Hard to believe it’s been a week already, but here we are! 🙂 I decided to whip up a speed-drawing of Pennywise the Dancing Clown from Andy Muschietti’s It. for my second installment of Fan Art Friday. I loved how absolutely creepy Pennywise’s face was in this scene so that’s the one I went with. The floaty Bill Skarsgård eyes, all the teefs. How could I possibly resist? 😛
It was fun to play with some new techniques and brushes for this one. I don’t think I’ve ever colored that many teeth in a single drawing. Haha
Definitely looking forward to what will (hopefully) be a relaxing weekend. Who knows if that will happen though. 😛
What are you weekend plans looking like? Watching any good horror movies or read any scary novels/graphic novels?
Who loves wendigo stories? Why, yours truly, of course! 😉 To be honest, I love legendary and mythical creatures of all sorts, but wendigos are always a special sort of treat in my book. Needless to say, I am really excited to see the upcoming horror film Antlers, produced by Guillermo del Toro.
For those of you wondering to yourself, WTF a wendigo is, here is your quick Wendigo 101 lesson for the day: A Wendigo is an evil spirit from Native American Algonquian legend that will corrupts anyone who has committed the unforgivable crime of cannibalism. The evil spirit twists the human it is influencing into a monstrous version of themselves with a horrible, never-ending hunger, and a murderous cruelty that knows no bounds. Since these legends originate in Canada and the Great Lakes regions of the United States, it is no surprise that winters were hard where these tales originated. People didn’t always make it through the winter, and hunger can make people desperate enough that they’d do anything to survive, even taking part in an act as taboo as cannibalism. In a lot of ways the legend of the wendigo can be seen as a cautionary tale.
Last week I found out that this movie is actually based off the plot of a short story called The Quiet Boy, written by Nick Antosca, creator of Channel Zero. Always a fan of reading the source material before I watch a movie or show its based on, I tried to look up the story on GoodReads but couldn’t find it. Then I saw over on the Bloody Disgusting website that you could read the entire short story HERE on the Guernica site. So, if you’re interested, check it out.
Anyway, let’s get onto my review for The Quiet Boy, shall we? 🙂
Julia is just starting her teaching career when Teach For America lands her in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where the unofficial town motto is “Hills, Whores, and Liquor Stores.” Definitely not was she was hoping for when she dreamed of being a teacher. Still, our protagonist wants to do right by her fourth graders.
While teaching her kids about storytelling, specifically of the fairy tale and tall tale variety, one of her young students named Lucas catches her attention with the story he is working on. What she initially assumes is going to be another cookie cutter take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, turns out to be something much different altogether, and something far more sinister.
Drawing from Lucas’ story in the Antlers movie trailer.
Worried for Lucas, she wants to help the boy, and learn more about what his home life might be like. Between the underlying themes in the boy’s story he is writing and the fact that Lucas always comes to school in old clothes, always smells like damp leaves and damp animal fur, and looks to be very underfed, Julia assumes things aren’t great at home. She also worries that Lucas’ father might be a drunk and not taking proper care of him or his younger brother. Her fellow teachers view Lucas as one of those lost cause kids, but Julia wants to help him, and to learn more about what his life at home might be like. Due to how private and protective Lucas is any time she brings up home or his family, Julia decides to pay his home a surprise visit when she is sure he won’t be there. What she discovers is nothing she could have imagined. Things get dark pretty quickly from this point on in the story, but I won’t spoil the fun. 😉 It’s a quick read and I provided the link so you can read it if you’re interested in seeing what Julia finds. The story does its own thing with the wendigo legend, and I thought it was interesting the direction it went in.
I’d rate it 4 out of 5 stars, and reading it made me excited to see how it will be adapted into a movie when it hits theaters in April 2020. 🙂
It’s been a hot minute since I actually watched this one, but in the spirit of catching up on all the reviews I’ve fallen behind on, let’s do this! Before we get too far into this review, let me just start by saying this collection of (mostly) animated shorts is fully loaded with nudity (both male and female), loads of violence, blood and gore, profanity, horrific monsters and aliens, and sexually explicit content pretty much the whole way through. We’re talking lots of boobies and floppy wieners, guys, so if that bothers you, I’d keep on scrolling through your Netflix options. 😉
To give you an idea of what you’re in store for with Love, Death & Robots, I’ll give you a fun fact about the series. It was originally intended to be a theatrical rehaul of Heavy Metal. For whatever reason, this did not come to fruition so instead we wound up with 18 original shorts with unique animation styles and stories, most of which I really enjoyed. 🙂 Much like Heavy Metal, the stories often run in the genres of science fiction, horror and comedy. The animation is fantastic, with some of it being a more simplistic 2D style and some of it being so convincing it might take a couple minutes of watching it to realize it isn’t live action. Some of the shorts feel complete and others leave you wanting more because the possibilities it leaves you with are so endless.
A humorous trio of robot tourists exploring the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city, werewolf soldiers and other shapeshifters galore, farmers with mech suits who gotta protect themselves and their cows from insect-like aliens, and a haunted desert where the ghosts aren’t your typical human spirits make up only a sampling of what you have to look forward to with this collection of tales. Some were definitely better than others, but overall I enjoyed watching most of them. Plus, if you’re not digging one, fret not because they’re all pretty short. 😉 This is absolutely not for kids, and honestly probably not even for some adults. (Trigger Warnings galore for this anthology, just sayin’.)
If you’re a fan of exploring different animation styles and entertainment in the vein of Heavy Metal, it’s definitely worth binging your way through the anthology. Science Fiction and Horror with a dash of Comedy are the dominating genres in this series. I enjoyed most of the animated tales myself, but I could certainly see it not being everyone’s cup of tea. Most of them all brought something cool and interesting to the table, be it the animation style, plot, or characters, but I gotta give a special shout-out to my favorite (and also my LEAST favorite) stories.
My pick for the top 3 stories I enjoyed (in no particular order) would have to be:
Sonnie’s Edge
Three Robots
Shape-Shifters
And my pick for my LEAST favorite 3 of the series, also in no particular order are:
Alternate Histories
Ice Age
When the Yogurt Took Over
What about you guys? Anyone give this one a watch? What did you think? 🙂
I’m not sure how I missed all the trailers for this movie, but luckily my boyfriend is far more observant than I am and made sure we went to see this one. Newly in theaters, Game Night (starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) is a hilarious, fast-paced comedy that had the entire theater laughing out loud all the way through.
The story is centered around a group of competitive friends who regularly get together for game nights where they go head-to-head in a wide variety of games. But when Max’s (Bateman’s) hot-shot brother shows up and introduces the group to a new high stakes game, the night winds up taking several wild and crazy turns.
If you enjoy a good game night yourself from time to time, you’ll probably enjoy this as much as we did and be able to relate to certain parts, but even if you don’t, the actors all have such great chemistry that it makes for some really funny scenes that I think most people could still enjoy. I would definitely watch this one again. It was a lot of fun. 🙂
Hey, guys! I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was a lot of fun. My boyfriend and I went to see the new It movie, so expect a review of that to come soon. 😀 Since my previous post was about scary clowns, I thought I’d mix it up with something a little sweeter before delving back into that. 😛
Speaking of sweet, check out this growing sweet potato bush from the green house. I feel like with Fall quickly approaching I’m running outta time to share these gardening photos so pardon this random post.
We’re also growing two different types of lemon trees in the green house. They’ve been doing really well so far this Summer, but we’re going to have to move them inside pretty soon so they survive the coming winter.
So, plant business aside, I’ve been meaning to share the photos of those cream puffs I mentioned making before for my dad’s birthday. 🙂 Here’s some of the Work In Progress pics, and then the final product, topped with powdered sugar and filled with a light and fluffy cream filling.
Here they are as little dough balls, ready to go into the oven
Fresh from the oven and ready to cool on the cooling rack.
Stuffed to the max and topped with powdered sugar.
Coulrophobia: a lengthy word that refers to the fear of clowns.
Hey, guys! ❤ Since tonight is the premier of season 7 of American Horror Story AND this Friday is when the new film adaptation of Stephen King’s It hits theaters, it seems an appropriate time to talk about clowns and how they scare the hell out of so many of us. Plus, Halloween is fast approaching, and I’m sure we’ll have many a spooky thing to discuss in the weeks to come. 😀
Despite the many phobias I myself have, clowns are not really much of an issue for me these days. Same with dolls and ventriloquist dummies and whatnot. I know they tend to freak most people out, but I tend to be fairly indifferent to them thankfully. This, however, was not the case when I was but a wee Ignited Moth. I was very afraid of clowns. I remember going to the Fox Theatre in Detroit with my grandma in the winter and it would be so dark out and the sewer-grates would have creepy steam rising from them. I was always convinced Pennywise was down there and that he was just waiting to snatch us up.
I also have an aunt who used to keep this creepy-ass clown doll in the back seat of her car when I was younger. The thing had a mini baseball bat (no doubt for beating children to death with, because why else would a clown need a baseball bat?) But that’s about it. I never really had that lingering fear of clowns that so many people I know still do. I’m thankful for that though, because I have plenty of my own fears to keep me on edge. 😛
So, how about you? Do you (or have you ever) had a phobia of clowns? Do you remember what caused it? I’m just curious. No worries, I won’t be sending any clowns to your door or anything like that. Just wondering is all. 😉
Also, are you planning on going to see the new It movie when it opens? Or are you gonna watch this season of AHS? They’ve been teasing the hell out of clowns for this season, so that should be interesting. I know it’s supposed to have to do with this past election as well (now there’s a real horror show if I’ve ever seen one). 😛
Decided to do a post about recent “Lasts” because why the heck not? 🙂
Last Thing I baked: Last night I had the chocolate craving to end all chocolate cravings so I baked fudge brownies with chopped up Milky Way candy bar in it. I’d never tried making brownies with chopped candy bar in them, but I will definitely do it again. The bits of Milky Way were so melty and delicious!
Truer words have never been spoken.
Last Book I finished Reading: I recently got around to finally finishing Golden Son by Pierce Brown (second book of his Red Rising Trilogy). It was so good! I liked it even better than the first one. 5/5 stars!
Last Photo I Took: Caught Bailey after she had crawled into my travel bag and made a bed out of it. It’s a poor quality pic because I took it with my crap-tastic phone, but it was too cute not to snap a picture of. 🙂
Last Song Listened to: The Birthday Massacre- In the Dark.
Last Movie I Saw In Theaters: Power Rangers! lol Yeah, I went and paid adult dollars to go see it. (Actually my boyfriend did, but still, don’t you judge me.) 😛
Last Food I Ate: Nachos! Had them for dinner earlier. 🙂
Last Outfit I Wore: I’m in my pajamas because whenever you get home for the day and don’t have to go anywhere it is considered “Fuck Pants O’clock”. My pajamas make no sense today, I’ll admit it. I have on an old Cannibal Corpse band T-shirt with light blue Pajama bottoms that have cute little penguins all over them. Murder on the top, Cuteness on the bottom!
If you want to answer the same questions in the comment area, feel free to have at it! Perhaps we have the same tragically mismatched taste in bedtime attire, or both enjoyed a bounty of nachos for dinner? Only one way to find out! 😛
IgnitedMoth 