A Dream Within a Dream

Picnic at Hanging Rock
M'House
DVD
2/24/08

My friend Joe gave me a copy of the Criterion DVD of Picnic at Hanging Rock for Christmas a few years ago. I've just now gotten around to watching it.

It's based on a novel by Joan Lindsay about a group of Australian schoolgirls who go on a class outing to Hanging Rock on Valentine's Day, 1900. Three of them and a teacher vanish. Hanging Rock is a real place and, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a lot of effort has been put into making you believe that the events in the film really happened.

And, like the events in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, they didn't.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a fiction. It's lyrical and mesmerizing and it's central mystery is maddeningly unresolved. It's a good thing, too. As Lovecraft wrote, "In all things mysterious, never explain." Lindsay actually wrote a chapter that explained the mystery that was excised from the book and went unpublished until after her death. And when you find out what it is... well, it's kind of ridiculous. I haven't read the book and I don't know how well it fits in with the tone of the book and while the explanation fits in with aboriginal mythology, it still has kind of a "That's It?" vibe to it.

And I'm not going to say what it is.

Still, this is one creepy movie. It's a horror film that takes place mostly during the day and where very few horrifying things are seen. There is a monster, in the form of the girls school headmistress, but the unnerving thing about the film is Hanging Rock itself. Its given a presence and there is a deep, low thrum on the soundtrack that accompanies most of the scenes set there. And as the vanished girls ascend the the rock, there is the feeling that something is calling them to the peak, something almost sexual. With the exception of one (the one who runs screaming down the mountain as the others disappear) they remove their shoes and stockings, and the one who later reappears is missing her corset. And I doubt it's a coincidence that the pan flute is the primary instrument in the score.

Which raises the question, if the girls were abducted by faeries, is the one who was sent back even the same person who was taken? Or a changeling, or something else? As I mentioned, it's maddeningly unresolved and open to interpretation and even if there is an author penned solution to what's going on, who's to say she was right?

Apparently, they screen Picnic at Hanging Rock at Hanging Rock every Valentines Day. I think if anywhere, that would be the place to see it.

THE END BEGINS AGAIN

Diary of the Dead
Muvico Egyptian 24
Hanover, MD
35mm
2/23/08

So maybe we shouldn't have gone to see a Romero movie at a mall. Ever been to a mall in, say, December and been completely unable to find a parking space? Ever had that experience in February?

Welcome to Arundel Mills.

So, the new Romero flick, Diary of the Dead, is only playing in about 40 theaters in the country and four of them are in the DC area, and all of them are at least an hour drive away. So of course we go to the theater with the big statue of Anubis out front. Yeah, you read that right. I though I worked at a ridiculously overdesigned theater at the Hampton 24, but words cannot describe how silly this place is when you get right down to it and realize that it is in essence a big box that's made to show movies.

So, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the show?

Diary of the Dead isn't bad. It's a bit heavy-handed with it's message, and it's nowhere near as good as Night or Dawn, but honestly, at this point nobody's expecting it to be. And we do have some people doing and saying some pretty stupid things from time to time, like the girl who says that her friend who's just died might not come back as a zombie when every single person on the planet who has died has done exactly that.

And I could have lived without the narration. It kills the tension and it a lot of cases tells us things that we already know. I would have been fine with the bit at the beginning that establishes that at least one person makes it and one most definitely does not, but would have been happy if what's-her-name had just shut up from then on out.

There are some great bits though. Some really great bits. Such as how the rich kid disposes of his zombie problem (It's a great image and I won't ruin it). In fact, Phillip Riccio, the guy who plays the rich kid does a great job, especially in the last half of the film.

But even he's not as cool as Samuel the Amish zombie-killin' badass. I would pay to see a whole movie just about that guy. It's actually kind of amazing that Romero's done five zombie movies, four of which take place in Pennsylvania, and this is the first time we've seen an Amish. (Irony points awarded for the fact that this one was filmed in Canada.)

I liked the cameos, too. I didn't catch all the radio voice cameos, though I did catch Guillermo Del Toro as the guy talking about immigration. And Greg Nicotero making an appearance as a zombie doctor was cool. I think he may be the only guy to play two different zombies in more than one Romero flick. And I still can't figure out if he's the guy who gets eaten by the bird-monster in The Mist.

Oh yeah, zombie stuff. There's some very inventive zombie stuff in this one. And I won't spoil any of it. You'll have to see it for yourself. I'm sure it'll be on video soon. Especially since it doesn't look like it'll get a wider release anytime soon.

Still, as long as Romero keeps making zombie pics, I'll keep seeing them. I like how it's been forty years since Night of the Living Dead and he really hasn't repeated himself. Even the remake of Night takes on a different social issue that the original, even if it's basically the same movie. I also like how within the context of the movies themselves, only a few years have passed between Night and Land and somehow it's actually believable that Night and Diary take place at the same time, even though there's forty years between them.

Thank you, George.

Not ha-ha funny

Funny Games
DVD
M'House
2/11/08

About ten years ago we brought John Waters to JMU. At dinner (because this is how I choose to remember it) someone asked him if he'd seen anything good lately and he mentioned Michael Haneke's Funny Games, saying "It's really disturbing." Sounds good. But, I figured that if John Waters found it disturbing, it had to be really fucked up.

So it took ten years to get around to watching it.

It's an unsettling movie, about an upper class German couple and their son who go to their lake house for a holiday. Two young psychos show up and proceed to torture and torment them. That's it. But that's not it.

Basically it's a comment on the conventions of horror movies and the people who watch them. There's a gimmick here, where one of the two psychos is not only fully aware of the conventions of horror movies, he's also fully aware that he's actually in a movie. For me, it worked. It's also interesting that Funny Games seems to be a critique of movies like Hostel and Saw, but it predates them by years. It's also better that them.

I don't know if it's because I waited for ten years to watch it that I didn't find it as disturbing as I expected to. It is unsettling and creepy and most of the actual violence is kept off screen, which of course makes it worse. There's a technique used throughout where the camera will focus on a single view and all of the characters are off screen. You hear things, and you want to see them, but you know that it's something that you really don't want to be looking at. It's perverse and often baffling, but it works.

Still, I'd recommend that anyone interested in horror movies see it. I'm curious to see the remake with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, but honestly am not sure why it was made, since it appears to be shot-for-shot the same. But, it got me to finally watch the original, so that's a good thing.

I Wonder Why The Title's Not On It


You know, we did the math not too long ago and somehow I've managed to collect somewhere in the neighborhood of around 300 movie posters. And yet, I have never gotten any 007 posters. I like the Daniel Craig era ones so far and this teaser for Quantum of Solace is particularly nice.

Are You Aware of Garfield?

Cloverfield
Regal Westview16
Frederick, MD
35mm
2/1/08

Sometimes, and this happened with The Mist, too, hearing the number of people coming out of a theater saying how much they hated a movie I liked only makes me like it more. Cloverfield is a nasty, effective little giant monster movie that actually works better than something like, say, the American version of Godzilla, by focusing on a small group of people making their way through a disaster zone rather than the big-picture monster attack.

It's brisk and though it feels longer than its hour-and-thirty-five minute running time (including trailers!) it also feels like its just as long as it needs to be. It's fun and I get the impression that it'll hold up to repeated viewings. I definitely think it's a good argument for investing in a decent home theater sound system and I'd argue that it's worth seeing in the theater just for the sound.

And considering how disappointed I usually end up with things I see in the theater, where I feel that they could usually have waited for video, saying something's worth seeing in the theater means a lot.

In Honor Of Superbowl Ad Sunday

They sure don't make ads like they used to: