http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 26 May 2004 01:09:13 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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TyFrom the DVD's back-cover blurb:Spider (Ralph Fiennes) has been allowed a second chance at life after a long stay in a mental institution and sent to a halfway house under the stern watch of Mrs. Ilkenson (Lynn Redgrave.) Revisiting his old neighborhood reawakens memories of his where his mother (Miranda Richardson) and his father (Gabriel Byrne) raised him. He soon begins to uncover the real truth shifting seamlessly back and forth between the tragic events that polarized a boy's adolescence to the shell of a man enduring the surreal plausible reality of today.It's a pretty good summary of the film except for two details, the first minor and the second major: Mrs. Ilkenson should be Mrs. Wilkinson, and I'm not sure why a mistake like this could be made, given the credits and how Wilkinson is a far more common surname than Ilkenson. Like I said though, this is only minor. The description of Spider's process of "uncover[ing] the real truth" provides an image of a traditionally active protagonist, but the title character is most definitely not one of those, floating as he does through most of the film's running time. This perhaps is why so many people find Spider "boring." I personally found it quite gripping, not despite but because of the languid pacing of the film.It's also neither contemplative nor meditative in the fashion of such films as that of, say, Krzysztof Kieslowski; Spider's mental illness, after all, results in his lacking the capacity for orderly contemplation and meditation. Instead, it's the collective efforts of cast and crew guided by David Cronenberg, along with the participation they demand from the viewer, that performs this work of reflection in a more metaphorical and almost-poetic sense.Above and beyond flawless performances from a cast that also includes John Neville (who has done supporting work in Little Women and The Fifth Element, but is perhaps best known for playing the Well-Manicured Man of The X-Files as well as the title character in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) is Cronenberg's characteristically clinical direction. I'd go so far as to call it elegant, despite it seeming inappropriate for this film's visuals. He's aided by the work of a few constant collaborators: Composer Howard Shore's mournful yet understated score, in a style closer to his work in two other films about insanity: Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs, aside from most of Cronenberg's other films. For those only familiar with the musical gravitas he provides in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, it would be best to seek out those films to show you why I consider him one of my favorite film composers, perhaps second only to Carter Burwell. He's also done some "middle-ground" work for Ed Wood, High Fidelity, and That Thing You Do!, which only highlight his range. Editor Ronald Sanders's surgical precision in cutting a film that shifts from past to present while simultaneously blending the two in a more impressionistic but no less effective way than the poster design below. (The blending of past and present has to do with several scenes in which the adult Spider appears in the frame--or a neighboring one--with the boy Spider for most of the film's "flashbacks." It's worth noting how it is the former who follows the cues of the latter quite often in the film, subtly expressing the way mental illness makes one feel helpless and incapacitated.) Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky's images of decrepitude and decay, both architectural and psychological, in a nearly monochromatic palette that I would call earthy, if it wasn't so (sub)urban. Suschitzky, as is usually the case with his work for Cronenberg, pulls off quite a coup with shots that seem dead and cold and yet simmering with a repressed and tense undercurrent of menace and dread. The cinematography of Spider strikes me as quite an accurate portrayal of the thematics of the literary Gothic. When I first saw this film, I was afraid I would sorely miss Carol Spier's production design and how it brilliantly meshes with Cronenberg's films, but Andrew Sanders presents himself as more-than-adequate to the task.It's an excellent film, and I'm willing to call it a perfect one, at least in its conjunction of form and content. Nevertheless, like so many films I love, it's not something I can easily recommend to just about anyone, even while I consider it in such superlative terms. That said, if you read through this and find yourself interested, you could do so much worse than indulging that curiosity. Video15989@blogcritics.org Wed, 26 May 2004 01:09:13 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/01/130330.php Andrew Albert J. TyPoppy Z. Brite's foreword to this collection of 45 short stories opens with a haunting entreaty: "Are you out there, Thomas Ligotti?" It's an appropriate question to ask, given Ligotti's invisibility in bookstores relative to other horror writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Even Brite's own books are easier to find. Little consolation may be found in how this is partly due to Ligotti's works being out of print, despite their earliest publication in the 80s. Whether it is testimony to avid fans relieving bookstores of these darkest of dark fictions or to certain unfortunately publishing decisions, the result is still a gaping lack for many readers of contemporary horror.Ligotti knows about consolations; following Brite's foreword is "The Consolations of Horror," an essay he wrote for this anthology, a veritable manifesto expressing his own views on horror. Even more telling is how his stories themselves demonstrate these consolations. In the face of his rejection of the clear-cut moral dilemmas and satisfying closures of mainstream horror fiction, the unrelentingly bleak nihilism that remains must surely provide some sort of comfort to the reader. Such comforts we end up begging for, because reading these works can be an overwhelmingly wrenching experience.Ligotti also knows about gaping lacks: his stories abound with such phrases as "an empty mist through an eternal twilight" ("The Journal of J.P. Drapeau"), and "the infinite, all-penetrating vision of things in which madness is the sole substance and thereby becomes absent and meaningless for its very ubiquity and absolute meaning" ("Masquerade of a Dead Sword"). While there is the occasional beastie to be found, such as the vampires of "The Lost Art of Twilight" and the insectoid forms that liberate themselves from "The Cocoons," the true horror here is found in the dark unknowable void of the human condition. Ligotti is unafraid to be visceral, such as when he describes "a mutilated carcass, something of terrible rawness, a torn and flayed thing whose every laceration could be traced in crystalline sharpness" in "The Spectacles in the Drawer," but he isn't out to disgust you for its own sake. In fact, while the stories here epitomize the nightmarish more than any other writer I know, it is more of an atmospheric dread at work than the sudden provocation of explicit frights.The Nightmare Factory then is an apposite title in this regard: these are indeed nightmares, stories whose peripheral glimpses into the inexorability of decay and darkness leave an exquisite aftertaste of terror. Ligotti is efficient; some stories are better than others, but every single one is a superior example of literate horror, resulting in a consistently excellent anthology. By no means though should you assume that Ligotti simply churns out tales like an automaton working from a template. The metaphysical horror he draws his tales from may be a single fount of dreadful inspiration, but an infinite darkness holds infinite terrors, and this is what Thomas Ligotti knows best of all. Books13291@blogcritics.org Mon, 1 Mar 2004 13:03:30 EST