December 16, 2009

Goth News for December 16

DARK MOVIE TRAILERS:

The Apple Trailers website is making a big fuss over the Tim Burton Trailer, which is available in HD. It's a featured ad on the top of the Apple site right now. 3/5/10!

Alice in Wonderland, at Apple

BEASTLY: This looks SO stupid. I probably shouldn't even give it the time of day to share the link. But maybe you need to have a laugh today. "Goth classmate Kendra retaliates by casting a spell that physically transforms him into everything he despises." Uh, goths can cast spells now? Wish I'd known this 16 years ago.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/beastly/

DARK SIDE OF THE NEWS:

"The Brood" Remake Gets a "Crazies" Director (CHUD)

"Coraline" Helmer Henry Selick Working on 3 Projects, Including Another Gaiman (Digital Spy)

Neil Gaiman, Others React to Golden Globes Nominations (Newsarama)

40 Screenshots From "Alice in Wonderland" Trailer (/Film)

New "Alice in Wonderland" Trailer Shouts 'Off With Her Head' (MTV Movies Blog)

New Trailer for Tim Burton's "Alice" Highlights Weirdness (Sci Fi Wire)

"Paranormal Activity" Comic Previewed (Digital Spy)

Brad Pitt, Summit Working on Dracula Movie, "Vlad" (MTV)

Natalie Portman to Star, Produce in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (AMC)

Quoth the Reader, 'Evermore': Creating Zines Based on Poe's Life and Work (NY Times)

So You Think You Know Edgar Allan Poe? Boston Library Exhibit (Boston Herald)

"Thor" Writers Taking on Futuristic Vampire Flick "Damn Nation" (First Showing)

"Three Kings" Director to be Brains of Austen Zombies Movie? (Sci Fi Wire)

December 4, 2009

New Links for December 4, 2009

DARK SHOPS:

Do Bats Eat Cats is an Etsy shop selling handcrafted gothic and Victorian jewelery (earrings, bracelets and necklaces). There are also some nice Celtic designs. (Discovered via Etsy's Dark Side Street Team.)

DARK MOVIES:

The Disloyal Subjects of the Mad Hatter Facebook page appears to be the official propaganda arm for the upcoming film. 70k fans and counting. That's a lot of people excited about the film!

Though I never cover metal music (whether black metal or goth metal) I want to point out this intriguing documentary, Until the Light Takes Us, about Norwegian metalheads who burned churches and killed people. Ugh, I'm glad they weren't goths. We'd never hear the end of it.


DARK BOOKS:

This is a pre-order from Quirk Classics. I'm not sure if it's a sequel to Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, or if it's something different, but the front cover just makes me so happy. Keep up with the gossip at the Quirk Classics Facebook page.


DARK SIDE OF THE NEWS:

The New York Times had a recent article on Edgar Allan Poe museums, societies, conventions and celebrations.

There are going to be some disappointed Twilight haters tomorrow. A plagiarism suit against Stephenie Meyer has been dismissed.

I love this post on the Craftygoths Livejournal. Estraye suggests cool ideas for goth Christmas decor, including murderous gnomes and butchered gingerbread men. I love it!

December 3, 2009

New Links for December 3, 2009

NEW LINKS TO THE PARANORMAL:

Creepy North Carolina is a blog covering weird or haunted places in the state. Currently posting about The Haunted Cherry Point Air Station, the ghost haunting the North Carolina Zoo, and the legend of the Little Red Man.


DARK MOVIE TRAILERS: The Road

This is not a goth movie, and this is not a horror movie. I mention it because I read the book a couple weeks ago (in preparation for getting my Viggo on) and sobbed for fifteen minutes after finishing it. For two or three days after reading it, I was depressed and kept thinking back to what I'd read. (Beautifully written, by the way).

The movie was somewhat less difficult, as my mind had made worse visuals than were depicted on screen. A four-hanky film for me, and one hanky for my male companion. Afterwards, our theater full of people left somberly, more silent than I've ever seen a group of strangers leave a theater, most of them not even flipping on their cell phones immediately as usual.

If your idea of holiday fun is going to see something grim, depressing, visually striking, and emotionally moving, then by all means go see The Road.

The Road Movie Trailer, at Apple


NEW LINKS TO DARK ART:

Goth Loli, by Madeleine Moon

Madeline Moon - This is a user-self-submitted link by the artist. She draws dark fairies and dark fantasy art.

"Mary Becoming Annette, by David Simkin

Want to see some really weird stuff? Check out the art gallery of David Simkin. Surreal, strange and definitely intriguing.

Also check out Ravenkult, a horror art site which actually scared me so badly I gasped and my cousin came running into my bedroom to see if I was ok! (It was Voodoo Teddy that startled me).


NEW LINKS TO DARK SHOPS:

Fine Chainmail Jewelry has some interesting pieces that I thought some of you might like looking at. They sell several styles of necklaces and bracelets (scroll down and use the Previous and Next navigation buttons to see more designs).


DARK SIDE OF THE NEWS:

Tim Burton Exhibit at MoMA: Publicity Ploy or Actual Art? (PopMatters)

Buffy's "Willow" Says No To Joss-Less Remake (Sci Fi Wire)

SyFy's "Alice" Skimps on Story's Essential Weirdness (Reuters)

November 27, 2009

Dark Side of the Net Shut Down for Now

Carrie from Darklinks and Tatyana from Goth Babe of the Week, having a blast at Convergence on the Queen Mary, July 2009. I am so grateful for all of the many wonderful goth friends I've made over the years, that I would never have met without Darklinks, alt.gothic, Convergence, etc.

THE PRESENT:

This is a sad and historic day for Dark Side of the Net, sixteen years after I started it. Every page on Dark Side of the Net is currently forwarding to this blog, which means the link database has been removed for the first time ever.

I have been trying to decide what to do after years and years of repeated incidents of people completely copying Dark Side of the Net over, removing my name and credit from the info, and making advertising money claiming various iterations of "the largest horrorlinks" or "The largest Halloween links on the Net". I'm not sure how one can try to claim one has the largest goth or horror link collection on the net when all someone did was copy my thousands of hours of hard work and pretend it's their own. I never even claimed I have the largest collection of goth or Halloween links, since I'm not sure if I do or not. Probably not! Besides, this has all been about the quality of very cool websites I've found, not the quantity. I do strive for completeness though - why link to only five Cure websites if there are 20 awesome and useful ones out there?

Meanwhile, I don't want to spend tons of money on legal fees to go after the *many, many* dishonest people copying from Dark Side of the Net. That's money better spent on my kids, my home, travel with friends, and my breaking-down car.

Of course, these plagiarising pages come and go, and don't last more than a few years. They'll all disappear eventually. But I'm tired of it. It's sapped my will to work on the pages at all. Why work hard to build a useful database so someone else can profit from it without permission?

THE PAST:

My continued mission has been simply to "Share the cool dark stuff I find with other people who might enjoy it too," not to make money off it or attain notoriety or goth fame or whatever. But it simply sucks the pleasure out of all this to see people stealing my work, removing my name, lying about it, and refusing to take it down when confronted. Meanwhile, because of my life becoming busier, and depression about my work being stolen, my links database definitely got ignored and is quite out of date. It doesn't make sense to keep it up in the condition it's in.

THE FUTURE

Coming in 2010

  • - A new page design (I can hear you cheering!). It will still be pretty heavily text based though and not very GUI or graphicy. I want it to work well on all of our mobile phones, and to load up quickly.

  • A new database to make it harder for lazy people to steal (though there's always people lazy enough to spend a few hours tweaking a scraping script, sigh)

  • A search engine! Finally!

  • More affiliate advertising and banner ads, but no Google Adwords text spam. Sorry, folks, but the new database, logo and graphics are costing me a lot of money. I'll try to have only interesting, highly targeted ads on the pages - and only ads showing stuff I personally think is cool and would want to own myself.

  • More attention to the Darklinks Social Network, which will become a bit more members-only. Not for elitist reasons, but for quality of participation reasons. This includes more time spent on the Dark Side Book Club, Dark Side University, Dark Side Writers groups, and other projects I think are really fun.

  • Dark Side of the News will be taking a different turn and I think 50% of you will love it and the other 50% never used Dark Side of the News or will groan and hate it when you see what I'm doing to it.

  • The Facebook and Twitter accounts will be less spammy with Dark Side of the News type items, and more specifically focused on what's going on at the Dark Side of the Net itself.

It's been a pleasure sharing my dark finds with you,

-Carrie Carolin

Dark Side of the Net links:

http://darklinks.ning.com/

Darklinks.com on Facebook

Dark Side of the Net News on Livejournal

Darklinks.com on Twitter

Goth Almanac

GothAlmanac on Twitter

October 31, 2009

Halloween Music Videos on Youtube

What I'm listening to today while I work and get ready to go to a Halloween party:

"Every Day is Halloween" by Ministry. Believe it or not there are some 20 year olds in my house today who had never heard this song. They're rockin' out now, loving it.

Now I'll creep them out with the Halloween movie theme which they associate with a lot scarier movie than it is in reality.

Siouxsie and the Banshees performing Halloween in 1981. Now I have to watch Spellbound too!

Korn: Kidnap the Santa Claus - From the "Nightmare Revisited" album.

Haha, someone made a video for Rammstein's "Engel" using imagery from Nightmare Before Christmas.

Can't go through Halloween without listening to Dead Man's Party. Here's Boingo playing live at the Ritz in 1985. I'm checking out this video in particular, rather than their normal cool stop-motion animated video because Danny Elfman is such an amazing performer. His facial expressions are so interesting to watch.

Not sure how I got started on the tradition of listening to The Cure's "A Forest" every Halloween, but now it's not Halloween officially until I enjoy listening to this song..

NiN covered "Dead Souls" by Joy Division for the Crow soundtrack.

Not a Halloween song, but one of my all time favorite goth songs ever, Attrition's "A Girl Called Harmony." Beautiful!

This is not at all Halloween related, but I get a kick of watching this incredibly geeky girl uh.. handsynching? to Basshunter, while wearing spoonfingers. I had a momentary Edward Scissorhands flashback during this.

Happy Halloween!

-Carrie

Darklinks.com

October 12, 2009

New Links for October 12, 2009

Goth Blogs:

Redecorating Middle-Earth in Early Lovecraft is a really interesting blog by an author and editor. They're a geek with cool interests. I thought you'd like to read a bit here, where it's "Always Halloween and never Thanksgiving."

Gothy Products:

Gothic Audio Cabs sells coffin-shaped guitar speaker cabinets. You can learn more about them on Myspace and Twitter.

Clothes that Kill has an awesome sense of humor. Just check out the annotation for their "Sookeh" True Blood-themed T-shirt: "Sometimes, when you have a heavy accent and you're very excited, you may not be able to clearly pronounce the name of your loved ones. This can be terribly frustrating. Printed on 100% cotton 6.1oz t-shirt." Haha, Bill's pronunciation of Sookie's name has been driving me crazy. Glad I'm not the only one who noticed! Check out "Dead Bat Designs" while you're here.

Geek Toys Collectibles just launched their line of "Seven Deadly Sins" collector figures. They're available through Dark Horse.

Twilight Beauty is a showcase and shop for the Twilight licensed beauty products being hawked ferociously right now.

This is a bit off-topic, but I wanted to show you the beautiful packaging on these Norman Love Confections "Black" Chocolates. I love the purple, teal and red colors the chocolates are dipped in. If any of my RL friends are reading this post, hint, hint, my birthday is April 2! cough, wink, etc!

I was going to link to Tsaifi on etsy, but I'm not sure it's dark enough for you guys to enjoy it. What do you think of the Bride print?

Follow the White Rabbit! is a blog by a woman who creates plush and vinyl toys. Most of it is adorably cutesey, not dark, but if you are interested in customs and urban vinyl toys at all, you might like checking this out real quick.

Check out these striped floor lamps. They're a bit modern, a bit 1950s, and what the heck, I just love stripes so much!

Goth Culture:

Here's an interesting article called "Baby Bats to Eldergoths: A Guide to 21st Century Goth Culture." It's a simple overview to various goth subgroups, including Tradgoths, Romantigoths, death rockers, cybergoths, rivetheads, perky goths, Corpgoths, J Goths, and more. The pictures are fun to look through!

Dark Videos:

You might enjoy checking out A Short Love Story in Stop Motion, on Vimeo. It's by Carlos Lascano.

Games:

Zombie Shooters offers 24 quick, fun little Flash games you can play online right away.

Fonts and Graphics:

Skeleton Logo Generator Tool uses a skeleton font to make a graphic using the word you choose.

Books and Literature:

Southern Vampires is a fan site for the Sookie Stackhouse vampire books.

Speaking of which, All Things Sookie is a simple fan site with a "Sookie-pedia."

Haunted Houses 2009:

Scare for a Cure is a haunted house in Austin, Texas that's donating proceeds to cancer charities.

September 30, 2009

New Links to Halloween Haunts 2009

Tonight I'm adding new Halloween Haunted Houses for the 2009 holiday season. The links might not be new to you, but they're links I have never added to Dark Side of the Net's Haunted House links yet. This is fun!

Silent Forest is a haunted theme park in Creedmoor, North Carolina. Children under 10 are not recommended to attend. There's also a Facebook page about the theme park.

California

Coffin Creek is in Corona, California.

The Empty Grave is in Anaheim, one block east of Disneyland.

Knotts "Scary Farm" in Anaheim, CA has a huge Halloween event going on in October. They'll also be Twittering about upcoming events.

Halloween Horror Nights at Universal will also be Tweeting about their October horror events.

Legend of Boot Hill is held in Irvine.

The Queen Mary is host to Shipwreck Halloween. Looks fun, I'm ashamed I never linked to this in years past!

Sinister Pointe is in Brea, California. Their Facebook page suggests this is a multiple haunted house attraction.

And at Six Flags Magic Mountain there are Halloween events starting October 3, called "Fright Fest."

Colorado

Colorado Springs, Colorado is the site of Haunted Mines.

Michigan

Deadly Intentions is in Warren, Michigan.

Exit 13 is in Mount Morris, Michigan.

Wyandotte, Michigan is the home of Hellblock 13.

Minnesota

Frightmares - Burnsville, Minnesota hosts four attractinons: Asylum, Haunted Hollow, Fright Factory, and Orchard Manor.

New Jersey

Macabre Manor takes place in Keyport, NJ.

Misc

Howl O Scream is from Busch and Sea World. It takes place in Williamsburg, VA, as well as Tampa Bay, FL and San Antonio, TX.

September 24, 2009

September 24 Update

New links for Dark Side of the Net on September 24:

Dark Art:

Oh. My. God. I love this: The Art of Natalie Shau. She's an amazingly talented illustrator and photographer from Lithuania. I bet you'll find several things here you'll enjoy looking at. The artist also has a Myspace presence, Twitter stream, and a Livejournal.

Steampunk:

What a shame this isn't being updated anymore! The Aethereal Adventures of Emma Verne" was an amazing steampunk webcomic. The blog hasn't been updated since 2008, but you can enjoy the back archives at least. I won't be linking to this on Darklinks since it's no longer updated, but I enjoyed looking at it today.

Gentleman's Emporium sells men's and ladies recreated 1800s style garments. There are also some lovely lacy parasols, felt hats, bathing costumes, and pocket watches. Not necessarily a "steampunk" store, but carries clothing you could adapt and utilize for your needs.

Ebay Shops:

While checking links, I came across this interesting one-of-a-kind goth Jesus art doll, on eBay. Freaky. A lot of work went into this, but I wonder if it will find a buyer at that price.

Goth Events:

The Amphi Festival 2010 will feature Funker Vogt, And One, Project Pitchfork, and Destroid. It takes place July 24-25, 2010 in Cologne, Germany. There's a Livejournal community, a MySpace page, and a Twitter page.

Speaking of events, I'm keeping my eye on this Zombie Christmas Ball that some people in Minneapolis, MN plan to host again this year.

Dark and Horror Blogs:

Frankensteinia is one of the best written and most interesting blogs I've come across in the genre, ever. Currently comparing C-3PO to the Monster; showcasing a Superman comic where Bizarro meets Frankenstein's monster; and sharing screencaps from Flash Gordon meeting Frankenstein. If you're interested in the topic, I'd make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or stop by a couple times a week. There's also a Twitter page for the blog, a MySpace, and a Facebook Page.

Goth Clubs:

Black Widows Nightclub is a goth club in Melbourne, Australia. They play synthpop, industrial, darkwave and gothic rock.

Music:

Cadillacs & Cadavers is a deathrock, horrorpunk band from Canada. They sport gigantic, cool mohawks, so I would have thought they were a straight up punk band, huh.

September 18, 2009

September 18's Test of Dark Side of the Net as a blog



Flames Rising is a pretty nice looking horror zine. They have fiction, blogs, news, interviews and reviews. They're also on Twitter.


Tonight I visited Bella's Diary, a Twilight fan fiction site. I liked the idea of a fan fiction diary, but there are a lot of cluttery ads here too. If you want to read more Twilight blogs, try Top Twilight Blogs.com.

You may wonder why I link to Twilight, when it's not a goth or even a horror movie. Yeah, I know. My thought is that kids who don't know much about Goth might stumble upon my blog posts sprinkled with occasional Twilight stuff, and in the process explore links to stuff that's actually goth.

I Twittered this a while ago.. an interesting article on Guillermo del Toro's house from io9. Fabulous pictures.

I'm not sure if this is a joke site, or serious: FaceGoth.com.
Halloween Lolcats: HalLolween.

A monster-shaped stroller for toddlers. Um. Scary.

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