Culture Surfing

Somehow I missed Drag Me to Hell when it played in theaters earlier this year, but I caught up with it last night. It’s smart and nasty in all the right ways, while being totally icky — it could just as easily had the title Don’t Put Stuff in My Mouth. Director Sam Raimi seems to be having more fun plaguing Alison Lohman’s loan officer than he did in all three Spider-man movies combined. This weekend it’s playing at GSU’s Cinefest if you’d rather see it on a big screen in a dark room for Halloween.

For scares at your local multiplex, you can still find ultra-violent Zombieland and the lo-fi sleeper hit Paranormal Activity (which outgrossed Saw VI last weekend). Two other lesser-known horror flicks have been highly touted, but I can’t vouch for them (yet). Critics like the 80s-retro bloodfest The House of the Devil, which hasn’t yet opened in Atlanta. A cult following surrounds the Halloween anthology flick Trick ‘r Treat, which was long-shelved but has recently been released on DVD:

Nearly every horror film that’s off-beat or extreme in some way has champions, even dreadful ones, so it’s hard to separate the superior from the shlock. Here’s a list of more chilling choices from the darker corners of the video store, as well as intriguing ones that I’ve been meaning to see.

Continue reading “13 Days of Halloween: Which (obscure) scary movie to see?” »

Bookmark It

About five years ago, the Alliance Theatre asked me, possibly due to a clerical error, to take part in a panel discussion with the winner and runners-up in its first Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. The clear winner for “funniest person in the room” that day was Megan Gogerty, whose Kendeda contender Love Jerry was produced — to no little controversy — at Actor’s Express in 2006. Gogerty returns to Atlanta to perform her one-woman show, Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant, at Synchronicity Theatre Nov. 5-22. A professor at the University of Iowa, she recently recorded an album of songs about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

What are the origins of the show?
It’s a sort-of true story. I take some liberties with my life. It’s about two things. The first is my journey as a Democrat wandering through the Bush years, which coincides with a personal narrative about me deciding to have a family. It began when I was in Iowa City at a theater company that does a monologue festival. I performed one that I’d written a while back about meeting Hillary Clinton at a book signing. It went over super well. I used to do stand-up years and years go, so I thought maybe I should expand the monologue. Riverside Theatre said, “Do it! Great!” It had a short turnaround time, so I came up with a generic title, Megan Gogerty Loves You Very Much, which is true. I am Megan Gogerty and I do love you very much. And I decided to do Hillary Clinton.

Continue Reading “Speakeasy with Megan Gogerty” »

(Photo © 2009 Megan Gogerty)

Bookmark It

1) Atlanta Pride Festival officially kicks off in Piedmont Park.

2) Bands of America perform at Georgia Dome.

3) Big City Burlesque stages The Seven Deadly Showgirls at 7 Stages.

4) Hand of Doom performs at 529.

5) Halloween is in full effect with Fuggin Monster Jam, Silver Scream Spook Show and Halloweenus Wangdoodle, to name a few.

See more Atlanta events.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

Bookmark It

Create a puppet workshop (Courtesy Joe Boris)

The Center for Puppetry Arts just received a $75,000 Common Good Funds Grant from the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta so they can keep doin’ what they do.

Since 1951, The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta has been connecting community members, nonprofits, and other partners to strengthen the Atlanta region through philanthropy. Today they are one of the largest Community Foundations out of the more than 700 that exist around the country. With the support of their donors, The Community Foundation averages more than $75 million in grants annually to an estimated 2,000 nonprofit organizations locally, nationally, and internationally.

The Center for Puppetry Arts nonprofit organization operates with minimal staff and limited resources and still manages to continually provide awesome programming to the community such as the Ghastly Dreadfuls this time of year. The Center is dedicated to educating the public about the past, present, and future of puppetry as an art form. It’s not afraid to experiment either, as with 2008’s Cinderella Della Circus. The Center also tries to make its programming accessible to as much of Atlanta as possible through ticket donations and special programming.

Bookmark It

Long ago Tina Fey’s sitcom “30 Rock” established that resident hayseed-naif Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer) hails from Stone Mountain, Ga. “Stone Mountain” provided the title of last night’s episode, in which Fey’s Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaughey traveled to the Bible Belt to find a new “TGS” cast member with appeal for Middle American viewers. McBrayer was born in Macon and raised in Conyers, but it’s not surprising that “30 Rock’s” notion of Stone Mountain — located in “Western Georgia” — bears virtually no resemblance to the suburb found East of Atlanta. At one point a Stone Mountain newscaster announces that a local funnyman “has been hired by a Catholic to appear on ‘TGS’ with a black fella.” One gets the impression that “30 Rock’s” creators think that people actually live on Stone Mountain. It’s good for a few chuckles, though:

Bookmark It

Untitled, Sovereign Tree (kingfisher branch) by Todd Murphy

The Atlanta art scene serves up some seasonal spooky shows as well as some great opportunities to meet local artists this weekend. Read on for the rundown.

Continue reading “Weekend Arts Agenda: Which craft?” »

Bookmark It

I was only looking for costume ideas…

(H/T to Gawker)

I also came across this tale of teen angst/recipe for Oh-No-She-Didn’t Butternut Squash Soup from CosomGirl.com:

Lindsey was a shoo-in for head cheerleader. Her handsprings were Slinkies on speed; her pikes were 90 degrees of perfection; her dismounts put Nastia Liukin to shame. On top of that, while other cheerleaders decorated the football players’ lockers (Go Warhawks!), Lindsey decorated the other cheerleaders’ lockers. Everyone on the squad adored her.

Except Tiffany. Tiffany, who could only do the splits because she was born with some sort of weirdo ligament problem. Tiffany, who slipped cards into the football players’ lockers after the squad had decorated them so the guys thought the work was hers alone. Tiffany, who had a secret stash of embroidery supplies and could arrange it so that the word FARTER mysteriously appeared on a certain teammate’s black bloomers in bright yellow thread. Hmmm.

Find out what happens to Tiffany and grab the inexplicably accompanying recipe here. (And by the way, it’s none of your beeswax why I was reading CosmoGirl.)

Bookmark It

Half Familiar by Monica Cook. Oil on Canvas. 2009.

If you were planning on attending the Castleberry Hill Art Stroll this evening, think again. The event was quietly moved to a second-Friday event earlier this month. Castleberry Hill Neighborhood Association President Laurel Emery explained by e-mail that scheduling on the last Friday of the month often conflicted with holidays — like this Halloween weekend, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. The next Art Stroll will be Fri., Nov. 13.

If you skip out of work early today, you might be able to catch a few of the shows hanging right now. Most gallery hours end at 6 p.m. today, like the Marcia Wood Gallery which is currently showing work from the very talented Monica Cook.

Bookmark It

1) Gogol Bordello performs at Variety Playhouse.

2) The Masquerade starts Halloween early with an All Purpose Party.

3) Underground Atlanta hosts the Darkside Tours.

4) Critical Mass gathers for a special Halloween/Pride bike ride through downtown.

5) The Secretaries opens at PushPush Theater.

See more Atlanta events.

See more Halloween events.

(Photo courtesy Lauren Dukoff)

Bookmark It

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that theater owner Bob Wood bought the building from Inman Park Properties founder Jeff Notrica for upwards of $2.8 million. According to the article, Notrica (yes, the same Notrica that owns the embattled, beer-crushing Clermont) was facing foreclosure and the pair’s deal had been in the works since April. A foreclosure would have forced the theater out of its 14th Street home.

The loan secured by the building was scheduled for foreclosure this month, according to a foreclosure auction notice. The value of the loan was $2.8 million, but Wood says “I paid more for the building than that.”…”It saved him from foreclosure,” Wood said. “He’s been a great guy to us. We wanted to help.”

Read more from CL’s Scott Henry about “Inman Park Properties’ implosion.”

Bookmark It

Zombies have become so popular that the corridors of our pop culture resound with ravenous moans for “Braaaiinns!” White Zombie, screening Saturday at the Plaza Theatre’s Silver Scream Spook Show, offers a kitschy reminder that the living dead weren’t always the decomposing cannibals of George Romero.

Follow the trail of body parts back a few decades, and you’ll find the origins of zombies in Haitian folklore. White Zombie shouldn’t be mistaken for a documentary about voodoo traditions, though. Filmed in 1932 to ride the horror trend established by Frankenstein and Dracula, White Zombie fudges the detail as to whether zombies are walking corpses or living people enthralled by drugs and hypnotism.

Victor Halperin’s film begins with a painfully white engaged couple, Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge Bellamy), stumbling across a burial ceremony shortly after their arrival in Haiti. They plan to marry as soon as possible at the estate of their new, wealthy friend Charles Beaumont (Robert W. Frazer), having forgotten the old adage, “Don’t talk to strangers because they might try to zombify your fiancée and raid her coffin.” Desperate to steal Madeline for himself, Charles enlists the aid of a sinister plantation owner with the nefarious name of Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi, of course). Though Madeline seems to die on her wedding night, she’s actually become enthralled by Legendre.

Continue Reading “Campy White Zombie harks back to pre-Romero living dead”

Bookmark It

For sheer literary merit and respectability, Frankenstein has cast a shadow over all horror novels published over the two subsequent centuries. Picking Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic seems like an easy out, though, which ignores more recent landmarks of the genre like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. The new century has already seen some excellent horror novels, including Dan Simmons’ huge, Victorian-era chillers, The Terror and Drood, Scott Smith’s disturbing vacation-from-Hell The Ruins (hey, anyone see the movie?) and China Mieville’s genre-busting Perdido Street Station.

Still, evaluating the scariest of everything for the 13 Days of Halloween series has reminded me of the subjectivity of fear-based entertainment and the fact that the most lingering scares date back to youth. For the novel that scared me most, I have to back to vintage Stephen King, who penned several heart-stopping books before I was old enough to drive. Salem’s Lot and The Stand would be satisfying choices, not to mention his “Monkey’s Paw” homage Pet Sematery). His novel that scared me most, though, wasn’t even a novel.

Continue reading “13 Days of Halloween: The scariest novel” »

Bookmark It

Los Cenzontles

No one knows exactly when the sugar skull was invented. It may be the most recognizable symbol of Dia de los Muertos today, but the brightly decorated, edible molds likely date to a time before the colonization of the Americas. Many of Central America’s indigenous populations kept human skulls and bones to use in celebrations honoring the life and death cycles. At some point, sugar bones became a common offering, perhaps symbolizing the sweetness of life in the shape of death. Things changed when the Conquistadors arrived, however. For those who survived the bloody invasion, the Catholic Church moved the celebrations from the ninth month of the Aztec calendar to All Saints Day and All Souls Day on Nov. 1 and 2. Sugar skulls will be easy to find in the coming days at the Atlanta History Center and the Rialto Center for the Arts, where Eugene Rodriguez’s Los Cenzontles performs this week.

Continue reading “Dia de los Muertes leaves a trail of dead this weekend” »

(Photo courtesy the Rialto Center)

Bookmark It

THE PEOPLE VS. LEO FRANK: Leo Frank (Will Janowitz) is sentenced to jail following his conviction for the murder of Mary Phagan.

By David Lee Simmons

The Leo Frank case has been examined and re-examined over the years. It’s been the subject of four film works and numerous books, the most recent of which put into even clearer perspective the trial that eventually re-energized the Ku Klux Klan and emboldened the Anti-Defamation League.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that The People vs. Leo Frank — writer/director Ben Loeterman’s half documentary, half re-enactment — still feels fresh in its depiction of Georgia’s most infamous murder trial.

Part of it is the timing: The movie comes more than 20 years after the last film work, the Emmy-winning mini-series starring Jack Lemmon and then-unknowns Peter Gallagher, Kevin Spacey and Cynthia Nixon. It also comes on the heels of Emory film studies chair Matthew Bernstein’s book about all four film works, Screening a Lynching.

Continue Reading “Ben Loeterman appeals The People vs. Leo Frank“

(Photo Courtesy BLPI Inc.)

Bookmark It