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Thus far, the character of Holly Gibney has appeared in six different Stephen King books, with the seventh book, Never Flinch, on the way this year. Holly Gibney has become something of an anti-Randall Flagg, appearing across multiple series as a force for good. While Holly Gibney has been controversial among Stephen King readers, King himself clearly loves her and she's become an integral character.

Interestingly, Holly is one of the only Stephen King characters to appear in multiple Stephen King screen adaptations, with Cynthia Erivo playing Holly in The Outsider miniseries and Justine Lupe in the Mr. Mercedes TV show. Clearly, she's here to stay. For those curious about diving into her story, reading the books in chronological order is always the best way, but it's also fun to look at her appearances so far and rank them.

Books In Which Holly Has Appeared

Release Date

Mr. Mercedes

August...

Stars: Brittany Baker, Pooch Hall, Chris Whitcomb, Eric Lutes, David Gere, Brendan Kelleher, Salvatore DelGreco, Angie Campbell, Eric Allan Kramer | Written and Directed by Matthew Kohnen

Alarmed is the latest original film from the streaming service Tubi. Regular readers may have noticed it’s been a while since I’ve reviewed one of those, and there’s a simple reason for that. Apart from Terror Train, which went to a different service here, they haven’t done anything that caught my attention lately. This sounded like it could be a decent home invasion thriller so I gave it a look.

Janet and Sean are having marital issues. The fact their son Billy got busted for hacking some government networks and is back living with them 24/7 while he serves a sentence under house arrest isn’t helping matters.

They decide they need some time to themselves and plan a weekend getaway.

Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products released each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more.

Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week!

Jurassic Park Virtual Pets from Tamagotchi

Ready for a double dose of ’90s nostalgia? Tamagotchi – the beloved virtual pet keychain from our youth – is celebrating Jurassic Park’s 30th anniversary with dinosaur virtual pets. Due out in March, amber and egg versions are available to pre-order for 20.99.

Depending on how you interact with your baby dino, they may evolve into over 20 different dinosaurs, including rarities. If you don’t take proper care of them, they’ll leave you. When your prehistoric pal is in a bad mood, give them a snack (leaves and nuts for herbivores; meat and fish for carnivores) or play one of three mini-games.

Holly by Stephen King

Stephen King will publish Holly on September 5 via Scribner.

"No one knew where he came from…" "But everybody wanted what he was selling." Gravitas Ventures has revealed an official trailer for The Pez Outlaw, a documentary film that first premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival earlier this year. Another unbelievable true story, this one about a pez obsessee and his secret mission to get his hands on the golden ticket - a lot of golden tickets. "A sPEZtacularly fun documentary." Steve Glew spent the 1990s smuggling rare pez dispensers into the USA from a factory in Eastern Europe, making millions of dollars. It was all magical until his arch-nemesis, "The Pezident" from the US company, decided to destroy him. Steve becomes the hero of his own adventure, but as we know, all good things must come to an end. This also played at the Freep Film Festival and Cleveland Film Festival this year, and will be out on VOD...

Six top TV documentary directors will reveal details behind their projects when they join Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with key 2021 guild and Emmy contenders this month. Each person will participate in two video discussions to premiere on Monday, May 10, at 5:00 p.m. Pt; 8:00 p.m. Et. We’ll have a one-on-one with our senior editor Joyce Eng and a group chat with Joyce and all of the group together.

RSVP today to this specific event by clicking here to book your reservation. Or click here to RSVP for our entire ongoing panel series. We’ll send you a reminder a few minutes before the start of the show.

This “Meet the Experts” panel welcomes the following 2021 guild and Emmy contenders:

“Framing Britney Spears”: Samantha Stark

Stark was a News Emmy nominee for “Coming Out.” Other projects have included “They Get Brave,...

Following its initial release on AT&T Audience Network back in 2019, the entire third season of Mr. Mercedes (based on Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy) is coming to Peacock on March 4th, joining the first two seasons on the streaming service:

Press Release: Based on the best-selling Bill Hodges trilogy by Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes returns for its much-anticipated third season. When beloved local author John Rothstein is found murdered, Hodges, Holly, and Jerome, along with local police, must track down his killer. But this case is more complex than the cold-blooded killing of an American icon. Unpublished novels of Rothstein’s were stolen from his home, and they are worth millions. As the case unfolds, the trio learns that although Brady Hartsfield may be gone, his depravity lives on in the lives of his victims.

Season three of Mr. Mercedes premieres on Thursday, March 4 on Peacock. All 10 episodes will drop at once.

"Do exactly as I say..." HBO has unveiled an official trailer for a documentary series titled Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults, available for streaming starting in December this year. This is the latest documentary made by filmmaker Clay Tweel, who has directed a number of my favorite docs over the years including Finders Keepers, Gleason, Print the Legend, and Make Believe. It will air as a four-part series next month on HBO Max. Most Americans will remember the shocking news story - in March of 1997, 39 people killed themselves in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp. This is the story of Heaven's Gate, a UFO religious cult based near San Diego that was founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite. We've seen many films about cults, many docs about cults, and plenty of TV specials examining Heaven's Gate and how so many...

HBO Max has released the first trailer for their upcoming Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults docuseries. The series is a thorough examination of the infamous UFO cult through the eyes of its former members and loved ones. There is a lot going on in the trailer, which promises brand-new information about the cult from those who were closest to it, along with the aftermath. Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults is not going to be for the faint of heart when it debuts on HBO Max in December.

What started in 1975 with the disappearance of 20 people from a small town in Oregon ended in 1997 with the largest suicide on US soil and changed the face of modern new age religion forever. Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults is a four-part docuseries that utilizes never-before-seen footage and first-person accounts to explore the infamous UFO cult that shocked the nation with their out-of-this-world beliefs.

This Power Rangers Beast Morphers review contains spoilers.

In watching ‘Finders Keepers’ I was struck by how normal everything seemed. I don’t mean this is a normal episode because it clearly isn’t, but how all the Rangers acted around each other. Sure there was a little surprise from the Power Rangers Beast Morphers team meeting the Dino Charge Rangers but it was mostly matter a fact. There’s a problem and they need to team-up to solve it! I wish more teams were able to interact this way. There doesn’t need to be a giant world ending battle. Sometimes the two teams crossing paths is more than enough.

It was really nice to see the Dino Charge team back in action. Sure Riley and Shelby didn’t show up in person but four out of six (of the main team) isn’t bad, although I wish they...

Mr. Mercedes has found a new home in NBCUniversal’s recently launched premium streaming platform, Peacock.

The move to Peacock yields a new lease on life for Mr. Mercedes, the Stephen King adaptation crime series, which started life in 2017 as a broadcast offering on the AT&T-owned, DirecTV-exclusive Audience Network, only to be left derelict with an uncertain future after the channel’s dissolution this past January. With the move—announced on Sept. 21, King’s birthday, of all days—Mr. Mercedes Seasons 1 and 2 will be bingeable on Peacock starting on October 15. That premiere will eventually be followed by the show’s most recent outing, 2019’s Season 3, which will arrive on a date to be announced.

The series, which operates under a prolific creator/showrunner in David E. Kelley, adapts King’s novel trilogy—2014’s Mr. Mercedes, 2015’s Finders Keepers and 2016’s End of Watch—into a serialized format. The...

Joe Exotic, Tiger King and the mullet that launched a thousand memes has become an instant megastar thanks to the Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness which arrived on the streaming service at the end of March and has become the internet’s new obsession.

It’s a very weird doc that seems to have captured people’s imaginations and left them wanting more. The great news is that there are loads of totally off the wall documentaries out there to stream. We’ve rounded up some of the craziest to be your next-watch post Tiger King.

Finders Keepers

This 2015 documentary is so bonkers and also such an obvious companion piece to Tiger King we dedicated a whole article to it. It’s about two men engaged in a long feud about the ownership of a mummified human leg. One guy inadvertently bought the leg which was hidden...

With the presence of the Mercedes Killer still lingering in the minds of those who were connected to him and his merciless massacre, some of the most unsettling moments of the Mr. Mercedes series (based on Stephen King's Bill Hodges books) are yet to come, and before the sixth episode of season 3 airs tonight on AT&T Audience Network, we've been provided with three exclusive clips to share with Daily Dead readers.

Written by David E. Kelley and Jonathan Shapiro and titled "Bad to Worse," Mr. Mercedes episode 3.06 airs tonight at 10:00pm Est on AT&T Audience Network. You can watch a deadly threat and tense courtroom drama unfold in our exclusive clips below, and stay tuned to Daily Dead for more updates on season 3 of the Stephen King adaptation!

Episode 3.06: "Alma gives Pete a scare and instructs Morris to do the same. Pete revisits the local bookstore.

"It's hard. He in hell for staying faithful to a 'hood." Dreamville has released the full official trailer for an American documentary titled Out of Omaha, which premiered at the DocNYC Festival last year and won the main Audience Award prize. The latest feature from acclaimed doc filmmaker J. Clay Tweel, the film is about two black brothers overcoming systemic injustice in the city of Omaha, Nebraska. The social film is described as an "award-winning, intimate portrait of twin brothers Darcell and Darrell Trotter, young black men coming of age in the divided city of Omaha." Executive produced by J. Cole. Check it out below. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Clay Tweel's doc Out of Omaha, direct from Dreamville's YouTube: The documentary follows twin black brothers Darcell and Rell as they come of age in the racially divided city Omaha, ...

Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes has been one hell of a wild ride. This is a jacked-up and twisted series that is hard to watch at times, but it tells a fascinating story that I’ve enjoyed watching unfold.

We’ve got a new trailer to share with you today for the third season, which is going to be an adaptation of Finders Keepers, which is the second book in the novel trilogy. The synopsis for the upcoming season reads:

When beloved local author John Rothstein is found murdered, Hodges, Holly, and Jerome, along with local police, must track down his killer. But this case is more complex than the cold-blooded killing of an American icon. Unpublished novels of Rothstein’s were stolen from his home, and they are worth millions. As the case unfolds, the trio learns that although Brady may be gone, his depravity lives on in the lives of his victims.

Based on Stephen King's Finders Keepers (the second novel in the Bill Hodges trilogy), the third season of Mr. Mercedes will premiere on AT&T Audience Network on Tuesday, September 10th, and ahead of its premiere, the third season's official trailer has been unveiled, featuring the return of Bill Hodges and friends, who are all dealing with the aftermath of the Mercedes Killer and the disturbing emergence of a new murderer.

"AT&T Audience Network’s critically-acclaimed series, Mr. Mercedes will return on Tuesday, September 10 at 10:00pm Et/Pt for season three with 10 one-hour episodes.

Stars include Brendan Gleeson as Bill Hodges, Justine Lupe as Holly Gibney, Jharrel Jerome as Jerome Robinson and Breeda Wool as Lou Linklatter with guest stars such as Holland Taylor as Ida Silver and Bruce Dern as John Rothstein.

Based on the Bill Hodges trilogy from prolific author Stephen King, season three of Mr.

The forthcoming third season of Mr. Mercedes is flipping the script in a way. While Season 2 was sourced from the End of Watch, the third book in the Stephen King crime novel series, season 3 will center on events of the third book, Finders Keepers.

At TCA, director and executive producer Jack Bender explained the reason behind the flip.

“At the end on season 1, because the focus on the show as this love-hate affair between Brady Hartsfield and Bill Hodges and because of the condition that we left our hero-villain, played by Harry Treadaway — in almost comatose after his head was bashed in– we had to figure out a way to have him on the show in an active way,” said Bender. “We came up with a version that wasn’t going to be Finders Keepers. We knew we were going to have to put that off and found a way...

Joseph Baxter Aug 15, 2019

Mr. Mercedes Season 3 is coming to the Audience Network, continuing the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s Bill Hodges books.

Mr. Mercedes Season 3 is officially set for Audience Network. The renewal of Mr. Mercedes Season 3 arrived shortly after the late-summer-launched Season 2 wrapped its run on October 24, 2018, and has a late 2019 release date. Stephen King has called it the show's best so far...

This is the best season of Mr. Mercedes--based on Finders Keepers. Check this out.https://t.co/nouBaDFKhe

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 5, 2019

The series will continue its process of adapting Stephen King’s novel trilogy – 2014’s Mr. Mercedes, 2015’s Finders Keepers and 2016’s End of Watch. As originally intended, 2017’s Season 1 followed the first novel, and the recently-aired Season 2 covered the second.

While one might deduce that Season 3 would mark the end of the series, creator/showrunner David E. Kelley teased a “master plan” with...

The last few days of 2015 are spent in reflection about the year that's just wrapping up and in anticipation of the year just ahead, at least for me, and since we had our ten best list last week, this week it's time for the runners-up, the fifteen films that also filled out our year. As always, I look at this list and I think it would make a perfectly spiffy top ten if that's how things had shaken out, which is to say that the only real purpose of any of these lists is to remind you of more of the experiences that were worth having in a theater. There are plenty of good films that aren't on either of my lists this year. That doesn't mean I didn't like them or they're not good. It just means that these films meant more to me for some reason. For now,...

There was no order in this courtroom.

Tuesday's episode of Pretty Little Liars saw the start of Alison's (Sasha Pieterse) trial for Mona's (Janel Parrish) murder, but we didn't really learn anything new the proceedings. Instead, the state's team tried to drum up melodrama and air dirty laundry, painting Ali as a manipulative, soulless ringleader who took high school cattiness way too far.

Yeah, that's an accurate portrait – and that's exactly what Big "A" was counting on.

Read on to learn what happened in Rosewood, and don't forget to tell us who you think A is in the comments section...

There was no order in this courtroom. Tuesday's episode of Pretty Little Liars saw the start of Alison's (Sasha Pieterse) trial for Mona's (Janel Parrish) murder, but we didn't really learn anything new the proceedings. Instead, the state's team tried to drum up melodrama and air dirty laundry, painting Ali as a manipulative, soulless ringleader who took high school cattiness way too far. Yeah, that's an accurate portrait - and that's exactly what Big "A" was counting on. Read on to learn what happened in Rosewood, and don't forget to tell us who you think A is in the comments...

The True/False Film Festival has announced the lineup for its upcoming annual event, which takes place in downtown Columbia, Missouri from March 5-8. Selected from roughly 1,200 submitted and solicited films, the 38 chosen titles reflect the festival's typical focus on the art of non-fiction cinema. Many titles will be making their North American premieres, while others screened earlier this year at Sundance. The 2015 True/False Festival Lineup includes: "Something Better to Come" "Spartacus and Cassandra" "Rules of the Game" "Those Who Feel the Fire Burning" "White Out, Black In" "Heaven Knows What" "The Visit" "Drone" "(T)error" "Of Men and War" "Cartel Land" "Western" "Invasion" "Il Segreto" "Tea Time" "Tales of the Grim Sleeper" "Finders Keepers" "Meru" "I Am the...

Way to save!   Taylor Swift may be a fan of high-end, impossible-to-buy couture gowns (a la the breathtaking Elie Saab for the 2015 Grammys), but the pop superstar sure loves a good budget-friendly buy from time to time. Photos: Celebrity street style -- copy the looks  For example, on Dec. 19, the "Style" singer, 25, was spotted in New York City, bundled up in a chic plaid topper by Finders Keepers with Rag & Bone booties, an Aldo handbag, and a knit cap. The day she donned the [...]...

Finders Keepers is just another one of those tricky movies. You can either choose to sit back and be as annoyed as a single mother of six in FoodMax or you can embrace the films strengths and respect the fact that at the end of the day it isnt a boring film. Opinions are likely to vary greatly on this picture although I doubt anyone will leap to label it a smash hit. Somewhere in between greatness and awfulness holds an open seat for a movie like Finders Keepers. How long it takes for the film to eventually fade away and make the journey to that desolate location remains to be seen.

Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in TrainwreckPhoto: Universal Pictures With Sundance just wrapping up and Berlin starting up in a few days, we are now immersed in the year-long barrage of film festivals. One such festival in South By Southwest. A few weeks back they announced the first seven films of their program, including the opening night film Brand: A Second Coming. Today, they have revealed the rest of the features to be shown in March (except for the midnight program), and some of it has me very excited. The bigger titles announced do not do much for me. Paul Feig's Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy, and the Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart starrer Get Hard leave a lot to be desired in terms of anticipation, as does a work in progress cut of Judd Apatow's latest film Trainwreck. I'm guessing an Apatow work in progress is probably around three and a half hours.

South by Southwest, the multi-faceted film, music and technology festival held annually in Austin, TX will feature such upcoming films as Paul Feig’s Spy, David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn, Alex Gibney’s documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, and Ondi Timoner’s Russell Brand profile Brand: A Second Coming as headliners in this year’s film festival lineup.

SXSW runs from March 13 to 21 in Austin and is now in its 22nd year. Variety has details of the 145 films and 100 world premieres bowing at this year’s festival. Brand, as previously reported, will be the festival’s opening night film.

Other notable titles on the list are the Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard, a rough cut of Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, the directorial debut of 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, Ex Machina, and a new comedy by Michael Showalter, Hello, My Name is Doris.

On the small screen,...

Just as sex scandals are pretty much as old as politics themselves, as long as we've had films, we've had cinematic depictions of sex scandals, usually serious and sometimes comedic. Whether filmmakers have had to be coy about the nature of the scandals -- see "The Best Man" or "Advise and Consent" -- or whether filmmakers have been able to directly tear sex scandals from the headlines -- see "Primary Colors" -- the ground has been fertile. Fortunately -- Unfortunately? -- sex scandals just keep coming along and we keep lapping them up, from Eliot Spitzer to John Edwards to Anthony Weiner. Bringing the genre to Sundance this year was "Zipper," a largely straight-faced approach to a plausibly finger-on-the-pulse topic, which falls flat because of a middle act in which the drama spirals into dated addiction craziness. When it's a political thriller, "Zipper" is respectably acted and presented and has some merit.

The Sundance Film Festival is host to the world premiere of dozens of independent films, most of them looking to get distribution so they can make it to the big screen (or at least VOD). And since there are so many sales that happen at the festival, we wanted to keep you updated with a complete and comprehensive list of all the films getting picked up here at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. As of the writing of this initial post, five films have already been sold, and the festival has barely started. You'll find the festival films sales listed below as well as other info on each movie, starting with the most recent acquisition. Read on! Below is a list of the latest distribution news straight from Sundance 2015 - refresh for updates. The Orchard picks up Finders Keepers Recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle...

Kevin Pollak's documentary "Misery Loves Comedy" has a cute pun of a title that also draws attention to the film's primary flaw. Had Pollak just called his first directing foray "My Friends Talk About Comedy" or "White Comedians Love Misery," I probably could have just felt that this was one person polling a bunch of chums on a subject of mutual interest and accepted its limitations. But "Misery Loves Comedy" spends its entire runtime on a series of talking-head interviews with various comedians and on grand pronouncement after another, different variably famous stand-ups keep saying what "comedians" are like and what "comedy" is about. And given the composition of Pollak's panel of experts, I'm afraid that's ludicrous. With dozens of comics participating, the total number of African-American comics featured in the entire documentary? One. Whoopi Goldberg is brought in to summarize one Richard Pryor routine. She does that and nothing more.

The story at the heart of the documentary “Finders Keepers” is a completely bizarre one: the custody battle over a human leg, the ridiculous feud that ensues and the painful aftermath. In one corner you have John Wood, a disgraced heir with deep-rooted father issues and a drug habit, on the other you have an unscrupulous reptile in human form with his own issues. A tale that made worldwide “weird news” headlines back in 2007, Wood lost his leg in a plane crash, the same misfortune that killed his father. After the crash, in a strange tribute to his departed dad, Wood decided to embalm and keep the appendage. Severely depressed after the death of his father, which he blamed himself for, and addicted to painkillers, Wood soon bottomed out spiritually and financially. Down and out, the leg was lost after Wood failed to pay his bills and the contents of...

Published last year, Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes follows retired cop Bill Hodges as he hunts a killer who used a set of wheels as a lethal weapon. This past summer, King announced that Mr. Mercedes was the first book in a planned trilogy. Finders Keepers, the second installment of that trilogy, is due out in May and its official cover has now been revealed, and we also have the Misery-esque synopsis.

Finders Keepers will hit shelves on June 2nd, 2015. We have the official synopsis for the novel, which is projected to be 448 pages long (via Simon & Schuster):

““Wake up, genius.” So begins King’s instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books,...

Stephen King’s next novel, Finders Keepers, is heading our way on June 2nd; and his publisher, Scribner, has unveiled the book’s artwork, which we snagged from StephenKing.com. It’s Book #2 in a proposed trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes. Finders… Continue Reading →

The post Artwork Found for Stephen King’s Finders Keepers appeared first on Dread Central.

Park City. Jim Strouse's "People, Places, Things" plays like an 86 minute pilot for an HBO comedy series and even in this age of "TV and Movies Have Achieved Parity," I doubt that's what anybody wants to hear. But if you know me, you know I mean it largely as a compliment.  And what does that mean? Well, not too much happens in "People, Places, Things." It's a low-incident narrative that's supposed to be about emotional truth mixed with humor, but a lot of the comedic beats are being played rather broadly.  It feels as if the basic plot elements and, particularly, characters are in place at the end of the film for an ongoing storyline that might be amusing. Give me this cast and some of these characters on a weekly basis for 10 or 13 half-hour episodes per season and I could grow to really like them. And speaking of growth,...

Netflix came to this year’s Sundance Film Festival as the digital spoiler, ready to spend more than traditional studios to lure the top indie movies away from theatrical distribution – but so far they haven’t spoiled a thing, as the big acquisitions in a healthy market have mainly gone to the usual distribution suspects.

Multiple dealmakers have told TheWrap that Netflix came to Sundance with a specific strategy to outbid the other studios for movies in an attempt to build a track record as a buyer of major festival titles. A longtime supporter of independent film, Netflix has been...

Park City. The breakout hit of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Lee Daniels' "Precious" was an intriguing tightrope act on the threshold of misery audiences could withstand in a movie that was still fundamentally meant to be life-affirming.  Already acquired by the extremely busy folks at Showtime, this year's Sundance World Documentary Competition entry "Dreamcatcher" is another test for that precarious balance.  Full of moments that are sure to cause cringing and wincing, sure to push some viewers to an empathetic breaking point, "Dreamcatcher" does, indeed, manage to unfold with a consistent sense of uplift thanks to Brenda Myers-Powell, its featured subject. Because of Brenda Myers-Powell, Kim Longinotto's film is finally quite inspirational, though the journey is through such muck as to make you question the darkness of human nature entire.  Brenda Myers-Powell was molested as a child, pushed into prostitution as a teen and stuck in a cycle...

It's been around 150 years since we gave much respect to Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle's so-called Great Man Theory of history. While there are unquestionable great men and great women who helped shape culture and history, the number of great men and women who made impacts that are worth studying outside of the context of their society is virtually nil. It's not an interesting or accurate way to view history and, as a result, we don't give credence to people who try it.  It's even less informative to view tragedy through an Awful Man Theory. It's almost inconceivable to imagine an interpretation of World War II, for example, that said, "So Germany was just going along fine and then Hitler came and ruined everything." As monstrous as Hitler was, you'd never write a story of Nazi atrocities in which you reached the end and said, "And it was all Hitler's fault.

Park City. Serendipity always plays a major role in Sundance scheduling. Yes, we have an elaborate Excel doc with all of our screenings and interviews and naps and meals programmed, but the best Sundance moments are often when you have a two hour block and duck into the yet-to-premiere Ozarks mystery featuring the girl from "The Bill Engvall," or when you trust the buzz from the night before and trudge a mile through a blizzard to see an indescribable drama starring a little kid named "Quvenzhané." As the Yiddish proverb goes, Der mentsh trakht Sundance un got lakht or "Man plans Sundance, God laughs." [Anybody who attempts to correct my Yiddish gets blocked.] So on Sunday night, I went to the far-flung Temple Theater for an evening screening, only to discover a totally different movie was playing and there was no chance I could get to the correct theater in time to see the movie I intended to see.

The "How I Met Your Mother" Redemption Tour is in full effect at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Jason Segel has received the best reviews of his career for his gimmick-free performance as David Foster Wallace in "The End of The Tour." Cobie Smulders is proving her mettle as a leading lady in "Unexpected." And Josh Radnor is nowhere to be seen with a follow-up to "Liberal Arts." [Sorry. Easy punchline. I actually thought "Happythankyoumoreplease" was a perfectly respectable sign of Radnor's potential as a writer-director.] Meanwhile, Neil Patrick Harris has been too busy winning Tonys and preparing to host the Oscars to be in anything Sundance-y this year, while Alyson Hannigan remains chronically underused. Smulders also stars in "Results," which premieres at Sundance on Tuesday, but at least her Festival got off to a solid start with "Unexpected." Directed by Kris Swanberg, who co-wrote with Megan Mercier, "Unexpected" is a very slight movie, almost absurdly short...

Park City. If the bursting-at-the-seams crowd at Sunday's (January 25) world premiere of "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" was any indication, the film festival world (and probably the subsequent HBO world) has been waiting impatiently for a cinematic pulling back of the curtain from the Church of Scientology.  And when you absolutely, positively have to get informed on a subject in a reasonably smart, reasonably all-encompassing, reasonably passionate (without succumbing to sloppy outrage), narratively tight 120-minutes, it's hard to imagine a more reliable tour guide than director Alex Gibney.  The absurdly prolific filmmaker can be counted on to deliver a comprehensive rendering of difficult issues and that's exactly what "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" is. If you've read Lawrence Wright's book -- I have not -- or any of the recent string of tangential Scientology exposes -- including Wright's profile of Paul Haggis, which...

The legacy of Kurt Cobain is one of maddening genius, maddening potential and the maddening disappointment and betrayal of how much of that potential went unfulfilled when he took his own life at 27. Maybe that's why my immediate reaction to Brett Morgen's Sundance premiere documentary "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck" was visceral pleasure and appreciation, but a maddening uncertainty about what else I was supposed to take from the film.  And maybe that's why after five more minutes of contemplating "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," I was able ponder the possibility that Morgen wants his documentary to be definitive exactly be virtue of being so undefinitive.  An often spectacular piece of multi-media assemblage, takes viewers on a journey at least somewhat into Kurt Cobain's brain and into his life and if that leaves you wanting more... Well, of course it does. "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck" begins with practically feigned happiness in Aberdeen,...

Park City. This doesn't happen often, but I had to stay after the Sundance Film Festival premiere screening of "Slow West" to listen to the Q&A with director John MacLean to get a sense of what the intended tone was for his World Cinema Dramatic Competition entry.  Large portions of the second half of the 1870-set Western made me laugh, sometimes fairly hard, but I couldn't quite tell if the aspiration was parody or misgauged sincerity. The answer? Neither. Maclean said he was going for something almost fairy-tale-esque at the bloody climax of "Slow West," which means that something heightened was an aspiration, even if fairy tales very rarely leave me laughing.  Sometimes you're just not receiving signals on the frequency that a movie is transmitting and I accept that just may be the case, especially since the first questioner praised "Slow West" for its realism. Realism, eh? The...

The events in "The Amina Profile," playing in Sundance's World Documentary Competition, are not being revealed for the first time in Sophie Deraspe's film. If you Google Amina Arraf and her A Gay Girl in Damascus blog, the arc of the story plays out on the first search page. It was a widely reported story, but not universally reported, which makes for a complication in discussing "The Amina Profile." Do I discuss what the actual movie is, even if it means stripping aside some secrecy? Or do I play coy, pretend this documentary is like "The Sixth Sense" and I'd be violating its integrity by revealing too much while, thus, give it only half the intellectual consideration it probably deserves? I'm going with the former approach, because while obfuscation is cute and fun, "The Amina Profile" is an interesting movie that probably will have a better chance at exposure...

Park City. Documentarian Kirby Dick has done oddball character studies, intellectual biographies and targeted the motion picture ratings system. But if 25 or 50 years from now Dick is most remembered for scathing polemics exposing epidemics of sexual assaults in America's most powerful institutions, well that would be a pretty honorable thing upon which to hang one's hat.  Targeting the Catholic Church ("Twist of Faith") and the military ("The Invisible War"), Kirby Dick has proven himself a master of visceral polemics that inspire outrage and culminate in aggressive calls to bear witness and take action. But Dick's approach to institutional sexual abuse isn't just to shine light on a subject and give exposure to victims.  When "The Invisible War" premiered at Sundance in 2012, I wrote, "'The Invisible War' may depress you and make you cry, but it'll also probably leave you inspired. It's a portrait of courage as much as victimhood.

On Friday I screened the first great film of the 2015 Sundance film festival. Finders Keepers is a hilarious, bizarre and sometimes devastating documentary about the true life story of two men. Shannon Whisnant purchases a storage unit at auction and is surprised to find a severed human leg inside a used bbq grill. The other […]

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Park City - It would be wrong to pigeonhole Jason Segel as simply a comedic actor. Whether playing the romantically scorned Nick in "Freaks and Geeks" (or Peter in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"), the psychotically romantically scorned Eric on "Undeclared," the romantic but, in a key arc, grieving Marshall on "How I Met Your Mother," Segel has always been able to infuse his clowns with a grounding of real pain or disappointment or passion. But thinking back over Segel's resume, it was hard to point to any role that indicated Segel might be a chameleon. He's always come across as too large in stature, too modern in tone to be invited to do period films or biopics or really any kind of project skewed towards the dramatic.  I'd never have described Segel as limited in his acting range, but whether by his choice or Hollywood's perception of him, Segel's CV was...

Maybe if "Wild" hadn't done such a solid and visually rich job of portraying one woman's determination to restart her life by hiking 2000 miles, the banal platitudes and strange visual monotony of two older guys' determination to restart their lives by hiking 2000 miles in "A Walk in the Woods" wouldn't seem so subpar. Maybe if Robert Redford hadn't done such harrowing, committed and honest work as a man battling nature in "All Is Lost," Robert Redford's lax, barely engaged work as a man meandering through nature in "A Walk in the Woods" wouldn't seem so subpar. Maybe if "A Walk in the Woods" weren't having its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, a venue that doesn't always demand artistic or narrative experimentation but certainly rewards the work of risk-taking, it's bland and peculiar artistic and narrative flatness wouldn't seem so subpar. But here we are in Park City,...

In Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, originally published last summer, retired cop Bill Hodges is haunted by an unsolved crime involving a killer who drove a car through a crowd of people and escaped. Now that same murderer is gearing up to wreak more death and destruction, and it’s up to Bill to stop him. Readers who couldn’t get enough of this storyline on the printed page can look forward to seeing it play out on the small screen, as it has been revealed that Mr. Mercedes is being developed as a limited TV series.

Deadline reports that Sonar Entertainment is moving forward on a limited TV series adaptation of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. David E. Kelley (Boston Legal, The Practice) is set to pen the script, with Jack Bender (Lost) lined up for the director’s chair. No other details are known at this time, but...

Stephen King‘s detective novel “Mr. Mercedes” could be the next great limited television series, as long as David E. Kelley doesn’t “mess it up.”

The creator of TV hits including “The Practice,” “Boston Legal,” and “Ally McBeal” has signed on to write the script for the project Sonar Entertainment is developing for Jack Bender (“Under the Dome”) to direct.”

Also Read: Stephen Hawking Wants to Play a James Bond Movie Villain

Both Kelley and Bender will executive produce the adaptation of what King describes as his “first hard-boiled detective tale.” Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey of Temple Hill Entertainment will also executive produce,...

Happy 2015! The new year is off and running with a ton of great genre-related home releases this week, including the high-def release of Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh from Scream Factory as well as the latest from Alex Aja, Horns, starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Adam Wingard is also celebrating the release of his recent indie hit The Guest on Tuesday and we’ve got several indie horror films to look forward to, including The Houses October Built, Sick: Survive the Night and Missionary from Anthony Diblasi.

Spotlight Titles:

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)

His myth has endured for generations. His legacy is eternal rage. And now he’s back… with a vengeance! Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh continues the tale of the phantom-like figure who wreaks a terrible fate upon those who chant his name five times while looking into a mirror… and come face to face with grisly death.

Marc Buxton Sep 11, 2019

Stephen King universe isn't just full of terrifying monsters. It is also home to many great fictional heroes...

In the Kingverse, there are monsters aplenty, but what of the heroes? There may be villains of every shape and size dwelling there, but Stephen King’s dark worlds are also inhabited by bright lights who keep the monsters at bay, brave beings of complex integrity who are tasked with questing through landscapes of pure terror while not losing their souls in the process.

These are King’s heroes, his protagonists that act as a line of defense between sanity and the creatures of unknowable corruption that slither between the cracks of King’s stories. They walked through the valley of the shadow of death and oh, they feared evil, but these heroes kept their heads held high.

A perfect example of King's heroes is the Losers' Club from It,...

That spooky time of year is upon us once again! As with other years, Halloween 2014 will feature lots of creepy TV programming airing up to, and on the date itself. Here are some notable TV programs to check out during Halloween 2014. All times Eastern; check back for updates and additions as more network announcements are made: 31 Days of Halloween Oct. 1-31 on Syfy. Running through Friday, October 31, 31 Days of Halloween will unleash nearly 600 hours of creepy programming featuring the 10th anniversary Ghost Hunters special, the original movies Dark Haul and Finders Keepers, and a … Continue reading →

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