Good pall Grim D. Reaper (who you may have seen in Episode 8), writes in with cool news about Guillermo del Toro. Those who know his work, know that Del Toro is a huge fan of Lovecraft (he managed to fit quite a lot of Cthulhu into Hellboy), and it looks like he may take on a truly %100 Lovecraft tale by directing “At the Mountains of Madness”.
More details here from D. Reaper.
Del Toro has recently become a favorite director of mine. Although I’m talking off the Pan’s Labyrinth Bandwagon, I’ll say that I’m quite glad that he’s taking it into his hands. I’ve enjoyed Hellboy thoroughly, and loved The Devil’s Backbone (which I checked out on account of the PLB). I have to say, all of the “Lovecraftian” films I’ve seen haven’t satisfied me. Stuart Gordon can make a fun film, but they go overboard on blood and nudity, taking out most of the intellectual substance in the stories (though his adaptation of Dreams in the Witch House was better than Lovecraft’s mediocre story). The other Gordon adaptation I saw (of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, easily one of the greatest stories Lovecraft ever wrote), I didn’t finish. I liked part of it, but when it got to the sacrifice, it didn’t feel good enough to finish. John Carpenter has shown more skill, but while I find The Thing to be really suspenceful and great, I didn’t get a Lovecraftian feel like some say it has. In the Mouth of Madness I barely finished, it had gotten mixed reviews, so I probably shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. But the biggest dissapointment for me had to be the take on the magnum opus itself: The Call of Cthulhu (okay maybe the magnum’s AtMoM, but for the sake of my argument let’s settle for this). The silent B movie feel did not work well. The over exaggerated acting felt unnecessary in today’s day and age. In fact, the whole silent issue didn’t work. B/w has still been used effectively to this day, albeit it’s quite rare. The way it was reviewed, you’d’ve thought it was a breakthrough in cinema, but it fell flat.