Happy New Year, Isabel fans! Stay tuned for site news and an exclusive new special feature later today. To start the New Year off though, I’ve added the first 3 gorgeous stills (one of which is HQ) of Izzy in her new movie Daybreakers. She looks really great in these stills! Daybreakers is released in the UK and US next week.

• Daybreakers (2010) > Stills x3

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I have a rare treat for you Izzy fans today! I’ve added 5 HQs from the set of Daybreakers back in 2007 (?). You can see Izzy hanging out on the set with some extras, and in some gory looking make-up. These are rare photos and exclusive to Isabel Lucas Online – remember where you get the good Izzy stuff first

• Daybreakers > On the set – Misc. x5

A script review for Red Dawn has been posted at FilmDrunk – there’s no real mention about the performances or characters, but it gives you a basic idea of what the film will be like.

In Daybreakers news, a couple of new posters have been released – neither of which feature Isabel unfortunately – and you can view them over at cinemaspy.com.

Only a tiny tiny shot of Isabel, and not even a new one! But still …

ShockTillYouDrop.com have just posted an interview with Daybreakers directors Peter and Michael Spierig. There is no mention of Isabel, but they do talk about the possibility of a sequel:

Question: Have you already decided what happens next?

Michael: Absolutely, we have. We don’t want to jinx anything. We’ll see what happens in January, but we do have a lot of ideas if we get to do another one. [There will be] a lot more Subsiders if we get to do another one.

To read the full interview visit shocktillyoudrop.com.

Exclaim.com:
Initially, the glossy sheen, clever anti-capitalist subtext, gorgeous storyboarding and stellar art direction mask the many faults of Daybreakers, with dry exposition hiding behind top-notch set designs and tightly assembled action sequences. After awhile, however, we begin to tire of the bland, humourless characters and the piecemeal story patching together what is essentially a series of vampire-related, science fiction ideas and prospects without focus.

There is a message, sure, and a heavy-handed one at that, but it’s difficult to care with nothing but wooden archetypes blurting out prosaic babble without subtlety or nuance.

Set in 2019, this political fable features a society loaded with vampires, and a dwindling human populace farmed for blood and hunted like animals. The problem with this is that without food, vampires mutate and regress to an animalistic, bat-like stage, killing anything in their path, which proves problematic in the face of social order.

- From Fangoria.com

“Life’s a bitch, and then you don’t die,” so says Bromley Marks Pharmaceutical’s hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) after a long night of work developing a new blood substitute. If this sounds off the beaten path for a typical horror movie, you’d be right. Especially considering that our hero Dalton, his co-workers and the rest of the public are, as suggested by the previous quip, vampires. Vampires that have literally engulfed the world, leaving the last remaining humans in hiding for fear of being captured and their remaining pure blood harvested.

That may be the set up to Daybreakers, co-director’s Michael and Peter Spierig follow-up to the 2004 cult zombie flick UNDEAD, but it’s only the beginning of this elaborate yarn. In an even more unique twist, the worst of the starving vampires are rapidly devolving into ferocious, flesh-winged, bat-like “Subsiders”, terrorizing the otherwise well-adjusted population of undead.

After a test run of a new bloody elixir results in what can only be described to viewers as an extreme case of medical malpractice, more problems arise. As if being in serious need of a new lab coat isn’t bad enough, Dalton accidentally encounters one of the last remaining bands of humans. Perhaps most importantly, he’s introduced to Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac (a scene… no, wait, movie-stealing performance by Willem Dafoe), the crossbow toting, Elvis singing/mantra quoting, car detailing resistance leader who may possess a cure to the entire condition. This, however, does not impress pharmaceutical head Bromley (Sam Neill), who explains that a cure is not good for the blood business.

The Toronto International Film Festival announces its complete 22nd Midnight Madness programme, a Festival favourite drawing legions of devoted fans for manic midnight screenings of wild and wicked films for the witching hour. Midnight Madness continues to offer films that you might not expect in a festival context, an eccentric mix of the weird and the wonderful, and this year’s features include crazed animation, chick fights, zombies, vampires, a possessed cheerleader, exhilarating martial arts and more!

“This year’s Midnight Madness lineup is a showcase of some of the most highly anticipated thrillers and chillers of the year,” said Colin Geddes, TIFF programmer. “Bloody proms and zombies seem to pop up as main themes, but I’ve made sure to inject some truly bizarre action into the mix with animated plastic toys from Belgium and Russ Meyer inspired fighting femme fatales.”

The Midnight Madness Package is $156.51, and available to students and seniors for $100 (prices do not include GST, building-fund fee and service charges). Other ticket packages for the Festival are also available for purchase by cash, debit or Visa†. Purchase online at tiff.net/thefestival, by phone at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM (Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed weekends and holidays) or in person at the Festival Box Office at Nathan Phillips Square (Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week), located at 100 Queen Street West, in the white tent, west of the square. The 34th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10 to 19, 2009.

Daybreakers
Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig
Australia/USA
World Premiere
Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill star in this sci-fi horror about a future populated by vampires where humans are the minority.

From TIFF.net Press. Read more details about the film on it’s page at the TIFF site here.

It’s a vampire movie, the lead character is named Edward and it arrives in theaters this winter. Um no, not that one. But hey Twilighters… maybe we should keep an eye on this “Daybreakers” movie too, don’t ya think?

Starring Ethan Hawke (as Edward), Willem Dafoe, Sam Neil and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” breakout Isabel Lucas, “Daybreakers” sounds like a less romantic, bloodier alternative to the “Twilight” craze. Lucas, an Australian native, sat down with MTV recently to spill the beans on the vampire flick’s hot new trailer, and how the flick is aiming to draw new blood out of the crowded genre.

“They’re different vampires; they’re much more classic,” she said of the difference between “Twilight” and her January film, about an Earth in 2019 where a handful of humans struggle for survival ten years after a plague turns much of the population into bloodsuckers. “95% of the population of the world is now vampires, and there are 5% of fugitive humans on the run.”