Wes Craven

While most of us have Christmas on our minds, Universal Studios Hollywood is already planning for next Halloween. > Halloween Horror Nights 2011: Review | Photos | Celebrities   Universal has been conducting an online survey to gauge fan interest in 50 movie and television properties as potential haunted maze themes for Halloween Horror Nights 2012. The annual post-Halloween poll offers fans a glimpse into what could be on the horror horizon at Universal.

While most of us have Christmas on our minds, Universal Studios Hollywood is already planning for next Halloween. > Halloween Horror Nights 2011: Review | Photos | Celebrities   Universal has been conducting an online survey to gauge fan interest in 50 movie and television properties as potential haunted maze themes for Halloween Horror Nights 2012. The annual post-Halloween poll offers fans a glimpse into what could be on the horror horizon at Universal.

Wanda Sapp often visited movie sets to watch her daughter perform stunts. She never dreamed she'd watch her daughter die. Sapp and two of her other children were present in November, when Sonja Davis fell to her death while working as a stunt double on the upcoming Eddie Murphy film "Vampire in Brooklyn." The family is suing Paramount Studios and Eddie Murphy Productions for $10 million, alleging that the film crew failed to provide proper safety equipment.

Following a bloody scene near the conclusion of "Scream 4," the character played by the horror franchise veteran Neve Campbell turns to series newcomer Emma Roberts and self-referentially cautions her to not mess with the original, though she uses cruder language to express her displeasure. The question this weekend is whether fans of the first three films also might feel that the new thriller tramples on the "Scream" legacy. It's been 11 years since "Scream 3" arrived in theaters, and franchises don't normally relaunch themselves after such a long hiatus.

It's nearly Halloween--horror movie season--and a new Wes Craven flick is opening Friday, but don't go to see it expecting a bloody fright fest. His "Music of the Heart," as the title might suggest, is about as far away as one can get from the filmmaker's signature works, movies like "Scream" or "Nightmare on Elm Street."

Wes Craven is through making excuses for his macabre handiwork. After 25 years of raising grade-A gooseflesh, most recently with "Scream," he has decided to go upbeat and up-market with a "low-budget art film." "What's the point of doing more [horror films]?" he grumbles morosely. "Films about the violence of the human soul are looked down on as exploitative; they cause some great societal ill. So I've decided to try something different." But not just at the moment. . . .

He may be known as a master of screams, but at home, Wes Craven likes his peace. What's more, he likes it green. At any time of the day or night, the director of the horror classics "Nightmare on Elm Street," "Shocker" and "Scream" might be roaming in his garden, checking the fishpond and admiring the view. "I'm a late-night guy," he explains. "I'll be out here for the sunset and later, if I'm up all night, I'll wander out and catch the dawn."

Director Wes Craven has been responsible for scaring the living daylights out of people with horrifying thrillers such as "The Hills Have Eyes," "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" trilogy. But the 65-year-old director is somewhat frightened about teaching a directing workshop Wednesday as part of Cal State Long Beach's 10th annual WideScreen Film Festival.

WHEN you're Wes Craven, here's how things happen. You want to make a thriller, in this case "Red-Eye." Your top choices for the leads are Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams, two of Hollywood's up-and-coming actors. McAdams flies from Canada to Los Angeles for a brief meeting with Craven. And it's a go. Murphy reads the script, flies from London, has lunch with Craven at LAX, signs on, and then 40 minutes later hops on a plane back to London.

Following a bloody scene near the conclusion of "Scream 4," the character played by the horror franchise veteran Neve Campbell turns to series newcomer Emma Roberts and self-referentially cautions her to not mess with the original, though she uses cruder language to express her displeasure. The question this weekend is whether fans of the first three films also might feel that the new thriller tramples on the "Scream" legacy. It's been 11 years since "Scream 3" arrived in theaters, and franchises don't normally relaunch themselves after such a long hiatus.

"My Soul to Take," the first film horror-meister Wes Craven has both written and directed since 1994's "New Nightmare" (and his first picture in 3-D), is a thrill-free snooze that will certainly rank as one of the least ? if not the least ? effective entries in Craven's nearly 40-year canon of cinematic shockers. The overly complex story goes something like this: Sixteen years ago in the town of Riverton, Abel Plenkov (Rául Esparza), a schizophrenic family man with seven personalities?

Filmmaker Jason Reitman took some time out of his hectic award season schedule (for his Oscar-nominated "Up in the Air") to take over programming at the New Beverly Cinema beginning Friday. The writer-director is also on tap to appear at the revival theater -- schedule permitting -- to introduce his faves. Screening Friday and Saturday is a Matthew Broderick double bill: John Hughes' "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" from 1986 and Alexander Payne's razor-sharp 1999 satire, "Election."

Moviegoers, beware. A host of masked, murderous slashers, demented fiends and demonic forces are about to converge on the multiplex, but it's not your immortal soul they're after. It's your hard-earned dollars. Horror films are dominating the release schedule in 2009 -- almost certainly, event movies like "Watchmen" and "Terminator Salvation" will outgross their spookier kin, but not a month will go by without at least one film designed to terrify audiences making its way into theaters.

Joan Rivers was just a shadow of herself on the hot Viennese Terrace of the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena. She was, in fact, in Pennsylvania, selling things on QVC. Only her ethereal satellite-fed video image cracked jokes for critics and reporters who had come to TV Guide Channel's first press tour event to schmooze with Rivers, her daughter Melissa and the lesser celebrities who were "scheduled to appear" at the Monday cocktail party.

WHEN you're Wes Craven, here's how things happen. You want to make a thriller, in this case "Red-Eye." Your top choices for the leads are Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams, two of Hollywood's up-and-coming actors. McAdams flies from Canada to Los Angeles for a brief meeting with Craven. And it's a go. Murphy reads the script, flies from London, has lunch with Craven at LAX, signs on, and then 40 minutes later hops on a plane back to London.

Director Wes Craven has been responsible for scaring the living daylights out of people with horrifying thrillers such as "The Hills Have Eyes," "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" trilogy. But the 65-year-old director is somewhat frightened about teaching a directing workshop Wednesday as part of Cal State Long Beach's 10th annual WideScreen Film Festival.

Freddy Krueger fans will exult and horror movie mavens will not be surprised: "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" is much better than the usual run of scare pictures. Craven directed the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie, still by far the best, but had no real involvement in any of the five sequels. His "New Nightmare" draws on some Old Nightmares from the series but also gets at something new to the genre.

A wrongful-death lawsuit was filed Wednesday in a Los Angeles Superior Court against Paramount Studios, actor Eddie Murphy and director Wes Craven by the family of a stuntwoman killed during filming of an upcoming movie. The lawsuit, which seeks $10 million, is a result of a fatal stunt involving Sonya Davis on the set of Paramount's film "A Vampire in Brooklyn." Davis was critically injured after an unsuccessful 42-foot backward leap from a building in November.

You can't judge a movie by its title. Especially in the case of "Ruby's Bucket of Blood," a new Showtime movie premiering Saturday on the cable network. Despite its Grand Guignol moniker, "Ruby's Bucket of Blood" is not some gory horror flick, but a sexy, sultry drama with a hefty dose of blues music that stars Angela Bassett--who doubles as the film's producer--Kevin Anderson, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Jurnee Smollett.

It's nearly Halloween--horror movie season--and a new Wes Craven flick is opening Friday, but don't go to see it expecting a bloody fright fest. His "Music of the Heart," as the title might suggest, is about as far away as one can get from the filmmaker's signature works, movies like "Scream" or "Nightmare on Elm Street."