Witch

IT SEEMS ONLY appropriate that the southern Frederick County town of Burkittsville would select Severna Park's ToadNet as its Web site provider.Like filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Edward Sanchez, whose movie, "The Blair Witch Project," has put Burkittsville on the map, ToadNet founder and chief executive officer, David Troy, 27, knows what it's like be successful at a young age.He and his former partner, Ray Mitchell, started their first computer business in...

Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters is the latest twisted adptation of a classic tale or character, akin to tales Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Abraham Lincolm Vampire Hunter . As might be expected from such a bizarre mashup of Grimm's fairy tale and modern culture, the movie seems to have split critics and viewers, according to early reactions. Here are excerpts some reviews: -- Tribune: Writer-director Tommy Wirkola focuses on the fights, and flings all manner of viscera at the 3-D camera as limbs are whacked off and heads and torsos explode.

The witch who went to school got kicked out of class.A county book-screening council voted not to allow second-grade teachers to use "The Witch Goes to School," by Norman Bridwell, and will vote over the next week on eight other books objected to by some members.When a high school student who is a member of the screening committee defended the book by saying the witch in it is a good person, the mother behind her said, "This is the problem."For people of faith, a lot of Christians and a lot of Jewish people, they don't want their children thinking of witches as good people, people they should be friends with," said Nita Korn of Pleasant Valley, who has a child at West Middle School."

It's easy being green, once you learn the knack. To create the distinctive pigment for Elphaba, the title witch in "Wicked," makeup designer Joseph Dulude had one goal. "The most important thing was that we didn't want it to look fake," Dulude said. "We wanted it to look like skin, and we wanted Elphaba to be pretty. People hate her not because she's ugly, but because her skin color is different. " Dulude tried several products before he settled on Landscape Green Chromacake, after discovering that it could not be applied full-strength, which required airbrushing.

KISII, Kenya -- A fertile oasis nestled in the highlands of western Kenya, Kisii District is a farmer's paradise. Its flourishing countryside boasts seven-foot cornstalks, trees laden with bananas and endless acres of tea plantations.But beneath the tranquil facade, a phenomenon reminiscent of the Salem witch trials in late 17th-century Massachusetts has plunged the close-knit Gusii tribe into a murderous frenzy.Since July of last year, 44 men and women accused of practicing witchcraft have been burned to death in Kisii and neighboring Nyamira districts, according to police officials.

Some people want to exorcise their ghosts, but Joann Julian of Bel Air is fighting hard to keep hers around.Last October, vandals stole a life-sized witch and a ghost from the elaborate Halloween display she set up in her yard.This year, a 5-foot Dracula was the first to go from the eerie Halloween collection, then the witch.The display is a family tradition that has grown every year, the Julians say.This year, spotlights at night glow over white ghosts luminously draped among trees, 6-foot witches and mummies, spirits and grinning pumpkins and a ghoulish Freddie Krueger, the slasher from the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies.

Halloween hunch players reaped a bonanza at Laurel Park yesterday when Tippity Witch exploded through the stretch and drove to a 1 3/4 -length victory in the featured Grade III Martha Washington Stakes. Sent off at 9-to-2 odds, the New York invader set up a late daily double that pleased the avid devotees of tomorrow's holiday when Ghostly Numbers followed by winning a maiden special race in the finale to produce a $78.40 payoff. In winning for the first time since May, Tippity Witch collected $60,000 as the winner's share of the $100,000 purse and increased her lifetime earnings for owner Cynthia Knight to more than $200,000.

American moviegoers spent more than $60 million last weekend watching film of the Maryland countryside.Of course, it helped that the Old Line State's countryside was decorated with the likes of Julia Roberts, Richard Gere and a 200-year-old witch with an insatiable appetite for student filmmakers.In a weekend that looks like it may have been Hollywood's most profitable ever, the two highest-grossing films were both shot right here in Maryland. Top moneymaker "Runaway Bride," the long-awaited re-teaming of Roberts, Gere and "Pretty Woman" director Garry Marshall that was shot largely in Berlin on the Eastern Shore, pulled in an estimated $34.5 million.

ELKINS, W.Va. - Roaming the switchback tableaux of West Virginia, from teeming flea markets to still-life cemeteries, Gerry Milnes, a folklorist steeped in Appalachian discovery, traverses a paradox: Modern highways let him journey among the secrets of the mountain hollows far faster in the 27th year of his serendipitous mission. But so, too, do the roads speed the young generation away from their roots, endangering the chance to carry on the old, unwritten craft of johnboat building down in Gauley Bridge, for example, or the art of backwoods witch-doctoring still practiced hereabouts beyond the interstate.

ROSSVILLE, Ill. -- Things were already going downhill in this small farming community when the witches arrived. Area factories had shut down. So had the local high school. A suspicious fire had destroyed much of the downtown. The use of methamphetamine was destroying families. So when a group of Wiccans from out of town moved into a storefront this summer and put up a sign advertising "Witch School," it was only a matter of time before alarm bells sounded and tempers started to boil in this village of 1,200 about 125 miles south of Chicago near the Indiana border.

In describing the status of cyclist Lance Armstrong, reporter Jill Rosen somehow managed to turn from straight reportage to editorializing ("To host Lance Armstrong, triathlon drops sanctioning," Sept. 21). Mr. Armstrong has not been proven guilty of anything and has been pursued by the several anti-doping authorities for most of his career. I can only assume that he finally gave up fighting the USADA's most recent attacks because he was worn out after all of this fighting - or maybe it was just the continuing financial cost of defending himself.

Members of the VFW Department of Maryland gathered in Ocean City for their annual convention two weeks ago, a week before last week's Maryland State Firemen's Association Convention in Ocean City. As the VFW Post 8185 folks returned to Port, the Water Witch fire company firemen and their families left for their week at the beach. At the Firemen's Convention Memorial Service Sunday, June 17, Shirley Sentman's mom, the late Dot Brown, was remembered and honored for her service to the WWFC Ladies Auxiliary.

Political consultant Julius Henson, who wrote the 2010 Election Day robocall that prosecutors said was designed to suppress black votes, was led from a Baltimore courthouse in handcuffs Wednesday after being sentenced to 60 days in jail. Baltimore Circuit Judge Emanuel Brown also ordered Henson, 63, to complete 300 hours of community service. Brown announced his sentence after listening to Henson cast himself as a victim in his final remarks to the court. "The state has a problem with the First Amendment.

"Lovely Molly," the horrific tale of a woman either demonically possessed or tragically insane, may be the film that makes Eduardo Sanchez someone other than one of the guys responsible for 1999's "The Blair Witch Project. " Which would be fine with the Maryland-raised filmmaker, whose movie gets its local premiere tonight to cap the first day of the 14th Maryland Film Festival. "I love being one of the guys that did 'Blair Witch,' but I'm really proud of 'Lovely Molly,'" Sanchez, 44, said about the film he shot last fall in and around Hagerstown.

The members of the Water Witch Fire Company, along with their EMS unit, the fire police and the ladies auxiliary, gathered at the VFW Post 8185 in Port Deposit Saturday evening for their annual awards banquet and dance. This year's event was extra special, with four members of the Ladies Auxiliary inducted into the Harford/Cecil Firemen's Association Hall of Fame. Emcee Richard Brooks welcomed Cecil County Commissioners Robert Hodge and Michael Dunn along with guests from the following fire companies: Chesapeake City, North East, Singerly, Perryville, Wakefield, Havre de Grace and Rising Sun, plus guests from the Cecil County Sheriff's Office, the Cecil County Department of Emergency Services, the Town of Port Deposit, Tome's Landing Marina and Chesapeake Truck Service.

The Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra continues its 35th anniversary season on St. Patrick's Day with a "Ghosts and Witches" concert. Sheldon Bair, SSO founder and music director, noted that guest artists from Canada will be featured, and hinted that the concert may conclude with "a little something special for St. Patrick's Day. " The music begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 17, at Bel Air High School at 100 Heighe St. Come early, at 6:30, for...

Imagine "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Romeo and Juliet" rolled into one story, and you've got "Dark of the Moon" as presented by the Western Maryland College's theater department.The play, which starts tonight, is based on the old folk ballad, "Barbara Allen," and is set in the Great Smoky Mountains. "Dark of the Moon" tells the story of John, a young witch boy who falls in love with Barbara Allen."The poor guy falls in love for the first time, but he falls in love with a human, and he's a witch, so he has no chance of marrying her because they're different races," explained Eric Lyga, who plays John.

Jamie Schoonover is on her way to dinner. As she strolls through Fells Point toward Bertha's, men and women stare audaciously."I'm just a poor Goth," says Jamie, all dressed in a wardrobe straight from "The Addams Family." Jamie, a 15-year-old with marbled blue eyes, black fingernail polish and a head shaved clean on the right side, takes the stares in stride."Oh, I'm used to people being scared of me for the way I look," says Jamie, a freshman at Southwestern High School in Baltimore.Days before, another ninth-grader at Southwestern certainly seemed scared of her. Head down, voice barely audible, her neck ringed with a silver cross, Jennifer Rassen was saying she couldn't get her voice out of her head -- the witch's voice.

"Witch's Brew," the latest effort from horrific Baltimore director Chris LaMartina, gets its world premiere at the Charles Theatre Wednesday night. The movie, filmed in and around Baltimore over the past two years, offers the twisted tale of a couple local brewmasters who run afoul of a witch. The results are predictably horrifying — especially to those unlucky enough to sample their "Slacker Lager. " As the movie's tagline so succinctly puts it, "Liver damage will be the LEAST of your problems.

I'm not really one to question a Festival of Tolerance. It sounds nice. But perhaps the timing's not right when you're very much in midst of a murderous witch-vampire battle. And the head witch has turned into a cult leader. WORST FESTIVAL OF TOLERANCE EVER: Nan's Vampire League leadership never gets questioned. Maybe it should after this episode. Despite Bill's pleas, she's decided to go forward with the vague Festival of Tolerance. Even when silvered the day before in case Marntonia is up to her tricks.