Update on the Marge Simpson as Lenore painting! I printed out a still from the Tree House of Horror and did a light sketch on a canvas. Some artists HATE using any sort of sketching material that does not involve paint, fearing that the lines will show through. But I sketch lightly and use a very soft pencil or charcoal. I also tend to use a lot of paint on the canvas (if I am using water color or expect paint to be thinly applied I don’t sketch anything in advance). I ran into one problem in this painting just…being…too…big! I had to bend Marge’s hair over too far to still fit on 2 canvases (one of these is 3 feet tall too!). So the solution was to add a third canvas. This way it looks natural and isn’t cramped. Yes, yes, the original painting this is based off of had two canvases, but I think it will be even better with three. Here’s the sketch…
Today I want to talk about a character in a movie that just came out. I saw the midnight showing for The Crazies and I could not help but notice the emotions that run throughout this movie. But, one character in this film has a very different character arc than most people. I find him a very fascinating person and a very heroic person… his name is Deputy Russell Clank.
His personality is that of a close friend to Sheriff Dutton. It can be implied that Clank has been his friend for a very long time and they have been through hell and back together. You can tell right off the bat that Clank is very loyal to Dutton and that he takes his job seriously and he’s very devoted. He’s also pretty funny. He is the definition of a true small-town American hero. Even during the beginning stages of the outbreak, he is very loyal and very outgoing. But, in one of the saddest and probably one of the more emotional points in the movie, he turns.
Unfortunately Clank has the sickness that causes him to go crazy. After shooting a government official in the head (Dutton being mad because he could have given them information), Clank decides to take matters into his own hands and grab Dutton’s gun and holds him and his wife hostage. He tells them to walk while he follows behind him aiming the gun at them. It’s a kick in the nuts to the audience because we fell in love with his character and he saved Dutton many times before that moment and to see him turn into a ‘crazy’ was just too hard for us to handle.
However, his loyalty will always be there. In a stunning (it gave me shivers) move, Clank prevents the crazies from reaching his head and his thinking and he turns back to the good side. In one of the best confrontations Dutton reasons with him and takes the gun from him and than Clank offers to distract the military while Dutton and his wife escape. No matter what, he is the Deputy and he will do what the Sheriff says and he sacrificed himself to save them. He didn’t die a ‘crazy,’ he died a true American hero. He’s one the best heroes in a horror movie.
Commission ideas never cease to amaze me. You think us artists are creative, well, you should see the messages we get! I happen to know a big fan of The Simpsons. A few years back I did a smaller 11″ by 14″ painting for her. The shot was of Homer having a crayon reinserted into his brain up through his nose.
The painting was surprisingly difficult, requiring broad swaths of canvas the exact same color and very fine brush work to properly outline Homer and surrounding objects. Who knew that The Simpsons would be so tough to paint? Here’s the picture…
I bring this up because I’m just about to start another commission for this same customer, a much cooler one! Most of us horror fans have watched The Treehouse of Horror every hear. One of the best episodes was The Raven, which was a full blown reading of the classic poem by Edgar Allen Poe. In the episode there’s a shot of Marge as Lost Lenore. My painting will be based on that…two separate canvases and all.
Stephen King has proven that he can tell a really great horror story; he puts thought and character development into each tale he crafts. Even some of his short stories are well-known and pretty frightening in terms of description and content… and Cycle of the Werewolf is not exception. I really enjoyed this and unlike most of his short stories, this one is not bundled together into a compilation book but rather a stand along book. The story is about a werewolf that viciously attacks citizens of a small town known as Tarker Mills. This story also centers on an eleven-year-old crippled boy named Marty Coslaw who inevitably confronts the werewolf. Little does he know that the werewolf is actually the town reverend, Lester Lowe.
It is very rare to find a really good werewolf book and I think that king really nailed this story. Much like his short work, King really makes the characters three-dimensional and given that it is a short story, he does it quit well. From the beginning few pages to the last pages I was really captivated and really into the book. I even liked how he kept with the ‘cycle’ aspect of the book following the werewolf from month to month.
What made this book different from all the rest of King’s books (or should I say different besides a select group of books) are the illustrations. We’ve seen illustrations in the Dark Tower series and some even in The Stand but these ones are so beautifully drawn and beautifully morbid that it accents the whole story. Each month is in beautiful sketched black and white. I think Berni Wrightson really outdid himself in this book.
If you like short stories and you are in the mood for a pretty tense and overall great story, I would give Cycle of the Werewolf a try. It’s not your typical werewolf film because it doesn’t just focus on the werewolf itself but on the character that would eventually kill him. It’s definitely a good story by the master of horror.
So back in March of 2009, I reviewed my favorite movie of 2008, Let the Right One In. If you’d like, you can read the review here.
After watching the movie and hearing it was based on a book, I had to get it! However, being in Korea made it extremely difficult to locate it. I looked online and couldn’t find it at Barnes and Noble, nor did I want to pay for it from Amazon. Fortunately for me, the movies popularity lead to the re-release of the book! Imagine if you will, my excitement when I saw the book at a Korean bookstore! Needless to say, I snatched it up right away.
Now, Let the Right One In was the first book by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist. Despite it being his first novel, I thought it was amazing! Of course, I can’t say anything about the writing since it was translated by someone else, but the story is one that will stay with you forever.
Carriers Director: Alex & David Pastor Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, Chris Pine, Piper Perabo, Emily VanCamp
Synopsis: Four friends fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where a deadly virus has wiped out most of humanity.
Verdict: The film presents some interesting moral dilemmas, but fails to transcend its derivative premise. Watch Zombieland instead.
I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories. I plowed through Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (we’ll revisit the book later in this review) in two sittings. I’ve seen 28 Days Later more times than I’d like to admit, and I even sat through the lackluster sequel. The idea of a world on its last legs is fascinating to me, so you can imagine how much I anticipated the DVD release of the Pastor brothers’ film, Carriers.
Beam down to the zombies and set your phasers on sucky.
Carriers deals with four friends who have survived a worldwide pandemic: an airborne virus that can also be contracted through contact with the infected’s blood. In order to reach their destination, they have to adhere to a set of strict rules, no matter the cost.
There’s so much wrong with the movie that I might as well start from the top: the film’s title. Below is the definition of a “carrier,” pulled from Dictionary.com:
Immunology. an individual harboring specific pathogenic organisms who, though often immune to the agent harbored, may transmit the disease to others.
Right off the bat, we have problems. A carrier is someone who harbors a disease and transmits it to others. None of the main characters “carry” the disease, and none of them are immune to it. Apparently, the party responsible for naming the film couldn’t be bothered to do the ten seconds of legwork it took for me to find the definition. That’s just lazy.
We’re back! We took about a 4 week hiatus as I did some blog redesign, expanded our crack blogging team, and dealt with a bunch of personal life schtuff. First, the blog has been updated and we’re now more stable than ever before. We also have a new place to call home, www.horrorart.biz. I happen to know the owner very well, especially as he’s me. During the past year my attention has been split between Horrorart.biz and Horrorblogger.com. This marriage of sites will increase focus, content, and advertising by bringing these two together. We’re also no longer Horrorblogger.com, but rather A Horror Blog. Pretty up front name name? For whatever reason, feedback was that folks tripped up on the term “blogger”. Seemed pretty obvious to me, but I’m all about listening to what readers want.
Hey, just because you dug a hole and threw dirt on us, didn't mean that we were dead.
With two big site shifts in 4 months, this will be the LAST big change for awhile and we can all settle in and look forward to some stability and great content. I’ll also be posting and writing about the latest developments in horror art, including the latest specials, upcoming events, and other news. I have also improved our underlying template and have made it a little more horror-appropriate.
Personal schtuff will be ongoing throughout 2010, but the blog is back regardless. The big news on my end…I’m going to be a dad for the second time. Yep, we have our second little monster on the way. Luckily, there are still many months until Dracula gets more sleep at night than I will.
This somehow escaped me when it was released in October, but it is such a good thing, I cannot keep it to myself.
What happens when horror legends Roger (THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS) Corman and Joe (THE HOWLING) Dante are asked to create a three-part “webisode” for Netflix? The use actors Corey (FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER) Feldman, Tony (CANDYMAN) Todd, and Stuart (ARACHNAPHOBIA) Pankin, and create a spooky little gorefest reminiscent of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS. Even better, after watching an episode, the audience got to vote on who gets killed in the subsequent episode. Best of all, it was totally free. Even if you weren’t a Netflix subscriber, you could watch the film.
Written by Richard Christian (THREE O’CLOCK HIGH) Matheson, the movie opens with Feldman’s character, a rock and roll guitarist for a heavy metal band, named Jonny Splatter. He puts a gun to his own head and blows his brains out on camera, after muttering some words of a magic spell. Cut to his wake in a large mansion, where a handful of Jonny’s closest mates gather to remember him. Pretty soon, there’s no cell phone signal, the doors and windows lock, and the body parts start to fly, courtesy of Vincent Guastini, special effects guru behind such films as DOGMA, THINNER, and LAST OF THE MOHICANS.
If you’re interested in seeing more of Vincent’s handiwork, here is one of his effects demo reels:
When Jonny returns from the grave to seek vengeance on those who wronged him, he gleefully spews one-liners and chews up the scenery. It has an old-school feel to it, and anyone who is a fan of ‘80s horror will enjoy this film thoroughly. Granted, it’s only 28 minutes long, but as far as web experiments go, Netflix deserves a big cheer. Leaving it in the hands of Corman and Dante was smart, and making it available for free was simply brilliant. I’d love to see more of these types of films in the future.
Finally, the ending is not what you’ll expect. Without further ado, here’s where you can watch the entire show:
Like most horror movie fans, I don’t much care for the flood of remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings we’ve been subjected to the past several years. To even hear news of one of my favorite horror films getting a reboot is comparable to fingernails on a chalkboard. With all the new technology and techniques created or discovered in the film industry the past couple of decade and a whole new generation of filmmakers at the helm…the remake has become a bit of a necessary evil. However, there are some films that I believe to have been near perfection the first go around and find it difficult to justify the need for an updated treatment. Even worse is when some celluloid cowboy comes riding in on his one-trick pony and decides that he should retell a tale in a way that answers every little question, making every angle of the plot so blatantly obvious even Frances Farmer would have gotten it, thus ruining an aspect that made the original so great (I’m looking at you, Rob Zombie!). Again…it’s a necessary evil and for every ten or fifteen stinkers to hit the big screen, there’s always that one film like Dawn of the Dead or My Bloody Valentinethat gets it right.
Something that really irks me and that I believe to be unforgivable though, is when a filmmaker pulls “a Tarantino”, as I like to call it. Pulling “a Tarantino” is to take someone else’s ideas and films, transform them scene-for-scene into your own, and call it an original or an homage. When a person can watch a film and recognize each scene exactly from the film(s) they were taken…that’s not paying tribute, that’s stealing someone else’s work. The most recent example I’ve seen of this can be found in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later…a film I absolutely love and was heartbroken to find out wasn’t exactly as original as I had thought.
I was watching an early 80s Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who on DVD a while back and there was an advertisement for a British mini-series called Day of the Triffids…an adaptation of a John Wyndham novel of the same name. It seemed to have that rubbery monsters and cheesy sci-fi goodness that I’ve always loved, so I thought I’d give it a go. Not twenty minutes into this mini-series…I realized I was basically watching 28 Days Laterminus the zombies(or infected, for you purists). Man wakes up alone in a deserted hospital seemingly unaffected by whatever chaotic event has plagued the city, check. Man wanders out to discover London reduced to a post apocalyptic wasteland of sorts, check. Joins company with a handful of other survivors who give him the rundown, check. Finds out that everyone he knew or loved is probably dead, check. Man and band of survivors run into some not-so-friendly military types, check. They decide to make a go of it own their own and give the military guys the slip, check…
Here’s the sketch…
Like most horror movie fans, I don’t much care for the flood of remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings we’ve been subjected to the past several years. To even hear news of one of my favorite horror films getting a reboot is comparable to fingernails on a chalkboard. With all the new technology and techniques created or discovered in the film industry the past couple of decade and a whole new generation of filmmakers at the helm…the remake has become a bit of a necessary evil. However, there are some films that I believe to have been near perfection the first go around and find it difficult to justify the need for an updated treatment. Even worse is when some celluloid cowboy comes riding in on his one-trick pony and decides that he should retell a tale in a way that answers every little question, making every angle of the plot so blatantly obvious even Frances Farmer would have gotten it, thus ruining an aspect that made the original so great (I’m looking at you, Rob Zombie!). Again…it’s a necessary evil and for every ten or fifteen stinkers to hit the big screen, there’s always that one film like 