The Visit – Analog Artist Digital World

Gladys West from Elite Animation Academy gave me tickets to see a free test screening of M. Night Shamalan‘s “The Visit” at Cinemark Movie Theater in Artegon Marketplace 5150 International Drive Orlando FL. The free ticket warned that attendees should arrive early since the screening was on a first come basis. I decided to arrive early and sketch the line as it formed. 20 people were already in line. I asked the couple who were last in line, if I could squeeze in behind them after I finished my sketch.

People at the front of the line talked about the latest roll playing game. It made me wonder if there was a Comic Con in town. One guy in line sort of looked like Jesus, and his friends joked that he should audition for the roll of Jesus at Holy Land. Since he is an atheist, he wasn’t the right man for the job. A security officer from Burbank California looked over my shoulder to check out the sketch. Her job was to make sure everyone turned off their cell phones before the movie started.

With the sketch done, I got back in line. The guys behind me were talking about an incident of road rage on an I-4 off ramp. The guy said that if his family wasn’t in the car then he would have killed the other driver. Jesus! I assume that every other driver on the road is as impatient as this guy. Even so you can’t escape everyone’s rage. The line started to move and Terry, my wife hadn’t arrived yet. I had to hope that she would be able to force her way in without a ticket. I put my art supplies in the seat next to me to hold her seat, but as the theater grew more crowded, I got uncomfortable turning people away. Luckily the theater didn’t fill up completely.

“The Visit” wasn’t what I expected. Everyone in the theater was braced for a scare. The film was set up like a documentary shot by a young brother and sister. Their mom had left her parents home twenty years earlier and never spoke to her parents again. Her parents looked her up on the Internet and they wanted to meet their grand children. The two children were sent off on their own by train to visit their grand parents whom they had never met in an isolated farm house upstate. The grand parents turn out to be more than a little strange, if not insane. What gives the film heart is that the young daughter is shooting a documentary in the hopes of finding an elixir for her mother’s guilt. Rather than horror, most scenes were laced with laugh out loud humor. As scenes grew darker and more sinister, laughter offered relief. Like in the “Sixth Sense” there was one unexpected twist that truly had the audience on the edge of their seats. The grandpa turned out to be scarier than Freddy Kruger and the grandma was as creepy as a Japanese ghost. Sun downers was the clinical explanation but she went way beyond that diagnosis. Terry grabbed my sleeve every time the tension built.

The Visit turned out to be a film with true heart. I give the film eight Yatzys. You really need to see the film to believe it. The fact that many people in the test audience had waited hours to get in the theater, meant that we had a very lively audience. The film is scheduled to open nation wide on September 11th.

Star Child’s Odyssey: A Retrospective View Into the Imaginative World of Toni Taylor opened on August 15th at Gods and Monsters, inside Artegon, (5250 International Drive; Suite E8, Orlando, Florida). I held a free ticket give away last week on AADW and Toni won the ticket to “The Visit” by M. Night Shamalan. I decided to visit her opening to present her with the ticket and to sketch. Toni was one of the first artists I met when I started doing one sketch a day. She was kind enough to let me visit her studio to watch as she painted.

Toni Taylor began her professional illustration career in 1985 as a
cover artist for Heavy Metal Magazine. She is a visionary artist whose
work travels through the realms of fantasy and mysticism. She feels a
special kinship with the mysteries of Ancient Egypt as well as the
spirit of Native America. Goddess imagery is represented powerfully in
her collection and as a lover of all things celestial, the beauty and
limitlessness of the Cosmos often finds its way into her paintings. Mark Your Calendar! Toni’s paintings will be on display for one month.

Toni has begun creating three dimensional tree sculptures using wire, driftwood and moss. They were quite beautiful and amazingly affordable. Dale Bartlett, the Tree Mon, helped inspire Toni to explore these mysterious miniature creations. Dale had tears in his eyes as he told me that Toni would certainly surpass her master. He was so proud of her. The retrospective showcased work from all facets of her career over the years. In the realm of her imagination anything is possible.

Anna Maiya Young and Todd Fisher the owners of Gods and Monsters had the foresight to include the Transmetropolitan Gallery inside the huge comic store. Anna told me about her bucket list of talented artists that she wanted to showcase. Those artists include, Clive Barker, David Mack, Ben Templesmith, Menton 3, David Stoupakis, Chet Zar, Damien Echols and Vaughn Belak, so her bucket list is almost complete. Needless to say there will be amazing art showcased in this venue all year.

A falconer and a knight from Medieval Times stopped in to the opening. Also some of the cast from Phantasmagoria mingled in the crowd adding to the color of the evening. Later performers danced with fire outside. I could feel the heat on my skin as they gracefully performed with five pronged torches. A butler offered a mistress a drink and then she became a human flame thrower spitting flames six feet in the air.