list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Gods and Monsters on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Gods_and_Monsters/116040/default.aspx Title: Gods and Monsters
Year: 1998
Director: Bill Condon
Plot: Gods and Monsters was promoted from the outset as an artistic drama, but the publicity tended to play coyly on the possibility of a homosexual romance between the retired film director James Whale, played by Ian McKellen and his hunky gardener Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser). While the film does involve romance, the central relationship between the director and his gardener is about the development of a genuine friendship between two outwardly dissimilar but inwardly kindred spirits. In the story, Whale has been living for many years in peaceful, if not entirely contented retirement, under the loving and watchful eye of his contentious and argumentative Hungarian housekeeper (Lynn Redgrave). His earlier celebrity as the director of the original Frankenstein movie and its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, results in his being visited occasionally by disagreeable young men who have come to bask in the reminiscences of this creator of two "camp" classics. His reputation as a fairly outrageous homosexual comes into play here, when one particularly unpleasant and effeminate young man comes by seeking cinematic tidbits: the director challenges the boy to a game of stripping off one article of clothing for every revelation he shares about his moviemaking past. He had gotten the boy down to his briefs when he is stricken with one of his ever-recurring bouts of epilepsy, the result of a series of strokes. By way of contrast, while he is clearly interested in his gardener as a sex-object, gradually luring him into ever closer association, the openness and vulnerability of this awkwardly aggressive heterosexual boy inspires him to reveal the history of his heart. It turns out that, like the young man who is modeling for his supposed artworks, he came from a poor and difficult background. By the time naïve gardener learns of the director's homosexuality from the housekeeper, he has been drawn too deeply under the man's spell to stay away from their meetings for long. While the tension between the men never departs, a genuine relationship of caring develops between them. Meanwhile, Whale has been clearly observing the progressive deterioration of his mental faculties, and is increasingly being overwhelmed by vivid memories and visions. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 31
Number of Lists: 18
Number of blog posts: 3
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:17:03 GMTGods and Monsters1998Bill CondonGods and Monsters was promoted from the outset as an artistic drama, but the publicity tended to play coyly on the possibility of a homosexual romance between the retired film director <a href="/players/P___116539/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>James Whale</a>, played by <a href="/players/P____47684/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Ian McKellen</a> and his hunky gardener Clayton Boone (<a href="/players/P____24843/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Brendan Fraser</a>). While the film does involve romance, the central relationship between the director and his gardener is about the development of a genuine friendship between two outwardly dissimilar but inwardly kindred spirits. In the story, Whale has been living for many years in peaceful, if not entirely contented retirement, under the loving and watchful eye of his contentious and argumentative Hungarian housekeeper (<a href="/players/P____59204/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Lynn Redgrave</a>). His earlier celebrity as the director of the original <a href=/films/12430/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Frankenstein</a> movie and its sequel, <a href=/films/4431/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>The Bride of Frankenstein</a>, results in his being visited occasionally by disagreeable young men who have come to bask in the reminiscences of this creator of two "camp" classics. His reputation as a fairly outrageous homosexual comes into play here, when one particularly unpleasant and effeminate young man comes by seeking cinematic tidbits: the director challenges the boy to a game of stripping off one article of clothing for every revelation he shares about his moviemaking past. He had gotten the boy down to his briefs when he is stricken with one of his ever-recurring bouts of epilepsy, the result of a series of strokes. By way of contrast, while he is clearly interested in his gardener as a sex-object, gradually luring him into ever closer association, the openness and vulnerability of this awkwardly aggressive heterosexual boy inspires him to reveal the history of his heart. It turns out that, like the young man who is modeling for his supposed artworks, he came from a poor and difficult background. By the time naïve gardener learns of the director's homosexuality from the housekeeper, he has been drawn too deeply under the man's spell to stay away from their meetings for long. While the tension between the men never departs, a genuine relationship of caring develops between them. Meanwhile, Whale has been clearly observing the progressive deterioration of his mental faculties, and is increasingly being overwhelmed by vivid memories and visions. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide31Tag Target (>10)1833http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t31777jl3n5.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Gods_and_Monsters/116040/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2009/7/5/42919.aspx Post By: pippin06
Post To: Reel Thoughts
Post Date: 7/5/2009 11:21:37 AM
Body: What's an Oscar Flashback (tm)? Read here: Next on my Netflix queue was Gods and Monsters, for which Ian McKellen was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar; Lynn Redgrave was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar; and Bill Condon won for Best Adapted Screenplay (film year, 1998; awarding year, 1999). The other nominees for these three categories were: Best Actor Life is Beautiful - Roberto Benigni (Winner) Saving Private Ryan - Tom Hanks Affliction - Nick Nolte American History X - Edward Norton Best Supporting Actress Shakespeare in Love - Judi Dench (Winner) Primary Colors - Kathy Bates Little Voice - Brenda Blethyn Hilary and Jackie - Rachel Griffiths Best Adapted Screenplay Out of Sight Primary Colors A Simple Plan The Thin Red Line This movie also represents the fifth of five LGBT-themed Oscar movies at the top of my Netflix queue (thanks to my stream of consciousness queuing). Just in case you were keeping track. I've been wanting to see Gods and Monsters for a long time, mainly because I like Ian McKellen so much. This film predates Gandalf but is semi-contemporaneous with Magneto, and I just enjoy his screen presence and line delivery. 1998 was also a great year for films, as you might be able to discern from the nominee list above, so it was just one of those films that I'd always chalked up to my hope-to-see list, should I get the chance. That's why the almighty Netflix is so great, but, really, I promise I don't work for them. Gods and Monsters is a biopic about director James Whale (McKellen), who was most famous for directing Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein, even though he directed other pictures like Showboat. The film begins when Whale is in his retirement years, having just been afflicted by stroke and being doted on by his longtime housekeeper (Redgrave). He lives in relative peace, though it is clear that he is not quite comfortable in his state of resignation, particularly when young men come seeking stories about the Frankenstein pictures. One of the facets focused upon in this film was Whale's unhidden homosexuality, as the opening scenes of the film feature the wily director taunting an eager interviewer by being willing to only offer morsels about his movies, so long as the devotee removes an article of clothing in exchange for each answer, at least until post-stroke epilepsy interrupts the game. As the movie progresses, Whale's gardener, Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser), becomes the object of the director's affection, and while his sexual attraction is barely contained, Boone's alpha-male heterosexuality seems to make Whale more willing to talk about his past, including revelations about his father, his time in war, and the seeds of his moviemaking career, as Boone poses for Whale to draw him. When Boone later learns of Whale's homosexuality, though he is initially reviled by the information, he can't seem to stay away from the charismatic and interesting man, and a genuine friendship develops between them, even as Whale's health and mental stability deteriorate with each passing day. Gods and Monsters was something of a mixed bag, both as an artistic work and as a piece of entertainment. My immediate reaction was that the story was a bit of a narrative mess: the film centered on the end of a man's life and his ability to cope through an awkward and cathartic friendship, but the focus was scattered. First, time and celluloid were spent on Boone's struggle to cope with befriending a gay man who he also seemed to acknowledge as a creative genius, but the story never flushes out why Boone in particular can't stay away, despite his discomfort, or why he should be drawn to Whale to begin with. It intimates that he is somewhat aimless and confused, traumatized by his childhood relationship with his father, and seemingly unable to commit to current love interests, but the film fails to offer an explanation as to why Boone finds solace in his friendship with Whale. By the same token, the film also dallied with curious cut scenes representing visions of madness that Whale was supposed to be having as his mental condition deteriorated, which were sometimes funny and, at least, interesting but made the picture maddeningly distracting, rendering the pacing quite choppy as they broke the natural flow of the story. While madness may disrupt the natural flow of a person's ability to understand his world and surroundings, and while it was important to put Whale's health in context with the apparent point of the story, some thought has to be given to the potential audience of the film, especially since the film's thrust was not so much to focus on Whale's declining mental state but on his progression toward the end of his life given his choices and actions of the beginning and middle of it. I am curious as to why Condon won the Oscar for this picture, but I haven't seen the other nominees in the Adapted Screenplay category. There were some clever and poetic lines delivered by McKellen and co-stars, but the story itself was so disjointed, I actually had a hard time staying focused and/or concentrating on the picture. I was wide awake but started thinking about things I had to do rather than remaining committed what I was watching. Gods and Monsters still had some good points about it, however. Ian McKellen is always a joy to watch because he has such a wonderful grasp of language and a melodious British accent to accentuate his delivery. Also, he has the ability to communicate so much with simple facial expressions, and, if nothing else, this film portrays how Whale was a complex man, full of convictions and regrets that McKellen was able to emanate with simple looks or a subtle crooked smile. Redgrave was also amusing as his overly concerned Hungarian housekeeper, fussing over her charge as if he were her husband, while simultaneously worrying over his afterlife due to his lifestyle in the current one. Of the two categories for which these performers were nominated, I've seen Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful in the Best Actor category and Shakespeare in Love in the Best Supporting Actress category. So far, I feel Tom Hanks was most deserving of the best actor award (but he'd already won twice by this nomination and so was very unlikely to win), since Benigni acted much like he does in real life in the charming Life is Beautiful, though McKellen had a difficult part and did an amazing job. I feel that anyone would probably have deserved the Supporting Actress award over Dench, who, as I recall, was given a pity prize after an earlier snub for 15 minutes of unimpressive screen time as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Redgrave was charming, but I haven't seen enough of this category to say that she was snubbed in the end. On the other hand, I was less convinced by Fraser. The role was certainly new territory for him, as he'd traditionally played goofballs in films like Encino Man and George of the Jungle, but I had a hard time suspending disbelief for him because he's simply not that great of an actor. I've often felt that he gets cast for his looks, though he has some arguable comedic timing too. I think the former applied more to his inclusion in this film, as I failed to believe or trust any single emotion or dynamic that he offered as this character, which is disappointing, given the unusual and complicated relationship being portrayed. The supporting cast aside from these main three was also largely uninteresting, and none of the technical elements kept me engaged, either. Ultimately, Gods and Monsters had some originality even as it had some creative if unbalanced storytelling and some good performances. While watching the film, though, my brain disengaged from concentration on the picture somewhere two-thirds of the way into the film, when Whale's visions and focus on Boone's inability to handle Whale's gay lifestyle collided into one big hodgepodge of unresolved mishmash. Even the ending was something of a conundrum - going from one likely eventuality to one unlikely one without explanation for this transition. Maybe I missed the overall point, but I don't think so. As a result, I'm inclined to rate Gods and Monsters a 6.5 on the patented ratings scale between cute/mediocre and shaky/entertaining because the film wasn't quite mediocre but was definitely a bit more than shaky in my opinion. I also think the test has not been passed here, since I'm obviously not as interested in the film having seen it as I was before I viewed it. Gods and Monsters may be recommendable if only because of McKellen, or if there is an interest in the life and times of director James Whale, but otherwise, it lacks a fully fleshed-out story, adapted though it was from a source novel (which now makes me wonder how the novel reads).
]]>Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:21:37 GMTpippin06Reel Thoughts7/5/2009 11:21:37 AMWhat's an Oscar Flashback (tm)? Read here: Next on my Netflix queue was Gods and Monsters, for which Ian McKellen was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar; Lynn Redgrave was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar; and Bill Condon won for Best Adapted Screenplay (film year, 1998; awarding year, 1999). The other nominees for these three categories were: Best Actor Life is Beautiful - Roberto Benigni (Winner) Saving Private Ryan - Tom Hanks Affliction - Nick Nolte American History X - Edward Norton Best Supporting Actress Shakespeare in Love - Judi Dench (Winner) Primary Colors - Kathy Bates Little Voice - Brenda Blethyn Hilary and Jackie - Rachel Griffiths Best Adapted Screenplay Out of Sight Primary Colors A Simple Plan The Thin Red Line This movie also represents the fifth of five LGBT-themed Oscar movies at the top of my Netflix queue (thanks to my stream of consciousness queuing). Just in case you were keeping track. I've been wanting to see Gods and Monsters for a long time, mainly because I like Ian McKellen so much. This film predates Gandalf but is semi-contemporaneous with Magneto, and I just enjoy his screen presence and line delivery. 1998 was also a great year for films, as you might be able to discern from the nominee list above, so it was just one of those films that I'd always chalked up to my hope-to-see list, should I get the chance. That's why the almighty Netflix is so great, but, really, I promise I don't work for them. Gods and Monsters is a biopic about director James Whale (McKellen), who was most famous for directing Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein, even though he directed other pictures like Showboat. The film begins when Whale is in his retirement years, having just been afflicted by stroke and being doted on by his longtime housekeeper (Redgrave). He lives in relative peace, though it is clear that he is not quite comfortable in his state of resignation, particularly when young men come seeking stories about the Frankenstein pictures. One of the facets focused upon in this film was Whale's unhidden homosexuality, as the opening scenes of the film feature the wily director taunting an eager interviewer by being willing to only offer morsels about his movies, so long as the devotee removes an article of clothing in exchange for each answer, at least until post-stroke epilepsy interrupts the game. As the movie progresses, Whale's gardener, Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser), becomes the object of the director's affection, and while his sexual attraction is barely contained, Boone's alpha-male heterosexuality seems to make Whale more willing to talk about his past, including revelations about his father, his time in war, and the seeds of his moviemaking career, as Boone poses for Whale to draw him. When Boone later learns of Whale's homosexuality, though he is initially reviled by the information, he can't seem to stay away from the charismatic and interesting man, and a genuine friendship develops between them, even as Whale's health and mental stability deteriorate with each passing day. Gods and Monsters was something of a mixed bag, both as an artistic work and as a piece of entertainment. My immediate reaction was that the story was a bit of a narrative mess: the film centered on the end of a man's life and his ability to cope through an awkward and cathartic friendship, but the focus was scattered. First, time and celluloid were spent on Boone's struggle to cope with befriending a gay man who he also seemed to acknowledge as a creative genius, but the story never flushes out why Boone in particular can't stay away, despite his discomfort, or why he should be drawn to Whale to begin with. It intimates that he is somewhat aimless and confused, traumatized by his childhood relationship with his father, and seemingly unable to commit to current love interests, but the film fails to offer an explanation as to why Boone finds solace in his friendship with Whale. By the same token, the film also dallied with curious cut scenes representing visions of madness that Whale was supposed to be having as his mental condition deteriorated, which were sometimes funny and, at least, interesting but made the picture maddeningly distracting, rendering the pacing quite choppy as they broke the natural flow of the story. While madness may disrupt the natural flow of a person's ability to understand his world and surroundings, and while it was important to put Whale's health in context with the apparent point of the story, some thought has to be given to the potential audience of the film, especially since the film's thrust was not so much to focus on Whale's declining mental state but on his progression toward the end of his life given his choices and actions of the beginning and middle of it. I am curious as to why Condon won the Oscar for this picture, but I haven't seen the other nominees in the Adapted Screenplay category. There were some clever and poetic lines delivered by McKellen and co-stars, but the story itself was so disjointed, I actually had a hard time staying focused and/or concentrating on the picture. I was wide awake but started thinking about things I had to do rather than remaining committed what I was watching. Gods and Monsters still had some good points about it, however. Ian McKellen is always a joy to watch because he has such a wonderful grasp of language and a melodious British accent to accentuate his delivery. Also, he has the ability to communicate so much with simple facial expressions, and, if nothing else, this film portrays how Whale was a complex man, full of convictions and regrets that McKellen was able to emanate with simple looks or a subtle crooked smile. Redgrave was also amusing as his overly concerned Hungarian housekeeper, fussing over her charge as if he were her husband, while simultaneously worrying over his afterlife due to his lifestyle in the current one. Of the two categories for which these performers were nominated, I've seen Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful in the Best Actor category and Shakespeare in Love in the Best Supporting Actress category. So far, I feel Tom Hanks was most deserving of the best actor award (but he'd already won twice by this nomination and so was very unlikely to win), since Benigni acted much like he does in real life in the charming Life is Beautiful, though McKellen had a difficult part and did an amazing job. I feel that anyone would probably have deserved the Supporting Actress award over Dench, who, as I recall, was given a pity prize after an earlier snub for 15 minutes of unimpressive screen time as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Redgrave was charming, but I haven't seen enough of this category to say that she was snubbed in the end. On the other hand, I was less convinced by Fraser. The role was certainly new territory for him, as he'd traditionally played goofballs in films like Encino Man and George of the Jungle, but I had a hard time suspending disbelief for him because he's simply not that great of an actor. I've often felt that he gets cast for his looks, though he has some arguable comedic timing too. I think the former applied more to his inclusion in this film, as I failed to believe or trust any single emotion or dynamic that he offered as this character, which is disappointing, given the unusual and complicated relationship being portrayed. The supporting cast aside from these main three was also largely uninteresting, and none of the technical elements kept me engaged, either. Ultimately, Gods and Monsters had some originality even as it had some creative if unbalanced storytelling and some good performances. While watching the film, though, my brain disengaged from concentration on the picture somewhere two-thirds of the way into the film, when Whale's visions and focus on Boone's inability to handle Whale's gay lifestyle collided into one big hodgepodge of unresolved mishmash. Even the ending was something of a conundrum - going from one likely eventuality to one unlikely one without explanation for this transition. Maybe I missed the overall point, but I don't think so. As a result, I'm inclined to rate Gods and Monsters a 6.5 on the patented ratings scale between cute/mediocre and shaky/entertaining because the film wasn't quite mediocre but was definitely a bit more than shaky in my opinion. I also think the test has not been passed here, since I'm obviously not as interested in the film having seen it as I was before I viewed it. Gods and Monsters may be recommendable if only because of McKellen, or if there is an interest in the life and times of director James Whale, but otherwise, it lacks a fully fleshed-out story, adapted though it was from a source novel (which now makes me wonder how the novel reads). http://www.spout.com/blogs/karina/archive/2008/10/28/36729.aspx Post By: Karina
Post To: Karina on SpoutBlog
Post Date: 10/28/2008 11:00:56 AM
Body: Watch Frankenstein (Edison, 1910) in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com For city-dwelling adults without kids, Halloween can be truly frightening. With the pressure on to outdo ones friends, frenemies and total strangers with a costume that strikes the perfect balance between creative, alluring and topical, the average October 31st night out can be a lot like sixth grade, except with the added toxic influence of alcohol and biological clocks. Plus, this year the streets are expected to be full of Sexy and/or Ironic and/or Demonic Sarah Palins. Scary! So why not stay home and watch movies instead? If you’re gonna convince anyone to abandon their plans and spend the night on your couch instead, you’ve got to have a theme and a plan, so we’ve put together an outline for a full night of films, all of which are available on DVD and/or online, based around one of the ultimate icons of classic horror: Frankenstein. We lay it all out after the jump. 7pm: Frankenstein (1910) Directed by J. Searle Dawley My long-dormant interest in silent horror was revived recently by Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies, a great documentary that played at the Toronto and Hamptons Film Festivals which examines the influence of early cinema on early 20th century fine art. Inspired by excerpts seen in that doc, I went on the hunt for this silent short (it’s just under thirteen minutes in length), is the first known cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Though the film was shot at Edison Studios and is often billed as a Thomas Edison production, Edison actually had nothing to do with it. Though this Frankenstein is hardly graphically violent, it was initially censored in Britain for essentially being too creepy; this is no doubt thanks to director Dawley’s incredible, pioneering special effects, which especially pop out in the making-of-the-monster sequence. Thought lost for decades, a print was discovered in the 70s. Still, prepare to begin your evening huddled around a computer screen: Frankenstein is not yet available on DVD, but you can watch it on the Internet Archive, on YouTube, or via Veoh above. 7:15: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Directed by James Whale The virtually undisputed masterpiece of the first golden age of filmed horror, James Whale’s sequel to his own 1931 Universal blockbuster opens with a prologue that could almost be characterized as meta. Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) expresses mock disbelief that Mary Shelley’s “bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein, a monster created out of cadavers out of rifled graves.” Elsa Lanchester, who will show up later as the Monster’s lightning-struck bride, here appears as Shelley, and she looks up from her embroidery and defends “her moral lesson [about] the punishment that befell a moral man that dared to emulate God.” The film then jumps to the wreckage of windmill fire where the first movie left off, from which point it picks up a subplot from the novel and twists it into unforgettably melancholy ends. Maybe I’ve just seen it too many times to be scared or to even really laugh at some of the more over-the-top performances; at this point, I find Bride to be unbearably sad. Especially in its second half, beginning with the fugitive monster’s encounter with the blind man who will teach him to speak and feel. And there’s one line that just breaks my heart, over and over again: the mad doctor Praetorius asks the Monster if he understands how he came to be. Boris Karloff’s face falls (as much as it can under all that make-up) as he nods and says, “Made from dead. I loved dead. Hate living.” Once he’s able to articulate his thoughts, it soon becomes apparent that the Monster was the smartest guy in the room all along. 8:30: Gods and Monsters A bit of a palette cleanser between the two out-and-out horror films on our list. Bill Condon won an Oscar for his exploration of the later years of director Whale, which contains footage from and flashbacks to the making of Bride of Frankenstein. The film is definitely fictionalized — Condon based his script on a novel, and Brendan Fraser’s character Clay the gardener was a fabrication — but a basic biopic was not on the agenda. As a work that draws connections between Whale’s homosexuality and his masterwork about a misunderstood other, Gods and Monsters could be filed alongside the work of Todd Haynes, as a kind of activist academia wrapped up in narrative film. 10:15: Flesh for Frankenstein The Paul Morrissey-directed, Andy Warhol-produced takeoff on the classic tale of reanimation could be called Frankenstein, Italian Style. Initially planned as a 3D release (!) Flesh brings the Frankenstein story back to the playfully grotesque, surreal beauty evident in the silent version, but super-gory and explicitly sexual to the point of camp, it was also very much of the zeitgeist. Co-written by Tonino Guerra, who scripted Amarcord as well as many of Antonioni’s films of the 60s, and clearly influenced by the Giallo horrors blossoming under the direction of Dario Argento and Mario Bava. 11:50: Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks’ satire spoofs all three Frankenstein films of the 1930s, and it, along with the brief clip of Colin Clive at the beginning of Oingo Boingo’s video for Weird Science, landed in my consciousness at a much earlier age than any of the original films it pulls from. I don’t find myself laughing as hard as I did at age 13, but I would be remiss not to list it here. Plus, much, much later in my cinematic development, I learned that the Puttin’ on The Ritz bit, the famous dance number with Peter Boyle which the NY Observer recently cited as the backdrop for the “funniest joke in the history of film,” was a loose take-off on the recital played by Boris Karloff’s piano virtuoso zombie in my favorite horror film of the 30s, The Walking Dead (which is unfortunately not on DVD; otherwise, it would surely have made this list.) 1:35: Targets To put it in the crassest terms possible, by the time Peter Bogdanovich’s Roger Corman-produced directorial debut came around, thirty years away from his career peak, Karloff was so far removed from young Frankenstein that he might have been walking dead. 80 years old and rocking half a lung, with about a year left to his life, Karloff contractually owed Corman some screen time. In an effort to scrapt two barnacles simultaneously, the producer told whiz kid Bogdanovich that he could make any film he liked, so long as he used 20 minutes of new footage of Karloff, and 20 minute of recycled footage from the 1963 Corman pic The Terror, starring Karloff and Jack Nicholson. So Bogdanovich, with screenplay help from Sam Fuller, crafted a story that would have Karloff essentially playing a version of himself, an aging horror star who makes one final public appearance at a drive-in for a special screening of one of his films. Karloff wasn’t up to a starring role (he allegedly sat in a wheelchair breathing through an oxygen mask between takes), so this became the b-plot to the suburban killing spree of an enrared Vietnam veteran, who comes face-to-face with Karloff in the film’s climax. For all of the extenuating circumstances, Karloff’s performance in Targets is masterful, embodying the last vestige of horror as myth in conflict with horror as reality. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth
]]>Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:00:56 GMTKarinaKarina on SpoutBlog10/28/2008 11:00:56 AM Watch Frankenstein (Edison, 1910) in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com For city-dwelling adults without kids, Halloween can be truly frightening. With the pressure on to outdo ones friends, frenemies and total strangers with a costume that strikes the perfect balance between creative, alluring and topical, the average October 31st night out can be a lot like sixth grade, except with the added toxic influence of alcohol and biological clocks. Plus, this year the streets are expected to be full of Sexy and/or Ironic and/or Demonic Sarah Palins. Scary! So why not stay home and watch movies instead? If you’re gonna convince anyone to abandon their plans and spend the night on your couch instead, you’ve got to have a theme and a plan, so we’ve put together an outline for a full night of films, all of which are available on DVD and/or online, based around one of the ultimate icons of classic horror: Frankenstein. We lay it all out after the jump. 7pm: Frankenstein (1910) Directed by J. Searle Dawley My long-dormant interest in silent horror was revived recently by Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies, a great documentary that played at the Toronto and Hamptons Film Festivals which examines the influence of early cinema on early 20th century fine art. Inspired by excerpts seen in that doc, I went on the hunt for this silent short (it’s just under thirteen minutes in length), is the first known cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Though the film was shot at Edison Studios and is often billed as a Thomas Edison production, Edison actually had nothing to do with it. Though this Frankenstein is hardly graphically violent, it was initially censored in Britain for essentially being too creepy; this is no doubt thanks to director Dawley’s incredible, pioneering special effects, which especially pop out in the making-of-the-monster sequence. Thought lost for decades, a print was discovered in the 70s. Still, prepare to begin your evening huddled around a computer screen: Frankenstein is not yet available on DVD, but you can watch it on the Internet Archive, on YouTube, or via Veoh above. 7:15: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Directed by James Whale The virtually undisputed masterpiece of the first golden age of filmed horror, James Whale’s sequel to his own 1931 Universal blockbuster opens with a prologue that could almost be characterized as meta. Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) expresses mock disbelief that Mary Shelley’s “bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein, a monster created out of cadavers out of rifled graves.” Elsa Lanchester, who will show up later as the Monster’s lightning-struck bride, here appears as Shelley, and she looks up from her embroidery and defends “her moral lesson [about] the punishment that befell a moral man that dared to emulate God.” The film then jumps to the wreckage of windmill fire where the first movie left off, from which point it picks up a subplot from the novel and twists it into unforgettably melancholy ends. Maybe I’ve just seen it too many times to be scared or to even really laugh at some of the more over-the-top performances; at this point, I find Bride to be unbearably sad. Especially in its second half, beginning with the fugitive monster’s encounter with the blind man who will teach him to speak and feel. And there’s one line that just breaks my heart, over and over again: the mad doctor Praetorius asks the Monster if he understands how he came to be. Boris Karloff’s face falls (as much as it can under all that make-up) as he nods and says, “Made from dead. I loved dead. Hate living.” Once he’s able to articulate his thoughts, it soon becomes apparent that the Monster was the smartest guy in the room all along. 8:30: Gods and Monsters A bit of a palette cleanser between the two out-and-out horror films on our list. Bill Condon won an Oscar for his exploration of the later years of director Whale, which contains footage from and flashbacks to the making of Bride of Frankenstein. The film is definitely fictionalized — Condon based his script on a novel, and Brendan Fraser’s character Clay the gardener was a fabrication — but a basic biopic was not on the agenda. As a work that draws connections between Whale’s homosexuality and his masterwork about a misunderstood other, Gods and Monsters could be filed alongside the work of Todd Haynes, as a kind of activist academia wrapped up in narrative film. 10:15: Flesh for Frankenstein The Paul Morrissey-directed, Andy Warhol-produced takeoff on the classic tale of reanimation could be called Frankenstein, Italian Style. Initially planned as a 3D release (!) Flesh brings the Frankenstein story back to the playfully grotesque, surreal beauty evident in the silent version, but super-gory and explicitly sexual to the point of camp, it was also very much of the zeitgeist. Co-written by Tonino Guerra, who scripted Amarcord as well as many of Antonioni’s films of the 60s, and clearly influenced by the Giallo horrors blossoming under the direction of Dario Argento and Mario Bava. 11:50: Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks’ satire spoofs all three Frankenstein films of the 1930s, and it, along with the brief clip of Colin Clive at the beginning of Oingo Boingo’s video for Weird Science, landed in my consciousness at a much earlier age than any of the original films it pulls from. I don’t find myself laughing as hard as I did at age 13, but I would be remiss not to list it here. Plus, much, much later in my cinematic development, I learned that the Puttin’ on The Ritz bit, the famous dance number with Peter Boyle which the NY Observer recently cited as the backdrop for the “funniest joke in the history of film,” was a loose take-off on the recital played by Boris Karloff’s piano virtuoso zombie in my favorite horror film of the 30s, The Walking Dead (which is unfortunately not on DVD; otherwise, it would surely have made this list.) 1:35: Targets To put it in the crassest terms possible, by the time Peter Bogdanovich’s Roger Corman-produced directorial debut came around, thirty years away from his career peak, Karloff was so far removed from young Frankenstein that he might have been walking dead. 80 years old and rocking half a lung, with about a year left to his life, Karloff contractually owed Corman some screen time. In an effort to scrapt two barnacles simultaneously, the producer told whiz kid Bogdanovich that he could make any film he liked, so long as he used 20 minutes of new footage of Karloff, and 20 minute of recycled footage from the 1963 Corman pic The Terror, starring Karloff and Jack Nicholson. So Bogdanovich, with screenplay help from Sam Fuller, crafted a story that would have Karloff essentially playing a version of himself, an aging horror star who makes one final public appearance at a drive-in for a special screening of one of his films. Karloff wasn’t up to a starring role (he allegedly sat in a wheelchair breathing through an oxygen mask between takes), so this became the b-plot to the suburban killing spree of an enrared Vietnam veteran, who comes face-to-face with Karloff in the film’s climax. For all of the extenuating circumstances, Karloff’s performance in Targets is masterful, embodying the last vestige of horror as myth in conflict with horror as reality. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/10/28/36728.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/28/2008 11:00:45 AM
Body: Watch Frankenstein (Edison, 1910) in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com For city-dwelling adults without kids, Halloween can be truly frightening. With the pressure on to outdo ones friends, frenemies and total strangers with a costume that strikes the perfect balance between creative, alluring and topical, the average October 31st night out can be a lot like sixth grade, except with the added toxic influence of alcohol and biological clocks. Plus, this year the streets are expected to be full of Sexy and/or Ironic and/or Demonic Sarah Palins. Scary! So why not stay home and watch movies instead? If you’re gonna convince anyone to abandon their plans and spend the night on your couch instead, you’ve got to have a theme and a plan, so we’ve put together an outline for a full night of films, all of which are available on DVD and/or online, based around one of the ultimate icons of classic horror: Frankenstein. We lay it all out after the jump. 7pm: Frankenstein (1910) Directed by J. Searle Dawley My long-dormant interest in silent horror was revived recently by Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies, a great documentary that played at the Toronto and Hamptons Film Festivals which examines the influence of early cinema on early 20th century fine art. Inspired by excerpts seen in that doc, I went on the hunt for this silent short (it’s just under thirteen minutes in length), is the first known cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Though the film was shot at Edison Studios and is often billed as a Thomas Edison production, Edison actually had nothing to do with it. Though this Frankenstein is hardly graphically violent, it was initially censored in Britain for essentially being too creepy; this is no doubt thanks to director Dawley’s incredible, pioneering special effects, which especially pop out in the making-of-the-monster sequence. Thought lost for decades, a print was discovered in the 70s. Still, prepare to begin your evening huddled around a computer screen: Frankenstein is not yet available on DVD, but you can watch it on the Internet Archive, on YouTube, or via Veoh above. 7:15: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Directed by James Whale The virtually undisputed masterpiece of the first golden age of filmed horror, James Whale’s sequel to his own 1931 Universal blockbuster opens with a prologue that could almost be characterized as meta. Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) expresses mock disbelief that Mary Shelley’s “bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein, a monster created out of cadavers out of rifled graves.” Elsa Lanchester, who will show up later as the Monster’s lightning-struck bride, here appears as Shelley, and she looks up from her embroidery and defends “her moral lesson [about] the punishment that befell a moral man that dared to emulate God.” The film then jumps to the wreckage of windmill fire where the first movie left off, from which point it picks up a subplot from the novel and twists it into unforgettably melancholy ends. Maybe I’ve just seen it too many times to be scared or to even really laugh at some of the more over-the-top performances; at this point, I find Bride to be unbearably sad. Especially in its second half, beginning with the fugitive monster’s encounter with the blind man who will teach him to speak and feel. And there’s one line that just breaks my heart, over and over again: the mad doctor Praetorius asks the Monster if he understands how he came to be. Boris Karloff’s face falls (as much as it can under all that make-up) as he nods and says, “Made from dead. I loved dead. Hate living.” Once he’s able to articulate his thoughts, it soon becomes apparent that the Monster was the smartest guy in the room all along. 8:30: Gods and Monsters A bit of a palette cleanser between the two out-and-out horror films on our list. Bill Condon won an Oscar for his exploration of the later years of director Whale, which contains footage from and flashbacks to the making of Bride of Frankenstein. The film is definitely fictionalized — Condon based his script on a novel, and Brendan Fraser’s character Clay the gardener was a fabrication — but a basic biopic was not on the agenda. As a work that draws connections between Whale’s homosexuality and his masterwork about a misunderstood other, Gods and Monsters could be filed alongside the work of Todd Haynes, as a kind of activist academia wrapped up in narrative film. 10:15: Flesh for Frankenstein The Paul Morrissey-directed, Andy Warhol-produced takeoff on the classic tale of reanimation could be called Frankenstein, Italian Style. Initially planned as a 3D release (!) Flesh brings the Frankenstein story back to the playfully grotesque, surreal beauty evident in the silent version, but super-gory and explicitly sexual to the point of camp, it was also very much of the zeitgeist. Co-written by Tonino Guerra, who scripted Amarcord as well as many of Antonioni’s films of the 60s, and clearly influenced by the Giallo horrors blossoming under the direction of Dario Argento and Mario Bava. 11:50: Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks’ satire spoofs all three Frankenstein films of the 1930s, and it, along with the brief clip of Colin Clive at the beginning of Oingo Boingo’s video for Weird Science, landed in my consciousness at a much earlier age than any of the original films it pulls from. I don’t find myself laughing as hard as I did at age 13, but I would be remiss not to list it here. Plus, much, much later in my cinematic development, I learned that the Puttin’ on The Ritz bit, the famous dance number with Peter Boyle which the NY Observer recently cited as the backdrop for the “funniest joke in the history of film,” was a loose take-off on the recital played by Boris Karloff’s piano virtuoso zombie in my favorite horror film of the 30s, The Walking Dead (which is unfortunately not on DVD; otherwise, it would surely have made this list.) 1:35: Targets To put it in the crassest terms possible, by the time Peter Bogdanovich’s Roger Corman-produced directorial debut came around, thirty years away from his career peak, Karloff was so far removed from young Frankenstein that he might have been walking dead. 80 years old and rocking half a lung, with about a year left to his life, Karloff contractually owed Corman some screen time. In an effort to scrapt two barnacles simultaneously, the producer told whiz kid Bogdanovich that he could make any film he liked, so long as he used 20 minutes of new footage of Karloff, and 20 minute of recycled footage from the 1963 Corman pic The Terror, starring Karloff and Jack Nicholson. So Bogdanovich, with screenplay help from Sam Fuller, crafted a story that would have Karloff essentially playing a version of himself, an aging horror star who makes one final public appearance at a drive-in for a special screening of one of his films. Karloff wasn’t up to a starring role (he allegedly sat in a wheelchair breathing through an oxygen mask between takes), so this became the b-plot to the suburban killing spree of an enrared Vietnam veteran, who comes face-to-face with Karloff in the film’s climax. For all of the extenuating circumstances, Karloff’s performance in Targets is masterful, embodying the last vestige of horror as myth in conflict with horror as reality. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:00:45 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/28/2008 11:00:45 AM Watch Frankenstein (Edison, 1910) in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com For city-dwelling adults without kids, Halloween can be truly frightening. With the pressure on to outdo ones friends, frenemies and total strangers with a costume that strikes the perfect balance between creative, alluring and topical, the average October 31st night out can be a lot like sixth grade, except with the added toxic influence of alcohol and biological clocks. Plus, this year the streets are expected to be full of Sexy and/or Ironic and/or Demonic Sarah Palins. Scary! So why not stay home and watch movies instead? If you’re gonna convince anyone to abandon their plans and spend the night on your couch instead, you’ve got to have a theme and a plan, so we’ve put together an outline for a full night of films, all of which are available on DVD and/or online, based around one of the ultimate icons of classic horror: Frankenstein. We lay it all out after the jump. 7pm: Frankenstein (1910) Directed by J. Searle Dawley My long-dormant interest in silent horror was revived recently by Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies, a great documentary that played at the Toronto and Hamptons Film Festivals which examines the influence of early cinema on early 20th century fine art. Inspired by excerpts seen in that doc, I went on the hunt for this silent short (it’s just under thirteen minutes in length), is the first known cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Though the film was shot at Edison Studios and is often billed as a Thomas Edison production, Edison actually had nothing to do with it. Though this Frankenstein is hardly graphically violent, it was initially censored in Britain for essentially being too creepy; this is no doubt thanks to director Dawley’s incredible, pioneering special effects, which especially pop out in the making-of-the-monster sequence. Thought lost for decades, a print was discovered in the 70s. Still, prepare to begin your evening huddled around a computer screen: Frankenstein is not yet available on DVD, but you can watch it on the Internet Archive, on YouTube, or via Veoh above. 7:15: Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Directed by James Whale The virtually undisputed masterpiece of the first golden age of filmed horror, James Whale’s sequel to his own 1931 Universal blockbuster opens with a prologue that could almost be characterized as meta. Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon) expresses mock disbelief that Mary Shelley’s “bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein, a monster created out of cadavers out of rifled graves.” Elsa Lanchester, who will show up later as the Monster’s lightning-struck bride, here appears as Shelley, and she looks up from her embroidery and defends “her moral lesson [about] the punishment that befell a moral man that dared to emulate God.” The film then jumps to the wreckage of windmill fire where the first movie left off, from which point it picks up a subplot from the novel and twists it into unforgettably melancholy ends. Maybe I’ve just seen it too many times to be scared or to even really laugh at some of the more over-the-top performances; at this point, I find Bride to be unbearably sad. Especially in its second half, beginning with the fugitive monster’s encounter with the blind man who will teach him to speak and feel. And there’s one line that just breaks my heart, over and over again: the mad doctor Praetorius asks the Monster if he understands how he came to be. Boris Karloff’s face falls (as much as it can under all that make-up) as he nods and says, “Made from dead. I loved dead. Hate living.” Once he’s able to articulate his thoughts, it soon becomes apparent that the Monster was the smartest guy in the room all along. 8:30: Gods and Monsters A bit of a palette cleanser between the two out-and-out horror films on our list. Bill Condon won an Oscar for his exploration of the later years of director Whale, which contains footage from and flashbacks to the making of Bride of Frankenstein. The film is definitely fictionalized — Condon based his script on a novel, and Brendan Fraser’s character Clay the gardener was a fabrication — but a basic biopic was not on the agenda. As a work that draws connections between Whale’s homosexuality and his masterwork about a misunderstood other, Gods and Monsters could be filed alongside the work of Todd Haynes, as a kind of activist academia wrapped up in narrative film. 10:15: Flesh for Frankenstein The Paul Morrissey-directed, Andy Warhol-produced takeoff on the classic tale of reanimation could be called Frankenstein, Italian Style. Initially planned as a 3D release (!) Flesh brings the Frankenstein story back to the playfully grotesque, surreal beauty evident in the silent version, but super-gory and explicitly sexual to the point of camp, it was also very much of the zeitgeist. Co-written by Tonino Guerra, who scripted Amarcord as well as many of Antonioni’s films of the 60s, and clearly influenced by the Giallo horrors blossoming under the direction of Dario Argento and Mario Bava. 11:50: Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks’ satire spoofs all three Frankenstein films of the 1930s, and it, along with the brief clip of Colin Clive at the beginning of Oingo Boingo’s video for Weird Science, landed in my consciousness at a much earlier age than any of the original films it pulls from. I don’t find myself laughing as hard as I did at age 13, but I would be remiss not to list it here. Plus, much, much later in my cinematic development, I learned that the Puttin’ on The Ritz bit, the famous dance number with Peter Boyle which the NY Observer recently cited as the backdrop for the “funniest joke in the history of film,” was a loose take-off on the recital played by Boris Karloff’s piano virtuoso zombie in my favorite horror film of the 30s, The Walking Dead (which is unfortunately not on DVD; otherwise, it would surely have made this list.) 1:35: Targets To put it in the crassest terms possible, by the time Peter Bogdanovich’s Roger Corman-produced directorial debut came around, thirty years away from his career peak, Karloff was so far removed from young Frankenstein that he might have been walking dead. 80 years old and rocking half a lung, with about a year left to his life, Karloff contractually owed Corman some screen time. In an effort to scrapt two barnacles simultaneously, the producer told whiz kid Bogdanovich that he could make any film he liked, so long as he used 20 minutes of new footage of Karloff, and 20 minute of recycled footage from the 1963 Corman pic The Terror, starring Karloff and Jack Nicholson. So Bogdanovich, with screenplay help from Sam Fuller, crafted a story that would have Karloff essentially playing a version of himself, an aging horror star who makes one final public appearance at a drive-in for a special screening of one of his films. Karloff wasn’t up to a starring role (he allegedly sat in a wheelchair breathing through an oxygen mask between takes), so this became the b-plot to the suburban killing spree of an enrared Vietnam veteran, who comes face-to-face with Karloff in the film’s climax. For all of the extenuating circumstances, Karloff’s performance in Targets is masterful, embodying the last vestige of horror as myth in conflict with horror as reality. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/love/MemberTagFilms.aspxlove
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