Welcome to the Dead Parade #13: Dead Silence
Step on a crack, break a mirror, spill the salt, and wear white to a Japanese wedding, Ticketholders! Welcome to the Thirteenth Dead Parade, held this Friday at 1101 D Street, Apt. #15.
But not really. I was just goofing around with the number thirteen in various base representations this morning, and needed an excuse to stop thinking about them.
Being an obsessive, compulsive nerd sucks sometimes. Anyway, whether you care or not (because that's just the kind of sucky, obsessive, compulsive nerd I am) here are the above numeric representations of the the number 13 explained for the non-mathy among you:
13 (base 10, a.k.a. decimal) = 1*10 + 3*1
1101 (base 2, a.k.a. binary) = 1*8 + 1*4 + 0*2 + 1*1
D (base 16, a.k.a. hexadecimal, or just hex) = 13*1
15 (base 8, a.k.a. octal) = 1*8 + 5*1
I can hear the dead silence in the air as you faithful Ticketholders neglect to give a crap, which is a welcome coincidence because silence is what today's issue is all about.
The first Silent Hill stars Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black), Sean Bean (The Hitcher), Laurie Holden (The Walking Dead), Deborah Kara Unger (White Noise), and Kim Coates (Resident Evil: Retribution). Mitchell is Rose da Silva, adopted mother of a girl who has sleepwalking dreams about the titular town. Rose and her daughter, Sharon, go on a road trip to Silent Hill to uncover the reason behind Sharon's somnambulatory nightmares, leading Rose to search the town when Sharon suddenly disappears.
What ensues is a terrifying, yet escalatingly more ridiculous journey into an alternate reality full of deformed torture victims, lava babies, acid-spitting torso monsters, a pyramid-headed man with a giant sword, swarming roach-rats, a cult of anti-witchcraft ghosts, and a dead girl on stilts who's wrapped in barbed wire.
Former Face Off judge Patrick Tatopolous does his usual best to bring the creatures to life, but still--this is what adapting a Resident Evil knockoff into a movie gets you, folks!
Even with all the weird crap going on, there is a story at the bottom that at least makes a shred of sense. I was just as disappointed that the movie didn't end properly as I was the first time. There was so much left unresolved at the end of Silent Hill (Rose and Sharon reunited, but still trapped in the alternate dimension, while husband Christopher da Silva--played by Bean--curls up for a grieving nap in the real world...the end?). I desperately wanted more closure from the movie, and at the same time, it was so unfathomably ludicrous that I didn't really care if there was a sequel in the works or not.
D+
But a sequel there was. Bean, Unger, and Holden return with small supporting roles in the sequel Silent Hill: Revelation-3D, which follows an older Sharon da Silva (Adelaide Clemens, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), now going by the name Heather Mason as she and her father move from town to town, on the run after Sharon's escape from the alternate dimension of Silent Hill. Unaware of her past and plagued by untimely slips into the nightmarish other realm, Sharon/Heather returns to Silent Hill to once more uncover the secrets of her past.
The journey is just as nonsensical as it was in the first film, if not more so, thanks to a new mannequin-spider that encases people in plastic wrap webbing before transforming them into mannequins to use as replacement parts for its limbs, a hulking Malcom McDowell (Rob Zombie's Halloween) with glowing jack-o'lantern holes in his face and a magic amulet in his stomach, and The Matrix's Carrie-Anne Moss as the Missionary (an albino, sword-handed ninja bondage freak who looks like she was patched together from Tatopolous' pile of rejected Nemesis prosthetics after the second Resident Evil movie).
Unlike the latest two Resident sequels, however, the 3D effects here are rather innovative. The ash that fell from the sky in the first Silent Hill now comes at you right in front of the camera, lopped-off fingers (an item I have never seen come at me in a 3D film before) are propelled by spurts of blood, the mannequin-spider seems to inspect the audience with one of its head-appendages before scaring the crap out of us with its protruding worm-like mouth (which is scary enough to me in two dimensions). Sure, there are the requisite steam-baths, jutting swords, erupting rings of fire, and weapons thrown at the camera, and every bit of it looks as fake as if it were purchased with a three-dollar bill, but it was still refreshing to see amid all the recycled bull feces.
I forget what other point I was going to make, but thank God for happy endings and an actual measure of closure. As bad as this was, I am actually looking forward to a sequel, especially one where Sean Bean might be the lead character for once.
C-
Stay tuned and spread the fever as I try to never let you down with my review of Gravity-y-y-y-y in the next issue-issue-issue of Just the Ticket-icket-icket. Is there an echo in here?
But not really. I was just goofing around with the number thirteen in various base representations this morning, and needed an excuse to stop thinking about them.
Being an obsessive, compulsive nerd sucks sometimes. Anyway, whether you care or not (because that's just the kind of sucky, obsessive, compulsive nerd I am) here are the above numeric representations of the the number 13 explained for the non-mathy among you:
13 (base 10, a.k.a. decimal) = 1*10 + 3*1
1101 (base 2, a.k.a. binary) = 1*8 + 1*4 + 0*2 + 1*1
D (base 16, a.k.a. hexadecimal, or just hex) = 13*1
15 (base 8, a.k.a. octal) = 1*8 + 5*1
I can hear the dead silence in the air as you faithful Ticketholders neglect to give a crap, which is a welcome coincidence because silence is what today's issue is all about.
The first Silent Hill stars Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black), Sean Bean (The Hitcher), Laurie Holden (The Walking Dead), Deborah Kara Unger (White Noise), and Kim Coates (Resident Evil: Retribution). Mitchell is Rose da Silva, adopted mother of a girl who has sleepwalking dreams about the titular town. Rose and her daughter, Sharon, go on a road trip to Silent Hill to uncover the reason behind Sharon's somnambulatory nightmares, leading Rose to search the town when Sharon suddenly disappears.
What ensues is a terrifying, yet escalatingly more ridiculous journey into an alternate reality full of deformed torture victims, lava babies, acid-spitting torso monsters, a pyramid-headed man with a giant sword, swarming roach-rats, a cult of anti-witchcraft ghosts, and a dead girl on stilts who's wrapped in barbed wire.
Former Face Off judge Patrick Tatopolous does his usual best to bring the creatures to life, but still--this is what adapting a Resident Evil knockoff into a movie gets you, folks!
Even with all the weird crap going on, there is a story at the bottom that at least makes a shred of sense. I was just as disappointed that the movie didn't end properly as I was the first time. There was so much left unresolved at the end of Silent Hill (Rose and Sharon reunited, but still trapped in the alternate dimension, while husband Christopher da Silva--played by Bean--curls up for a grieving nap in the real world...the end?). I desperately wanted more closure from the movie, and at the same time, it was so unfathomably ludicrous that I didn't really care if there was a sequel in the works or not.
D+
But a sequel there was. Bean, Unger, and Holden return with small supporting roles in the sequel Silent Hill: Revelation-3D, which follows an older Sharon da Silva (Adelaide Clemens, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), now going by the name Heather Mason as she and her father move from town to town, on the run after Sharon's escape from the alternate dimension of Silent Hill. Unaware of her past and plagued by untimely slips into the nightmarish other realm, Sharon/Heather returns to Silent Hill to once more uncover the secrets of her past.
The journey is just as nonsensical as it was in the first film, if not more so, thanks to a new mannequin-spider that encases people in plastic wrap webbing before transforming them into mannequins to use as replacement parts for its limbs, a hulking Malcom McDowell (Rob Zombie's Halloween) with glowing jack-o'lantern holes in his face and a magic amulet in his stomach, and The Matrix's Carrie-Anne Moss as the Missionary (an albino, sword-handed ninja bondage freak who looks like she was patched together from Tatopolous' pile of rejected Nemesis prosthetics after the second Resident Evil movie).
Unlike the latest two Resident sequels, however, the 3D effects here are rather innovative. The ash that fell from the sky in the first Silent Hill now comes at you right in front of the camera, lopped-off fingers (an item I have never seen come at me in a 3D film before) are propelled by spurts of blood, the mannequin-spider seems to inspect the audience with one of its head-appendages before scaring the crap out of us with its protruding worm-like mouth (which is scary enough to me in two dimensions). Sure, there are the requisite steam-baths, jutting swords, erupting rings of fire, and weapons thrown at the camera, and every bit of it looks as fake as if it were purchased with a three-dollar bill, but it was still refreshing to see amid all the recycled bull feces.
I forget what other point I was going to make, but thank God for happy endings and an actual measure of closure. As bad as this was, I am actually looking forward to a sequel, especially one where Sean Bean might be the lead character for once.
C-
Stay tuned and spread the fever as I try to never let you down with my review of Gravity-y-y-y-y in the next issue-issue-issue of Just the Ticket-icket-icket. Is there an echo in here?
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