Here's a first look at the final box art for the North American release of THE DEFILED. Warren has done a great job on this and it was a pleasure to design the artwork with him.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Defiled Box Art
Here's a first look at the final box art for the North American release of THE DEFILED. Warren has done a great job on this and it was a pleasure to design the artwork with him.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Great feedback on AD
Word is out and already emails are flooding in about our film. We will be in Europe in February showing the picture. Can't wait to see the response on the big screen again.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Full Page Ad - Coming Soon
Here's an advance look at the full pge ad that will run in both RUE MORGUE and FANGORIA magazines this Spring. If you're not familiar with either of these fine publications - shame on you! They're the bible of monster movie and horror flick magazines. More to come soon!!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
New JG Interview in Reel Chicago
http://www.reelchicago.com/story.cfm?storyID=3119.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:W North Ave,Chicago,United States
April 2011 DVD Release
Reality Entertainment/Warner Brothers to release The Defiled April 2011 in the USA. Full commentary tracks by stars and director Julian Grant plus full photo gallery.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:W North Ave,Chicago,United States
Updates for 2011
Lots to post soon about our film. A big fantasy film festival in Europe is showcasing us in February. No names yet as it is very hush hush. More when I can.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:W North Ave,Chicago,United States
Friday, October 8, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Subway Station @ Home
Here's another poster. On my local train line. Love it. A friend (who shall not be named) has volunteered to liberate one for me. The poster, that is - not the purple punk girl Ha Ha.
Reel Chicago Showcase
This just in. Local webzine Reel Chicago promotes the "Illinoise" Filmmakers and we are there front and center. Thanks, Ruth. Really appreciate it.
Go to http://www.reelchicago.com/story.cfm?storyID=3005 for all the details.
Defiled added to Hallowscreen, Florida
This just in! We've been slotted into the Halloween Schedule in Sarasota, Florida for the inaugural film festival HALLOWSCREEN.
It's great to support horror themed festivals and I'm making it a real priority in 2011 to play as many film festivals as possible with our film. Contact me here if you want to play THE DEFILED at your horror themed event.
For more info on HALLOWSCREEN, please visit http://hallowscreen.blogspot.com/
Bigger, better - Cooler!
We're everywhere!! From banners hanging on poles to large bus posters in the downtown Loop and beyond, the CIFF posters can be seen throughout Chicago. Am so happy to be on this artwork as it just keeps us out in front!
Sunday, October 3, 2010
As seen on the CTA
Finally I catch up with the elusive CIFF poster my students and friends have all seen. That's Brian Shaw and Kathleen Lawlor in the film to the right of the logo of the Chicago Int. Film Festival. Thanks Mimi and all the lovely folks at CIFF. I've never been treated so professionally and kindly. Comp tickets for cast and crew, full passes for the stars - this is a film festival done right. Could not recommend more.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
New Promotional Picture - Julian Grant
New promo pix for THE DEFILED. My first time in greasepaint. I did the makeup application myself and had a grand old time doing it. Love the tone and texture of this stuff. It really is like painting on a canvas.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
New Critical Essay - Just Received
On The Ambitions of The Defiled
Zoran Samardzija
Good Horror films manage both to scare us and disturb us with imagery that channels deep-seated psychological and social anxieties. Then there are the even more intellectually ambitious ones. In addition to viscerally thrilling their audience, they inspire philosophical reflection about how cinema, and especially the Horror genre, mediate and transform our understanding of the world and history itself. In a post-1960s North American context, the two masters of this brand of intellectually challenging Horror film have been George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Romero is obviously best known for his Night of the Living Dead (1968) and five other zombie films. As influential as those have been, for me Romero’s masterpiece remains his film Martin (1977). Martin is both a shocking viewing experience and a complex examination of vampire myths, alienation, and belief. In addition, it provides an almost unparalleled ethnographic record of American economic decay in the late 1970s, right before Reganism came along to usher in the final victory of financialization and corporatism over life in the United States. Cronenberg, too, in his best films mixes the visceral with the philosophical. No matter how many times I view his Videodrome (1983), I always manage to be disgusted by its imagery and intellectually enthralled by its vision of a world where media and medium and external reality become indistinguishable.
Julian Grant’s The Defiled firmly belongs to this tradition of intellectual Horror films perfected by George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Rest assured it has enough gruesome imagery to churn the stomach of even the most desensitized of Horror film fans. Yet, the opening scenes of the film immediately alert us that The Defiled has far more ambitious and eccentric aims than just revolting its audience. With its beautiful blue-toned black and white cinematography, it certainly does not look like other post-apocalyptic zombie/ virus films to which the audience may be accustomed. Even better, The Defiled has no intelligible dialogue. Why not you ask? This is because Grant subverts the conventions of the zombie/virus sub-genre by giving us a zombie who is the main protagonist of the film. Recall that George A. Romero flirted with the idea in his underrated Land of the Dead (2005) with the African-American gas-station attendant zombie who is more compelling than most of the humans in the film. Without spoiling anything about the plot, suffice it to say that The Defiled ultimately does not ask us to identify with a zombie protagonist for the purposes of satire or direct social commentary. Instead, it invites its audience to revert back to older historical forms of Horror film spectatorship: to empathize with the humanity within the monster rather than reveal the monstrous within the human.
For all its compelling subversions of the modern post-apocalyptic zombie film, there is something, therefore, also old-fashioned about The Defiled. Rather than replicating the nihilism of recent Horror films that imagine the end of humanity without mourning its demise, it asks us to reconsider our origins and fate as humans—origins that it implicitly filters through the lens of film history. The Defiled, in other words, contains several homages and references to a diverse spectrum of films: Frankenstein (1932), George A. Romero’s aforementioned zombie films, and Eraserhead (1977) are but a few that stood out to me. I was even reminded of the apes from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as I watched an especially de-evolved zombie early in the film. Such homages, however, are not just empty citations. Instead, cinema itself functions as the historical past in The Defiled in order to trace how we have arrived at our own era of economic crisis and to remind us that the catastrophes that beckon need not mark the end to human empathy.
Zoran Samardzija
Good Horror films manage both to scare us and disturb us with imagery that channels deep-seated psychological and social anxieties. Then there are the even more intellectually ambitious ones. In addition to viscerally thrilling their audience, they inspire philosophical reflection about how cinema, and especially the Horror genre, mediate and transform our understanding of the world and history itself. In a post-1960s North American context, the two masters of this brand of intellectually challenging Horror film have been George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Romero is obviously best known for his Night of the Living Dead (1968) and five other zombie films. As influential as those have been, for me Romero’s masterpiece remains his film Martin (1977). Martin is both a shocking viewing experience and a complex examination of vampire myths, alienation, and belief. In addition, it provides an almost unparalleled ethnographic record of American economic decay in the late 1970s, right before Reganism came along to usher in the final victory of financialization and corporatism over life in the United States. Cronenberg, too, in his best films mixes the visceral with the philosophical. No matter how many times I view his Videodrome (1983), I always manage to be disgusted by its imagery and intellectually enthralled by its vision of a world where media and medium and external reality become indistinguishable.
Julian Grant’s The Defiled firmly belongs to this tradition of intellectual Horror films perfected by George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Rest assured it has enough gruesome imagery to churn the stomach of even the most desensitized of Horror film fans. Yet, the opening scenes of the film immediately alert us that The Defiled has far more ambitious and eccentric aims than just revolting its audience. With its beautiful blue-toned black and white cinematography, it certainly does not look like other post-apocalyptic zombie/ virus films to which the audience may be accustomed. Even better, The Defiled has no intelligible dialogue. Why not you ask? This is because Grant subverts the conventions of the zombie/virus sub-genre by giving us a zombie who is the main protagonist of the film. Recall that George A. Romero flirted with the idea in his underrated Land of the Dead (2005) with the African-American gas-station attendant zombie who is more compelling than most of the humans in the film. Without spoiling anything about the plot, suffice it to say that The Defiled ultimately does not ask us to identify with a zombie protagonist for the purposes of satire or direct social commentary. Instead, it invites its audience to revert back to older historical forms of Horror film spectatorship: to empathize with the humanity within the monster rather than reveal the monstrous within the human.
For all its compelling subversions of the modern post-apocalyptic zombie film, there is something, therefore, also old-fashioned about The Defiled. Rather than replicating the nihilism of recent Horror films that imagine the end of humanity without mourning its demise, it asks us to reconsider our origins and fate as humans—origins that it implicitly filters through the lens of film history. The Defiled, in other words, contains several homages and references to a diverse spectrum of films: Frankenstein (1932), George A. Romero’s aforementioned zombie films, and Eraserhead (1977) are but a few that stood out to me. I was even reminded of the apes from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as I watched an especially de-evolved zombie early in the film. Such homages, however, are not just empty citations. Instead, cinema itself functions as the historical past in The Defiled in order to trace how we have arrived at our own era of economic crisis and to remind us that the catastrophes that beckon need not mark the end to human empathy.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Getting ready for CIFF
We're all thrilled to have the film WORLD PREMIERE at CIFF. What an honor. For years, I had a poster from their Monster Movie Marathon in my edit studio in Canada and I am excited to be part of this years line-up. I'm stopped on the street and at Columbia College Chicago all the time by students, faculty and well-wishers all looking forward to the three screenings. Am shooting the DVD commentary this Friday and look forward to sitting down with stars Brian Shaw and Kathleen Lawlor and revisiting the film.
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