2008 Dances of Vice Festival Weekend
A weekend of neo-Victorian festivities sponsored by Dances of Vice will take place in New York City next month. From the Dances of Vice site:
We invite all modern dandies, decadents, aesthetes, artists, thinkers, and dreamers to join us on February 8th and 9th for the 2008 Dances of Vice Festival in New York City!
The festival will include live music headlined by cello rock ensemble Rasputina. Other highlights include a vintage Polaroid photo booth, a live Victorian fencing demonstration, puppet operettas, and a costumed ball.
via Phantasmaphile
The Muppets Present: Great Moments in Elvis History
The signing of the Declaration of Independence is the setting for this 1996 Muppets Tonight skit featuring a bevy of muppet Elvises as the founding fathers.
I was pretty much weaned on The Muppet Show, but I missed this later incarnation. Thank you, Youtube. Thank you very much.
via Bits and Pieces
Bite of the Living Dead
Rob and I often lament that the rest of the world doesn’t operate on our natural schedule - waking a few hours before dark and heading back to bed some time after dawn. In the Hollywood area, many industries have adapted to the unconventional schedules and privacy concerns of the Tinseltown elite by offering expanded hours.
One dentist has opted to alert her clientele to late night hours with a series of advertising posters designed by Adville to look like campy horror film posters.
The ad campaign announces the 6pm - 2am availability of Patty Ross, DDS, also known as La Contessa Nocturna and The Dentist of Darkness.
Now if only this would catch on, maybe we’d have somewhere to go at 2am on a Tuesday after getting our teeth cleaned and hitting the 7-11.
via Neatorama
The Return of Sir Richard Grenville
Robert E. Howard’s stirring yet maudlin poem about friendship and loyalty features the ghost of a long lost comrade of Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane returning from the dead to fight alongside his former friend. A touching tribute to the enduring power of those bonds of brotherhood we forge in our youth, and mourn as we age, the poem’s strength is enhanced by the moody noir atmosphere of this short film by artist Mike Kane.
I found this movie on an old post at Pulp Reader.
If the film has you yearning for derring-do check out this collection of Howard’s Solomon Kane stories.
Brian Morris: Sharpie Virtuoso
I am utterly blown away by what Chicago-based artist Brian Morris can do with a Sharpie pen.
Whether he’s working on paper:
or on three dimensional objects like these bookends:
the results are gorgeous pieces that combine tattoo-style artistry with a Día de los Muertos aesthetic (and maybe a bit of state fair atmosphere thrown in for good measure.) More images are available in the gallery on Brian’s site, on his blog, and at Rotofugi.
Discovered via Ectoplasmosis.
I Know An Old Lady
This creepy short film by Texas based filmmaker Bradley Steele Harding is composed entirely of still photographs. Its description on YouTube says it’s an homage to 1970’s drive-in movies, but I thought there was a Lovecraftian element, or at the very least a bit of Poe in the story.
This is the second time that we’ve presented movies made up of still photos and both create such a bleak atmosphere of horror that I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to evoke any emotion but dread using the technique.
The film is broken up into five parts. Here’s the first:
The other four parts can be found on Harding’s YouTube channel. I recommend putting some time aside to watch them in one sitting to get the full effect.