BEST SHORT FILM! BEST EDITING!

The results from the Chicago Horror Film Festival are in... and the news is GREAT!

CHICAGO HORROR FILM FESTIVAL AWARD NOMINATIONS ARE IN!

The contenders for awards at the 2014 edition of the Chicago Horror Film Festival have been announced, and I'm pleased to report that The Last Halloween is up for five awards this year!

The nominations in question are for Best Short Film, Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Special Effects!

Needless to say, I'm tickled pink by this news, as is the entire Last Halloween cast and crew. Keep watching this space, and I'll keep y'all abreast as to whether or not we actually win anything this year! In the meantime, please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Cheers;
yer old pal Jerky

FERAL HOUSE ON "BANNED BOOKS WEEK"

Our friends over at Feral House have a few choice words to share about the much-ballyhooed "Banned Books Week" as that much-ballyhooed American Library Association-sponsored event comes to its usual, anti-climactic end. Particularly noteworthy are head honcho Adam Parfrey's comments on the 2007 death of Russian publisher UltraKultur's founder Ilya Kormiltsev, shortly after the latter published Russian-language versions of popular FH titles like Apocalypse Culture and Extreme Islam. Also, if you haven't picked up your own copy of Hipster Hitler, what the hell are you waiting for? Get yours now before they're all burned!

THE LAST HALLOWEEN GOES INTERNATIONAL!

Daily Dirt Diaspora readers may or may not know that their old pal Jerky has been trying to kick-start a career in the motion picture industry since... oh, gee... since he was but a wee tyke! Although, truth be told, he was never really what anybody would rightly call "wee". 

Anyway, my most recent attempt at creating cinema is The Last Halloween, a ten minute short film based on an 8-page comic story I drew in late 2013, directed by my long-term writing partner (and best friend since the age of 9), veteran film industry editor Marc Roussel. You can see Marc's impressive IMDB credits here, and watch a trailer for our little movie, here:

So, we made a movie. And it's pretty decent. And that's all well and good. But what's most important at this point is that people get to see the damn thing. And that's why I'm pleased to report that yes, Virginia, people have been seeing the damn thing!

In fact, seeing as it is part of the mandate of this particular member-blog of the Daily Dirt Diaspora family of inter-related blogs to bring you news of yer old pal Jerky's progress in all of his multitudinous and variegated projects, I figured I should give you guys a rundown of The Last Halloween's film festival dates, past, present and future. 

Beginning, as is always fitting, at the beginning...

Twisted Celluloid Film Festival 2014
Friday, May 16, 2014

This was our World Festival PREMIERE! And it took place in beautiful Cork, Ireland, where we had the honor of screening as a special short presentation prior to the debut of a beautiful new 35mm print of the original EVIL DEAD!

Crypticon Seattle Tri-Cities Fantastic Film Festival

May 25, 2014

An official selection in the Shorts program!

The Nickel Independent Film Festival

June 17-21, 2014

This one took place in beautiful St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada!

FilmQuest
July 2, 2014
This festival took place in conjunction with a huge Fan Expo in Salt Lake City, Utah! We were an Official Selection, and were were also nominated for Best Makeup Effects and Best Art Direction / Production Design!

DETCon1 
July 17-19, 2014
We were an Official Selection at this Detroit-based horror/sci-fi/fantasy film festival!

Calgary Horror-Con
August 2, 2014
We were an Official Selection at this fest!

Mascara & Popcorn Film Festival
Aug 14-17, 2014
We were an Official Selection at this fest and we WON an award for BEST VISUAL EFFECTS!

Vivisection International Horror Shorts

August 17, 2014 at 7:30 PM

We were an Official Selection of the Summer 2014 Edition of this Philadelphia, Pennsylvania based film festival.

Action On Film International Film Festival
August 22-30, 2014
We were an Official Selection for this Monrovia, California-based  Fest, where we were nominated as BEST MAKE-UP and BEST HORROR SHORT (and came in first runner up in both categories).

Rue Morgue Festival of Fear FanExpo

August 28-31, 2014
We had two screenings at this hugely influential fan convention event in Toronto as part of the "Little Terrors" program of shorts, co-presented by Unstable Ground. It was a great experience that we hope to repeat at other FanExpos in the future!

Montreal ComicCon Horror Fest 

September 12, 2014
Official Selection!

The Diabolique International Film Festival
Sept 18-20th, 2014
We screened on Saturday, Sept. 20 at this Bloomington, Indiana based festival, where we got a couple of really nice write-ups in the local press (here's one!). We were also nominated for BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY and BEST MAKE-UP FX!

Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival 
Sept 26, 2014

This festival took place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and our film was the short feature that ran before the gala presentation of the buzz-generating new indie horror film Housebound!

Chicago Horror Film Festival
Sept 26, 2014

Official Selection!

Beyond Fest
Sept 25 – Oct 4, 2014

Our film is an Official Selection and part of the "Shock Till You Drop” shorts program at this increasingly influential Los Angeles, California based film fest! I mean, check out this awesome website! Also (and almost unbelievably), we're showing on the same night, in the same theater, as John Carpenter's seminal classic (which was such an inspiration to us that we thank Carpenter in our credits), the original HALLOWEEN!

Feratum Festival Internacional de Cine Fantastico, Terror y Sci-Fi
Oct 2-5, 2014

We're really excited about showing as an Official Selection of the International Short Film competition of this Tlalpujahua, Mexico based film fest! I mean, again, just look at this site!

Raindance Film Festival
Oct 4, 2014

We're an Official Selection at this UK-based fest, and we're proud to be the short feature opening for a documentary about our fellow Canuck, the comic artist Seth, called Seth’s Dominion! Learn more, and maybe attend!

Tri-Cities International Fantastic Film Festival
Oct 5, 2014
Official Selection!

Slaughter Movie House 
Oct 6th, 2014
Official Selection! Check 'em out on Facebook!

SITGES Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantastic de Catalunya
Oct 7, 2014
Spain's biggest and most influential fantastic film fest has done us the honor of making us an Official Selection! Check out the lovely Last Halloween site they made for us on their own website!

ScreamFest Horror Film Festival 
Oct 15, 2014 (at 9:30 PM)
We're an Official Selection at this Los Angeles, California based fest, which you can check out on Facebook!

PollyGrind Underground Film Festival
Oct 16, 2014
We're an Official Selection at this ground-breaking Las Vegas-based festival which you can learn more about here!

Samain du Cinema Fantastique
Oct 28, 2014
We're an Official Selection at this festival, which takes place in gorgeous Nice, France! Learn more here!

Twisted Tails Film Festival 
Dec. 5-7, 2014
We're an Official Selection of this festival, which you can learn more about here!

***

Well, that's about it... for today, at least! Yes, that's right, there's even MORE exciting Last Halloween news coming up in the next few weeks! So keep watching this space for more updates about our little-movie-that-could. I'll try to keep you posted on any awards that we might win, any write-ups we might get in the press, any paying gigs that this labor of love leads to, etc, etc. In the meantime, I wish you all a good night, and if you live near any of the festivals listed above that haven't taken place yet, why not make the trek to go check  out yer old pal Jerky's movie work the way it was meant to be seen... in a darkened room full of strangers!

Cheers!
YOPJ

MONSTER MAYHEM THURSDAYS!

It's been a while, but I figured I might as well revive an abandoned tradition by sharing with you all a sketch that I began working on today, Thursday, September 26, 2014! It's a portrait of the Lovecraftian Elder God known as Yog-Sothoth, as re-imagined by occultist Kenneth Grant for his own particular dark version of things... Now, this is a pencil rough that I'll be inking over the next few days, so watch for the final image in these pages, coming some time soon!

LEWD LEXICON

BLINK OFF (v) When a man places the head of his penis inside the vacant ocular cavity of a one-eyed individual who then in turn stimulates said glans by means of a constant, rhythmic blinking action, that man can be said to have been well and duly "blinked off."

THE BAFFLER ON THE LONG CON

If “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” then the conservative movement is well onto the third phase of that life cycle.

One of my favorite magazines (journals? digests?) of all time was The Baffler Quarterly, which was published by Thomas Frank, current editor of Harper's (which has gone downhill since Lewis Lapham left to do his own quarterly, but is still worth reading).

Anyhoo, The Baffler was recently revived, and they have this amazing article about just exactly how the Conservative Media Elites really feel about the people who listen, watch and read them...

Here is a fine, elucidating example of the kind of brazen hucksterism that is being inflicted upon readers of NewsMax, The Blaze, Alex Jones’ websites, WorldNetDaily, etc, on a daily basis...

Dear Reader, I’m going to tell you something, but you must promise to keep it quiet. You have to understand that the “elite” would not be at all happy with me if they knew what I was about to tell you. That’s why we have to tread carefully. You see, while most people are paying attention to the stock market, the banks, brokerages and big institutions have their money somewhere else . . . [in] what I call the hidden money mountain . . . All you have to know is the insider’s code (which I’ll tell you) and you could make an extra $6,000 every single month.

If I were a cruel, heartless bastard, then maybe I could claim to be tickled pink over the fact that this particularly noxious socio-political demographic is getting fleeced, snookered, and bled bone dry by the very people they trust to cut through all the so-called "liberal media bias" and give them the real scoop about the world we live in... a world which they seem to believe is constantly on the brink of some sort of Apocalyptic collapse over President Blackenstein's historically unprecedented reign Socialist Islamic Terror...

Actually, scratch that. I am sort of tickled by it!

Anyway, you can read more, oh so delicious hilarity at The Baffler.

***

Recommended supplemental reading:

• Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch
• Jesus Plus Nothing
• How the Hobby Lobby's Billions support a Right-Wing Political Agenda.
• Pretty much the entire Religion Section of the Rotten Library.

And here's a great book for y'all to check out:

Thunder on the Right, by Alan Crawford. This is one of the best books of its kind that I've found. So many juicy details on the "dignified" forefathers of the conservative movement.The origins of ALEC and Heritage are especially tawdry and funny.

NEW MARIANNE FAITHFUL TUNE PENNED BY ROGER WATERS HAS VINTAGE PINK FLOYD VIBE

Personally, I kinda dig it. There's an "Arnold Layne" meets "Mother" thing going on there. Then again, I have always worshiped at the Temple of Floyd, so perhaps my judgement is clouded. Regardless, let me know what y'all think down in the comments section, below.