Connect with us

News

Del Toro’s World is Alive in New Museum Exhibit

Published

on

If you happen to live in Minneapolis and love Guillermo Del Toro, you should probably get to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA).

For those who don’t live in that state you have until May 28 2017, to find any means necessary to see this new awe-inspiring horror exhibit.

Starting on Sunday March 5, “Guillmero Del Toro: At Home With Monsters” brings the prolific director’s personal collection of horror memorabilia to the art space that has been created to look like his Los Angeles home he calls “Bleak House.”

Several rooms take visitors on a journey through his inspirations and realizations of the gothic horror artform.

With paintings, original manuscripts and human-size monsters created by special effects genius Ray Harryhausen, this exclusive exhibit only showcases one-fifth of De Toro’s extensive personal collection.

Arguably the greatest horror movie director of modern times, the Spanish native has immersed film goers into the world of gothic horror. From “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the recent “Crimson Peak,” Del Toro encapsulates the romantic part of the genre with striking imagery and out of the ordinary characters and monsters.

growlermag.com

“I want to see the show to explore the continuity between haunting classic horror films like ‘Frankenstein’ that have inspired him, and how this fantastic filmmaker transforms those images into his own beautiful, uncanny work,” said Juli Kroll, an associate professor of world cinema, Latin American culture and Spanish at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

Gabriel Ritter, curator of contemporary art said the idea to transform the museum into the Del Toro universe was inspired by the institute’s director, Kaywin Feldman, after reading an article about him in The New Yorker.

JOSH WHITE/ JWPICTURES

Ritter says the exhibit tracks the timeline from idea to fruition. And it all begins once you enter, “so cinematic and strange it looks like a portal, with inlaid monstrous eyes that follow and track you as you enter the exhibition. It scares the bejesus out of you.”

Sectioned by themes, the tour begins with images of birth and innocence before it progresses through displays of the occult and witchcraft. Monsters make up the mid portion of the exhibit and concludes with death and the afterlife.

Walls are crimson colored and incorporate some Haunted Mansion-type special effects with rainfall and thunder slapping outside prop windows.

Del Toro’s films also plays through video monitors and MIA will screen some of his most notable works throughout the length of the show.

JOSH WHITE/ JWPICTURES

The March 5 opening has already sold out which is a bit strange for this type of exhibit admits Ritter, but it’s clear that Del Toro is well-respected by fans and contemporaries alike.

Despite mentors telling him early in his career to not become a film maker known for being weird, Del Toro says that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

“I belong completely to the creatures I create,” said Del Toro. “There’s a kinship that is entirely genuine and spiritual to me. It’s beyond affection. There is a link between those creations and me. I love making them. I am very moved by the fantastic.”

growlermag.com

He says the white marble sculpture “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” may represent his thought processes when it comes to his imagination. That sculpture shows a divine power dropped from the heavens and the pleasure felt by a mortal experiencing such an event.

“I really feel like that’s me contemplating a monster,” he said. “I really am ecstatic at seeing a creature. I get enraptured by these creatures in a way that I’m sure has a perfectly plausible psychological reason. It’s fascinating, the cohabitation of the grotesque and the sublime. Throughout the history of art, we’ve had to do portraiture of angels alongside portraits of demons and monsters. They are a theater of the mind.”

JOSH WHITE/ JWPICTURES

This comraderies and attachments to his creations are more than just static plotlines, they are burgeoning connections that become as real as you or me.

“I am a horror director in terms of kinship with the monsters,” Del Toro said. “But I’m not interested in hating them and fearing them. I believe in loving them. In most movies, your kinship is the humans and the monsters are the scary creatures. In my movies, the scary things are the humans.”

MIA

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

on

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

on

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

on

Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading