Review: The Amityville Horror (2005)

I've always wondered why filmmakers bother to remake movies that were perfectly fine in the first place. I mean, did we really need a new version of Psycho? Another Manchurian Candidate? More Planet of the Apes? No, no and no. (And we still have The Pink Panther and King Kong to look forward to.) Why waste time remaking good movies when there are so many bad movies with at least the germ of a good idea at their cores that are more worthy candidates for "re-envisioning"?

The current popularity of horror films, particularly ghost stories, would seem to position The Amityville Horror as a promising candidate for such a revisit. The original Amityville, based on the "nonfiction" best-seller by Jay Anson (the truthfulness of which has been at the very least disputed, if not entirely dismissed as fiction), starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder as George and Kathy Lutz, a young couple who move their family into a riverside property in Amityville, New York, only to move out 28 days later after experiencing numerous flavors of paranormal nightmare, like plagues of flies, blood flowing out of the walls and possession. Despite hysterical performances by Brolin, Kidder and Rod Steiger and overall lousy reviews, the 1979 version of Amityville made millions of dollars and generated seven follow-ups, most of which related to the original in name and basic concept alone.

Unfortunately, producer Michael Bay (who also produced the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) and director Andrew Douglas squander the opportunity to pump new life into the franchise by going through many of the same motions as the original, only with younger stars and a few bits lifted from more recent thrillers like The Ring and The Grudge (themselves both remakes) thrown in.

Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George take over as George and Kathy, who go looking for a house for themselves and Kathy's three precocious moppets from her previous marriage (her first husband died) and find this lovely riverfront property in Amityville for dirt cheap--maybe because the previous tenants, the Defeos, were murdered in their sleep with a shotgun by Ronald Defeo, who claimed that voices in his head told him to do it. Uh oh.

George and Kathy buy the place anyway, and weird ensues almost immediately. George becomes remarkably short-tempered and just can't seem to get warm no matter what he does, so he essentially moves into the basement to be closer to the furnace. The youngest Lutz, Chelsea, starts talking to a not-so-imaginary friend named Jodie, who isn't a pig with red eyes this time around, but a spectral little girl with flowing black hair (just like Samara from The Ring) who urges Chelsea to jump off the roof. Kathy calls in a priest (Philip Baker Hall) to bless the house, but the house tells him to "GET OUT!" and, very sensibly, he does, leaving the Lutzes to do battle with the evil spirits on their own.

Reynolds does his best to convey George's confusion over his own behavior and gets some nice, creepy moments, like when George makes Kathy's oldest son hold the firewood while he cleaves in half with an axe or when he screws into the woodwork at random. By the end of the movie, though, when Reynolds comes off as little more than a junior Jack Torrance with better abs and more facial hair. Melissa George doesn't fare as much better as Kathy, wearing the same wide-eyed, appalled facial expression most of the time and sporting some of the most frightening eyebrows this side of Mommie Dearest.

Director Douglas keeps things moving at an brisk pace, but that rapid movement also works against this new Amityville. George Lutz's descent into madness/possession isn't so much a steady decline as it is a straight drop--the boxes have barely been unpacked when George starts acting wacky, stripping the movie of any opportunity to build suspense. And no matter how many ominous tracking shots of the house we get (trust me, there are many) or "surprise" appearances by Jodie are thrown at the audience, the atmosphere of dread and foreboding that Douglas and screenwriter Scott Kosar are striving for never takes hold.

By the time Hall gets knocked on his ass by a very unconvincing swarm of computer-generated flies, it's hard to stifle the laughter anymore. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the reaction Bay, Douglas and Kosar were going for.

And the Oscar Goes to...(2005 Edition)

Last year, my office didn't have an Oscar pool, so I listed my picks for the Academy Awards here. And since that went so bloody fucking well (I was right on exactly two of my choices), why not embarrass myself again this year?

Got your scorecards out? Then let us begin.

Best Director. Alexander Payne scored a nice little hit with his wine-swillin' dramedy, Sideways, and the movie might take home an Oscar or two. It won't be in this category, though. Not with a couple of 500-pound gorillas named Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese taking up space here. (Taylor Hackford? Mike Leigh? Sorry, gentlemen. Love you both, butÉno.) Eastwood already has a Best Director statue for Unforgiven, but his Million Dollar Baby was perhaps the best-reviewed movie of 2004, despite controversy over its ending. And no, I'm not going to be a flaming hemorrhoidal asshole like Michael Medved and reveal the ending here. (You may or may not agree with the decisions the characters make, but revealing the ending? That's just wrong.) However--and it amazes me every time I say this--Scorsese has never won for Best Director. Never. The Aviator may not be his best film--it might not even be his fifth best film--but the time has come to right this wrong. Hasn't it? Give Martin the damn statue.

Best Supporting Actress. The Supporting categories are usually the most interesting, since they're usually a mixed bag of reliable veterans (Cate Blanchett, Laura Linney), hot young thangs making a mark (Natalie Portman), comeback kids (Virginia Madsen) and actors you've never heard of before and probably won't again (Sophie Okonedo). For a lot of them, the nomination will have to be the award, because they have no chance, like Okonedo and Linney. It's nice to see Portman do something other than imitate a mannequin, as she's done in each of the Star Wars prequels (and presumably will in the final installment later this year), but she won't be rewarded simply for not sucking. So it's down to Madsen for Sideways and Blanchett for The Aviator. I wouldn't be upset if Madsen won--I have longstanding lust for her, trueÑbut I really believe this round goes to Cate the Great, who got ripped off when she was nominated last (Gwyneth Paltrow? Really?), so she might get a makeup Oscar here.

Best Supporting Actor. We have a bunch of former sitcom stars this year--Alan Alda from "M*A*S*H," Thomas Hayden Church from "Wings" and Jamie Foxx from "The Jamie Foxx Show"--but none of them is likely to win, especially Foxx, since he's also nominated for Best Actor for Ray. (It's a shame the Academy nominated Foxx twice rather than give some other actor--David Carradine for Kill Bill, Vol. 2, maybe--a shot.) Clive Owen? I don't think so. That leaves Morgan Freeman (also a TV veteran from "The Electric Company"--anyone else remember that? No? Damn, I'm old.), who is both narrator and comedic foil to Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby, and performs with the same steady assurance he brings to every role, even in crappy movies.

Best Actress. In 1999, Annette Bening and Hilary Swank duked it out for the Best Actress Oscar, and Swank won for Boys Don't Cry. And that's how it should play out again this year, with Swank walking off with another little golden statue (manufactured right here in Chicago) for her (literally) muscular performance in Million Dollar Baby. Imelda Staunton? Catalina Sandino Moreno? Kate Winslet? Smile at the nice camera when the red light comes on, ladies. That's the closest you'll get to winning.

Best Actor. Johnny Depp was nominated last year, and I predicted that he would win. (Yes, I'm a dumbass.) Eastwood has never won an Oscar for his acting, and he probably won't here, especially since his performance owes tall props to Burgess Meredith's crusty turn in the Rocky movies. Then again, if Million Dollar Baby starts sweeping up awards in other categories, he might. (Then again, the Academy could have given his slot to Paul Giamatti for Sideways, since Giamatti's co-stars, Virginia Madsen and Thomas Hayden Church, were both nominated.) The same theory could apply to Leonardo DiCaprio: If The Aviator starts sweeping categories, he could grab the Best Actor Oscar. It's great that Don Cheadle, usually one of our most reliable supporting actors, got a lead nomination for Hotel Rwanda, but his chances here are outside at best. The winner? Jamie Foxx for Ray, proving again that comic actors can give dramatic performances with the best of 'em, and that the Academy loves stories of tortured geniuses and addiction (in this case, both).

Best Picture. Three biopics--The Aviator, Finding Neverland and Ray--versus heartbreaking drama--Million Dollar Baby--and observant comedy/drama--Sideways. Hollywood loves them some epic storytelling. The only thing close to an epic this year? The Aviator. Any movie that takes crazy-ass Howard Hughes and makes him remotely appealing deserves something.

Then again, given how my picks turned out last year--i.e., smelling like rotting meat--you might want to take the picks above and use them as a guide to what not to vote for. Just sayin'.

Popcorn Kernals 2004

So...where were we?

Oh, yeah. Bitching endlessly about...well, everything.

Even though I stopped updating this Web site back in April (and thank you, by the way, to all of you who had nice things to say about this bloggity and its author, and who asked/demanded that I start posting here again), I didn't stop doing creatively stimulating things, like taking pictures or writing. You'll see that as this year goes on.

I also didn't stop going to the movies. Okay, I saw four fewer movies than I did in 2003. But I saw four more movies at my neighborhood theater, the Davis, than I did in the previous year (support you'r local independent movie houses, y'all--you never know when they'll be swallowed up by one megaplex or another), and I saw more movies with friends than I had the previous year, when I saw more movies by myself than I ever had before (or ever want to again).

I never got around to reviewing most of this year's movies and probably never will, so here are my comments, brief though they may be, on the new movies I saw on the big screen in 2004:

Dogville Lars von Trier employed an amazing cast (Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, Chloe Sevigny, Ben Gazzara, Patricia Clarkson, Philip Baker Hall, etc.) and minimalist sets (often only suggested via gestures by the cast) to make effective criticism of the mistrust and abuse of outsiders by Americans (even though von Trier has never visited America and, reportedly, never wants to). But once he makes his point, he makes it again. And again. And again. At one point, Sailor J asked to look at my watch. I held it up close enough for both of us to see the face of the silver Timex: we'd been in the theater for an hour and a half. "Holy fuck," she said with no small amount of despair in her voice, "we have an hour and a half to go." We both groaned.

Dawn of the Dead Yeah. I know. I reviewed this one already. But if one good thing came out of this reasonably entertaining but thoroughly unnecessary remake of George Romero's '70s classic, it's this: Due to the renewed popularity of zombie movies, Romero is now shooting Land of the Dead, his fourth zombie flick, with actors you've actually heard of before (Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento). As long as it's better than Romero's last undead epic, Day of the Dead, it's all good. Also, the Dawn remake was the last movie I saw at the historic Biograph Theatre, which closed this fall and will be rebuilt as a live-theatre venue. Fare thee well, Biograph: Your seats always made my ass ache, but I'll miss you anyway.

Hellboy Do I give a shit about one CGI-animated beastie dicksmacking another CGI-animated beastie? Not really.

Van Helsing It's never a good sign when a movie actually becomes less interesting and exciting when the title character shows up, but that's exactly what happens in Van Helsing, which starts off with a neat black-and-white tribute to the classic Universal horror films of the '30s (which also effectively hides the abundant CGI effects employed), then spends the next 90 minutes or so pissing all over the memory of said classics. And Kate Beckinsale? Some of us love pale women with flat chests and thin upper lips. We really do. The plastic surgeon is not always your friend.

Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban I've yet to read even one of J.K. Rowling's best-sellers, yet I continue to be entertained by the movies made from them--maybe because the writers and directors and actors can be bothered to, y'know, tell stories and develop characters we give half a shit about, instead of letting the special effects tell the "story" for them.

Spider-Man 2 I liked Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) better in this sequel than I did the Green Goblin in the first movie (he looked way too much like a Power Rangers villain). But Kirsten Dunst? Put a bra on, girl. Those babies'll be hitting your knees soon, and you're way too young for that.

De-Lovely While it's nice to have a biopic that puts Porter's songs back in the foreground with popular stars performing them (Robbie Williams, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Sheryl Crow, etc.) and deals (albeit opaquely) with Porter's sexuality, the whole framing device of the play about Porter's life being viewed by its subject essentially from the afterlife bugged. (I understand that Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea employs essentially the same device to tell the story of Bobby Darrin. I'm sure it'll bug me there, too.) And Ashley Judd can't sing very well, but it's great to see her in a movie without a serial killer in sight.

The Village It would be interesting to see a movie directed by M. Night Shymalan in which he didn't devote so much time and energy to skull-fucking his audience--he's obviously got the talent to do much more. As it is, though, he tries to spring a surprise ending on his audience yet again, and that act is getting very old very quickly, especially if you can figure out the twist long before it gets there (and I did).

Alien vs. Predator After the relative success of 2003's Freddy vs. Jason, this movie tried to turn the same trick--reviving two all-but-dead movie franchises. It doesn't succeed. It's dull and dark (literally) and not nearly as much fun as you'd expect. Then again, it's directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who helmed the humorless and boring Resident Evil, so what did I expect? Something better than I got, that's all.

Little Black Book What the hell was I doing watching a romantic comedy after all my recent conflagrations? Hell if I know. But as manufactured and unreal as the plot is and how little effort is made to establish the central romantic relationship, at least Brittany Murphy is cute and charming and would probably be fun to watch in a better movie. I'll say this much, though: The twist ending did indeed come as a complete surprise and almost won me over to liking the movie as a whole. Almost.

Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid Was anybody asking for this "sequel," which doesn't feature even a single carryover character from the original? Even KaDee Strickland fans? Really?

Exorcist: The Beginning Paul Schrader wrote and directed his version of this prequel to William Peter Blatty's original story and turned it in to the studio, which hated it so much that they hired Renny Harlin to direct a completely different version. And that story is much more interesting and entertaining than anything in Harlin's version, which consistently confuses "grossout" with "frightening." I hope we get to see Schrader's version someday--it can't be as bad as what was actually released...can it?

Resident Evil: Apocalypse Okay, I have to be honest: I expected to hate this movie as much as I hated the original. But you know what? I actually kind of enjoyed it--at least a good deal more than I expected to--mostly because this film is intentionally funny, while the first film was almost entirely devoid of humor. The editing of the fight scenes is dreadful, though--you barely make out who's fighting or why. And Milla Jovovich plus Naked equals Ed's Ass in a Theatre Seat.

Hero Unspeakably pretty. Unbelievably graceful in the movement of its fight scenes. Excruciatingly slow in the development of many of its dramatic scenes, all of which go on two or three beats longer than they need to. But who gives a fuck when it all looks so damn good? I do.

Shaun of the Dead It's been way too long since we had an effective, funny, disgusting zombie comedy. So here it is--on the surface, an homage to George Romero movies, but with its own social commentary to make. It's always a good sign when the movie ends and you're sorry that it has.

Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow One of the most brilliantly art directed movies in the history of the medium, to be sure. But art direction doesn't take the place of storytelling, and Sky Captain has very little story to tell, and what it does have is lifted from earlier, better movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Rocketeer. Angelina Jolie, despite having her famous, fabulous lips featured prominently in the advertising, has little more than a slightly extended cameo. And wasn't there a living actor available to play the villain, instead of dragging Laurence Olivier's corpse back via digital hokus-pokus, or did director Kerry Conrab do it just because he bloody well could?

The Incredibles It wasn't as, well, incredible as any of Pixar's earlier efforts, like Finding Nemo or either of the Toy Story movies, but The Incredibles is still pretty damn fun, even if it's basically The Fantastic Four with slightly switched-around powers. (Guess than Fantastic Four film due for release this year is just about redundant now.)

The Grudge Once you figure out what The Grudge is about--anybody who has spent even, say, five seconds in this haunted house is gonna diediedie--things get pretty dull, even if there is something popping up--a spectral child, hair snaking across the ceiling, KaDee Strickland (yes, I'm crushing on her right now--your point?)--to keep the viewer awake.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events If, by "Unfortunate," you mean "a movie starring Jim Carrey," you're correct. His mugging, prancing and preening yanked me out of every scene he was in as Count Olaf by the scruff of my neck. And while I get that he's playing a ham actor (Carrey plays three parts and is much easier to take when playing someone other than Count Olaf) who enjoys murdering people, especially if it makes him insanely wealthy, couldn't somebody--the director, maybe?--have handed Jim a script and made him stick to it? I have to say, though, that the animated end credits are amazing--I could have gone for a whole movie that looked exactly like that, especially as that would have meant 300 percent less Jim Carrey.

Now, I realize how harsh some of my assessments above sound. And I enjoyed some of the movies above more than you'd think, truly. But I must confess that I'm tired of movies in which technology takes the place of storytelling, movies that exist just because the movie before it did well or because they might sell okay on DVD, movies that do nothing but suck nine dollars or so out of my wallet without giving me anything in return but a ringing headache.

Here's to hoping that 2005 is a better year--in oh, so many ways.

Leftover Spam

Last month, I wrote about the junk mail that piles up in my mailbox like leaves on an autumn lawn, though not nearly so picturesque or colorful.

And still the spam keeps coming in ever-increasing volume and even less entertaining forms:

Prescription Drugs. Now, I realize that Americans are thoroughly screwed when it comes to prescription drugs. The companies that manufacture said drugs charge premium prices for them, with their stated reasoning being that since they spent the cash to research and develope the drugs, they're entitled to charge whatever they want to in order to recoup their expenses. Okay. I get that. But when the choice for some Americans--especially seniors whose sole income is likely their Social Security check--is between paying for drugs they need to survive or, say, rent and food, something is way out of whack. The funny thing, though, is that these same drugs are available for a lot less in other countries. And when one of those countries is as tantilizingly close as right over our northern border--yeah, Canada, I'm talking about you--who can blame anyone for taking a little trip to save a good chunk of change? Even as expensive as gas is these days (and will increasingly become over the impending summer months), you'd still save money driving to Toronto or Montreal for your prescriptions than if you walked to your neighborhood Walgreens or CVS.

All that said, would I buy prescription drugs from a site that clogged up my mailbox with blind solicitations? Two words: Fuck. No.

Software/Hardware. I'm an old-fashioned sort in many ways, but one of the most prominent manifestations of this personality trait (flaw?) is that there are certain things I won't buy online. DVDs? Sure. Books? Why not? Porn? Not so much anymore--"When masturbation's lost its charm, you're fuckin' lazy," or so Green Day sang--but when I did buy, I did quite a bit of it via e-mail. But a printer for Polly Jean? Or software that I can't be certain would be compatible with her delicate innards? I'd be more likely to walk down my crumbling back porch, pile up what little paper money I have, douse it with lighter fluid (which I do have, despite the fact that I don't smoke much more than three cigarettes a year) and light the pile up.

Hi. Oh, but this fascinates--and infuriates--me to no end. My e-mailbox has been crammed to capacity lately with messages from addresses I've never heard from--all of them with attachments that they want me to pop open. Now, I may be an idiot in many ways--spending money recklessly, falling in love unwisely, working at a dead-end job eons longer than I ever should have--but even I am not addled enough to double-click a ZIP or EXE file from someone I don't know. Shit, I won't even do that from someone I do know unless I'm expecting an attachment from a friend. Once, Sailor J sent me a scan of Richard Roeper (said by far too many to be my celebrity twin) with his arm around a woman who was a dead ringer for a mutual friend and former co-worker. But she had titled her e-mail "Hi" and I had to to ask her, "What the bloody hell are you thinking? Don't you know that assholes are sending e-mails like that to spread viruses?" She confessed that she didn't know, and I felt bad for going off, especially since she's one of the few readers I have left.

But the sheer volume of these infected e-mails--sometimes as many as a dozen a day--surprised me. So I asked out tech at work what the blue fuck was going on. "The virus-writing community..." Wait...there's a virus-writing community? Do they get together for coffee or have conventions? "...is having a competition to see who can write the nastiest virus and cause the most damage on the Net." How absolutely darling. It's hard enough to maintain a site on the Web without these evil rat bastards trying to take me and Polly Jean down for the count. And to make things extra special, it appears that some of this dicksmacks have appropriated Adoresixtyfour.com's address to send some of these infected e-mails (or so I'm lead to believe, from the "mail delivery failure" notices I get from places like Canada, Great Britain and Hungary).

There's little more disheartening these days than seeing that my e-mailbox has a dozen messages in it, but not one of them is from a friend I haven't heard from in a bit, a close associate who's read the latest update and enjoyed, or some random stranger passing along a rare compliment. When only spammers are paying attention to you--and scant attention at that--it might just be time to pull the plug once and for all.

The spammers would have plenty of other, more tasty targets--they wouldn't miss me at all.

The Coldest Stare

Tonight, I sat out on the top stair of my building's back porch--a gray, decaying thing that shakes violently whenever I cart a load of laundry up it or a load of trash down and has somehow escaped the notice of city inspectors, despite an allegedly stepped-up effort by the city to check out such structures in the wake of a porch collapse last summer that killer 13 partygoers in Lincoln Park--and looked up at the stars.

You can't see very many stars in the city. Only the brightest ones can cut through the haze of street and alley lights that hovers over Chicago like a permanent cloud. When I worked in Evanston at the Evil Publishing Company, I could stand on the El platform, waiting for the southbound Purple Line train, and look south to the metropolis, covered in yellow-gray gauze. Not that Evanston was that much better for star-gazing; its proximity to Chicago virtually makes it as difficult to study constellations as it would be standing at State and Madison, even on the most crisp winter night.

I never realized how little I could see above until I got away from the city.

A decade ago, my girlfriend at the time had an invitation to go to a wedding in Livonia, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. We took the South Shore electric train to South Bend, were picked up by her parents (who lived--and live--in Berrien Springs), had dinner, then drove off across the state. Or maybe we spent the night and drove the next day. My memory--sometimes a remarkable thing, sometimes a Rubik's Cube of images that never quite fit onto one side--doesn't have that one in order. But she drove her parents' Ford Taurus across the state of her birth and fiddled with the radio dial, desperate to find something only moderately awful in the air.

And I? Just. Stared.

The night sky had slid over Michigan and brought friends with it. Burning white points of light. Thousands of them. You couldn't properly make out constellations, because they brought the rest of their galaxies with them. I'd been to the Adler Planetarium and read about the stars, but this was the very first time I'd actually seen how many I couldn't see at home. Upon a subsequent visit to my girlfriend's parents' home, I walked out after dinner and stretched out in their gravel driveway. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I couldn't count all the stars I saw--the arc of the whole Milky Way lay before me, revealing points of light as they looked before the hundred or more light years it took them to travel to this little, angry world, to my wide brown eyes, and no amount of time spent flat on that gravel would have let me take it all in.

Tonight, it's pretty clear in Chicago. And like I said, the brightest stars still do cut through the city lights, and I've spent many a night out here. Sometimes with a Red Dog dangling from between fore and middle fingers, getting killed too quickly for the good of my body or my mind. Sometimes with a cigarette or two, when the burning of my lungs and nostrils was welcome distraction from the rest of my life. Sometimes just listening to the brass windchimes I bought at a Pier 1 years ago and kept wrapped in red paper, waiting for the day when I'd hang them outside my first house. But I never bought a house--never had that kind of scratch, and likely never will--so I gave up, cast away the red paper and let the windchimes sing. The past couple night have been breezy indeed, so they've had a lot to sing about.

Last September, I was sitting out here, staring up at the evening sky or out at the pear tree a couple yards north or down at my bowling shoes, when the wooden storm door behind me rattled. Without getting up, I leaned back, turned my body halfway, and yanked the door open. Lottie was standing in the doorway, eyes wide, meowing to come out. Most nights, I'd just shag her back in and tell her she was being silly. I'd done that with the Girlish Girls ever since Ms. Christophee managed to sneak out and spent the night on the street, only to be found the next morning, huddled against the mottled brick of our apartment building, shaken and dirty but otherwise unharmed.

That September night, though, I didn't shag her back in. Instead, I patted the peeling surface of the porch, beckoning her out.

On all of the other occasions lottie had taken to explore the porch, she'd stalked every inch of the landing, sniffing out rival cats or squirrels or possums on the prowl for my next-door neighbor's discards. But on this night, she walked right up next to me, sat down beside me, and watched the stars with me. Maybe because she didn't search the porch because she was sick, hadn't eaten in a couple of days, and just didn't have the energy for it. Or maybe she knew what the vet would find the next day. Maybe she knew she was dying. Maybe I knew it, too.

We sat there together for a long time. I looked up at the stars as I had so many nights before, and spoke the words I'd spoken so many times before that I had ceased to be certain that I was speaking aloud at all: "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight." On previous occasions, I'd wished for mundane things, like a new job or the love of a woman. But that night, with this large, loving tabby beside me purring hard enough to shake this old porch to splinters, I wished as hard as I'd ever wished for anything for her to get better. To be okay. To not suffer any more than she already had. And the stars looked back at me with the coldest stare and didn't answer.

Three days later, she she had to be put to sleep. There was nothing else to do.

Tonight, the door rattles behind me again. I stand, turn, open the door. Ms. Christopher looks up at me, pleading for the opportunity. No, the dimwit hasn't learned a thing from her experience with getting lost. But I don't shag her back. I open the door and welcome her to sit with me. And she does (after a lengthy search of the premises, of course). And we watch the stars together.

I still wish on stars from time to time, though maybe not with the same level of conviction displayed in wishes past. But I keep in mind a line of dialogue from an episode of M*A*S*H, in which a wounded soldier believes himself to be Jesus Christ and army psychiatrist Sydney Freedman asks him if it's true that God answers all prayers.

"Yes," the wounded soldier answers, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Sometimes, the answer is 'no.'"

Review: The Hands of Orlac (1924)

The director (Robert Weine) and the star (Conrad Veidt) of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari reteam for this first film version of Maurice Renard's story of a concert pianist, Paul Orlac (Veidt), whose hands are destroyed in a horrific train wreck. Through experimental surgery, Orlac's hands are replaced with the hands of an executed knife-wielding killer named Vasser. (Such surgery wouldn't be possible in the "real" world for several decades.)

Orlac's father, who hates Paul and refuses to lend money when his wife begs for such, is later found murdered, and Vasser's prints are found at the scene. Is Paul the real killer? Do the transplanted hands have a mind of their own? And who is the mysterious stranger (Fritz Kortner) with steel hands, claiming to be Vasser returned from the dead and blackmailing Paul for his dead father's fortune?

Weine tries to add nightmarish touches throughout the film. And a couple of sequences--an actual nightmare, in which Kortner's face hovers above Veidt's bed, and a scene in which Veidt stumbles through darkness, with only his face and outstretched hands visible--are effectively spooky. Unfortunately, the conclusion of The Hands of Orlac, in which Kortner's character is revealed to be a common criminal engaged in an elaborate scheme to drive Veidt mad and steal his father's cash, is not only ridiculous, but it also severely undercuts whatever mood had been established before it.

Not there was any consistent tone to begin with. Relatively restrained sequences with the blackmailer (who also bullies Orlac's maid into aiding in the scheme) are side by side with scenes of a pallid, bug-eyed Veidt staring at his hands like they don't belong on his body (which, of course, they don't). And that conclusion plays like Weine trying--and failing--to do an imitation of Fritz Lang's bizarre crime films, like Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. The removal of even a hint of supernatural presence makes the whole film feel like a cheat and makes it more like American films of the time, in which the villain who seems like an otherworldly monster turns out to be a criminal, a lunatic or a mad scientist (and, sometimes, all three at the same time). Compare this approach with Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932), which is primarily a crime thriller, but maintains a supernatural subplot--hinting, at the very least, at madness, if not possession by the dead Mabuse--that it doesn't back off from or explain away.

The first Hands of Orlac may have been a misfire for its director and star, but ten years later, Renard's story was successfully remade as Mad Love, directed by cinematographer Karl Kreund (who also directed the Karloff version of The Mummy at Universal) and starring Colin Clive as Orlac and Peter Lorre as the mad, obsessed Doctor Gogol (who sews the murder's hands on). This silent version of the story--available only through independent video companies working with less-than-perfect prints--pales in comparison.

This Sporting Life: Bad Sports

The National Hockey League (NHL) regular season ends Sunday. Of course, in Chicago, the NHL regular season ended quite some time ago, if it can honestly be said that it started at all. For our city's rumored representative in the NHL, the Blackhawks, never really showed any of verifiable evidence of having actually "played" any games this season.

Video footage is alleged to exist of individuals dressing in Blackhawks uniforms and skating in arenas in cities like Buffalo, Vancouver and Calgary, but dressing like hockey players and actually "playing" hockey are not the same thing. I can't say with any certainty that similar footage exists of these pretenders skating on United Center ice--the owner of the Blackhawks, William Wirtz, has refused for years to allow regular season home games to be telecast locally. Better for Chicago viewers in the long run, really, though not so good for local electronics stores, which surely would do fantastic business replacing the television sets of irrate hockey fans angered beyond reason at the athletic atrocities flitting across their soon-to-be-shattered screens.

Raise prices beyond reason. Deny local fans TV coverage of home games. Trade away any player that might be worth more than a nickel. I'm not sure you could come up with a more perfect way to destroy a fan base if you tried. Even if, as General-Manager for-the-umpteenth-time Bob Pulford claims, the draft picks acquired in trades over the past year are key to rebuilding the franchise, by the time this team is watchable again there may be no fans left to care.

I grew up as a hockey fan. Played the game in the alley behind the apartment building we lived in on Ohio Street. Took multiple pucks/puckballs to the head (explains a lot about about me, doesn't it?) while playing goalie in my brother's borrowed pads and mask. And most of my friends were big hockey fans, too. Why? Because even if we couldn't make it to the Chicago Stadium (long since razed) to catch a game, we could watch on TV--at least if we could point the rabbit ears on the back of the black-and-white portable set in the family room in the proper direction to get the signal to look like something other than a reenactment of the Blizzard of '67.

Hockey isn't entirely dead in Chicago, though. We also have an AHL (minor-league) team, the Wolves, and they have a nice little fan base of their own. In fact, on a couple of occasions this year, they've outdrawn the Blackhawks. And the Wolves televise all of their games. Coincidence? No such thing.

Oh, but if the Blackhawks were the only stupid sports franchise in this city, we could just ignore them and, eventually, they'd just go away. They might anyway, but we'll still have plenty to cringe at.

The Bulls had a grand stretch that ended six years ago--my God, has it really been that long?--but have been an embarassment to the sport of basketball ever since. You can argue forever whether or not the team's owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, was right to "break up the dynasty" (as he has often been accused of) or, at the very least, not make an effort to keep the team together for at least one more championship run, until all the hair on your head turns gray and falls out. But no one can argue about the quality of the team since that last banner was raised at the United Center--the Bulls have been, and are, dreadful.

And the most frustrating season of that horrid run has been the current one, in which the new general manager, John Paxson (replacing the much-loathed Jerry Krause) brought in new players and, when the team faltered, a new coach--and, amazingly, the team actually got worse. Even more amazing is the fact that attendance at the United Center has been excellent--among the NBA's best, in fact. Are these people masochists? Do they like burning money? If so, could they spare some from the fire and slide some to me? A fiver, even? No? Well, then. By going game after game, they're only ensuring that the product on the court will continue to reek.

There is hope for sport in this city, if one looks elsewhere. The Chicago Fire, our soccer team, is pretty bloody good. The Bears hired a new coach and have brought in new, experienced players, so next year might be different. The White Sox (also owned by Reinsdorf) lost several key players, but they happen to be in the weakest division in baseball, so they have a chance to succeed. And the Cubs? They almost made it to the World Series last year and spent some money in the off-season for the first time in a long time. If Mark Prior's elbow and Achilles tendon start to behave themselves, this baseball season could be, at the very least, entertaining.

At the United Center, though, it might be time to call the EPA in. There's something very toxic on Madison Street.