New Yorkers living in and who once resided in the Metropolitan Area know Donald Trump too well. For worse, he’s one of us. However, the farther west and south one travels, the short-fingered vulgarian somehow morphs into a worthy figure.
What better demonstrates the concept of “two Americas”? Continue reading Strength Through Fear
Could it be that our real existences can frighten us deeper than what imaginations may conjure?
Atmospheric movies and artful live stagecraft can make flesh crawl. Or even startle audiences out of their skins. Continue reading Monstrosities
Congregants whose services demand sacrificial rites just might look for pointers at how cinema has steeped modern Halloween in blood and gore.
Until fairly recently wasn’t Halloween a simple holiday? One, which for the vast majority of us had lost its pagan purposes. Hadn’t it become candy mania for children and tomfoolery for adults? At best, an occasion for bingeing on movies that scared using moody atmosphere, lucid dialogue and vivid supporting characters?
When did trick or treat entertainments become so ominous? How did The Uninvited become the rebooted version of, what else, Nightmare on Elm Street?
For that matter, how has any producer neglected inserting Ministry’s Everyday Is Halloween into his or her movie?
What happened to the witches and ghosts? The improbable monsters? How did single-minded mass murders and asocial autonomes crowd out our familiar bump-in-the-night terrors? Haven’t these new manifestations of our subconscious, now news cycle regulars, coarsened more than the society they’re intended to reflect? Continue reading Ooh! Scary! Ooh!