Moonshine of the Damned Update #1

I'll start labeling these with numbers, just because it makes sense since I plan on doing more.

For starters, I'm officially changing the name from Bimbo Zombie Killers! Moonshine of the Damned to simply Moonshine of the Damned. Not only to simplfy it, but as a reference to the naming scheme of Evil Dead - so it's a vague reference, but one nonetheless. It went from Evil Dead, to Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, and of course, Army of Darkness, so I'm doing the same thing.

And I've been giving some thought to a poster - not that I really need one, or ever do really, but it's part of the process that I enjoy. This time around instead of doing a photo of the girls or something like that, I'm actually going to paint it - not digitally, but regular old, acrylic on canvas, paint. I'll be using this design:

And this will be, sort of, yet another reference, this time to the movie House, which featured a painted, slightly stylized zombie hand ringing a doorbell. I'll be scanning the painting and digitally touching it up a bit, but that's it.

This painting will also be the prize I'll be giving away for the funding campaign. Not sure of the size yet, but I'll be picking up the canvas next week and start working on it.

Speaking of the funding campaign, I'll be launching the 2nd phase of it next week - more about that then.

Finally have the first draft of the script, it's a little rough but it's all there. Casting is pretty much sewn up for all the new parts. So far the zombie casting process is going pretty well, not fantastic, although I haven't really been pushing it too hard just yet. I've broken up the zombie parts as actual roles that are being cast, rather than just making a random call for extras and hoping for the best.

And I've been working away trying to get a more accurate gauge on the FX budgets now that I know the needs of the script. That will be going on for the next couple weeks, finding out all the little bits I wrote and now have to create somehow. Should be fun.

That's it so far, we'll see how next week goes.

Brain and a Finger!

Brain and a Finger for $12.

Limited supply. I have 10 of these sets for sale on a first come, first serve basis (orders must be paid for within 2 weeks of ordering or it will be offered up to the next person who requests). The partially eaten Brain Keychains are normally $10, but this set is being sold for $12 - the Brain would normally retail at $8 and the Severed Finger at $7, you might be only getting a few dollars in a discount, but this is for a fundraiser not a direct retail sale - so that's a pretty decent deal.

The Severed Finger will be chosen at random from a batch already made. All orders can be made here, brains@themonkeyrodeo.com and mention "Brain and a Finger" as the subject - should they be all sold you, I'll let you know right away. Shipping is the same as usual, $15 in Canada, $25 in the US. Contact me for overseas rates, but be warned it won't be cheap, so best to find a couple other folks who might be interested in reduce the shipping costs.

Lord of Tears Kickstarter

This is the first time I've every really promoted someone else's work  here and I'll admit it's probably only because no one's every asked, but also because I think I'm pretty hard to impress. UK filmmaker, Lawrie Brewster recently contacted me to help promote his Kickstarter campaign for a film he's working on called Lord of Tears.

He sent me a pile of links to check out, so I'm just going to repost them all here because I feel like it:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2367066/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3879509/

The Kickstarter below includes our trailer, and a video in which I describe more about the film.
Kickstarter - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lawriebrewster/lord-of-tears
Direct Trailer Link - https://vimeo.com/60118572
Direct Trailer Download - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/29968604/LORD%20OF%20TEARS%20OFFICIAL%20TRAILER%20v6.zip

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/lordoftearsmovie?ref=ts&fref=ts

Tumblr - http://lordoftears.tumblr.com/

Key Art and BTS Stills - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/29968604/Lord%20of%20Tears%20-%20Screenshots%20and%20Key%20Art.zip

Official Website www.lordoftears.com

I highly recommend you check it out, it looks pretty funky, if you  can't be bothered following all the links, here's some stuff right here. Here's some stills he sent me:

This is one thing about the UK I love, the locations.

Look at this, it's damned awesome.

 How's this for creepy?

Even if I were to just judge it by the stills, I'd say it's pretty cool. How about a trailer?
So if your pockets are feeling heavy and you're in need of some good karma, head on over to to his Kickstarter page and get to donating.

Need Zombies this summer on PEI for web series.

The title pretty much explains it.

If you've been following this blog you might recall I tried shooting a web series last summer, Bimbo Zombie Killers! Undead in the Water - well, it didn't work out since we were late starting and ran out of time. We're trying it again, now under the title Moonshine of the Damned.

We need zombie extras in order to do all this though. We're looking for reliable folks who can commit to just one day of shooting - there'll be several involving zombies, but most people will only be needed for one day for a specific scene.

Anyone interested in being an extra can email me at casting@themonkeyrodeo.com or send me a message on The Monkey Rodeo page on Facebook.. We're looking for adults only, no children please. Must be able to commit to at least one day of shooting, schedule will be available for this summer very soon - so no excuses there. We'll be starting in June and shooting on weekends throughout the summer on Prince Edward Island.

We supply the makeup as well, it will be foam latex prosthetic appliances - so if you're allergic to latex, you might want to let me know. We will be doing some simple face painting makeup as well from time to time. Zombies will be asked to show up 2-3 hours before shooting times to get done up.

Costumes can be any ratty old clothes (you can check to see if we have any zombie wardrobe though), no logos - no brand names at least, bands and stuff like that are fine. We're also accepting clothing donations for our zombie wardrobe - the more torn up the better and all sizes welcome, send me an email about that as well (same address as above), I'll even thank you in the credits.

That's more or less it, you can email me with any questions as well.

Demon Photo Services

While I'm continuing to do my own shoots, I am no longer really looking for new models - but that doesn't mean you still can't get demonized as I'm planning on offering up a Demon Photoshoot Service. Here's the details:

If you’re not a resident of PEI and you don’t live here, well that’s a problem. However, should you plan to be on the Island at a certain time and are interested, let me know – but 2 weeks notice minimum would be appreciated as I am busy and this is not a last minute thing.

Since every shoot will be, most likely, totally different, it’s hard to pin down all the finer details – such as locations, travel, costumes and whatever. I can say, I don’t have a car so travel is up to you. I don’t have a stock of costumes, so if you wanted something special or specific, you’d have to supply that yourself unless it’s so special (and you’re willing to pay extra) I’d have to make it. As for locations, anywhere you’re willing to drive to is fine by me.

Cost Breakdown:

For example, this here picture, should someone wish to recreate this, would be expensive – and that’s not even thinking of the costume, which was mostly custom made for this shoot. The makeup was a full face piece ($50), a pair of ears ($20) and 4 pairs of horns($40), plus application ($20) would run $130, plus $20 for the shoot itself – you’d be looking at $150 for that kind of photo shoot.

Another example

Forehead ($20) – and for this shoot I did make some custom fangs and had a pair of contacts leftover from another shoot with the same model.  This would run you $40.

However, if you wanted fangs, custom made ones are pretty pricey and a bit of a pain to do a right now (working on that however), my suggestion would be to find yourself some cheap Halloween ones for yourself. I think Repeats in Charlottetown actually has some all year round, but I could be wrong.

Some other important stuff to know:

The more people, the more time it'll all take and the more it'll cost - there's no discount for multiple people since it's way more work time for me. Also, multiple people at night can be tricky since it's harder to focus on multiple subjects unless there's good light.

Children...Nope. I DO NOT recommend this for children because there's a lot of things that can go wrong and some adults even have issues with it. I am not interested in dealing with these issues nor is a simple explanation enough to waive this - unless you yourself have gone through it and totally understand the entire process and are willing to convey that to your child and are willing to accept the consequences should there be a reaction to the makeup or something in the whole process, I refuse to do a shoot with anyone of age 12 - and there's no wiggle room on this, and they must be accompanied by a parent. Also, most of the larger pieces I have will most likely not fit children anyway.

Sometimes, in certain conditions - like nighttime - pictures can not to turn out very well, no problem there at all. Should you want to do a night shoot and the bulk of the pictures just turn out blurry and out of focus, I've no problem redoing the shoot at no extra cost. However, the makeup must be identical to the previous shoot.

I'm sure there's a lot more things that could be covered, but there's just too many variables - so feel free to send me an email foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com, and asked away. Can't hurt.

Remaking Malice

As the title would suggest, I am remaking the never finished movie that started me on all this demon stuff, Malice.

I have no idea what prompted this, but the idea just popped into my head this morning and I debated doing it or not. So I sent a message to the original lead actress, Heather, and gave her the rundown on my idea. It's not that I wanted to let the project go, but I just couldn't see it be completed to a point where I'd really have been happy with it.

It suffered a massive amount of issues because of the length of time it took to make it. Continuity errors were everywhere, nearly everyone's hair changed at one point or another, some very dramatically at that. Just so much changed as we shot it that I just can't see salvaging anything really worthwhile out of it all.

The only people who would even enjoy it where those who were in it, I couldn't see myself being comfortable posting it online (and it would've been unfair not to) because of the barrage of insults and comments that would've come flooding in regarding all the problems with it.

It was fullscreen, standard def, some video glitches as well. The number of reasons not to finish it just piled up and got worse with every year it wasn't completed. So today, I decided to just let it go.

Now, the remake isn't going to be a direct remake of the original story. I'm taking a queue from the reshoot of BZK! Moonshine of the Damned, taking the best parts of the story and reworking everything into an entirely new story. The idea came from working on the grant for another project called "Conversations with Demons", which is about a world in which we've discovered that Demons exist, it deals with the social implications, not the military fighting large hordes of murderous creatures, but the simple notion of how we would welcome a race of creatures we previously only believed to be fictional and have for hundreds of years just passed off as evil anyway.

The remake of Malice will be a much simpler, and much more peculiar story - I'm planning parts of it to have no dialog for very long stretches, leaving the audience to figure out what's going on for themselves at first and finally revealing as much as possible by the end.

Malice will no longer be a human girl with an eyepatch and super strength, but a full blown Demon. I'm hoping that will remove any issues with hair continuity that might arise should it take awhile. At this point, I'm still talking (more or less) with Heather about being involved as Malice again - time commitments are obviously a consideration. So I'm hoping she's willing to wait to see an almost final script before making a definite choice.

We'll see how it all goes. I'm planning on writing over the course of the next year, planning it out as much as possible so when time comes to shoot, the bulk of the work will already be done and we can just focus on shooting instead of struggling with making things work and juggling schedules last minute.

And, the footage from the original will not just vanish, but I've decided that from now on, anytime I shoot something involving a TV screen, we'll be showing part of Malice randomly.

Brains, brains and more brains...

We're approaching the 1/4 mark sold of the Brain Keychains, not too bad - but I'm pretty sure we can do better. It'd be nice to have them all sold by April, if not sooner. So here's hoping - with a little help - we can get the word out there.

They're $10 each ($10.50 if you're using Paypal) + shipping 15 in Canada and $25 in the US. If you want one but you're not too keen on the shipping costs, than find a few friends who might want one and split the costs, it's as simple as that. And, if you're on PEI, you can arrange a pickup or delivery, so it's even cheaper that way.

All the funds are going towards the FX budget for the (hopefully) upcoming web series, Bimbo Zombie Killers! Moonshine of the Damned. The FX in this will easily be the most impressive of anything done on PEI - although, that's not really saying too much since I'm the only person doing FX like this locally at the moment.

For every person who places an order, their name will go into a draw to win one of the larger props be specifically made for this series, and there's going to be some awesome one. Could be worth well over $100 retail. And, you'll also get a thanks in the final credits of the series - so snag one of these bad boys before they're all gone, only 200 are ever going to be made and the moulds will be destroyed once I make all 200.

If you've any questions or want to order one, send an email to brains@themonkeyrodeo.com.

10 Things I Hate About Movies - Part 10.

10. Continuity Errors.

Now, you might think I’m going to bitch about movies with continuity errors. You would be so damned wrong. I’m going to bitch about assholes who think they “win” at movies by constantly pointing them out.

Look people, continuity errors happen. They’ve always been there and they always will be. Do you realize the monumental task it is to make a movie? Why do you think they cost millions of dollars to make? Do you see all those names in the credits? Think of it this way.  Take a huge empty room and place a donut on the table. Tell 1000 people who are about to walk through the room to not touch the donut. Without a doubt not one person will admit to it, but the damned thing will move or just have vanished. It’s just the way it works.

Now, multiply this idea by a thousand and you’ll just begin to understand the shitstorm that is movie continuity. I hate continuity, so when I make it movie there’s a line of what I will and won’t worry about – because (and I’ve said this before) making good movies is really hard work, which is why I don’t make them. You’ve got a single set, filled with hundreds  of little props and dozens, upon dozens of people walking through it between each take. Do you really expect that one little prop will never move between shots?

Glasses of water being full one second,  half full the next.  Clothing articles missing or partially removed or unbuttoned. Food, cigarettes, background extras, the list is unending. It’s just a near impossible task to make a movie without this happening. Everyone should know this my now. EVERYONE. So why do some people feel the need to sit on their little throne of “I watch the movie good!” and point out continuity errors? Sure it might be fun when you notice it the first time and it’s kind of a funny error, but you move one and continue to watch. You don’t sit and make lists and expect the world to be in awe that you’re pointing out someone else's mistakes – let’s face it, it’s like pointing out there’s weather today, we all know, we just care to talk about it sometimes because we’re too busy enjoying it.

The End. I'm sure there's more thing about movies that annoy me, but I can't be bothered anymore.

Re: Your Brains

So the title was a bit of a lure, but yes, this is about Brains, just not Jonathan Coulton.

In case you missed it, I'm selling only 200 of these custom made, partially eaten Brain Keychains. They're made of resin with a hard gloss coating, hardware included as you can see here. They're probably just slightly larger than the average male thumb, if you needed to know that.

Why am I selling them? I'm trying to raise money for the Bimbo Zombie Killers! Moonshine of the Damned web series I'm hoping to shoot this summer. The funds are going towards the special effects needed for the series.

The details: for only $10 you get one of these bad boys and a thanks in the final credits of the series. Plus once it's all over and done with, I'll be picking a name from those who purchased one, and they'll be winning one of the larger props being made for the series. No idea what it'll be yet, but there's a lot of awesome stuff designed and it'll probably retail for well over $100 or could even be a one of a kind. Who knows. But it will be unique.

To date, 30 have been sold. 170 remaining.

Payment details: Canadians can use Email Interact, everyone else Paypal (Paypal users need to add $0.50 for each brain). Shipping in Canada is $15 on average and $25 to the US. Residents of PEI can just arrange a pickup or delivery.

Questions or Order can be sent to brains@themonkeyrodeo.com

Just let me know the amount of brains you want. If you need shipping or not, and if you do need it shipped, let me know your address. Pickup and shipments will be made every Tuesday. That's pretty much it.

Bulk orders are definitely welcome and encouraged for anyone looking to cut their shipping costs. And please feel free to share this, any help is good help.

10 Things I Hate About Movies - Part 9.

9 POV Movies (or Found Footage)

This style is very, very tricky to pull off. I mean in reality, imagine you’re out with your friends videotaping them doing something stupid and the end of the world happens.  Are you really going to run around filming stuff, screaming “Someone has to see this!” as your friends are being eaten by giant ancient squids from space? Just so you know, YouTube is probably down at that point, so no one really cares.

The hardest part is coming up with that thing that makes people believe that someone might continually film this incident. “Quarantine” did a decent job of that – and no, I don’t believe “Rec” did. I’m not a huge fan of American remakes of foreign films, but “Rec” just wasn’t that great and the lead actress was utterly atrocious.

“Cloverfield” I have mixed feelings about. There’s nothing more fun that a giant monster movie, but when you push your monster into the background and focus on these pretty white people trying to survive, I felt a little lost. I get the idea, and I respect the idea – take something that’s a well known genre and do something different, I was complaining about people not doing that earlier – so for that fact I appreciate the movie. I like it didn’t explain too much, but I didn’t care for the overhype promotional campaign. Like I said, very mixed feelings. Good on the one hand, and literally bad on the backside of that same hand and one the other, the opposite – or something like that.

“Diary of the Dead” an example why this style should be shot in the head. What an undead turd of a movie. From the clichéd (and badly acted) characters to the way they conveniently placed the “real” camera to catch those scary zombie moments cinematically. This movie should never have been made, if you remove the POV element this was an incredibly sad, tired and just unnecessary attempt at a zombie movie by a man who should have known better.

“V/H/S” was kind of amusing, I think only because it was several short POV movies instead of one long movie – this is the only reason this movie worked, because instead of trying to set up a scenario and continue it for 90 minutes or more, it was like “Tale of the Unexpected” or “The Twilight Zone” in a series of pretty much unrelated freaky ideas that didn’t have enough time to wear themselves out. It also did a decent job of justifying the filming and even simulating video noise and tape or digital courruption.

“The Last Exorcism” is a good example of a good premise gone horribly lame. It started off kind of interesting, got into somewhat promising territory and then suddenly absolutely nothing really interesting at all happened until it was finally over – thankfully. A pretty dull movie in retrospect, although they did that typical best justification of it being filmed possible, until the very last shot which really was pandering and probably would never have actually happened.

I’ll only mention “Paranormal Activity” to say how much I hate those movies. Unscary and boring as fuck on a stick. Ooh, look at the scary floating pool cleaner!!! Fuck you to those who made those movies – you’ve just made other assholes think they can do it too. Thanks. These movies are a good example of how “found footage” movies don’t work when you think of the logic behind them. There was a horrible incident and people died and there’s footage, let’s creatively edit it like a horror movie since we’re doing this for commercial purposes instead of, in reality of the logic of movie, for an investigation into the incident, they’ll enjoy that. 6 seconds of black footage and a jump scare? That should really help those government officials figure out what happened. Piss off. These movies are just terribly made and should stop now.

Like the aforementioned “Monster” if you’re not bringing something new, don’t do it. You can’t outdo “Cloverfield” so why bother? This genre/style is already near dead, there’s only so many “things” that can be done POV style.  So far we’ve had (and this is going way back kids) Cannibals, Witches, Zombies, Outbreaks, Dinosaurs, Giant Monsters, Trolls and I’m sure a who slew I can’t think of offhand. Hell, there’s a Japanese movie (I haven’t seen it) called “P.O.V. – A Cursed Movie”.

There’s so much to complain about this style, and nearly everyone does. “Video cameras don’t do that” and blah, blah, blah – and they’re right. Take a camera, record something and shake the shit out of the camera. Shut it off, turn it back on and record again. Throw it at a wall…Now watch the footage, I guarantee none of those little glitches and artifacts you see in movies will show up. How hard is it to replicate that accurately? Not at all, do what I just said and make note of it, there…your work is done. To be fair, one or two movies have done it right – congratulations to them.

I have yet to really see a POV movie that I really felt worked and I never once questioned “why is this person still filming?” It’s a great idea, I understand the psychology of it. It makes you feel like it’s happening to you, “ooh, much more scary”. It’s a nice tool – unfortunately it’s a simple seeming style. So simple that shitty little indie studios try to do it to pull it off focusing too much on their annoying, poorly written characters and not enough on the actual “scary” stuff. When all you have is a handful of shots involving your horror element or “bad guy” you’ve failed, you’ve failed so miserably you should have the camera ripped from your pathetic little hands and be beaten with it – while it’s being filmed with said camera. That would be an awesome movie.

UPDATE: Since I originally wrote that last paragraph I finally got to watch “Troll Hunter” and god-damn, what an awesome movie. Now this was a movie about three students doing a documentary, so it’s kind of like “Quarantine”  and “The Last Exorcism” in that it justifies its need to be POV (even though it would’ve worked as a normal movie) and it did it well. I felt like I was watching a documentary, actual footage that might have been shot. There were no sloppy cuts for action or pauses like those retarded “Paranormal Activity” movies (man, did I mention those things suck shit?), there were no weird “glitches” to hide stuff – you want documentary style footage about trolls? Here it is. However I’m not sure how the footage was supposed to have been “found” and ultimately “released” but who the hell cares after seeing a guy take on a 200ft troll with nothing more than a glorified flashlight. This was a POV or “found footage” movie done well, and done VERY well at that. Very rarely do I see a movie I’m jealous of and “Troll Hunter” was one of them.

10 Things I Hate About Movies - Part 8.

8. Bad Casting I’m starting to run out of steam here and need to really dig deep to think of what else I hate about movies. Bad casting isn’t something I would call pervasive and the bringer of ultimate doom to movies, but it can ruin a potentially decent movie.

Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” had some wonky casting that didn’t really work for me. I don’t mind Adrian Brody and I’ve gotten used to Jack Black, but neither of them really felt like they belonged in that movie. They just didn’t mesh with the rest of it for me. This is another subjective, it’s just your own damned opinion kind of thing, but that’s the point of all this. It’s my opinion.

The Asylum has issues with this as well, although in their defense (for a change) they don’t have access to big names, but it feels like they just grab whoever and draw the part from a hat. Sometimes it works and other times it’s just this weird awkward mess.

Uwe Boll is pretty guilty of this by times. Burt Reynolds as a king? Burt’s amusing and all, but seriously? He used to be a great actor actually (Deliverance anyone?) but now he’s just wandering through the script waiting to take a nap. Boll casts otherwise unlikely, and sometimes unlikeable, actors in roles that just don’t fit them. It’s really hard to call things out on this because it’s really a matter of taste.

People bitched back in the day about “Total Recall” and how Quaid, in the original novel, was described more like Woody Allen that Arnold. I’ve recently heard the same mutterings about “Jack Reacher” and the casting of Tom Cruise.

Casting really is an art and the issues here are more towards studios or directors playing favorites. Like when David O’Russell was doing “Uncharted” and wanted Mark Wahlberg for Nathan Drake. No one was happy about that, and nor should they. Video game adaptations get more scrutiny here I think than book adaptations. Mainly because the fans feel a little more connected to a character, especially in the case of Nathan Drake – who everyone wants Nathan Fillion to play. I love Fillion, but he’s getting a little too old to really fit that character (and Nathan’s the same age as me, so that’s not an insult, it’s just the way it is).

This post was a little weak maybe. I might’ve been premature in calling this “10” things, we’ll see how 9 goes.

"Thing in a Jar", the Complete Collection

With the completion of the 5th and final "thing", an Albino Bilifore Parasite, I'm offering up the "Thing in a Jar" props as a whole collection.

Here's the ugly little sucker before being sealed up in his jar. It's made from 2 layers of silicone, with small beads of Premo embedded between them for eyes. A layer of laxet that's been torn and distressed  finishes it off. The silicone is untinted for a semi-translucent look, the image below was taking during sunrise and gives it a sort of delicate deep fried look, it doesn't normally look like that.

Here he is all snug in his jar of simulated Giant Mountain Troll bile to keep him fresh.

Using silicone to make this and adding on 6 thin tendrils really gives it a creepy realistic look. A lot of other "things" like this I've seen online are usually hard, made of sculpy or latex, tend to be stiff, this method gives a very realistic movement when the jar is moved - wasn't sure if it'd work, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Here's a very quick video showing that off.

And finally, here they all are together. The smaller jars are $20 each, the two larger jars are $25. Normally in total they'd be $110, but I'm offering the whole collection up for only $95. One of the reasons, is because sometimes accidents happen in shipping no matter how well they're packed and the most used method with Canadapost offers $100 coverage - so there's some security in shipping at least. And I would, of course, recommend the faster methods - less handling means less likelihood of damage.

I might at some point create a "Collector's Edition" of this, probably only one or two will be available, but each will come in an antiqued wooden case in which they can be displayed. No idea when this will happen though.

BZK! Moonshine of the Damned $10 Funding Campaign

I'll admit, I do get tired myself sometimes at seeing the endless stream of crowd funding campaigns for amateur web series and literally dozens of other things that may or may not be legitimate. And it's hard to run one, the hardest part are the rewards for donations. I ran one, it did okay, not great. After the site and Paypal took their bits, we hadn't raised as much as I'd hoped.

So I'm doing another one, much simpler - each donation is only $10 and you get, as quickly as I can make them, one of these:

Plus a "thanks" in the final credits and once it's all said and done, every person who donated will go into a draw for one of the larger props from the series, probably worth well over $100.

So, for $10 you'll get one (of only 200 being made) custom made, hand painted partially munched on brain key chains - as well as a "thanks" in the final credit of the web series. Payments (in Canada) can be made by Email Interact ($10+shipping), local orders (on PEI) can be made in cash and pickup or delivery can be arranged.

If you don't live on PEI and are concerned about the shipping costs, than feel free to share this with a few friends, not only will you be helping out the campaign but you'll be saving money on shipping costs if you split it.

Also, they're made from a hard resin and finished with a gloss coating.

Note: While this is open to anyone, anywhere that sees this, the main idea is for local sales in order to cut down on extra expenses. So, in other words, PayPal orders add an additional $0.50 to cover their fees and shipping is additional as well - for this reason, bulk orders by mail are preferred.

To order your partially eaten Brain Key Chain, (or if you have any questions) you can email in your order here: brains@themonkeyrodeo.com.

10 Things I Hate About Movies - Part 7.

7. Spoilers

Not something I ever used to care about and it doesn’t always pertain to movies. It is an annoyance and more directed at the film goers than the industry – at least it used to be.

It’s one thing when a fat asshole blurts out the ending to a movie you were going to see in about 30 minutes time and thinks it’s funny that they ruined it for you, but it’s another thing entirely when the industry does it too.

Magazine articles, Facebook groups, commercials, even trailers on DVDs, all contain some amount of spoilers. Why? It’s like they assume you sit glued to your TV, or the big screen , the very moment the entire rest of the world is watching it as well so it’s fine to blab out key movies less than an hour after the movie or TV is over.

It’s not alright. You’re being a fucking dick. A huge, ignorant, loud-mouthed dick. No one thinks you’re cool, there’s not a gaggle of hot girls waiting around the corner to have group supermodel sex with you because you loudly blurted out the butler did it. In fact, they might knee you in the groin like you deserve and chances are that’s about as close to any “action” as you’ll ever get or deserve anyway.

There were spoilers in the “Spiderman 2” commercials that aired a week or so after it was released. Industry entertainment magazine and reviews pretty much recap the movie for you so why the hell bother seeing it? A trailer at the beginning of the 5^th season of Dexter, pointed out how the season ended – that’s awesome, no need to watch it now, thanks. Oh, and on the flipside, if you wanted to blame the commercials for ruining the “surprise” of the “The 6^th Sense”, you must stay away from me. Forever.

I’ve removed myself from most of the Facebook groups that are for some of the few shows I watch because as soon as the episode has aired they’re making posts about it. Are we that hard up for gossip that now even movies and TV shows are close enough fodder? Dexter (Season 3 or 4) and Burn Notice (Season 6) – your Facebook pages are run by assholes.

Luckily, since I stay away from reviews (I’m not a fan movie critics for the most part anyway, since it’s become a form of entertainment in itself now instead of an actual relevant critique or review), I don’t have cable so I don’t see commercials every 15 minutes. My friends are all smart enough and I think most of them feel the same way about spoilers (although I can point out a couple I’d like to give a smack to) so they don’t say anything. I’m still surprised I managed to watch the last Harry Potter movie with no idea what was going to happen – that was nice for a change.

This isn’t something I blame the studios for, at least not entirely. When it comes to commercials and trailers they do take a bit of the blame, it’s the rest of the media and public that take the blame for this one.

Demon photo shoots for 2013 and possibly beyond

With a few changes to how I do things in regards to prosthetic makeup, I'm moving into doing some much larger pieces. I'm constructing a much larger foam latex oven this year (hopefully soon) and the photo shoots will involve much more elaborate makeup this time around. Like full head pieces, arm and hand pieces, and other pieces to really demonize people a little bit more.

The previous book contained stuff that was really intended for resale, most of the stuff in the new round of shoots won't be because it's being custom made for each model - although there will be a few of the simpler shoots thrown in there.

I've picked out a small group of both men and women who I will be doing lifecasts of (mostly just their heads, but all depends on what the shoot needs). Because the makeup will be more drastic in obscuring their natural features I don't mind reusing the same people for the more elaborate shoots - plus it'd just be too expensive to do head casts for every single person - plus I don't have the space to store all that stuff.

So what do I have planned? All sorts of stuff, this time around I want to do some more iconic type characters (iconic in my estimation at least). One I have planned is a demon version of Kratos from the God of War videogames - that should be pretty awesome, Kratos is already kind of demonic. I'll be using John MacDonald for that one - if you familiar with my previous shoots and don't know who John is, he'll actually make the original Kratos look scrawny in comparison.

Lara Croft and even Nathan Drake are being planned as well - in separate shoots. Both are pretty easy and I chose them because if you're into videogames they're both fairly recognizable because they keep a consistent costume style and look. I'm sticking with the more realistic human characters, so no, I will not be doing a demon PacMan or Mario, it just seems a little too retarded for me.

I'm thinking a demon Indiana Jones would be cool. I have a friend who's a huge Indy fan so I'm looking to get him to do it, just need to find a really good location for that shoot.

I was toying with fairy tale characters as well, the first I came up with was Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf - that one seems pretty obvious and logical, if I think of others that work a well as that I might do a few more of these. Could be cool, but offhand I can't think of too many iconic type fairy tale characters who would be recognizable as a demon or without a explanation. I'd like the images to speak for themselves and have, at least, a good portion of the viewers able to recognize the character.

These are all going to require some crafting of props and costumes, I was thinking I'd just buy a couple of the cheap foam Sword of Chaos props for the Kratos shoot, but last night I was thinking they might look a little small in John's hands - until I see them in context I'm toying with making my own.

One of the more intricate, and possibly annoying, shoots will be the Steampunk Demons, it'll feature (all fictional characters) Dr. Mordgog and his two assistants as they travel through time. That'll be a 3 person shoot and could be awesome if I really take the time with the props and costumes. The thing with Steampunk is, if it isn't don't right it looks stupid. You can't just throw on a victorian-esque suit and some goggle and declare you're into Steampunk, you need some crazy assed looking shit to go with it. This is going to be a big one and really hard to do right, luckily I've been planning it for awhile.

Otherwise I'd like to do a demon Samurai (could be awesome or terrible depending on the costuming ideas), might go with a more "Samurai Jack" approach to this one, don't know for sure just yet.

I think a Geisha Demon (continuing with that theme) could be pretty awesome, need a good setting though for this shoot. We don't really have the best gardens that I feel I'd need to pull this one off well.

A Victorian Age Demon, a female one with the huge crazy dress, I think that could look pretty cool.

And one I've been debating about for some time and really need to work on the design is Hellgirl. I made a remake about another shoot I had done where I painted up the model in all red, that she kinda reminded me of Hellboy's little sister - if he had one. Then I thought, why not? I've seen a lot of female cosplayers doing their version of a female Hellboy, but I don't want to do that, it's too easy.

I want to do a fully realized character that would fit into that world, more del Toro's than Mignola's maybe, that could very well be the sister of the Right Hand of Doom. In this case she would be known as the Left Hand of Destruction (tentative name). She wouldn't be an identical twist on Hellboy, other than having horns (of a different configuration) and being red - I kinda think you need those things in order for it to resemble the original. That could be cool.

I'm sure there will be more, I have a few others I'm playing around with to see if I can form them into a decent concept. I'm not putting the same timeline for completion on this project as I was the first, this one is going to take a lot long, maybe 2, possibly 3 years even. Who knows at this point.

10 Things I Hate About Movies - Part 6.

6. Over hyped Movies

This annoys me a lot. It’s pretty simple and luckily this is very avoidable and I’ve been actively avoiding certain hype for certain movies in order to actually enjoy them.

A good example of an over hyped movie that lead me to believe I might have multiple orgasms just watching it, “That Dark Knight”. What a massively overrated muddy movie. Sure Ledger was pretty cool as the Joker, but the plot was so back and forth, back and forth with about as much depth as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The Joker has a plan, but Batman knows about it, but the Joker knows Batman knows, but the Batman…blah, blah, blah. It was like the same scene over and over again for far too long, leaving threads from the beginning dangling too long so when they wrapped them up near the end you just sat wondering “what the hell was that for?”.

It wasn’t a bad movie, just overrated. “Batman Begins” was a much better movie and I actually don’t even give a piss about “The Dark Knight Rises”. The trailers looked overwhelmingly dull and aside from Anne Hathaway there was nothing to really be interested in seeing.

I don’t go to the cinema, because it’s filled with mostly noisy ignorant assholes here and I’m not paying any kind of money to just be annoyed, I’d rather wait until DVD, so I don’t worry too much about over hyped movies. And avoiding commercials is easy when I don’t have cable.

Over hyping almost ruined the new “Star Trek” movie for me, not from a commercial standpoint but from people I know ranting on incessantly about it. Like I would literally cease to be if I did not see this movie to the point where I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t go see it in the cinema, which I had intended to and just waited for DVD. And I’m glad I did, I really did enjoy it. This is a rare case though and is only because I waited I think and really already had a strong opinion of my own about it.

On the flipside, so many movies out there recently have been shat on by critics and filmgoers, luckily I don’t care much for critics and the opinions of others means very little to me when it comes to what movies I like and don’t like.

For example, movies that have been shat on that I really enjoyed (not saying they’re awesome or brilliant, but I don’t get the shitting on they got) the remake of “Fright Night” – I LOVED the original movie, I hated the notion of the remake. But I heard the cast (and not even really being a Colin Farrell fan, although I do appreciate him more now) and who was writing it, I thought it might be alright. It was far from alright, it was pretty damned awesome. My concerns about who in the world could ever replace Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent were alleviated when I heard it was going to be David Tennant. His Peter Vincent was a complete opposite character and just as memorable.

The new “Conan the Barbarian”, “Dylan Dog”, the prequel of “The Thing”, all pretty fun, enjoyable movies. All got a steaming pile of hate from most everyone – I don’t get it. I liked them just fine. Actually, I really liked "Dylan Dog" and maybe it's because I never read the comic or graphic novel or what the hell spawned it, but I never cared for Brandon Routh and still enjoyed this movie for what it was worth.

And a really good example of what I’ll call “under hype” was for “Ghosts of Mars”, so much I actually wrote a Facebook post about it upon finally seeing it. I was expecting to hate myself for watching it, expecting to have an uncontrollable urge to seek out and beat the crap out of John Carpenter for making it. No, it was alright. Maybe it’s because I so expected it to be crap I was able to see it for what it really was? I wasn’t hyped to see it at all so I wasn’t let down. This movie was considered to be the movie that ended Carpenter’s career. Was it really that bad? No, not by any means. Was it good? No, just was just another movie that left little to no impact. It wasn’t even interesting enough to hate. It was just a movie with weirdos on Mars in it, a decent time waster of a movie.

So I guess it works both ways. I hate how we’re influenced by outside sources in how we feel about movies. Sure, that’s part of the machine and how it works I guess, but I think if people really stood back away from the hype they might find out what their actual taste in movies is. And that means not so many 3D idiots would still be dreaming of banging tall blue aliens. Another movie, I have no interest in seeing.

PS

I wrote this all awhile ago and was waiting for this to happen. I saw “The Hobbit” a movie that I heard a resounding chorus of “mehs” and “nothing happens” to “it was like watching a videogame” and all I have to say it, “you useless, jaded, motherfuckers!” It was awesome.  Sure it took awhile to get going, so did Fellowship. You have to set things up – this wasn’t a continuation, this was a prequel and a lot of groundwork had to be laid out and once things got going action-wise, it didn’t stop. It was literally one sequence after another until the end. I’m glad it wasn’t loved by everyone, it makes me realize I’m not another movie-watching sheep that needs to be told what I think about movies.