Latest news with #RonPerlman
Geek Tyrant
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Review: Logic's PARADISE RECORDS Is a Ridiculously Fun Ride That Will Bring You Back to Your Favorite '90s Hangout Movies — GeekTyrant
The movie Paradise Records is making its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival today, and I was able to watch it ahead of its release. The film was written, directed, and produced by hip-hop artist Logic, who also starred in the film, making his big screen debut in each of those capacities. In the movie, Logic plays Cooper, a record store owner who, along with his cousin and friends, is trying to keep the store alive despite unpaid bills piling up. While this seems like a simple story that we've seen before, quirky characters, star cameos, and a hostage situation with bloody mayhem makes the story unique in the best ways. It's reminiscent of the '90s movies we all loved, which take place in malls, record stores, comic book shops, diners, video stores, and other small town businesses we grew up hanging out at. The best part of the film is the banter between the friends and the jokes they lob at one another throughout every scene. We even get to see outtakes at the end of the movie that include some great one-liners that didn't make the cut. The film reminds me of a Jay and Silent Bob flick, which is funny because the pair do make an appearance, along with tons of other stars like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ron Perlman, Kevin Corrigan, Diedrich Bader, Martin Starr, Bobby Lee, and many more. Paradise Records is just a good time full of lighthearted, R-rated fun, and I had a blast watching it. Stay tuned for the film's theatrical release date.
Geek Tyrant
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Mike Flanagan Confirms His CLAYFACE Movie Script Was Inspired by BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES — GeekTyrant
Mike Flanagan is one hell of a filmmaker and storyteller, and in the projects he works on, he's no stranger to horror or heartbreak. It sounds like both were baked into his original vision for Clayface . While promoting his new film, The Life of Chuck , the filmmaker opened up about the DC project he once had his hands on and confirmed that his version of Clayface was heavily inspired by the acclaimed two-part Batman: The Animated Series episode 'Feat of Clay.' When asked if his script was inspired by that, Flanagan told ComicBook: 'Of course it was. I mean that is the perfect [story]. 'Feat of Clay,' Ron Perlman, to me, that's it. That two-parter knocked me out. The short answer is that is absolutely that is what inspired my script. 'That is the world I wanted to live in. Batman: The Animated Series when I was growing up was my Batman. As much as [Michael] Keaton was my Batman, The Animated Series really was my Batman.' That emotional anchor from the animated series clearly left a mark on Flanagan. While he's not directing the film due to other projects like Carrie, his story may still shape the final product. A new writer has since jumped on the project, and word is, it's said to be getting a page one rewrite, which is a shame, if true. Flanagan went on to say: 'I don't know what they're doing with Clayface. I'm not directing it, and that filmmaker will need to make it their own. I know that they're doing work on the script. 'I'm off doing other things now, I really hope it remains true to the spirit of what I wanted it to be. But it's not my movie, so I'll be in the audience with you, anxious to see how it comes out.' Clayface is currently slated as the third film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's new DC Universe, with a September 2026 release date. James Watkins ( The Woman in Black ) is attached to direct, and the screenplay is currently being revised by Hossein Amini ( Drive, Obi-Wan Kenobi ). No casting has been announced, but production is expected to begin later this year. As for 'Feat of Clay,' it tells the tragic origin of Matt Hagen, a disfigured actor who, in desperation, uses an experimental chemical called Renuyu to shapeshift and keep working. The thing is, It's addictive, and he becomes a puppet for corrupt businessman Roland Daggett, leading to his horrific transformation into Clayface. That storyline is packed with body horror and emotional despair, feels like something Flanagan could have knocked out of the park. Previous story reports hinted that Clayface would follow a washed-up B-movie actor who takes a mysterious substance to stay relevant. It's not hard to see how Flanagan might have riffed on the classic Daggett/Hagen dynamic, updated for a new audience, but still rooted in themes of desperation, addiction, and exploitation. Hopefully, not everything that Flanagan delivered in his script will be scrubbed away. With Amini's track record and Watkins' eye for atmosphere, Clayface could very well be DC's first true body horror character study. A monster movie with a soul. And while Flanagan isn't behind the camera, here's hoping the bones of his version stay intact. Because if done right, this could be a great film.
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ron Perlman on Hellboy, the LA fires and Trump: ‘A snake-oil con-artist who'd sell you bad vodka and swampland in New Jersey'
Ron Perlman could be mistaken for Will Ferrell's grumpy older brother. Today, however, he mostly looks trapped. That slab of a face, frosted with a white beard and moustache, seems too formidable to be contained by the narrow vertical frame of his iPad camera. Wearing a stonewashed grey denim jacket over a black shirt, he peers down at me, brow crinkled, as if from a great height. It's like being on a Zoom call with Goliath. Though he introduces himself as 'Ron from Brooklyn', the actor, who is a few weeks shy of 75, is sitting at home in Los Angeles. No, the fires didn't touch him, but the nearest ones were only three miles away, close enough to make him jittery. 'Scary times,' he says. His voice rumbles like a freight train. Tom Waits, whom he was once plausibly but falsely rumoured to be playing in a movie, sounds like Charles Hawtrey by comparison. Perlman has lived in LA since the 1980s, when he was one of the leads in the hit romantic fantasy series Beauty and the Beast. (The Terminator's Linda Hamilton was the other.) He won a Golden Globe award and received two Emmy nominations for the show. But Perlman's fame was curiously manageable. He got the best restaurant tables, yet no one knew what he really looked like beneath the leonine disguise he wore for the role. One magazine voted him the sexiest man of the year – in his Beast makeup. No prosthetics were needed for his new film, the atmospheric, old-fashioned, black-and-white boxing drama Day of the Fight, in which he plays Stevie, who is training Irish Mike (Michael Pitt) for his latest bout. 'When you say 'old-fashioned', I mean, sure, no one's wearing spandex,' Perlman concedes. 'But it's all about friendship and love. Mistakes, victories and failures. To me, that's not old-fashioned. It's the kind of movie I could wallow in for days.' The director is Jack Huston, whose grandfather John made the sweat- and booze-soaked 1972 boxing classic Fat City. Day of the Fight conveys a decent sense of life in a spit-and-sawdust gym, and features some high-calibre cameos (Joe Pesci, Steve Buscemi). The worst you could say is that there's not enough Ron Perlman in it. But it proves that he has few equals when it comes to evoking an entire existence in a flash. He growls his first line ('Hey asshole!') and most of the others, which include 'Kid, I love ya' and 'Get da fuck outta here!' Leading roles aren't his thing anyway, unless you count occasional grotesques such as the carnival strongman in the twisted dreamscape of The City of Lost Children (1995), co-directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie), or the horned, tomato-red hero of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy adventures. Del Toro stood his ground against the studio, which wanted to cast The Rock or Vin Diesel, and modelled the character so closely on Perlman that when the actor flirted with using a different voice, the director said: 'What are you doing? Just be Ron Perlman and that will be Hellboy.' Personality-wise, there isn't much separating him from his infernal alter ego. 'The character's number one charm is that he's a bit of an underachiever,' Perlman says. 'He's a superhero who'd rather watch the Marx brothers and play with his cats and eat pizza than save the world. But he does it because the world is a fucking mess. Someone's got to. He does it reluctantly. And that's how I do everything.' If Perlman sees himself as an underachiever, directors don't agree. Many have kept coming back to him for more. He made three films with Jeunet, the best of which is the cruelly underrated Alien Resurrection (1997). Three with Jean-Jacques Annaud, too, including the ones that launched him as a film actor after a decade in theatre, and established him as the king of performing in prosthetics: first, the prehistoric Quest for Fire (1981), for which a glossary of grunts and growls was specially devised by Anthony Burgess; and second, a chilling adaptation of Umberto Eco's medieval whodunit The Name of the Rose (1986), in which Perlman's character was falsely accused of Satanism and burned at the stake. Spending four or five hours in the makeup chair for these films, and for Beauty and the Beast, led to him being called the Lon Chaney of his generation. It served a psychological purpose, too. 'When I was a young man, I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I was given this gift of putting layers of stuff between me and the real world so that I could free myself to play these characters. Then in my mid-40s, I experienced a kind of détente with my body: 'Oh, maybe you're not so bad after all.'' His relationship with del Toro has stretched from the Mexican auteur's gory 1992 debut, Cronos, to Nightmare Alley (2021) and Pinocchio (2022), with only the occasional gap. 'He has a feel for my skillset, which is limited,' Perlman says. Does he really think that? 'Well, I was hoping you might correct me,' he deadpans. When I do, perhaps a fraction too late, he perks up: 'There you go! I was spearfishing for validation and I got what I wanted.' In 1990, del Toro, then a special-effects makeup expert, sent him a handwritten fan letter. At the meeting that followed, Perlman witnessed the budding director's unorthodox approach to dinner. 'Guillermo said, 'I like to start with dessert.'' At the end of the meal came soup. 'By the time we stood up, we were like brothers who had been separated at birth.' Once shooting on Cronos was finished, Perlman threw a Hollywood bash for del Toro – he calls it his 'I've found this genius film-maker and I want you all to meet him because he's going to become one of the greats' party. Hamilton brought along her then partner James Cameron, which sparked an enduring friendship between the Avatar director and del Toro. That means Perlman can be indirectly credited for the moment at the 1998 Academy Awards when Cameron – furious that Harvey Weinstein had sacked del Toro from his second film, Mimic – nearly lamped him with the Oscar he had just won for Titanic. 'We all wanted to take a crack at Harvey,' shrugs Perlman. The closest he ever got was urinating on his own hands before pressing the flesh with the feared producer. Recounting that story on Twitter in 2018 led Perlman into a spat with Donald Trump Jr, who accused him of knowing about Weinstein's predatory behaviour and yet doing nothing. 'I never said I knew Harvey was a rapist,' Perlman shot back. 'I did know he was a prick, though.' It was the start of an outspoken streak that he has only recently reined in. He was the last of the cast members of Sons of Anarchy, the series in which he played the leader of a biker gang, to join Twitter. 'They were all saying, 'Ron, it's fun!' I didn't have any desire to exercise that muscle until the arrival of our 45th – and now 47th – president. I'd grown up in New York so I knew everything there was to know about that snake-oil salesman con-artist. I was so offended to see this guy who'd sell you shitty steak and bad vodka and swampland in New Jersey now emerging in a leadership position. And yeah, it got hot and heavy.' You could say that. At one point in 2020, Perlman challenged Republican senator Ted Cruz to a fight online. The actor was still taunting Republicans last summer, when hopes were high for Kamala Harris to take the presidency. He tweeted at Elon Musk: 'Yo elon! [sic] You sweating yet?' He was hardly alone in believing the election would have a happier outcome. How is he dealing with the fallout now? 'I was gonna ask you,' he says glumly. 'It's all still as impossible to process as the fires in LA. This is going to have to run its course.' It's a long way from Hellboy. But then he offers a glimmer of hope: 'I'm spending a lot of secretive time working on my version of counteracting. If I get lucky, I'm going to go back to being very public again.' Political ambitions? 'No. A counter-movement.' Wait, what? 'If I have anything to announce, I'll come to you, I swear to God. But that's all I'm going to say for now, my friend.' I think back to his description of Hellboy, and how he goes off reluctantly to save the world because it's a mess. Well, someone's got to. Why not Ron Perlman? Day of the Fight is streaming on the Icon Film Channel, and is in cinemas from 7 March
