Posted Aug 24, 09 01:43 PM
Dark Magic
I've never had much use for magicians. Well...most of them.
Call me a rabbit-outta-the-hat snob. A pseudo-illusionist. There's no quarter hiding behind my ear, either. I've got better things to do than figure out which peanut shell the pea is under, or what Lance Burton did with the Brooklyn Bridge. Mind you, over the years, the trickery has grown exceedingly more confounding to the eye. But don't count me as an "aye," even though David Copperfield was pretty good in Terror Train (1980).
It's difficult to suspend belief when, at its core, magic is solely about sleight of hand – in which case, there's nothing to believe in the first place. I tune out the illusionist's savvy lip service - which, of course, is intended to distract the audience - and stare at the fast, coin-free hand or the pattern of the box lining of the crate into which the beautiful volunteer climbs. Awareness of attempts at diverting us is built-in, so we're always looking for the wires. Subtract The Prestige (2006) from the discussion: Where's the "magic" in magic?
In The Wizard of Gore (1970), Herschell Gordon Lewis took the "gag" out of the "saw the person in half" gag. Of course, Lewis was only notorious for being notorious, the kind of (very loosely put) filmmaker probably all glow-y for being cited as going toooooooo faaaaar. Not far enough, I say. Eh! Put the magician in his own box, then sharpen the hacksaw. I'll buy a dinner theater ticket for that one.
But I digress.
Imagine my disappointment when I found out that William Friedkin's curtain call to The Exorcist – 1977's Sorcerer – had Roy Scheider and a bunch of inmates trying to haul a truckload of nitroglycerin over the Andes. False advertising! Hey! Where are my pointed hats with crescent moons? The witches and warlocks of Rosemary's Baby (1968) are my kind of magicians: Evil in the deliciously atypical charming and dotty vein. Anjelica Huston was a hoot in the Jim Henson-stamped The Witches (1990), and covens met PG-13 clicks in The Craft (2000). But with W's & W's, I like it darker in the daylight.
Potent, unforgiving wizardry entries are generally not in surplus. I highly recommend Dario Argento's Suspiria (1978) – the first (and easily most cohesive) entry in his "three sisters" trilogy. A weird rock score by Goblin, color-assaulting production design and merciless ultra-violence completely drown substance with style. But like a nightmare washing around in R.E.M., it strikes a nerve... and keeps striking. Jessica Harper plays an American student who enrolls at a conservatory outside Rome only to discover that...well...
What's this week's topic?
My high hopes have stayed high for the boy wizard franchise. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) once again makes magic cool with superb attention to villainy and shadow, daring to further develop its adversaries as if they stepped in from the set of a classic horror film. Director David Yates, building to the inevitable two-part finale a year and two away, methodically drains the sunlight and innocence from this go-round of Hogwarts. Where science fiction had previously dimmed down its light bulbs to resemble scare prototypes (see the blog "Dark Science"), now fantasy, too, treads on another genre's visuals. Skull faces take shape in clouds, candle wax drips like stalagtites, and a somber Harry suffers a bloody nose. Attempts at humor, thankfully, are relegated to cleverness (in a potions class, Oscar winner Jim Broadbent's Professor Slughorn gets the line, "Louie, don't forget your rat tail!"). But this series has intelligently played out like a sunny day overtaken by a gathering storm - with only one rain-out (the sullen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).
It's renewed a faith in magic that begrudgingly...warily...arms-folded... half-smiles once in a while. Just don't force me to sit through a rerun of Bewitched.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 01:43 PM