Strange noises and disappeared teens… Let’s explore!
February 22, 2013
Do we really need to change the horror movie?
I just spent the last two articles talking about all the things that need to happen in order for horror movies to be fun and scary again, but do we really need all this?
The point of going to any movie is to be entertained. Do bad, cliché-ridden horror movies still provide that? Yes, in a way. Riffing and watching with a large group can still be highly enjoyable experiences. In fact, riffing the film is the best part of a bad movie. There’s certainly appeal to laughing at the misfortune of dumb kids getting hacked like Thanksgiving dinner or the general mistakes of someone who just didn’t care to make a movie the right way…
I guess this is where we start to veer into the difference between “great film” and “good movie.”
Wit was a great film. Trick ‘r Treat was a great film. The Dark Knight was a great film.
Feast, The Last Lovecraft, and Dredd were good movies.
What’s the difference? A great film stands the test of time. It can reach a wide audience and has layers upon layers of meaning that only get better with each successive viewing.
A good movie is fun. You may not necessarily watch it again, but it did its job.
I want great horror films again. I want the kinds of movies that get the crowd so quiet that you can hear your own heartbeat. I want real terror, not the endless gore of a slow death with no sympathy for the victim. I want to actually care about the victims so that I can feel something. I want horror with layers of meaning.
…But I also love movies that are good just on their own. For example, one of my favorite horror films, Feast, is a straight-up closed circle monster movie where the characters don’t even have names. It’s gory and so over the top it loops around and comes back to “plausible.”
Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong. Not every movie can be The Shining, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Some of my favorite memories watching movies involved movies that weren’t all that great but were obviously having a good laugh at themselves while we, the audience, laughed too.
Bad movies serve a purpose much like bad writing. They serve as examples. Eventually, the market gets so saturated with the bad that the good comes out. It’s strange. That’s not to say every movie on Netflix Instant should be a must-see, but it does mean that we get more examples of what doesn’t work. It’s like I said regarding drawing with charcoal. When you make enough mistakes and wipe the slate clean, eventually, you get something much better than the original work.
You know what? I changed my mind.
Bad movies can keep coming. They have a purpose. Good movies? Take note and learn from their mistakes.
And now, in celebration of this revelation, let’s bask in the glory of cheese that will be Spiders 3D.
I just saw… something. I’m not sure I can adequately describe what it was, so I’ll just let you watch the video. Warning, though. It’s a red band trailer and includes some gore.
From the movie description:
Torn apart by a tragic accident, former couple Josh (Xavier Samuel) and Tina (Sharni Vinson) come face to face in a supermarket for the first time since their break up a year earlier. The awkward encounter comes moments before a robbery takes place; and then the unimaginable occurs, a tsunami swallows the sleepy beach community.
Josh and Tina find themselves in a desperate situation, trapped in the underground supermarket along with other survivors from the store with no escape. Rushing water quickly floods the supermarket threatening to entomb them in a watery grave. Before long the survivors discover they are not alone, the tsunami has brought unwanted visitors from the depths. The survivors quickly realise their battle is not only to overcome the threat of drowning and the predator within their midst, but a threat far more sinister — hungry great white sharks.
Okay… just what the hell were they trying to sell? It started off like some romance movie right out of Nicholas Sparks. We start off with a couple in some sort of trouble that’s trying to get their lives in order? Okay. Sounds pretty standard. Then we get a robbery complete with scary-looking masks. Okay… so is it now a crime drama? A thriller? Then we get the tsunami that levels the town and now it’s turned into a disaster survival film. And of course, it doesn’t end there.
Any one of those set-ups would have been good for a movie. I don’t watch romantic movies, but I’m sure many of you might have been interested in the story of a couple trying to stay together after a tragedy. Then things go downright weird. It makes me think people just really don’t care about the movies that get put out. As much as I’m waiting to see The Avengers, The Hobbit, and The Dark Knight Rises, those are all derivative from older works or sequels. I can’t really recall the last original movie I saw that really gave me a thrill.
Mary and I just saw Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, though, a GREAT horror thriller with zero gore for all you horror newbies out there, and that was a really good time.
If this movie actually makes good money at the box office, I’m going to start pitching my own ideas until one of them sticks and I get a movie deal.
A jaded Iraqi war veteran returns home to start his life over. But the town mayor, his old high school rival, has stolen his woman. Then, they decide to settle it once and for all with a table hockey match, the country’s leading sport. That’s when the zombies attack. I’m thinking Will Ferrell as our veteran.
No? Okay, how about this?
A bumbling IT guy tries to get a promotion at work by installing new servers in one night, accidently creating an AI that help him in life and love. However, his father has recently died and willed him a mansion purported to be haunted and he must spend the night to receive the rest of his inheritance. However, the house is filled with teens having a wild weekend party while being stalked by a mysterious psycho-killer.
Oh! Even better! High school sweethearts get invited to a raucous party in the middle of the woods. When they get there, everyone is missing and a mysterious figure is stalking them. It turns out to be an adorable alien stranded on Earth who needs their help. The catch is that they’re also being hunted by government agents. Who are also aliens. From the future.
Trailers and movie descriptions are not above making a movie sound different than it really is, so I’m sure this is mostly a monster movie of some sort, but it really irks me with the way five different plots were seemingly strung together. At best, Bait looks like a hastily-put-together monster movie. At worst, it’ll be thirty minutes of watching these idiots go through their lives before something interesting happens.
I’ll skip this one.
Instead, I think I’ll watch these other idiots hurt themselves through sheer stupidity.
You need to cut the crap. Right now. You’re going to make a film version of the novel Warm Bodies, a romance wherein a zombie finds love with a human girl in a post-apocalyptic world. I’ll give the book some credit. I read the first few pages, and while it acknowledges some of the squickier aspects of zombie lore with the literary equivalent of a gore discretion shot, it does a decent job of showing that life as an undead is not pleasant or even clean. The writing is fairly clean and tight and I wouldn’t mind reading the whole thing out of morbid curiosity, but we have a problem.
Hollywood, you will NOT turn zombies into teen heartthrobs.
Okay, Hollywood, go away. I need to talk to my readers.
Readers, hi. Welcome back. Did you see what Hollywood is going to do?
Just from reading the first few pages of the book in question, it sounds like it would work well as literature. Maybe not. I’m willing to at least read it to find out. Here’s the first problem, though. In the book, our main character is clearly identified as having a suit and being a 20-something. In the stills from the upcoming movie, the main character, R, looks like a teen. I already know where this is headed.
They’re going to do it. Don’t think they won’t. I’ve been waiting for this. The trend was strong with vampires. The entire teen literature section, currently the teen vampire romance section, is filled to the brim with this crap, and now zombies are in the mix. Zombie romance stories are not new. Aaah! Zombies and Boy Eats Girl both did it in film years ago, but those stories were told for laughs. Night of the Living Dead 3 played it as a horror film since the protagonist was a woman slowly turning undead as her boyfriend was forced to watch. After all, how could love exist between a mortal woman trying to survive the zombie apocalypse and an undead, barely sentient creature with a hunger for human flesh and tasty, tasty brain meats?
It can’t. Willing suspension of disbelief will take you so far. Like I said, though, I haven’t read the whole novel, and from R’s narration, at least author Isaac Marion has played with the concept to the “mindless zombie” and made his undead closer to apathetic amnesia victims. They eat because they’re hungry. They lack complex motor functions to do things like talk or quickly move.
I am, however, having trouble accepting that this prose is being uttered by a creature with no memory of his past life. The writing’s not bad, like I said, but it takes skill to speak, let alone write like this. It’s the problem of Twilight supposedly being narrated by a world-weary 16-year-old who was well-read and yet could not grasp basic emotionally mature concepts such as empathy.
There’s also the fact that zombie fiction tends to be… squishier than vampire fiction. Vampires can get away with not actually showing too much blood since they only need to make two neat little holes and suck the blood away. Zombies actually need to dismember a living person and eat the brains. This involves the kind of graphic scenes best left to R-rated movies.
Then again, I’ve been wrong before. Best prediction? The movie will suck as it’s softened to appeal to the teen girl market and give them a new Edward. We’ll have a deluge of zombie romance (what is it with undead boyfriends?) and the genre will have to wait at least five years before being taken seriously again.
Fear Hollywood.
And now, let us bask in the glory of a real zombie movie. Warning! Gore aplenty ahead.
Shown here? Sociopathic child murderers. No, really.
November 21, 2011
If you’re a regular reader, you know I love a bad movie. Give me cheese. Give me ham. Serve it with some well-fermented low budget and you’ve got a winner!
Every so often, though, I come across a movie that isn’t bad, but it has so many things that could easily qualify it as Rifftrax material. However, a weird alchemy of performance, writing, and just the right amount of cheese make it into a wonderful movie that actually gets better with age.
One such movie is Hocus Pocus.
Wait, I know what you’re thinking.
“The Disney movie with Bette Midler?”
Yeah, that’s the one. Mary and I actually sat down to watch it this weekend out of pure nostalgia, and the more we watched it, the more we realized how smart and genuinely funny it was. Yes, there was a drink or two involved, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a movie you should watch if you want to learn a few things about writing.
The Sanderson Sisters are so completely over the top and fit so many of the standard “witch” stereotypes that they probably seem like a minstrel show for Wiccans. The movie is historically inaccurate to the point of being a Fox News documentary.
And I’m fine with that.
Winifred (played by Bette Midler) is so hammy that it works. If you’re going to have a villain be over-the-top, go all the way. Nothing kills the mood more than a half-assed attempt at villainy that ends up coming off weak because it was supposed to be taken seriously. Unless a character is supposed to be goofy, at least make him or her aware of the insane amounts of scenery they’re chewing. Winifred is as stereotypically villainous as it gets, but she’s very much aware of her image and plays it off every chance she gets.
Not to mention the fact that she’s genuinely dangerous and one of the first things we see her do is drain a child of life and sentence her brother to an eternity as a cat.
If you’re going to have ham, might as well have the whole pig.
I first saw this movie when it came out in 1993, then again a few years later, but it really wasn’t until I saw it this weekend that I realized just how adult a lot of the humor was. Seriously, the entire premise starts with our lead character getting made fun of for being a virgin, then lighting the candle that brings the Sanderson Sisters back.
After this, everyone from the talking cat to his little sister (played by a VERY young Thora Birch) points out he’s a virgin every chance they get. What are the odds her character even knew what a virgin was?
Then, you have Sarah, the ditzy witch who is about as sharp as a turkey sandwich. She easily comes off as child-like and whimsical… until she starts making cracks about hanging kids on hooks and playing with them. Throw in the fact that she’ll apparently mount anything with a Y-chromosome, and you get someone who may appear harmless to the little kids watching her while appearing to embody every aspect of lust and the cruelty of childhood.
Nothing kills the mood more like the reader calling out things your characters should have done. The Sanderson Sisters are bumbling Disney villains most of the time. The heroes are two high-schoolers, one 10-year-old, and a talking cat from Colonial America.
But they do a lot of things that make sense. The kids are smart enough to recognize they have a few advantages over the witches, such as their knowledge of modern technology. Max takes early advantage of this by using a lighter to set off a fire-suppression system and pretend it was a spell to the newly-arrived witches. He later uses a car’s headlights to simulate sunlight and make them think they’re about to die. Plus, they actually try to warn the police and the adults about the situation.
Of course, running around and saying you just resurrected 300-year-old witches that are part of local lore does you make sound like you’ve been licking frogs.
The Sanderson Sisters also have their moments. After they realize everyone is really in costumes and they get made at a grand party, they play it off as though they too are in costumes and sing a song that’s really a component to a spell that enchants a good chunk of the adults in town.
There are moments of stupidity on all sides, of course, but the rest of the movie really is put together very well and does so many things that redeem its flaws. Remember to not be afraid to make things over the top. If you have to dial it down later, so be it, but better to have more than you need than to have to try and make things more dramatic or funny later.
Hocus Pocus should have been on my Halloween movies list. It’s one of those movies that really just goes with the premise and plays with it. It’s got stuff for adults, for kids, and it’s just fun.
Now shown? The dismembered corpses hidden under the house.
October 24, 2011
It’s the best week of the year, and with Halloween coming up, I thought a whole week of horror-themed articles are in order.
Let’s talk about the must have’s for any Halloween movie viewing marathon.
The thing to remember when trying to pick horror movies for mass viewing is that everyone is going to have vastly different tastes. Some people want gore. Others want something scary but funny. Maybe others love the suspense. With that in mind, this list is going to include a little bit of everything. It’s not a “The Best Horror Movies EVAH!” list. It’s what I think works when you have to satisfy a lot of tastes.
“Saw”
Genius inventor Jigsaw traps people in elaborate traps designed to metaphorically make them face something about themselves. This is usually a dark secret or a vice that makes them inadequate in the killer’s eyes.
Okay, so the sequels could have done without basically turning into a series of more and more elaborate scenarios that missed the whole thematic point of the original. So what if pretty much the point of the movies after the third one was to show how sadistic the writers could be?
The original movie is AWESOME. It barely shows any blood (unlike the sequels), and it’s more concerned with the characters actually finding a way out, unlike the rest of the series where we just get a sickening countdown until someone dies because, let’s face it. If you’re in a Jigsaw trap, you’re dead. Most the gore is implied, making this, surprisingly, a good intro to novice horror watchers. Trust me. They don’t show anything you wouldn’t see on a graphic episode of CSI.
“Re-Animator”
This is it. The gore-fest. The standard. Every movie with exploding bodies or dismembered body parts wishes it has the kind of humor, shock, and lasting power this movie has enjoyed.
Herbert West is a medical student with a secret. He’s working on a serum, his “reagent,” that can bring dead flesh back to life. His goal is to wipe out death, to make humans immortal, but the tests aren’t promising. Anyone brought back suffers from violent personality and animal-like hunger. That’s not going to stop the good doctor from trying, though.
This has to be not only one of my favorite horror movies, but also one of my favorite horror films. Not only do we get Jeffrey Combs at his hammy best, but the film is very much aware of what it is: a horror comedy. And it does it well. The gore is over the top. The humor is dark. The whole movie’s like finishing an onion blossom by yourself. It’s fried and you know it can’t be this good, but damn if it’s not tasty.
I showed this to a friend who is very squeamish about gore, and while she shrieked and yelped, she admitted she had a great time with it. It’s just so over-the-top that it works.
“Halloween” and “Halloween H20”
Okay, so this one’s two films instead of one.
Halloween is the classic story of horny teens getting offed by a masked killer on a meaningful holiday. Michael Meyers is one of the templates for every slasher after 1977. The films that came out afterwards? It gets crappier and crappier until the last few movies where the writers decide to throw in something about a Celtic curse and some psychic powers. Needless to say, those last few movies are… not good.
But…
If you watch only the first movie, the 1977 film that made Jamie Lee Curtis one of the undisputed scream queens, then jump twenty years to the unfortunately named Halloween H20, you get a decent storyline that actually has plot.
H20 still has the trappings of the slasher genre, but it’s smart enough to bring back Curtis as a more mature, grown up version of her original character. Think about it. She survived one of the most traumatic nights of her life and evaded a serial killer that is the stuff of legend. What would something like that do to a person? That’s pretty much what H20 is about, and it leads up to a climactic battle that caps off a 20-year old rivalry.
Just ignore the movie that came after this one, too. Trust me. It’s better if you don’t know.
“Feast”
Monsters attack diner. Diner Patrons fight back. Monsters start killing off patrons one by one. No one has a name.
Feast is both a parody and homage to horror movies. Every character is designated by a convenient subtitle like “Hero,” or “Harley Mom,” or “Beer Guy.” We even get a little leaning-on-the-fourth-wall subtitle telling us everyone’s chance of survival. Some of these estimates are clearly sarcastic.
The result is a movie that is actually a lot smarter than it looks. The patrons are very much aware of how screwed they are and they aren’t all dumb. In fact, they’re quite mortal and when I say anyone can die, I mean ANYONE. No, really. Just try and guess who makes it out and who actually bites the dust and when.
“In the Mouth of Madness”
Let’s say you got that one guy in the crowd that wants something a little meatier, something more psychological. Bust out some Sam Neil.
A prominent author (lovingly modeled after Stephen King) has vanished as his new book is due to hit the shelves. A series of strange murders tied to his books has the publisher worried, so they send a private investigator to find the elusive writer. The journey takes our investigator on a trip into a town that should be fictional, a town filled with beings and situations that cannot possibly be real. All the while, our hero and the audience have to wonder… Is it all real, or are we seeing things through the eyes of a madman?
The movie never really concerns itself with fully explains where the eldritch abominations from beyond time and space came from or why they chose to come through books and other media. It doesn’t explain why the author is seemingly the avatar of alien monstrosities. It doesn’t even bother showing you if things are real or just a dream.
It’s just going to throw weirdness after weirdness and you and you’re going to accept it. Why? Because it’s cool…
It just is. Trust me.
There are MANY more movies out there you could use. Of course there are: The Thing, Nightmare on Elm Street, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Psycho, The Shining, etc. These are just a few of the ones I think would be good for a party. If you just want to do some drinking games with dum kids getting killed, any old slasher film will work. I recommend something from the 80’s or somewhere between 1999 and 2009. Most of the schlock came from these years. The more obscure, the better.
Just remember. There are no bad movies. Just movies you can make REALLY funny with the right crowd.
To show you how to properly riff, here are Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy doing what they do best.
The Thing is one of those classic films that really changed the genre. The special effects showed a graphic representation of alien invasion on a biological level. The sense of paranoia created by not knowing and actually caring who had been infected by the Thing made it not only deeply disturbing, but also unleaded nightmare fuel.
So how did the prequel/remake stack up?
I’m going to try and not give away any spoilers, but here’s the lowdown on the original 1982 film.
An American research station in Antarctica finds out that a nearby Norwegian outpost has been decimated by… something. They investigate and find evidence of an ancient starship buried in the ice. However, as a coming storm threatens to cut the Americans off from all contact with the rest of the world, they slowly realize that something from the Norwegian camp made it to the American outpost. It can perfectly mimic whatever it consumes. And not everyone is human anymore.
The prequel actually starts days before in the Norwegian camp. After finding the alien ship, they call in a paleontologist, Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). When she arrives, the team removes an alien corpse from the ice and begins to study it, but soon things take a turn when the alien wakes up and escapes. Soon, the team can’t be sure who is still human or not.
The movie is FUN, and I mean that in the best way. One thing I liked compared to the 1982 film is that the prequel actually has happy, likable characters. Kurt Russell is dour and jaded and shell-shocked, and everyone else is pretty much just as dark. The Norwegian team, though, is actually having fun with their work, making it more jarring when the bodies start piling up. Winstead is actually really good in her role as an archeologist-turned-Amazon and she adds some heart to the film.
Because of the changes in special effects technology, the monster is much faster and interacts with the victims much more prominently. We get to see some very freaky transformations that don’t have to cut back and forth between different models. Plus, we FINALLY get to see how the thing absorbs someone and changes them, and it’s the kind of thing that would make the Marquis de Sade gag.
Best of all, whoever wrote the script actually paid attention to a little something called continuity. We get to find out what the hell the creature the American team found was and we got to see why the Norwegian camp was such a warzone, including finally explaining the corpse that apparently killed itself in the radio room.
Once the action gets going, it gets going, too. While it starts with the same kind of paranoia as the original, it soon turns into a chase to stop the creature, and it’s much faster than the original film.
Let’s face it: it’s a foregone conclusion than pretty much every character you see is going to die by the end of the film. They have to. There are only so many ways to tell this story, too, and if anyone is smart enough, they do what the characters do to try and weed out the alien. This unfortunately means that the general plot is a dead giveaway. You know the broad strokes of what will happen.
By having the creature take a center stage in the action and featuring all sorts of close-ups and extended transformations, the film obviously needed to step the game up. While early reports said that the film was going to use as little CGI as needed, the final version is FULL of CGI. Not only that, but it’s not revolutionary in any way. It looks okay. It’s not a bad computer effect, but it’s the same thing that’s been done over and over again.
Does the 2011 film stack up to the remake? Yes and no.
It was a really fun movie overall. I enjoyed the action scenes and was concerned with the welfare of every character. I thought Winstead and the rest of the cast were very good at their roles.
However, I do want to address something else. As io9 pointed out, a lot of viewers are complaining that the Thing in the prequel doesn’t seem to have any plan, unlike the original film where it was trying to leave Antarctica and infect the rest of the world. True, but I actually thought it made sense. In the prequel, the monster’s just woken up. It’s weak. Even if it infects other humans, it’s still an alien to our culture and our ways. It’s probably more scared than anything.
By the time we get to the sequel, it’s had time to adapt and it makes the great escape plan of looking like a dog so others will take it in. Even at the end of this film, it finally wised up and decided to try to blend in to get rescued as a human.
Would I watch it again? Probably. It’s not a terrible film by any means, but it does have the added weight of having to live up to one of the standards of the genre, so that hurts it.
Go watch it. If you saw the 1982 version and loved it, this is a nice addition to the mythology. If you’ve never seen the Kurt Russell version, do yourself a favor and do so now before seeing this one.
This man's VOICE has had more three-ways than you've had one-ways. Just accept that you are a lesser man.
July 29, 2011
I mentioned the Battleship movie a few months back. Reports indicated Tom Arnold and Rihanna were going to star in the adaptation of the classic game. Well, Arnold is nowhere on the IMDB page, but Rihanna sure is. The trailer came out and I expected to see all the cheese of Snakes on a Plane and the cinematic potential of Meet the Deedles.
Are you ready for this?
…Crap.
Now I actually want to watch it. I’m willing to ignore the Transformers-like sound effects and alien sequences. I’m willing to forget that this is based on a board game that’s only slightly more complicated than tic-tac-toe. Why?
Liam Fraking Neeson.
Seriously. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed that the man’s mere presence in a movie trailer make me want to watch it. How can we forget the earworm-like effect of this:
Before that, we had Neeson virtually act out an entire trailer by himself in Taken. The entire set-up is one of the most famous monologues and coldly-calculated threats I can recall hearing in a movie in some time. It’s chilling, efficient, and brutally honest. It breaks every rule of “show, don’t tell.” He basically tells us the entire set-up to the movie, its backstory, everything… AND IT WORKS.
Oh, and the rest of the movie’s pretty cool too.
Then we had him give the introduction to the highly-anticipated Batman Begins. His brief monologue oozes class.
But what is it about Neeson? It’s like he’s the sweet leaf basil of movie trailers. Adding a little to the mix can’t hurt. I’m convinced Liam Neeson can make ANY trailer better.
Just read the following and imagine Neeson saying it in a deep, mysterious voice like he does in Taken:
You, Paul Rodriguez, and you, Jimmy Falon, are the chosen ones. Without your strength and ability to make a kick-ass chicken enchilada, our world is doomed. If you do not act, the aliens will come here. They will find you. And they will make you watch Jersey Shore until you bleed out the ears.
Snooch to the nooch, motherfuckers. Peace out.
Now tell me you wouldn’t want to see that movie if you heard that in Liam Neeson’s voice. I swear the man could make Jersey Shore sound like a Shakespearean comedy if he tried.
See you Monday, and enjoy some video of idiots getting hurt. It’ll balance out all the awesomeness you just saw or else you’ll explode.
And speaking of things that are fun and bring us joy, every time a new harry Potter movie or book comes out, without fail, we get the psychos. Pat Robertson is already out in full force, but this gentleman takes the cake. Yeah, he’s a comedian, but the scary thing is that I’ve heard people who talk like him.
Michelle Bachmann, for all her gay hate speech, actually has a gay sister-in-law. What does does sister-in-law think of her family’s views? Let’s just say there are some disagreements.
Rick Perry, possible GOP presidential candidate, started out as a Democrat. Hey, it IS Texas. He probably switched because they use liberals for target practice down here.
The Amazing Spider-Man is coming out next year, and we’ve already been treated to a blurry teaser filmed in a movie studio. That doesn’t mean we can’t look back on the old cartoon and guess at the kinds of things we can expect from a darker take on our favorite web-slinger.
The Young Turks found an old speech of Bachmann’s where she announces her hope that the end times are among here. Do we really want to give nuclear defense codes to this woman?!
Speaking of airheads, here’s Palin TRYING to look sexy. The result is akin to a mildly retarded beagle thinking it’s a ballerina.
Okay, this is going to be brief, but I have some advice for all your writers and artists out there struggling to get the next paragraph out. I know you’re staring at the computer screen, or the easel, or something else and you think that if you stare at it hard enough, it will write itself.
Get out of the house.
This morning, Mary and I went to do a little field work. To be honest, I was getting a little burned out on Charcoal Streets. Things started to sound flat. It didn’t pop like it used to. Things just read, well, boring.
I’d wanted to go downtown and take pictures, walk through the border, and experience the sights, sounds, and smells of border culture. Three hours, one hundred degrees, and three hundred pictures later, we had some incredible shots to work with for both photomanipulation and as final works themselves.
The smells of the streets, the feeling of being utterly exhausted in the heat and still feeling accomplishment at everything we did, energized me more than I can explain. People-watching is a wonderful tool for artists, and this trip offered a lot of notes, images, and memories.
We found a church that was bricked up down to the windows. The door was rusted shut and nothing, not even a sign, told us anything about it.
Another church had a beautiful metal cross… though one quarter was rusted and falling apart while the rest remained almost pristine.
Mansions and former elegant homes dot the city, and many have been turned into offices for lawyers and others. Some, however, are empty, overgrown shells that wouldn’t look out of place in a Silent Hill game.
I haven’t sweat like that in years, not since I worked door-to-door sales in a cotton uniform in the middle of July. I still feel hot despite having drunk cool water since we got back to the apartment, but I’m sure it will pass.
Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to keep drinking water until I’m at least 50% dihydrogen monoxide again. See you Monday, and keep sharing Randomology links!
