Browsed by
Category: Goth Chick

Goth Chick News: C2E2 2017 – More Harley Quinn’s Than You Can Swing A Mallet At

Goth Chick News: C2E2 2017 – More Harley Quinn’s Than You Can Swing A Mallet At

Comments 2 comments

C2E2 2017

The annual cosplay bacchanalia that is the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (or “C2E2” for you cool kids) rolled into our city’s largest convention space on April 21 for three full days of exhibition in every sense of the word.

Now in its 8th year, preliminary attendance estimates easily top the 100K mark which was illustrated by the fact that the McCormick Center’s 6000 parking spaces were full on Saturday by 11 a.m. and attendees were being bussed from other nearby lots. Of course one must also consider that this year’s C2E2 event was sharing a small amount of their space with The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual Experimental Biology convention which accounted for some of the parking consumption.

Imagine with me if you will, jacketed and bespectacled scientist-types of a certain age, navigating the long pedestrian bridge connecting the garage to the event space alongside Superman, Wonder Woman and various members of the Seven Kingdoms. Now imagine Black Gate photog Chris Z and I under the influence of too little sleep, too much caffeine and more than the normal snark level, trudging along behind them.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Ellen Ripley Relives Her Tortured Past

Goth Chick News: Ellen Ripley Relives Her Tortured Past

Comments 0 Comment

Alien digital Sigourney Weaver-small

Consider for a moment your adult self, with all your current knowledge, experience and (theoretic) ability to know better, magically transported back in time to relive the trials and tribulations of your incredibly awkward and potentially misspent youth.

Would you do it?

Personally that’s a great big “no” with several colorful swear words preceding it. But this is the exact personal hell soon to be faced by Sigourney Weaver.

Sort of.

Ridley Scott isn’t ruling out a young Ellen Ripley entering the storyline in one of his planned Alien: Covenant sequels, via the magic of CGI de-aging.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Netflix Gives Hill House Yet Another Life (Yay!)

Goth Chick News: Netflix Gives Hill House Yet Another Life (Yay!)

Comments 11 comments

The Haunting of Hill House-small

I discovered Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, considered one of the best ghost stories of the 20th century, in fourth grade. Not because it was on the approved reading list for nine-year-olds – on the contrary, I didn’t run into it academically until high school – but because I came across it during a summer reading program at my public library. Thankfully, librarians then were far less politically correct than they apparently are today, and they didn’t discourage browsing of selections that were not strictly “age appropriate.”

Since I fell in love with all things Shirley, I discovered Hill House had two theatrical adaptations, both call The Haunting; one in 1963 by Robert Wise, and one in 1999 (my guilty pleasure) directed by Jan de Bont and starring Liam Neeson, Owen Wilson, Cathrine Zeta-Jones, and The Conjuring‘s Lili Taylor. Both telling the tale of a group of people spending a summer in a mansion rich in haunted history and tales of the paranormal, who soon realize the stories are not just old wives tales as they begin to experience the supernatural and malevolent phenomena for themselves.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: IT Floats Into the Record Books (Even Before Its Release)

Goth Chick News: IT Floats Into the Record Books (Even Before Its Release)

Comments 9 comments

Black Gate IT

Clowns are creepy.

You know it. I know it. And Stephen King really knows it because he’s about to make bank on it… again.

After months of anticipation, the first trailer for director Andy Muschetti’s upcoming theatrical re-adaptation of King’s classic novel IT hit the net last week; and to say the response was positive would be a serious understatement. In fact, even though I’ve now watched it about a dozen times, I must say I was freaked out all over again when I attached it to this article.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure yet, check it out below…

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Neck Deep in the Haunts – The 2017 HAA Show

Goth Chick News: Neck Deep in the Haunts – The 2017 HAA Show

Comments 0 Comment

Transworld Halloween & Attractions Show

Hard to believe Goth Chick News has been covering the Haunted Attraction Association’s Halloween show for sixteen glorious years, but as Black Gate photog Chris Z and I once again headed south from Chicago at 5 a.m. toward St. Louis, it didn’t feel like it had been that long at all.

Okay, that’s BS. At 5 a.m. it felt longer.

But as we motored through darkened cornfields dodging various small animals and quoting the movie Motel Hell (“It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters!”), it dawned on me how many “firsts” this show represents in my Black Gate career; first trade show covered, first interview and first article in the top 50, though back then I think it was top 20.

Needless to say, not only does the HAA loom large professionally, the people we’ve met along the way mean it has a special place in my little black heart.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: The Horror of Adult Coloring Books

Goth Chick News: The Horror of Adult Coloring Books

Comments 2 comments
Grimm Fairy Tales Adult Coloring Book-small Grimm Fairy Tales Adult Coloring Book-back-small

The explosion in popularity of adult coloring books over the past few years is quite possibly one of the greatest things to happen for us big kids, who are stuck performing stupid “adulting” activities such as going to a day job and paying bills.

Relieving anger and stress by coloring complex and hilarious pictures, (seriously, check out the Farting Animals coloring book; you won’t be disappointed) has become a norm among grown-ups, resulting the marketing of implements significantly more expensive and fancy than the most coveted of childhood creativity tools; the 64-color crayon pack.

So it was only a matter of time before the “Shut the F*** Up and Color” and “Drunk, Foul-Mouthed Jerk Unicorns” coloring book creators sought to capture revenue from an even more diverse audience by venturing further into inappropriate subject matters such as the horror genre.

Welcome to the new world of coloring slashers, corpses and skulls.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Full On Fan-Girling Over MST3K

Goth Chick News: Full On Fan-Girling Over MST3K

Comments 4 comments

MST3K-small

Though in my early Goth Girl days I was admittedly too enthralled with my beloved (and sometimes cheesy) horror movies to ever consider hacking on them, my teenaged years did find me gaining an appreciation for snarky commentary during movies.

So it will be no surprise to anyone that discovering Mystery Science Theater 3000 meant Joel, Servo, Crow and Gypsy became my early mentors, playing a big part in creating the sarcastic, mocking and malicious critic who sits before you and would ultimately find a safe haven in the page of Black Gate.

In a word – I was hooked.

Years later I now own every episode of every season, in multiple formats. And I waited in a two-and-a-half-hour line to spend a total of 30 seconds saying “hi” to Joel Hodgson at a con – right behind a guy hauling around a life-sized “Crow” which I coveted to the point of violence.

So clearly, I’m not alone.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: A LARPing We Will Go…

Goth Chick News: A LARPing We Will Go…

Comments 6 comments

Black Gate LARP-small

The conversation in the office at my day job was, for once, interesting this week. I overheard several of the engineers discussing LARPs, meaning Live Action Role Play, an activity with which I only have a nodding familiarity. The topic occasionally comes up at the various Cons we cover each year, in the context that cosplayers are sometimes also LARPers.

As there was no way I was going to blow my Black Gate cover by jumping in the middle of the engineers’ discussion, I decided to do a bit of investigation on this topic. I became curious to know how popular LARPs actually were, what type of scenarios are explored and who were the people engaged in the activity?

First, to begin as they say, at the beginning…

LARP is described as one-part improvisational theater, one-part reenactment and one-part role playing game. As you may have guessed, it owes its structure origin to Dungeons and Dragons. Like D&D, a game master or GM (vs a dungeon master) determines the rules and the setting of the game, and may also influence events or act as a referee during play. Unlike D&D where players build and describe their characters through a narrative, LARP players take on the physical role of their player character (PC) and act out the storyline in a real environment.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Your Binge List, Part Deux

Goth Chick News: Your Binge List, Part Deux

Comments 0 Comment

Bram Stoker Award-smallA few weeks back I gave you the list of preliminary ballots for The Horror Writers Association (HWA) 2016 Bram Stoker Awards. Not only is this award the most awesome visually, but any of the works honored by making the preliminary cut are more than worthy of your cold-weather binging.

However, on February 23rd the HWA announced the finalists for the Stoker in each category. So if you were having trouble deciding where to begin, this should help narrow the field as each category now contains five works only, from which one will be chosen to receive the lovely little haunted mansion to forever grace their mantelpieces.

So here they are…

Superior Achievement in a Novel

  • Hard Light, Elizabeth Hand (Minotaur)
  • Mongrels, Stephen Graham Jones (William Morrow)
  • The Fisherman, John Langan (Word Horde)
  • Stranded, Bracken MacLeod (Tor)
  • Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, Paul Tremblay (William Morrow)

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: A Fan Girl Meltdown Over Amazon’s Good Omens

Goth Chick News: A Fan Girl Meltdown Over Amazon’s Good Omens

Comments 1 comment

good-omens-smallI can say with certainty that I almost never get worked up over film adaptations of books, with good reason; they rarely live up to their source material.

But today I make an exception.

I might actually squee… Well probably not, but still.

Amazon Studios recently announced a six-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s novel Good Omens which will debut in 2018.

Insert small squee here.

I first picked up the book Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch in an airport bookstore in 2006. I then proceeded to laugh out loud on my flight from San Jose to Chicago, and laughing out loud at a book is something I haven’t done since my first reading of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Later I picked up of the audio version which I listened to in the car and nearly drove off the road. Finally, in January of 2015 I acquired the BBC Radio 4 dramatization, performed with a full cast and fell in love all over again.

There is no better cure for a bad day then listening to a few chapters of Good Omens.

But what is just so darn amusing about the story?

For me it has all the elements — demons, angels, witches, the Antichrist — all wrapped in a story that boldly showcases the absurdity of it all in the most biting and British of ways.

The book is set “today” but the show will be set in 2018 and in both, the world is on the brink of an apocalypse. But follies ensue when Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a demon, aren’t all that enthusiastic about the end of the world, having grown quite comfortable with their lives on earth. Also, they may have misplaced the Antichrist. And he may just be an ordinary boy who wants to stay in his small town with his gang of friends.

I’m snickering just typing that.

…

Read More Read More