Congratulations to Katie F. and Andy R., who won passes to see The Lazarus Effect, the new horror movie opening this weekend.
The film is about the dead coming back to life.
If this ever happens in real life, I’m sure Republicans will find some way to blame it all on Obamacare.
Whenever I run a contest for free movie tickets, I ask myself three questions:
For the most part, the answer to #1 is “No, because they don’t make those,” and the answer to #2 is “Maybe, but probably not.”
So I run a lot of contests for horror movies, and as we all know, we Hispanics love those.
As such, I’m offering you the chance to win passes to a screening of The Lazarus Effect, which is about a group of scientists “who achieve the unimaginable — bringing the dead back to life.”
You can catch it in one of the following cities:
Chicago
El Paso
Los Angeles
Miami
New York City
All you have to do is comment on one of my posts (including this one) about anything you please. Just make sure to tell me what city you plan to see the movie in, and tell me what names (up to two people) I should put on the guest list.
I’ll announce the contest winners in the next week or so.
Until then, please avoid resurrecting corpses. That kind of thing seldom turns out well for anyone involved.
Congratulations to Chase, JT, and Guillermo, all of whom won passes to see Ouija, the new horror movie coming out next week.
I didn’t want to mention this before, but Ouija sounds suspiciously like the 1980s classic Witchboard. That movie starred Tawny Kitaen, so you know it was good.
Clearly, we should all be on the lookout for any future movies that address the problem of demonic mass-produced board games.
I may have mentioned, once or twice, that I am like many Hispanics in that I love horror movies. So it’s no surprise that just about the only contests I have on this site consist of tickets to see horror movies.
For example, I’m offering you the chance to win passes to a screening of Ouija, the new horror movie coming out on Halloween. In the film, a group of friends awaken the dark powers of an ancient spirit board (this was probably not very smart of them).
You can catch it in one of the following cities:
Dallas
El Paso
Los Angeles
Miami
New York City
All you have to do is comment on one of my posts (including this one) about anything you please. Just make sure to tell me what city you plan to see the movie in, and tell me what names (up to two people) I should put on the guest list.
I’ll announce the contest winners in the next week or so.
The Ouija board tells me I will have many takers on this one.
As I am fond of mentioning, I live in beautiful Southern California, where I frequently soak up the sun, hike in the hills, hit the beach, and hobnob with celebrities.
Well, in truth, I have rarely hobnobbed in general, and even fewer times with anyone who could remotely be called a celebrity. But we LA residents do see A-listers out and about on occasion.
Very few of those stars are Hispanic, as I’ve pointed out before. But now we have statistical evidence that Latinos are not getting their shot at the silver screen.
A new study shows that over the last six years, there has been “no meaningful difference in the representation of characters from underrepresented backgrounds.”
Since 2008, the number of Hispanics onscreen rose from 3.3 percent to 4.9 percent. Latinos are about 17% of the American population, so Hispanic representation in film would have to triple to even be close to reflecting reality.
In fact, another study found that there are actually “fewer Latino lead actors in the entertainment industry today than there were seventy years ago.” Ouch…
Now is a good time to point out that Hispanics (including me) are avid fans of the cinema. In fact, Latinos bought more than one-quarter of the tickets to movies last year. And we don’t even want to get into how much we support certain genres (e.g., horror movies) more than most people.
But there was one positive note in the report. Surprisingly, Hispanic females were more likely to be featured in popular films than were white females or Asian females.
Still, even that comes with a caveat. You see, “Hispanic females were also more likely to be shown either partially or totally nude onscreen than any other race [and] seem to be more hypersexualized than their female counterparts from other groups.”
Yes, when it comes to American movies, Latinas are both underrepresented and underdressed.
Of course, the idea that the entertainment industry would objectify a Latina is ludicrous.
Yup, just plain crazy.
Congratulations to Electric Siesta, who won the contest to see Halley, a new Mexican zombie movie.
We hope to receive a review from Electric Siesta about how much he liked the movie. That is, assuming that a zombie doesn’t bite a chunk of his flesh off, thereby turning him into one of the undead and sending him lumbering across the countryside in search of fresh victims.
That would really suck.
Like many Hispanics, I love horror movies. Zombies, in particular, are perennially cool in my book. So I’m especially pleased that this site’s latest contest combines zombies with the future of filmmaking.
I’m talking about Halley, a Mexican zombie movie currently available on Vimeo On Demand. Check out the film here.
The film turns the classic zombie film into a hauntingly surreal reflection on alienation and loneliness. Halley follows the main character’s surrender to his body’s decomposition, as he withdraws from the world of the living.
I will provide the winner of the Halley contest with a free screening access code. To be entered into the drawing, all you have to do is comment on one of my posts (including this one) about anything you please.
If you win, I’ll email you the code. By the way, I won’t make your contact info public, so don’t worry about that.
I’ll announce the contest winner in the next week or so.
Until then, remember one key point:
Always aim for the head…
Our babysitter is a recent immigrant (from Africa). She was confused about the concept of Halloween, so she asked me to explain it to her.
Halfway through mentioning the various aspects — ghosts and goblins, people watching horror movies, children going door to door for candy, adults getting drunk, women dressing trashy — she asked, “I don’t understand how that is all one holiday, and what do pumpkins have to do with anything?” She’s right. This is one seriously schizophrenic party.
And I didn’t even get into the roots of the holiday, which are in the pagan celebration of Samhain. And of course, I was remiss in not mentioning the Latin American custom of Dia de los Muertos, which has established more of a presence in the United States over the last few years, largely because of the booming Hispanic population (you’re welcome).
But regardless of how you celebrate today, be sure to maintain the spirit of the holiday. You know, like the kids do.
It’s the end of the year, and according to blogger tradition, I am supposed to list the top ten greatest Latino moments or the top five worst Hispanic travesties or the top sixteen weirdo stories involving Latinos.
But honestly, who has the time to accumulate all that data?
So instead I’m posting the trailer for Mama, a new movie from Guillermo del Toro, the creator of the amazing Pan’s Labyrinth. The trailer is bilingual (sort of), and as I’ve stated many times, if there is one thing that Hispanics love (other than Jan Brewer, of course), it’s horror movies.
The film opens in January and looks like an appropriately creepy way to start the new year.
So I recently watched the horror-comedy Attack the Block, a British movie about an alien invasion of the inner-city projects. Yes, it’s as preposterous as it sounds, and while far from brilliant, it’s a fun ninety minutes.
However, I made a classic internet mistake after I saw the movie: I read other people’s comments on the film.
