Joe Berlinger
7 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Naturally, a sequel was made the following year, but Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 suffered from (a) audience fatigue, and (b) being a bit shit.
The final minutes of Adam Wingard’s “Blair Witch” meaningfully expound 1999’s bombshell blockbuster “The Blair Witch Project,” finally delivering some of the answers that 2000’s terrible, unintelligible “Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” passed over.
The awful official sequel, 2000's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, disappeared without a trace.
The Departed (2006)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger (2014)
Characters
On one hand, the documentary is gripping, because we love a good mobster story and Bulger's saga, one of the inspirations for the Jack Nicholson character in "The Departed" and likely to be the subject of its own movie possibly starring Johnny Depp, is straight out of Hollywood.
It's one more bizarre mystery surrounding Whitey Bulger, the model for Jack Nicholson's character in Martin Scorsese's Oscar winning film "The Departed" and the brother of former Massachusetts Senate President Bill.
But compared to the long, bloody career of Whitey Bulger, which left dozens of bodies in its wake (and helped inspire the Jack Nicholson character in "The Departed," a fact left out here) this isn't the story that really compels our attention.
Despite the character study that the first part of the title suggests, no attempt is made to speculate on Bulger’s psychology or even elaborate his personal history in order to inform a viewership how exactly a South Boston son of a longshoreman could grow up to be one of the most famous killers in recent history, not to mention inspire a legendary status and outsized myth that led to Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed.
Second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Most Wanted list during most of the past decade (and nowhere near as charming as Jack Nicholson’s spin on him in The Departed), James “Whitey” Bulger ruled South Boston for decades until going into hiding for 16 years.
His run as head of the Winter Hill Gang spawned a library full of books and Martin Scorsese's film "The Departed."
Zodiac (2007)
Directed by David Fincher
influenced Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)
Themes Visuals
David Fincher’s masterpiece Zodiac ran with the tagline “There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer” and a dozen years later it seems Joe Berlinger’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is the inheritor to this phrase.
The last genuinely fresh film in this most dubious of genres, Zodiac , was made 12 years ago, and not once in those 12 years have we seen a movie - fiction, non-fiction, or documentary - do anything with a serial killer that hasn't been done.
As a film in the serial killer genre, it’ll be decades before any filmmakers come close to capturing the magic of David Fincher’s “Zodiac” - and Berlinger pays homage to that film while trying to make artistic choices that seem ambitious, but are really the safe way out.
Making a Murderer , Serial , Zodiac —it’s insanely popular across all media.
This is especially true when you compare it to the 2007 film Zodiac and the 2017 series Mindhunter (both directed by David Fincher), which covered the same territory with much more purpose and vitality and are both readily available on Netflix.
At the end of the day, this film was not directed by David Fincher, and was never going to come close to the magnificence that is Zodiac.
Knowing that the mirror's primary tactic is to alter people's perceptions of reality, she has rigged up numerous cameras, timers, lights and fail-safes in order to record what actually goes down as opposed to what her mind will perceive (a nod to Blair Witch 2, I thought while viewing, and director Mike Flanagan has since confirmed ).
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced by Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Themes
There have been many apt comparisons of The Matrix Resurrections to Wes Craven's metatextual New Nightmare, but I was also struck by its similar thematic threads to Joe Berlinger's much maligned (and much misunderstood) Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, a film that acknowledges the existence of its hugely influential predecessor and seeks to interrogate its own societal impact.
Another intriguing element is how Berlinger plays with the differences between what the characters remember and what they capture on video, an idea borrowed more from David Lynch's masterful Lost Highway than from the first Blair Witch.
The Paradise Lost triptych, made between 1996 and 2011 by two directors of whom one, Joe Berlinger, went on to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was full of florid speculation reinforcing notions of a cultist killing.