NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES: Movie reviews. And one actual nightmare!

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde--the silent one with John Barrymore.

The two notable things about this movie are 1. Barrymore and 2. the changes made to the storyline. As far as 1., he's creepy and awesome. Even at the story's beginning, when he's supposed to be practically perfect in every way, he looks ferocious and kind of like he's about to bite the head off a bat. His fit during the first transformation is great. (...Though the second transformation slides into the ridiculous.)

2. is really annoying. Not only is Jekyll's early perfection pushed over the top in a way it isn't in the novel; not only is a Henry Wotton/Jimmy Stewart in Rope figure introduced, rather than having Jekyll seduce himself, play Richard to his own Lady Anne; but Jekyll's downfall occurs when he... sees a fan-dance. Yep. Sex made him a monster. Not even the chance to see Nita Naldi could keep me from being desperately bored by this idea. I was really glad I'd read the novel first, since if I had assumed that this was Stevenson's own storyline I doubt I would have bothered to read it.

Random notes: The intertitles are illustrated and a lot of fun. The close-up shot where Hyde's horrible hands first begin to move is genuinely shivery--thrilling and frightening even to those of us raised on contemporary horror techniques.

Powwow Highway: There's a pony in here somewhere.

...No, okay, it really wasn't that bad. This is a demi-political road movie in which a rough-edged American Indian Movement guy and his best friend head out to find and presumably rescue the AIM guy's sister, who was framed for drug possession. Both of the lead actors (Gary Farmer and A Martinez) were really good, and I'll be looking for more of their movies.

But rrraaaarrrrrggghhhh, this was really predictable, sentimental, and cliched! It's just not good. If the writer/director had decided to take this in a noirish direction, it could have worked so much better--there's past ('70s) vs present ('89 I think), past (1800s) vs past ('70s), mysticism vs politics, attempts to escape the past and "the system" and one's own personality.... I swear, this could have been a really good movie! Instead, it's... not.

And my nightmare, in which I was in Jeepers Creepers 3! No joke. I don't even know if there is a Jeepers Creepers 3--there is a 2, but I haven't seen it. Anyway, for all my complaints about the original flick, it now joins Misery as only the second horror movie to give me actual nightmares. ...Sometimes I was just watching the movie, in which survivors from the first one and the sequel teamed up against the eeeeevildoer. Other times the action was real, and I was one of the terrified characters. Other times I was the evildoer! Yipes.

Interestingly, two elements of the nightmare were drawn from things I genuinely liked about the movie: the golden afternoon, light-drenched, in which the first half takes place--just gorgeous to look at; and the full-throttle ending. I hated the very last shot (thought it was overdone and kinda goofy), but the way the plotline ended was very, very satisfying, and my nightmare picked up on that.

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale; the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong, and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?"
--Revelation 6:12-7

MITT ROMNEY'S TIES TO ABUSIVE "TOUGH LOVE" CAMPS FOR TEENS:

...As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon. According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.” Through a spokesperson, Lichfield has dismissed the similar charges against WWASPS to The Hill as “ludicrous,” claiming that the teens who sued “have a long history of lying, fabricating and twisting the story around to their own benefit.” ...

Ultimately, Straight would pay out millions in settlements before it finally closed. However, to this day, there are at least eight programs operating that use Straight’s methods, often in former Straight buildings operated by former Straight staff.

more (and more)

I'VE UPDATED that list of some Iraqi blogs, on the sidebar. These are all blogs being updated fairly regularly (with the exception of the Salam Pax BBC link), mostly personal stories, all very much recommended. Iraq Blog Count is a good place to start.

How I loved our church, and how clearly I can see it still! The old porch by which we entered, black, and full of holes as a colander, was worn out of shape and deeply furrowed at the sides (as also was the font to which it led us) just as if the gentle friction of the cloaks of peasant-women coming into church, and of their fingers dipping into the holy water, had managed by age-long repetition to acquire a destructive force, to impress itself on the stone, to carve grooves in it like those made by cart-wheels upon stone gate-posts which they bump against every day. Its memorial stones, beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray who lay buried there furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time had softened them and made them flow like honey beyond their proper margins, here oozing out in a golden stream, washing from its place a florid Gothic capital, drowning the white violets of the marble floor, and elsewhere reabsorbed into their limits, contracting still further a crabbed Latin inscription, bringing a fresh touch of fantasy into the arrangement of its curtailed characters, closing together two letters of some word of which the rest were disproportionately distended.
--Swann's Way

I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by voluntary memory, the memory of the intellect, and since the pictures which that kind of memory shows us preserve nothing of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over the residue of Combray. To me it was in reality all dead.

Permanently dead? Very possibly.
--Swann's Way

"TO DIE THE BOOMER DEATH." Feel like emailing me about this? Opinions, anecdotes, assorted whatnot? I'm working on a related piece, which I should get done by the end of the week, so yeah, I'd be very happy to hear from you all.

THE RACKET:

A PROPOSAL making its way to the House floor would hurt everyone from the average American taxpayer to the struggling African farmer. It would enrich a small number of big businesses in a few dozen congressional districts. It would claim money that could otherwise go to priorities the Democratic majority supposedly champions: environmental conservation, student loans, Head Start, food stamps or children's health insurance. Even President Bush wants to reprioritize the spending.

So what will the Democratic leadership do about it?

more

Oh, give up,
Oh, give up for my blogwatch...

Club for Growth: I went to these bars in college. Above the law since 1997! (Or hey, how much does the drinking age destroy social cohesion?)

Daniel Mitsui: Ave/Eva.

Hit & Run: Like Solidarnosc in reverse.

Journalista: How! I'm Dani Moonstar. (Scroll like Minnehaha.)

Ninomania has a lot of interesting comments on today's Supreme Court decisions, esp. on the shift from parental rights to students' rights, and the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case. "A few years ago the Court declined to recognize an across-the-board 'drug exception' to the Fourth Amendment 'knock and announce' requirement. But in myriad other ways, the war on drugs has greatly changed our law, and not necessarily for the better." Y'all might find this an unexpected perspective from a self-confessed fan of Nino Scalia.

Scrutinies: Homework, homeschooling, and opportunity costs.

The Rat: Is it smart to tell your smart child she's smart? Yeah, no. (This of course plays into my deep horror of valuing your child--or anyone else--for her abilities and attributes, rather than just for the fact that she's alive.)

HOMECOMING: On Friday in the New York City subway I heard yet another accordion rendition of music from The Godfather. Which I like a lot, you know.

But when I arrived back home, heavy-laden and panting and sweating under D.C.'s swampist cloud cover, I heard the hometown equivalent, and felt my spirits rise: Out by the Union Station fountain, a man was playing the saxophone and singing hymns into a microphone. I caught "Amazing Grace," "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," as well as a couple I didn't recognize. They were breathy, shuddery, panhandling-style with syllables missing; and they were everything I love about my city.

Your vote: If I'd been on that taxi line (shut up, I had bags and bags of books, and if you'd heard me wheezing like Black Beauty's last moments you'd've called me a taxi too!) for another ten minutes, which would I have heard first?

a. "Shenandoah"
b. "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"
c. "Moon River"
d. "I Know That My Redeemer Lives"

Oh, heartbreak city, you're never loved as well as you deserve. In this way you resemble all my sweethearts.

Two drifters, off to see the world;
I'm not so sure the world deserves us....
--"Moon River," as covered by Morrissey

THE VIENNA VEGETABLE ORCHESTRA.

"THE WOUNDED TORTURER":

...Neither man would describe what they’d endured. “It is secret, intimate,” Fr. Roman said, “I saw saints fall, and I saw the simple rise and become saints.” Fr. George admitted that he gave way under torture. When a victim is out of his mind with pain, he doesn’t know what he is saying. Fr. George told his interviewer, “It was a spiritual fight, between good spirits and evil spirits. And we failed on the field of battle; we failed, many of us, because it was beyond our ability to resist … The limit of the human soul’s resistance was tried there by the devil.”

This emotional and spiritual damage was even worse than the physical pain. Fr. George went on, “When you were tortured, after one or two hours of suffering, the pain would not be so strong. But after denying God and knowing yourself to be a blasphemer—that was the pain that lasted … We forgive the torturers. But it is very difficult to forgive ourselves.” At night a wash of tears would come, and with it, returning prayer. “You knew very well that the next day you would again say something against God. But a few moments in the night, when you started to cry and to pray to God to forgive you and help you, was very good.”

Fr. George once attempted to write a memoir of his Pitesti experience, but found it impossible: “Sometimes I was hammering at one word, timidly, then persistently, then intensely, to madness. The word became nothing other than a sequence of letters or sounds. It had no meaning. It didn’t tell me anything. I would say: ‘beating’ or ‘pain’ or ‘prayer’ or ‘curse’ … and I would substitute one for another without any change; none told me anything! I would say ‘cell’ and the word would not speak. I could say instead ‘lelc’ or ‘clel’ or ‘ellc’ with the same result. Everything was mute and absurd." ...

Yet the worst was still to come. In order to demonstrate that they had truly become “the Communist man,” in order to fully embody the persona demanded of them, these mentally and physically battered prisoners were required to become torturers. They were compelled to assist in the “re-education” of new prisoners, and any reluctance or leniency was cruelly punished.

more (via Mark Shea)

We can't be silent, 'cause they might be blogwatch
(And what are we gonna do unless they are?)...

Alias Clio: A field guide to irony. "It should be added, however, that there are dealers in irony for whom the initiated circle is not of outside hearers, but is an alter ego dwelling in their own breasts."

Daniel Mitsui: Remnants of a Nagasaki cathedral; Gothic cathedral in full color.

Hit & Run: The taco truck menace.

The Wall Street Journal has an economics blog. (Via... the Club for Growth, maybe?)

"When the anti-terrorism cop is Muslim." Via Ratty.

From the Institute for Justice: "Victimizing the Vulnerable: The demographics of eminent domain abuse." Probably via Hit & Run.

These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
--Hebrews 11:13-4

RESPONSES TO MY COMMONWEAL PIECE: I thought this one was really fascinating. I don't have the knowledge necessary to agree or disagree--I, uh, didn't actually read any of LT Johnson's books before I reared up on my hind legs and started fussin' at him--but anyway, people following the discussion should check it out.

Also, if you've emailed me, I will respond, but it may take me a few days. If you haven't emailed me, but you might want to, please do! I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, concerns, suggestions, etc. I really appreciate the emails I've gotten thus far.

Regular blogging should recommence soon. For now I will just say that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is still awesome. "I've loved you more than any woman's ever loved a rabbit."

IF YOU'RE HERE VIA THAT COMMONWEAL PIECE, you might check out the sidebar, where I have links to a bunch of other articles on God 'n' gay stuff.

Oh, and: welcome!

TWO LINKS: Christian Wiman:

...I wish I could slow things down at this point, could linger a bit in those months after our marriage. I wish I could feel again that blissful sense of immediacy and expansiveness at once, when every moment implied another, and the future suddenly seemed to offer some counterbalance to the solitary fever I had lived in for so long. I think most writers live at some strange adjacency to experience, that they feel life most intensely in their recreation of it. For once, for me, this wasn’t the case. I could not possibly have been paying closer attention to those days.

Which is why I was caught so off-guard. I got the news that I was sick on the afternoon of my 39th birthday. It took a bit of time, travel, and a series of wretched tests to get the specific diagnosis, but by then the main blow had been delivered, and that main blow is what matters. I have an incurable cancer in my blood. The disease is as rare as it is mysterious, killing some people quickly and sparing others for decades, afflicting some with all manner of miseries and disabilities and leaving others relatively healthy until the end. Of all the doctors I have seen, not one has been willing to venture even a vague prognosis. ...

...“It is necessary to have had a revelation of reality through joy,” Weil writes, “in order to find reality through suffering.” This is certainly true to my own experience. I was not wrong all those years to believe that suffering is at the very center of our existence, and that there can be no untranquilized life that does not fully confront this fact. The mistake lay in thinking grief the means of confrontation, rather than love.

more--this excerpt doesn't do it justice (via Amy Welborn)

and Gracia Burnham:

...Gracia attended a senior-citizen Bible study at the First Baptist Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, where she’d been invited to speak.

Fifteen frosted-haired ladies, some wearing sweaters decorated with hollyhocks, gasped as Gracia pulled a piece of stiff batik fabric from a Voice of the Martyrs white plastic shopping bag. Using her teeth, Gracia showed the class how she’d wrapped the fabric, called a malong, around her to make a changing room and a bathroom. The toilet was a theme of the weekend. “The first few times I made a mess of it and had to wait until I got to the next river to wash it,” she said.

...She then showed the ladies how the fabric served as a blanket, a backpack, and even, on one occasion, a stretcher for a 14-year-old Abu Sayyaf member named Ahmed. At first, she had loathed Ahmed for hoarding food when she had none, throwing stones at her while she bathed — fully clothed — in the river, and pushing her along the trail saying “faster, faster.” As she and Martin slowly starved, Gracia prayed to find a way to love Ahmed.

One day, he was injured in a firefight and soiled himself. Gracia could see he was mortified. Thinking of her own son, Zach, who was about the same age, she took Ahmed’s clothes to the river to wash them. There, she was filled with love. The last time Gracia saw Ahmed, who had been carried wounded through the jungle in the malong, like a sling, he had gone stark raving mad and was tied by the hands and feet to the walls of a hut in the southern Philippines. Someone had stuffed a sock in his mouth to keep him from screaming. She wondered aloud to the Bible study class where Ahmed was now — still crazy, perhaps, or pushing another hostage up another steep mountain path. Or, most likely, he had died and gone to hell.

more here if you subscribe to The New Republic; I don't, so I'm relying on Get Religion's excerpts and comments here.

O TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE: The current issue of Commonweal features "Homosexuality & the Church: Two Views." Luke Timothy Johnson is view #1, and I am view #2. Hie thee thither, and let me know what you think.

For a long time I would go to bed early.
--Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time v. 1: Swann's Way, tr. CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin