Tag Archives: horror

“Us”: Revenge of the Duality of Man

April 4, 2019 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Lupita Nyong'o!

Now I’m imagining a do-over of 12 Years a Slave in which this version of Lupita Nyong’o turns Michael Fassbender into so much whittling scrap.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: once upon a time in 2002 I once spent most of a museum walk expounding at length on how virtually every piece of art in front of me, no matter how abstract or realistic or kitschy or modern, could in some way be deconstructed into a metaphor for the Duality of Man. It’s not hard. Take a thing, figure out a way to chop it into two warring halves like you’re Karnak of the Inhumans teaching a philosophy class, and presto. You’ve just written some tenth-grader’s literature report. It was fun till I began annoying myself and possibly our friends.

Leave it to Jordan Peele to follow up his Best Picture nominee Get Out with an unofficial adaptation of my blathering seventeen years later as the raging box office smash Us. It’s about time someone better than me did this.

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Our HorrorHound Cincinnati 2019 Last-Minute Photo Parade

March 17, 2019 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments
chibi-Devil's Rejects!

Say hi to Chibi-Captain Spaudling and Chibi-Otis B. Driftwood from Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects.

Convention season is here again!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last year we attended our first HorrorHound Cincinnati, an annual convention in honor of the scary, icky, disturbing, stabby, psychotropic aspects of pop culture. The folks at HorrorHound Magazine orchestrate the festivities so loyal fans of the deadly and the dead can enjoy a themed geek space of their own apart from Star Wars and Star Trek and whatnot. (Well, mostly.) We’ve attended four of the same company’s HorrorHound Indy shows in our own hometown because, even though horror isn’t a primary focus for our entertainment habits, their overseers have a flair for assembling a top-notch guest list filled with actors we’ve seen in a lot of great works throughout our lives…and who also just so happen to have one or more Halloween-apropos movies or TV shows among their IMDb credits.

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Our HorrorHound Cincinnati 2018 Photo Mini-Parade

March 24, 2018 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
C. Thomas Howell!

For our Gen-X pals out there: C. Thomas Howell kicks off our 2018 convention season in style.

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended our first HorrorHound Cincinnati, an annual convention in honor of the spooky, bloody, gross, unsettling, slashing, nightmare-inducing, id-tastical aspects of pop culture. The folks at HorrorHound Magazine orchestrate the festivities so loyal fans of the murderous and the macabre can enjoy a themed geek space of their own apart from Star Wars and Star Trek and whatnot. (Well, mostly.) We’ve attended four of the same company’s last five HorrorHound Indy shows in our own hometown because, even though we’ve detached from much the genre as we’ve gotten older and finickier, their showrunners have a flair for assembling a top-notch guest list filled with actors we’ve seen in a lot of great works throughout our lives…and who also happened to have one or more scary movies or TV shows on their resumé. Win-win.

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Our HorrorHound Indy 2017 Photo Parade

September 9, 2017 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sean Astin!

After the destruction of the One Ring, Samwise Gamgee enjoyed an extravagant victory tour and vaudeville revue.

Saturday marked our fourth trip to HorrorHound Indy, an annual Indianapolis convention in honor of the scary, bloody, icky, haunting, stabbing, disturbing, black-garbed aspects of pop culture. The folks at HorrorHound Magazine orchestrate the festivities so loyal fans of the murderous and the macabre can enjoy a themed geek space of their own apart from Star Wars and Star Trek and whatnot. (Well, mostly.) As we’ve gotten older and more puritanical, our touchpoints with horror, terror, and gross-outs have dwindled in number compared to the average attendee, but the intersections between their guest list and our favorite worlds continue to delight and surprise and draw us back into their waiting wings.

Exhibit A: this year’s reunion of three cast members from The Goonies, which they’ve ruled is sufficiently spooky and/or contains enough human skeletons to be on-topic. You might remember Mikey, the asthmatic yet fearless leader who guided our heroes through convoluted clues, deadly booby traps, and the clutches of the wicked Fratelli family to find hidden pirate treasure and give someone in Hollywood the idea to go make National Treasure someday. I saw The Goonies in theaters when I was 13, a year younger than Mikey. Little did I know he would grow up to be Sean Astin — underdog football winner, savior of Middle-Earth, and sidekick to Encino Man. Bonus points to the esteemed Mr. Astin for very nearly guessing my age, and not just because I look it more than ever.

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The 60-Minute Speed-Conventioning Challenge

September 12, 2015 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Lance Henriksen!

We had an idea in mind of how today would go. A small Indianapolis convention had brought in a handful of actors of varying levels of fame and importance. In my mind one of the biggest was Lance Henriksen — Bishop from Aliens and Alien³, one of several cops from The Terminator, star of the X-Files spinoff Millennium, costar of the southern-vampire cult classic Near Dark, and other stuff I’m forgetting. With a geek resumé like that, I anticipated waiting a few hours or more for the chance to say hi.

VIPs could enter the con at 10 a.m. When the general public was ushered in promptly at 11, we were third in his line. That seemed wrong. If we had known how quickly we’d finish the rest of my to-do list, maybe we would’ve taken a closer look at the photo, noticed his blinking, and asked humbly for a retake. Who knew.

Right this way for photos and a super-short convention round-up!

How Far Would You Go to Meet Willie from “V”?

September 7, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

My wife has always been a big fan of the 1983 TV miniseries V and its 1984 sequel, V: the Final Battle. She could take or leave the short-lived series that followed, and she had no interest in sampling the recent failed reboot.

Veterans of V are an extreme rarity at local geek conventions. Until tonight she’d only met its star, Marc Singer, several years ago at a Trek con that was generous enough to incorporate other sci-fi universes. While it was interesting for us to see the original Beastmaster up close, he was never her favorite V character. Whenever she waxes nostalgic about the show, her narrative sooner or later turns to the subplot of Willie, the humble alien Visitor who would betray his race, join the human resistance, provide comic relief, and lend the show some much-appreciated heart. He may not have been a he-man like Singer, but I’ll admit he stood out in every episode I saw when she introduced me to their world.

This weekend that particular actor is in town, headlining a convention that’s been around for a few years. We’ve never attended it before because its primary focus really isn’t our thing. After weeks of hemming and hawing over whether or not this was a suitable idea for us, ultimately we had to ask ourselves: how many other chances will she have to meet him?

It’s in that spirit, after no small amount of deliberation, that we endured wretched construction traffic and the world’s ickiest dealer booths to grant her not-dying wish of meeting the man who brought Willie to life.

Many of you know him better for his movie work, including one specific character ten thousand times more well-known than Willie.

Robert Englund, HorrorHound Indy 2013

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