Maybe. . . .
Category: Culture
The Call Of Cthulhu!
A BIG, Texas-sized CHT to the reader who e-mailed me a link to the just-released DVD of The Call of Cthulhu!
For those who may not know, The Call of Cthulhu is one of the keystone stories of early 20th-century weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.
The story dates from 1926, and now the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has adapted the story to film–done in the style of a 1926 silent film!
This was an outstanding choice.
Though there have been a number of Lovecraft film adaptations, they are generally regarded as unworthy by Lovecraft fans. Too much of Lovecraft’s ability to create mood depends on his narration, and when you have characters speaking to each other in naturalistic dialogue, the same effect just can’t be created. Also, many filmmakers who have adapted his stories have been notoriously unfaithful in doing so, changing elements left and right so that the film bears little resemblance to what Lovecraft wrote.
This film, being done by a historical society, is extremely faithful to the story and, by chucking out naturalistic dialogue in the manner of a silent film, it is able to capture the eerie mood of a Lovecraft story through the power of image and music.
This film is a REALLY good adaptation. Lovecraft (who did go to the movies and even had a job as a ticket salesman at a movie theater for a while) would have LOVED this flim if it had been made in 1926 so that he could have seen it. He would have raved about it in his letters to friends.
I Seem To Be Having Tremendous Difficulty With My (Creative) Lifestyle
I know some of you loyal JA.O readers have been wondering where you can find my artwork online, and whether it is available for purchase. Some nice person even made a bid for my last piece in the comments box, which was real flattering.
That particular piece is bound for our state Eucharistic Congress at the end of October, but will be available afterward.
I have been hinting at a web page of my own for some months, but as yet it has not come together (Soon, honest!).
I have been in a kind of transition period, professionally, and things have not always developed in a linear way.
Let me ‘splain-
No, there is too much… let me sum up…
After closing my art gallery in May of ’05 (another story), I endeavoured to set up a working art studio in my home, with the idea of painting on a regular basis. I had other freelance work as well, but the painting would now be my main focus. My immediate goal was to produce a well-rounded portfolio (at least twenty pieces) so that I could begin to approach some serious regional and national galleries, as well as having some to enter in competitions.
But running my gallery had taken me away from other duties for almost a year, and I found I needed a few weeks just to catch up on chores that I had left undone.
My beautiful family was also home on their summer break, and I found it hard to work with alot of people and activity going on in the house.
So I didn’t really paint that much all summer.
Then fall came, the family was back in school and I could get things really rolling… except my studio wasn’t right. It took me another week to figure out a workable layout and to control the lighting, etc… . Proper lighting is crucial.
Finally, everything was set. All my ducks were in a row. I was in my studio, by myself, all day, with nothing to do but paint.
That’s when I ran into a serious case of "painter’s block". Ugghh.
Discipline was called for, but with prayer and a few weeks of self-examination, I was really, really ready to paint.
And so that’s (finally) what I have been doing.
So with apologies to those who have been so encouraging about my art, I ask for just a little more patience. I should be online within a month or so.
In the meantime, the act of painting has got me thinking about possible parallels to writing, especially in the area of the Gospels and what we might reasonably expect of the gospel writers.
But that is another post.
Mythic Art
"Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world." –Joseph Campbell
The day after I saw a fabulous performance of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale — although, to be honest, just about any performance would have been "fabulous" to me since I had never seen Shakespeare performed onstage before — was the feast day of St. Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. If you know the play, then you know that the King of Bohemia is an important character in that play. If you know Shakespeare, then you know that nothing in Shakespeare is coincidental, so I wondered if the play had any connection to the old English Christmas carol Good King Wenceslaus.
Thanks to Google, I found this extremely interesting article on the influence of the English holiday cycle on Shakespeare’s plays. But I’ve also learned that if you surf the host site when Google points you to extremely interesting articles, you can oftentimes find extremely interesting sites. This is not always true. I still remember my consternation when I found that the only online host I could find for the introduction to Dr. Ludwig Ott’s classic Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma was a rabidly radical traditionalist site that seriously proposed that John Paul the Great was a murderer. (The site is so repugnant that you’ll have to Google for it yourself if you’re really that interested in reading its ramblings. If you want to find the Introduction to Ott’s book, just Google "Introduction Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma Ludwig Ott" for that link alone.)
In any case, the host for the Shakespeare article was much more interesting. It is called The Endicott Studio and is a kind of online gallery for mythic art. The art it hosts is from various disciplines: fiction, poetry, articles, and artwork. It’s a secular site and the secularism shows, but it is interesting. It’s worth a visit.
Two Films This Weekend
There’s a couple of interesting films in theaters right now (for my money, at least). SDG has reviews of both of them. If you’re looking for a movie to go to this weekend, you might check out
or
WALLACE & GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT
Be sure to check out Steve’s reviews of them.
Duck Soup
I really like the Marx Brothers brand of zany humor.
Recently I re-watched their movie Duck Soup and it reminded me of just how funny the brothers can be.
Duck Soup is my favorite of all the Marx Brothers films–at least of all the ones I’ve seen thus far (there are still some I have yet to watch). It’s also widely considered the best of their films by film critics.
One note for readers who aren’t native English-speakers: The title of the movie is not to be taken literally. Americans almost never eat duck soup. Instead, the phrase "duck soup" is a metaphor that refers to something that is very easy. If you say, "That’s just duck soup," you mean "That’s very easy" (not that many folks use this phrase much any more; presumably it dates to an era when more Americans went duck hunting).
The film was made in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. It shows the Marx Brothers at the peak of their form. (In fact, this was the last Marx Brothers film to feature Zeppo–the Marx Brother who served as "romantic interest" in their early films. After this, Zeppo stayed behind the scenes and let Groucho, Chico, and Harpo completely take over the spotlight.)
Among other classic bits, Duck Soup contains the famous "mirror gag."
In this scene, Groucho is confronted with Harpo (and later Chico) dressed exactly as he is.
They mimmic his behavior to an impossibly exact degree, creating the illusion that he is looking into a mirror when he is really looking at someone mimmicing him.
This was not the first or the last time the mirror gag would be used. It was previously used in a couple of silent films and was later used by Lucille Ball (with Harpo Marx) and on The X-Files.
In addition to physical comedy involving Harpo, there’s also a lot of wordplay involving Groucho and Chico. Recently here on the blog we were talking about the nature of comedy and the subject of wordplay came up as a form of (frequently) unhurtful humor that doesn’t presuppose that anyone is unfortunate. It can just be a game where we see how cleverly words can be bounced off each other.
The Marx Brothers were great at that. (Though some of their wordplay does contain barbs–particularly toward their regular leading lady Margaret Dumont–as well as occasional politically incorrect remarks since these films were made in the 1930s.)
I don’t remember when but I apparently saw this films as a boy.
How do I know that if I don’t remember it?
Because the film messed me up with respect to American history. We Americanistas all know of "the midnight ride of Paul Revere"–a famous event in our history in which the silversmith Paul Revere made a . . . uh . . . midnight ride and warned the countryside that British troops were coming in from Boston.
This occurred in 1775, the year before we threw off the shackles of Our British Oppressors (now Our British Best Buddies).
According to the story, Paul Revere was supposed to watch the tower of the Old North Church, where he would see one lantern if the British troops were coming by land and two lanterns if they were coming by sea. In HISTORY, he saw two lanters and rode off telling people that the British Redcoats were coming by sea, but in Duck Soup‘s re-enactment of the scene there’s a joke where Groucho sees three lanterns, and he declares that "They’re coming by land and sea!"
I saw that as a boy and that one image sank into my brain. The image of those three lanterns being lit stuck with me, and I thought I’d seen it in one of those stiff, formal "you are there" history reenactment films they’d show us in school.
I was in my twenties or thirties before I realized that this was A JOKE and not what really happened.
The film makes fun of all kinds of history–including the contemporary European history of when it was made. It features the fortunes of an imaginary European country named Fredonia, which is locked in conflict with the neighboring country, Sylvania. It deals with the problems of taxes and economics and national pride and self-defense that plagued the nations of Europe between the two World Wars.
Evil dictator Benito Mussolini thought it so closely reflected the events of the day in Italy that he BANNED the film, much to the delight of the Marx Brothers.
The movie is a regular history-slaw, which must have used just about every historical costume that Paramount Pictures had in their wardrobe department.
Despite the fact that Duck Soup is commonly regarded as the greatest of the Marx Brothers films (by me and others), it was for many years unavailable on DVD.
It was apparently released on DVD early on, but went out of print and was only available at insanely expensive prices (like $300 a disk!).
But it has recently been re-released and is now available again at HUMAN prices!
GET IT AS PART OF A 5-DISK MARX BROTHERS SET FROM PARAMOUNT.
So Where’s MY Serenity Screening???
I’m very jealous that the publicists for the upcoming movie Serenity (based on the cult sci-fi show Firefly) have invited the guys over at Powerline to have a screening of the movie for themselves and 120 or so of their readers.
I mean, John Hinderaker, who does their review, spends half of the piece talking about the fact that he isn’t a sci-fi fan, doesn’t watch TV, and hasn’t seen a sci-fi movie since Star Wars (the ORIGINAL one).
What pearls before swine! I mean, that’s just fahng-tzong fung-kwong duh jeh.
On the other hand, I’m very pleased to note what this represents. As Hinderaker explains:
These folks have figured out that the major bloggers have audiences that exceed those of most newspaper and magazine movie reviewers, and that we can help generate word of mouth traffic and, better yet, controversy [SOURCE].
Yet another indication of life in the fourth age of human communications.
And I’m not really bitter about not getting a Serenity screening.
After all, they can’t take the sky from me.
PRE-UPDATE: STEVEN D. GREYDANUS’S REVIEW OF SERENITY IS AVAILABLE ONLINE. (And it’s insightful.)
Stories Of Terri
To coincide with the first anniversary of her death this coming March, the Schindler family will be releasing a book on their struggle to save her life:
"Terri Schiavo’s parents and siblings are writing a book about their struggle in the epic end-of-life case that divided the country and captured the attention of everyone from the Pope John Paul II to President Bush, their publisher said Tuesday.
"The yet untitled memoir by parents Bob and Mary Schindler, brother Bobby Schindler and sister Suzanne Vitadamo will be published in March to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of the brain-damaged woman, whose feeding tube was removed after her husband won a court order to do so.
"’This book is the moving story of an ordinary family caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and it will set the record straight for the first time,’ said Jamie Raab, senior vice president and publisher at Warner Books in New York."
Apparently unwilling to miss out on the action, Terri’s husband and murderer Michael Schiavo also plans to release his own memoir, to be titled Terri: The Truth, in which it is likely that he will tell everything but that:
"The Schindlers’ book is likely to compete for space on the shelves with a memoir by Terri Schiavo’s husband, Michael, who fought his in-laws in court for eight years to end her life, arguing she would not have wanted to be kept alive in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state.
"Michael Schiavo said he is collaborating on the book with author Michael Hirsh. The 280-page book is titled Terri: [T]he Truth, and is planned for release in March by Dutton Publishing."
The Schindlers will not profit from their book on Terri, instead planning to "donate profits from the book to a foundation they established when they were fighting to save Terri’s life, Warner Books said. The foundation now is dedicated to protecting severely disabled people."
No word yet on Michael Schiavo’s plans for the money he will make from his book.
At Last! Someone In Hollywood With A GOOD Idea!
And by "a good idea" I mean "my idea."
You may have noticed that the time between the theatrical release of a motion picture and its DVD release is getting shorter. MUCH shorter.
My idea: Eliminate the time discrepancy COMPLETELY. Release movies on DVD at the same time they are in the theater.
In fact, SELL THEM IN THE THEATER. There’s no better time to hit a person up to by a DVD of a movie than when they’ve just seen it and are all excited about it. Make them wait 3-6 months and their enthusiasm will cool and you’ll have less of a chance of selling them that DVD.
I know I’ve come out of a movie and really wanted a DVD of it only to find myself thinking, months later when it finally comes out, "Was it really that good? Do really want to spend the money for a DVD?" My memories of the movie have faded enough that I end up not buying one, even though I now have the chance.
Selling DVDs in the theater would also (a) help boost flagging theater revenues (good for the theaters) and (b) cut down on film piracy if people can buy a legitimate copy the same way selling songs through iTunes cuts down on illegal downloading (good for the studios) and (c) please the customer (good for the customer)!
I know, I know.
People will argue that letting people buy the DVDs will cut down on ticket sales. Maybe so. Maybe not. You can cut down on that some if you only sell the DVDs in the theater while the movie is showing, so you have to go there to buy them.
At any rate, it gives customers more choice, and in principle, that’s a good thing. (Me being a customer.)
I think it’s an idea that’s at least worth experimenting with.
Aaaaa-AAAAAA-aaaah!
That’s one way of trying to transcribe the most famous scream in motion picture history:
THE WILHELM SCREAM!
It’s named after a character named Pvt. Wilhelm in the western The Charge At Feather River (1953), who is just filling his pipe when he is shot in the leg by an arrow, prompting him to utter the now-famous scream.
The scream went on to be used in countless Warner Brothers movies and, after it was discovered by Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt, in countless additional movies as well.
Burtt ran down the source of the scream and found that it was originally used in the 1951 film Distant Drums, where an unnamed character is eaten by an alligator.
After the photography on the film was done a series of voice takes was done under the title "Man being eaten by an alligator," and these became (collectively) known as the Wilhelm Scream.
Who the voice actor was doing the Wilhelm Scream is not known for certain, but Burtt has uncovered evidence that it was Sheb Wooley. best known for recording the song "Purple People Eater."
The scream has been used in innumerable movies, including all of the Star Wars films, all of the Indiana Jones films, and the second and third Lord of the Rings films.
It’s even used in TV shows and video games.
No doubt, you’ve heard it dozens of times, and now you know its name!
LISTEN TO THE WILHELM SCREAM (.wav).
(PARTIAL) LIST OF MOVIES WITH THE WILHELM SCREAM.
NPR RADIO FEATURE ABOUT THE WILHELM SCREAM (.real).
WATCH A MONTAGE OF CLIPS WITH THE WILHELM SCREAM (.mov; 48 mb!).
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WILHELM SCREAM.
BUY MOVIES WITH THE WILHELM SCREAM.
BUY WILHELM SCREAM MEMORABILIA.
How many films have you seen with the Wilhelm Scream?
(Maybe I’ll take the .wav file and use it for one of my Windows sound events. Every time my computer crashes, it could make the Wilhelm Scream.)