Blogcritics Author: Cindy Collins Smith

Technology Review: iPhone 3G

Cindy Collins Smith — Mon, 4 Aug 2008 19:32:20 EDT

The second-generation iPhone comes with performance enhancements, added functionality, and a more robust network.
Some people call me an “early adopter” — a term that does not universally apply. Unlike my father and brother, I’ve never gone after new stuff for the sake of new stuff. I still don’t have a Blu-ray player or an HDTV. (My older models still work.) But when it comes to a gadget of desire, I’m right there. Maybe...

Movie Review: WarGames 25th Anniversary Event, July 24

Cindy Collins Smith — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:31:17 EDT

The seminal hacker film WarGames returned to the big screen July 24 for a one night, nationwide, 25th Anniversary tribute.
It was the coolest movie trailer in the summer of 1983. A robotic synthetic voice asked "SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?" as the words themselves spooled out across a computer screen. And David Lightman (played by a nearly unknown Matthew Broderick) answered back: "How about 'GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR'?"... unleashing a phantom...

The Third of Michael Emerson's Five Creepiest Characters of All Time: Johan Borg in Hour of the Wolf

Cindy Collins Smith — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:56:09 EDT

Emmy-nominated "Lost" actor Michael Emerson goes to the art house to find the third of his favorite creepy characters.
In his "creepiest performances" video, Michael Emerson (Ben Linus on Lost) gives a nod to Max von Sydow and Ingmar Bergman: Another great one is, if you watch Ingmar Bergman movies... Max von Sydow did a movie for Bergman called The Hour of the Wolf, where he plays a sort of standard tortured Swedish artist who just can't stop killing...

DVD Review: VeggieTales - Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry's Big River Rescue

Cindy Collins Smith — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:25:06 EDT

In this new installment of VeggieTales, Tom and Huck learn the value of helping others, even if it costs them.
VeggieTales is back, this time putting a vegetable spin on the American big river classic Huckleberry Finn.It's 1904, the year of the St. Louis World's Fair. Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry (a.k.a. Tom and Huck) are homesteading along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River and are within days of owning their own land. As they dream...

The Second of Michael Emerson's Five Creepiest Characters of All Time: Kaspar Gutman in The Maltese Falcon

Cindy Collins Smith — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:16:30 EDT

"Lost" actor Michael Emerson makes the non-intuitive choice of "The Maltese Falcon's" Sidney Greenstreet as his next favorite creepy character.
In his EW video on the creepiest performances of all time, Michael Emerson (Ben Linus on Lost) reveals that Sidney Greenstreet creeps him out:Another über creepy performance, I think, is Sidney Greenstreet's in The Maltese Falcon. He's one of those characters who's so civilized on the surface, and yet you hope you're never left...

One of Michael Emerson's Five Creepiest Characters of All Time: Nosferatu

Cindy Collins Smith — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 06:22:51 EDT

"Lost" actor Michael Emerson reveals his top five creepy characters in an Entertainment Weekly video.
"Creepy" is the first word viewers use to describe Ben Linus, former leader of The Others on Lost. Some time back, Entertainment Weekly got Michael Emerson, the actor who plays Ben, to reveal who he credits with giving the five creepiest performances in film and television history. EW later posted the video on YouTube.So who creeps...

Movie Review: Why The Happening Doesn't

Cindy Collins Smith — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 18:54:48 EDT

In The Happening, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan takes on Alfred Hitchcock and George Romero but gets tangled up instead.
Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan is known for creating twist endings. What he should be known for is twisting conventional genres. Sometimes it works, as it did in The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable. And sometimes it just falls flat. In The Happening, Shyamalan plays off a couple of different genres, but most obviously he works with...

DVD Review: The Crown Jewels of Ripper Cinema - The Lodger (1944)

Cindy Collins Smith — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:47:10 EDT

One of the greatest Jack the Ripper movies finally comes to DVD in a classy studio edition.
Not many movies are in contention for being among the Ripper cinema’s “crown jewels.” Perhaps Pandora’s Box. Probably Murder by Decree. And definitely the John Brahm/Laird Cregar Lodger. My film geek friends have always been split over whether the 1944 Lodger or Murder by Decree is the best Ripper film of all time. There is...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, 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. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

(Part 4) Patricia Cornwell's Jack: First Impressions of Case Closed

Cindy Collins Smith — Wed, 3 Sep 2003 00:58:02 EDT

From RipperLady archivesCan you believe this has taken four parts just to get through the opening chapter? Don't worry, though, I'm not going to tackle any more Cornwell for awhile once we're finished here... unless, of course, there's a wild outcry for more, more, more!Well, last time I posted (I feel like I'm in a serial!), we learned that Sickert may have been sexually mutilated through surgeries in childhood. We also learned that one of the letter writers to Scotland Yard suggested that the Ripper was a sexually mutilated man. And last time, I also cautioned the reader to remember that, no matter how possible, the notion of Sickert's mutilation is a hypothesis, not a known fact.Yet, Cornwell takes this hypothesis and uses it to speculate on Sickert's frame of mind right before the marriage of his mentor, James Abbott McNeill Whistler. She writes: "The anticipated connubial bliss of [Whistler] must have been disconcerting to his former errand boy-apprentice." And that "Women were a dangerous reminder of an infuriating and humiliating secret that Sickert carried not only to the grave but beyond it, because cremated bodies reveal no tales of the flesh, even if they are exhumed." It must have been disconcerting? And women were a dangerous reminder of a humiliating secret? Well, for starters, Cornwell has just assumed the certainty of her hypothesis.... even though, as she herself admits, Sickert's cremation makes it impossible to verify. (In fact, she almost implies--or perhaps does imply--that Sickert intentionally had himself cremated to wipe out the evidence of a physical debility that Cornwell is only speculating about). Secondly, she's presuming to have access into Sickert's mind and to know what he must have been thinking, how he must have been experiencing Whistler's marriage. Yet, she has no direct access to that information because Sickert did not keep journals. Perhaps she is channeling Sickert?Before she gets to the summation of these charges, let's look at what is currently something of a side issue, but which will figure into Cornwell's summation. She mentions that Sickert tended to read only stuff that affected him. He liked to see his name in the paper; he liked to read his own letters to the editor. And he loved to read about crime. In other words, he was somewhat narcissistic (as many artists are), and he was fascinated by crime stories. In fact, he had such an interest in crime that Sickert later drew sketches of murder scenes. Cornwell uses this evidence to damn him with the appellation "Jack the Ripper." She assumes that this fascination is indicative of an unhinged and violent mind. And later in the book, she will argue that some of these artistic renderings may have been drawn of murders committed by the artist himself. So, let me ask... Would you say that Patricia Cornwell has an interest in crime? She writes detective fiction and speculates on the identity of Jack the Ripper, doesn't she? Judging by the fact that you are reading this, I would guess that you have some interest in crime. And I know I do. So, here we are... Walter Sickert liked to read about crime. I like to read about crime. You, right at this very moment, are reading about crime. Cornwell reads and writes about crime. Every Ripperologist in the world reads and theorizes on crime. Unless all of us (or even many of us) read about murder as a prelude to commiting murders of our own, then Sickert's interest in crime seems about as sinister as mine or yours or Cornwell's.Ah, but as mentioned above, Sickert also liked to paint and draw crime scenes. (Never mind that he is much more famous for painting music halls!). Doesn't that demonstrate a murderous inclination? The short answer? No!Cornwell is a writer. She paints crime scenes with words. Sickert is a painter. He paints crime scenes with... well... paint (and pencil). Are we to assume that, because Sickert is a visual artist rather than a verbal artist, his portrayal of crime is somehow more sinister than Cornwell's own portrayal of crime? Or, for that matter, Alfred Hitchcock's visual/verbal portrayal of crime? Ummm, I think not. Each artist is using his or her own medium to artistically portray murder. Now, that's not to say that Sickert is absolutely not Jack the Ripper. It's simply to say that if the subjects of his artwork indicate an inclination towards murder, then we could say the same thing about Patricia Cornwell, Alfred Hitchcock, and any number of other visual and verbal artists.Finally, Cornwell just pulls out the stops in her summation of the charges against Walter Sickert, as she writes: "For Walter Sickert to imagine Whistler in love and enjoying a sexual relationship with a woman might well have been the catalyst that made Sickert one of the most dangerous and confounding killers of all time. He began to act out what he had scripted most of his life, not only in thought but in boyhood sketches that depicted women being abducted, tied up, and stabbed." Okay, how much of that do I really need to parse at this point? We see, once again, Cornwell assuming the certainty of her hypothesis re: Sickert's genitals. We see her beg the question, as she assumes the very thing she needs to prove in her argument... i.e. that Sickert actually was this killer. But we also see, in the final sentence, a rather tenuous grip on factuality. Without access to his thoughts, how does Cornwell know that Sickert scripted the actual performance of mutilations in his thoughts? And further, while the boyhood sketches depicting the murder of women may have been drawn by Sickert, they are actually part of a collection of his father's artwork. Cornwell has no more certainty that these sketches were drawn by Sickert than she has certainty that Sickert wrote the "Scotus" letter. All she has is hypothesis. And even if she knew for a fact that Walter , not Oswald, Sickert drew the sketches, would they necessarily indicate that he harbored murderous desires towards women? And finally finally finally...Cornwell ignores the "Nemo" letter to the editors of the Times of London (the letter about Eastern criminal methods). Yet in a set up to a major rhetorical flourish, she does make a point of "Nemo" having been Sickert's stage name, only to instruct us that Sickert "dropped" this name "in the late summer of 1888 [and] he gave himself a new stage name that during his life would never be linked to him." Oh, the certainty of it all. Oh, the manipulation of it all! Need I tell you what that new stage name is? No, you know it. It has been played out on the world stage for over a century now. It is synonymous with evil and murder and blood on the streets of London in the fog.But Cornwell's flourish, no matter how effective rhetorically, still begs the question. And Martha Tabram is still quite likely the victim of a different killer.

Cindy Collins Smith is a writer/editor with contributions in several Midnight Marquee/Luminary Press books--including the recently published You're Next: Loss of Identity in the Horror Film. She is known in Ripper circles as the owner of the Hollywood Ripper website, which covers nine decades of Ripper and Faux Ripper movies, and she is a serial contributor to Ripperologist magazine. In her day job, Ms. Smith edits a magazine, a newsletter and conference publications for a professional association. She also helps develop social media strategies.

(Part 3) Patricia Cornwell's Jack: First Impressions of Case Closed

Cindy Collins Smith — Tue, 26 Aug 2003 22:54:23 EDT

(a.k.a. RipperLady Does Cornwell, Part 3)from RipperLadyHi everybody. Well, today we're going to get a little closer to why Cornwell insists that Whistler's marriage drove her Ripper candidate over the edge. Next time, we'll actually get there! But hey, let's look at something else first. If you came across the following description in a book or an article, what do you think you'd conclude about the person it described?He had "blue eyes that were as inscrutable and penetrating as his secret thoughts and piercing mind. One might almost have called him pretty, except for his mouth, which could narrow into a hard, cruel line." Inscrutable, penetrating, secret, piercing, (almost) pretty, hard, cruel. These are the adjectives you have to work with... and this is how Cornwell describes Sickert's facial features in her opening chapter. Think she might be loading the dice a little bit?Hey, I'm not trying to "read into" Cornwell's text or "read between the lines." But Cornwell is a novelist. As a novelist, she controls, through her words, much of the imagery that the reader will "see" while reading the description. And the imagery she uses here is actually rather "stock" imagery for describing the villain in a novel. Sickert's eyes penetrate, his mind pierces (and what do knives do?). His eyes are inscrutable, his mind secretive... hmmm, so, he cannot be "read." To look at him, you would never know what he was thinking. And then, there's his mouth, hard and cruel. Not much interpretation needed there! She's instructing you on what to think.Through the descriptive power of language, Cornwell plants an image in the reader's mind of a hard and cruel man... piercing, penetrating, and utterly secretive. Another way of putting it is that Cornwell is using her descriptive powers in place of argument. She's trying to sway the reader on a somewhat subliminal level. And yes, using adjectives suggestive of cruelty and the type of secrecy necessary to be the Ripper is an effective rhetorical strategy. But in an argument--which relies upon facts, and putting facts together through a logical process--it's cheating. Sickert's facial features are irrelevant to the question of whether or not he is Jack the Ripper (unless, of course, they match a well-known description of one of the men seen with one of the victims on the night she was murdered... which, so far as I know, they don't). But with just the right wording, his features can be made to suggest that he is the Ripper. Okay, let's put aside my little language obsession for now. Are you ready for the big revelation? The one that absolutely proves that Sickert was more likely than anybody else to be Jack the Ripper?Well, without providing any evidence at this point in the book (though she does provide substantive evidence later on), Sickert had a genital abnormality, and he'd had three surgeries for it by the time he was 5 years old. In fact, according to his own nephew (whom Cornwell interviewed), the abnormality was in his penis. From these facts, and some of Sickert's artwork, Cornwell extrapolates that Sickert may have had a short stump of a penis. Well, that's all well and good. Based upon the evidence she presents later on, it may well be true. But it's a hypothesis. The problem is that Cornwell takes her hypothesis and argues as if it's a certainty. And she even gives her case a head-start. She plants the notion in the reader's mind before ever presenting any evidence to support it.Okay, so what are some of the ways that Cornwell runs with her hypothesis? Oh man. Here is where it really gets "good." Actually, she piles one hypothesis on top of another hypothesis on top of another hypothesis, and before we know it, Cornwell has reached certainty. But I just have to wonder... If the foundation itself is a hypothesis, and everything built on top of that foundation is a hypothesis, then how do we get to a certainty--at least in the "real world" of logic? I mean, am I dense or something? Is it really really obvious that if a guy might have had a mutilated penis, and the guy's painting mentor was getting married in a few days... that the guy would have been driven (at least temporarily) over the edge into murdering and mutilating women? Ooops. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.Anyway, here's a little bit of the process that gets Cornwell to her certainty. First, like most Victorian gentlemen, Sickert liked to use pseudonyms in writing letters to the editors. Secondly, Sickert (Cornwell, by now, assumes) could not have normal relations with a woman. Well, guess what? One of the letters written to the police (and signed pseudonymously by "Scotus") speculates that the criminal may have had his "privy member destroyed" (i.e. his penis mutilated), and is taking it out on prostitutes. Consequently, Cornwell takes this Victorian gentleman's speculation about the state of the killer's genitalia as fact. And then, from there, she implies that the letter writer may have been Sickert himself! (I mean, Sickert did like to write under pseudonyms, didn't he? Never mind that "Scotus" was not known to be one of them!). Maybe Sickert was just playing with the police, laughing at them. So here's the status of the Cornwellian logic at the moment: Some Victorian guy suggested that the killer might have had mutilated genitals, so that means that the killer must have had mutilated genitals... particularly since the letter suggesting that theory just might have been written pseudonymously by Walter Sickert (who just might have had mutilated genitals). In the real world, though, the "Scotus" letter really has no authority without any solid evidence of its significance. It's just another of the many pseudonymous theories floating around London at the time.Along these same lines... One of the letters to the editors was signed using (more or less) an identity that Sickert was known to use in his letters (and had even used on stage). The letter was signed "Nemo." And Sickert was known to use the pseudonym "Mr. Nemo." The author of the "Nemo" letter claimed that his time in India led him to believe that the murders were were using "peculiarly Eastern methods and universally recognized, and intended by the criminal classes to express insult, hatred, and contempt" (Times of London, 4 October, 1888). Now, unless Sickert had spent time in India (or thought it would be fun to pretend he had spent time in India), it's unlikely that the letter was written by him. But since "Nemo" is a name that is actually associated with Sickert (while "Scotus" is not), it's much more likely that the "Nemo" letter was written by Sickert than that the "Scotus" letter was. (Cornwell, incidentally, never mentions the "Nemo" letter). I'm not quite sure why Cornwell thinks that the theory voiced in the "Scotus" letter carries any more weight than any of the other theories that were going around... except that this theory happens to be the one that best fits her pet suspect.Well, once again, it looks like I'm going to have to stop, so I don't start to bore you. But here's where we are at the moment (getting repetitious?)... Sickert may have had genital mutilation which impaired his ability to engage in genital sex, and a letter signed "Scotus" speculated that the murderer roaming Whitechapel had mutilated genitals. Next time... we finally get to dissect the Whistler hypothesis, which only works, by the way, if we first accept these these two other hypotheses as fact. Hope you're having fun. I'll be finished with my first impressions on Thursday. What's wild is that these first impressions only took a couple hours of reading and note-taking. But there's just a lot to talk about.Who knows, maybe when she gets into the forensic evidence stuff, she'll start to argue on more solid ground.For further appearances by Walter Sickert, check out these...