Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy
Netflix l Blu-ray l DVD l Amazon Prime
Directed by Daniel Farrands & Andrew Kasch
Written by Thommy Hutson
Starring Heather Langenkamp, Wes Craven, Robert Englund, Robert Shaye, Lin Shaye, Sara Risher, Rachel Talalay, and David Chaskin
1428 Films/ Panic Productions
Not Rated | 240 Minutes
Release Date: May 4, 2010

Horror movies were becoming one-dimensional and sequel-crazy. By mid-1984, three Halloweens, and four Friday the 13ths had come out. Then along came Freddy Krueger.

Freddy was different from all his horror icon predecessors. Whereas Michael Myers and Jason were silent masked stalkers, Freddy had personality. A child killer murdered in an act of town-coordinated vigilante justice, he unfortunately becomes a dream demon and stalks the children of his killers while they sleep. His grotesquely burned face left nothing to the imagination, and his ability to work within the dream world made him limitless as a killer and gave the filmmakers the freedom to go crazy with off-the-wall kills.

Fans of the many great animated features to come out of Japan’s fabled Studio Ghibli are never happy to hear that the man behind the curtain, the master himself, Hayao Miyazaki, is retiring from making feature films. It’s something he has said in the past many times, but this time, with the release of his final film The Wind Rises having come and gone, it appears to be for real.

As depressing as all of that is, it turns out that filmmaker Mami Sunada was given unheard of access to Studio Ghibli to document how things work there and show Miyazaki, the writer and director of Castle in the Sky, My Friend Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and more, in his final days working as a filmmaker.

The result is a documentary titled The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, and you can watch a trailer for the movie below. Think of it like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but following a master filmmaker instead of a master sushi chef.

Raging Boll
DVD
Directed by Dan Lee West
Starring Uwe Boll
Olive Films
Release Date: October 21, 2014

On September 23, 2006 four online film writers were selected from an extensive pool of challengers to go head-to-head with controversial German director Uwe Boll in one round of boxing at the Plaza of Nations entertainment complex located in Vancouver, British Columbia. The event had all of the marks of being a public relations stunt of the lowest stunt, but it held a morbid curiosity value for longtime detractors of Boll and anyone who ever wanted to see a filmmaker actually take on some of their most vocal critics with punches rather than words.

The four critics selected were Rue Morgue writer and current Fangoria editor Chris Alexander, Ain’t It Cool News writer Jeff Sneider, amateur boxer and Internet critic Nelson Chance Minter, and Something Awful webmaster and CEO Rich Kyanka.

The event was heavily hyped and dubbed Raging Boll by promoters. That’s also the name given to this 2010 documentary directed by Dan Lee West, who worked in various capacities on a few of Boll’s earlier films prior to becoming a filmmaker, which is just now receiving its first American DVD release courtesy of Olive Films.

The TV business is harsh and unforgiving. Even when all the steps are taken to get a show made, they often fail and find themselves canceled…sometimes before even getting a fair enough shot to grow their fanbase. And when a show does fail, most of the blame falls on the showrunner. Even when shows are a smashing success, such as AMC’s The Walking Dead, the job of showrunner can prove to be a daunting task.

A new documentary titled Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show is on the way, and aims to shine a light on one of the more challenging jobs in the entertainment industry. In it, a veritable who’s who of top TV showrunners talk about their work, including J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Damon Lindelof, Terence Winter, Ronald D. Moore, and many more.

A trailer for the documentary has been released, and you can check it out below.

With the entire internet dumping ice water over their heads to raise awareness for ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or, as it is commonly known, Lou Gehrig’s Disease), I thought that I would put a heavy metal spin and a very human face on the story.

Guitar virtuoso Jason Becker was 19 years old and on top of the world. He had already released two critically acclaimed albums with fellow shredder and future Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman under the moniker of Cacophony as well as a blistering solo debut album. He had just been hand picked to be David Lee Roth’s guitarist following in the giant footsteps of Edward Van Halen and Steve Vai. But just one week after getting the Roth gig, his meteoric rise came to a screeching halt when he was diagnosed with ALS and told that he had 3-5 years to live. His first question to the doctor was, “Will I be able to tour?”