Tag Archives: zombies

Weekend Roundup

Distractions, Hobbies, Toronto

Dan rocks outOn Saturday, SharkBoy and I had a dinner for my brother, The Professor, who was returning to England on Sunday. We made veggie chili with chocolate, in consideration of Emma, who I just learned last week has become meatless. Dumping a fist full of semi-sweet chips into chili may sound odd, but it brought out a “depth” to the taste as well as a dirty, naughty feeling. SharkBoy made a blazingly tasty salad and a somewhat mushy cheesecake pie, which we all decided was delish, but needed a few more hours in the fridge.

After dinner, we all retired to the media room for a rousing game of Guitar Hero, which the Professor sucked at (love him dearly, but you’d think of all those years at discos would give him more rhythm), and then on to Mario Cart, which he did exceedingly better at. See you again soon, Professor!

Political BraiiiinsSunday was the Zombie Walk 2008. After some scouring of dollar stores for props and cheap makeup, we came up with (cue theremin) Zombie Mechanics!! oooo! We didn’t want to rip up our original Halloween costumes so we chose this last minute switch. I think we did quite well, considering it was 90% improv on the day of makeup application. The Mailman joined us and found the day …interesting. When we got there there was the added surprise of a Cardboard Battle – two teams made of elaborate costumes made of only cardboard and duct tape battled each other for …supremacy? Bragging rights? Either way, some of them were pretty cool. One of the best costumes was a Tonka truck yellow, digger handed teddy bear, who fought like a trooper. With that going on, it was easy to see that the event had grown exponentially since last year. I think the Toronto Zombie Walk people need to consider they have a monster on their hands. A cheap $5 megaphone doesn’t convey much information to 1500 people. I bet there will be more organization next year because the cops were getting a pit pissed at the size of the crowd spilling out onto Queen Street.

Gallery of some zombies here… my camera’s batteries died half way through the day.

Strange The Strangers

Celebs and Media

The StrangersSaw the trailer for The Strangers last week when we went to see Iron Man. Usually horror movies don’t do anything for me because I grew up on a steady diet of 70s/80s slasher movies. I even took a night course on how to make horror make up and actually got to work on a Bollywood-type movie about East Indian zombies in the water reclamation plant. Or something. We didn’t get to see a script, just one day to make heads into zombies.

I digress. The trailer actually made me jump. Seriously. Okay it had the usual “WHAM! SCREAM! BOOM!” kind of structure but it did find one thing that manages to freak me out every time. The old “being watched by the creep in full sight” shot.

I find if you’re going to scare me it has to be the most cleverest of bait-and-switches (not just “open the fridge, get something, close the fridge…MONSTER behind the open door!!!”) or it has to be subtle. Theres a scene in the trailer that has the female lead standing alone in a large room, no sound. From behind, through a darkened doorway, enters a masked figure. And they just stand there, the woman unaware that someone is at the threshold of the room, staring at her. Here’s some screen grabs:

The reason this freaks me out is probably because I read waaaay too much Edward Gorey as a kid . His drawings of vacant Victorian rooms and random acts of tragedy somehow reminded me of certain rooms we had in the house growing up (see image below, from The Gashlycrumb Tinies). This trailer is the same effect, visually, as sniffing something and having a flood of memories come back to me. I was terrified of the vacant apartment we had on the top floor of the rambling old house I grew up in and I think I only went into it once, clutching my sister’s hand, cutting off the circulation.

Oh yes, I think I’ll see this one!