da_craw

Once upon a time, there was a homeowner named Word Geek. Word Geek tried to take care of his house and yard as best he could, mowing the lawn, trimming the borders, and raking the leaves. One year, Word Geek and his neighbors had to cut down many of their trees. This made Word Geek sad, because he liked the trees, but when fall came, he was a little happy because he wouldn't have as many leaves to rake. Word Geek still had one big tree in his front yard, but Word Geek wasn't worried about that, because in previous years, that tree kept its leaves all through the winter.

So Word Geek was very surprised when his big tree in the front yard started to drop all its leaves in October. At first, Word Geek thought, "There are only a few leaves; I'll rake them up sometime." As days passed, however, more and more leaves fell on the front lawn, and Word Geek began to be concerned. He decided that he should rake the leaves, but he always had a good reason not to. "I would rake the leaves today, but I have a lot of editing work to do," or "I would rake the leaves on Saturday, but I'm going to see friends," or "I would rake the leaves today, but it's pouring rain." As November was about to turn to December, Word Geek decided that the leaves must be raked as soon as possible. That night, as Word Geek slept, a strong wind storm came up. Word Geek woke up the next morning and looked out his window to discover that all the leaves were gone! And Word Geek was very happy.

The moral: If you procrastinate long enough, the wind will take your work away. (The moralist does not accept any responsibility if you apply this moral to office work, construction projects, or taxes.)

OK, stillsostrange, I'll admit I wasn't initially hooked by The Drowning City, until I reached the point where they commission the smuggler's ship.

And then I realized that not only is the name of the ship the Rain Dog, but the CAPTAIN IS A ONE-ARMED DWARF. And he's playing dice along the wharf! And the code phrase is, essentially, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." And he takes the ring.

Howling with laughter, I was.

Well played, Ms. Downum. Well played, indeed.

Judging by this weekend's box-office numbers America is enthralled by teenaged vampires. Whatever. I think it's fine that a film is being marketed towards tweenaged girls but something tells me that, for many of them, their interest in vampire lore begins and ends with the Twilight series and that's a shame as there are many other, frankly better, vampire flicks to choose from. I'm pretty tired of the overly romanticized depiction of vampires. Personally, I like my vampires nightmarish - not dreamy. If Twilight fans are so enraptured of pretty boy emo vampires then the following films will probably make them run out the room screaming like - well, like little girls.


Let the Right One In (2008) - From my original LiveJournal post, dated 11/23/08 (exactly 1 year ago today): This weekend I went to see that new 'young vampire in love' movie. No, I'm not talking about Twilight, I'm talking about Let the Right One In, one of the best films I've seen this year, regardless of genre. Despite having two twelve year olds for leads Let the Right One In is a decidedly adult film - I imagine it would be too much for most of Twilight's tweenage audience to handle. While the film is neither sexually graphic* nor exploitative it's discomfortingly frank in its depiction of the intimacy that emerges between two twelve year olds. There's nothing to be worried about, though. The relationship between the leads is only slightly less chaste than the one featured in WALL-E - where holding another robot's hand was a serious proposal and was tantamount to intercourse. My guess is that most teenagers will prefer the dreamy, airbrushed romance of Twilight as opposed to the awkward, sometimes messy, relationship so beautifully and compellingly portrayed in Let the Right One In. Corpses tend to have that effect on tales of young love.
*OK, there is one fleeting shot of full frontal nudity but it serves a thematic and narrative function and trust me it is NOT erotic at all.


Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1923) - The granddaddy of all vampire films FW Murnau's classic silent film might have been lost forever. Despite major and minor changes in the plot and changing all the names of the characters Nosferatu was unmistakeably an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula and an unauthorized one at that. Stoker's widow was not amused and sued the filmmakers for copyright violation. The Stoker Estate won and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed. It was too late though as many copies had been distributed around the world by then and the film went on to become a classic of world cinema. The impact of Murnau's Nosferatu on the world of horror, especially vampire films, has been eclipsed only by Todd Browning's 1931 film of Dracula. In that version, Bela Lugosi established the template of the urbane, sensual Count; one that would influence virtually every depiction of Dracula to come but Max Shrek's hideous Count Orlock is much closer to how Stoker originally depicted him. Anyone reading Dracula for the first time might be surprised at how unsexy and unromantic Dracula really is. Count Orlock, as played by Max Shrek is one of cinema's most memorable monsters; so much so that the make-up design was copied almost identically when Werner Herzog remade Nosferatu and when Tobe Hooper adapted Stephen King's vampire novel, Salem's Lot. 2000 saw the release of Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalized look at the making of Nosferatu, which takes the interesting approach of suggesting that Max Shrek was, in fact, a real life vampire.


Martin (1977) - Written and directed by George Romero, Martin is possibly the first film to reexamine the vampire mythos and to put it in a modern setting. This low budget shocker is shot in a gritty, semi-documentary style and places Martin firmly in the grimy ethnic neighborhoods of an economically ravaged Pittsburgh. The steel mills have closed, the economy is in shambles, crime is up and everyone is looking for work. Juvenile delinquents and stray dogs roam the street and everywhere you look the signs of neglect and decay are evident. Into this grim environment comes Martin, a shy, socially awkward young man who has been sent to live with his elderly cousin, a deeply religious man who persecutes Martin with his Old World beliefs. Martin has inherited what his cousin refers to as "our shame", the family curse. He was born a 'Nosferatu'. The family keeps their shame secret by harboring their afflicted relatives but monitoring their actions and limiting their movements with warning bells, crucifixes and garlic. Martin scoffs at these superstitions. "There is no magic!" he says. Nevertheless, Martin firmly believes himself to be an 84 year old vampire and although he doesn't have sharp teeth he does stalk young women, drugs them, has his way with them and then slits their wrists with razor blades to drink their blood. Is Martin truly a vampire or a sick young man whose mind has been warped by the religious mania of his upbringing? While Romero makes no secret of his own interpretation the film itself wisely leaves it to the viewer to decide.


Stephen King's The Night Flier (1997) - Who's the bigger vampire? A monster that feeds on human blood or bottom feeding tabloid journalists who will stop at nothing to turn human misery into money-making headlines? Ok, it's not subtle but this modestly budgeted flick, based on a Stephen King short story, puts a few twists on the old vampire legend, offers up lots of gore and features a rare (and unhinged) lead performance from Miguel Ferrer as the cynical, unsavory reporter. The inevitable face to face between the journalist and his subject in an airport men's room is well staged and chilling.


The Hunger (1983) - Alright, so Tony Scott's The Hunger might violate my 'no pretty vampires' rule but bear with me. Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie aren't exactly hard on the eyes but at least we're dealing with adults here and not some Tiger Beat pin-up models. Every century or so vampire seductress Deneuve picks a new lover to, supposedly, join her for eternity. What she doesn't tell them is that immortality comes at a horrible and very unromantic, unsexy price and it's not the part about drinking blood either. Director Scott has always been longer on style than substance and The Hunger, his debut film, is no exception. However, beneath its MTV-era sheen The Hunger manages to elicit a real sense of dread mingled with kinky eroticism. Also, the sight of a man literally aging before our eyes as he sits in a clinic waiting room might be the slyest visual metaphor for the ills of the health care system.


I Am Legend (1954) - I'm recommending the book, not the Will Smith movie or the previous adaptations (The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man). While all three films have good qualities all have deviated from Matheson's influential novella and none have revealed the true meaning of the title. In fact, only Smith's version retained the original title and even then it soft-soaped the ending and totally changed the meaning of "I am legend", the lead character's final realization. In Matheson's book Richard Neville is the sole survivor of a plague that causes the victims to exhibit vampire-like tendencies. By day, he researches the disease and theorizes why such things as sunlight, garlic, even crucifixes work against vampires. By night, he locks himself in his house and waits for the vampires' nightly siege. Today it's common for vampires or zombies to be given a scientific rational as opposed to a supernatural one but Matheson was arguably the first to bring supernatural horror into the realm of science fiction and his slender novella has been a huge influence on later writers, filmmakers, comic book artists and more. In the Smith version the filmmakers chose to make the monsters more like zombies than vampires but George Romero beat them to it first as the notion of lone survivors waiting out a siege of bloodthirsty creatures would later inspire him to make his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead.


Cronos (1993)
Guillermo del Toro's debut film is a curious one; a vampire movie that never once mentions the word 'vampire' but like his subsequent Spanish language films it deals with sympathetic monsters, his obsession with biology (namely insect biology in Cronos) and is viewed largely through the eyes of a child. Jesus Gris (the close rhyme with Jesus Cristo is no accident) is a kindly antiques dealer and doting grandfather. One day, he discover a strange, scarab like device made of gold. Curious, he winds up the clockwork mechanism only for the device to latch itself onto his arm and stab him with a scorpion like stinger. Unbeknownst to him he has been injected with a serum that grants him immortality. At first he enjoys his new found energy and his restored virility but, as always, there is a price to be paid and the Cronos Device needs fresh blood for the owner to remain immortal. Meanwhile, a venal, terminally ill industrialist has been obsessively searching for the Cronos Device for himself. He orders his brutish nephew (Ron Perlman in his first of several films with del Toro) to kill Jesus and retreive the device. Jesus' resurrection in a funeral home is one of the film's stand-outs, filled as it is with del Toro's dark humor and macabre attention to detail. (You'll never look at funeral-home practices the same way ever again). The true heart of the film is the deep bond of love between Jesus and his mute granddaughter, Aurora. When Jesus returns home Aurora accepts him unconditionally, despite his ghastly appearance. In one of the film's lovelier moments Aurora hides her grandfather not in a coffin but in her oversized toy chest and tucks him in amongst her dolls. Sick of what he has become and terrified that he might lose control and hurt Aurora some day, Jesus resolves to take back the Cronos Device and destroy it once and for all. This quietly observed, semi-tragic film has its rough spots but it showed that del Toro was a talent to watch and Cronos is a worthy entry in the vampire genre. Not recommended for people with a phobia of bathrooms or nosebleeds.


Blade II (2002)
Guillermo del Toro is back on the list again only this time he's playing with a pre-established film franchise. I know plenty of people who hate Blade II and I'm not here to dissuade them but del Toro shows up and earns his paycheck while managing to inject some of his own quirky obsessions into the material in ways both playful and gruesome. Sure, most of the vampires are good looking but they don't spend their downtime looking wistfully into the distance. No, they spend their free time in underground nightclubs drinking blood cocktails, feasting on humans, getting their bodies surgically altered while they sit at the bar and french kissing with razor blades in their mouths. Sure, that's what all the cool kid vampires are doing but judging by head vampire, Damaskinos (who enjoys the occasional blood aspic) vampires get to be pretty old looking and ugly, eventually developing a complexion somewhere between a loogy and a green tinged oyster. After taking the assignment del Toro insisted that the new vampires, The Reapers (a kind of vampire that preys on other vampires) be redesigned according to his own specifications and the result is one of the most memorably gruesome vampires designed yet. Vampire autopsies never looked so disgusting.

Honorable Mentions: These are films that I haven't seen in a while so my memories aren't clear enough to write much about them. That wouldn't stop me from recommending them though.


Near Dark (1987)- This family of traveling, good ol' boy vampires would whup the ever loving hell out of the Twilight clan.

(John Malkovich as FW Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Max Shrek)
Shadow of the Vampire (2000) - An entertaining recounting of the making of FW Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu. The twist is that (in this fictionalized telling anyway) the 'actor' credited as Max Shrek is actually a real vampire. This is another film that uses the monster to highlight the misdeeds of 'normal' people. Who is the bigger monster; Shrek? Or the obsessed director who is willing to put his cast and crew in jeopardy in order to create great art?


Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2003)- Probably too slow, too strange, too 'black and white' for younger audiences but it merits a viewing even if it never manages to truly frighten. This mashup of silent film techniques, horror, melodrama, surreal imagery, the Dracula story and....uhmm....ballet is weird like only Guy Maddin can be.

My brother ran in Philadelphia Half-Marathon yesterday. No sarcasm or snark; I just think that's awesome. He finished in just over two hours, was pleased with his time, and thinks he can do better next year.

My family went down to do the support thing, and I stationed myself along West River Drive (now Martin Luther King Drive, but I'm not used to that name yet), near the Zoo, for those who know where that is. I was posted there because it was between miles 11 and 12, which was where he thought he'd need an emotional boost, but it's not easy to get to with the road closings, so there wouldn't be many people around. And there weren't, really...I saw some other folks, but there weren't any other spectators within 100 yards of me. Watching a marathon go by is really an amazing thing...humans can make themselves do all sorts of extraordinary things if there's a few thousand other people all doing it at the same time.

Yesterday in the bookstore I noticed Stephen King's "The Dome", and I took a cursory glance at it. The thing that stood out to me: no text on the back cover. No text on either jacket flaps. The only text at all was "Stephen King" and "The Dome". It was almost as if the dustjacket was saying, "Fuck you, we don't need to tell you anything about this book other than it's Stephen motherfucking King and therefore you've already decided whether or not you're buying it so shut the fuck up and go get in the check in line."

Or, maybe I'm just reading into things.

Conversation in our household:

Me: What are you doing?
Nicholas: Drawing.
Me: What are you-- you're drawing like Rob Liefeld!
Nicholas: Well--
Me: NO SON OF MINE WILL DRAW LIKE ROB LIEFELD!

I'm always on the lookout for interesting web-series-- especially in terms of sci-fi/fantasy-- and on the whole, I go unsatisfied.

A big part of the problem is its a medium where most people doing it don't quite understand the medium, at least in terms of pacing. I mean, your typical web-series episode clocks in around 8-10 minutes. And many that I've seen do NOTHING with those 8-10 minutes.

Take, for example, "Venus Rises". Its eight minute first episode has a two-minute credit sequence (which does, at least, do some world-building work, but nothing that wasn't done more effectively by the 30-second voiceover at the beginning), and over a minute of end credits. That's, like nearly 40% of your running time, spent on credits! In the episode itself, two guys work on a space station, and they get a blip of something, and one guy has to go check it out. No real hook, sorry. It's a shame, because the digital effects work is some really nice stuff, reminiscent of B5 (though actually better quality). But no storytelling.

Some of these webseries seem to be platforms for writer/actors... and again, there isn't really storytelling. Take Chick over at Koldcast. The first episode has nothing other than identifying the girl wants to be a superhero. There's a bunch of stuff in the description that... I don't see in the episode. That tends to be a recurring problem with webseries. The description tells you the WHOLE story, which you don't get until you see the whole run of the series, but watching the first episode, you don't get that at all.

That said, I want to heap some praise on Riese, a moody Steampunkish show. I'm not sure what all is happening, but stuff HAPPENS and I'm engaged and interested. It looks neat, it's dynamic, and lead actress Christine Chatelain is actually a professional who evokes a certain poor-man's Summer Glau vibe, and her look in the show is tough without being cheesecake. Check it out.

( Smallville Spoilers )

GUYS. GUYS.

Guess what shipped from Amazon today?

MY STAR TREK BLU-RAY OMGGGGGGGGGGGG COME TO MAMA CAPTAIN HOTFACE

Guess what else shipped today?

MY NEW HOT FUZZ BLU-RAY (now I can have a DVD for the bedroom and a BR for the living room - I think entertaining myself with movies is going to be VERY IMPORTANT to me in a few months)

I AM SO EXCITED I CAN BARELY STAND IT

(PS - never mind that I'm too busy to watch either of them til Sunday night at the earliest - I will have them in my hot little hands and I'm calling it a win.)

(PPS - also, everyone should see Bottle Shock. Seriously. I totes watched it b/c it had Chris Pine, and then it turned out to be pretty awesome. Husband, OMGLawDad and Middle!Sister also liked it, and trust me - if all of us like a movie, it's probably got pretty broad appeal. If you've seen it, tell me what you thought!))

I'm considering playing a game of RoboRally with Sparky. I don't know how he'll do with the forward planning aspects, but he's interested, so I've agreed to give it a try. I was reading through the rules today, to figure out the best way to teach it to an 8-year-old, and I found a tune running through my head...yes, Raymond Scott's Powerhouse. Entirely involuntary...I'm not sure whether to be amused or disturbed.

Jackie Chan will make a man out of you!