John Carpenter’s first proper film in ten years is The Ward, starring everybody’s favourite lesbian, Amber Heard. I was talking to a friend recently about Carpenter and we agreed he has to be one of the most gifted filmmakers not to have received full-on critical acclaim outside of film geek circles. He’s made some bad films as well, but when you consider the quality of his output and how much involvement he has as a director, it’s sort of infuriating that he doesn’t get more acknowledgement.
Anyway, I’m curious to see whether The Ward will be better than Shutter Island. I’m willing to bet I will enjoy it a bit more at least.
As far as I’m concerned, John Carpenter is a master (and not just of horror) filmmaker. Scorsese got me interested in movies, but Carpenter made me a fan, without him my adventure through the world of cinema would have been very different. Here’s hoping for a successful comeback and for The Ward to make it to the movie theaters in Québec (what kind of release will it get?).
Judging from the activity on its IMDb board and its trailer getting onto the home page, I don’t think it’s going to go the way Monte Hellman’s last movie did.
Apparently, according to Wikipedia (not the most relibable of sources, true), Road to Nowhere will appear at the Venice Film Festival, so there’s hope for it yet.