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Frankenstein

Film

12 Horror Sequels That Don’t Suck

By Jason Bailey on

If you’re like us, you’ve probably spent a good (possibly unhealthy!) chunk of your October watching lots and lots of horror movies. But if you watch too many, you’ll start to notice a pattern. Horror movies seem to be the genre most prone to sequelizing and rebootinating — there are five Wrong Turns and six Leprechauns, for Chrissakes — and the results are seldom worth a damn. The logic is easy to understand; with horror, the genre itself (rather than big-name stars or mind-blowing special effects) is the marketable element, so once the connection has been made, it’s easy to go back for seconds. And horror movies are constructed accordingly, with doors left open for sequels and series. Most are just awful. But some aren’t; occasionally, the ingenuity and inventiveness of a good chiller will return in its follow-up. So, as you’re putting together your Halloween DVD stacks, allow us to help you separate the pop from the pap; our dozen horror sequels that (contrary to expectation) are not terrible are after the jump. … Read More

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Pop Culture

The 25 Craziest Works of Halloween Nail Art We’ve Ever Seen

By Judy Berman on

Now that nail art has taken over the world — and, most importantly, the Internet — there are nails for every occasion: Christmas, Thanksgiving, your third cousin’s Bar Mitzvah, your former co-worker’s Graceland destination wedding. But no holiday inspires the nail art world like Halloween. Whether it’s tiny renderings of horror movie villains, nails painted to look like zombie claws, or a 3D press-on set called “fierce black cats and brains on crack,” there’s plenty of scary — and scarily elaborate — Halloween nail art out there. We’ve spent longer than we’d like to admit scouring the web for the best examples, and our 25 favorite designs are below. … Read More

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Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we practiced 20 pickup lines for the subway. We hoped dictionaries everywhere weren’t offended by the addition of words like F-bomb, man cave, and sexting. We explored a Hezbollah theme park in the Lebanese town of Mleeta. We wondered which Expendables 2 star was the most expendable.… Read More

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Books

10 Fake Books in Movies That We Wish We Could Read

By Emily Temple on

Like everyone else, we’ve been swooning over Wes Anderson’s newest film, Moonrise Kingdom, since well before it hit theaters. But now that it has, we’ve swooned even more — and not least because the movie stars a girl with a suitcase full of awesome-sounding (and totally made up) books. We’ve already explored wonderful fake books by TV characters, and imaginary books written about in real books, so we thought we’d round up a few fictional books on film that we wish really existed so we could sit down and read them. Click through to see the made up tomes we picked, and let us know if we missed the one you’ve been most itching to read in the comments. … Read More

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Architecture

Extreme Architectural Makeovers: 12 Startling Frankenmuseums

By Claire Cottrell on

The idea for Mary Shelley’s most famous novel, Frankenstein, came to her in a dream while summering in Switzerland with the notoriously melancholy poet, Lord Byron, and the manic creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction, John Polidori. As you do when you’re bored, conflicted writers obsessed with the occult on holiday, you hold a competition to see who can come up with the best horror story. Mary’s tall tale about a hideous creature created by a science experiment gone awry clearly won.

We’re all for trial and error, and as our favorite visionary architect and staunch advocate of pushing the limits, Bucky Fuller, said “there is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.” A boundary pushing bout of genius is the hope when you’re a castle-builder looking to change the world, but there’s a fine line between botched and brilliant (ahem, Lady Gaga). Click through to check out twelve extreme experimental designs that we think are too brave for their own good. Let us know in the comments if you agree, then tell us what modern buildings you think should have been left on the design world’s equivalent of the cutting room floor. … Read More

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Pop Culture

The Most Commonly Misunderstood Fantasy Creatures

By Victoria McNally on

As much as we love fans of genre fiction and fantasy, you have to admit that they are not all that good at dealing with change. Writing a vampire novel but don’t want your vamp to have to deal with the dangers of sunlight? People will get straight-up enraged with you for letting him off the hook. And why shouldn’t they? You’re breaking the vampire rules! Everyone know they burst into flames in the day!

As it turns out, since none of these fantasy creatures, you know, exist, people have been taking liberties with their “rules” since they were first invented. In fact, most of the stuff you think you know about mythological creatures? They’re all modern add-ons to ancient myths. Don’t believe us? Check out some of these commonly held myths that you probably associate with werewolves or elves, and see just how wrong you were about them. If you can think of any we missed, let us know! … Read More

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Film

Guy Maddin’s Séance Series and a Few Other Famous Lost Films

By Alison Nastasi on

“Over eighty percent of silent films are lost. I’ve always considered a lost film as a narrative with no known final resting place — doomed to wander the landscape of film history, sad, miserable and unable to project itself to the people who might love it.” Only Canadian director Guy Maddin can make a filmmaker’s frustrating, unrealized dream project sound like a beautiful, but haunting, reverie. His Spiritismes project at the Centre Pompidou in Paris runs until March 12 and invites visitors to behold the creation of a new film. During séances (yes, communion with the dead) Maddin and a group of actors (including greats like Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, and many more) will become “possessed by the wandering spirits … to bring their movies back to life.” Maddin will be composing one film a day based on the supernatural experiences. If you’re crying, because Paris is far away and no one loves you enough to send you there, take heed of this live streaming website — broadcasting from 11 AM to 9 PM (6 AM to 3 PM ET).

We wanted to examine a few famous films that have been lost to the studio fires, oceans, and mismanaged hands of the past. Click through to see what gems we’ve uncovered. We promise the ectoplasm will be minimal. … Read More

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Food

20 Awesome, Terrifying Halloween Cakes

By Nicole Rallis on

In honor of Halloween, some culinary artists are corrupting the sweetness of cake, fondant, and molding chocolate by transforming them into horrifying, ghoulish sculptures. Wounded zombies dripping with blood, grim pumpkins, eyeball-filled cauldrons, and eerie sugar skulls are just some of the All Hallows’ Eve staples that have been re-imagined with the aid of piping bags, buttercream spatulas, and layers upon layers of cake that have been carved down to form seriously creepy creations. In honor of the spooky holiday’s imminent arrival, we’ve rounded-up a batch of exquisitely detailed cakes that’ll give you a fright after the jump. … Read More

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Design

Wanted: Frankenfont’s Typographical Evocation of Frankenstein’s Monster

By Tom Hawking on

Anyone who reads Flavorwire regularly will know that we’re big fans of anything related to creative typography, so we’d hankering to get our hands on a copy of Frankenfont, a new edition of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus that uses a variety of fonts found in PDFs across the internet. In keeping with the gestalt nature of Frankenstein’s monster, the book renders each word in the book in a variety of typefaces, with strange and obscure fonts appearing more frequently as the novel progresses. The first few chapters use mostly Times New Roman, Arial and Helvetica; but as the story unfolds and the monster grows more uncontrollable, the typography devolves into weird and grotesque shapes. It’s a fascinating idea; you can see some excerpts from the book after the jump, which show how the fonts become more and more twisted toward the story’s end. There’s more details about the process used to realise the idea, along with ordering info, at the project website. … Read More

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Art

Gallery: 'Tiny Confessions' from Shakespeare, Frankenstein and Pets

By Judy Berman on

Your dog doesn’t enjoy being compared to an Ewok. Your pug would like to have you on a leash. And your cat? Sorry, buddy, but she isn’t a nervous wreck like you. These are only a few of the revelations in Christopher Rozzi’s Tiny Confessions, a delightful series that expose the little secret your pets — along with Shakespeare, Frankenstein, fortune cookies, etc. — are keeping from you. Click through after the jump for a selection of our favorites, and visit Rozzi’s Etsy shop to see more images and pick up an affordable print or 20. Seriously, snap yours up before we buy him out. … Read More

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