By Craig Leask The Grand Hotel on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, which opened in 1887, is known for being the largest summer hotel in the world as well as housing the world’s longest front porch which extends to a length of 660 feet. If this wasn’t enough for boasting rights, it has also received iconic status…
By Craig Leask Burnt Offerings (1976) is not a run of the mill creepy movie with weird characters being tormented by restless spirits in a crumbling old mansion. In this case, the mansion in this movie IS the restless spirit. The angle is refreshingly unique in the haunted house movie genre. The movie was directed…
By Craig Leask There are few movies where a single building can create the atmosphere required to set the scene for an entire film. Some that do: the isolated Timberline Lodge in Oregon (standing in as the Overlook Hotel in 1980’s The Shining); the large Dutch Colonial house at 112 Ocean Avenue (1979’s The Amityville…
By Craig Leask The term “Greatest Films” troubled me when I was first presented with this topic as an “assignment”. My stress is based upon the concept that creating such a list is entirely subjective. Could these be my “Desert Island” films? Are these the films that were the most ground breaking? Most controversial? Most…
By Craig Leask Thanks to extremely attractive film incentives and widely varying geographical terrain, North Carolina has done well attracting movie and television productions to the area. The mountainous, heavily forested terrain of the state has been used as the ideal stand in for such movies as: The Swan 1956 with Grace Kelly and Alec…
By Craig Leask The Shining (1980), the Stanley Kubrick directed film based on the 1977 book by Stephen King stands out as the quintessential horror film. This accolade however has not been acknowledged without controversy. The movie’s tone is immediately set in the opening sequence; following a yellow Volkswagen through the vast emptiness of mountainous…
By Craig Leask Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder, is primarily set within the derelict mansion of aging and forgotten silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). After years out of the public eye, Norma has unrealistic ambitions of making a celebrated comeback to the screen. Her fragile mental state and unrealistic aspirations are…
By Craig Leask Stephen King, in his 1981 book “Danse Macabre” called the 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson “one of the finest horror novels of the late 20th century”. Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal labels Jackson’s book “the greatest haunted-house story ever written.” With praise of this magnitude, it is…
By Craig Leask Under The Tuscan Sun (2003) is based upon the Frances Mayes 1996 memoir “Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy” in which she chronicled her family’s purchase and restoration of an abandoned villa in Tuscany. After being on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two and a half…
By Craig Leask In an era when a director did not have the option to rely on CGI or Green Screen to create a film, everything needed to be real. If they needed a thousand extras, they had to be hired. If elaborate sets were need, they had to be constructed. Cecil B. DeMille needed…