Favorite movies from the 1980s until now (so far)

1. 2010 (1984) with Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban
2. 28 Days Later (2002) with Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Alex Palmer
3. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) with John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin 
4. Aliens (1986) with Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser
5. Another Earth (2011) with Brit Marling, William Mapother, Matthew-Lee Erlbach, DJ Flava
6. Body Heat (1981) with William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson
7. Brokeback Mountain (2005) with Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid
8. Bugsy (1991) with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley
9. Casino (1995) with Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci
10. Children of a Lesser God (1986) with William Hurt, Marlee Matlin, Piper Laurie
11. Coraline (2009) with Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Jennifer Saunders
12. Dances with Wolves (1990) with Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene
13. Despicable Me (2010) with Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand
14. Dracula (1992) with Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins
15. Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010 documentary) with Banksy, Space Invader, Mr. Brainwash
16. Far from Heaven (2002) with Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert 
17. Ghost Busters (1984) with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver 
18. Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) with Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt
19. Grey Gardens (2009 TV Movie) with Drew Barrymore, Jessica Lange, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ken Howard
20. Hamam (The Turkish Bath) (1997) with Alessandro Gassman, Francesca d'Aloja, Carlo Cecchi 
21. Home Alone (1990) with Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern 
22. I Am Legend (2007) with Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan
23. Ice Age (2002) with Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Ray Romano  
24. In the Mouth of Madness (1994) with Sam Neill, Jürgen Prochnow, Julie Carmen, David Warner
25. In the Valley of Elah (2007) with Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Jonathan Tucker, Jason Patric
26. In Time (2011) with Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde
27. Jacob's Ladder (1990) with Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello  
28. Jane Eyre (2011) with Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Su Elliot
29. Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (2011) with Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini
30. Jurassic Park (1993) with Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum
31. Lady Chatterley (2006) with Marina Hands, Jean-Louis Coulloc'h, Hippolyte Girardot  
32. Le renard et l'enfant (2007) with Bertille Noël-Bruneau, Isabelle Carré, Thomas Laliberté, Camille Lambert
33. Light Sleeper (1992) with Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, Dana Delany, David Clennon
34. Lincoln (2012) with Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
35. Marley (2012 documentary) with Bob Marley, Ziggy Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Lee 'Scratch' Perry
36. Max Manus (2008) with Aksel Hennie, Agnes Kittelsen, Nicolai Cleve Broch, Ken Duken
37. Men in Black (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino 
38. Michael Clayton (2007) with George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Michael O'Keefe
39. Minority Report (2002) with Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow
40. Miss Potter (2006) with Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn
41. Moon (2009) with Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw
42. Oblivion (2013) with Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko
43. Out of Africa (1985) with Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus Maria Brandauer
44. Pandorum (2009) with Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue
45. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) with Ivana Baquero, Ariadna Gil, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú
46. Phoenix (1998) with Ray Liotta, Anthony LaPaglia, Daniel Baldwin 
47. Pitch Black (2000) with Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Vin Diesel, Keith David
48. Prometheus (2012) with Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron
49. Ratatouille (2007) with Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm
50. Romancing the Stone (1984) with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito
51. Romeo is Bleeding (1993) with Gary Oldman, Lena Olin, Wallace Wood, Juliette Lewis
52. Scarface (1983) with Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
53. Shoot the Moon (1982) with Albert Finney, Diane Keaton, Karen Allen, Peter Weller
54. Skyfall (2012) with Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Judi Dench
55. Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) with Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, Kevin Anderson 
56. Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997) with Sigourney Weaver, Sam Neill, Gil Bellows
57. Solaris (2002) with George Clooney, Natascha McElhone, Ulrich Tukur, Viola Davis
58. Something Wild (1986) with Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, Ray Liotta  
59. The Accidental Tourist (1988) with William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis, Amy Wright
60. The Age of Innocence (1993) with Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder  
61. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) with Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard 
62. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) with Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson
63. The ‘Burbs (1989) with Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Corey Feldman
64. The End of the Affair (1999) with Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Stephen Rea 
65. The Grifters (1990) with Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Jan Munroe
66. The King's Speech (2010) with Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Derek Jacobi
67. The Last Seduction (1994) with Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman  
68. The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) with Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Yvonne Zima, Craig Bierko
69. The Money Pit (1986) with Tom Hanks, Shelley Long, Alexander Godunov, Maureen Stapleton
70. The New Daughter (2009) with Kevin Costner, Ivana Baquero, Samantha Mathis, Gattlin Griffith
71. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) with Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey
72. The Proposal (2009) with Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson
73. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) with Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler
74. The Shining (1980) with Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
75. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) with Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Lawrence A. Bonney, Kasi Lemmons
76. The Sixth Sense (1999) with Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams
77. The Skeleton Key (2005) with Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, Joy Bryant, Gena Rowlands
78. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) with Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Derek de Lint
79. The Witches of Eastwick (1987) with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer
80. Traitor (2008) with Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Archie Panjabi, Saïd Taghmaoui
81. Twelve Monkeys (1995) with Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt  
82. Volver (2006) with Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo
83. What Dreams May Come (1998) with Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra, Max von Sydow
84. What Lies Beneath (2000) with Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Katharine Towne, Miranda Otto
85. What Women Want (2000) with Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei, Alan Alda

Favorite movies from the 1930s - 1970s

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
2. 40 Carats (1973) with Liv Ullmann, Edward Albert, Gene Kelly, Binnie Barnes
3. Adam’s Rib (1949) with Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday
4. Agatha (1979) with Dustin Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave, Timothy Dalton, Helen Morse
5. Alien (1979) with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt
6. All That Heaven Allows (1955) with Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel
7. All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) with Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Susan Kohner, George Hamilton
8. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) with Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey
9. Barefoot in the Park (1967) with Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Charles Boyer, Mildred Natwick
10. Brigadoon (1953) with Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Elaine Stewart
11. Burnt Offerings (1976) with Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Burgess Meredith and Eileen Heckart
12. BUtterfield 8 (1960) with Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher, Dina Merrill
13. De Dødes Tjern (1958) with Andre Bjerke, Bjørg Engh, Henki Kolstad
14. Dial M for Murder (1954) with Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings
15. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973, TV) with Kim Darby, Jim Hutton, Barbara Anderson, William Demarest
16. Don’t Look Now (1973) with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie
17. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) with Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner
18. Fantasia (1940)
19. House of Dark Shadows (1970) with Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Roger Davis
20. House of Wax (1953) with Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk
21. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) with Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson, Noel Francis 
22. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) with James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
23. Klute (1971) with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, Roy Scheider
24. Light in the Piazza (1962) with Olivia de Havilland, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux
25. Marlowe (1969) with James Garner, Gayle Hunnicutt, Carroll O'Connor, Rita Moreno
26. Midnight Cowboy (1969) with Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver
27. Mon Oncle (1958) with Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie, Lucien Frégis
28. Oliver! (1968) with Mark Lester, Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Oliver Reed
29. Psycho (1960) with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles
30. Rebecca (1940) with Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders
31. Romeo and Juliet (1968) with Leonard Whiting, Olivia Hussey, John McEnery
32. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) with Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon
33. Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, Pat Hingle
34. Straight Time (1978) with Dustin Hoffman and Theresa Russell
35. Sunday in New York (1963) with Rod Taylor, Jane Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Robert Culp
36. The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957) with Jennifer Jones, John Gielgud, Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna
37. The African Queen (1951) with Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley
38. The Apartment (1960) with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray
39. The Paradine Case (1947) with Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, Charles Laughton, Charles Coburn
40. The Pearl of Death (1944) with Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey
41. The Sentinel (1977) with Cristina Raines, Ava Gardner, Chris Sarandon, Martin Balsam
42. The Split (1968) with Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Ernest Borgnine, Julie Harris
43. The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) with Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Alexis Smith
44. The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner
45. Westworld (1973) with Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold

Loving movies

I’ve been a movie-goer for what seems like forever. I can remember the wonderful feelings associated with going to see films as a child; the anticipation, excitement, the experience of sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start—all of those feelings are still with me now whenever I enter the movie theater, many years later. I love sitting in the dark watching the big screen, waiting for the magic to start; no matter how many possibilities exist for watching films in other formats, nothing will ever replace the wonder of the big screen for me. The first two films I can remember seeing as a young child were Snow White, a Disney animated classic, and That Darn Cat starring Hayley Mills, whom we all wanted to be at that time—cute and adventurous. My mother took us to see both films at The Music Hall in Tarrytown. I can remember the long line to buy tickets that stretched around the corner onto Broadway—parents with their children. Hayley Mills also starred in a film called The Moon-Spinners, another favorite of ours from 1964, but one that we saw as a two-part television series several years later on ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ that ran on NBC if I remember correctly, at least at the time when we were children. As a family, we went to see Oliver! (1968) and The Twelve Chairs (1970); my parents wanted to see these films and I remember struggling to understand the latter film, an early Mel Brooks comedy about the search for jewels hidden in one of twelve dining chairs. But understanding Oliver Twist’s life situation was not so difficult—you could relate to his misery as a fellow child or at least imagine how it must feel to be orphaned and alone in the world. Understanding the brutality of the relationship between Nancy and Bill Sikes was more problematic; not surprising since violence between lovers was not something we knew much about or had seen as children. I wanted to see Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which came out in 1968, but my parents would not take us to see it, probably because it had to do with young love (and sex) and my parents did not want us getting ideas in our heads about such things. So I didn’t get a chance to see it until I was in my early 20s. Getting a chance to see a film that you had waited to see for a long time wasn’t like today where you could just rent a film from Netflix or download it from iTunes. If you knew that a film was going to be shown for a limited amount of time, either in the theater or on TV, you made plans to see it, because you never knew when you would be able to catch it again.

I am one of those people who enjoy doing post-mortems on films I’ve seen—dissecting the plot, the symbolism, the movie’s philosophy, what it all meant, the characters, the acting—all of it. Very few people I know enjoy doing this to the degree I do; you come out of the theater and ask, ‘What did you think of the film?’, and people will respond, ‘I liked it’ or ‘It was very good’, or some such comment. But it’s hard to get most folks involved in a long discussion about the movie. And that has to suffice, because not everyone likes doing movie analyses like I do. I’ve tried, and there are few takers. My father was one of those people who enjoyed discussing movies in detail; he was my conversational partner when it came to the arts—literature, movies, plays, music. Movies are entertainment for most people; they are for me as well, but I like being jolted out of my comfort zone by a movie, and I like finding out why. I want to know why some films provoke me, why others intrigue me or make me sad, how symbolism in one movie reminds me of another movie or of a book I’ve read or a song I’ve heard. I like how film music can trigger nostalgic feelings that remind me of people from my past or a book from long ago. I like the interconnectedness of different art forms, and the fact that I can make the connections if I want to. I want to connect the dots—it seems important to me to do so.  

Stoker and the secrets families keep

The best thing about the recently-released film Stoker is Mia Wasikowska as India Stoker. A glitteringly wild-eyed and intense Matthew Goode as her uncle Charlie Stoker and a befuddled and repressed Nicole Kidman as her mother Evelyn Stoker are very good, but Mia owns the role of India Stoker. I’ve seen her in Alice in Wonderland and in Jane Eyre. I loved the latter film; she was a perfect Jane Eyre in my book. Stoker is about the coming of age of India Stoker, a peculiar teenage girl and only child whose eighteenth birthday celebration is marred by the tragic death of her father Richard Stoker (played by Dermot Mulroney) in a car accident. India as deftly played by Mia Wasikowska is a non-emotional, brooding teenage girl who does not like to be touched and who cannot seem to find her exact place in the world until she meets her uncle Charlie, whose existence she was unaware of until he shows up at her father’s funeral. And then all hell breaks loose. I didn’t find Stoker as shocking as many reviewers have described it, although its cruelty is provocative. It’s not a film for everyone, not a crowd pleaser, and that was clear to me last night when I was at the cinema. It was screened for viewing in one of the smaller auditoriums that ended up half-empty on a Saturday night. Its narrative form reminded me of psychological horror films from the 1970s, where you knew something bad was coming already from the first few minutes of the films and you dreaded it, dreaded watching what gradually unfolded onscreen. I found Stoker rather restrained, detached, and slow-moving but deliberately-paced, almost as though it was an investigation into how murderers are born. On looking back at it, I would guess that this has to do with that most of the story takes place from the perspective of India, whose coming of age and emergence from her cocoon of teenage moodiness as a full-blooded killer are gradual. She responds slowly to the evil and madness in her uncle Charlie, whose attempts to seduce her are not just sexually-motivated; her uncle is turned on by the evil he somehow sees or senses inside of her, and he wants to be the one to bring it out. He is what she needs to turn the screw inside of her, to force her to ‘become herself’, to acknowledge who and what she really is. It’s as though India knew he existed all along, and was just waiting for him to come and release her; this is never more clear than when she reads the letters her uncle has sent to her during her growing-up, which have been hidden from her by her father in a locked box. It is the first time you see her excited and happy, because she understands that someone really understands how she feels, a scenario not unlike what could happen to most normal teenagers. The deliberate pace reflects her own confusion—it’s as though she cannot believe that she really is a killer, and spends most of the film coming to terms with that unpleasant fact. The film is about the making of a killer and the acknowledgment that one is a killer, how to internalize that knowledge and move on with life. India does show some remorse, when she cries in the shower remembering the boy Whip who tried to rape her and who was killed by her uncle. It’s unclear if she’s crying for him or for herself. But once stoked and excited by her newfound feelings, she is a quick learner. In truth, she has already been well taught (stoked) by her father, who took her hunting from a very young age. The movie presents her father as a hero type, one who took care of his brothers and who protected Evelyn and India from uncle Charlie, who ended up in a mental institution after the cold-blooded murder of his little brother when they were children. And you find out along the way who really was responsible for India’s father’s death and why. But you have to wonder why a father would take his daughter hunting for hours at a time, teaching her to be silent, to wait, and then to go in for the kill when the prey makes itself visible. It’s a brutal way to spend hours of time with a child; I could think of so many other pastimes that would have been more appropriate for a father and daughter. It made me wonder if her father had sensed or seen in her some of the traits he had seen in his brother Charlie, and hoped that by teaching her to hunt that he would ward off coming misery. If so, his plan backfired, since he sets his daughter up for the life she eventually chooses. And did her mother sense something odd about India as well, and tried to repress the knowledge? It’s unclear. That is perhaps one weakness in the plot; Evelyn Stoker’s character could have been developed more fully, in order to give us some insight into how the relationship between mother and daughter became so dysfunctional. It is intimated that perhaps Richard loved his daughter more than he loved his wife; it is also fairly clear that Evelyn did not really look forward to having children. The film becomes more imbued with real emotion, becomes less detached and more real, when Evelyn finally begins to wake up and to say how she feels, but by then it is too late for her relationship with India.

Perhaps the most shocking thing in the film is that the emerging killer is a young woman. But the ultimate shocker by the end of the film is that no one is safe, not even uncle Charlie. By then, India has been witness to, and a silent partner in, one murder, and privy to the knowledge of three others committed by her uncle (her father, the housekeeper, and her aunt). Uncle Charlie is merely a liability at this point and she no longer needs him. The film ends with her leaving home; she has come into her own and embraced her own cold-blooded insanity, as exemplified by her deliberately-staged confrontation with the sheriff who suspects she has had something to do with Whip’s disappearance. She has learned to lie and how to throw people off her scent, or how to deal with those who track her. She is her uncle’s protégé, and she has learned her lessons well. 

Oblivion and other sci fi films this year

2013 promises to be an interesting year for sci-fi films; Oblivion with Tom Cruise has already opened, and Star Trek Into Darkness and After Earth are opening in May and June respectively (in Norway). I’ll be seeing the latter two when they open. I remember looking forward to the premiere of Prometheus last year around this time. I went to see Oblivion tonight and loved it, in contrast to several of the online reviews that I’ve come across that were mostly negative. The focus of the reviews always seems to end up on Tom Cruise the person, not Tom Cruise the actor. That of course is partially his own fault since he draws attention to himself with his vocal religious beliefs and viewpoints, but as an actor he delivers in this film, and that’s all that matters to me. Did he make the part of Jack Harper--drone repairman, believable, did I root for him, was I stepping onto a post-apocalyptic planet earth along with him, was I accompanying him on his daily visits to the planet to repair the drones, did I feel his confusion and determination, and was I rooting for him to be reunited with his wife Julia? I can answer yes to all these questions. And besides Tom Cruise, there are other good actors and actresses that do their part to make this a memorable film, e.g. Morgan Freeman as Beech, Olga Kurylenko as Julia, and Andrea Riseborough as Victoria. Oblivion is an epic sci-fi film, beautifully photographed with a number of impressive bleak shots of a barren planet earth in rubble, some great action sequences (especially the flying), some evil-looking machines/weapons called drones whose potential for nastiness reminded me of the spider bots in Minority Report from 2002 (another Tom Cruise film) and an ‘alien’ we never really see except as a computer screen image of a human woman named Sally. As the story unfolds, we come to understand that Jack's world is not really what he thinks it is; he is willing to follow his curiosity and to find out what is really going on, whereas his partner Julia, who monitors his daily activity as a drone repairman on the earth's surface, is not.

Oblivion is really about one man’s quest to find himself (after his dreams and memory flashbacks have prompted him to become curious about his past life) and his home in a world destroyed by war and treachery. Oblivion is a great title for this movie--what is it Jack has forgotten, and has Jack been forgotten? I was moved by the portrayal of the importance of the instinctual (primeval) desires we have as humans--to know where we come from, to have a home we call our own, and to have someone to love, or perhaps more importantly, to have someone who knows us, thus saving us from oblivion (being forgotten). Watching the scenes of Jack with his wife Julia (one scene especially where she talks about growing old together, dying and being forgotten by the world) brings us to a wistful place where the belief in the power of love is all-consuming. Real life doesn't always play out this way, but we want it to, no matter how many times it does not. The character of Julia as played by Olga Kurylenko has a non-aggressive quiet way about her that is quite endearing; her sweetness makes a nice contrast to Andrea Riseborough’s Victoria, who is calculating, direct and effective (almost robotic-like) as Jack’s former co-pilot and current team partner who is in love with him. I won’t give away the story or the ending, but I can definitely recommend Oblivion. I also enjoyed the film music; Jack Harper is a Led Zeppelin fan (Ramble On--an appropriate song for parts of this film) and a Procol Harem fan (Whiter Shade of Pale). The film title track is also quite a good song—Oblivion—performed by a group called M.8.3 with Susanna Sundfør. 

Goodbye Showtime

Showtime in Bjerregaards gate, Oslo, closed its doors tonight after more than fifteen years in the video rental business. I cannot remember when they were not there, so that tells me it’s a long time ago that they opened their doors for the first time to movie lovers like me. They’ve been running a ‘going out of business’ sale for the past week; all their DVDs, Blu-Ray videos, candy, microwave popcorn, Pringles potato chips and other snacks were on sale with huge percentage markdowns. I got a text message from them this past week telling me that they were going out of business and that they would have a sale all week; I stopped in tonight, mostly to say goodbye to the store and to deal with my mixed feelings about its closing. I asked the young woman behind the counter why they were closing; she said because they were running a deficit. They simply don’t turn enough profit. And that’s the death knell these days. Nobody keeps a store open when it’s operating in the red.

The store, which was rather large, never made much out of itself, and that was one of the reasons I liked it. It probably could have used a bit of renovation; it could have been a tad trendier. No matter. I liked it as it was, somewhat organized, somewhat messy. You could always find the new films--the top 10 films; you might have to search for some of the older films you wanted, but it was fun to do so, like going through bookshelves in a library trying to find a specific book or author, and discovering something else along the way, like some long-forgotten horror film from the early 1990s. I enjoyed talking to the people who worked there; sometimes they recommended films (like Exit through the Gift Shop—about Thierry Guetta and Banksy, the street artist), other times we briefly discussed films we had seen. Stopping in to Showtime was something I often did on Sunday evenings after I had attended mass; I would walk up the hill in Ullevålsveien, make the right onto Waldemar Thranes gate, and there it was, right next door to the pharmacy. I would often rent three films at one time and purchase some candy or other snack to enjoy during film viewing. I will miss that little routine on Sunday evenings; I almost asked the young woman tonight—what am I going to do now without you? She looked unhappy, probably about as unhappy as I did. I feel sad about their closing. I’m not always so fond of change, especially when it impacts on what I love doing —watching movies. I don’t think it will be easy to find another such store in our residential vicinity; I have a feeling that this closing is a portent of things to come—that most such stores will be closing their doors eventually. Many major cable TV companies offer online video services now, and there are any number of companies that have sprung up to provide that service if your cable TV provider doesn’t. If you have an internet connection, you can download whatever film you’d like to see without paying a fortune. If you own a tablet of any sort, you can download films for viewing onto your iPad or similar. So why would you want to physically walk into a store and rent a film?

I guess my answer would be that I don’t want to spend my entire life in an online world. I am on a computer each day from early morning until late afternoon for work purposes: emails, Google searches, reading journal articles, writing journal articles, visiting scientific sites—the list is long. Many hours are spent online each week. It’s a limited way of living in the world, even though the internet exposes you to a huge amount of information. I feel constrained at times when I am online. So I like actually walking into a video rental store and perusing the shelves, trying to find a film I’d like to watch. I suppose people will point out to me that you are really doing the same thing when you are on Netflix or other online video services; you’re checking out their ‘film library shelves’. I guess that’s true, but I will still miss being able to physically pick up a film DVD and turn it over to read about the film on the back cover, deciding to rent it, buying some candy on my way out, and looking forward to watching the films when I get home. Goodbye Showtime, and thanks for many enjoyable years.

(For those of you who read Norwegian, here is a link with three reviews of this store. It's nice to see that others also had pleasant experiences dealing with Showtime: http://www.yelp.no/biz/showtime-oslo)

Leaving unkindness and tyranny

I was up late last night, so I sat and watched two old films on TCM—BUtterfield 8 from 1960 with Elizabeth Taylor as a part-time model/part-time call girl (I’ve seen it several times before but never tire of it), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street from 1957 with Jennifer Jones as the poetess Elizabeth Barrett who married Robert Browning. Whenever I watch the old films, I’m always struck by the depth of the character portrayals, by the richness of the stories they tell, and by the feelings I’m left with after they’re over. The old films make you think: about your life, others’ lives, different situations, different times, how you might have handled those situations, and so on. In Butterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor’s character Gloria is looking to change her life and to find real love, and thinks she has found the way to do so in her relationship with Weston Liggett, played by Laurence Harvey, who is married, albeit unhappily. This being the film world of the late 1950s/early 1960s, we know that their story cannot end like that of Pretty Girl. Weston is a borderline alcoholic with an explosive temper also looking to change his life. While they enjoy some happy moments together, Gloria makes a mistake early on in their relationship that ultimately dooms it, and Weston’s behavior toward her in a restaurant in reaction to this ‘mistake’ is appalling—he is verbally and physically abusive to her in a harrowing scene. He treats her like dirt in a public setting, calls her a whore to her face in a loud voice, and provokes the wrath of other men around them, who step in to their argument to try to protect Gloria. Weston ends up getting punched in the face for his abusive behavior and quickly leaves the restaurant. His subsequent attempts to reconcile with Gloria, to apologize for his crude and caveman behavior, fail; she flees from him in her car, and he follows her. Their story ends tragically, with her dying in a car crash. It struck me that her attempts to change her life, to leave her past behind, to become a new woman, to find self-respect, were punished in this film. She was not allowed to find happiness, with or without a man. But what struck me most of all was the lack of kindness and understanding toward those attempts. With the exception of one person, her childhood friend Steve, played by Eddie Fisher, there were few others who understood her need to change her life; everyone else seemed bound by the conventions of society at that time—marriage, duty, respectability. Why she had chosen the life she chose comes to light when she reveals her secret (early sexual abuse by a father figure) to Steve. But by then we know it is too late. It seems rather horrible to me that she should pay for others’ sins as dearly as she paid in this film, but that says more about the time when the film was made. But it is the lack of kindness toward her that sticks with you after the film is over.

In The Barretts of Wimpole Street, we meet Elizabeth Barrett, her sisters and brothers, and their tyrant of a father, a widower (played by John Gielgud) who refuses to let any of them marry and who vows to disinherit them if they do. Suffice it to say that the household atmosphere is stifling and life-killing, with the father determining how they live, what they eat, who they see, and so forth. It is implied that the father treated his wife in much the same way as he treats his children; she may have loved him early on but came to fear him as his children do. He has absolute control over them, is unkind in word and action, and prefers having his children fear rather than love him. Elizabeth is an invalid with what seems to be some sort of heart problem; in truth, her illness is probably a reaction to her father’s psychological abuse. She is bedridden and her brothers and sisters try to keep her in good spirits; it is her dog Flush who seems to do the best job at giving her some sort of happiness, and he plays a major role in the film. The film is really the story of how Elizabeth comes to life and gets well after meeting the poet Robert Browning, who has fallen in love with her through her poetry and who wants to marry her. It doesn’t take Robert long to figure out that her father is a major cause of her illness and unhappiness. They carry on their romance in secret, as does Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta with her Captain. But we know that Elizabeth’s father will eventually find out, and he does. So the question then becomes, how will they escape their tyrant of a father? He is truly a scary man; he dominates any room he walks into with his dourness and life-killing behavior. You could say about him that a flower would wither in his presence. In a rather sickening scene toward the end of the film, he tells Elizabeth that he is moving the family out of London to the country to get away from the bad influences (visits from friends and suitors), and that he hopes that she will come to love him and not fear him. He then makes the mistake of professing his feelings for her, which border on incestuous. Elizabeth understands that he will ultimately destroy her, and that she needs to get away from him immediately, which she manages with the help of their housemaid Wilson. The scene where she, with her dog Flush in her arms (she could not leave him behind) and Wilson are sneaking out of the house while the rest of the family is sitting down to dinner, is actually terrifying. I kept waiting for her father to appear, to crush whatever little courage and spirit was left in her. Had he appeared while she was escaping, he would have won. And had she left Flush behind, it would have been awful; her father, when he discovers that Elizabeth and Wilson have gone, orders the dog destroyed. But of course Elizabeth knew that this would be his fate, and since she loves her dog, he goes with her. I have never rooted for a character to escape her tyrant the way I did with Elizabeth; when they paused on the staircase, just a few feet from the front door, I found myself saying ‘go, leave, get out now’. It would have been awful had she been stopped. But she does escape, does marry Robert, and Flush stays with them. It's a true story with a happy ending, in other words, and thank God for that.

Both films deal with women who want to change their lives and leave unhappiness and abuse behind. Both women decide to leave their abusers—men who mete out nothing but unkindness, misery and unhappiness, men who confuse love and control, men who dominate and bark out orders, men who can say and do things that they would never tolerate from the women in their lives. It made me appreciate the courage and the energy these women showed in the face of abuse; they knew they had to leave their situations and they did. In one case it ended tragically, in the other, it ended happily. So it goes in life; it’s not always easy to leave an unhappy situation. But the courage involved in trying to leave is what stays with you long after the films are over. 

Watching Skyfall

I finally got around to watching the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, with Daniel Craig as Bond. I’ve wanted to see it since it opened at the end of October, but unfortunately there were other more pressing issues that got in the way until now. Skyfall is the best of the Bond films, in my opinion. It is a near-perfect film and a near-perfect film experience, for so many reasons. I’ve watched it twice already, back-to-back viewings, and the second time I found myself trying to find flaws in the plot, in the characters, in the acting, in the cinematography, in the villain, in the Bond women, in Bond himself. I came up short every time. It is the first Bond film where I could follow the plot without question, the first Bond film where I could understand the villain’s motives, the first Bond film that depicts the complexity and the shadowiness of the espionage world. I found myself thinking of John Le Carre’s book (one of my favorites) A Perfect Spy; mostly because both delve into the realm of the psyches of their spies. In A Perfect Spy, we learn why the protagonist Magnus Pym (who works for the British MI6 as a spy and has lived a lie for his entire life) was the perfect spy, and about the role his con-man father played in his life, in his moral development (or lack thereof), and in his ultimate downfall. In Skyfall, we come to understand that the death of Bond’s parents at an early age made him a good recruit for the world of espionage. As M (played by Judi Dench) says to him, ‘orphans make the best recruits’. One set of authority figures are replaced by another set in the form of MI6. The latter are more ruthless, demanding, amoral and untrustworthy than the first. Bond is really a pawn on a chess board; he is moved around at will and accepts his role and his fate (‘hire me or fire me’). Answering the call of duty plays an all-consuming role in how he sees the world. It’s all he knows. He belongs to the old world of loyalty to one’s country, less to oneself. One’s body is merely a tool in the service of one’s country. In that sense, it is completely understandable that the women he meets are tools as well. That message was also quite clear in A Perfect Spy, and made having a normal functioning relationship/marriage with a woman impossible. And yet, Bond did marry once for love, in an earlier film, but his wife was shot and killed. He remains alone, a loner, needing no one, perhaps because the death of his wife affected him permanently. That makes it possible for him to be an instrument in the service of his country. It also explains why he needs to take out the villain in this film, whose sole aim is to kill M because she has betrayed him; M provides Bond with his only stable relationship, albeit a superficial one. M and Bond know what they need to know about each other; the trick is to not become sentimental with and about each other. Deep down however, they are fond of one another, as this film touchingly depicts.

‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways—relying on one’s instinct, intelligence and skill, not on a computer or other technology to solve the problem at hand. Bond’s age and physical limitations in relation to his ability to change and grow and to meet future challenges are in question here. That is one message in the movie. But when Eve says to him ‘old dog, new tricks’, we know that the old dog can learn new tricks, can resurrect himself (his hobby—resurrection), can be fit for fight, and can seduce the ‘new’ women (Eve included). But I also thought about how filmmaking and production have changed during the past half century since the first Bond film. It’s an industry that is constantly reinventing itself, thanks to new camera and digital techniques and effects—new tricks in an old trade. The effects are stylish, eye-catching, and atmospheric. The film works on so many levels; it is seamlessly put together. It is a film you just slip into, almost as though you found an opening in one dimension that allows you to step into that world. It glides along on a noiseless track, and you are pulled onto the monorail that takes you into the world of James Bond. The use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) certainly helps to create that atmosphere, that world, almost one of virtual reality; there must have been a lot of CGI in this film. The intricate and nuanced use of colors and digital effects also creates the different moods that hold one captive—eerie, bold, violent, beautiful, and suggestive. I don’t know what the use of colors and digital effects does to the brain (are they subliminal effects in some way?), but I am sure that a psychologist or psychiatrist could tell me. I would guess that there is a fair amount of research being done in the field of marketing to find just the ‘right’ digital effects that will make us want more, enjoy more, buy more. I find these types of digital effects to be almost addictive; I find myself mesmerized by the use of streaming and gliding colors and shapes, the dim blue lighting, the use of light and shadows, glass buildings, color tones, and so forth. The shots of the digital ads, e.g., the writhing jellyfish, climbing the Shanghai skyscrapers in the darkness are beautiful and confusing; they create a chaos of shapes and colors, so that it’s almost impossible to distinguish a real figure from a shadow. But it all comes together so seamlessly, falling into place in the brain. The choreography of the fight scene on the edge of the room high in the clouds; the figures are dark and move like dancers—a beautiful scene. There are so many of these types of scenes—beautiful, haunting (the long-distance view of the Skyfall estate house), the landscapes of Scotland—wild and stark, almost like a painting, interspersed with the views of Shanghai, Istanbul and London. Skyfall is a typical Bond film in that respect—multiple locations, lunatic villains, over-the-top stunts, but in terms of its visual effects, it’s so much more. 

Some really good child actors

I’ve been on a quest to watch some of the movies I’ve missed out on during the past five years or so, and the deep dark winter months are the perfect times to catch up on my film watching. Sometimes the reason I haven’t seen the films is because I haven’t been able to get to the theater to watch them when they’ve opened; other times I’m quite sure they haven’t opened in Norway at all, even though IMDB states that they opened in Norway on this or that date. They may have gone directly to DVD, if that can qualify as an opening in Norway. In any case, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by three films that have caught my attention, made me cry, made me think, and ultimately made me happy that I saw them. They are Genova (2008), Creation (2009), and Hugo (2011). What they all have in common are wonderfully good child actors; especially in Genova, but closely followed by Creation and Hugo.

If you haven’t seen any of the films, I can briefly summarize them here. Genova is the story of a Joe, a husband and father whose wife has died in a car accident that may have been caused by their youngest daughter who was sitting in the backseat of the car together with her older sister, playing a game. The husband decides to move his daughters and himself to Genova, Italy for a short while; the film relates their daily lives in a new and strange city, and the adventures each of them embark upon. Colin Firth as Joe, and Willa Holland as Kelly (the eldest sister) are very good, but it is the youngest daughter Mary, played by Perla Haney-Jardine, who shone in this film. Her acting is superb; there were times when you just wanted to reach out and hug her, she was so good, especially when her awkwardness and loneliness shone through. In real life, she is about sixteen years old now; when the film came out, she was about eleven. She had a remarkable self-possession at that young age that was riveting. Composed, observant, guarded, smart as a whip, but full of feelings and thoughts that she did not really understand or know how to express at that age; the scene where she talks to a female friend of her father’s and tells her that she feels guilty and responsible for her mother’s death is heartbreaking. Her wonderful self-possession reminded me of my niece when she was that age; she had (and still has) many of those same qualities.

Creation is the story of Charles Darwin and his family, at the time before he wrote the book that would make him famous, The Origin of Species. The film details his struggle to acknowledge the scientific truths about evolution that he has discovered which put him into conflict with his Christian faith and with his wife, who is very religious. Charles Darwin and his wife Emma are played by Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, who are married in real-life; they are terrific together. Darwin’s life was complicated by poor health and much unhappiness; he lost his eldest and beloved daughter Annie, played so convincingly and movingly in the film by Martha West, most probably to tuberculosis. Their relationship was close on many levels, and she was clearly his favorite child, likely because she was so interested in his work and in the natural world. Had she lived, she could have become a scientist like her father. The film depicts the conflicts in the Darwin marriage as well as the events surrounding the death of Annie, and is based on the book Annie’s Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, by Randal Keynes. So much of the film revolves around Annie and the impact her death had on Charles Darwin; Martha West did a wonderful job as Annie. It was impossible not to be moved to tears by her performance. The same can be said for Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly.

Hugo is the third film where a child figures prominently in the story; it reminded me a bit of the film Oliver! (1968). The young boy Hugo Cabret, played by Asa Butterfield, has a wistful look to him, much like Mark Lester’s Oliver in that earlier film, and his performance is very nuanced and very good. Both of them play young boys who are orphans; Oliver lives in an orphanage, whereas Hugo lives in the walls of a Paris train station where he fixes and maintains the station’s clocks, a job he learned from his drunken uncle who disappeared months ago and who is discovered drowned in the Seine river. The film is the story of how Hugo slowly befriends an older man who knows that Hugo steals from him, a shopkeeper by the name of Georges Méliès', played by Ben Kingsley. Georges works in the train station selling and repairing trinkets and small toys; Hugo steals parts from him sporadically in order to repair the ‘automaton’ he and his father were working on before his father’s tragic death. But Georges was once a promising filmmaker, before WWI destroyed those plans and ambitions, turning him into an unhappy and bitter man. As fate would have it, this automaton was actually designed by Georges Méliès' when he was a young man. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that the film is based on the real-life story of Georges Méliès', a French filmmaker who was way ahead of his time in terms of special effects and surreal sets and props, and a magician as well. He is known especially for two films, A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).

It is not possible to predict what the future will hold for Perla Haney-Jardine, Martha West, or Asa Butterfield in terms of their future film successes, as child actors often have a hard time repeating the successes of their youth. But they certainly deserve many more chances to express their tremendous talents and to shine as brightly as they did respectively in each of these films.

Fear of the dark and of the creatures that live there

An interesting discussion this past weekend with some friends who were visiting—we ended up talking about the horror movies that have scared us the most. All of us are adults, and all of us ended up being scared, as in many sleepless nights after having viewed them. Scared as in lights on in all rooms of the house when alone, creepy images that seem to be imprinted on our brains forever—that sort of thing. The Grudge, The Ring, and I Am Legend were the films mentioned by several people, and it occurred to me that what these films all have in common are characters that are hideously deformed or grotesque in some way. In The Grudge and The Ring, female characters have been transformed into evil creatures with long dark hair that covers their faces, but when those faces are exposed, they are terrifying. They also have a tendency to glide along hallway walls or to crawl down stairs, and they have a nasty habit of appearing where you would least want them to turn up—in your bed or in an elevator. The shock value alone of having seen them is enough to make you want to sleep with all the lights on for many nights afterwards. The use of children in horror films can also be quite shocking—children who become evil, possessed children, little monsters--as in Children of the Damned; this offends our sense of normalcy. It’s not supposed to be that way. What scares us in I Am Legend are the humanoid monsters with superhuman strength (vampires in the novella by Richard Matheson on which the film was based) who roam the streets of the city by the thousands at night looking for prey. They can scale the outer walls of buildings and cross a city park in record speed, screeching and growling. But they cannot tolerate the light of day, which gives the protagonist (in this film Will Smith) the daylight hours to do the things he must do—find food and fuel for his car, and try to find other survivors like himself. But he must be home by sunset in order to lock down his house so that these creatures cannot find him or get inside his house. But of course you know they will at some point, and that he will make a mistake that will allow them to do so, and that is what is scary—when will it happen? It’s only a question of time. We can empathize with the protagonist; what would we do if we were in his shoes? How would we survive, and would we? Or would we go mad?

When I was a child, I thought that if I concentrated hard enough, I could create the imaginary creatures that scared me. Just that thought alone, that I might have the power to create those creatures, scared me. Where did those scary creatures come from? Perhaps from the fairytales that were read to us as children—among them Grimm’s fairytales about witches (Hansel and Gretel; Snow White), wolves (Little Red Riding Hood) and other odd and sometimes evil creatures. Perhaps they also came from our religious education that taught us about God and the Devil. They did not come from TV or films, as my parents did not purchase a TV until I was almost thirteen years old; I did not start going to movies until I was in my early teens. When I was a teenager, I was sure that by the time I reached adulthood, I would no longer be scared when watching horror or supernatural films. That has not proven to be the case. I need only think of The Shining, I Am Legend, The Grudge, The Exorcist, REC, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (the original TV movie), Burnt Offerings, and a number of other films in this genre, to remind myself of the effect they had on me upon first viewing. I think that fears of the dark or of monsters in the closet or under the bed are primal fears; we do not see well in the dark, whereas our predators (mostly carnivorous animals in early times) did. They had the advantage. So we built shelters to keep them out and used fire to allow us to see but also to keep predators away. We are thankful for the protection of our modern homes—with doors and windows we can lock against anything or anybody that might want to hurt us. We turn on our alarm systems to be warned if an intruder breaks in. But what happens if the intruder is not human? If we keep the lights on, will that keep the non-human intruders away? What scares us is the possibility that our ‘protections’ are merely illusions—can locked doors and windows keep out things that really want to get in? Our locks, alarm systems and indoor lighting cannot protect us against supernatural threats. Films like Paranormal Activity, The Entity, and The Exorcist scare us exactly for this reason. And what happens if people become possessed by evil spirits, as happened in The Shining or in so many other supernatural horror films? How do you fight that type of evil? In the final analysis, perhaps horror films in general make us thankful for the good old routine daily life that we live; we do not have to fight off predators on a daily basis, nor do we have to hunt our own food. Most of us living in industrialized societies do not have to risk our lives each day in order to survive. 

Why I love the story of Jane Eyre

One of the best things I did last weekend was to watch the most recent film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre from 2011 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229822/) with Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester. I was completely emotional by the end of the film; I know how the story ends so there were no plot surprises, but the quality and intensity of the acting by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender were just that overwhelming. Michael Fassbender was a wonderful surprise as Mr. Rochester; I have seen him in Prometheus and Fish Tank previously, and he is Mr. Rochester, David and Conor respectively, all completely different people, a testament to his acting abilities. He managed to impart a real humanity to Mr. Rochester, a humanity that I have not felt as strongly in other Mr. Rochesters. You feel sorry for him and for his predicament, even though you understand that he will suffer for his willfully deceiving Jane about his being married to a mad woman whom he is unable to divorce. By the time he tells her the truth, on her wedding day; you are hoping that Jane will forgive him because you know he is truly sorry for lying to her. But being the moral, proud and wise young woman that she is, she tells him that she will not live with him without being married and she leaves him and Thornfield Hall behind. As fate would have it, a tragedy occurs that ensures that she will finally be able to marry Mr. Rochester, but it was not the tragedy that made her return to Thornfield. It was her recognition of her own humanity and need for love; she gained the insight (inner sight) she needed to understand that she had found real love with Mr. Rochester and that she could not live in a passionless marriage with St John Rivers. She had to marry a man she loved. Her return to Mr. Rochester was actually an acknowledgment that she would live with him regardless of his marital situation as he had initially proposed once she found out he was already married. As it turns out; during her separation from Mr. Rochester, his wife burned down Thornfield Hall and committed suicide thereafter, but Jane is unaware of this when she returns to Thornfield. Mr. Rochester has lost his eyesight due to the fire and must depend upon those around him for help. When Jane returns to him, you understand that he has gained the ability to be grateful, and is no longer the proud and desperate man he once was. No matter how many times I’ve read the book or seen the different Jane Eyre films and TV series through the years, I am always moved by this story—it’s impossible not to love it. 

Some thoughts about the film The Burrowers

Apropos Kristen Stewart—her recent film, Snow White and the Huntsman, was not a movie I liked very much and I really don’t understand the hype surrounding it. This film got a wide release and generated big box office; I cannot imagine why. I think all involved did passable jobs, but no more than that. The film is forgettable once you’re out of the theater. Charlize Theron overacted/over-reacted and Kristen Stewart under acted/under-reacted (few to no facial expressions in key scenes and so little to say; it was sometimes painful to watch, especially the final scene. It almost seemed as if she was struggling to get some words out, but they never came). Chris Hemsworth did the best acting job if you ask me, within the limited emotional range of the film. The entire film had a wooden feel to it. One can hope that there will be no sequel. I cannot see how it would be feasible, realistic or even necessary. What more is there to say about this story that hasn’t already been said?

The other night I watched a film on Showtime called The Burrowers, from 2008. This film was apparently never released to the movie public and instead went straight to DVD. I don’t understand the rationale for that move, since I thought it was a much better film than big budget Snow White and the Huntsman. Who makes these decisions? The Burrowers was actually quite a creepy little horror film, albeit a very unusual horror film since it was set in the American Wild West during 1879. It is a bit slow-moving, but the characters are interesting and well-developed, as is the storyline. A family living out on the lonely prairie disappears without a trace, and a posse is formed to try and find them/rescue them from the Native American Indians whom they are sure have abducted them. How wrong they are. Their discovery that entities other than Indians are stalking them, waiting for them in the dark, is as I said, creepy, because they, like us, find it hard to believe that such monsters could exist out on the plains. But they do. And they are not just any monsters, they are burrowers, creatures that live underground and who have a penchant for tracking and eating humans. But their mode for doing this is quite unique, and I won’t spoil the film by giving this information away, except to say that it is exploited in an effort to kill them off. The creatures, which are CGI creations, are scary enough such that the film works. The Burrowers is a clever film, and while some people on IMDB have complained about the film’s ending, I found it to be realistic, though unsatisfying. All the loose ends are not tied up. The monsters are not completely wiped out. What the film manages to convey very well is a sense of dread; imagine you are out on the prairie at night, sitting around a fire at your campsite. Your vision is limited, the dark envelopes you, you hear noises. Even if there were no monsters, the reality of spending the night out under the open skies, exposed and vulnerable, could be anxiety-inducing for many people. I am one of them. The film never plays for laughs; it takes itself seriously, and that is one of its strengths. Additionally, you get a real feel for what life must have been like in 1879—long periods of isolation, no internet, no phones, little communication, mostly rumors and innuendoes, and the constant threat of attack. I found myself thinking of the X-Files, always a good sign in my book, because some of the X-Files episodes were quite scary. The Burrowers brought to mind the X-Files episode Detour from 1997. Both the film and the TV episode are well-worth watching. 

Summer movie viewing

Some really good (old and newer) movies that I have seen recently, in no particular order:

·         Mon Oncle (1958) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050706/

·         Elementarteilchen (The Elementary Particles--2006) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430051/

·         Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335119/

·         Midnight Cowboy (1969) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064665/

·         The Skeleton Key (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397101/

·         Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056625/

·         Bloedbroeders (2008) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071201/

·         Harrys döttrar (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456972/

·         Puss in Boots (2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448694/

·         Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515091/

·         Prometheus (2012) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/

Ridley Scott's Prometheus

Last night I did something I haven’t done many times before in my life. I attended the pre-premiere of a movie whose release I have been eagerly anticipating—Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. The film’s official release date in Norway is today, June 1^st. But the Colosseum movie theater in Oslo showed the film last night (9pm showing only) to a packed house, which in and of itself was an enjoyable experience. The film was introduced by a young man who apparently works for an American company in Norway involved in the film’s promotion. At one point he asked for a show of hands for how many women were in the audience. I guess because men outnumber women when it comes to liking sci-fi films? Anyway, there were a lot of women in the audience. Never occurred to me before that sci-fi might be a genre dominated by men, since I personally know more women than men who enjoy sci-fi books and films. But never mind—I want to tell you about the film.

The story is somewhat intricate and uneven; the film opens with fantastic footage of what is supposed to be prehistoric earth; the 3D effects give the viewer the experience of actually moving over the planet in a low-flying spaceship. An alien human-like figure stands on the precipice of a huge waterfall, and drinks some kind of strange liquid in a pod. He is alone. Above him a spaceship hovers, apparently the ship that brought him there. After drinking the liquid, his body reacts violently, transforming into some strange-looking creature that falls off the cliff into the water; as he does, his body explodes, releasing the DNA that will be the precursor DNA to our own. Cut to 2089, where a group of scientists (among them Elizabeth Shaw played by Noomi Rapace, and Charlie Holloway played by Logan Marshall-Green) interested in the origins of humanity discover cave paintings on the Isle of Skye in Scotland that resemble cave paintings from other archaeological digs around the world. All of them ‘point’ to the stars; the patterns seem to be an invitation to visit that distant world, which is exactly what these scientists are dreaming about—finding the origins of man. Four years later, they are traveling in space on their way to this world, in a spaceship called Prometheus. They land on this new world, and all hell breaks loose, literally. That’s the point of these films, and also the fun of watching them. You know something bad or evil is lurking in the wings, just waiting for its chance to break free. I will definitely not spoil the film for you by describing what happens; it is well-worth seeing and you will be impressed beyond belief at the special effects and the 3D experience. I felt like I had traveled to that world after being in the theater for two hours. I found myself wishing the movie was longer, the effects were that good. The images of that deserted, barren, dark world will haunt you for hours afterwards. The fact that the plot has a few loopholes, or that there are some illogical occurrences, was not a problem for me, although I know it is for some others who have voiced their criticisms on IMDB. I am more interested in the atmosphere that these kinds of films can create, and Prometheus delivers.  It manages to create the world it set out to create, just like in the Alien films.

Mythological and biblical references are prevalent in this film. What can the story of Prometheus in Greek mythology tell us about the film’s plot? Prometheus was a Titan god who was given the task of creating mankind out of clay. Prometheus ended up in conflict with Zeus, who had given him this task, because he liked his mortal creations very much and wanted the best for them, a feeling that Zeus did not share. Zeus became angry at Prometheus for a number of things—among them that Prometheus had tricked the gods into allowing man to keep the meat from sacrificial offerings to the gods, whereas the gods got only the animal bones. As punishment, Zeus withheld fire from man; Prometheus decided to steal the fire back and deliver it to mankind, which he did. Zeus punished him by chaining him to a stake on a mountaintop where an eagle fed upon his liver, which grew back each day since Prometheus was immortal. In the film, the very idea that the scientists could obtain the knowledge of their origin can be seen as a ‘transgression’ against their divine ‘creators’ (Engineers). At the risk of over-interpreting the meaning of the film, I couldn’t help but think of the story of Adam and Eve. Like Adam and Eve in the garden of Paradise, who ate of the fruit from the tree of knowledge that ended in their being banished from the garden, the scientists are ‘punished’ for trying to seek and attain the knowledge that will place them on the creative level of their creators. The ‘gods’ are jealous; they and they alone wish to hold the keys to (knowledge about) the creation of mankind. The gods of Greek mythology were not all perfect gods—they could be angry, jealous, and vindictive—just like their creations; there were any number of wars in the heavens. The universe was thus both orderly (good) and chaotic (evil). Christian mythology describes how Lucifer the archangel, whose name means ‘light bearer’ (interestingly enough when talking about Prometheus and his bearing of fire to mankind) defied the will of the divine Creator and was banished to hell along with his followers. Lucifer and his followers are the bad angels whose sin was pride and thinking they were better than God. It is clear in the film that the distant world that harbors so much chaos and evil for the space travelers was a repository of ‘life’ guarded by alien humanoids that were tall, strong and violent. Are these the bad angels? One gets the feeling that this dark world was more like hell, where transgressors against the gods, as Prometheus was, would have been banished.

So where then is the world of our creators? Where do they live, since they do not live on this dark barren world? This is the question Elizabeth Shaw has at the end of the film. How come our creators were so unsatisfied with their creations that they relegated them to a hellish world? What was the transgression committed by the original creations? Did they attempt to trick their creators or to steal something of value to them, like Prometheus did with Zeus? Did they try to become the creators? Why did the creators choose earth as the place for their creations? Why did the alien humanoid in the first scene die such a violent death in order that his DNA would be spread in the waters of earth, as a precursor to our own? When did this happen, before or after the settling of the world on which the spaceship Prometheus lands? Why did things go so horribly wrong on this world? Why do the Engineers on this world want to destroy earth as is the plan when the giant spaceship attempts to take off toward the end of the film, and what stopped them up until this point? These remain unanswered questions at the end of the film. Perhaps they will be answered in a sequel, or perhaps not. In any case, the film opens for different questions and interpretations. And in the final analysis, it is perhaps not so surprising that as we (viewers and movie directors alike) age and approach our mortal ends, that the questions of where we come from, how did we get here, and where we (might) end up after death, preoccupy us. We would prefer that our lives had meaning and that it is not the emptiness of the abyss that awaits us. We would prefer heaven to the barren, deserted and dark world that the Prometheus found. 

Warm weather musings and updates

Summer has finally come to Norway, at least to Oslo and the surrounding area. And it’s not even officially summertime yet according to the calendar. So guess who’s happy? It’s my favorite season, summertime. It brings with it no work or very little work, vacation, sun, warmth, travel, long lazy days, boat trips, bicycle rides, a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables on a daily basis, salads, enjoying a few hours with friends or my husband at outdoor cafes—the list is endless. My plants are happy; it’s just to take one good look at them. Their leaves seem greener and they just seem to be healthier. Just like us, how we respond to the sun. Everyone seems happier, more patient, less aggressive and more open. I wish it could be like that all year long. Summer always seems to be the time when new beginnings blossom, for me at least. More than spring, although you might say that spring is where those new beginnings take root.

I haven’t written too much about work lately, I guess because I’ve moved into a new phase now at my workplace—the ‘wait and see’ phase. For the time being, my work life seems to have evened out a bit. All that means is that I have found a new research group to settle into and so far, so good. It feels good to be a part of something to which I can contribute. I just hope this new group is allowed to grow and flourish. One year ago, the other ‘new group’ that I was a part of was just getting onto its feet and learning to get to know one another. And then the end of 2011 came and that group went ‘poof’ and was no more. Management decided to move the pawns around on the chess board once again, and came up with new suggestions for new constellations. And of course they know best. The uplifting part of these political scenarios is that they happen now in public for all to see, so that it is no longer possible for my friends and colleagues to say that they don’t believe me when I tell them how it is. They’re now experiencing some of this personally and they don’t like the treatment either. I’m a couple of years ahead of them, having graduated from anger to depression to cynicism to healthy skepticism. ‘Trust no one’ as the main characters on the X-Files used to say. In a work-related context, I’d say that’s where I am now. Still like the research work I do, though. I just hate work politics, but they’re part and parcel of the whole arena, in fact of most business arenas.

Mostly, I’ve floated myself back into the world that I love the most after science—the world of the creative arts--literature, movies, art, and music. That world always fills me with hope and the feeling that I am being renewed—new beginnings within myself. I’m reading again, listening to new music, appreciating art where I find it, and going to the movies as often as I manage. Or renting DVDs to catch up on the movies I’ve missed. I just read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and enjoyed it; he describes evil behavior in mankind in a way that can chill you to the bone, and he does it in a way that seems so ordinary. I’m currently reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and enjoying it immensely; Olive is a prickly middle-aged woman but her life is so worth reading about—all the different people who cross her path and who interact with her. I recommend it. I got tickets to see Deadmau5 at Oslo Spektrum concert stadium next week as I wrote about in my previous post; in a few weeks I will see Sting at the Norwegian Wood music festival in Frogner Park. I recently went to see the movies Dark Shadows, Hunger Games and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and I got tickets today for the opening night of Prometheus (can’t wait!) next week. I’ve rented The Rum Diary with Johnny Depp, and watched Source Code and Another Earth (another film I wrote about recently). All of them were good films, and all of them inspire me in a way that no other art form can. I’m hooked on movies—always have been and always will be. Some of you may ask where I find the time to do these things—yes, I know and feel the time constraints all the time. The answer is that I am making the time now. Again I ask, if not now, when? Academia can eat up every spare minute of life including evenings and weekends, and I don’t want that. So yes, I am choosing the creative world of the arts any chance I get, as I’ve written about here in this blog many times before. It helps to balance out the administrative, political and other demands of academia. The actual research and experiments though are the creative part of science, when we are actually permitted to pursue them. There is a lot of creativity in the world of science research; the trick is to not get buried by all of the other demands that eat up that creative time.

The indie film 'Another Earth'

I have self-published three books that I am sure would never have seen the light of day had I sent them via an agent to a large publishing house, so that makes me an indie author. Not that I am against traditional forms of publishing, mind you. I just believe in giving underdogs a small chance. I may try the traditional publishing route with my next book, but it’s not finished yet and I may still change my mind. As I’ve written about before, Amazon/CreateSpace has given indie authors like me a chance to get our books out there. I’ll never be a millionaire from the royalties I get from the minor book sales I enjoy, but I’ve learned valuable things about the publishing and marketing worlds, and that by itself is worth gold, because I don’t have to pay a publicist to market my book. This is the true beauty of our modern society—dreams can become realities in the digital age.

But this time around this post is not about my experiences as an indie writer, but rather about an indie movie I rented recently. A nice little gem of a film released in 2011 called Another Earth; it had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2011 where it won an award. You can find it listed on IMDB at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1549572/. It was directed by Mike Cahill, and written by him and Brit Marling, who also has the lead female role of Rhoda in the film. Another Earth is labeled as both a drama and a sci-fi film, and I guess you could say that it is a sci-fi film of sorts. But the science fiction aspect is not paramount; it is the backdrop for the personal drama that plays out in the film. Despite the presence of the ‘other earth’ in the sky—a hauntingly beautiful orb that looks just like our planet—the film is really about what happens to individual lives in the aftermath of personal tragedy. It is about making amends, paying back, trying to forgive, and trying to move on with one’s life. The two main characters, Rhoda and John (played by William Mapother), have a hard time moving on with their lives. Their paths become entwined through a mistake really, or rather a failure on the part of Rhoda, a college-age young woman, to inform John, a middle-aged professor for whom she cleans house, about her role in the car accident that took his wife and child from him. Her inability to tell him about her role in his personal tragedy leads inevitably to another type of failure—the end of a love affair, but which inspires her to try to set things right for him. The film is well-worth seeing. The sci-fi elements of the film serve to keep us wondering about the possibility of second chances on the other earth, and this involves the aspect of whether or not there is synchrony between both planets. Will the other ‘me’ on the other earth have lived the same life as I did on this earth, and so forth. I won’t give away the details or ending of the film, but will say that despite a rather abrupt ending, you won’t be disappointed. The film will make you think, and if you read the message boards about this film on IMDB, you will find that there are others who are puzzling about the very same things. The mark of a good film—it gets people talking, discussing and trading ideas and possible scenarios.

I have no idea how much it costs to make films, nor do I have any idea of what it cost to make Another Earth. According to IMDB, it grossed $77,740 in the USA on its opening weekend (24 July 2011); it opened on four screens. As of 2 October 2011, it had grossed $1,316,074 in the USA. I rented the DVD here in Oslo just last weekend; I cannot remember that it opened in the theaters here, although according to IMDB it opened here in Norway in November 2011. No matter. I’ve seen it on DVD. It will be interesting to see what returns will come from the foreign market, especially from DVD rentals/sales. The American earnings are not a lot of money really, compared to what some of the commercial blockbusters rake in. But I’m betting that Mike Cahill and Brit Marling are not complaining. I doubt it cost them that much money to make the film. So now they may even have some funds to write and direct a new film. It will be interesting to follow them further; I hope they make more films like Another Earth. 

Dark Shadows and 'marginal weirdness'

I have been eagerly awaiting the opening of Tim Burton’s new film, Dark Shadows; it opened here in Norway this past Friday, May 11th. So I was online a few days before and ordered a ticket so that I was assured a seat in the theater. I needn’t have worried; the theater was not full, and I doubt it will be for any of the showings. Not because the film isn’t worth seeing, it is, but mostly because it will have limited appeal given its subject matter in a cinema world where vampires have been done to death. I need think only of the Twilight films and of True Blood, both of which I don’t really watch, although I have seen one of the Twilight films and a few of the True Blood episodes. They don’t appeal to me as much as the original Dark Shadows TV series or the two Dark Shadows films from the 1970s (House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows) based on the TV series. The original Dark Shadows series and even the subsequent films managed something none of the other vampire films or series has managed as well, with the possible exception of Francis Ford Coppola’s incredible wonderful film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And that is to take themselves seriously, despite that the subject matter was nothing more than pure fantasy. They wove the supernatural fantasies of vampires, ghosts, witches, werewolves and other creatures into a soap opera storyline filled with romance, love, sex, deceit, treachery, normal life, family life and honor, wealthy families, and tragic lives. They managed to be serious and campy simultaneously. The Dark Shadows TV series was talky, like a good soap opera should be. It kept its viewers hanging literally onto each word a character uttered. Those words were important to the storyline, driving it forward, and since the series ran from Monday to Friday, viewers were guaranteed a treasure trove of conversations, arguments, conflicts, ultimatums, discussions and more conversations. In between all of these, something supernatural could occur—there might be vampire or witch activity, or ghosts that wandered about the Collinwood mansion or estate, which was often shrouded in darkness or fog. It seemed to be always evening on Dark Shadows; and like the individual characters, I was always relieved when they got indoors, into the foyer and then into the main drawing room—a safe haven for the most part, because that was where normal family life happened, where ghosts and vampires and witches were kept at bay at least when the individual family members met there. Of course the other parts of the house were not as ‘safe’; I need only think of the different rooms inhabited by ghosts, or rooms that were portals into parallel times. I think those are the parts of Tim Burton’s film that I liked the most—when the Collins family sat down to dinner, with the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michele Pfeiffer) sitting at the head of the table, in complete control of her family. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell someone to be quiet, and he or she toed the line. At these times during the film, there was conversation, a sense of family, a sense of why these people stayed together and lived together in the house. Viewers learned about the history of the Collins family and how they made their living. There was character development and storyline progression. Much of this took place during the first half of the film. And then came the second half of the film, which took off into another realm completely—the absurd really, with Alice Cooper visiting the mansion as entertainment for one of the family’s famous ‘happenings’, or Angelique (played by Eva Green) ranting and raving about being scorned and how she would make Barnabas (Johnny Depp) and the family pay. She did a good job, but I would have preferred less emphasis on her and more on Barnabas and Victoria/Josette (played by Bella Heathcote), on Carolyn (played by Chloë Grace Moretz), or even on David (played by Gulliver McGrath). The film ends up being rather schizophrenic; I preferred the first half—the return of Barnabas, his entrance into and confrontation with the 20^th century, his meeting with his old family, his having to live and act as a vampire—all those things. The second half of the movie toyed with the first half. I would have preferred otherwise. But I am not sorry I saw the film. Why? Because after I got home, I went online and found some of the old Dark Shadows TV episodes on YouTube, and watched a few. And then I went onto Amazon and ordered the entire DVD collection of the original TV series (131 DVDs spanning 470 hours). I’ve decided that I will come home from work each day and watch one episode, just as I ran home from school in the 1970s to watch an episode on TV. I am looking forward to the experience of reliving the original series.

I’ve been following the reviews of Burton’s film to this point. The New York Times gave it a good review and even put it on its Critics’ Pick list: http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/movies/johnny-depp-stars-in-tim-burtons-dark-shadows.html. IMDB has a list of the different reviews so far: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077368/externalreviews

But the review that resonated most with me was the one on Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/. Why? The following excerpt from this review will explain it well: 

“Barnabas Collins predates not just “Twilight” and “True Blood,” but also Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” and the entire rise of the Goth sensibility. In the 1970s, vampires were something that only marginal weirdos who went to science-fiction bookstores and watched Hammer films like “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” knew about. People like the teenage Tim Burton, in other words”.

Well, marginal weirdo could describe me too. I may not have gone to sci-fi bookstores when I was a teenager (I’ve done so in my twenties and loved all the ones I’ve been in), but I did watch the many Christopher Lee vampire films and I even dragged my poor sister to them to keep me company. Heck, I dragged her to a lot of different horror films from that time. Needless to say, she does not have the same fond memories I have of time well-spent in dark movie theaters watching horror films. Of course, now that I think of it, she did accompany me, when she could have said no. Sometimes we were accompanied by a friend of hers, who was a marginal weirdo like myself. He liked those kinds of films, and was even the type to build models of Frankenstein and Dracula that glowed in the dark. I don’t know what happened to him after high school; I can only wonder if he too has seen Burton’s film. I would love to hear his take on the film.