Kristin Thompson analyzes the Internet-fan-driven PR campaign for and interaction with Snakes on a Plane versus the Internet-fan-driven PR campaign for and interaction with Borat and the relative successes thereof, touching on the Internet-fan-driven PR campaigns for and interaction with The Blair Witch Project and The Lord of the Rings on the way. Besides a great deal of insight in terms of the key differences between the phenomena surrounding each of those films, the piece offers another exciting tidbit that I, at least, wasn’t aware of: Thompson is writing a book about the Rings films and fandom called The Frodo Franchise. Hot.

Downtown Austin was shut down after dozens of dead birds were discovered. Probably just something they ate.

Remember those mystery smells that periodically enveloped a city or two a while back? There’s currently a gas-like odor of unknown origin blanketing Manhattan, and I’ve received first-hand (first-nose?) reports from friends who say they can smell it in Jersey City, too. Oh well, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. You can go about your business. Move along.

“So many babies, not all of them dead, are being dumped in the bush that hyenas have developed a taste for human flesh.”

–anonymous Zimbabwean game ranger, “Zimbabwe, the land of dying children; Mugabe has ruined his country with policies that are killing thousands, writes RW Johnson in Harare,” The Sunday Times

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

But apparently there is a certain type of African fungus that reproduces by driving a certain type of African ant insane. Once the ant inhales the fungus, it infects the bug’s brain, causing it to crawl out of its jungle-floor habitat, climb a tree or vine, latch on with its mandibles, and wait to die. The fungus then consumes the ant from the inside out, then shoots a spike-like appendage out of the dead insect’s brain, which then lets loose spores that fall to the ground and begin the cycle anew.

Video found at Random Good Stuff, courtesy of the great Bryan Alexander at Infocult, who has more information about the process and about the equally gruesome Alien-style life cycle of the ichneumon wasp. Nightmare material all.

Courtesy of the great cartoonist and editor Sammy Harkham comes this old essay on David Lynch and his film Lost Highway by David Foster Wallace. Provided you can stomach Wallace’s almost superhumanly grating tics and have already seen Twin Peaks because THE DUMB BASTARD REVEALS WHO KILLED LAURA PALMER WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A WARNING, it’s worth a read. It’s part of Mike Hartmann’s City of Absurdity, an almost superhumanly exhaustive Lynch fan site, which you should probably also check out. I wrote about Lost Highway here, if you’re interested.

Posting this was inspired by flipping through the channels and discovering that Kyle MacLachlan is a cast member of Desperate Housewives. He also maintains an almost superhumanly adorable website for his dogs Mookie and Sam, did you know that?

“In the last week more Americans have died in New Orleans than in Iraq. Since Dec. 29, there have been eight military deaths. In the Big Easy, there have been 14 murders.”

–Martin Savidge, “Homicides on the rise in New Orleans; City’s murder rate is 30 percent higher than any other U.S. city,” MSNBC.com

Learn what my most anticipated horror event of the year is at this week’s Horror Roundtable!

Learn what I thought of yesterday’s issues of Civil War, 52, Scalped, All Star Superman, Amazing Spider-Man, and Punisher War Journal at this week’s Thursday Friday Morning Quarterback!

“They

Courtesy of Loren Coleman comes a report that a “very fast and aggressive” eight-foot American Crocodile has been captured in the Cayman Islands. The only problem? Crocs have been extinct in the Caymans for two centuries.

Real-life water monsters RULE.

I’ve been hostile to Hostel‘s (and similar films’) attempts to dress up their splatter in the clothing of social critique–I’ve been doing this without having seen them, granted, but it just seems to me like anyone could watch The American Nightmare and say “yeah, me too.”

These photos by Clinton Fein, on the other hand, are another story.

I still feel there’s a certain narcissim posing as bravery in only speaking to evil when it’s going on in your own backyard, but regardless, another story entirely.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

I recently interviewed Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who shared all sorts of juicy info on the remainder of Season 3. Go read it!

Now go look at some skeletons having sex.

(Hat tip: Strange Ink.)

If you enjoy weird, weird comics, have I got a treat for you: The day job has posted an article I edited on Fletcher Hanks, the Golden Age comic-book writer/artist whose work is basically the most bizarrely violent and violently bizarre stuff you’ve ever seen. It’s in honor of the forthcoming collection from Fantagraphics and editor Paul Karasik, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Fantastic Comics of Fletcher Hanks.

Good Lord.

First of all, the blogroll (to the left; scroll down) has been updated after a prolonged period of benign neglect. Click around and see where the day takes you.

Second, you can learn my horror-related New Year’s Resolution at this week’s Horror Roundtable.

Third, to expand a bit on my reaction to Travis Mackenzie Hooper’s Pan’s Labyrinth review, I felt like I should point out that I’m on his wavelength in terms of not digging the sort of cheesily calculated return to childhood “magic” that “grown-up fairy tales” traffic in, but not in his aversion to clear-cut depictions of good and evil. While I think it’s a sign of true adult storytelling (and adulthood generally) to acknowledge that things can be more complicated than that, I also think it’s a sign of true adult storytelling (and adulthood generally) to acknowledge that sometimes, things can be just that simple.

Well, this was definitely a thrill: Over at the day job, my interview with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof is now online. A major theory about the Others is debunked and (SPOILER) the real reason for the death of Eko is revealed therein, among lots of other juicy info. Even Nikki and Paulo get a moment in the sun!

More from The House Next Door:

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A pair of links from Matt Zoller Seitz’s daily link round-up caught my eye today.

The first is a post by Drew Morton of the intriguingly titled group blog Dr. Mabuse’s Kaleido-Scope on “The State of the Horror Film in 2006.” Unfortunately, its coherence and insight can be best summed up by quoting one sentence: “Thanks to films like ‘The Descent’ and ’28 Days Later,’ I believe that over the course of the next year horror films will be coming into a renaissance not seen since the days of ‘Scream.'” Huh? The thrust of the pieces is that “recent” horror films have been adding elements of comedy or social criticism to further engage audiences–which is obviously something horror films have in fact been doing, well, forever (and moreover is giving a lot more poli-crit credit to the “When she gets her eyeball ripped out, that’s about Iraq! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” school of horror filmmaking than I’m willing to hand over). Still, it’s worth a read if you’re interested in how the genre looks to uninitiated types who nonetheless are up for thinking about how the genre works, which I’d imagine describes most professional critics and a goodly chunk of the academy.

More intriguing to me was a lengthy post from film studies god David Bordwell (he has a blog! how did I not know this?) on the self-conscious artifice of many recent film’s narratives, and the healthy role that genre–“science fiction, mystery, fantasy, horror, and comic-book movies…[and] indie cinema”–played in creating this state of affairs. I’ve always found it startling, if not depressing, how few fans of high-falutin’ art (not critics, but the kinds of people who read a lot and post on message boards and such) pick up on the ways that genre tropes frequently constitute violations of traditional formal narrative or visual structure. When a film stops in its tracks to watch a shape-shifting alien annihilate a pack of sled dogs, there’s something interesting going on there beyond the fact that a shape-shifting alien is annihilating a pack of sled dogs.

[…]movies like this get made, remakes of perfectly good films with cult followings, remakes done up