"like swimming with a shark in dark waters": Review of Tornado Alley
TORNADO ALLEY
Directed by: Sean Casey
Starring: Sean Casey, Joshua Wurman, Karen Kosiba, Don Burgess, narrated by Bill Paxton
Running time: 43 minutes
At: Museum of Science
Rated: unrated
from Ethan Gilsdorf's review in The Boston Globe
“Hunting a tornado can feel like swimming with a shark in dark waters,’’ the narrator says. “You know it’s there. You just can’t find it.’’
The voice, of course, is Bill Paxton, from “Twister.’’
“Tornado Alley,’’ the latest IMAX spectacular, which opens tomorrow at the Museum of Science, follows a team of 100 scientists and their fleet of vehicles mounted with Doppler weather radars, collectively called VORTEX 2. Their mission: to understand which supercell thunderstorms make tornadoes and why, and to plumb their “unseen architecture,’’ thus increasing warning times and saving lives. They spend a springtime scanning a seven-state swath of the Midwest known as “tornado alley,’’ home to 80 percent of the world’s most violent tornadoes. One wonders what happened to VORTEX 1.
You get what you might expect: the behind scenes sit-and-wait, then the psychedelic radar images blossoming on screen. The meteorologist geeks drop probes on the roadside and speak in crackling voices over the CB: “Rogue 11, deploy’’ and “Copy that.’’ Then a dark funnel gathers its strength, the soundtrack’s horns blare and kettle drums thunder, and “55-gallon oil barrels fly like leaves in the wind,’’ Paxton says, injecting the proceedings with requisite drama.
Meanwhile, Sean Casey (of The Discovery Channel’s “Storm Chasers’’) offers the thrill-seeker angle. He races around in his 14,000-pound armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle, or TIV, which looks like a prop from a low-budget postapocalyptic action movie. The TIV is equipped with a roof-mounted turret letting Casey shoot with his 70mm film camera in a 360-degree panorama. “It’s coming right at us!’’ he barks, and the turret swivels like he’s battling TIE fighters swarming the Death Star. Everyone in this documentary wants to be Han Solo.
“Tornado Alley’’ is awe-inspiring, doom-slinging fun, fluffy as the 10-mile-high clouds towering on the screen. More real might have been any grumbling between adrenaline junkie Casey, who seeks point-blank footage from the heart of a twister, and the more cautious researchers, who are actually doing science. In 43 minutes, only so many subplots can unfold.
Given tsunamis and other disasters swamping the planet, there’s some perversity to be had here, too. Weather geeks and motor heads alike might enjoy “Tornado Alley’’ and take pleasure in the chase. But when the clouds part and the destruction is revealed, can we feel good in the morning?
Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’‘ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com. 
From fart jokes to infidelity
The Farrelly Brothers discuss marriage, fidelity, The Flintstones, bathroom humor and their new comedy "Hall Pass"
By Ethan Gilsdorf
BOSTON --- Peter Farrelly loves his wife. He loves his kids. Yet, like many married men and women, he entertains wild visions of bachelor freedom. And for that impulse, in part, he blames "The Flintstones."
"I saw Fred come home and saw Wilma just rip into him. 'Where have you been?! Myna myna nya!'" Peter says, mimicking Wilma's high-pitched shriek that he recalls from watching the show as a kid. "I thought, why doesn't he just leave? ... I wouldn't put up with that."
Not wanting to put up with the day-to-day drudgery of marriage and its inherent declining sexual desire is the fantasy Peter and Bobby Farrelly tap into with their new comedy "Hall Pass," which opens today.
Bobby and Peter Farrelly flank the author, Ethan GilsdorfMore so than with this fraternal filmmaking duo's previous films such as "Dumb and Dumber" (1994), "Me, Myself & Irene" (2002), "Fever Pitch" (2005), and their most commercially successful film, "There's Something About Mary" (1998), "Hall Pass" takes on a topic many comedies avoid: domesticity and the vast distance from singlehood that married couples must endure.
"We had all our friends at the screening last night," says Bobby. "I would say 98 percent of them are married. ... It's fun to do a story that most of them can seemingly relate to."
"This one is probably closer to our actual lives than any other movie we've done," Peter adds.
Loyal Farrelly brothers fans will be pleased to learn that, as always, bathroom humor is involved. But the film's premise isn't about giving a student a pass to head to the little boy's room. It's more like a "get out of jail free" card.
Caught ogling women and becoming wistful for their days before the chains of marriage and fatherhood, two friends (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are given a week's break from the bonds of matrimony by their way-too-understanding wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate). Are they still on their game? Comedy ensues.
A bit off their own games, Peter and Bobby eat breakfast in a suite at the Ritz Carlton in Boston. It's the morning after a recent Boston screening of "Hall Pass," and despite being a little groggy from the night's festivities, the brothers still can't resist recounting how the two of them, plus their 80-year-old father, recently all went in for a colonoscopy together. "A triple header," Bobby, 52, deadpans (Peter is two years his senior). "Good times. We've done that twice."
But sharing a couch and a plate of pastries as they reminiscence about their path from Cumberland, Rhode Island, to Hollywood, the Farrellys aren't always the fart-joke, class-clown types you'd expect. Their material -- most of it -- is surprisingly PG-13 rated.
That said, the Farrellys do like to talk about women. And sports. When a reporter informs them he once lived in Baton Rouge, Shaquille O'Neal's former stomping grounds, they want to know if they have "really pretty girls down there." (They do.)
"If my wife came to me and said you can have a hall pass but I'm taking one, too, I wouldn't do it," says Peter, who dominates the discussion. (When Bobby speaks, he tends to let his eye wander to the window overlooking Downtown Crossing.) Running his fingers through his mop of brown hair, Peter continues, "but if she said you can have a hall pass; I'm staying home with the kids" -- he snaps his fingers -- "I would be out the door in about 30 seconds."
Just like Fred Flintstone.
"I would say girls are probably the single most alluring thing on the planet," Bobby says, his "the" more like "da," his Ocean State accent still coloring his speech.
But Pete, as his bro calls him, fesses up that if he played the dream of bachelor freedom, he'd strike out. "If I couldn't use the movie rap that we're in the business, I can assure you that I'd get nowhere, without taking my wallet out." He mentions watching newly single friends in their 50s try to pick up women. "Horrifying and hilarious at the same time. It's shocking how much they have lost off their fast ball."
In the case of "Hall Pass," Wilson and Sudeikis don't let their flabby physiques and Clinton-era musical knowledge prevent them from trying to score with chicks. While "Saturday Night Live" veteran Sudeikis may not have obvious lady-killer looks, the filmmakers needed to bring Owen Wilson's charm down a few notches -- otherwise, Bobby asks, "Where's the comedy?"
"We dorked him up a little," says Pete. Wilson is dressed in plaid short-sleeves and a "Born in the USA" T-shirt.
Despite taking place in Rhode Island and on the Cape, "Hall Pass" was shot in Georgia, partly due to tax breaks and the winter shooting schedule, with some second-unit footage shot in Providence. "People say why don't you just make it a Georgia story?" says Bobby. "Because we don't really know Georgia. We don't know how people talk."
Today, Bobby lives on the South Shore with his wife and kids and commutes to Los Angeles when needed. Peter lives in Ojai, California, about 90 minutes north of LA -- "only because my wife is from Santa Monica."
With "Hall Pass," the two have nine films under their belts in 17 years. But their direction hasn't progressed much technically since their debut, "Dumb and Dumber," when they didn't know a focus-puller from an F-stop.
"We still don't know," Bobby says.
So on the first day of shooting, the Farrellys still give the same speech. "We say, 'Look guys, we wrote the script, we understand the script, but there's a hell of a lot we don't understand. We're going to need your help,'" says Peter. Like with their writing collaboration, on the set, they divide the responsibilities. Peter works with the actors while his quieter sibling generally looks on from behind the monitor. Usually they agree if a performance is on target or if a gag is working, but if they disagree, they'll shoot it both ways and decide in the editing room.
They stress that their comedy rests not on the outrageous humor, but on likable characters. Nailing down protagonists the audience cares about is the hard part. Once the goofy guys are in place (in many a Farrelly comedy, the men are clueless dorks while the women are savvy and hot) the gags flow naturally.
But while the theme of "Hall Pass" may be slightly more earnest than in other Farrellymovies -- Peter insists that when the hijinks are over, it ultimately carries a "pro-marriage message" -- there's plenty of humor involving excrement, masturbation, and oral sex.
The Farrelly's next project should also appeal their core fan base: a movie adaptation of "The Three Stooges," now in pre-production and scheduled to begin shooting later this year. While names including Russell Crowe and Benicio Del Toro (as the anger-management-challenged Moe), Sean Penn (as wild-haired Larry), and Jim Carrey (hairless Curly) were once attached to the project, at the moment, the film is not cast.
"There's been more interest [from actors] in 'The Three Stooges' than any movie we've ever done," says Pete, "which is ironic since it's been the hardest movie to make because the studio thinks there's not enough interest in 'The Three Stooges.'" Confident there's still a Stooges audience, he called the studio's reticence a "head-scratcher."
Set in the present day, the Farrelly's "Stooges" will include three individual episodes, staged much like the vaudeville-rooted original, in wide shot. "At all points you want to see all of them," says Bobby. "Typically the camera will tell you where to look. Look at his face. Look at how he reacts. It's doin' the work for ya. Not with the Stooges. You pick and choose what you want to watch."
They'll shoot in color, but the palate will be black and white.
"They're not big bright color guys," Pete says of the Stooges.
"Unless they go golfing," Bobby says.
After the "Stooges," then what?
"We don't have a grand plan. You kind of do what's in your heart," says Peter. The Stooges were in their hearts for a decade. "And then something else will come up and I don't know what it is." He pauses. "I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days we did a horror movie. Or a thriller."
"We'll do something," Bobby says. "We do what we think is funny. We're not shy about it. We'll do it. We'll do it in a big way."
Their next big thing done in a big way will surely include their brand of boundary-pushing humor. Yet Peter says there's a deeper theme that remains constant. "We write about love. Loving women, or loving baseball, or loving bowling, or loving something."
Even loving Betty Rubble.
He thinks back to Fred running out on Wilma. "I'd stay with Betty. I know Barney had a better thing going."
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms," his travel memoir/pop culture investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures athttp://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.
When is shock just schlock?
The re-release of William Lustig’s “Maniac’’ (1980), the notorious film in which a serial killer scalps women, is a chance to reevaluate shock value, or the value of shock, or schlock.
Ever since Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 “Un Chien Andalou’’ reinvented squeamish by showing a razor slicing open an eyeball, filmmakers have tested the limits of good taste. Whether in the service of high art or plain shock, films make us face what we’d rather not even imagine.
Each year ups the ante in some way. With gore galore, Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’’ (1974) reveled in being censored. William Lustig’s “Maniac’’ (1980) gave us a serial killer who scalps women. Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles’’ (1989) depicted the lives of Muppet-like puppets not on Sesame Street but Skid Row. More gentle but no less revolting, the Farrelly brothers’ “There’s Something About Mary’’ (1998) suggested a new way to style Cameron Diaz’s hair. And so on.
Yet just because filmmakers can depict such depravities, should they? And how far can our envelopes be pushed before we, as an audience, feel ripped apart?
Lustig has been appearing at theaters nationwide this winter to introduce a fresh, 30th-anniversary print of his notorious slasher film, and possibly address these and other questions. If nothing else, the re-release of “Maniac’’ lets us reevaluate shock value, or the value of shock, or schlock. [Upcoming dates include: February 18-19, Brookline, MA; March 11-12,Omaha Nebraska; March 26 & 27, Kansas City, Mo.; April 16th,
Richmond, VA; May 6, Phoenixville, PA; May 12, Stamford, CT; More info: http://www.grindhousereleasing.com/maniac.html]
In its day, Lustig’s film gained notoriety as among the most disturbing of its genre, not only because of the graphic violence — in one scene, a man’s head is shown blowing apart in slow motion — but because “Maniac’’ focuses on the killer, played by character actor Joe Spinell (“The Godfather,’’ “Taxi Driver,’’ “Rocky’’). Other horror movies like “Halloween’’ (1978) and “Friday the 13th’’ (1980) followed the victims. “You find yourself feeling empathy for someone committing despicable acts,’’ says Lustig in a phone interview from Los Angeles.
“Maniac’’ and its ilk helped usher in a new over-the-top horror category that attracted its share of controversy. Feminists protested the unrated “Maniac,’’ and “Sneak Previews’’ critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert incited audiences to boycott. “If ‘Maniac’ doesn’t deserve to be rated X for violence,’’ Siskel wrote, “no film does.’’ As for the rape-revenge flick “I Spit On Your Grave,’’ another poster-child slasher film, Ebert said “attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life.’’
Clearly, the moviegoer “finds pleasure in movies meant to challenge, disturb, shock and even sicken,’’ Newsweek critic David Ansen wrote. “But at what point does the challenging become the unbearable?’’ What inspired Ansen’s inquiry was the notorious 2002 French film “Irreversible,’’ which includes a 10-minute scene of Monica Bellucci being raped while her head gets pummeled against a cement wall.
If the point is to “push taboos,’’ says Lustig, a film like “Irreversible’’ succeeds. “There’s a liberation of ideas [in these films], a willingness to push the envelope, something that’s taboo.’’ Of course, gross-out stunts like drag queen Divine eating dog excrement in John Waters’s “Pink Flamingos’’ (1972) seem aimed only to induce a gag reflex. Other films, like Hitchcock’s “Psycho’’ (what Lustig calls “the granddaddy of them all’’), tapped into something more psychologically primal.
That we want and even need to have the bejesus scared out of us is clear; works by everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Stephen King have taught us that. If watching an action hero injects us with a shot of adrenaline, feeling disgusted by gore or repelled by torture reminds us of the limits — of morals, of pain, of our own bodies — we must not exceed.
Lustig never intended to sate any highfalutin cultural or psychic craving. “I made ‘Maniac’ as a horror film fan. I didn’t intellectualize it,’’ he says. “It wasn’t what I said, ‘to push the envelope.’ We just went on instinct. We were making the film for ourselves.’’ Lustig now heads Blue Underground, a DVD company that stokes our nostalgia for gore of yore, distributing lost classics about “psychopaths, cops, robbers, zombies, cannibals, madmen, strange women and more,’’ its website declares.
Undoubtedly, what it takes to shock us has changed since the Surrealist Twenties, the Comics Code Authority crackdown of the Fifties, and the Dungeons & Dragons/heavy metal parental freakout endured in the 1980s. Movies reset our boundaries, then we become habituated, then unimpressed.
“Years ago when we were younger, we craved some form of radical stimulation, and early horror/slasher films filled in the gap,’’ wrote Carl Cephas, president of Washington, D.C.’s Psychotronic Film Society, in a recent e-mail. But as visual stimulation “went into overkill,’’ the audience reached over-saturation. The films left nothing to the imagination. A new wave of film history twisted that border till it bled again.
Looking back, 1972 was a banner year for limit-pushing. Among other things it gave us “Pink Flamingos,’’ “Deliverance,’’ “The Last House on the Left,’’ and “Last Tango in Paris.’’ But even then, some suspected its alarming effect would prove ephemeral. Reviewing Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango,’’ Vincent Canby wrote, “It’s so Now, in fact, that you better see it quickly. I suspect that its ideas, as well as its ability to shock or, apparently, to arouse, will age quickly.’’
Or take 1975’s “Salò,’’ based on the Marquis de Sade’s book “120 Days of Sodom’’ but re-envisioned in Fascist Italy. Banned in its day, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film was available only as a bootleg until two years ago when it was finally released on DVD. But the long wait disappointed. “[People] were expecting gore, and they were bored,’’ says Brian “Horrorwitz’’ Horowitz, who runs a movie and collectibles business called Trash Palace out of Frederick, Md. We’d moved on.
Horowitz’s list of top audacious titles includes “Cannibal Holocaust’’ (1980), infamous because the director (Ruggero Deodato) was accused of making a snuff film; Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 “Straw Dogs,’’ known for its groundbreaking violence; and “A Clockwork Orange’’ (also 1971), which Stanley Kubrick pulled from theaters when it was accused of inciting gang violence. After each of these, more “more’’ became acceptable.
So what daring subject matter is left to colonize? And is it harder to make a more disturbing film these days when most boundaries have been explored, if not by mainstream movies then by video games and pornography? The answer might be the “torture porn’’ trend of the “Saw’’ series, or “The Human Centipede,’’ with its diabolical premise of a surgeon joining the digestive systems of three unfortunate tourists. Both are shocking, but also readable as responses to Abu Ghraib and our obsession with plastic surgery.
Meanwhile, recent remakes of “Last House,’’ “Texas Chainsaw,’’ and “I Spit on Your Grave’’ suggest the industry won’t take big risks. It wants to bank on the safety of familiar franchises, while soaking that cutting edge of what Canby called “Now’’ in as much blood as the ratings board can stomach. According to Cephas, it’s a game of “gore-upsmanship and the bucket is already full.’’
At least we’re beginning to look back on controversial films with rosier glasses. David Lynch’s 1977 “Eraserhead’’ was deemed by Variety a “sickening bad-taste exercise.’’ Now it’s a beloved cult film preserved by both the Library of Congress and National Film Registry. Same with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’’ now added to the permanent collection of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.
As for Lustig, he went on to direct a few more films — “Vigilante’’ and the “Maniac Cop’’ series — but none attracted much controversy, or notice. Even though a “Maniac’’ remake is in the works, the slasher veteran seems jaded by the genre he helped to create. For him, better computer effects, more gallons of blood, is actually less. It’s what’s suggested in the mind, not splashed on the screen, that can disturb the most.
“I always thought that Steven Spielberg’s best film was ‘Jaws,’ ’’ Lustig says. “You have the shark that pops out of the water when Roy Scheider is chumming. But what sells it is the expression on Roy Scheider’s face. You see his veins popping out and see that fear. That’s what it’s all about.’’
Wading through garbage to pick out the gems
Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett will visit 75 cities on the Found Footage Festival tour. Among the videos they’ll show are “Cutest Cat Capers’’ and “Ventriloquism for Fun & Profit.’’ (Josh Hertz)WADING THROUGH GARBAGE TO PICK OUT GEMS
by ETHAN GILSDORF
Celebrating the Dark Ages of VHS, the Found Footage Fest kicks off its international tour
Nowadays, an eight-year old armed with a Flip camera and iMovie can shoot and edit a video as sophisticated as what, 25 years ago, required a TV studio teeming with technicians. That same pesky kid can upload content in minutes to a potential audience of millions.
But once upon a time, if one dare imagine such a horrifying past, YouTube and Facebook didn’t exist. You couldn’t burn a DVD from your laptop. God -- aka Al Gore --- hadn’t even invented the Internet yet.
These were the Dark Ages of VHS. To shoot a home video meant lugging around a camera, tape deck and battery pack a heavy as a Renault LeCar. The only way to disseminate your video awesomeness to friends (real friends, not virtual ones) was to invite them over. Or entrust the videotape to the US Mail.
The Found Footage Festival recalls that cruder, less ironic “Golden Age of Home Video” of the mid-Eighties through the mid-Nineties, a time when how-to videos exploded and CG effects were only a few steps evolved from your Commodore 64.
The 2011 fest has kicked off its 75-city tour, with stops in many cities, from Boston to New York; Montreal to South Bend, Indiana; Buffalo to Tucson; San Francisco to
Winnipeg; and dozens of destinations in between.
For those old enough, video artifacts from that era exhume painful memories of mullets and shoulder pads. For others, their amateurish look is unintentionally hilarious. The Found Footage Festival rides that edge, alternately touching our funny and nostalgia bones.
“We come from the old analog world where to watch a video you had to trade it with someone,” say Nick Prueher, 34, festival co-founder and co-host, by telephone from his home in Queens, NY. “It used to be a social thing.”
Prueher and partner in crime Joe Pickett have revive that communal element by touring a selection of found videotapes --- corporate training videos, public access programs, home movies --- they’ve freshly culled from thrift stores and garage sales. During the live show, the two add context and off-the-cuff commentary: “What we were doing in our living room,” Prueher says. “‘Pre-Mystery Science Theater 3000,’ we were already making fun of bad TV.”
The show has one mandate. The footage must exist on physical media: VHS, or occasionally three-quarter inch U-matic videocassette.
“We don’t take anything from the Internet,” says Pickett, 35. “No one wants to see a YouTube video all blown up.”
The 2011 lineup includes all new footage Pickett and Prueher found while on last year’s tour. Their website --- www.foundfootagefest.com --- archives top finds from the thousands of tapes they’ve scrutinized; on the big screen is what Prueher calls “the cream of the crop.”
Clips that rose to the top include: how-to ventriloquism videos found in an Atlantic City Goodwill store; self- hypnosis videos promising better performance in tennis, bowling and lovemaking; exercise videos featuring an impressive assortment of celebrities including Cher and the American Gladiators; a Linda “The Exorcist” Blair instructional tape called “How to Get Revenge”; a montage of 25 hunting call videos with names like “The Mouth Yelper A to Z” and“The Magic of Squirrel Calling”; and dozens more.
“It’s burly, mustached men in camouflage making funny sounds,” says Pickett of the hunting call compilation. “It almost sounds like freeform jazz.” In a segment called “Lying & Stealing,” they show tapes obtained while claiming to run a meat processing plant, or by working at a video store, for a day.
Where possible, a video’s director or on-camera talent are tracked down and invited to come up on stage. Or, sometimes the hosts get the call. Pickett recalls when the makers of a shopping video contacted him. “We thought they were pissed, because it’s not very flattering footage. But we met them and they loved it. They came [to a show] and did a reenactment.”
Prueher make it clear that while the festival screens only the highlights, er, lowlights, the edits aren’t manipulative. They’re “true to the tape.” Pointing out the poofy hair and Dokken concert T-shirts gets laughs, he says, but the point isn’t ridicule.
“There’s partly that nostalgia. There’s partly that remembering the format and the production values of yesteryear and cataloguing and preserving it,” says Prueher. “The AFI [American Film Institute] is preserving ‘Citizen Kane.’ We’re preserving ‘Cutest Cat Capers.’” For them, these tapes are a more accurate portrait of the American people. With their bad tracking and washed-out colors, they “have more truth,” Prueher says, than any AFI top 100 films list.
“One thing we learned is there is a surprising amount of racism in ventriloquism,” he deadpans. “I always wanted to be a ventriloquist as a kid.”
Friends from the 6th grade, when they hailed from Stoughton, Wisconsin, Prueher and Pickett began their collection in 1991 after finding a McDonald’s training video called “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.”
“Our friendship is based on our appreciation for things that are so bad that they’re good,” Prueher says. “We didn’t excel in school other than that. Our sense of irony was very well developed from the age 12.” Prueher went on to be a researcher at the “Late Show with David Letterman,” Pickett a film technician, and both have written for “The Onion.”
In 2004, living in New York, the two were encouraged by friends to turn their private screenings of Reagan-era archeological AV finds into a show. Sold-out performances in the East Village snowballed. Since then, they’ve appeared at theaters and comedy festivals, and on cable and network TV. Today they hit the road for nine months out of 12, hosting 75 to 100 shows a year. The Onion's “A.V. Club” features their web series; also in the works is a book.
While the rules forbid soliciting videos, sometimes Pickett and Prueher stumble across something too brilliant to resist. Take one film called “Spring Break ’85.” After attending a screening last year, Rockland, Mass native Rudy Childs handed over a tape with a curious backstory. One of Childs’ friends worked security at Reagan’s inauguration; his job was to guard CBS TV equipment. “They should have had a security guard watching him,” Childs, now 50, recalls. “He stole badges, hats, microphones.” Childs brought a video camera on vacation to Fort Lauderdale, and he and his buddies wandered the beach, posing as news reporters with a genuine CBS microphone.
“We were dressed up in shorts,” Childs says. “They [the interview subjects] didn’t know what to make of us. You have a beer in your hand, and long hair, asking questions. ... Video cameras weren’t that prevalent back then.” Childs was in attendance at the Brattle Theatre screening in Cambridge, Mass., to reveal more about the making of “Spring Break ’85.”
Another video breaking the “thrift store only” rule is “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.” Directed by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, the 16 minute cinema verité short captures the caterwauling, beer-swilling, zebra-stripe-spandex-wearing populace outside a 1986 Judas Priest concert. Passed around Hollywood and the indie rock scene --- everyone from Sophia Coppola to Ed Norton to Dave Grohl (of Nirvana/Foo Fighters) saw it --- “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” was dubbed a cult classic, and has joined the festival to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
“It was an underground thing from jump,” says Krulik, now 49, by phone from D.C. “We gave it away. We threw it in the public domain by accident.” Krulik and Heyn have since shot explorations of other “weird, eccentric subculture” behavior: at a Neil Diamond show parking lot (same venue as the Judas Priest concert, but a decade later), in line at a Harry Potter book signing.
Krulik and Childs just completed a “making-of” documentary called “Heavy Metal Picnic,” about a Potomac, Maryland, blues fest; the organizers decided to bring in heavy metal for two days. “Shirtless men running around, fights breaking out – everything you love from ‘Heavy Metal Parking Lot,’” says Pickett.
As for the future, one might wonder if the age of broadband might conquer the Found Footage Festival’s low-fi nostalgia trip. Nick Prueler thinks not. With the superabundance of downloadable material out there, he feels people appreciate the Found Footage Festival’s curatorial role. As Prueler puts it, “Two people wade through all the garbage to pick out the gems.”
Besides, in 20 years, they might be showing stuff they find on DVD or SD memory cards --- even YouTube or Facebook. Prueler: “Bad ideas never change.”
Then Prueler and Pickett will rescue those bad ideas and bring that terrible, beautiful garbage to a theater near you.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.” Reach him through his website www.ethangilsdorf.com
YouTube playlist of Tolkien-themed videos!
These are Tolkien-themed videos I shot in New Zealand: looking for hobbits in Hobbiton (Matamata); elves in Rivendell (Kaitoke Regional Park); Weta Workshop (Wellington); and a mash-up of footage from the "If you want him, come and claim him!" scene (Arrowtown).
More to come. Hope you'll take a look.
We're gonna need more holy water
Sure, the Crusades are morally reprehensible—but when it comes to battling evil, out come the holy water, sacred texts, and "in the name of the father" pronouncements.
a review of Season of the Witch
by Ethan Gilsdorf
What ever happened to the risky Nicolas Cage who took on meaty roles like Adapation? Or, at least, the one who played sincere characters like Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas? Or, for that matter, the comic and goofy Nic of Raising Arizona?
Rather, and sadly, the actor of late has imprisoned himself within a cage lackluster supernatural action vehicles like Ghost Rider, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Wicker Man, Next, and Knowing. In each, Cage possesses some awesome power, prognosticates some doomed secret, or stumbles across a malevolence force. Cue the time portals, fiery circles, demonic possessions, pagan rituals and creepy flash-forwards of knowledge mere mortals ought not to know.
In Season of the Witch, the hangdog-faced Cage (now with greasy, shoulder-length locks) confronts another paranormal conundrum, this time set in medieval Europe. Disenchanted by his time in the armed services, aka the Crusades, Behmen (Cage) deserts the war with his longtime fighting, boozing and whoring buddy Felson, played by the primitive-looking Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Hellboy II). "You call this glories? Murdering women and children?" is Behmen's anti-war epiphany moment, after he takes part in a massacre at the fortified city Smyrna. The two pals wander back home from the Holy War and are captured for going AWOL.
Meanwhile, Europe has been engulfed by the Black Plague. A dying Cardinal (Christopher Lee, ghastly enough without makeup but here unrecognizable behind icky prosthetics of festering boils and tumors) offers them clemency if they agree to transport a suspected witch, a girl played by newcomer Claire Foy, who is blamed for causing the plague. Get she to a monastery. The monks there will know what to do. Right.
Ergo, the quest commences.
An A team is assembled: our two heroes, a monk named Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moore, from The Bank Job), a stoic knight (Ulrich Thomsen), an elfin altar boy who craves adventure (Robert Sheehan, from Cherrybomb) and Hagamar, a convicted thief (Stephen Graham from "Boardwalk Empire") who is freed because he knows the way and because he can provide comic relief.
The journey takes the party through craggy mountains, barren plains and haunted forests. Much of the scenery is appropriately Dark Agedly forlorn. The film was shot in Hungary, Austria, Croatia, and that other European location known for its Old World charm, Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Eastern European film crew, who also handled much of the special effects, is chock with Istváns and Zoltáns.
Season of the Witch film borrows more than a few tricks from that other quest epic you may of heard of, The Lord of the Rings. The kinetic camera may as well have been controlled via remote control by Peter Jackson. It sweeps across CG landscapes melded with the real scenery and filtered with that bluish, gauzy light (likely added in post-production color grading), a look-and-feel we now associate with films set in days of yore. The score, composed by Icelander Atli Örvarsson ("Law and Order," "The Fourth Kind") includes more than its share of Howard Shore-esque brass fanfares and haunting choruses. And yes, one of the nasty forests they must cross, patrolled by wolf packs, is called ... not Mirkwood ... not Fangorn ... but Wormwood.
The Tolkien echoes don't end there. Behmen and Felson's friendly rivalry—"Whoever slays the most men, drinks for free"—recalls Legolas and Gimli's battlefield body-count contest, minus 99 percent of the chemistry. Likewise, Felson's "What madness is this?" line regurgitates Boromir's "What is this new devilry?" moment when the Fellowship first faces the Balrog in the Mines of Moria. To Perlmans's query, Cage replies: "This be a curse from hell."
No one attempts an English accent, which is probably for the best, for already Cage as heroic knight is hard to swallow. But director Dominic Sena (Gone in Sixty Seconds, Swordfish) makes no attempt to establish any sort of linguistic consistency. One moment, Hagamar, who speaks like he wandered off the set of "Jersey Shore," spouts lines like "Don't be deceived. She sees the weakness that lies in our hearts"; then he's all "Let's kill the bitch!" Likewise, early on our monk Debelzaq intones, "There is a whisper throughout the land, that the hour of our judgment is on us." Later, in the climactic battle, he exclaims, "We're gonna to need more holy water." Debelzaq may as well be channeling Roy "We're going to need a bigger boat" Scheider from Jaws.
Like in many action movies, the creaky script by Bragi Schut, Jr. (who wrote and directed the CBS sci-fi series "Threshold") tries to ride that knife edge: sober and serene so we'll buy the premise, yet giving the heroes a wide berth for wisecracks. Perhaps because Season of the Witch is meant to be taken as a period picture—OK, a supernatural thriller set in the 14th century—this familiar Hollywood cocktail of lofty prose and battlefield quips feels especially strained. Amazingly, Schut's screenplay won a major writing competition, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences's Nicholl Fellowship. Which does not instill much confidence in the Academy's ability to recognize good screenplays.
Schut's other problem is story. Much is made of whether the ragged girl is, in fact, a witch. Cage's character suspects she might be wrongly accused. You're not like the others—you're kind, the girl says. But the audience knows whether or not the innocent gal possesses supernatural powers long before the characters do; despite evidence that should alert our clueless heroes, they're unnecessarily dense. The unexpected wrinkle of exactly how the evil forces takes form partly redeems this plotting mishap, but not before the film's credibility has been battered.
A more serious shortcoming is the film's contradictory message. Early on, showing a rather a modern and enlightened perspective, Cage and Perlman defect from the Crusading army to protest the unjust and brutal wars. Killing soldiers and innocent women and children in the service of a Christian God is offensive, our heroes intuit. Yet Season of the Witch reveals its odd logic in the final reel. Sure, the Crusades are morally reprehensible—but when it comes to battling evil, out come the holy water, sacred texts, and "in the name of the father" pronouncements. Schut, our screenwriter, can't have it both ways—implicating the Church for atrocities that shoved Christianity down the throats of infidel Muslims, while suggesting that only Christian mojo can save the day.
Despite the drawbacks—the cumbersome script, the flat performances by Cage and Perlman—genre fans with their bars set low will find this junk food fun. The effects are decent. The production design's medieval grittiness is convincing. The scenery is moody and sometime staggering. (Attention Hungarian Tourist Board: begin your Season of the Witch movie location bus trips now.)
(Before I go, other gripe: Am I the only one dislikes that flickery, ever-so-slightly sped up combat photography so in fashion now? It's like you're viewing the fighting through an old-timey projector. Ridley Scott recently used this technique in Robin Hood. I find the jerkiness distracting.)
Ignoring Sena's cheap horror and suspense tricks, overall the action sequences are rousing, with plenty of mass-scale sword-clangings, torch-bearing through dark passages, and effortless beheadings. If you like your swords-and-sorcery mind-candy a campy blend of Tolkien and The Exorcist, and you don't mind a few groaners, Season of the Witch might, heroically, do the trick.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning, travel memoir/pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (now in paperback). Follow his adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.
Is steampunk the new goth?
Is steampunk the new goth?
By Ethan Gilsdorf, December 29, 2010
(links to images on the Christian Science Monitor site)
A Steampunk mantel clock by Roger Wood of Ontario is valued at $1,500. It’s part of an exhibition titled (with Steampunkish ornament), ‘Steampunk, Form and Function, an Exhibition of Innovation, Invention and Gadgetry’ at a Waltham, Mass., museum. [photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor Staff]Some pop culture genres such as Tolkienesque fantasy imagine a magical past of strange races and global quests. Others, such as hard-core dystopian science fiction, warn against a future marred by apocalyptic meltdown.
Then comes steampunk, a hybrid vision of a past that might appear in the future – or a future that resides, paradoxically, in the spirit of another age.
No, you're not stuck in some goofy concept album by The Moody Blues. Steampunk is a fantasy made physical, made of brass and wood and powered by steam, born of the Industrial Age and inspired by the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It takes form both as an aesthetic movement and a community of artists; role-players; visionaries; and those who use the tools of literature, film, music, fashion, science, design, architecture, and gaming to manifest their visions.
"[Steampunk is] drawing on actual history. You can pull into it what you're into and put your spin on it. It's accessible yet expandable," says Jake von Slatt (real name: Sean Slattery, of Littleton, Mass.), who likens the philosophy behind steampunk to the open-source software movement. "There is a real focus on sharing, exploring things together, building community."
Steampunkers gather in conventions to exchange ideas – plus, they know how to dress to the nines and party like it's 1899.
Mr. von Slatt, who came of age in the era of punk rock, new wave, and Goth, has always been a tinkerer. Steampunk lets him "revisit youthful enthusiasms," he says. Now he creates intricately crafted anachronistic objects: for example, computer keyboards taken apart and rebuilt with brass, felt, and keys from antique manual typewriters. He's transformed a 1989 school bus into a wood-paneled "Victorian RV," which he uses to travel to steampunk conventions.
Currently, he's "steampunking" a fiberglass, 1954-style Mercedes kit car, tricking it out with salvaged gauges and lights from other cars and gold filigree trim. Drawn to steampunk's "do-it-yourself, making something from nothing" mantra, von Slatt scavenges most of his components from the dump.
Roots in a 1960s TV series
Steampunk was first introduced as a literary subgenre. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel "The Difference Engine" popularized the idea of an alternate history where the Industrial Revolution-level technology of pistons and turbines, not electricity, powers modern gadgets, as Victorians might have designed them. But even way back in 1960s, the television series "The Wild Wild West" helped define the genre. The sci-fi western featured a train outfitted with a laboratory and featured protagonists who were gadgeteers.
Today, steampunk's reach has exploded, from Boston to San Francisco's Bay Area, to Britain, New Zealand, Japan, and beyond.
"Steampunk is definitely growing in popularity," says Diana Vick, vice chair of Steamcon, an annual convention in Seattle that doubled its attendance when it held its second meeting in November. "I believe it is due in part to the fact that it is a rejection of the slick, soulless, mass-produced technology of today and a return to a time when it was ornate and understandable."
This year, Steamcon celebrated what its website called the Weird Weird West. It notes: "Imagine the age of steam on the wild frontier ... roughriders on mechanical horses, mad inventors ... mighty steam locomotives ... airships instead of stagecoaches."
Every culture that embraces steampunk seems to make it their own. Patrick Barry, a member of New Zealand's League of Victoria Imagineers, has seen myriad international examples. "All have a different flavour, world vision and cultural base for the artists and writers to draw from and it shows," he writes via e-mail. Even in his tiny hometown of Oamaru, steampunk has taken off. Three groups have recently mounted an exhibition, a fashion show, and run several events. "Oamaru has a population of about 13,000 people. We had 11,000 people visit the exhibition over its six week [run]."
Previously, most works in the genre would have been set only in the Industrial Age. Over time, explains Dexter Palmer, author of the novel "The Dream of Perpetual Motion," the term "steampunk" has undergone "definition creep." "Nowadays the label's much more comprehensive, and seems to refer to any retrofuturistic or counterfactual work that features machines with lots of gears, or lighter-than-air flying craft, or similar sorts of things."
Some works have been retroactively embraced as part of the genre. For example, Terry Gilliam's dystopian satire, "Brazil," is now considered steampunk even though the film was not called steampunk when it was released in 1985.
In Mr. Palmer's novel, a greeting-card writer who is imprisoned aboard a zeppelin must confront a genius inventor and a perpetual motion machine. The author created a set of rules for his fictional universe: While things might be "scientifically implausible" to the reader, they would be "self-consistent and plausible to the inhabitants of the imaginary world." He based his ideas on source materials that predicted life in the year 2000 and then designed gadgets that seemed modern, but used turn-of-the-century tech. For example, there's an answering machine in the novel that functions by recording to a wax cylinder.
'It wants to teach us things'
"One of the really wonderful things about Steampunk is that it, more than any other subculture, seems to want to teach us things," von Slatt wrote on his blog at steampunkworkshop.com. And, like the punk and Goth movements before it, steampunk teaches another way of looking at the world.
Ms. Vick adds that another appeal lies in its largely optimistic and romantic, not dark and cautionary, outlook. "We also embrace and foster good manners and dressing up, which are both sorely lacking in society today," she says.
Indeed, dedicated steampunkers are lured by fashion. To dress up as a privateer and pilot flying machines powered by "lift-wood," or play a mad scientist who meddles in alchemy, the required accouterments include corsets, top hats, and lace-up boots; military medals, parasols, and aviator goggles.
Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum aren't particularly into costuming, but when attending an event they will break out period garb. Their businesses, ModVic and SteamPuffin, offer home remodeling and design services for steampunking Victorian-era homes, an idea they applied to their own 1901 house in Sharon, Mass. They loved the turn-of-the-century fantasy but, Bruce says, "you don't want to live in the 19th century in terms of conveniences." So they retrofitted modern appliances or hid them behind facades of functional art. Combining old and new, their living room sports a plasma TV framed by an antique wooden mantel.
Upstairs, Bruce's attic office incorporates portholes, a bank vault door, and computer workstation made from an antique desk and pipes from a pump organ. You can almost see the ghost of Jules Verne hammering out a few e-mails.
"How much more fun is it to make something ornate and beautiful, rather than boring and unadorned?" asks Melanie. The couple is working on a book project, and recently curated two exhibits in the Boston area.
Tom Sepe, an artist exhibiting in one of them, the "Steampunk Form & Function" show at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Mass., shipped his "Whirlygig," a "steam-electric-hybrid motorcycle," from his workshop in Berkeley, Calif. The circus performer discovered steampunk via the Burning Man art community, and looks at his life as art. "Every choice we make is part of a performance," he says. "Every object we make or touch becomes an artifact of who we are and how we have been."
For Mr. Sepe, "three crucial elements" keep him engaged in the steampunkmaker culture: the "warmth factor" of its handmade materials, its functionality, and whimsy – "free thinking imagination and fun." Unlike other art forms, he says, "It doesn't take itself too seriously."
And whereas other genre fans can niggle over the small stuff, steampunk tends to be more open-ended. Jeff Mach, one of the partners behind New Jersey's Steampunk World's Fair, remembers Goths back in the 1990s sniping at one another for not being "Goth enough." No so with this latest, more inclusive cultural mashup. "It's not starting from a single point but many points," he says.
Many suggest steampunk is the next Goth, or even bigger. "I think this is the beginning of steampunk as a new sort of thing, as a pop culture phenomenon," says von Slatt. "I think it's the tip of the iceberg."
You must see Marwencol
[For more information on Marwencol, seehttp://www.marwencol.com/ ]
Like all accomplished war photographers, Mark Hogancamp puts himself at risk.
He shoots fugitive moments of violence, anguish, and bravery. But Hogancamp’s work differs from others’ in one key respect: The combat zones he enters don’t entirely exist in the real world. It’s the battlefield of his emotions that he’s trying to capture on film.
Marwencol is a remarkable documentary about this peculiar man and the fictitious, painstakingly-detailed, 1/6-scale town he built in his yard. Set in Belgium during World War II and populated with dozens of buildings, military vehicles, and more than 100 foot-high, poseable action figures, Hogancamp’s simulacrum is called Marwencol.
“Everything’s real,’’ Hogancamp gushes at one point in the film, demonstrating how a tiny pistol in one soldier’s hands has a working hammer and replaceable clip. “That all adds to my ferocity of getting into the story. I know what’s inside every satchel,’’ he says.
Those contents include a stamp-size deed proving that Captain “Hogie’’ Hogancamp, the real man’s 12-inch alter ego, owns the doll-house-size, make-believe bar in this make-believe realm.
The fine line separating real from imagined is the focus of this poignant and provocative documentary, winner of the Jury Award for best documentary at the SXSW Film Festival. [Marwencol opens at selected theaters in more than 40 cities nationwide, starting in November and continuing into December and January. More info on theater dates here:http://www.marwencol.com/theaters/]
Picking up steam: Why is Boston the hub of steampunk?
Picking up steam
Mashing modern days with the Victorian age excites role players, artists, and other fans of steampunk
When Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum bought a 1901 home in Sharon, they wanted to restore it top to bottom. And rather than force a modern interior design, they remodeled it with a Victorian twist.
In the kitchen, an antique cash register holds dog treats. A cast iron stove is retrofitted with a Miele cooktop and electric ovens. In the family room, a wooden mantle frames a sleek flat-screen TV, and hidden behind an enameled fireplace insert, salvaged from a Kansas City train station, glow LED lights from the home-entertainment system.
Unknowingly, the Rosenbaums had “steampunked’’ their home, that is, added anachronistic (and sometimes nonfunctioning) machinery like old gears, gauges, and other accoutrements that evoke the design principles of Victorian England and the Industrial Revolution.
“When we started this three years ago, we didn’t even know what steampunk was,’’ said Bruce, 48. “An acquaintance came through the house and said ‘You guys are steampunkers.’ I thought, ‘Wow, there’s a whole group out there that enjoys blending the old and new.’’
It’s not just the Rosenbaums cobbling together computer workstations from vintage cameras and manual typewriters. Local enthusiasts are mounting steampunk exhibits, writing books, creating objets d’art, and dressing up in steampunk garb for live-action role playing games.
To be sure, steampunk has been part of the cultural conversation for the past several years, as DIY-ers embraced the hand-wrought, Steam Age aesthetic over high-tech gloss. But recently, it seems to be gaining a wider appeal, especially here.
“Boston lends itself to steampunk,’’ said Kimberly Burk, who researched steampunk as a graduate student at Brandeis. “You have the MIT tinkerers, the co-ops in JP, the eco-minded folks.’’
Both a pop culture genre and an artistic movement, steampunk has its roots in 19th- and early-20th-century science fiction like Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’’ and H.G. Wells’s “The Time Machine.’’ Its fans reimagine the Industrial Revolution mashed-up with modern technologies, such as the computer, as Victorians might have made them. Dressing the part calls for corsets and lace-up boots for women, top hats and frock coats for men. Accessories include goggles, leather aviator caps, and the occasional ray gun. And there’s a hint of Sid Vicious and Mad Max in there, too.
Still, steampunk defies easy categorization. It can be something to watch, listen to, wear, build, or read, but it’s also a set of loose principles. Steampunk attracts not only those who dream of alternative history, but those who would revive the craft and manners of a material culture that was built to last.
“The acceleration of the present leaves many of us uncertain about the future and curious [about] a past that has informed our lives, but is little taught,’’ said Martha Swetzoff, an independent filmmaker on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design who is directing a documentary on the subject. “Steampunk converses between past and present.’’
It also represents a “push back’’ against throw-away technologies, Swetzoff said, and a “culture hijacked by corporate interests.’’
For Burk, steampunk is more akin to the open source software movement than a retro-futuristic world to escape into. “Steampunk isn’t about how shiny your goggles are,’’ she said. “It’s about how cleverly you create something.’’
The urge to rescue and repurpose forgotten things led the Rosenbaums to spread the steampunk gospel. They’ve founded two companies: Steampuffin and ModVic, which infuse and rework 19th-century objects and homes with modern technology. They’re working on a book about the history of steampunk design. And, hoping some steampunker might want to live in a pimped-out Victorian crib, they purchased a second home in North Attleboro, restored it using their “back home to the future’’ philosophy, and put it on the market.
Bruce is also curating two steampunk exhibits. One will be displayed at Patriot Place’s new “20,000 Leagues’’ attraction, an “hourlong, walk-though steampunk adventure,’’ scheduled to open in December, according to creator Matt DuPlessie.
Meanwhile, “Steampunk: Form and Function, an Exhibition of Innovation, Invention and Gadgetry’’ recently opened at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, a former textile mill already filled with steam engines and belt-driven machines.
“Form and Function’’ includes a juried show of steampunked objects (many by local artists) like a steam-electric hybrid motorcycle called “the Whirlygig,’’ an electric mixer powered by a miniature steam engine, and a flash drive made with brass, copper, and glass. Perhaps the most impressive piece is a rehabbed pinball machine whose guts look like Frankenstein’s lab — down to the colored fluids bubbling through vintage glass tubes.
“I like giving things a new life,’’ said Charlotte McFarland of Allston, exhibiting her first-ever steampunk creation, “Spinning Wheel Generator.’’
Such functional art objects tap into a nostalgia for a mechanical, not electronic, age. Unlike the wireless signals, microwaves, and motherboards of today, the 19th century’s gears, pistons, and tubes were visible and visceral. While the workings of a laptop can seem impenetrable, we can fathom the reality of moving parts.
“As the world becomes more digital, the world less and less appreciates machines, which will be lost,’’ said Elln Hagney, the museum’s acting director. “We are trying to train a new generation to appreciate this and keep these machines running.’’
Some of the most committed local steampunkers dress up in period garb and take part in live-action role playing games. Most “LARPs’’ (think Dungeons & Dragons but in costume) are swords and sorcery-based, but Boston’s Steam & Cinders is one of only a couple of steampunk-themed LARPs anywhere.
Once a month, some 100 players gather for a weekend at a 4-H camp in Ashby. The game’s premise? A crashed dirigible has stranded folks at a frontier town called Iron City, next to a mysterious mine. Engineers, grenadiers, and aristocrats vie for supremacy. There are plenty of robots to fight (players dressed in cardboard costumes sprayed with metallic paint), and potions to mix (appealing to the mad scientist in us all). Players stay in character for 36 hours straight.
“Yes, it’s a fantasy world and it’s not England,’’ said Steam & Cinders founder Andrea DiPaolo of Saugus. “But getting to dress in British garb and speak in a British accent is something I enjoy.’’
Meanwhile, publishers are striking while the steampunk iron is hot.
“We can tap into the enthusiasm of a reader who can imagine an alternative version of the 19th century,’’ said Cambridge resident Ben H. Winters, author of this summer’s mash-up book “Android Karenina.’’
Winters steampunked Tolstoy’s novel by re-envisioning Anna Karenina in a 19th-century Russia with robotic butlers, mechanical wolves, and moon-bound rocket ships. Sample line: “When Anna emerged, her stylish feathered hat bent to fit inside the dome of the helmet, her pale and lovely hand holding the handle of her dainty ladies’-size oxygen tank . . .’’
“Hopefully,’’ explained Winters, who also wrote 2009’s “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,’’ “we’ll be adding to the fandom of the mash-up novel by introducing a new fan base: the sci-fi crowd.’’
Climb to Bruce Rosenbaum’s third-floor study and you feel as if you’ve entered one of those mash-ups. The attic space feels like a submersible, packed with portholes, nautical compasses, and a bank vault door. His desk is ornate and phantasmagorical, ringed with pipes from a pipe organ. It’s a place where you can imagine Captain Nemo banging out an ominous dirge.
“There’s freedom with steampunk,’’ Melanie added. “Almost anything goes.’’
+++++++
A Steampunk Primer
Not sure who or what put the punk into steam? Here’s a quick-and-dirty intro to some of the culture’s roots and most influential works, plus ways to connect to the steampunk community.
Books
Jules Verne: “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865), “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1869)
H.G. Wells: “The Time Machine” (1895), “The War of the Worlds” (1898), “The First Men in the Moon” (1901)
K.W. Jeter : “Morlock Night” (1979)
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling: “The Difference Engine” (1990)
Paul Di Filippo: “Steampunk Trilogy” (1995)
Philip Pullman: “His Dark Materials” trilogy (1995-2000)
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill: “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (comic book series, 1999)
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, editors: “Steampunk” (2008)
Dexter Palmer : The Dream of Perpetual Motion (2010)
Movies and TV
“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1954)
“The Wild Wild West” (TV series: 1965–1969); “Wild Wild West” (movie: 1999)
“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (2003)
“Steamboy” (anime film: 2004)
“Sherlock Holmes” (2009)
“Warehouse 13” (TV series: 2009-)
Steampunk info/community on the web:
The Steampunk Empire: The Crossroads of the Aether, thesteampunkempire.com
Steampunk magazine, steampunkmagazine.com
“Steampunk fortnight” blog, tor.com/blogs/2010/10/steampunk-fortnight-on-torcom
The Steampunk Workshop, steampunkworkshop.com
Other resources:
computer/console games: Myst (1993); BioShock (2007)
Templecon convention (Feb 4-6, 2011; Warwick, RI), templecon.org
Steam & Cinders live-action role-playing game (Boston), be-epic.com
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation (Waltham, MA), crmi.org (“Steampunk: Form and Function” exhibit through May 10; Steampunkers “meet up” Dec. 19; steampunk course March, 2011; New England Steampunk Festival April 30-May 1, 2011)
Steampuffin appliances and inventions and ModVic Victorian and steampunk home design (Sharon, MA), steampuffin.com, modvic.com
--- Ethan Gilsdorf
See Second Skin
To say that video games, particularly massively multiplayeronline games, are popular is like saying Oprah has decent Nielsen ratings. According to Strategy Analytics, in 2008 they generated $1.5 billion in wolrdwide subscription revenues, a figure that’s expected to balloon to at least $2.5 billion by 2012. Variously abbreviated as MMOs, MMOGs, and MMPOGs (or, if of the roleplaying kind, MMORPGs), these games have become an integral part of our social revolution and evolution, altering how we actand interact. But for good or evil?
This is the question I ask in my book "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks." And it's one asked by Juan Carlos and Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza, creators of the award-winning documentary Second Skin.
Every now and again, a film comes around that helps you understand your world a little better. Such is the case with Second Skin, a documentary that focuses on various groups computer gamers "whose lives have been transformed by online virtual worlds" -- be they addicted players, couples who meet and fall in love online; disabled players; or those toiling overseas as "gold farmers" to make digital goodies for richer (and western) players.
For the documentary "Second Skin," filmmakers took six months searching for subjects obsessed with online role-playing games. Eventually, they settled on four subjects, intercutting between them to explore the appeal of the massively popular "World of Warcraft" and "EverQuest" games.
Many potential subjects refused to participate, fearful of the geek label, said writer-producer Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza (in an article I wrote about them for the Boston Globe). He had to reassure them that he and his co-filmmakers were sympathetic gamers themselves. "We're emphasizing the human aspect of the people behind the game."
This month, Second Skin hits the theaters in Somerville (Boston); Austin, LA, and Colorado Springs. Check here for dates and showtimes in your town. In theaters August 7th. On DVD (with Liberation Entertainment) everywhere August 25th.
Harry Potter comes to Boston!
The Museum of Science in Boston made this announcement today:
"This fall, Harry Potter fans will get the chance to step inside the famous wizard's magical world through Harry Potter: The Exhibition, which opens at the Museum of Science, Boston on October 25, 2009, at 9 a.m. Tickets are now available online at mos.org or by calling 617-723-2500, 617-589-0417 (TTY). Visitors will be able to experience dramatic displays inspired by the Hogwarts™ film sets and see the amazing craftsmanship behind authentic costumes and props from the films. Harry Potter: The Exhibition will run in Boston through February 21, 2010."
Cool stuff includes "display Harry Potter artifacts in settings inspired by film sets, including the Great Hall, Hagrid's hut, and the Gryffindor common room" and "a 500-pound, 10-foot tall chess piece"
Great news. But it raises the question: what business does a science museum have displaying movie props and special effects displays? Don't get me wrong: I love these movie magic exhibits. The MOS hosted both a Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movie show. But I wonder if, in the words of Ioannis Miaoulis, President and Director of the Museum of Science, "This exhibit will spark their curiosity and imagination, leading them to experience the excitement of discovery that's also at the heart of the Museum's science and technology exhibits and programs."
Or maybe, just maybe, it will net the museum a crapload of money. Which isn't a bad thing. But I'd rather Miaoulis just call a spade a spade and say, hey, this is going to pay the heating bills and help update our cutting-edge technology displays that date back to the 1980s.
PSAs from the future
No explanation needed. Just watch 'em.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
Egad! someone who does not like Harry Potter?
Ok, so let's say you hate Harry Potter. Bryony Gordon, the author of this story (originally appearing in the Telegraph UK) bravely if foolhardily admits he'd enjoyed a blissful period thinking that Harry Potter did not exist at all, because no book or movie had been released in ages (ages for Harry Potter fans, anyway). "For two blissful years my life has been a Harry Potter-free zone. No talk of muggles, or quidditch, or Hogwarts or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." And for this London resident, "nobody has made any really unfunny jokes about the train leaving from platform 9¾, which is good, because it means I have had less cause to hit people over the head with a rolled up newspaper." Yuk yuk.
Which just goes to show you, you can't force geekdom on anyone. You can't make a person like a book, a movie, a pop cultural phenom. But this author goes out on a limb a little further, to say, "it won't surprise you to learn that I don't understand grown adults who like Harry Potter... It's a bit sinister, actually. In my mind, you may as well sit on the train reading a Thomas the Tank Engine picture book making choo-choo noises." Then the "escape" claim: "I know that mature fans of Harry Potter claim it allows them to escape to another world, that it helps them to feel young again."
For me, there's nothing wrong with that. But for Mr. Gordon, I sense the kid's play that Harry Potter evokes is shameful.
Gordon cleverly exits on a joke "But when the first one came out I was 17 and by the time that the final movie instalment is released I will be 31. That doesn't make me feel young. It makes me feel really, really old. And there's nothing magic about that." And leaves me wondering if there's something else here, unexamined, that explains his aversion to all things Hogwarts.
--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks