Grande Illusions

Tom Savini. One of the biggest names in horror, not just for his amazing make-up effects, but also for acting, stunt work, directing, and special effects supervising. The guy does it all.

His credits include the 1978 classic zombie film by George Romero, Dawn of the Dead, the 1985 follow-up,Day of the Dead, and Creepshow (1982). Who could ever forget the gun codpiece in the 1996 hit, From Dusk 'Till Dawn? And the list just keeps on going, because he has several projects in post-production right now.

The man is 62 years old, and he still can scare the crap out of us. In an age where Hollywood (and our culture) worships youth and throws away our most experienced workforce, the fact that he is still "allowed" to be active is a miracle. Thank goodness for miracles!

Tom Savini's passion for make-up effects sprung from the 1957 film, Man of a Thousand Faces. His 1983 book, Grande Illusions, a Learn-by Example Guide to The Art and Technique of Special Make-up Effects, is now in its sixth printing, and has introductory essays by both Stephen King and George Romero, and a forward by Savini, himself.

Savini takes you through ten of his movies and their makeup effects in a clear, step-by-step progression. Lots of pictures, each phase carefully laid out. Funny enough, the only book really out there at the time Savini started, was Dick Smith's book, which I blogged on here. Having come from a dental background and having mixed my share of alginate impressions, I particularly enjoyed the section about making fangs. Just remember to brush your teeth before you take impressions, because you would not believe how icky it is to see last night's dinner in an impression. (I'm a girl. I can say icky and still feel cool.)

For those who are interested, Tom has a sixteen-month make-up effects program here. Maybe you'll be inspired to be the next Tom Savini, and my blog will be about you.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001681/

Thankful

Thanksgiving is a day away. It's our day to give thanks for what we have and gorge ourselves into a food coma.

Here are two people I'm thankful for. We went for cocktails Monday night and they came up with the brilliant idea of going to Apple Hill the next day, do some wine tasting and grab a pie. We had a blast, and since girls talk about, um, interesting things, we were cracking other people up along the way. I'm glad we could spread some Holiday Cheer.

I'm thankful for these two for making my move from my hometown of 39 years easier, and making me feel like one of the girls.

Thanksgiving is also a time I'm thankful for what I didn't get, or don't have anymore.

I'm thankful that I divorced husband #1 and #2, so that when Mr. ShellHawk came along, I would be available and know the difference between being married and being happily married. Another bonus: I topped my personal best in "length of marriage." Personal best never made it past three years; it's four and a half, now. Whoopee! (I'm also glad I chose NOT to go to my local pub that night and went to the one in Santa Monica to meet a friend for dinner, because I met him in Santa Monica and never would have if I'd gone to the other place. I'm also glad that when he left his ex and he had a choice of turning left to L.A. or right to Oklahoma City, that he chose left.

I'm thankful for the jobs I didn't get in this job search I'm on. I found out later that one doctor has a reputation of being verbally abusive to his staff (And what a shock! They're underpaid, too!), and I would have had to work Saturdays (and be away from my hubby) for another job. I hate working Saturdays.

On that note, I'm glad I got downsized from my last job, because of the stress that shouldn't have been a part of the job in the first place. And I get to work on other projects so maybe I won't have to go back into dentistry, if I'm lucky.

I'm thankful I don't live in L.A. anymore. For more reasons than I can count.

I'm sure you have your own list. Take a moment to reflect on what you got, and didn't get.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear Reader.

Ghost House Underground

Do you remember when you were a little kid and it was report card day? Do yo remember dreading the words, "Has potential, but needs to learn to focus."?

You know where this is going, right?

Ghost House Underground is a series of (so far) eight independent horror films brought to you by the makers of 30 Days of Night (which I liked) and The Grudge. I picked them up at the video store yesterday because I hadn't heard of them and thought I'd give a couple of them a shot.

Dance of the Dead is a film that has pretensions of being a teenage Shaun of the Dead. They really should have studied both comedy and the zombie genre a bit more. Plot: A town that is next door to a nuclear power plant suffers a zombie invasion due to a long-term leak of said power plant into the local cemetery and the town. And it happens on prom night.

Review: Slow, not very funny, and the zombies moved too fast. Oh, did I mention they are hypnotized by live rock music? Sort of like the yodeling in Mars Attacks kills the Martians, only rock music isn't deadly to zombies. Has potential, but falls short.

Dark Floors. I was really hoping this would be better, and at first, it was. Then they ran out of imagination. Then, it was painful to watch.

Plot: An autistic little girl is in the hospital for yet another battery of tests by the clueless medical profession. Dad gets tired of it and decides to take her home from the hospital that very night. They get stuck in between floors and when the doors re-open to (of course) the sixth floor, strange occurrences occur. Blah, blah, blah. The very end of the movie felt random to me (No spoilers. If I had to sit through every grueling minute of this, so do you, my dear reader.), and the idea formed in my head that the writer pulled it out of his little Finnish shorts.

Maybe I'm too harsh on this one. It's a good movie for night of friends and cocktails. The monsters and the gore are impressive, as are the visual effects. And, anyway, don't we all suffer from the idea that we can write better horror? It's easy to criticize when we haven't trotted our dreck out there for the world to see.

I will rent the others. I am looking forward to the next generation of horror film makers; their birth, their evolution, their new take on the old story. I look at these films as student films, showing great potential. When these students pull focus and get a few years under their belts... Well, watch those bat wings unfurl, 'cause these guys are gonna fly.

Well, it's got SOME rat in it.

Another short post today. Got the stuff off to Goodwill and got the T-Day shopping done, now getting ready for drinks with the ghouls. I mean, girls. Heh.

But the good news is, Haunted Props knows what a girl's favorite word is: SALE!

Wooo-Hooo! Rat-in-a-bucket on sale! Hooray!

Necromance

Ahh, the Holidays. A time to offend people by saying, "Merry Christmas." (Oops! Did I say that out loud?) A time to say, for the umpteenth year, "I really need to save for this all year." A time to shop and wear out that plastic.

But where can the gruesomely inclined shop?

If you're ever in the L.A. area, specifically around Melrose Avenue, the place to go is Necromance. I met Nancy, the owner, a few years ago while working at my dental office in Encino, and was very impressed by her. We struck up a conversation about her store, and I bought a couple of gifts from there as a result. (I always try to support small business.)

Neat as a pin, and with a variety of neat gifts for those of us with darker desires, Necromance is a fun place to browse for hours.

The skeleton card holder will run you around $37.00, as will the Theda Bara cardholder. There are black parasols, Odd Fellows secret society pins, coffin flasks, old skeleton keys, walking sticks, and stuff for the etymologically inclined... It's all here.

And if you don't know if your sweetheart wants the coffin purse or the metal child's skeleton purse, you can always get a gift certificate. Online, too. How easy is that?

Halloween How-To

Mr. ShellHawk has been rumbling a little. Muttering, muttering, under his breath, "Storage. Garage a mess. MY garage. MY workbench, Precious..."

O.K., maybe not the "Precious" part.

In the period of insanity that is pre-Halloween prep, Mr. ShellHawk was told by my sister-of-the-heart who lives across the street (as she waved her martini glass at him) that the Garage of Doom is now the "Woman Cave." He took it well, and with characteristic indulgent humor. The fact that she made a martini for him might have had something to do with that, but hey, I'll take it where I can!

So today, while he's out playing paintball with said sister's hubby, I have decided to attack the garage and try to instill some kind of order on Chaos.

It's also "displacement activity," which is a fancy term for doing something that is viewed as work and therefore constructive (virtuous) in place of other things that you're trying to avoid. For me, that's the Stewie issue.

I'm still delaying the removal of Stewie's arms and possibly head for storage. Will there be reprisals from Stewie and his little brothers, Brian and Peter? Maybe the muttering in the Garage of Doom isn't Mr. Shellhawk, but the three of them plotting... You see my dilemma, don't you?

We do need the space, period. Mr. ShellHawk has this insane dream of parking his car in his garage. I ask you, fellow Haunters, will the madness never end?

Note, by the way, the large waders sitting on the Mighty Dodge. And the spreading stain of transmission fluid beneath it. (Someone "rebuilt" the transmission only a year and a half ago, before I drove the Dodge to Northern California and our new home. Don't get me started on all the "repairs" I've paid for that have turned out like this.) The large waders, thankfully, aren't mine, and are one of the numerous items that need putting away. I'm undecided on the transmission fluid slick. Any donations to The Mighty Dodge Restoration fund will be appreciated. (Kidding. A little.)

Note the crows on the workbench. Some of their beaks melted off in the rain and I need to repair them before I put them in storage. They got a bit mushy, so I can't just glue them back on. Any suggestions from a taxidermist or stuffed thing rescuer/rebuilder will be appreciated!

Since today will be a busy day, cleaning and organizing the Garage of Doom (which will involve a trip to Goodwill to get rid of my 50 gallon fishtank) I'll make this a quick post.

Go here for the Halloween Technology Roadmap. Lots of good project info.

Alright. Here I go. Aww, man! Where are my gorram work gloves?!

Making a Monster

Those of you who are monster movie fanatics (denizens of Dorkistan, perhaps?) will surely recognize Dick Smith's name. For those of you who don't, Dick Smith is one of the godfathers of monster makeup and makeup effects. His career spans 50+ years, he has an academy award under his belt for Amadeus, and is responsible for some of the most iconic faces in the horror genre, including charming little Megan from The Exorcist.

First published in 1965, Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup Handbook in now in its fifth printing, with an introduction from the also-legendary Rick Baker (Hellboy, The Ring).

Dick takes you through each effect step-by-step, and there are plenty of clear reference pictures. He also has an appendix of makeup supply you may need. This book is easy to read, easy to understand, and very likely to help scare the crap out of the darling little kiddies at Halloween. If you have children of your own, you'll be able to make them up into some pretty cool little monsters. I guess their outsides will reflect their insides, then. Heh.

You can find a copy of it at http://www.monstermakers.com/, a site which is also worth a surf for monster folks like ourselves. You can find Dick Smith's official website here. You can take a basic or advanced course in monster makeup from his site, too. Explore, people!

In Your Own Backyard

Some days, I really believe that we have too many choices. Too much on the to do list. Too many outside forces telling us to look, well, outside, for satisfaction. Too many people that tell us where we are isn't pretty enough. So we spend our time (note the word, "spend") frantically searching, searching, searching. For what? Whatever advertising tells us we need. In that search, we miss the simplest things. The sunrise. The chance to watch your spouse sleep. The two seconds it would take to actually listen to what your child is telling you. For that child, childhood.

I have to make a conscious effort to slow down sometimes, because I'm just as guilty of most other people of being a "human doing," rather than a "human being." Even though I'm unemployed, my days just fill up. Job search, housework, yard work,

cooking, and last, usually, are things I want to do. My various art projects (many in different stages of incompletion), watching the sun rise, calling my 99-year-old grandma, touching base with old friends who are now far away.

A couple days ago, I caught the sunrise. It was worth getting out of bed for.

Yesterday, as I was doing, doing, doing, I noticed the little Japanese Maple in my backyard. The leaves have turned already, the rain hasn't yet come to knock them down. I've been admiring the colors for days. I realized if I didn't get out there to take a few pictures soon, the leaves would be gone and I'd have missed the chance to capture the beauty in my own backyard.

Now, the light wasn't ideal in the photographic sense. It wasn't the fabled "golden hour" (which wouldn't have done any good anyway, because my backyard is in shade by sundown), and in all honesty, I'm not a photographer and I don't have the slightest idea how to set an f-stop. Whatever that is. (I suppose I'll have to read a book sometime soon, if I'm to be posting pictures with this much regularity! In my spare time, of course...)

I just see pretty things, and I try to see them everywhere.

Especially in my own backyard.

Trick or Treat Prank

Great prank here. I will let this stand alone today. We should all be this imaginative!

Enjoy!

P.S. If you click on "White Lines" on my Shaun of the Dead review, you'll actually come up with the scene I mentioned. The clip had been removed from YouTube, and now it's back. Hooray!

Bones

I took these the other day on my play date with my husband.


We ran across this cow carcass on the ranch I mentioned in a previous blog, taking pictures on the way out. I think my honey was worried his friends would think I was odd to take pics of this even though I told them it was research photos for later.


I imagine the turkey vultures made short work of this one.





I find the bleached color fascinating. I always have this picture in my mind of bones yellowing with age, but I guess since they're in the sun, they bleach just like everything else.

This will make great reference for the '09 Halloween display.