The first three episodes of Beyond the Rave are up at MySpace. Watch now!!

There’s a little more than three days until the premiere of Beyond the Rave on MySpace. Join their MySpace now to see it first!

Source: telegraph.co.uk

The much cherished Hammer Horror film franchise is back with a very 21st-century tale of vampires.

Hammer Horror is back from the dead. Thirty-two years after its last diabolical despatch from the dark side (Christopher Lee disgracing the cloth as a heretic priest in To the Devil… a Daughter), one of the most cherished franchises in British film history is about to return with Beyond the Rave, a blood-spattered tale of vampires on the rampage among hardcore dance fans.

And, while the setting is bang-up-to-date (it’s infused, too, with allusions to the conflict in Iraq), the film is also at the cutting edge of distribution technology. It will be presented in 20 five-minute “webisodes” on the social networking website MySpace, before an eventual release on DVD, and will also be available to download.

A fresh-faced cast, including Jamie Dornan (Marie Antoinette) and Nora-Jane Noone (The Descent) in the lead roles, is augmented by cameo appearances by Sadie Frost, who appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula, and 70-year-old Hammer Horror stalwart Ingrid Pitt (best remembered for The Vampire Lovers).

Veteran DJ/producer Pete Tong is credited with “curating” the music for the film.

Beyond the Rave is the story of Ed (Dornan), a British soldier due to fly out to Iraq, who spends his last day of freedom searching for his missing girlfriend (Noone), last seen in the company of a dubious band of rave devotees. He ends up at a dance party deep in a remote forest in the dead of night. There will be blood. Lots of it.

Dornan says he enjoyed the contrast with his previous role as Count Fersen in Sofia Coppola’s lavish biopic of the high-spirited French queen. “I had just come out of a nice family period drama, and that was partly why I wanted to do something like Beyond the Rave. I was also intrigued by the whole webisode thing.

“The shoot felt a lot faster than anything I’d done before. There was a real buzz on set because everything was so speedy. But then, if you’re going to make an impression in a five-minute episode, it’s got to be pretty sharp. It was new territory for everyone.”

And what about the lashings of gore and the ultra-violence? “Well, it was quite hard to take it seriously when you’re being attacked by a mad vampire wielding two samurai swords.”

Which again is in sharp contrast to Dornan’s next movie – the “all very pretty” Shadows in the Sun, due later this year and featuring the luminous, legendary Jean Simmons in the lead role.

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Source: m&c

Jamie Dornan is desperate to star in a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie.

The Northern Irish heartthrob – the ex-boyfriend of British actress Keira Knightley – revealed the ‘A Mighty Heart’ actress is his perfect leading lady.

He told BANG Showbiz: “I’d love to do a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie – she’s kind of flawless to me. I don’t think she’d want to do a romantic comedy with me though – I’m not sure that would be her bag!

“Sometimes I think it’s harder to be a leading man in a romantic comedy if you’re not English. I think the English do that really well – that sort of slightly camp, slightly pathetic thing. I’m not saying Colin Firth or Hugh Grant are pathetic – far from it! I think they are both great. But I would like to have a crack at it.”

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Source: m&c

Jamie Dornan is desperate to star in a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie.

The Northern Irish heartthrob – the ex-boyfriend of British actress Keira Knightley – revealed the ‘A Mighty Heart’ actress is his perfect leading lady.

He told BANG Showbiz: “I’d love to do a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie – she’s kind of flawless to me. I don’t think she’d want to do a romantic comedy with me though – I’m not sure that would be her bag!

“Sometimes I think it’s harder to be a leading man in a romantic comedy if you’re not English. I think the English do that really well – that sort of slightly camp, slightly pathetic thing. I’m not saying Colin Firth or Hugh Grant are pathetic – far from it! I think they are both great. But I would like to have a crack at it.”

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Source: Google

The executive producer of the first Hammer horror film in more than 30 years has urged fans to move with the times.

Hammer Films chief executive Simon Oakes, who bought the company in May last year, promised to protect its cinematic legacy but insisted that the “nostalgic folklore” of 1950s horror films had to give way to modern trends.

Accordingly, instead of playing on big screens, new movie Beyond The Rave will air from April 17 in five-minute instalments on MySpace – as a joint venture with the social networking site – before being released as a feature film on DVD.

It is expected to reach some 100 million people in 19 countries and in nine different languages, and while the Hammer horrors of the 1950s and 1960s made household names of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in classics like Dracula, the new film – shot as a full-length film but released twice weekly on the internet – features Sadie Frost and sets vampires against a backdrop of a drug-fuelled rave.

Oakes defended the modern production, saying: “We have an opportunity to recalibrate the DNA of Hammer Films for the MySpace generation.

“Hammer will make theatrical motion pictures but an important part of our strategy is what we are doing with MySpace.”

Beyond The Rave’s cast also includes Jamie Dornan, Nora-Jane Noone, and Football Factory actor Tamer Hassan, who described his character as “like George Clooney’s in From Dusk Till Dawn”.

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