Sunday, 24 October 2010
Today we ran all over town – Halloween costumes, groceries, and art supplies all took up our time. The highlight of the day, though, was probably joining the Happy Trails Nature Club on a bog walk at the Harriet Alexander Nature Center.
Here are the ladies in my family out enjoying the fall day:
While the highlight for Isla, evidently, was sleeping through the entire event, the highlight for Owen and me was the Nature Center’s indoor apiary.
The bees all live in this skinny hive that allows viewing on either side. It was fascinating to watch them going about their tasks. Owen, actually was so engrossed that he refused to come on over and listen to the story time. Here’s the apiary itself (with Owen’s head just visible):
The upturned jar to the right, incidentally, is filled with sugar water. “Sugar water” is just a chemist’s fancy terminology for “a solution of water in which sugar has been dissolved.”
You can just barely see it on the left of the picture, but the insects gain access to the great outdoors via a hard plastic tube. There were often four or five bees at a time marching back and forth through the tube to carry on their business. Here’s a close-up of the tube:
It’s probably difficult to see, but there is one bee making his way through the tube in this photo.
You’d think these bees would have life pretty easy, but it turns out they die every winter and need to be replaced with new Borg drones.
Pretty cool.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Today I watched a movie that has to be one of the most difficult movies for me to rate (I keep a list of every movie I’ve ever seen, along with a rating from 0-10). I watched the Van Sant 1998 remake of Psycho.
I try to rate flicks based on when they were released, ergo – I don’t hold it against a film if it’s a silent film, or if it’s special effects aren’t as awesome as more recent films. I also try to ignore outside influences – if a historical picture isn’t entirely historically accurate, I’m okay with that. And if a movie is adapted from a book, I try not to judge the former based on the latter. Indeed, the only time I purposely allow my judgment of a film to be colored by another work is in the case of sequels.
But what about Psycho?
Hmm… a shot-by-shot remake, with identical dialog of my all-time favorite film. Weird.
First off, the dialog is not identical. The writer’s wisely updated a couple of lines. For example, Marion doesn’t steal $40,000 as she does in the original, she steals $400,000 (makes sense). And Detective Arbogast doesn’t reference aspic (what the hell is aspic, anyway?), he references Jell-O, a brand name far more people would recognize.
But overall, this is a film from 1960, even if the opening credits insist it’s 1998. Would Sam really place his engagement on hold just to pay off his debts? In 1960, sure. But in 1998, no, I don’t think so. And would a finance office really keep their back offices air conditioned, but their front offices in sweltering heat? Again, in 1960, sure. But not in 1998. Worst, though, is when Sheriff Chambers’ wife calls the Bates Motel. She picks up the phone and asks that the operator connect her with the motel. Um…sorry, but in 1998, you can just go ahead and call people directly.
But while the film-makers stupidly didn’t update some dialog, they made some changes that were equally stupid. For one thing, Marion Crane is played by Anne Heche. I swear, you could see her thinking in her head “Okay, here’s the part where I need to blink nervously.” It’s like she was just walking through the role, making sure she pantomimed the expressions that were so natural with Janet Leigh.
Also, Heche is a diminutive Pixie of a woman. When she fist interacts with Norman (portrayed by Vince Vaughan), it just doesn’t work. Vaughan looks and acts sinister. He’s a foot taller than Heche and at least twice her weigh. They also appear to be matched in age. In short, he gave off every signal in the world that she should be scared, and that just ruined it. In the original, Leigh and Anthony Perkins are close in height and weight. She seems older, more self-assured, and Perkins’ Norman comes across as an awkward man-boy in his early 20s who doesn’t know how to hurt a fly.
But there’s more bad casting: the psychiatrist’s monologue at the film’s end was made interesting in the original by the way he spoke. It was as if he was at a loss for words, and was trying to think up how to explain Mrs. Bates’ condition as he spoke. But in the remake, the psychiatrist simply parrots the words, quickly and meaninglessly, as if he’s a politician giving a well-rehearsed speech.
And on the subject of bad casting: Julianne Moore plays Marion’s sister Lila. Though obviously in her 30s, she dresses like a teenager, complete with a Walkman and headphones. And it’s not only her rebellious teenager clothing: she also acts like a hormonal bitch. When Sam tries to show her support by putting his hand on her shoulder, she pointlessly shrugs it off. Later, he puts his hand on her shoulder again, this time to complete the illusion that he and Lila are married. But she shrugs him off again! Nice going Lila, now Norman knows you’re lying.
And here’s a weird thing: When Marion is killed in the shower, we are shown quick shots of thunderclouds. Weird…but okay, because it was a stormy night and I can see the connect between the storm outside and the storm inside. But later, when Mrs. Bates kills Arbogast, we also see two quick shots: one of a woman’s silhouette, and one of a cow standing on a road. Again, weird. But this time: stupid.
And speaking of Marion’s murder: the film-makers decided to show her pupils dilating. I appreciated that, because her pupils did not dilate in the original – and that was a mistake. Unfortunately, mere moments after watching her pupils dilate, we see her eyes again and they’re no longer dilated. Sloppy.
Maybe they forgot to keep her eyes dilated because they were too busy setting up an overhead shot of a dead Marion spread-eagled over the tub ledge. She’s face-down, of course, so we just see a very weird angle of her butt crack. Silly…at a time when silliness should not come into play.
But here are the two worst moves (and don’t read on if you’ve never seen the original, or if you’re squeamish):
1) While spying on Marion through the hole in the wall, Norman masturbates – to the point of ejaculation. I’m sorry, but besides detracting from the story, that just ruins the psychology of the next ten minutes. In the original, he simply watches her silently. He is aroused, but he gets no release. His conversation with his mother, and the ensuing stabbing don’t make any sense if Norman is not in a state of agitated arousal.
2) The original film closes with a brilliant triple-exposure of Norman/his mom’s skull/ a chain being pulled out of his heart cross-dissolving into the car being pulled out of the swamp. Then the credits immediately begin – literally chopping away at the scene of the car. It’s as if Hitchcock was saying, “Yeah, remember that money that you cared so much about? Well, here it is…but so what? Movie over!” In the remake, the triple-exposure is still there, but the camera lingers on the car. We are not left with Norman’s demented grin, but with the car being hoisted out of the water. And the shot doesn’t end there: the camera pans up and lets us watch the car being completed extracted and towed away. The scene continues through the entire closing credits, and even for over a minute after the credits end. It’s all useless, and it diminishes the impact.
But I digress. All my nitpicks serve, overall, to just compare the remake with the original. Had there never been an original, I would’ve watched this 1998 flick and found it very admirable. Unfortunately for that film’s creators, though, there was an original.
When asked why he remade a classic in a shot-for-shot manner, director Van Sant said: “So no one else would have to.”
Sorry, Van Sant – that answer is as silly and pointless as your film.
Bottom line:
Psycho (1960): A
Psycho (1998): C