January 16th, 2013.
From Shortlist Magazine:
KRIS KROSS SET TO REUNITE
16 Jan 2013
Horror Effects Hosted By Tom Savini.
One of these days, whenever I manage to sit down and completely gather all of my thoughts, I’ll tell you all about my friend Mark Liengie. He was a talented feller and when we were kids we used to draw together. We had this weekly competition going on where we’d try to out-gross the other by drawing the most fucked up images our young minds could conjure up and comparing them at weekends. Unfortunately I don’t know what happened to any of these pictures.
My friend Mark was a genius. A real one.
Before he died he was just about to make his…mark on the special effects industry. I believe he had a hand in creating the dead baby scene in “Trainspotting” as well as making a full dead body for an episode of “Taggart“.
On one of the last occasions I saw Mark he was outside his parents’ house with two fake human torsos on poles that each had wires and cables and string running from them. “Watch this!” he said, and with the push of a button on a handmade controller, the torsos EXPLODED with an amazing bang and instantly, a large part of the garden was drenched in the buckets of fake blood he’d filled the dummys with! Amazing.
Growing up, we’d quite easily watch the likes of “Creepshow”, “Dawn of The Dead” and “An American Werewolf In London” over and over again. We’d pause the tape on special effects shots and quickly draw exactly what we saw so that we could discuss how the effect was achieved later. It was a real learning process for me and really improved my drawing skills but Mark took things a lot further than I ever could. He’d regularly turn up on my parents’ doorstep with animal hearts and parts he’d got from the butcher and we’d cut them open. We’d both draw them but Mark would then go away and build an exact model replica out of all kinds of materials!
It’s amazing to think that he was only 9 or ten years old then but like I said, I’ll tell you all about him and his work another day.
Yesterday, I found a documentary film on Youtube hosted by our childhood hero, Tom Savini. As kids, Mark and I would have killed our nearest and dearest to have seen something like this…
You May Also Be Interested In…
* Blood test: Behind Al Cook’s “Necropolis”
* Graham Humphreys: “Zombie Flesh Eaters” Artwork
* When Barbie Goes Psycho
Some Drawings By The 13 Year Old Me…
My Mum unearthed some long lost drawings I did at school when I was 13 and gave them to me today.
Although they’re not very good at all, I remember getting really pissed off at the teacher for writing score marks on the actual drawing itself! Even the thought of it gets to me now and I’m 31! Ha Ha!
“The Godfather”: Robert De Niro’s Audition Tape.
Okay, next up to try out for the part of Sonny Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola‘s “The Godfather” we have a cheeky young upstart from New York, New York who goes by the name of De Niro. Robert De Niro…
The Heroic Musicians Of The Titanic.
11.40 pm tonight marks 100 years since The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and as much as we all know the story surrounding the tragedy, there has always been confusion and controversy concerning the Titanic’s musicians who all died on that night.
Ever since the sinking, people have debated and argued as to which piece of music was last played by the band on the doomed ship. It is generally understood that the final piece of music played by the musicians was either ‘Song d’Automne‘ or the hymn ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee‘.
But it doesn’t matter.
It’s not important.
What is important is that their names are remembered and that they continued playing as the ship sank in order to keep everyone else calm. Who knows what went through their minds that night as they stood up to death like gentlemen and played beautiful music.
Click on the image to enlarge:
The Heroic Musicians Of The Titanic were:
Wallace Hartley (Bandmaster & Violin).
Georges Alexandre Krins (Violin).
Roger Marie Bricoux (Cello).
Theodore Ronald Brailey (Piano).
John Wesley Woodward (Cello).
John Frederick Preston Clarke (String Bass & Viola).
John Law Hume (Violin).
Percy Cornelius Taylor (Piano).
Here is the ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee’ scene from the 1958 film “A Night To Remember“:
You May Also Be Interested In:
The Story Of Charles Joughin.
“The Titanic Disaster” By J.H. McKenzie.
