Wood Apple

Of course Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur, the dirtbag auteurs that turned Joe Dante's gleeful "Jaws" send up "Piranha" into "Piranha 3D," a hilarious, excessively violent screed about American over-indulgence, would spearhead a remake of 1980's "Maniac," a notoriously misogynistic Bill Lustig horror movie whose poster, featuring a man holding the bloody scalp of a young woman, still elicits cries of outrage. Most filmmakers would be too scared to approach the material; it practically glows it's so toxic. But when thinking about these two, who also turned Wes Craven's backwoods horror romp "The Hills Have Eyes" into an angry, gore-soaked metaphor for Bush-era American intervention and culpability, well, why the fuck wouldn't they, really? The original "Maniac," released during a fertile period for American serial killers and set in New York City (this was three years after the Son of Sam murders), concerned Frank Zito (played by the film's co-screenwriter, Joe Spinell), a sad...

"2001: A Space Odyssey," "Blade Runner," "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind," "The Tree Of Life"...the resume of VFX legend Douglas Trumbull pretty much speaks for itself. But he's also been a filmmaker as well, helming two oddities from the '70s and '80s -- "Silent Running" and "Brainstorm" (the latter notable for being the film Natalie Wood died while making) -- but hasn't done anything since except for a few shorts and some theme park stuff. But he's got some big plans...if the technology can arrive to make it happen... Trumbull has quietly been assembling a short film entitled "UFOTOG," a new ten-minute movie about a photographer trying to snap a photo of a UFO or something that is boasting some big, orgasmic tech details for those of you who are into that sort of thing. You see, it was shot in 4K 3D, on 3D virtual sets at Trumbull's own studio, at 120 frames per second (take that Peter Jackson and James Cameron!). In fact, JMR Electronics had to built the guy a...