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On DVD: Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

On DVD: Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

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Theatrical PosterJourney to the Center of the Earth (2008)
Directed by Eric Brevig. Starring Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem

Arguing whether Jules Verne is the Father of Science Fiction seems useless now. Regardless of who may deserve the title more—Cyrano de Bergerac, Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, etc.—Verne’s effect on literature of the imagination is so enormous and continually influential that he’s clearly the Father of Something Really Big. However, in the U.S. he still suffers from poor, outdated translations (often with cuts that remove almost a fourth of the originals) and the perception that he’s only an author for children. Better translations are now available, but the awful ones still remain in print, perching on bookshelves like croaking ravens to scare new readers away. New translations of his non-scientific-themed novels have started to broaden the author’s reputation (see my reviews of Michael Strogoff and The Lighthouse at the End of the World to get a sense of the other sort of novels that the distinguished Frenchman wrote), but Verne still remains “that guy we read in fifth grade” for many adults.

I’m a Verne fanatic, unabashedly, and I love him even more now than I did when I was an eager “young adult” reader. Discovering new books and new versions of books I thought I knew—the recent translations and restorations of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea are nothing short of revelatory—makes each Verne read a thrilling exploration. My favorite of his novels is Voyage au centre de la Terre, published in 1864 as the author’s career was starting to ascend. It was translated into English as Journey to the Center of the Earth, and sometimes Journey to the Interior of the Earth. On a deep personal level, I respond to the romance of a subterranean sojourn and discovering the mysteries hiding in the great caverns beneath a volcano in Iceland. Verne’s sense of wonder here is simply breathtaking.

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The Return of the King (1980)

The Return of the King (1980)

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Barad-dûrThe Return of the King (ABC TV, 1980)

Directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. Featuring the Voices of John Huston, Roddy McDowall, Orson Bean, William Conrad, Casey Casem, Theodore Gottlieb, Theodore Bikel, Glenn Yarbrough, Paul Frees

“Listen as we speak of the fall of the Lord of Darkness, and the return of a King of Light.”

The novel The Lord of the Rings has had an important place in my life even before I actually read it in ninth grade. As a young child, I already loved monsters and tales of fantasy, and my parents were glad to feed my monster obsession. They both knew about the books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (although neither had read them) and told me their pages were filled with dragons and trolls and all sorts of wonderful beasties; they showed me the Greg and Tim Hildebrandt calendars to whet my appetite. At age five, I had my first “Tolkien” experience with the television broadcast of the animated movie The Hobbit from Rankin/Bass. My mother then read the book to me. The moment I was old enough, I read it for myself. The enormity of The Lord of the Rings was still too far off, but there were movie versions to fill the gap. I was confused but somewhat dazzled by the odd, unfinished The Lord of the Rings film by Ralph Bakshi when it premiered on cable, but it was the 1980 animated television movie The Return of the King that really gave me a sense of what the epic novel was about.

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On DVD: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

On DVD: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

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First things first: Happy Birthday, Clark Ashton Smith!

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)
Directed by Rob Cohen
Starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Isabella Leong, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang

On my own blog, I’ve done a set of weekly reviews surveying all the movies in Universal’s classic Mummy franchise. Just as I finished up this lengthy project, the most recent entry in the second Universal Mummy franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, arrived on DVD, so it seemed an ideal time to take a look at it.

Except… no mummies appear in this “Mummy movie.” The film earns the first part of its title because it features ongoing characters from the two legitimate Mummy flicks that proceeded it, The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). But there’s no Egypt aside from a bar called “Imhotep’s,” and no mummified anything. We instead have an immortal Chinese Emperor/Wizard who breaks free from a terracotta shell, but that isn’t a mummy in my definition. The visual effects try to give him a mummified appearance when he’s still in his clay-like form, but sorry, still not a mummy.

But then, the second series of Universal mummy movies were never about the particulars of the classic horror-movie undead Egyptian, but about copying Indiana Jones, old adventure serials, pulp magazines, and adding wiseacre humor to attract the widest audience possible. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is perhaps the most pulpish of the four films in the series (I’m including the 2002 sword-and-sorcery spin-off The Scorpion King), and fans of pulp fantasy will find it interesting.

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