Check out the back cover of the Cannes Issue of The Hollywood Reporter. It's an ad for MOTHER OF TEARS. Alas, I'm not able to scan and post it.

Here go:

That ain't no catchy title.

BUT...a different movie called THREE MUTHERS would be exploitation gold! :P

I was hoping that there would be some sort of opaque, one-word title to fit the standard set by SUSPIRIA and INFERNO...I dunno, LACHRYMOSE perhaps?

I mean, CRY-BABY has already been taken.

I'm just hoping that Dario doesn't phone this installment in.

I like "Mother of Tears" better than "The Third Mother", the latter makes me imagine Dario making a film about a black leather gloved polygamist.

I like the MOTHER OF TEARS title myself.

Vincent

Anthony, where'd ya dig up that phone shot?

Answering my own question department:

Whole Bunch More Here, Kids!

LACRIMOSA is how the Suspiri-oid title should read, but it's a little far removed from the Mother of Tears concept. A way of reconciling them -sort of- might be to allude to the part of the choral Requiem that regularly has a 'Lacrimosa section'/movement, i.e. the DIES IRAE (Day of Wrath/Judgment Day)

When I was young and impetuous, SUSPIRIA and DIE HARD were my two favorite movies for a long time. And I long thought that the third installment of both movies should be fused together in one super threequel - Bruce Willis goes to Rome to find himself doing battle with Mater Lachrymartum.

I called it CRY HARD.

Yes, praise DeQuincey that I don't greenlight projects in this biz.

"Yippee-ki-yay, Mother Suspiriorum!"

I could see that:

McClane's wife Holly goes to Italy on a trip, and is kidnapped by the "Sons of Tears," a cult group out to bring back their spiritual leader, the Mother of Tears, who Holly is the spitting image of. Bruce arrives in Italy trying to get his wife back, but is in way over his head fighting the supernatural, he calls on the church for aid. They send their expert on the three mothers, the constantly drunk twin brother of Hans Gruber, who is still trying to pay for his brothers past sins. Their only lead, a dance school in Germany, where one of the only weapons that can kill the mothers was hidden long ago by a now institutionalized former student. Calling in a long held back favor, McClane gets Mr.Nakatomi to bankroll a whirlwind trip around the world to track down the artifacts that may end the mother's reign of terror. Before it's over, the pair will travel to a townhouse in Germany searching for a book by the architect E. Varelli., find an Italian music critic named Marcus Daly who will have a vital clue to the whereabouts of a piece of music with the power to repel the mothers, and finally find themselves in an all out war with the Sons of Tears, who may who may have had something to do with the taking of Nakatomi Plaza all those years ago. John still can't find a pair of comfortable shoes, but he has the perfect cure for jet lag, and he's going to need it!!

It's full circle for both franchises. :)

A few re-writes and keep the wrong directors away and it would work!

A new promo artwork has been released that mentions SUSPIRIA and INFERNO. You can check it out here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Mother#Promotion

SUSPERIA? Is that a typo or an alternate spelling?

MOTHER OF TEARS instills a "what's this about" feeling - especially to those not familiar with the other films.

But the title SUSPIRIA is really strange because - paritcularly when it was first released - it meant nothing to mainstream filmgoers except it sounded "creepy," especially on the TV ads at that time.

In fact, it took me years to find out the meaning of [the title] SUSPIRIA...INFERNO is way more obvious...

But MOTHER OF TEARS is kinda passive...and I don't know if it garners interest. Except for those in the choir...

Think this will get US theatrical release? Maybe with Asia it will (but man she's good lookin')...

New pics - and spoilery!

What the HELL is up with that last one - is this a remake of MYSTICS IN BALI?!

Here is the teaser trailer for the film:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...eoID=2034859115

Exciting. Is that 10-31-07 a euro/italy release date? Any word if it will hit theaters here? One good thing about living in NY is if this gets the selected theater treatment it will surely play here.

Yeah, the date featured in the trailer is for Italy only. No word on when (and it what form) it will hit here.

Those stills (particularly that one!) and the teaser clip from Italy all make me wonder if Dario has been sleeping at the back of the class and letting Luigi Cozzi direct the film (a joke). It looks like a gore film with bad acting, I hope it is better than that. Orange and green lighting instead of blue and red?

I would like to see it at the Cinema (in English) to give it a chance (it is the end of that Trilogy, after all!), so I hope it makes a UK Shockfest etc - why ever did they ghetto-ise horror/shock films by splitting these films from the main London Film Feastival?! I suspect Alan Jones may know the answers to all the above.

Alas, Italian fans will have to wait a bit longer to see some of those shots :

From Darkdreams.org:

"la terza madre rating confirmed
When it is released in cinemas in italy this october, it will have a 14 rating! This means all the hardcore gore will be missing. However, this will be re-instated for the dvd release.

source: alan jones"



I really hope that this makes it to U.S. shores on the big screen, and intact.

Here are 40 (!) new pics from the film:

http://www.occhisulcinema.it/Dos-Dario%20A...rza%20Madre.htm

I don't get how a 14 rating means that "all the hardcore gore will be missing."* THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, chock full of nasty and brutal sexual violence, and NONHOSONNO, a real gorefest, were both rated 14 in Italy. The 14 rating seems to be equivalent of a hard R-rating here, and in some cases even more than that. Perhaps some of the nastiest bits will be removed for the Italian cinemas, but "all" of it?

Vincent

* Emphasis added by me.

Well, I don't know which way the wind blows censor-wise in Italy these days, but an 'R' rating in say, 1987 is quite a different thing from the same rating this year.

Has anyone heard anything about the quality of Blue Underground's STENDHAL release? Like, how it compares to the R2 PAL Medusa release?

And for those who would seek out the Variety issue with MOTHER OF TEARS on the cover, it's just an ad; there's nothing inside the magazine about it......

It would be nice if it did, but what was the last (and I'm not counting midnight or festival screenings) general theatrical release of a Dario Argento film in the US? I believe it was TWO EVIL EYES with a very limited theatrical release (I saw it on Hollywood Boulevard at the now defunct Pacific Theater 3-plex). Before that, we're going back to UNSANE which never even opened in L.A. And then there's SUSPIRIA and we all know how good a theatrical release that got.

Anyway, I can't wait to see MOTHER OF TEARS. I have yet to be completely disappointed with any Dario Argento film. There's something in every film that impresses or surprises me. I even liked PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, so there you go!

Hopefully, a US distributor saw it at Cannes and licensed it for a solid US theatrical release. Unfortunately, I think it will still probably go direct to DVD here.

I don't know if it counts as a "general release" but CARD PLAYER did play briefly in NYC.

The Two Boots Pioneer is... special. In a good way.

If you want to check out a non-handheld version of the teaser, click here:

http://it.movies.yahoo.com/l/la-terza-madr...ex-1763732.html

Well, thanks for the offer but - OH WAIT - <click>!!!

;)*



*Actually, now that I look at it, I understand the indifference. "Non-handheld" is the best one can say about the technical presentation of that clip. The sound's ok too, I guess.

Watching the trailer, I couldn't help reflecting that the text (approximation)

"After SUSPIRIA and INFERNO comes the final chapter THE THIRD MOTHER..."

would be like me seeing a trailer for Jacques Tourneur's WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP in 1964 that sold the picture as coming "after I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE LEOPARD MAN!"

In short, I think knowing the relationship between the three movies is fine for those of us who connect the dots, but is it going to sell the picture to the majority of movie-going audiences who were born after 1980? INFERNO didn't even get a theatrical release here in America. I think they're going to have to cook up something a little less "resting on laurels" for the US campaign.

Aside from us 'dot-connectors', who's the US audience for this?

It's not like anyone's even going to try to pitch this to the SAW crowd (and I think they'd see right thru the attempt). Is NIGHT/DAY WATCH the template? I think those were aiming at a MATRIX/gaming culture that, again, Argento's film is likely ill-equipped to entice. And DAY WATCH only made half a million domestic anyway.

Is there a US mass-market for a semi-dubbed, dreamy yet awkwardly expositional, sexually vicious gorefest with "Masters of Horror"-level CGI starring that chick from XXX?

I imagine it's going to be just a matter of which laurels are rested on: the trilogy angle, or the standard, never works, "From Dario Argento, the master of horror..."

Why not just sell it as a completely original, supernaturally themed horror movie? That seemed to work for JEEPERS CREEPERS not too long ago. Not every movie needs to be sold on the "hook" of who made it, who stars in it, what movie it's a sequel to, etc. Given that one needn't have seen SUSPIRIA to enjoy INFERNO, there's really no need to even sell THE MOTHER OF TEARS as the third part of a trilogy on these shores. Just sell it as a supernatural horror flick about a plague of witches descending on Rome and throw some cool images into the trailer.

Vincent

I agree with Vincent. If it follows, there should be little to know direct connection. Why not just sell the movie itself?

I'm sure those words carry more weight in Argento's native land. I doubt it will be pitched like that here.

Should have worked a treat for those ____ WATCH movies - and I guarantee you they had superior ammunition in the empty but 'cool' visuals department.

As for JEEPERS CREEPERS, it came along before the last few waves of horror trends, and yet well after the SCREAM-derived wave prior. It definitely benefited from good timing, a simple, easily communicated premise and engaging characters, and it delivered on what it advertised. Not well enough to get much mileage out of a sequel, but enough to keep people talking about it for a few days after they left the theater. It fueled another weekend or two, increasingly no mean feat these days.

If Tim's really serious about wanting to bring out the under-30 crowd for this, I think there'd be a lot of PO'ed audiences coming out of THE MOTHER OF TEARS opening night. I don't think audiences are conditioned to tolerate the awkwardness and idiosyncrasies, the uneven production values and very 'foreignness' that we're so used to in Argento.

I can't wait to see a good quality trailer, but I honestly think that this film will read 'cheap' compared to say, I don't know, THE REAPING. Not that that did well, anyway. I think younger audiences tend to reject images that don't convey a certain commercial sheen unless they're very deliberately playing against that gloss, like THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. More common is the TEXAS REDUX solution - highly polished faux grit. And you're not going to be able to sell MOTHER on its dialogue, that's for sure.

I expect MOTHER to be it's own thing visually, but based on well, everything Argento's ever done, I doubt very much that thing can be made to look 'cool' to today's audiences in a 30 second TV spot. I don't think you'd make a dime saturation-booking SUSPIRIA into today's multiplexes. Though the music would help. It's still gives good pummel.

I think the best solution probably is to sell this on Argento's name, and on the reputation of INFERNO and SUSPIRIA, but NOT as a wide-booked, Friday-night-at-the-mall horror flick. Go for the OVER-30s. Go for the big city cineastes. Go for the BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF crowd, the guys who got a kick out of FUNNY GAMES before Haneke internalized it all with CACHE. Abel Ferarra devotees. Miike fans. Critics like Premiere's Glenn Kenny or NYT's Matt Zoller Seitz, who will pimp MOTHER before it comes out because of nostalgia of their own discovery of Argento, and their sense that he's never been given his due on these shores. The Onion AV Club. GreenCine Daily. Let them venerate his name. Those are the guys to pitch to, even though a good portion of their readers will surely be puzzled by whatever Argento's got up his sleeve here.

At least those audiences would feel duty-bound to give it some consideration, unlike suburban multiplex audiences, who, really, just aren't ever going to connect with this. Or even try to.

I was hoping to post a direct download link (playing the trailer in the browser was buggy as hell on my mac), and while I couldn't suss it out from a quick look over the code, "Avanze" over at Dark Dreams was able to create and post an AVI:

LA TERZA MADRE Trailer

Now it's *definitely* better looking than the camcordered & YouTubed version!