Movie Monsters

Super Milk Baby Japanese Monster Mash-Up

WHEN: Friday, February 1st, 2008 from 6:00-9:00 pm Eastern. WHERE: Sanctuary Tattoo Gallery, 31 Forest Avenue, Portland, Maine (right next to Portland Stage Co.) WHAT: Artwork inspired by Japanese monsters, made by 8 artists in 8 different ways! SUPER MILK BABY JAPANESE MONSTER MASH-UP! The title really says it all! This terrific group show at Sanctuary Tattoo pits eight of the Portland area’s scariest artists against each other in a battle of wits and skill over Tokyo! School girls will scream, bones will crack, the sushi will bite back, and buildings will crumble like old matzah balls… or something like [...]

10,000 B.C.: Cryptofiction?

You have got to love the mammoths! And sabertoothed tigers! What elements of narrative cryptofiction, in which these animals, as well as the hominids, are shown as surviving late into protohistorical times in 10,000 B.C. overlap with our interests? Frankly, I always find it intriguing and instructive to see how artists, filmmakers, and scientists recreate Pleistocene animals, so as to give us a clue of what might be behind some cryptids. I look forward to this movie, therefore, for just such images. I guess there are other things to watch in this film too, with regard to our ancestors. However, [...]

Nazis & The Search for Yeti

Heinrich Harrer in Tibet. I got to first thinking about Nazis, Tibet, and Yeti, three years ago, when I heard that famed mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, 93, died on January 7, 2005. The entire story does feel like it is straight out of Indiana Jones, of course. Movies are often a point of reference, needless to say. Harrer was portrayed by Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet, a 1997 movie based on Harrer’s 1953 nonfiction memoir with the same title. But sometimes the movies leave out the best parts. Harrer’s interest in what today we mostly know as the lore [...]

Cloverfield Cellphotos the Destruction of NYC

What are we to make of this film, Cloverfield, which opens January 18, 2008? What is the monster? Is it the monster of the id or a cryptid? Is this MySpace horror or YouTube cryptofiction run amok? Certainly people have had fun for a few months trying to figure it out (see sample video solutions below). What is this movie really all about? A cellphone camera version of “Blair Witch Horror” meets “Godzilla,” with a bit of “Planet of the Apes” thrown in, regarding the Statue of Liberty. And how about, jeez, those trailers? Some people love them, some people [...]

Yeti At McGill

The Year of the Yeti continues. Amazingly, my last Friday introduction of the classic film The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas and the new hardbound release of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, is being mirrored (skeptically) with something quite similar occurring tomorrow in Quebec. At McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, there will be a screening of the same film, preceded by an intriguing lecture. Here’s the announcement from McGill: The Redpath’s ever-popular Freaky Fridays series hits the New Year running, or at least ambling with a [...]