiday mood, though, imagine Jared Leto winning a second Oscar when...

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Portugal chooses "The Metamorphosis of Birds" for Oscar

by Cláudio Alves

When reading the list of films shortlisted for the Portuguese Oscar submission, I confess I was a tad disheartened. Only two of the six films had even been released when the finalists were announced, and I only had watched one of them. The other happens to be a project that reeks of exploitation, which I wasn't enthusiastic about promoting. At least, the film I did see, Catarina Vasconcelos' The Metamorphosis of Birds, was one I loved, going so far as voting for it as one of the best unreleased films on last year's Team Experience Awards. As luck would have it, the voting body responsible for the submission fell for it too…

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Tweetweek: Dune 2 and other social media obsessions

Three tweets that made us giggle...

Less Dune Part Two talk, more 2 Barb 2 Star talk.

— Chris Feil (@chrisvfeil) October 27, 2021

If a movie has to be watched then it isn’t a good movie

— C. Mason Wells (@cmasonwells) October 26, 2021

Let's stop making movies until we've seen all the old ones.

— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) October 26, 2021

More after the jump including Derek Cianfrance, Paul Verhoeven, and lots of Dune and Dune Part Two jokes...

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Now Playing: "Last Night in Soho" and more...

by Nathaniel R

"Do you like scary movies?"
Glamorous mod movies?
Psycho thrillers?
Ghost stories?
Actress twinning movies (a la Persona, Mulholland Drive, Black Swan)?

I wish we could report that Last Night in Soho would satisfy all those disparate urges or even a single one of them. But alas...

I first saw the movie in Venice and though that was just under two months ago, this ghost story haunts as one of the worst of the year. Was I unduly harsh with a "D" from the Venice review? From the review...

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