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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Ashes of Time

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Ashes of Time

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Ashes of Time (Hong Kong, 1994/2008)

Chinese director Wong Kar-wai, whose films are visually intense, almost hallucinogenic, had a long-time love of the wuxia genre, and in the early ‘90s, when he was having trouble raising money for his production company, he agreed to make a historical martial arts film based on the classic Condor Heroes stories. Excited by the story but wanting it to be perfect, he spent almost three years on the project, but the result was Ashes of Time (1994), one of the most beautiful films ever to come out of Chinese cinema.

However, Wong nearly broke himself (and his cast) in making it, so he took a break to produce a spirited parody of the Condor Heroes story with essentially the same cast, The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993), also covered below. It’s a hoot. Finally, I’ve added the undeservedly obscure Journey to the Western Xia Empire (1996), which though shot in the same western Chinese wastes as Ashes of Time is a different visual experience entirely.

And with that, we’re at the end of the ‘90s wuxia film boom, so next time, it’s back to classic swashbucklers!

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Goth Chick News: In Praise of Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher

Goth Chick News: In Praise of Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher

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Having fallen behind on my normal planned October activities, I am admittedly a bit late to the party when it comes to Mike Flannigan’s latest outing for Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, which debuted on October 12th. Flannigan is batting about 500 on the Goth Chick News stats board of directorial successes, so I was holding my breath in hopes he wouldn’t butcher one of my beloved Edgar’s properties.

On the plus side Flannigan helmed The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manner and Midnight Mass, all for Netflix and all in my top ten fav series list. On the downside, and this is a huge one for me, he is personally responsible for completely hosing the big screen version of one of my favorite Stephen King books, Doctor Sleep, for which I am hard pressed to forgive him. But perhaps Netflix is his true medium. So, with this in mind, I queued up The Fall of the House of Usher.

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What I’m Reading: November 2023

What I’m Reading: November 2023

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I’ve been juggling reading with catching up on a bunch of TV/streaming stuff. But I’ve worked in a couple of good reads.

I thought about a post on series’ I’m behind on in my reading. I probably will do one – sadly, it would be VERY long. But I did just finish two novels in one such, and I started a third.

HOLMES ON THE RANGE

I wrote this essay back in 2019 on Steve Hockensmith’s Sherlock Holmes-influenced cowboy brothers. Dear Mr. Holmes is a collection of the seven short stories that kicked off the series. And just last month, the seventh novel – Hunters of the Dead– came out.

I had read the first three novels and the short stories. But book four – The Crack in the Lens – came out in 2009. I was WAAAAY behind. So last week I read Crack… – and then immediately tore through The World’s Greatest Sleuth!. Now I’m on book six, The Double-A Western Detective Agency.

Check out my prior essay for a more in-depth look at the series. But the premise is that brothers Gustav (Old Red) and Otto (Big Red) Amlingmeyer, are trail-riding cowpunchers in the Old West. This is during the time of Sherlock Holmes’ Adventures and Memoirs. Gustav can’t read. So, while they’re sitting around the campfire at night, Otto reads aloud the Holmes stories from a dog-eared magazine.

Gustav is totally enthralled with Holmes’ methods and sets out to do some deducifyin’ on the trail. And these two fall into malice and mayhem like a spinster in one of Agatha Christie’s villages. Gustav is the brains, and Otto is the brawn.

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What I’m Watching – November 2023

What I’m Watching – November 2023

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So, it’s time for another What I’mWatching. Today we’ve got some TV, some movies, and some streaming shows – including what used to be called a teleplay. Awaaaaay we go:

BROOKLYN NINE NINE

This show ran for eight seasons (2013 – 2021), covering 153 episodes. I didn’t watch it when it aired, but I’m on the final season, now. This is a VERY fun comedy cop show. Stephanie Beatriz just co-starred in Twisted Metal. I like her mix of toughness and humor in both shows.

This reminds me of Animal Control (which I like), though it’s not as dumb. From the few episodes I saw of Park and Rec, I think this appeals to the same crowd. Good cast, funny stories, without dumbing things down too much. This has been my go-to evening watch, and I’ll be disappointed when it’s over. But a fun show.

THE CAINE MUTINY COURT MARTIAL

I wrote this post on Humphrey Bogart’s The Caine Mutiny, which is based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront) beat out Bogie for the Oscar that year. Quite simply, Bogart’s Captain Queeg is brilliant: Arguably his best performance.

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Goth Chick News: Things Are Looking Bad in Jerusalem’s Lot

Goth Chick News: Things Are Looking Bad in Jerusalem’s Lot

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The juggernaut that is Stephen King material being made and remade for big and small screens continues to plow forward with varying degrees of quality and success: thumbs up for IT (Part 1; 2017), thumbs down for Part 2 (2019), up for Mr. Mercedes (2017), down for the remake of Carrie (2013), up for The Shining (1980) and way WAY down for Doctor Sleep (2019), and on and on we’ve gone since the original Carrie in 1976.

A quick online perusal turned up no less than thirty-two King adaptations in the works, including additional runs at Carrie and Christine. Honestly, as my admiration for King’s source material is equally split between love it and hate it, I only pay attention to production news on the books I really liked, though that has been far more heartbreaking than not.

One of King’s stories which I regularly revisit is Salem’s Lot, which as vampire stories go, is a classic. Though the 1979 made-for-TV miniseries with David Soul was pretty cool for its time, and the miniseries remake in 2004 starring Rob Lowe was its own kind of hell sans Rutger Hauer as a far sexier vampire Barlow, I always thought this story was screaming for a big-screen (and big budget) take. I was therefore initially excited when in 2019, New Line Cinema announced Gary Dauberman was set to write a Salem’s Lot screenplay and Executive Produce the movie.

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Goth Chick News: Something To Sooth My Halloween Hangover…

Goth Chick News: Something To Sooth My Halloween Hangover…

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Fresh off my extended holiday, along with an unwanted souvenir in the form of Covid, I tested negative just in time to greet the trick-or-treaters, most of whom rightly decided not to brave an early Chicago snowstorm. So, here I sit with approximately two pounds of fun-size candy bars and a serious case of the blues. Never in my history have I been away from home for most of my favorite month of the year, missed out on nearly all the local haunted attractions, and attended zero parties dressed in an elaborate costume. Yes I did it to myself, and I agree that boo-hoo’ing over three weeks in Europe is probably downright evil (and not in the good way). But though every day is Halloween around here, October is the centrum around which the entire Goth Chick News year revolves, and that said, there is only one thing to do.

Start counting down to next year of course.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Peak ‘90s Wuxia

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Peak ‘90s Wuxia

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Dragon Inn (Hong Kong, 1992)

Wuxia, which roughly translates as “chivalrous martial heroes,” is the term for armed historical martial arts adventures, fantasy tales with a history in China dating back to early medieval times. Wuxia stories were adapted to film in China as early as the 1920s, but they were never a major genre until revived in the ‘60s and ‘70s in Hong Kong cinema by directors King Hu and Chang Cheh. Wuxia movies were eclipsed by the kung fu explosion in the early ‘70s but they never really went away, and when producer-director Tsui Hark had breakout hits with his Chinese Ghost Story and Once Upon a Time in China trilogies, the Hong Kong movie machine responded in emulation.

From 1991 through 1995 an avalanche of crowd-pleasing wuxia movies burst from the Hong Kong studios. A lot of these films were low-budget quickies made to formula, but that formula could be stretched to include a great variety of approaches. The three movies covered here illustrate how eclectic the Wuxia Boom was at its height. In the late ‘90s, wuxia movies returned to occasional and irregular productions, but the eclecticism of the boom years remained a hallmark of the genre, one that continues until today.

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A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

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Dark Harvest (Tor Books, September 4, 2007, cover by Jon Foster)
and the film adaptation (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, October 11, 2023)

Paul Finch’s “The Carrion Call” appeared in the eighth issue of the print version of Black Gate, and over the last decade he’s produced over a dozen Terror Tales anthologies (most recently Terror Tales of the West Country, which Mario Guslandi reviewed for us back in January). But he also maintains Walking in the Dark, one of the more entertaining and informative genre blogs, where he discusses horror new and old.

Last month he reviewed Norman Partridge’s modern Halloween classic Dark Harvest, originally published in 2006 — when it received many of the year’s major awards, including the Stoker, International Horror Guild Award, and a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name, and released for a brief theatrical run this month.

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Three Thousand (plus) Words of Longing: “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” and Three Thousand Years of Longing

Three Thousand (plus) Words of Longing: “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” and Three Thousand Years of Longing

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Three Thousand Years of Longing (United Artists, 2022)

One of the leading fantasy movies of 2022 was Three Thousand Years of Longing, directed by George Miller of Mad Max fame, and starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, who surely need no introduction. That might have been enough recommendation for me, but much more important was the source material, A. S. Byatt’s lovely novella “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” The novella was first published in the Paris Review in 1994, but I first read it in her collection also called The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, from 1998.

One of the enduring questions people tend to ask is — “What was better, the book or the movie?” The real answer is – well, it’s so tempting to say “always the book” but that’s flip and just not always true! (Exhibit A, to be sure, being The Godfather.) Actually, the real answer is “They are different media, doing different things, and they can both be good in different ways.” Banal, maybe? — but still true. So I thought to look at my reactions to Three Thousand Years of Longing, and to “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” Which is better? Does it matter? Are they even directly comparable, or are they two different works of art, pleasing us in different ways?

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Ten Things I Think I Think: October 2023

Ten Things I Think I Think: October 2023

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand takes a week off for a somewhat Robert E. Howard-centric installment of Ten Things I Think I Think. Books, television, movies, and even a computer RPG are in the mix today.

1) Jules De Grandin is a new favorite

Being a Robert E. Howard guy, I am familiar with Weird Tales – home to much of his best work, including Conan, Kull, historical fiction, and Solomon Kane, among much more. But not being into horror, I don’t really read anyone else from ‘The Unique Magazine.’

But I recently bought the audiobook for The Horror on the Links. It is Volume One of The Complete Tales of Jules De Grandin. A few stories have been a bit much for me in the macabre category, but Seabury Quinn’s doctor-former Surete policeman is an Occult Detective version of Hercule Poirot. I am absolutely loving the mix. I’m nearing the end of this collection, and I’ll be listening to Volume Two next.

De Grandin is a French transplant to fictional Harrisonville, New Jersey. His Watson is Dr. Trowbridge, and they investigate both cases that have natural, as well as supernatural, solutions. Each audiobook is about 25 hours long, which is a lot of entertainment. Paul Woodson does a great de Grandin. There are over 90  stories – including one serialized novel. As a Poirot fan, I’m totally in on these. I’ve been kicking around the idea of a de Grandin/Nero Wolfe crossover.

 

2) “The Horror from the Mound” is Quite a Story

Sticking with horror, I was hoping to have an essay ready today for Robert E. Howard’s “The Horror from the Mound.” It’s a (then) contemporary Weird Western which also appeared in Weird Tales. I’d read it before, and with one foot in ‘today’ and one firmly in the mid 1600s, may be my favorite REH horror story. Still working on the essay.

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