CON: Lionsgate 2/2

LIONSGATE PANEL
(Part 2/2):

MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN

Participants:
Clive Barker
Director Ryuhei Kitamura
Bradley Cooper
Leslie Bibb

Clive Barker is one cool dude. Completely out of his mind but he’s a great storyteller. I

heard nothing about MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN before the panel but hell, Vinnie Jones as the bad

guy, I’m in! Not really a stretch for him but still, Bullet Tooth Tony’s the man. The movie,

based on a short story by Clive Barker, is about a photographer who investigates some crazy

shit happening in the subway, i.e. people being killed yo!

Clips: A teaser was played to start off, which was random shots of the inside of an

empty subway train. The camera pans up to see meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. Creepy!

The trailer, which obviously showed more of the actual film, was made just for The Con. In

it, we get to see the setup of how the photog (Bradley Cooper) starts investigating the subway

disappearances.

I really liked the teaser, especially the reveal of the meat hooks, it made me feel both

frightened and hungry for a steak. The trailer itself didn’t really do anything in the way of

making me feel safer about taking public transportation, but it brought me in and had me

interested in seeing it. I just wished they showed actual clips from the flick. No biggie

though. On to the bullet point learnings!

• During the Q&A, someone asked Barker what scared him. He’s a huge animal lover, so

  thinking about “how the hamburger got into the hamburger” really wigs him out.

• He also mentioned his visit to a slaughterhouse and first time embalming someone as scary

  experiences.

• The panel was dominated by Barker’s slow, raspy delivery. By the time they got to Vinnie

  Jones, he answered his first question with a mocking, raspy Barker voice.

• Barker said MIDNIGHT is the best adaptation of his short fiction work, calling it, “a

  dark, dark movie.”

• Bradley Cooper talked about how scared of Vinnie Jones he is. During an intense scene in

  which they have a bit of scuffle, Cooper really didn’t think Vinnie was acting.

• Clive’s BOOKS OF BLOOD starts shooting in October in Scotland.
• Despite my thinking the title was derived from a girl’s night out with a college football

  team, the title actually comes from an experience Barker had with “special cookies”. After

  eating a batch, Barker gave titles to 11 unnamed stories.

• Should be out next year.

VIDEO
INTERVIEW w/ Clive Barker

VIDEO
INTERVIEW w/ Vinnie Jones

VIDEO
INTERVIEW w/ Bradley Cooper

SAW IV

Participants:
Director Darren Bousman
Mark Burg
Tobin Bell

By the time SAW IV rolled around, the only folks that were left were press people and the

hardcore fans. Not to say that the place wasn’t crowded. There was still a lot of people but

it was obvious who really wanted to check out the new SAW shite. As with last year’s SAW III

panel, they offered very little in the way of plot details, which is cool with me. What they

did show us was a teaser and a clip of the uncut first five minutes of the flick.

Clip: The teaser wasn’t much, other than a bunch of poor saps tied up in chains. The

second clip was a doozy. We fade into a man waking up, disoriented with a chain around his

neck. His eyes have been sewn shut. On the other end of that chain is a man with his tongue

cut out. As the no eyes man tries to assess the situation, the no tongue guy sees the key for the

chain’s lock on the back of the man’s neck. After a pretty intense fight, the no tongue guy kills

the other dude, grabs the key and unlocks the chain. Once he does that, blood starts pouring out of his mouth. Anddddd……scene.

Honestly, this had me at the chain-fighting-struggle. Being that the SAW series is what it is (meaning you know what you’re getting in terms of violence and what not), it still somehow seemed fresh and new. I don’t know, maybe I’m a glutton for this kind of shit. Here’s some other notable points that came out of the panel.

• Darren Bousman and Mark Burg had just learned that the flick received an NC-17 rating, which was met with a big applause.
• When asked how could Jigsaw come back after being killed, Darren responded with, “Legends never die.”
• Darren said that the success of the SAW flicks is based on how angry the MPAA is at his flicks.
• The film will be released October 26th.