Winchester

The Home Sweet Home Blogathon is an event devoted to themes of houses, homes and/or family, hosted by Taking Up Room and RealWeegieMidget Reviews. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host sites.

Winchester

Netflix viewing 

In 1886, Sarah Winchester moved from her home in New Haven, CT into a two-story farmhouse in San Jose. The widow of William Wirt Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company—the manufacturer of firearms—she had inherited a fifty-percent ownership of the company and over $20.5 million, so she was wealthy, but she had also lost her infant daughter and only child to a children’s disease called marasmus.

According to published accounts, a medium, who had allegedly been channeling Sarah’s husband at the time, told her to make the move west for a specific reason: to build a residence not just for herself, but for the ghosts of those who died from Winchester rifles. Thus began the creation of one of the strangest houses ever built.

Today the mansion is known as the Winchester Mystery House. It takes up 24,000 square feet of space (puny in comparison with the William Hearst Castle further south along the California coast), with 160 rooms, at a price of $5 million. Here’s a live walkthrough of the house from last April.

Was the house haunted? Rooms were added to it, day and night, until Sarah’s death in 1922 because, the story goes, she believed in the presence of ghosts, and the rooms held them at bay. The truth is much more mundane, but that hasn’t stopped speculation over the house’s supernatural connection, and a few years ago, Hollywood took a stab at telling the story.

Winchester doesn’t tread new ground in horror cinema, but it’s classier than most, thanks largely to the presence of Helen Mirren as the titular widow. In an original screenplay written (with Tom Vaughan) and directed by the Spierig Brothers, Sarah’s competence is challenged by the WRAC, who send Jason Clarke,  playing a doctor, in to determine whether she’s sane enough to still be co-owner.

The film relies too much on jump-scares and only scratches the surface of the wider issues of profiting from weapons manufacture. It also has elements of other horror flicks: The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, The Omen, etc. 

I remember wanting to see this when it initially came out. The mediocre reviews kept me away, but it’s not terrible. Clarke, the guy from Zero Dark Thirty, holds his own opposite Mirren nicely, and Sarah Snook is good as Mirren’s niece.

If nothing else, Winchester got me interested in the real-life elements behind the story, which are fascinating in and of themselves.

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Related:

the tale of Malabar Farm

Other movies about houses:

House on Haunted Hill

The Old Dark House

The House That Would Not Die

Can’t you feel a brand new day?

Books: Days of Thrills and Adventure

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the old movie serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel. It was the first serial I had ever watched, and despite its questionable plot structure and two-dimensional characters, it had action to spare and was entertaining, in its way.

Serialized fiction has made a comeback in the 21st century, not just in movies, but in television and books. A single story, told in multiple installments—as opposed to multiple stories featuring the same characters, like Andy Hardy or Lassie—has become more enthralling than episodic stories to modern audiences. 

Why? Here’s one theory, which boils the explanation down to the natural evolution of the medium. The storytelling style of the Marvel or Star Wars movies has its roots in the serials of the Golden Age, from the silents through the post-war era.

In 1970, Alan G. Barbour wrote a coffee-table book about those serials called Days of Thrills and Adventure. This was another gift from my librarian pal Bibi, sent last Christmas. It’s an overview of the classic movie serials, great and small, packed with photos, written more as an appreciation than as a critical analysis.

Movie serial actor Buster Crabbe

Serials followed a basic formula—good guy/bad guy dynamic, cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, constant action—which audiences of the day adored, especially children. Cowboys, detectives, federal agents, pulp heroes, spacemen, jungle men and others engaged in outrageous adventures, nabbing villainous masterminds and their lackeys. 

Barbour charts them all, describing not only the stories and the actors (and actresses) who starred in them, but also the filmmakers and the studios who brought them to life. He devotes a chapter to the talented stunt men and gives shout-outs to key crew members in fields such as special effects and model making. Don’t expect deep criticism here; this is written from the fan perspective, and that’s okay.

Days has tons of photographs. To someone unfamiliar with serials, they provide a sense of the variety of action to be found, as well as the often exaggerated, larger-than-life scenarios, often done on the cheap, as quickly as possible. 

Serials almost never reached the heights of the average John Ford or Howard Hawks film in terms of art, but their aspirations were different. With them, entertainment came over and above everything else, and audiences of the 30s and 40s were more than satisfied.

The Two Popes

A Luso World Cinema Blogathon é um evento dedicado a filmes e cineastas em língua portuguesa de todo o mundo, organizado por Critica Retro e Spellbound by Movies. Para uma lista completa dos blogueiros participantes, visite os links nos sites de hospedagem.

The Two Popes

Netflix viewing 

One of the brightest lights in recent Brazilian cinema has been director Fernando Meirelles. The São Paulo native discovered film through his father, who made 8mm parodies with his family and friends. In college he studied architecture, but also sustained his interest in filmmaking. He entered indie TV and experimental film after graduation, which led to advertising. He co-founded the ad firm O2 Films.

In 2002, he co-directed, with Katia Lund, the movie City of God, a crime picture based in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, based on a novel inspired by actual events. O2 Films was one of the production companies. The film was an international sensation, and was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In subsequent years, Meirelles made the Oscar-winner The Constant Gardener, as well as the films Blindness and 360 and the HBO series Joint Venture. When the Summer Olympics came to Rio in 2016, he directed the opening ceremonies. In 2019, Meirelles adapted the play The Two Popes for Netflix.

Popes loosely tells the story of the relationship between Pope Benedict XVI and the future Pope Francis, back when he was still Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in the wake of the 2012 scandal over corruption within the Vatican. Anthony Hopkins plays the former and Jonathan Pryce plays the latter.

Meirelles recreated the Sistine Chapel in the famous Cinecitta studio in Rome. This podcast explains how he did it. St. Peter’s Square was computer-generated. Additional filming was shot in and around Rome as well as Argentina.

Pryce and Hopkins were both Oscar-nominated, for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Pryce spoke some Spanish and Hopkins spoke some Italian and a little Latin. They both came across very convincingly.

I can’t say the story moved me that much, not being Catholic, but the contrast between the two holy men and their differing visions for the future of the faith was presented well. The reality behind the popes and their connection to each other is different, but this is, after all, a dramatization. The adapted screenplay by Anthony McCarten was also Oscar-nominated.

Popes is an ambitious production depicting a crucial turning point in religious history, told on a small, almost intimate scale.

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Previously:

Manoel de Oliveira 

Netflix new release roundup for December ‘20

The Vaccine is out in the world now, and it’ll take some time before its impact on the future of the film industry can be measured. One likes to believe 2021 couldn’t possibly be any worse than 2020, but getting past that nightmare of a year with not only a new president on deck but a legitimate defense against the Virus does give one reason to be hopeful. Zod knows we could all use that.

—Mank. The making of Citizen Kane through the eyes of co-writer Herman Mankiewicz. I was kinda drowsy when I watched this, plus it was really talky (what a surprise, a movie about a writer was packed with dialogue). It was cool to see historical figures like Orson Welles, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and William Randolph Hearst depicted, but ultimately this didn’t thrill me as much as I had hoped it would. David Fincher directs from a screenplay by his late father Jack. Gary Oldman acts drunk most of the time as Mankiewicz and Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies was good, but overall I thought it was kinda meh.

—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Early 20th-century blues pioneer Ma Rainey comes to Chicago with her band to record her songs, but her ambitious trumpet player has ideas of his own about how her music should be played. Co-produced by Denzel Washington, based on the play by August Wilson, Viola Davis is damn near unrecognizable in the title role but is also a force of nature, taking the contempt she holds for the white men controlling her career, the suspicion she has over Chadwick Boseman (in his final role) subverting her position as bandleader, and her general world-weariness and putting it into the blues. Boseman stands a strong chance at winning a posthumous Oscar with his performance; how very sad it is that he’s no longer with us.

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By now you’ve heard about Warner Brothers’ deal to release all its 2021 films on HBO Max at the same time as they’re released theatrically. It’s a plan that has rubbed some people the wrong way, among them Christopher Nolan. 

It’s awful hard to look at this and not think the genie is out of the bottle. It’s not likely to return, either. The theatrical distribution model was struggling before the Virus and if it’s a matter of financial survival on the studios’ part, even with a Vaccine now available, I’m unconvinced they’ll go to bat for the theaters without a strong motivation. Maybe one will come. 

That said, the recent stimulus deal signed last month offers some hope, and this piece offers more reasons to be cheerful for the long-term future of theaters (though watching movies at home has its merits too).

More on the other side.

Klaus

Klaus 

Netflix viewing 

The real-world origin of the mythological figure known as Santa Claus goes way back—I mean waaaaay back—but Hollywood has had their share of fun creating origin stories more befitting such a beloved character. 

I remember, for instance, the Rankin-Bass animated TV special Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, featuring voice actors Mickey Rooney and Fred Astaire (this year is its fiftieth anniversary). In 1985 RB made a second origin story, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.

Last year, Spanish animator Sergio Pablos added his Netflix feature film Klaus to the pile and gained an Academy Award nomination for his effort. A former Disney imagineer who worked on Tarzan and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he and his team at SPA Studios animated the film by taking 2D digital animation and lighting it as if it were 3D.

The story involves a young postman, a privileged rich kid, assigned to a remote northern village in order to establish a successful post office and prove his worth. He stumbles upon a way to get it going when he meets a reclusive toymaker and encourages him to make toys for the children of a community at war with itself. Complications ensue. Jason Schwartzman voices the young postman and JK Simmons (who sounds just like Peter “Optimus Prime” Cullen in this) voices Klaus.

I like that Klaus is (mostly) grounded in the real world, with almost nothing in the way of what could be considered “magic.” The usual myths about Santa have a real-world foundation and are developed through the rumor and exaggeration of the children. 

The animation reminded me of the work of Don Bluth in places. It doesn’t resemble the Pixar/Dreamworks CGI style we’ve come to expect these days, but it is something more than traditional 2D. The effect is startling, and it brings a fresh twist to computer animation. I kinda hope it catches on.

Congress saves movie theaters!

“...The agreement includes over $284 billion for first and second forgivable PPP loans, expanded PPP eligibility for nonprofits and local newspapers, TV and radio broadcasters, key modifications to PPP to serve the smallest businesses and struggling non-profits and better assist independent restaurants, and includes $15 billion in dedicated funding for live venues, independent movie theaters, and cultural institutions. The agreement also includes $20 billion for targeted EIDL Grants which are critical to many smaller businesses on Main Street.” [emphasis added]

This has been a crappy year all around, but it’s certainly ending on a positive note.

Thoughts?