pumpktoberfest #43 -
treat yoself.

spice up yer nuts.
 

pumpktoberfest 2010!

#195 - links &
drinks 2011.
twitter.

Wednesday
Oct102012

pumpktoberfest #38 - headless horse.

film: sleepy hollow
beer: new holland ichabod pumpkin ale

sometimes, i just want to thwack tim burton about the face with a clean, white, aristocratic-type glove. dude manages to be AWFULLY precious at times & with me the effect is always something between eye rolling & amazement. nightmare before christmas? AWESOME. edward scissorhands? AWESOME. most of his career? AWESOME. still, there's always the occasional eye roll from me whilst watching his films. so...with trepidation, i decided to bring him into the pumpktoberfest fold with his 1999 film, sleepy hollow. it stars burton personal obsession johnny depp & my personal obsession christina ricci & features miranda richardson, christopher walken & that ferris bueller principal dude of slightly-questionable character.

it's another burton take on a classic story (see: pretty much every film he's ever made). in this case, it's based on "the legend of sleepy hollow," the washington irving story first published way the hell back in 1820. i first encountered the tale through the cartoonified 1949 disney version, which i guess, as a kid, was scary. could burton possibly be better than disney though?!!! [private anti-corporate chuckle].

in case you're not up on the sleepy hollow story, a dude named ichabod crane (depp) travels to sleepy hollow, a town that's been plagued by a spate of beheadings. the townsfolk claim that there's a headless horseman who's risen from the grave & is beheading people. ricci plays the part of katrinavan tassel, the daughter of a important man in the town (michael gambon) & his step wife (richardson). at first, depp...er...crane, a man of science & not of faith, is skeptical of the existence of a headless horseman. his mind quickly changes though, as he has a face-to-face encounter with the horseman.

from that point on, it's beheadings & depp antics & a burton world that, as usual amazes visually, exploiting the black & white/color contrast of his version of the late victorian era. by the end, we've learned the true nature of the horseman. while it's not scary per se, i suppose it's at least slightly terrifying. definitely worth at least checking out this pumpktoberfest season.

OBVIOUSLY, if i'm going to watch sleepy hollow, i have to drink a new holland ichabod pumpkin ale. to be honest, in my head, the beer came before the film & the disney version wasn't horror-filled enough to qualify for pumpktoberfest, so i gave burton's a shot. it's a seasonal pumpkin beer that new holland brewing (out of holland, MI) has been brewing for quite a few years now. until recently, you couldn't get bottles of any of their beers here in NYC, so yay craft brewery expansion.

it's pretty much your standard pumpkin beer, an orangish-amber beer brewed with real pumpkin, cinnamon & nutmeg. it's definitely drinkable, especially at 5.2% ABV, but the flavor's just sorta meh. the pumpkin's there but it's just sort of there & the spices aren't all that prominent. i guess that's ok if you're looking to knock back a bunch of them over the course of the evening but, in the grand scheme of pumpkin beers, it's just a little too unremarkable to me. if you can find a bottle in your NECK OF THE WOODS, it's worth trying at least once though. if nothing, you won't hate it.

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