Thursday, November 28, 2002
Dan Keohane’s (now going by the moniker Daniel G. Keohane) new book, Christmas Trees and Monkeys, is out this week. This is his first collection and features stories that were published elsewhere (in places like Gothic.net, Electric Wine and The Pedestal), as well as some new ones. And he’s written special introductions for every story. I’ve known Dan for awhile now, and have really been enjoying his fiction. If you’re interested in a good collection of horror stories, check it out. You can order it directly from Dan's website, or you can get it from places like Barnes & Noble. 100% of author royalties go to the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Stories include The Doll Wagon (from Poddities) which received an Honorable Mention in the last Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, White Wave of Mercy (from Extremes 4: Darkest Africa), and The Monkey On the Towers (first published in the The Orphic Chronicle). Good stuff!!
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
And now for something completely diffferent....
I saw the new Todd Haynes movie, Far From Heaven, this past weekend. It was really good and people should check it out, but I’m afraid that because of the style and the subject matter, some people will make assumptions about it and not see it.
First off, people have been making a big deal about the Douglas Sirk connection, and rightly so. Sirk was a director in the 1950’s who made some interesting melodramas that were mainly meditations on the class system (and the hypocrisy) of the 50’s. Strangely, the hero of several of his movies was Rock Hudson (aside from his Sirk movies, Hudson’s only other film of merit was probably Seconds, an amazing, subtle science fiction movie, directed by John Frankenheimer, who also made The Manchurian Candidate, that really should be sought out – it’s a great one). The Sirk movie of importance in this context is All That Heaven Allows, which is about a high society widow (Jane Wyman) who falls in love with her much younger gardener (Hudson) and how all her society friends turn on her for the indiscretion of dating outside her social class.
The thing that was interesting about Sirk’s films was that they worked on two levels. On one level they were slightly off-kilter melodramas that seem pretty campy now. But beneath the overdone emotions and pastel colors, Sirk had another agenda. He was trying to make bold statements about the country during the 50’s, things that most other people wouldn’t talk about. Sirk’s films were often dismissed as “women’s movies” at the time, but they were very subversive in their own way.
I actually found out about Sirk’s films through John Waters. He mentioned he was a huge Sirk fan in his book Crackpot (if you have not read the Waters books Shock Value and Crackpot, you’re missing two of the funniest books ever written!!), and I figured I’d check a few of them out. Obvious titles, aside from All That Heaven Allows, include Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind, and Magnificient Obsession (which was in part the inspiration for John Woo’s masterpiece The Killer!!).
What does Sirk have to do with a new film by Todd Haynes? Well, Haynes has done something truly interesting here. He’s set his new film not in the real 1950’s, but in the 50’s of Sirk’s films. He has the stylistic elements down cold. And yet, this isn’t a ripoff of Sirk. It’s a totally new movie, with its own story, but it is just as easily a film Sirk could have made if he were still around today, or if he had more freedom back in the 50's.
So what’s it about? Well, the heart of this film is played by the amazing Julianne Moore (previously in Short Cuts, Boogie Nights and she played Clarice in Hannibal) as a housewife who is going through various crises. First off, she finds out that her husband is gay. As played by Dennis Quaid, he’s tormented and angry, totally dissatisfied with his American Dream life of wife, kids, and picket fences. And yet, he tries to lead two lives. When Moore catches him with another guy in his office late one night, everything changes.
While Quaid tries to “cure” himself by going to a psychiatrist, Moore finds herself drawn to her new gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert (also known as the President on the show 24), who also happens to be black. The most interesting aspect of the film is that her relationship with Haysbert is even more taboo than Quaid’s secret. And while Quaid is actually able to pursue his desires, Moore and Haysbert don’t even get the chance to take their relationship to an intimate level, and yet are made to suffer by the world around them for even daring to think about it. For even being seen together in public.
This is a brave, powerful film, and the most amazing scenes are those between Moore and Haysbert. They have real chemistry together, and they really seem to care about each other, even though there is no way, in the 1950’s world they live in, that they can’t do anything about it.
I think that a lot of people might avoid this film because of its 1950’s setting and the fact that it’s probably considered an “art film” but Far From Heaven features some of the best performances in a film this year, and I’ll be shocked if at least Moore doesn’t get nominated for the Oscar.
Well, that's all for this week, folks. I gotta go check out the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show now. Heh heh.
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Went to the comic store this week, and picked up the latest copy of the magazine Asian Cult Cinema. Not only is it a special Takashi Miike Issue (director of the amazing film AUDITION), but it features articles by Jack Ketchum and Edward Lee. If you're into the current wave of Japanese horror flicks, this is worth checking out.
Speaking of Miike, if you haven't rented AUDITION yet, you really should. This movie will fuck with your head. Everyone who's into horror movies must have heard about this one by now, but I won't give anything away, because this is the kind of movie where the less you know about it, the better. Its power comes with the ability to surprise. Definitely worth checking out. Easily the best horror movie I've seen in maybe ten years.
Not much else going on otherwise. Quiet week.
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Jonathan Harris died on Sunday. He was 87. For those of you who don’t remember, Harris played Dr. Zachary Smith on the old TV show Lost in Space. When I was a kid, this was one of my all-time favorite shows, and it still is. It started out as a serious enough science fiction show, but progressively got campier and stranger. I actually liked the show more the campier it got.
Of course, when they made a movie version of Lost In Space, they didn’t even try to do the campy version – they stuck to the ultra-serious pilot episode. But that’s not why the Lost in Space movie sucked. The reason why – and this is the same with a lot of beloved old TV shows that get remade as movies – is because what made Lost In Space so great wasn't the plot - it was the actors! The original cast was what made this show so terrific, and the number one reason I kept watching was to see what Dr. Smith would do next!
Harris originally played Smith as a one-dimensional evil villain. He was some kind of enemy agent sent to sabotage the Robinson family’s voyage into space. His evil acts included programming the onboard robot to try to kill the family, etc. But even Harris had said he knew that if Smith stayed totally evil, he wouldn’t last long on the show. So instead, he started making Smith more complex. He wasn’t simply an evil man; he was at heart a coward, vain, lazy, and often times a bit dumb. The ongoing joke on the show became what Smith would do in any given week to a) avoid having to do even an ounce of work, and b) sell the Robinson’s out to some evil aliens for his own personal gain.
This was one funny-as-hell show and it only got "worse" when it was competing in the same time slot opposite Batman. The more campy and “out there” Batman got, the more campy Lost In Space got.
Some of the best LIS episodes include:
1. Smith breathes in some gas and becomes the muscle-bound Super Smith (his hair also grows long!). He bosses everyone around and declares he is “Smith the Mighty.”
2. The Robinsons are captured by a giant, talking carrot (with a human face) while Smith is transformed into a giant human celery stalk.
3. Smith and Major Don West (Mark Goddard), constant adversaries on the show, are sent to a prison planet, where they are later forced to escape with fellow prisoner Creech, a guy who looks like a reject from Planet of the Apes.
4. The Robinsons go to a space station ruled by hippies who refuse to grow old. Smith gets a make-over and dons a long-hair wig and love beads and keeps saying, “Groovy.”
5. While the Robinsons are away exploring, Smith turns their spaceship, the Jupiter 2, into a hotel for aliens. Of course, the aliens who come to stay there are evil and want to kill him (this one starred Edie Williams who had a small but memorable part in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and was once married to Russ Meyer!).
Why did the Robinsons keep this guy around when he constantly did things that almost got them killed? I don't know - maybe they were fucking crazy!! After the 20th time of him trying to sell them to alien slave traders for caviar and champagne, you think they'd get the hint that maybe they should have gotten rid of this guy!
As for Harris himself, I actually met him once. He was at a science fiction in Boston about 10 years ago, and a bunch of us went to go see him. He was the main reason we went. I remember George Takei who played Sulu on Star Trek was there and had a line around the lobby to get his autograph, but we didn’t care. We wanted to meet Dr. Smith. (this was the same convention where I swear Yvonne “Batgirl” Craig gave me the eye!)
Harris was friendly, and funny. The kind of guy you could listen to for hours without getting bored. He had a lot of funny stories, including the news that he was Chuck Norris’s acting coach when Norris first starting acting in movies (I don’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing – but he seemed a bit embarrassed admitting it – haha).
I always preferred Lost in Space to shows like Star Trek, which took themselves way too seriously (although, strangely enough, William Shatner definitely belongs in the same “ham actor” category as Harris, even if Capt. Kirk was never supposed to be intentionally funny). LIS was a breath of fresh air, and there hasn’t been another show like it.
Jonathan Harris will be missed.
To quote Dr. Smith, “Oh, The Pain, the Pain!”
