Plaster Beak

Too busy to blog. All I've got for you at the moment is another teaser for Halloween 2011.

Long Weekend

And a very good one indeed.

I've been wanting (needing) to see Trick 'R Treat for a long, long time now. Unfortunately, due to the NZ Censorship System and parents, this hasn't happened. Well, this afternoon, my mum must have had a change of heart, she decided to let me see one of the very best horror films to date - Trick 'R Treat.

Image Source

I'm not much of an expert on movie reviews, but Trick 'R Treat was just too good not to.
The anthology plotline was smart, it was full of twists and none of the characters were what they seemed. The film was directed by Michael Dougherty, who is a yard haunter himself - pictures of his haunt can be seen here. His love for halloween and haunting really shows in this film. Every scene is packed with Jack O'Lanterns, yard haunts, scarecrows and monsters of all varieties. This is one movie I am sure to watch over and over again. And I have. I've watched it 5 times this weekend. It is GOOD.

It's hard to say what my favourite story was, but I think 'The Principal' and 'The Halloween School Bus Massacre' were my two favourites. The opening scene with Emma and Henry was brilliant, and the ending was jaw-dropping. My new favourite movie. Below are some screencaps I took.

I LOVED the inclusion of Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, as seen above. It is the first zombie film I ever saw, and possibly the first horror. I'll blog more about that another time.

Anyway, on with the weekend.

Prop-building is in full swing and I'm churning out ghouls for this year's haunt. A few teaser pics:

I've been listening to the new Florence and the Machine single obsessively - 'What the Water Gave Me'.

Her second album (still untitled) is being released on Halloween,

ohmygod,

and I've pre-ordered the deluxe edition at the Flotique. 

Lastly, I've made a few little ghosts inspired by the ones seen in Trick 'R Treat. They turned out looking a little bit like they were hanged - not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Orange

Grew this big fellow back in May. He's been hanging on all this time. Then he started to rot. With nothing else to do, I carved him up.

Nachzehrer

The first great plague swept Europe in the 13^th Century. Thousands upon thousands of disease-ridden bodies were piled up in huge mass graves, known as ‘plague pits’. When there became less and less room for more pits, gravediggers resorted to digging up old graves and filling them with more rotting corpses. Townsfolk were highly superstitious at the time, and some blamed the plague on vampires and curses. When old plague pits were re-filled, it is said that gravediggers came across bloated bodies that appeared to have chewed through the white shroud covering their decaying faces. Rumours spread and villagers believed that the ‘Nachzehrer’ were lurking among the corpses in the ground. Nachzehrer are a German breed of vampire, and are much like zombies, though they would become restless in their graves and chew through their burial shrouds. When the cloth was not enough to satiate their hunger, they would begin to eat themselves, and eventually crawl from their graves to devour their relatives. 

The Hobby

The best hobby ever.

Discovery

After extensive searching, police uncovered a severed head wrapped in plastic alongside various torture devices and tools.

Further details are pending.

White

It's snowing. It's actually snowing outside.
It's winter over here in New Zealand, but it NEVER snows where I live. Never ever.
I heard on the news that it last snowed like this 40 years ago.

A huge winter storm has been sweeping up the country for the past few days. Temperatures dropped below freezing point, huge amounts of hail dumped on everything, sleet, rain, gale-force wind, and snow.

Around 11:00 on Monday morning, were were getting some really decent snow outside, so we got taken out of class to play in it. It was drifting down all around us, little white flakes floating lazily to the ground. Occasionally the wind picked up and icy snowflakes flew into our faces. The whole experience was incredible. People were jumping around and yelling and opening their mouths wide to eat the stuff.

There wasn't enough snow to actually build up on the ground, but yesterday, late afternoon, there was a huge hail storm and I ventured outside with the camera. Our entire street was smothered in hail, the roads and sidewalks were all white. Hail had built up an inch thick on windscreens, and there was a soft crunch under my feet as I walked around, awe-struck. Never before has anything like this happened around here. Here's some pics I snapped (mostly of my back-yard).

A miniature snowman I built when the first snow was falling on Sunday.

Hot spiced apple juice (lots of cinnamon and clove).

I took the following photo just before a huge flash of lightning.

Afterwards, I stopped and listened to the huge, booming, rolling thunder that lasted 20 seconds. Then the hail came beating down full force and I raced back home, drenched and shivering.

Keeping warm and toasty.

It's magic. Cozy, snowy, white magic.

苦痛

My wallbreaker ghost was originally named Kutsuu. He was inspired by Japanese ghost films, and Kutsuu is Japanese for agony/suffering. He was a sad soul, perhaps he was a victim of a brutal murder - his mutilated body buried in a concrete wall. Years of hatred and sadness finally led to his soul breaking free from his concrete tomb (caught conveniently on camera by yours truly). But when the time came to post the pictures on my blog, it felt wrong. This was only a few weeks after the tragic tsunami that killed 20,000 Japanese civilians. I renamed the post Manifestation and erased all traces of 'Kutsuu' from my blog.

Fun Fact:
Kutsuu has a tube running from his throat to a hole in the side of his stomach, thus allowing marbles to be run down through his body. Something I'd wanted to do for a while. Expect more of this sort of silliness.

Kutsuu is now being recycled, reborn. Keep an eye out for him in this year's haunt.