Fans of the Friday 13th movie series are to be treated to a documentary retrospective on DVD: His Name Was Jason, hosted by Tom Savini, will be available to buy next year.

The retrospective will cover the “career” of Jason Voorhees throughout the movies and will include “reminiscences and ruminations spanning Jason’s entire film history, as well as a virtual who’s who of contemporary film horror”. It will be released in the US on DVD by Anchor Bay.

As well as the main documentary the DVD “splatter edition” is expected to contain some four hours of bonus material including behind the scenes footage.

The documentary receives its world premier this week at the the 31st Starz Denver Festival with the US DVD release scheduled for Feburary 2009.

One of the true classics of modern cinema is Chan-wook Park’s dark movie Oldboy, unpleasant even by the standards of Korean horror. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that it’s something special and a one-off.

So it’s an obvious candidate for a big-budget Hollywood remake. And who better to make it than the king of schmaltz Steven Spielberg? Yep, unbelievable as it sounds Variety reports that Spielberg is in talks to remake Oldboy, possibly with Will Smith in the lead role.

Spielberg is certainly a skilled director and capable of producing suspense – Duel is a superb example. However in recent years he’s tended towards the saccharin with an annoying number of cute kids in his films (remember the appalling 2005 version of War of the Worlds?).

As for Smith, I think he’s great at tongue-in-cheek comedy (Independence Day, Men in Black) but far less impressive in straight dramatic roles.

It all sounds like a recipe for a disaster.

Shock Till You Drop is reporting that a sequel to the movie 30 Days of Night is in the offing. Apparently this will feature character Stella Oleson from the first film hunting down and seeking revenge on the vampires.

Personally I’m a lot less enthusiastic about this than some people. As I said in my review of the first movie, it was “rather a waste of what could have been a very tense and claustrophobic situation”. By taking the character to the vampires even that situation will presumably be lost, leaving nothing much left other than a run of the mill vampire movie with snow.

Still, I’m open to being proved wrong!

Renowned comic book author Neil Gaiman currently has a bestseller in the US. The Graveyard Book tells the story of young Nobody Owens brought up by ghosts and ghouls in a graveyard.

Speaking to MTV Gaiman has now confirmed that there will be a film version of The Graveyard Book that he himself will produce. Encouraging news is that instead of going with the big Hollywood studios, Gaiman has opted to work with British special effects company Framestore. According to Gaiman: “I don’t think it’s going to be transported to a graveyard in Los Angeles where they’ve been burying bathing beauties or anything. I think we’re actual going to stick with where the book is written and film that.”

Sounds promising.

Some bad news from Entertainment Weekly: the proposed Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie Dark Shadows looks to be on permament hold. The project has been pushed into the long grass because there are now plans for Depp to appear yet again as Captain Jack Sparrow in a fourth installment of the Pirates series. Given that so far each Pirates movie has been worse than the previous one this news doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.

Dark Shadows was, of course, a famous or infamous TV series from the 1960s. Back then there was no time for retakes so it’s full of fluffed lines and malfunctioning scenery. Yet it still gained cult status, especially after it mutated from sub-standard daytime soap into a fully fledged vampire and monster infested gothic delight.

Dark Shadows is a show that – unlike some – is well suited to a big screen remake and a Depp-Burton partnership would have been fascinating. Unfortunately it doesn’t now look like it’s going to happen any time soon.