With the smash hit Scream, novice screenwriter Kevin Williamson and veteran horror director Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street) revived the...... more

With the smash hit Scream, novice screenwriter Kevin Williamson and veteran horror director Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street) revived the mouldering corpse of the teen horror picture, both creatively and commercially, by playfully acknowledging the exhausted clichés and then turning them inside out. Scream is a postmodern slasher movie, a horror film that cleverly deconstructs horror films, then reassembles the dead tissue, and (like Frankenstein's monster) creates new life. When a serial killer starts hacking up their fellow teens, the media-savvy youngsters of Scream realise that the smartest way of sticking around for the sequel is to avoid the terminal behaviours that inevitably doom supporting players in the movies. They've seen all the movies, and the rules of the genre are like second nature to them. One of the scariest and funniest setups features a kid watching John Carpenter's seminal Halloween on video. As Jamie Lee Curtis is shadowed by Michael Meyers and the kid on the couch yells at her to turn around, Craven reverses his camera and we see that the kid should be taking his own advice. The fresh-faced young cast (including Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette) is fun to watch, and their tart dialogue is sprinkled with enough archly self-conscious pop-culture references to make Quentin Tarantino blush. --Jim Emerson

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dvd blu ray hd dvd dvd format dvd sub type dvds rarewaves books cd s dvd s music and games search titles descriptions...... more

dvd blu ray hd dvd dvd format dvd sub type dvds rarewaves books cd s dvd s music and games search titles descriptions blu ray books cds classical opera cds clothing merchandise country folk cds dance cds dvd film dvds easy listening cds hd dvd instrumental cds jazz blues cds latin cds mouse mats nintendo ds pc pop cds ps 3 psp games rap hiphop cds reggae ska cds rock archive prints rock cds soul r b cds soundtrack musicals spoken world comedy t shirts usb video games vinyl wii world music cds x

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With the smash hit Scream, novice screenwriter Kevin Williamson and veteran horror director Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street) revived the...... more

With the smash hit Scream, novice screenwriter Kevin Williamson and veteran horror director Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street) revived the mouldering corpse of the teen horror picture, both creatively and commercially, by playfully acknowledging the exhausted clichés and then turning them inside out. Scream is a postmodern slasher movie, a horror film that cleverly deconstructs horror films, then reassembles the dead tissue, and (like Frankenstein's monster) creates new life. When a serial killer starts hacking up their fellow teens, the media-savvy youngsters of Scream realise that the smartest way of sticking around for the sequel is to avoid the terminal behaviours that inevitably doom supporting players in the movies. They've seen all the movies, and the rules of the genre are like second nature to them. One of the scariest and funniest setups features a kid watching John Carpenter's seminal Halloween on video. As Jamie Lee Curtis is shadowed by Michael Meyers and the kid on the couch yells at her to turn around, Craven reverses his camera and we see that the kid should be taking his own advice. The fresh-faced young cast (including Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette) is fun to watch, and their tart dialogue is sprinkled with enough archly self-conscious pop-culture references to make Quentin Tarantino blush. --Jim Emerson

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dvd blu ray hd dvd dvd format dvd sub type dvds rarewaves books cd s dvd s music and games search titles descriptions...... more

dvd blu ray hd dvd dvd format dvd sub type dvds rarewaves books cd s dvd s music and games search titles descriptions blu ray books cds classical opera cds clothing merchandise country folk cds dance cds dvd film dvds easy listening cds hd dvd instrumental cds jazz blues cds latin cds mouse mats nintendo ds pc pop cds ps 3 psp games rap hiphop cds reggae ska cds rock archive prints rock cds soul r b cds soundtrack musicals spoken world comedy t shirts usb video games vinyl wii world music cds x

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Fully aware of its status as the sequel to the surprise hit thriller of 1996, this lively follow-up trades freshness for familiarity, playing on our affection...... more

Fully aware of its status as the sequel to the surprise hit thriller of 1996, this lively follow-up trades freshness for familiarity, playing on our affection for returning characters while obeying--and then subverting--the "rules" of sequels. Once again, movie references are cleverly employed to draw us into the story, which takes place two years after the events of Scream, at a small Ohio college, where the Scream survivors reunite when another series of mysterious killings begins. Capitalising on the guesswork involving a host of potential suspects, director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson have crafted a thriller that's more of a Scream clone than a genuinely inventive new story. But the shocks are just as effective, and escalating tension leads to a tautly staged climax that's simultaneously logical and giddily over the top. Background information for trivia buffs: to preserve the secrecy of plot twists, copies of the screenplay were heavily guarded during production and restricted to only the most crucial personnel. When an early draft was circulated on the Internet, screenwriter Kevin Williamson did rewrites, and subsequent drafts were printed with red ink on brown paper, eliminating the threat of photocopying. None of the cast members knew who the killer was until the final scenes were filmed. -- Jeff Shannon

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Without a refresher viewing, the details of Scream, the 1996 collaboration between horror-meister director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson (who...... more

Without a refresher viewing, the details of Scream, the 1996 collaboration between horror-meister director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson (who also famously chronicled the ways of wayward teens without so much bloodshed as creator of the TV sensation Dawson's Creek) might be a little hazy. But even through the fog of memory, it's a pretty sure thing that texting, Facebook, live video streams on smart phones, and references to the Saw movie franchise were not major narrative devices. Even so, there is a common thread that yanks this inventive resurrection of the series back to life and ties it quite cleverly to the first, second, and third Scream installments. Summed up, that reach is captured in the word meta, which is pretty much what makes Scream 4 such a hoot as it scampers along on such a high plane of conceptual ingenuity. That several characters use the word in describing the action they're participating in makes the entirety of circular plot points, referential dialogue, and general level of self-reflexive action all the more exuberant. There are a few causes for honest screams in the action, even though the obvious raison d'être for Craven and Williamson's reteaming is to make audiences yelp with delight that trumps genuine fear pretty much every time. Original cast members Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Neve Campbell have all returned for the reunion, which also introduces (and largely kills off) a new set of young but very familiar faces recruited for the festivities. The sizable ensemble cast includes Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Alison Brie, Hayden Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Rory Culkin, Adam Brody, Mary McDonnell, and Heather Graham, among many others who make up visitors or inhabitants of the imaginary town of Woodsboro, USA, scene of the meta-movie carnage that began 15 years ago. The excuse for this round of action is the return of original surviving victim Sidney Prescott (Campbell), who is making a hometown stop on her book tour. As the heroic survivor of the various incarnations of Ghostface, the knife-wielding killer in Scream's first trilogy, Sidney has become a celebrity and purposefully shrugged off the victim label, but still lives on as a folk hero. Turns out she's especially popular with Woodsboro's high-school population and the many horror film buffs who constantly analyze their every activity in relation to the behaviors of movie characters and the rights and wrongs of what to do when there's a killer on the loose. It therefore surprises no one that Ghostface has returned to haunt Sidney, including retired reporter Gale Weathers (Cox), her now-husband Sheriff Dewey Riley (Arquette), and the assortment of teenage dopes who saturate the entire venture with theatrical gouts of gooey, black blood. The movie-within-a-movie franchise Stab is also a major player in Scream 4. Its sequel count is now up to seven as we discover in the briskly crafted and very funny opening scenes. In fact, Scream 4 is constructed with smarter precision than any of its predecessors and would require a lot of brain power for someone who feels up to the task of trying to figure out who Ghostface is this time and why the killing has started again. But taking the story seriously pretty much defeats the purpose of the absurdly entertaining formal achievement that Craven and Williamson have created. All the stabbing and screaming and intricate (il)logic of horror movie conventions are simply part of the mysterious amusement of a concept that will not die, now delightfully retooled for a new generation. --Ted Fry

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