Powers Boothe was one of Hollywood’s most understated yet grittiest badasses, a powerful, stone voiced presence who could vividly bring many characters to life including cowboys, corrupt politicians, stern law enforcement officers and more, always with the kind of steely eyed, half smirk charisma that suggested he’s holding a couple cards close to his chest for a fiercely explosive element to the performance arc later on. Unfortunately he is no longer with us but the vivid impression he left with his multiple, varied and always intense portrayals lives on every day. Here are my top ten personal favourite performances!
10. Philip Marlowe in HBO’s Philip Marlowe: Private Eye
Many actors have taken a whack at playing this iconoclastic gumshoe, but Boothe’s turn remains the most charismatic, entertaining and also under the radar. This is kind of a long lost HBO miniseries that’s hard to find these days but his gruff, keen and dangerous version of Marlowe is a key touchstone of the man’s career.
9. Mace Ryan in Dwight H. Little’s Rapid Fire
Perhaps the crankiest big city narcotics task force commander that Chicago has ever seen, Ryan teams up with the late great Brandon Lee to viciously take down a heroin syndicate and fire as many guns as he can in the process. He’s loud, mean and always on edge here but underneath that bristled exterior there’s a warmth and strong moral compass that we see in his subtly paternal relationship with Lee’s character. I might add this is one of the most underrated martial arts/shoot out actioners of the 90’s.
8. Mayor Eo Jaxxon in Comedy Central’s Moonbeam City
Not many people paid attention to this short lived, balls out animated series but it’s a fucking gem. Basically like an Archer type cop show with that amazing 80’s neon pastel Miami Vice aesthetic that we all love, starring Rob Lowe as a cocky but ultimately dipshit big city cop. Boothe steals the goddamn show in one episode alone though as the brash, coke fuelled, megalomaniacal mayor. Sporting a crispy white suit and two snow leopards for pets, it’s the kind of voiceover performance that lets this mostly grave and serious actor have a fucking ton of fun and just be looney for a little while, he had a real untapped gift for comedy that was only really apparent in this role.
7. Curly Bill Brocius in George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone
Nothing beats the sight of villainous Brocius stumbling out of of an opium den, drawing his revolvers and deliriously shooting civilians for the sheer hell of it. Or his deadpan, nonchalant “Well… bye!” sardonically sneered at Wyatt Earp and his gang. He’s admittedly overshadowed and outlived by Michael Biehn’s ferocious antagonist Johnny Ringo but still makes a hell of an impression.
6. Cy Tolliver in HBO’s Deadwood
Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen gets much of the accolades here and rightfully so but Boothe’s rival saloon kingpin is an evil snake whose perverse, complex and twisted relationship with his chief whore (Kim Dickens) is a powerfully compelling dynamic.
5. Sheriff Virgil Potter in Oliver Stone’s U Turn
All of the townsfolk in Superior, Arizona are nasty, secretive snakes, Powers’ scary local sheriff included. He spends much of the film intimidating Sean Penn, getting silly drunk on spirits and not a whole lot of actually enforcing the law. When the third act revelations begin to play out and the noirish twists come along there’s a terrifying, blind drunk ferocity to his work that remains some of the best in a large, prolific cast.
4. Corporal Charles Hardin in Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort
A well read, thinking man stuck in the military isn’t something you always expect to see in cinema every day but here he plays an educated Texan who is less than thrilled to be saddled with yokel fellow soldiers for a Louisiana National Guard training exercise that goes hellishly South. There’s a hard bitten nature to his resilience here as he and another survivor (Keith Carradine) in the unit do battle with dangerous Cajuns who know the terrain far better than them.
3. Senator Roark in Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City & Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
His monologue about power in the first film was a chilling picture of ultimate evil and corruption, and then in the second we got to see him actually act on all that for one of the most memorable and heinous comic book baddies ever written. Gravel voiced, power-mad beyond reason, narrow eyed and psychopathic to the bone, Powers makes this guy one arch villain for the ages.
2. Cash Bailey in Walter Hill’s Extreme Prejudice
The pimpest drug baron to ever wear a white suit and swig tequila, Cash is in a fierce turf war with childhood friend and Texas Ranger Jack Benteen (Nick Nolte) that erupts into bloody Peckinpah-esque madness. Boothe is slick, mean, magnetic, deftly verbose and creates one of the coolest, baddest dudes of action cinema here, whether he’s prophetically killing a scorpion or menacing his and Jack’s childhood sweetheart (Maria Conchita Alonso). What a character.
1. Bill Markham in John Boorman’s The Emerald Forest
Perhaps the most vulnerable and down to earth character he’s played, Bill is an industrial developer who loses his son at the edge of the vast Amazon rainforest, only to be reunited after a decades long search and the boy’s adoption into a Native tribe. He shows striking depth, compassion, determination and paternal instinct here, I love that Boorman cast him against type because he wound up giving what I consider to be a career best turn.
Oh hey another top ten of the year film for me. I love a good passion project, especially when the two artistic forces behind it are a couple beloved character actors who have spent much of their career in Hollywood playing villains, criminals, weirdos, bikers, aliens and all kinds of heavy stuff. William Fichtner’s Cold Brook sees the consistently brilliant actor team up with equally fantastic buddy Kim Coates for a charming, wonderfully simplistic tale of two small town dudes who make an incredible discovery.
Fichtner and Coates are Ted and Hilde, two lifelong pals who work as maintenance men for the college museum in their sleepy upstate NY town of Cold Brook. They each have a loving wife (played by Robin ‘Calamity Jane’ Weigart and Mary Lynn ‘Chloe O Brien’ Rajskub), kids and pretty much as cozy a life as anyone can hope for, complete with the kind of bromance that makes it obvious these two actors are tight in real life. Then one day a mysterious and deeply confused stranger (Harold Perrineau) shows up in the museum exhibit after hours and seems to follow them around after that like he has some purpose that even he doesn’t understand, and only our two boys can see him. It’s up to them to find out why this restless spirit has chosen them, what he wants and how to put him to rest while juggling the curious eyes of their wives, bosses and one campus security guard (Brad Henke) who takes his job just a bit too seriously.
This is low key, whimsical indie fare through and through and I downright fell in love. I’ve been following William and Kim’s career since I was a kid, they are two endlessly talented scene stealers and I can’t tell you how lovely and cathartic it was to see them just play a couple bros living and loving the small town life. They both shine brightly in their work here and Fichtner shows a steady hand in writing and direction here too, telling a story that clearly means a lot to him in broad, loving strokes. Perrineau is really effective as Gil the wandering spirit, seeming somehow perpetually lost but also pointedly soulful in each appearance. If you’re at all a fan of these two artists then I’d very strongly recommend this as you get to see them do the kind of work that Big Hollywood just doesn’t usually ever hire them for, something very personal to each and something that allows them the kind of freedom in expression that we as artists always dream of. Even if you’re not a huge fan it’s a beautiful little indie to watch on a cold rainy morning to warm the heart. Brilliant film.
It’s time for some schlocky 80’s biker trash. Savage Dawn is a cheap, sleazy, exceedingly noisy, obnoxious piece of dustbowl highway exploitation and I love every minute of it. Lance Henriksen is stoic ex green beret Stryker who drifts past a small town to visit his old army buddy (George Kennedy). Also blowing through the area is a pack of evil, vicious bikers led by sadistic Pigiron (William Forsythe, living up to that name and then some). Stryker just wants to chill out and have beers with his ol’ bud but Pigiron & Co. have other plans and the film is basically a loose, untethered series of ultra-violent run-ins with the gang, while other weirdo backwoods locals run in and out of the scenes all silly billy. Henriksen is the only actor here to play it remotely seriously, keeping that stone faced glare stolidly in place and dishing out beatdowns left and right. Forsythe is downright maniacal here, doing one of the best versions of his ‘psycho snarling hick shtick’ and chewing scenery like an evil tornado of redneck rambunctiousness. This was the first time these two tussled in a biker picture and would reunite again for Stone Cold in the 90’s, but that’s another story. The late Richard Lynch shows up as a feeble, horn-dog local preacher who gets in the way and the great Karen Black has a memorable turn as the loopy local slut. This ain’t nothing but bottom of the barrel street grease, there’s no way around it. But the actors sell it and there’s enough of them letting off steam to make this enjoyable, albeit fairly WTF in places. Gotta keep in mind that gnarly little nuggets like this were commonplace back then and sometimes I miss em.
It’s always cool for two of my top ten films of the year to find their way to me inside a week. A few days ago it was The Lighthouse and yesterday it was Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn, a brilliant, sprawling noir epic that sees this accomplished artist behind the camera for only the second time in his career and in front of it for the first time since I can remember… I think the last thing I saw him in was that fourth Bourne film that didn’t even have Jason Bourne in it. He roars back into action commendably here as both writer and director in a passioned period piece that has a lot to say and one of those old school two plus hour runtimes to say it in as well as the kind of jaw dropping, star studded ensemble casts they just don’t bother to assemble much anymore.
In adapting Jonathan Lethem’s novel, Norton rewinds a 90’s setting back into the 50’s and comes up a winner playing Lionel Essrog, a private detective whose friend, mentor and father figure Frank (Bruce Willis lingers in a cameo you wish was more) is murdered by shady thugs whilst investigating the kind of lead that can only end in bloodshed. Lionel suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome in an era where medication, compassions and science are sorely lacking and has thus sadly earned the moniker ‘freak show’ by his peers. That doesn’t stop him from using gut intuition to continue Frank’s work, leading him down the obligatory NYC noir rabbit hole of Harlem jazz clubs, red herrings, betrayals, corrupt government officials and bursts of sudden violence meant as warning but there to juice up the intrigue. It’s a fairly serpentine web of lies and decades old secrets involving many characters brought to life by one hell of a cast. Gugu Mbatha-Raw scores soulful points as an activist whose involvement runs far deeper than even she knows. Alec Baldwin gives a terrifying turn as an impossibly evil, truly bigoted mega city planner whose agenda to bulldoze poorer communities shows little remorse in character and allows the seasoned actor to provide what might be the best villain portrayal of the year. I didn’t think I’d be raving about Willem Dafoe two times in one week (he crushed his role in The Lighthouse) but the guy is on fuckin fire, bringing cantankerous warmth to a vaguer role I won’t spoil. Also in the mix are Michael Kenneth Williams as a mercurial trumpet player, Bobby Cannavle, Dallas Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Fisher Stevens, Cherry Jones, Robert Wisdom, Josh Pais, Peter Gray Lewis and Leslie Mann.
Considering that Norton’s director debut was a Ben Stiller romcom, its fairly heavy lifting to pivot over towards a two and a half hour period piece adapted from a revered novel but he pulls it off and then some. He directs the actors with snap and ease so we get organic, underplayed yet lasting impressions from each performance including his own, a very tricky role that never comes across as a gimmick. His affliction is never conveniently absent when the scene requires it and he makes sure to find the frustration, humour and lived-in aspects of Lionel’s personality. Baldwin’s character serves to represent the callous nature of real estate development conglomerates these days and the tendency to gloss over less fortunate folk like invisible downtrodden, or downright see them as lesser people. Norton, as both actor and director, gently explores this world with a compassion for areas in which some have more than less and focuses on themes until we get to see a powerful morality play unfold within the already tantalizing central mystery. This film sort of came out of nowhere (I don’t remember any marketing outside like a month before release?!) and isn’t making huge waves yet but it’s a powerful, funny, touching, detailed, beautifully acted and directed piece, one of the best thus far of the year.
As far as comparing The Wachowski’s V For Vendetta to its source material by Alan Moore, I may be one of the only few who feels like the film is an improvement. The graphic novel is beautifully written but bleak and drab in many instances where the film adopts a rich, full bodied and ever so slightly hopeful tone in the adaptation forage. I know Moore is somewhere out there in his yurt on the plains, reading my review on a 3G tablet and cursing my name, but oh well. Fierce political commentary, blitzkrieg action picture, careful interpersonal drama and more, this has aged well (scarily well depending on the angle one views it from) and holds up gorgeously fourteen November 5ths on since its release.
Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving make Stockholm Syndrome sexy again as Evey and V, two very different individuals whose lives have both been upended by the tyrannical, fascist British Government. He’s a vicious vigilante freedom fighter with scars on the outside and inside, she’s a wayward civilian swept up in his brutal quest to overthrow an evil dictator (John Hurt in beast mode), first as witness and later as accomplice. This involves a complex laundry list of various betrayals, sieges, escapes and terrorist acts, all brought to life in breathtaking spectacle. An underdog secret policeman (Stephen Rea, a study understated excellence) doggedly pursues them and questions his own loyalties, while the chosen date of Guy Fawkes day (hey, that’s today!) looms ever closer and with it V’s promise to blow the shit out of the parliament block.
V says it best when he growls: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.” There are large scale, prescient ideas at work here and despite being based on a graphic novel it feels eerily akin to our own world. V is a product of this damaged, corrupt system who has become a monster and is now ready to administer horrific dark justice on those who wronged him, working his way up an increasingly grotesque chain of despicable politicians with grim resolve. There’s a righteous fury to his quest and no other actor could have better captured the fire and brimstone behind that mask like Weaving does, he works wonders with his voice alone. There’s a lot more action than in Moore’s novel but can you really blame the Wachowskis? They are incredible at staging set pieces and the character of V suits the swooping, knife throwing, roof leaping, swash, buckle and bloody bodily harm on display here. There’s a strong undercurrent of compassion and humanity here to, as seen in my favourite sequence of the film: Portman’s Evey is locked up in a government prison and ready to wade into despair before she finds a rolled up scroll detailing the story of the cell’s former roommate and her struggles during the rise of this horrible regime. It’s in this short flashback scene alone we see all that’s worth fighting for in the microcosm of one girl’s life and feel the justification of not just V’s violent rampage but the collective uprising it stirs in the people. Great film.
I don’t really have a clever lead-in line to Roger Egger’s The Lighthouse for this review, partly because I’m still not sure just what the fuck I watched and partly because I’m processing the giddy traumas this thing inflicts on a viewer. One thing I’m sure of is the sheer elemental wonder of this film, it’s an intimate experience of immense power, a loving ode to black and white films overall, a pulverizing experience in off the wall horror, a terrific dose of briny black comedy, a dual character study for the ages, a gooey Lovecraft homage and one of the most hysterically intense viewing experiences of the year and perhaps ever.
From the moment Willem Dafoe’s Thomas Wake and Robert Pattinson’s Ephraim Winslow set foot on the rock that is to be their home for months, there is an oppressive maritime aura like no other, made so by several key factors. The haunting black and white photography by Jarin Blaschke is at once chilly, gorgeous and all encompassing, the creaky original score by Mark Korven has retro sensibilities and practically leaks dread off the screen and Eggers chooses to frame his story in the 1.19:1 aspect ratio used by early B&W filmmakers like F.W. Murnau. These aspects combined craft one unforgettable, deeply disquieting package, and I haven’t even raved about the performances yet. Dafoe and Pattinson give the kind of towering, monumental, thunderous turns that make you scared for them and want to yell cut before they’re lost to the maelstrom of their own mania. Dafoe is a creepy, crusty, brittle old salt who bellows, farts, berates and abuses Pattinson’s Winslow, a greenhorn who quickly loses his keen edge to the drink and the intangible, perhaps supernatural forces surrounding them. It’s a macabre treat watching these two poor sods race each other headlong towards madness helped by copious amounts of rum, the gnawing reality of isolation and the ever present wailing of seagulls which, as Dafoe makes clear, are bad luck to kill.
Word of warning with this one though: this is very much a bizarre, knowingly fucked up arthouse film and worlds apart from Egger’s hailed previous effort ‘The Witch,’ which for all its insanity actually had a coherent and decipherable story. With The Lighthouse he strives more for abstract, surreal and often impenetrable imagery and has no interest in providing concrete reasons or resolution for what’s seen, heard and felt. I myself prefer this style much more than conventional storytelling but it’s not for everyone and for better or worse there will be no viewer, however thick-skinned, left undisturbed. In any case this is one unique and impressive piece of work; Dafoe and Pattinson howl their way through impossibly long and intricate monologues (cue the original script and acting Oscars), the wind shrieks through the gorgeously designed set, a beautiful but terrifying mermaid (Valeriia Karamen) screams like a banshee out on the barnacle stained rocks and the ever present beam of the lighthouse (sometimes seeming eerily similar to the projector beam within the cinema itself) pierces the New England fog and sees all. A masterpiece and one of the very best films of the year thus far.
Ask me what the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is and time after time I’ll answer The Blair Witch Project. Sure it has it’s skeptics, cynics and badasses who aren’t phased but they’re the houseflies of the genre, constantly buzzing to one up each other. It’s much more fun to embrace when something scares the shit out of you and give it credit where it’s due. The most interesting thing about this film is the sheer amount of money made versus spent, it’s the ultimate minimalist experiment that swept the nation, landscaped the horror genre for decades to come and scared the fucking piss out of millions of people, myself included. So why is it so scary? Nothing completely descriptive happens, you never even see the witch and the ending is opaque.. but it’s exactly those reasons that make it so effective. Picture yourself in the woods at night; you’re already scared by the threatening elemental magic that only forests at night can offer, then you hear something in the trees, something overtly and obviously creepy. But you never see it. If a werewolf, witch, goblin or politician came barreling out of the woods then that once nameless fear is now right in front of you, and you are now faced with the prospect of overcoming it, the unknown element vanished. All this film gives you is that unknown element, for the entire 85 runtime, and ends on an ambiguously pitched note. It’s the withholding of what exactly is out there, along with other aspects, that makes this so haunting and a point that most horror movies inexplicably can’t seem to grasp. From the moment that documentary crew sets out there’s a cursed feeling because you know they’re headed for no good, then when they get hopelessly lost you feel the same panic they do. As the night wears on and they are forced to set up camp, they can hear eerie noises down by the river, babies crying and discover weird occult stick figures placed around their vicinity. This is when the true blood freezing terror sets in because now they are they so lost they’re not even sure what county they’re in anymore and whatever’s following them gets in their faces with increasing regularity and terrifying methods of approach. Much of the film happens at night, shot on shaky home video (this is bar one for found footage horror, the best there is) and the three actors playing these doomed guerilla auteurs are fantastically believable in their descent into panic, dread and mania. The final five minutes have since become legend and rightly so but the whole package is an impossibly terrifying nightmare from which it feels like there is no escape, and indeed for these poor people there ultimately is not. Masterpiece.
Well it’s that time of year folks – when kids in costumes and horror movies walk hand in hand – and while it’s not a staple for folks at the end of October around these parts (it’s more the ropes and the reins, and the joy and the pain, and they call the thing rodeo time), doesn’t mean we can’t sit down together and watch us an awesome little horror gem…that’s quickly turning into my new beer and pizza night movie selection . . . . ART OF THE DEAD.
Imagine if you will, being an artist . . . being a struggling artist. You just want to put yourself out there – be lauded by as many people as possible, carve you name on the tree of immortality as it were. Now . . . you’re this artist and in order to get what you want you make a Faustian deal, so that your name and the power of your work shall be enticing art lovers long after you have slapped on the wooden coat and bought the farm. Trouble is, it’s not really fame that you’ll receive at your end of this deal. No, the ancient evil that has served as your patron has a different kind of eternal damnation in mind…
That’s when we meet the Wilson’s. Boy brings his girlfriend home to meet Dad, Step-Mom and Co. Dad does really well, the house is amazing . . . plus he’s decided to collect some art . . . OH NO! The paintings are shamanistic depictions of the SEVEN DEADLY SINS. Y’all know them…? Anyways the maniacal painter responsible achieved a life beyond death by taking the power he sought and evilly won by inducing, in those who gaze for too long at the paintings, whichever sin is in.
What results is a funky good time at the movies…and I encourage you all to make ART OF THE DEAD part of your Halloween movie banquet. Come watch as the Wilson family, a supportive girlfriend, the sister’s nemesis, an unfortunate hooker and a bold and committed priest do battle against art, black magic and original sin!
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 22: (L-R) Danny Tesla, Zach Chyz, Jessica Morris and Lukas Hassel attend the “Art of the Dead” exclusive cast and crew screening at Ahrya Fine Arts by Laemmle on January 22, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for Mahal Empire)
I had a stellar time watching this…but…I have equal joy now in presenting the phenomenal cast and the genius writer/director of my new, favorite little B movie treat for All Hallows’ Eve . . .
Rolfe Kanefsky grew up in the suburbs of New York and attended Hampshire college where he studied Film. He began writing stories at a young age after his childhood dream of becoming a clown took the backseat to his interest in film. He has thus far written and directed 27 feature films and authored another 38 produced screenplays over the last 30 years. The cult flick “There’s Nothing Out There” was his debut at the age of twenty. Since then, Rolfe has continued to work in the horror genre with “The Black Room” starring Natasha Henstridge and Lin Shaye, “Party Bus To Hell” with Tara Reid, “The Hazing” starring Brad Dourif and Tiffany Shepis, “Jacqueline Hyde”, “Corpses”, and “Nightmare Man”. He was the winner of two Best Director awards for his horror flick, “Nightmare Man” at the Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and The Supernatural Film Festival in Las Vegas & at the I.F.F.Y.N.T.X. Festival in Texas before the film went on to be picked up by After Dark and Lions Gate as one of the “8 Films To Die For: Horrorfest 2007.
Branching out into other genres, Rolfe wrote “Blonde & Blonder”, a comedy with Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards, “A Dog & Pony Show” with Mira Sorvino and Ralph Macchio, the western “Doc Holliday’s Revenge” starring Tom Berenger, thrillers such as “Tomorrow By Midnight” starring Carol Kane and Alexis Arquette and “1 In The Gun” with Steven Bauer and Robert Davi. Recent family fare include the animated “Space Dogs: Adventures To The Moon” with the voice of Alicia Silverstone “A Tiger’s Tail”, “Timber; The Treasure Dog”, “Puppy Swap” with Margo Kidder, “Jimmy’s Jungle”, the period crime story “Bonnie & Clyde: Justified”, and the musical “Adventures Into The Woods”.
Rolfe has also been making a name for himself in the Lifetime thriller world and has authored seven female-driven thrillers including “Killer Photo” aka “Watch Your Back” starring Annalynne McCord. “Deadly Sorority” with Greer Grammer and Moira Kelly, “The Wrong Babysitter” starring Daphe Zuniga, “Deadly Vows”, “Intensive Care” and “The Wrong Vacation”.
With 65 produced credits, Rolfe is a very active filmmaker/writer who continues to work in almost every genre in the business
Known for her portrayal of series regular Jennifer Rappaport on ABC’s “One Life to Live”, Jessica has cultivated her career as the leading lady in various television shows and independent films. Also making a memorable appearance in Universal’s theatrical success “Role Models”. Jessica has recently been the star of Lifetime TV’s hit movie “The Wrong Teacher” and has also had strong guest starring roles on popular Prime-time shows, including Fox’s “Rosewood” and TNT’s “Perception”. In addition, she leads the cast in Tom Six’s highly anticipated new feature film. Jessica stands out as an actress who conveys honesty and depth through all of the characters she plays and has also discovered her passion for screenwriting.
Born and raised in Denmark, Lukas Hassel trained and graduated from the Samuel Beckett Theater School, Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
As a screenwriter, Lukas won the CineStory Fellowship for his top 30 Nicholl’s Fellowship script, “The Mechanic”. This has been optioned by director/producer Charlie Stratton and is in pre-production.
Lukas wrote and directed the sci-fi short film “Into the Dark” which went on the win multiple awards for acting, writing and directing and played in over 70 film festivals world wide. His latest award winning horror short film, “The Son, the Father…”, has screened in 50+ festivals and counting, and got made after winning the Hollyshorts Film Festival competition for best screenplay. Mighty Tripod and Evil Slave LLC produced.
He has appeared on TV in shows such as Blue Bloods, Limitless, The Blacklist, Elementary and more. Currently, he’s shooting “Art of the Dead” opposite Tara Reid in Las Vegas.
Danny Tesla has starred in over 3000 live stage show performances around the world. 1000 of those shows has been his own one-man variety show that he created called “The Danny Tesla Show” He has been working in the entertainment industry for over 30 years.
Danny Tesla started performing at the age of 7 as the youngest member of “The Sunshine Singers” performing in shopping centers and theme parks like Dream World. He also worked in Productions with the Australian Ballet Company such as Onegin, Romeo & Juliet, Don Quixote, and Swan Lake. Throughout his school years he produced, directed and performed every month for 2000 of his fellow schoolmates. He studied with the best teachers in New York, London and Sydney in all aspects of performing from singing, acting, and dancing. One of his dancing teachers was award-winning choreographer Dein Perry who created “Tap Dogs” which lead to Dan being one of the Tap dancers in the Fox Searchlight movie “Bootmen” starring Sam Worthington and Adam Garcia. Which meant he was invited to perform with Adam as one of the lead tappers at the Opening Ceremonies of 2000 Olympic Games live in front of an audience of 100,000 people and telecast to 4 billion people worldwide.
He also performed in Productions on the finest cruises ships in the world. Whichever ship he was on its showcast always was voted number 1 in the fleet. He worked on Royal Viking Queen, Star Odyssey, Silver Cloud, P&O Fair Princess, P&O’s Artemis, Oriana.
A career highlight for Danny was when he was cast as Eugene in “Grease The Arena Spectacular” Which broke all box office records and still holds the record to this day. He worked alongside Australia’s biggest stars like Danni Minogue and Anthony Warlow and John Farnham. Because of his creative contribution to that production he was asked back into two other productions by the same company to reprise his role. Danny has now performed Grease over 300 times to over a million people around Australia and New Zealand.
Danny Tesla was invited to perform at some corporate events in Singapore in 2003 and since then has performed at over 750 events in Singapore. He decided in 2009 to make Singapore his home and became the Creative Director and founder of “Broadway Production Company Pte Ltd” which not only produced more shows for corporate events but also TV commercials and a Musical call “City Gym The Musical” which was staged at Jubilee Hall in January 2013. Danny wrote the script, music and lyrics to City Gym. He also directed and produced the production as well as starred in it. In 2014 Danny moved to Los Angeles and acted in many productions like HBO’s “All the way” starring Brian Cranston and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. That same year he was asked to sing for the soundtrack for a new musical “Tesla The Electrical Spectacle” Inspired by Nikola Tesla’s story Dan Thompson made his stage name Danny Tesla and continues to work under that name winning awards like Best Actor in the film “Birthday in a Dark room” portraying Professor Ansel Adams and starring in other films such as “Surface Wounds”
Moving back to his roots in live entertainment Danny Tesla moved to Las Vegas and performed in Evil Dead the Musical for 6 months on the famous Las Vegas Strip and as a regular actor in the No. 1 escape room in the Country (the Basement) for 8 months. In 2017 he continued to pass on his experience by teaching Acting classes regularly for LA casting Showcase in Las Vegas and lending his acting skills to readings of “Shark Attack the Musical” at the Space and regularly singing at the Venetian. In 2018 he is set to play a lead role as Dorian Wilde in the Feature Film “Art of the Dead” starring Tara Reid.
Danny Tesla is an accomplished Actor, Singer and Dancer.
Robert Donavan dabbled with acting for some time before getting serious about the art. He began studying with Robert F. Lyons when he was 42 years old, and within two years started making films.
He continues to study acting to this day, having admittedly neglected his training as a young man. He has worked with such teachers as Lurene Tuttle, Harvey Lembeck, and James Best. Currently he is studying under Kimberly Jentzen.
He has worked with directors Wayne Kramer, Fred Olen Ray, Jim Wynorski, David DeCoteau, Rolfe Kanefsky, Thomas Callaway, and Elliot Feld.
The number of films Robert Donavan has appeared in is close to 60. They cross genres from comedy, to drama, to science fiction, the supernatural, and to horror. He has portrayed scientists, secret agents, border patrol officers, military officers, FBI agents, drug dealers, psychiatrists, morticians, cowboys, and disgraced priests.
The voice over industry has been a good fit for him, having voiced quite a few commercials, and was until this year, the voice of Yahoo Fantasy Football, and the Toyota Fantasy Football Hall of Fame.
Retirement is not in Robert Donavan’s vocabulary, and he has said he fully expects to work through lunch on the day of his funeral.
Rob Zombie was always going to make the jump from musician to filmmaker, you could just feel it in the air and it also felt apparent that he’d be a successful one too, unlike a few of his compadres (poor Dee Snider). The term shock rock has been applied to his work and that can be said of his films too; he’s always been about brash, crass stylistic choices and as such it shocks *me* when people are appalled at his films and their off putting nature, I mean this is Rob Zombie the heavy metal guy we’re talking about here, not someone innocuous like Barry Levinson. What consistently surprises me about his work in film is that along with all the appropriately trashy, nasty imagery and visual grotesquerie there is a strong drive to explore themes, cultivate mature, realistic characters and build worlds that feel like our our own to tell his scary stories in. This is all apparent in his Halloween 2 which I feel is an overlooked, misunderstood piece of horror madness and brilliance.
Being a huge fan of his original Halloween reboot I was surprised and curious at his decision to follow it up, because the first stands on its own and wraps up very nicely in the final moments, in its own way and as a calling card to Carpenter’s original. But he and the Myers name made Dimension Films a big pile of money and this film went ahead, which I’m grateful for. His vision of H2 is a spectacularly terrifying, relentlessly bleak and disarmingly psychological one, worlds away from his first outing and while it still bears the profane, yokel brand of his dialogue writing in spots, this is some of the most down to earth filmmaking he’s done. Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor Compton) is a mess following events past, and understandably so. She lives with her friend Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris, a perennial totem of the franchise) and Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Brad Dourif), barely coping with constant nightmares, waking dreams and hallucinations from her trauma and sees a psychiatrist (the great Margot Kidder) who doesn’t prove to be all that effective. Malcolm McDowell’s once helpful and compassionate Dr. Loomis has fought his own trauma by drinking hard and becoming a cynical, nasty media whore who cruelly makes it public that Laurie is in fact Michael’s baby sister, which doesn’t help her mental climate much. Add to this the fact that Michael did indeed survive that fateful Halloween night and is slowly making his way back to Haddonfield for round two and you have all the ingredients for a perfect storm.
This film is horror to its core but I also love how Zombie dutifully explores Post traumatic stress disorder in brutally realistic fashion, something that none of the other films in the series bothered to look at, seriously anyways. Compton is fantastic in a picture of hell as Laurie here, disheveled and dissociated to dangerous levels and damaged by Michael’s evil beyond repair. Michael (Tyler Mane) is different too, spending much of the film without his mask and followed by ethereal visions of his long dead mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and otherworldly, surreal demonic figures who spur him on in haunting dream sequences. Dourif is emotionally devastating as Brackett and people sometimes forget just what kind of dramatic heavy lifting this guy is capable of. He plays a nice, kind man who only ever tried to protect his daughter and Laurie both and when they collectively pass through the event horizon of being able to heal from the horror, the anguish and heartbreak in his performance shakes you to the bone. Zombie populated his supporting ranks with a trademark bunch of forgotten genre faces like Daniel Roebuck, Dayton Callie, Richard Brake, Richard Rhiele, Howard Hesseman, Mark Boone Jr, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Duane Whitaker and Sean Whalen and new talent like Brea Grant, Nancy Birdsong, Octavia Spencer, Angela Trimbur and, uh… Weird Al Yankovic too. Michael spends much of the film on his journey back to Haddonfield here after escaping a percussive ambulance crash (perhaps of his own elemental making) and as such many of the shots we get are him on the moors, farmlands and eerie fields of the neighbouring counties, haunting the land like some restless spirit until it comes time to kill once again. The atmosphere is one of dread and abstract mental unrest as we see each character, including Michael himself, begin to lose it. It all culminates in a horrifying, darkly poetic confrontation complete with a hectic police chopper and all the careening madness we can expect from Zombie’s vision of this world. Then he decides to give this legacy a disquieting send off that works sadly and beautifully by bringing back the song Love Hurts, this time crooned softly by Nan Vernon instead of a raucous strip bar sound system. Whether you’re attuned to Zombie’s aesthetic or not, there’s just no denying his artistic style, commitment to world building and brave openness in reinvention and experimentation within an established mythos. Great film.
Have sex with the wrong person and It will follow you around, until It kills you. ‘It’ is very obviously a metaphor for STI’s but also could be seen as many different things. David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is a high concept, slow burn, atmosphere smoked, synth saturated piece of sheer simultaneous beauty and terror, one of the finest and most influential pieces of horror filmmaking of the last few decades. The concept here is like some urban legend you’d hear at a house party: teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) sleeps with a strange boy from a neighbouring county, after which he ties her up and informs her that something, which can look like anyone, will follow her around relentlessly until it kills her, then resume following him and go back down the chain of sleeping around to whoever pissed it off in the first place. It only walks, mind you, but that’s almost worse because it comes across as more nightmarish and only prolongs the inevitable. Along with her sister (Lili Sepe) and some friends they form a makeshift posse to both outrun, outwit or simply beat the shit out of It until it leaves her alone.
This film works wonders for many different reasons other than the horror, which is chillingly effective. The concept alone works to stir up the kind of fear you don’t cultivate with gore, jump scares or cheap ghoulish tricks. This is the kind of horror that creeps up and sits down beside you during the film until you are uneasy beyond words, then gets up and follows you home when the credits roll. There are several practical set pieces involving this thing stalking them that should be used as textbook examples on how to raise hell within the genre. The performances are fantastic as well, particularly Monroe and Sepe, making these kids feel vaguely 80’s, kind of contemporary but always in a kind of dreamy, faraway laidback state that slips right in with the atmosphere. Speaking of atmosphere, one of the key elements here is the unnerving original score from Disasterpeace. It’s sometimes melodic and aerial, sometimes jagged and abrasive but always serves the scene and provides an auditory dreamscape for character and audience alike, giving a voice to the mute fiend that hunts them and lacing the dereliction of the Detroit setting with dread. The monster itself is representative of STD’s and that’s the main theme to read but there’s deeper linings to it as well. Her sister remarks at one point how when she was younger their parents wouldn’t let them stray past 8 Mile and how she didn’t understand why. It can almost be seen as a spectral manifestation of the unseen, unmapped, wilder areas of our urban sprawl, the mounting decay in any given city and the forces that govern it and perhaps eventually follow us back to the sanctuary of home. Whatever you choose to read into it, this is one fine example of what can be done in the horror genre and a brilliant slice of spook pie. Hell, the five minute prologue alone is already something else.
Podcasting Them Softly 