Ghost Stories
Check out this neat slideshow of famous ghost photos.
I caught two ghost movies just recently. The final wave of my Netflix freebies included 1408 and The Messengers.
I've read the Stephen King short story that spawned this feature film. It was pretty decent and I had some high hopes for this movie. But it bugs me how people snap up his short stories to make into longer version films (Maximum Overdrive, Tommyknockers, Lawnmower Man, et all), while some of his better novels (Cell, Lisey' Story and the wealth of literature which is The Gunslinger series) get passed over. And even though the shorts are good, they never capture the magic of them in film. This was no exception. I give it points for creep factor by effectively using The Carpenters "We've Only Just Begun". And, if you hadn't read the story then you wouldn't have missed what was glaringly left out. That was that the room itself is kind of a gateway to an unspeakable evil that slowly manifests itself as it "approaches" the room through whatever black dimension it exists in. There is kind of a reference to it when the wall started oozing some black goop, but that was it. They spent way too much time having the main character flash back to his dead daughter, blah, blah, blah.
The Messengers, on the other hand, had killer creep factor and it paid off in spades. I have to say that my favorite types of horror movies are haunted house movies or movies that build a lot of suspense without showing you a lot or shoving some fakey monster or slasher down your thoat. This film had both of those. It was so intense and creepy right from the start that my wife only lasted 15 minutes into it. At first I thought it was going to be an Amityville Horror type movie, and in some ways it was similar, but it wound up being completely different.
On the graphic novel front, I just picked up "30 Days of Night" at the library. I'm only about 10 pages in but it's an excellent vampire story so far. I saw that they have a movie based on it running now. Maybe I'll check it out one of these weekends.
More Halloween dorkiness...I've been making a bat pinata for a Halloween party we're attending this weekend.
I just hope it turns out half as cool as it looks in the picture. And also that the kids at the party aren't as dorky as the kids in this picture.
Oh, and my costume for the event...
It's Baron Samedi from "Live and Let Die". If you hadn't guessed, we're going with a voodoo theme this year.
In other news:
My car got broken into on a beautiful Sunday afternoon while I was at the zoo with my two kids. The lots were full, so we parked on a side street that we've parked on before. When we got back later that day, glass was all over the place. The assholes got my mp3 player (sure hope they enjoy my Harry Potter mp3s) and the face from my stereo (whatever the fuck good that will do them without the rest of it). Most expensive trip to the zoo ever. It took massive effort to keep my kids from experiencing the rage that was so close to exploding in me. To my credit, I played it up like it was nothing...and in the grand scheme of things, it is (I gotta' keep telling myself that). Luckily, the woman that lives in the house we parked in front of was very cool. She and her son saw us from their porch. She came down with a broom for me and her son and mine played a bit while I cleaned the mess up. I didn't call the police...what's the point? Insurance didn't cover anything. I took me 3 days, but I finally got the new glass in today. The money and hassle hurt, but the good thing is, I'm not leading such a shitty life that I need to bust into someone's car for a total of 10-20 bucks worth of crap, so I feel good about that.
And BTW....Goodbye Oink...it was fun.