Courtesy of Furious D, here’s a little film trailer for a low-budget production of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer In Darkness.” Honestly, isn’t that a great trailer? Aren’t you interested in seeing this movie? I know I am, and–here’s the thing–I hate H. P. Lovecraft’s body of work. All that nihilism, and the whole the-universe-is-more-horrifying-than-you-can-imagine Cthulhu Mythos, is to me not only depressing and demoralizing, but full-out blasphemous. But this trailer is irresistable. The people who made it (and, we assume, the film) are having so much fun, first in telling a story they enjoy, and then in re-creating the whole atmosphere of a 1930s horror film, that all their love shines through (which is ironic when you’re dealing with Lovecraft material). Bravo.
Movies
Hollywood’s Greatest Year?
Not to sound like an old codger, but movies aren’t as good as they used to be. Oh sure, they’re more technically dazzling than ever, and there is still a fair amount of quality among the dross. But film today is less interesting, surprising, or engaging than at any other time I can remember. This observation raises an interesting question, though: when was American cinema at its peak? More precisely, if one had to pick a single year as the best ever for Hollywood, what would it be? For many cinephiles, the answer to this question is 1939, and a strong argument can be made in its favor. Film highlights from that year include timeless works like Gone With the Wind (still the biggest ticket-seller of all time) and The Wizard of Oz, both of which remain frequently viewed today. The year also featured classics in genres like the Western (Stagecoach, directed by John Ford) and the sophisticated romantic comedy (Ninotchka), as well as the film perhaps most emblematic of Frank Capra, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. While 1939 is impressive by any standard, for my money Hollywood’s greatest year was 1974. The “New Hollywood” was well-established by then and
Straw Dogs 2011 a Liberal Screed
Why would you remake Straw Dogs? The question enticed me to the local multiplex last weekend. After all, the television advertising campaign for Rod Lurie’s (The Contender) latest film didn’t reveal much about the style and plot, but my fascination with Sam Peckinpah’s original version prompted me to see how such a morally complicated movie could be improved upon nearly 40 years later. Quick answer: It can’t. At least not by Lurie, a script that unabashedly lifts 90 percent from the original, and a cast either too ill-equipped or poorly directed to bring much more than “stand there, say that” chops. James Woods reprises his one-dimensional Southern racist redneck prone to violence role from Ghosts of Mississippi, James Marsden and Kate Bosworth look as if they’ve stepped out of a Vanity Fair photo shoot, the great Walton Goggins (TV’s Justified and The Shield) is totally wasted, and Alexander Skarsgard ping pongs between country-fried wholesomeness and really handsome rapist. The Monkee’s “Going Down” is used for Tarantino effect to show how “cool” the Jaguar XJ-driving protagonists – who know all the lyrics, natch – are, but zydeco and Southern rock (Lynard Skynard? Check. Molly Hatchet? Check.) are the indigenous musical flavors
Vampire Culture
How does one explain the efflorescence of the vampire in popular culture? David Solway has an idea: One can’t help but notice the growing prevalence of the vampire archetype in contemporary fiction and film, corresponding to the popular fascination with the Titanic story. The vampire and the Titanic constitute cultural paradigms, aspects of the subliminal awareness of deep social currents, suppressed forces, and nocturnal apprehensions expressed as aesthetic configurations. It used to be “sympathy for the devil.” Now it’s sympathy for cognizable evil: The premonition that something is awfully wrong haunts the imagination, although much of the time we cannot isolate precisely what it is that lurks in the shadows of our doubts and misgivings. Terrorism and a revived Islam, for example, clearly stalk the collective psyche. According to ancient lore, the vampire must first be invited into the premises he subsequently terrorizes, and this is certainly the case with the Islamic demographic. At the same time, all too many of us refuse to consciously acknowledge the threat and strive instead to prettify the image of Islam as a “religion of peace” — just as the modern vampire tends to be nipped and tucked into a cosmetic semblance of nobility
Did Thomas Jefferson Really Have Children by a Slave?
Everybody “knows” he did, right? In a book due out Thursday, eminent scholars say it’s unlikely that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’ children, disputing a decade’s worth of conventional wisdom that the author of the Declaration of Independence sired offspring with one of his slaves. The debate has ensnared historians for years, and many thought the issue was settled when DNA testing in the late 1990s confirmed that a Jefferson male fathered Hemings’ youngest son, Eston. But, with one lone dissenter, the panel of 13 scholars doubted the claim and said the evidence points instead to Jefferson’s brother Randolph as the father. The scholars also disputed accounts that said Hemings’ children received special treatment from Jefferson, which some saw as evidence of a special bond between the third president and Hemings. There seems to be reason to doubt Jefferson’s patrimony: Claims that the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson started in Paris are unlikely because she was living with his daughters at their boarding school across the city at the time. The “Jefferson family” DNA used in the 1998 test came from descendants of his uncle, which the scholars said means any one of two dozen Jefferson men living in Virginia
‘Globe’ Critic Characterizes ‘The Help’ Filmmakers As Slaveholders
The Help, a comedy-drama film set in the South during the turbulent mid-1960s, finished at the top of the U.S. movie box office for the second weekend in a row. Although the film received largely positive reviews, a critic from the Boston Globe predictably lambasted the film for insufficient hatred of the American South: It’s possible both to like this movie – to let it crack you up, then make you cry – and to wonder why we need a broad, if sincere dramatic comedy about black maids in Jackson, Miss., in 1962 and ’63 and the high-strung white housewives they work for. The movie is too pious for farce and too eager to please to comment persuasively on the racial horrors of the Deep South at that time. But the critic, Wesley Morris, didn’t stop there. His biggest complaint is that the The Help shows black women of the era as needing help in order to reach their full potential in the Jim Crow South. The central character, a white female known as Skeeter (Emma Stone), he notes, “changes the lives of a couple of dozen black women whose change is refracted primarily through her.” Not good, Morris complains:
Fred Steiner, R.I.P.
Most people don’t know who Fred Steiner was. As a musical composer and conductor, his work, both credited and uncredited, contributed to the sound of many Hollywood productions from the early ’50s to this year. I always associate him with the original Star Trek series (25 episodes) and Gunsmoke (11 episodes). However, he didn’t compose the themes for either show. But he was responsible for one unforgettable TV series theme tune: Perry Mason. We’re told Steiner’s original title was “Park Avenue Beat.” You can listen to Steiner’s most famous composition here (YouTube, 4 minutes 3 seconds). The series is slowly coming out on video.
Honor in a Dark World: John Huston’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’
John Huston’s 1941 film version of Dashiell Hammet’s novel The Maltese Falcon is, in my opinion , the superior work of art (though the novel is no mean accomplishment itself). The plot centers on the search for an extremely valuable statuette of a falcon, made centuries ago on the island of Malta , with people killing others in order to obtain it. The villains are mostly colorful, sophisticated, and at least superficially upper-class. Indeed, one of the two ways the film, in my opinion, is superior to the novel is that Mary Astor’s portrayal of Brigid O’Shaughnessy is three-dimensional, whereas in the book she is nothing more than a beautiful temptress. The hero, private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart, in his breakthrough role) , is capable, tough, and edgy. I have used the word hero, but he is at best a tarnished one. Though he seems tired, and even sickened, of it by the time the film begins, Spade has been cuckolding his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). Regarding Archer’s murder, Spade says, “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.… When one of your organization gets killed, it’s … it’s bad for business to
“Conan the Barbarian”: Not Perfect, But Closer
With this review, I consciously renounce all right to any respect as a film critic. I loved Cowboys and Aliens, which right-thinking people seem to despise, and now I’m going to admit to the world that I enjoyed the new Conan the Barbarian, which everybody except me and a few Facebook friends seems to loathe. I’m going to start by moving my recommendation, which I usually leave for the end of the review, to the beginning. The good things I’m about to say about Conan the Barbarian should not be taken as an endorsement for most of our readers. This movie earns its “R” rating. There is much violence, and enough graphic, special effects-enhanced gore to please Odin’s ravens. Also considerable female nudity, often in situations involving bondage. I think this was a major error on the part of the filmmakers. They could have made a movie just as good without voluntarily reducing their paying audience through shock techniques and salaciousness. On the other hand, the “R” rating is not inconsistent with the original material. I approached Conan the Barbarian with something less than low expectations. I mistrusted the re-boot project from the first, and Michael Medved, whose opinion I
‘Annie’ and Myths About the Great Depression
In a recent posting by Steven Horwitz on the Coordination Problem weblog, the author shows how pop culture can shape history — or, rather, our recollection of it: As I’ve been writing about the myths surrounding the Hoover presidency the last week or so, it got me thinking about the question of where those myths came from and why they persist. Certainly a big part of the persistence has to do with the biases in the media, the punditry, and academia. The economic facts of how much worse the Great Depression got under Hoover are not in dispute, but if one is predisposed to think, even in a naive way, that government intervention is the answer to economic problems, then it’s almost a necessity to accept the myth of Hoover as “laissez faire.” If you don’t, it would require some major cognitive dissonance to square the idea of Hoover as a proto-New Dealer (which he was) and the disaster of his presidency with your priors about the necessity of government intervention. But putting biases aside, I think there’s probably another source for it, especially in more recent years when more and more serious historians have rightly recognized Hoover’s interventionism. I
‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Mashup Notable for Flaws, Saving Graces
By S. T. Karnick The general rule for mixed-genre fictions is not that you can expect to interest fans of both genres, but instead that you end up only with those who like both genres. That, I suspect, is a central reason why so few are attempted and even fewer are successful with audiences or critics. That seems to be what’s happening with Cowboys & Aliens, which opened to less-than-enthusiastic reviews and lower-than-expected first-weekend ticket sales even though it finished first at the U.S. box office. That would explain the unexpectedly weak performance during the film’s first weekend. What’s likely to suppress its box office appeal in the coming weeks, however, is the film’s lack of a strong story line and dearth of appealing characters. Directed by Jon Favreau (the Iron Man films, Elf, Zathura) from a script by multiple hands, Cowboys & Aliens has plenty of energy and action and is basically enjoyable, but it suffers from a curious lack of interesting plot twists and a rather glaring casting mistake. Most classic Westerns, contrary to contemporary beliefs, were given excellent, complex plots with strong character motivations. Unfortunately, plot is the great weakness of Cowboys & Aliens. We know from
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