Shutter Island Part One: The Novel

Upon sterling recommendations from fellow film blogger John Greco and fellow independent Philly-based novelist Christopher Tait, I decided to make the most of my time waiting for Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, Shutter Island, to be released in theaters by…well, would you look at that…reading the novel.  I was a big fan of previous film adaptations of Lehane’s books, Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, so I was eager to finally dive into the source material.

In 1950’s Boston, two U. S. Marshals, perpetually lovesick and seasick Teddy (to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and freshly transferred from Seattle Chuck (to be played by Mark Ruffalo) are ferried to a remote island off the coast to a hospital for the criminally insane in order to investigate the disappearance of a homicidal schizophrenic patient, Rachel Solando (to be played by Emily Mortimer).  To reveal anything beyond this slim description of the set-up would be to reveal too much.

Shutter Island is a maddeningly thickening mystery where we soon learn the back-stories of our detectives, the doctors and the patients.  Around the 80 page mark I had two solid theories for what might have happened and how the novel would conclude.  It’s a tried and true whodunit/how’d-they-do-it tale where the pleasure of turning the pages is in seeing how your own theories stack up to what is eventually uncovered. 

Lehane is a writer who loves to add layers upon layers to his descriptions of people and places and never met a metaphor he didn’t like…chains in a spaghetti pile…or soft music crawling around the room like spiders (p 76).  It certainly maintains an effectively chilling atmosphere, though he can at times go overboard.  The author, however, deserves a heap-load of credit for telling the bulk of his story through police procedural question-and-answer style dialogue.  It’s here where his characters’ personalities (and secrets) are revealed to the reader, and where Lehane as a natural storyteller shines.  It takes a special kind of writer to be able to pull off expository dialogue without revealing the cards, and Lehane maintains a killer poker face while holding a straight flush in this regard.  There’s dark humor and grit to be found here, and these are the classic hallmarks of a great mystery writer.

NOTE TO READERS:  I am about to talk about a big spoiler without actually revealing the big spoiler, so read with caution.

However, about half way through the novel it became painfully clear that one of my two theories on what the final plot twist would be was correct…and sadly it was the most glaringly obvious of plot twists for this type of psychological thriller.  All of the far-fetched elements of the plot are easily explained away with this twist, though the act of explaining everything away after the big revelation becomes a far-fetched endeavor in and of itself.   Though some of the details surrounding the ultimate twist still provided some shocks and jolts, the latter third of the novel falls apart, and for me, all suspense was sucked out as Lehane arrived at the inevitable conclusion.

My initial fear with reading Shutter Island was that it would take any element of surprise away from viewing the upcoming film.  Unfortunately, the book took away its own element of surprise with its predictable “big twist”.  That being said, Lehane still crafted a most entertaining read, and this type of material in the hands of a director like Scorsese and an actor like DiCaprio should be a blast to watch.

Stay tuned for Shutter Island Part Two: The Film coming to movie theaters and The Schleicher Spin in February 2010.

Written by David H. Schleicher

Karma Police

Nic tells Eva, "If you look real close, baby, you can see where my career went up in smoke."

Werner Herzog once ate a shoe on camera after losing a bet.

Nicolas Cage starred in Con Air…and 8MM…and Ghost Rider…and not one, but two National Treasure films. The list of travesties could go on and on…though I jest the National Treasure films; they are good family fun even though they are so sloppily put together.

Clearly both men are insane.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (henceforth referred to as BLt: PoCNO) is a film to watch not just for the decent into bizarro world offered up by a collaboration between German Auteur Herzog and Hollywood Movie Star Cage, it’s a film to savor for all of its layers of interesting elements.

If you think that Nicolas Cage’s inexplicable role as ACTION STAR! is a perverse manifestation of his Id, and it is his Ego that has treated us to such amazing performances in movies like Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas and Adaptation, then BLt: PoCNO is the film for you.  His Ego is boldly on display here as Lt. Terence McDonagh, and his performance is magnificent.

Meanwhile, Herzog has been better known of late for his documentary work in films like Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World. But let’s not forget that sandwiched between those films was a dramatic reworking of his previous documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly that resulted in the superb POW tale Rescue Dawn. Here, Herzog reworks a bit of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film Bad Lieutenant. However, the first thing to notice about Herzog’s film is that in the credits the full title is THE Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. With the simplicity of the added “the” the director makes it clear this is not a remake or homage, but a reworking of the same theme…another look at the good cop gone bad.

One of the most interesting aspects is how well toned the film is to the genre conventions of the dirty cop opus. Herzog lays in some surrealism in a few masterfully done hallucination scenes, but it is wonderfully understated and never dives into the same realms of insanity something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas inhabited. There’s always the case that Cage’s Terence McDonagh is working on that brings him back into reality where a bust, a shake-down, a hit or a crash into his personal life is waiting around every corner. There’s one scene early on where Terence is busting a young couple leaving a club that goes too far, but in a way it shows how desensitized we have become to the graphic details of these stories where the cops are just as rotten as the criminals. Herzog wisely never wallows in the inherent despair of this scenario.

The New Orleans setting is a perfect mirror for Terence McDonagh. Like him, the city was corrupt, suffered a terrible blow (Hurricane Katrina for the city or a back injury for Terence), and then became even more corrupt. Yet all along the way, Terence tried to do the right thing. It’s just that for every right thing he did, there were a dozen bad things he had to do as well. Herzog cleverly plays with the idea of karma. For someone like Terence, you would think karma would be a bitch (as the old adage goes) but there’s a reason Herzog’s camera lingers on an engraving above a courthouse that reads, “This is a government not of man, but of law.” And he seems to imply that the law of karma is just. The good things Terence does either to atone or because deep down he’s really not so bad (it’s the drugs, man) outweigh his heinous deeds. The most surprising thing about the film is its underlying message that even in the most willfully corrupt of situations the universe will serve up not just hope but justice. However, just when you think everything is tidying up a little too neatly, Herzog delivers an ambiguous ending that shows there is always hope for redemption or a better life, but sometimes some people never change.

With a great music score from Mark Isham, an excellent supporting cast (including comedienne Jennifer Coolidge in a rare dramatic turn and Eva Mendes — a gorgeous actress tailor made for these “girlfriend” roles), and a respect for the conventions of the genre while simultaneously turning that genre on its head, BLt: PoCNO is a good movie about a bad cop. Herzog’s direction and Cage’s performance give the discerning cinephile much to think about…and that is something that should always be celebrated.

Written by David H. Schleicher

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SIDE NOTE: I saw the film at the Ritz at the Bourse in Philly on a lazy Monday afternoon off from work. (Aren’t those the best kinds of Mondays?) I’ve been a frequent patron to the Ritz Five and Ritz East for years, but this was my first time seeing something at the Bourse where escalators take you underground to the nicely appointed screening rooms. Of the three art-house staples in the city (all located within a few blocks of each other), the Ritz at the Bourse might be the nicest. Check out the full lineup at the Ritz Theaters at their website.

Of Music, Moroccan Food and Brothers

Of Music:

I’ve never tried to obtain the encyclopedic knowledge of music that I actively seek with film and literature, but I know what I like, and I’d like to think I know raw talent when I hear it.  Amidst a busy weekend a-visitin’ and travelin’ to Atlantic City and then up to the Big Apple, the highlight was watching Robbie Gil perform at Rockwood Music Hall on 197 Allen Street in NYC on Saturday night.  Live music isn’t typically my thing (in fact, this might’ve been the first live music act I’ve seen since college), but there’s certainly something to be said for the intimacy and communal energy at a small and eager venue, especially when you know the performer personally and are there mingling amongst not just his family and friends, but his fans, who swayed hypnotically, bobbed their heads, smiled and sometimes sung along with his powerfully lyrical and heartfelt songs.  If you are a fan of live music (especially of the bluesy rock nature) and live in or visit NYC frequently, you’d be a fool to pass up the chance to see Robbie Gil perform.

I’m listening to his latest EP, “Lightning in a Bottle” as I type this post, which I purchased at the show and features five great songs, though the title track and bittersweet “How’s Colorado” (which was amazing live) are my favorites.   You can check out more at Robbie Gil’s official website. 

Of Moroccan Food:

Cafe Mogador at St. Mark's Place.

If you happen to be in the East Village on an early Sunday afternoon, the brunch at Cafe Mogador on St. Mark’s Place is a must.  A small, cozy, and bustling establishment serving up fresh, organic brunch items and traditional Moroccan food is well worth the wait at the door.  The Moroccan Benedict plate is a flavorful and tasty ethnic spin on the signature brunch dish.  It was the perfect “chill” capper to a chilly but warm-spirited weekend celebrating friends’ birthdays and being out and about.

Of Brodre vs. Brothers:

Connie Nielsen's understated performance gave BRODRE its emotional heft.

Before heading up to NYC, we caught a showing of the new Jim Sheridan film, Brothers, which is a somewhat inexplicable remake of a Dutch film from just a few years ago.  It was especially interesting because I had just seen (finally) the original film, Brodre, aptly directed in an intimate quasi-Dogme-style by Dutch auteur Susanne Bier and featuring a sterling performance from Connie Nielsen.  As far as the remake goes, I appreciated the fact they tried to transplant the European film to an American setting as a way to shed light on some of the psychological and emotional trauma POW’s go through when returning to their families on the homefront, but it didn’t quite work for a number of reasons. 

Maguire and Portman show curious emotions and spend most of their time over-acting in BROTHERS.

The screenplay adaptation from the original film was sloppy and added an unnecessary dosage of American cheese to the proceedings and featured some stiflingly inept dialogue despite the fact it successfully translated many of the key scenes almost word for word.  It did open up the door to explore more even-handedly the impact of certain traumas on POW’s (in the original, there was a more abrupt turn-about off the deep-end for one character), but the main players weren’t able to pull it off.  Brothers became one of those unfortunate melodramas where two little girls acted circles around the adult leads, of which Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhall were especially awful and out of tune.  The film wasn’t without some entertainment value, though, as there were some finely wrought “uncomfortable dinner table” scenes, and watching Tobey Maguire get all spit-fueled and go bonkers in the end after some cringe-worthy moments early on certainly was a bit of fun.

Bottom line, as is often the case, and so sadly cliched, the original Dutch version is far superior to the American remake.

Written by David H. Schleicher

The Spiral of the Seasons

A photo I took someplace way outside of Wilmington, North Carolina.

During my senior year (2001-2002) at Elon University I took a year-long seminar course called “Quest for Wholeness”.  It was one of those courses that had a bit of a cult following on campus.  People whispered about it — I hear it lasts two semesters and there are no tests! – former students wrote about it, and there was a buzz to sign-up for it, especially among those in the Philosophy department.  The course was the brainchild of John G. Sullivan, PhD and his wife, Gregg, who had co-taught the class with him for many years even during her own battle with breast cancer. 

Before I had switched majors from Philosophy to Psychology, I had taken a few classes taught by John where I felt I had done some of my best writing and thinking, and I had learned much from his sagely approach to teaching.  He was the type of professor that would wax poetically about this philosophy or that and encourage debate, but he was also extremely practical in his lessons.  One of my favorite stories from him was when he told us about how angry he got one weekend when he tried to get into his office to catch up on some work but found the front door to the main building locked and he without a key.  He was so mad about it, he called up his department head to give him a piece of his mind, and the department head replied, “Do you want to continue to be angry and fight about it…or do you want to ask me for a key?”  In other words, it’s better to stay calm and focus on what will fix the problem than to get all worked up and stew in your own anger over the fact that the problem occurred in the first place.  Now that’s a useful philosophy.

At the time I was eager to take a break from my psychology courses and circle back on what I had learned earlier in my studies.  But nothing really prepared me for what a profound impact “Quest for Wholeness” would have on my life.  The overall arc of the course focused on the idea of viewing life experiences as cyclical and intertwined with the Four Seasons.  I became so taken by this concept that I later applied it to my novel, The Thief Maker, in which I told my story in a “thematic chronology” where events were not grouped in a linear fashion, but by how they thematically related to each other and to the cyclical nature of the Four Seasons.  Thus the structure of my novel was broken into four major sections: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.  So for all those who have asked me if I had been inspired by Tarantino’s non-chronological approach to his Pulp Fiction when writing The Thief Maker…the answer is, “Nope…’twas John G. Sullivan, not QT, who inspired that.”

That’s what made “Quest for Wholeness” so rewarding.  It circled in not just on a professor’s personal philosophy, but on my study of psychology, my writing and my every-day life and interactions with others.  John G. Sullivan viewed the professor-student relationship as a partnership, and he and his wife opened up their lives and their home to their students.  They were the people who invited the whole class over for dinner, and during those two semesters, it was like having a second family where everyone talked about everything in class, and our different disciplines and fields of study were all tied in together.  We learned how to become great listeners, how to open up our lives to new perspectives and to other people’s experiences.  We were all on that same journey…that same quest, and it was John and Gregg’s sincere desire that they and their students continue that quest long after the course ended.

When I learned of John’s retirement from Elon a few years ago, I was saddened to think that future students would no longer have the opportunity to go on that “Quest for Wholeness” with the Sullivans as their guides.  But just recently, I learned he has published a new book, The Spiral of the Seasons: Welcoming the Gifts of Later Life, where he has combined the new wisdom he has gained from entering that next stage of life (retirement) with his life’s work on the Four Seasons.  His book is not just for those entering retirement, but for anyone searching for ways to slow down, reflect and find their way through all that life has to offer.

The Quest it seems does continue.

It’s nice to see things come full circle.

Written by David H. Schleicher

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From his Amazon Author Profile:

John G. Sullivan is a native of Newport, Rhode Island. The sound of the sea still echoes within him.

Holding a triple focus, he is:
(1) Powell Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Elon University in North Carolina where he taught for 36 years;
(2) a faculty member of Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, Maryland, where he is principal designer of their MA program in Transformative Leadership;
(3) a participant in the work of the NC non-profit: Second Journey.

His abiding interest is in the place where philosophy, psychology and spirituality – East, West and beyond — intersect and mutually enhance one another.

Learn more about the book by clicking here.

Purchase The Spiral of the Seasons at Amazon.com.

The Road Often Taken

Hey, pop, you think Smokey the Bear is gonna be mad at us?

Over the years these grisly post-apocalyptic scenarios have become a dime a dozen in film and literature.  When award-winning author Cormac McCarthy decided to put his spin on the idea with his novel The Road, people took notice.  By focusing on a father-son relationship instead of the usual action and horror that lends itself so well to post-apocalyptic tales, McCarthy received mountains of praise for his stark, horrific fable.  Now, just in time for the holiday film season — and honestly, what screams holidays with the family more than a cannibal holocaust? — director John Hillcoat (previously responsible for the grim Aussie western, The Proposition) delivers his adaptation of McCarthy’s celebrated novel to the big screen.

The good news is McCarthy’s grim, ash-covered, earthquake-riddled, tree-toppling, cannibal-ridden, sparse nightmare of words is translated to Hillcoat’s visual world fully in tact.  The set designers, special effects folks and cinematographer deserve all the credit in the world for making this barren wasteland look both dire and magnificent in scope.  Also like the book, the film is essentially a two person show depicting the relationship between The Man (Viggo Mortensen, growling and whispering his way through another solid performance) and The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee, fraught, sympathetic and believable).  They do expand a bit on the back-story involving The Man’s wife (and The Boy’s mother), where we learn that Viggo’s character was insanely smitten by Charlize Theron’s character because she was the type of gal that would lay in the grass instead of a perfectly good hammock.  Why she chooses to abandon her husband and little boy remains a mystery as does the cause of the apocalypse, which will frustrate some while entrance others.

For the most part, fans of the book should rejoice, but I always had my reservations, and this fastidiously faithful film adapts all of the source material’s faults along with the good stuff.  Like the novel, there can only be so many scenes of the father and son traipsing across this hell-hole from one place to the next in search of food before the narrative becomes monotonous.  The story takes forever to get where it’s going, and once it does, the final act seems far too convenient and pat.  I won’t expand more on that here for fear of spoiling the film for those who haven’t read the book, but it is an ending that raises more questions than answers, although it is guised in a veil of hope.

Ultimately, John Hillcoat’s The Road is a reverent adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, well acted, well directed, and full of compelling imagery.  However, by overplaying its hand with regards to the central relationship between a father and son and remaining stubbornly vague about everything else, what was meant to be haunting and unforgettable is rendered easily forgotten with a shrug of the shoulders.  This is a road we’ve taken before, but I suppose I would rather take this one than to have to sit through another I Am Legend.

Written by David H. Schleicher

The Winter of our Discontent

Okay, so 2009 has been a fairly solid and entertaining year for films thus far…but is it just me, or is there very little to get excited about in these last few months?  Last year, 5 of the 10 films to make the top ten list for my annual Davies Awards were released in the final two months of the year.  This year, there’s nothing that has me as excited as I was last year about Doubt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon or Revolutionary Road — films with pedigree, class, all-star casts, interesting stories — you know, the type of stuff Oscar loves.  It seems every piece of Oscar bait was withheld until those last few weeks of December last year (let us not forget The Wrestler as well).    Hollywood spoiled us.  Yet…maybe there will be more of an element of surprise this year, and there will be that little film that comes out of nowhere  — and I’m sorry, folks, but you can’t tell me that films like last year’s Slumdog Millionaire or this year’s Precious came out of nowhere with all that highly manipulative prepackaged positive buzz and carefully platformed release schedules designed to maximize profit.  2009 has been full of surprises — who would’ve thought that Inglourious Basterds or District 9 would’ve been so good — so I’m holding out hope…and here’s my buzz on what films might become those diamonds in the rough.

Lest I remain discontent…here are my most anticipated films for the Winter Season 2009/2010.

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The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, limited release Christmas Day 2009).  This Palm D’Or winner from Cannes appears to be both Haneke’s most artistic and accessible film to date.  This seems a shoe-in for a Best Foreign Language Film nomination, though it could strike an even deeper cord, and seems destined to do for the cold, austere Haneke (Funny Games, The Time of the Wolf, Cache) what The Sweet Hereafter did for Atom Egoyan.  Thematically, there appears to be shades of religious films like Doubt or Silent Light or any from Dreyer’s canon, while the intimate, small-town story is anchored in a pre-WWI Germany ripe for, you know, all that stuff historians and artists and socio-political theorists and psychologists love to delve into when trying to uncover, “What happened to make the people do THAT?”  It all sounds well and good, but what really clinched this for me was the preview.  I haven’t responded to a preview like this since the original trailer for There Will Be Blood — a completely different type of film on the surface, but like this White Ribbon, appears to be a measured departure from the director’s previous works, and just oozes “THIS IS ART!”  It chilled me to the bone.  Here’s hoping the film does the same.

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Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, NYC and LA December 4th 2009, wide release Christmas Day).  Can director Jason Reitman duplicate the success of Juno?  Will George Clooney finally score a massive commercial hit outside of those awful Oceans “Insert Number Here” films?  Will Vera Farmiga (unsung for her roles in The Departed and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) finally score that first Oscar nomination?  Already, this film, which bares a striking resemblance to the detached type-A male personality Reitman previously put cleverly on display in Thank You for Smoking, has some critics gushing, “Why don’t they make more movies like this?”  In other words, it looks to be targeted at adults, smartly written, well directed, well cast and will tackle relationships in a mature, thoughtful way.  The preview is slick and well done, and I’m just hoping is makes enough money so at the very least those whining critics will shut their traps.  I jest…seriously, look at this preview!  Why don’t they make more movies like this?  This thing is a shoe-in Jerry Maguire-style Oscar-bound piece of entertainment.

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The Road (John Hillcoat, November 25th, 2009)  I have to admit, I’ve been running hot and cold on this one.  I thought Cormac McCarthy’s book was good but a bit overrated…though its stark minimalism made it ripe for a pulsating and thrilling film adaptation.  I got onboard when John Hillcoat was announced as the director — I loved his grim Aussie Western The Proposition.  But when the first images started floating around, I thought, man, they got it all wrong.  Then there was a delayed release date — this was originally slated for November 2008.  Then there was the first Hollywoodized preview, which made it look like a terribly rote post apocalyptic action film.  But now the reviews are coming out, and though they are mixed, the ones that lean positive are positively rapturous…and the word is, Hillcoat got his cut out there and McCarthy’s vision is in tact.  The original trailer was a studio hack-job but this one is a little better:

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Edge of Darkness (Martin Campell, January 29th 2010) Mel Gibson goes bat-shit insane in an attempt to uncover who murdered his daughter.  Looking to tap into the same audience that flocked to 2009’s Taken, Martin Campell (The Mask of Zorro, Casino Royale) directs this from a script by William Monahan (The Departed).  Unlike the total suck-fest that was Taken, this flick actually looks good…and we haven’t seen Gibson kick-ass in front of the camera in a long time.  Check it out:

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Shutter Island (Marin Scosese, February 19th 2010) Some of you might remember this was on my Summer/Fall Preview post earlier in the year, but after bombarding us with the schlocky trailer, the studio pulled the film at the last minute and changed the release date from October 2009 to February 2010.  I’ve never hid the fact that Scorsese is one of my all-time favorite directors, and thanks to previous and superb film adaptations of some of his other novels (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) Dennis Lehane is one my favorite writers whom I’ve never actually read.  This looks to me like Scorsese doing his own Hitchcock riff, and hell, even if this is no better than Cape Fear (which is still a pretty entertaining flick), then that will still be a most welcome relief in the middle of February, which is typically the worst time of the year for quality films.  Here’s the new preview:

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Other films of potential interest:

November 2009:

• Fantastic Mr. Fox (already in limited release, wide on Turkey Day) Meryl Streep!  George Clooney!  Animated!  In Stop-Motion!  By Wes Anderson!
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (already in limited release).  Shoe-eating German Werner Herzog directing American lunatic Nicolas Cage in an update…homage…remake…sequel…WTF? of that amoral Harvey Keitel film?  Sign me up!
• Broken Embraces (already in limited release).  Pedro Almodovar directing Penelope Cruz…again.  Ay yi yi.

December 2009:

• Brothers (December 4th).  An inexplicable remake of a quiet, intimate Dutch film that is currently being advertised as a melodramatic thriller.  Natalie Portman looks good at least.  Tobey Maguire promises to over-act.
• Invictus (December 11th).  This should successfully reunite the Clint Eastwood “Commercial Hit” with the Clint Eastwood “Oscar Bait”.  This is my early bet for Best Picture.
• The Lovely Bones (December 11th).  Peter Jackson directs the adaptation of the international best-selling novel.  Sounds good on paper, but am I the only one who thought the previews were hokey?
• Avatar (December 18th).  This is only on the list because it looks so monumentally unfathomably terrible — like a video-game update of The Smurfs mixed with a monstrously cliched “star-crossed love story in a time of war” plotline.  I keep hearing that goofily slack-jawed ”You’re not in Kansas anymore, you’re on Pandora” line from the previews over and over in my head.  What was Cameron thinking?  This will either be the season’s biggest bomb or biggest hit. 
• The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (Christmas Day).  The previews look like a mess, but this certainly has potential if Terry Gilliam gets the tone right…and there’s the Heath Ledger factor that should bring in the curious.

January 2010:

• The Book of Eli (January 15th) Yet another post-apocalyptic opus with an obvious religious message.  This one stars Denzel Washington instead of Will Smith.  At least the Hughes Brothers (From Hell) deliver up some hellishly cool imagery in the previews.

February 2010:

• The Crazies (February 26th).  The apocalypse.  Small town.  Zombies.  Or something.  Remake of the Romero flick.  This is only on the list because the preview was actually kinda good, though how many of these types of films do we need before the actual end of the world?

Written by David H. Schleicher

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So what films are you most excited about this winter?  Leave a comment and be heard.

The Covered Bridges of Bucks County

With fall winding down, this past Sunday was potentially the last nice day to do a day-trip of this nature.  The plan was to tour the Covered Bridges of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  Below are some of the photos I captured.  Why so few pictures of the actual bridges, you ask?  Well…we go lost thanks to lousy directions,  Bucks County’s willfully eccentric and confusing system of back-roads through the hills and countryside and non-GPS friendly points of interest.  The roads frequently change names, and some stop dead only to appear miles down another road and running perpendicular to their original selves.  Genius!  If anyone can tell me how to get to Cafferty Road from Dark Hollow Road, a small reward might be paid.  If you do this tour and absolutely must see every covered bridge, my only suggestion is to kidnap an actual native of Bucks County to be your guide.

To be honest, once you’ve seen one covered bridge, you’ve seen them all — go ahead, Covered Bridge Aficionados, send me your hate mail! — so my recommendation is when you reach the starting point of the tour at Washington’s Crossing just stay on River Road aka Route 32.  It’s a wonderfully scenic drive along a winding two-lane highway that snakes along the Delaware River and Pennsylvania Canal.  You’ll get great views of New Hope (the trendy town that always tries too hard), the Jehovah’s Witness Compound (with its literal Watchtower), the river islands, falling rock faces, quarries, cozy inns, biker taverns, beautiful homes, quaint villages and tiny wineries.  When you finally reach Uhlerstown (your WTF fact for the day: Uhlerstown was originally named Mexico), hang left and check out the best covered bridge around that from afar looks like it takes you right into the face of the hillside.  So feel free to toss the directions out the window, turn off your GPS, stop wherever you wish — we did at the historic Washington Crossing Inn for a bite to eat — and enjoy.

Written and Photographed by David H. Schleicher

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Other Related Info:

The Yardley Inn (which we previously visited) also makes for a great meal just off River Road.

Check out the Straight Dope on “Why are covered bridges covered?”

Cinematic Culture Clash

I believe it was Chaim Potok who once said something to the effect of “all great literature is about the clashing of cultures.”  In his novel, The Chosen, his insular idea of culture clash was an Orthodox Jewish boy befriending an Hasidic Jewish boy.  I think the same can be said of great cinema, though independent filmmakers often take a more volatile approach.

Below are four films that have passed through my Netflix queue this year that I believe deserve to be singled-out, praised, buzzed about…chosen.  All four are in a way about the clashing or melding of cultures and the effects that has on individuals, and three of the four are from directors with immigrant heritages.  Three of them have a good chance of making my top ten list for 2009, while another (from 2008) is in the running for my top 25 of the decade.  As is often found in independent films, with lower budgets and tighter focus on achieving a personal dream, filmmakers hone in on story and character with often startling results.  Low profile or lost in the shuffle either due to foreign origin or lack of widened stateside distribution, they deserve a larger audience, and those selective cinephiles who routinely uncover them have a duty to pass on the word.  Queue these up, post haste.

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Fatih Akin's THE EDGE OF HEAVEN nearly puts you there.

The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin).  Akin’s acclaimed film received a 2008 release here in the states and generated some mild buzz and decent business, though I didn’t catch up with it until this summer.  The multilayered episodic plot of the film is impossible to summarize in a capsule review, but it involves the intertwining stories of a college professor, a prostitute, a troubled political activist and others against the backdrop of Turkish immigrants in Germany.  Expertly told in an elliptically folding manner, the narrative is riveting to watch unfold and the characters’ actions are unpredictable and at times heartbreaking.  Like the films of Mexico’s Inarritu, the film globe hops (from Germany to Istanbul), and like the films of Canada’s Egoyan, Akin’s own Turkish German heritage is held up to a mirror.  Just how good is The Edge of Heaven?  Had I seen it in 2008, it would’ve been my pick for the number one film of the year in my annual top ten list and it is currently on my short list for the top 25 films of the decade.  Literate, bold and startling, international cinema doesn’t get any better than this.

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GOODBYE SOLO is one of 2009's best American films.

Goodbye Solo (Rahmin Bahrani).  A decidedly American film set in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Bahrani’s quiet and powerful character study shows us  the story of Senagalese cab driver (with an Hispanic wife) taking on the odd job of driving a depressed old ”Southern” man to what may be his final destination in Blowing Rock.  The whole “odd couple friendship” that blossoms out of the obvious culture clash may sound hokey, but Bahrani elicits subtle performances from his leads, and this combined with subtle direction in the closing scenes on the winding road through the Smoky Mountains to and from Blowing Rock leaves the audience in a contemplative mood.  This is the perfect example of a fresh, thoughtful American independent film.

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JERICHOW is about the distance between us.

Jerichow (Christian Petzold).  Apparently the best films coming out of Germany today (like Akin’s aforementioned masterpiece) are about Turkish immigrants.  This one has what sounds like the plot of a Hollywood potboiler:  Dishonorably discharged from his service in Afghanistan, a German soldier comes home and becomes entangled with a Turkish businessman and his mysterious wife.  This is one of those films with a deliberate pacing that reveals nothing of what’s to come, and the screenplay and the performances allow you at times to despise and sympathize with each of the main characters who are anything but one note.  Tiny details of everyday life are gleaned, like how a snack shop empire is run or how cucumbers are harvested, while stunning and haunting images of Germany’s northern countryside and shoreline are used as backdrops for a searing but refreshingly restrained melodrama.  The denoument and final line are haunting.  Hollywood would’ve killed to have made something this good.

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Strangers on a train in SIN NOMBRE.

Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga).  Fukunaga’s slick and stylish love story/crime saga was a minor hit on the art-house circuit earlier this year.  Aboard a train heading north, the paths of a Honduran teenage girl and a Mexican gangbanger cross while both plot daring escapes to America.  The director puts both the plights of illegal immigrants and the culture of gangland violence in-your-face.  The story arc where the two become starry-eyed for each other is a bit cliche, but it works for the most part.  There are shades of everything from City of God to Traffic to Romeo & Juliet, to dare I even say it…The Last of the Mohicans — check out the artistic preening and posturing of the gangbanger’s tattoos!  Fukunaga is a gritty romanticist, a master of violent montages and small intimate moments that create a tapestry that’s easy, though at times uncomfortable, for the audience to weave themselves into.  Sometimes shocking, a little bit predictable, Sin Nombre is a great entertainment. 

Written by David H. Schleicher

America by Walker Evans

Walker Evans (1903-1975) was undoubtedly one of America’s greatest photographers.  His black-and-white images stand as time capsules of an America now gone but still familiar.  Evans is best known for his iconic images of sharecroppers hit hard by The Great Depression as part of his work for the Farm Security Administration.  During my recent visit to Cooperstown, NY and the Fenimore Art Museum, I was able to see their amazing collection of Walker Evans’ photographs.  I was struck most not by his most famous images from the Dust Bowl and America’s Heartland, but by his images of America’s East Coast during the same time period.  His photographs of people and places spanning the hardened core of America’s original thirteen states from New York City to Atlanta captured an America that was shell-shocked but resilient, an over-developed and industrialized stretch of the Eastern Seaboard that was crumbling and decaying but populated by survivors — an America that would eventually pull through the Great Depression and produce the Greatest Generation defined by their heroic actions in World War Two.

Here are some of my favorite images from Walker Evans:

1.  Girl in Fulton Street (NYC, 1929).  I don’t know if this was taken before or after the Crash of ‘29, but there is a knowing look painted on this girl’s face…and you can see nervousness beneath the veneer.  Should she be scared to death or just slightly annoyed by the impending doom?

2.  Torn Movie Poster (Unknown, 1930).  The actual photograph is larger, but this close-up strikes at the heart of the composition.  This brilliantly captures the fear and the anxiety felt during the early years of the Great Depression that left many literally tearing at the scraps left over…or as modern rockers Muse might say, “It’s time the fat cats had a heart attack.”  Bonus points to anyone who can identify the film.

3.  Billboards and Houses in Atlanta (Georgia, 1936).  There is so much detail captured here…houses that have probably long since been demolished and movies no one remembers or watches anymore.

4.  Graveyard and Steel Mill in Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, 1935).  This image speaks volumes about an America mourning a crumbling infrastructure.

5.  Sons of American Legion (Bethlehem, PA, 1935).  From left to right, the boys facing out represent a motley crew of characters:  the serious one, the wisecracker, the impatient one, and the slow one.  Less than ten years later they would be marching off to war and would become the Greatest Generation.

6.  Joe’s Auto Graveyard (Pennsylvania, 1936).  This one says it all, doesn’t it?  When that scrap-metal was turned into tanks, America was reborn.

Written commentary by David H. Schleicher

All Photographs by Walker Evans.

Halloween Horror Film Festival

The Schleicher Spin now proudly presents:

A Guide to a Great Halloween Horror Film Festival

Step One:  Set the mood with the classics.

...and we go walking...after midnight...out in the moonlight...

• Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932) — Though religious persecution was a dominant theme in Dreyer’s canon, this moody piece of work was his one attempt at pure horror.  This plays like a filmed night-terror and contains so many dreamy, spooky, and downright bizarre images that you’re left with but one choice: surrender to the Dane’s macabre vision.  The corpse’s-eye-view of a funeral procession is a special delight that has yet to be matched in nearly 80 years of cinema.
• Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932) — While it’s easy for some to dismiss this as a literal circus sideshow, Browning’s still controversial masterpiece is a haunting portrayal of the horrors of Group Think.  When our anti-heroine receives her final comeuppance in the scene with the deformed and unfortunate beings crawling through the mud in the rain under railroad cars wielding knives and revenge, it makes for one of the most chilling climaxes in film history. 
• Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) — Boris Karloff’s lumbering monster has become memorialized and overused to the point of mockery, but there’s still something both horrific and sympathetic about his portrayal.  The infamous “drowning scene” still packs a wallop…especially with the emotional follow-up of the father carrying the little girl’s body through the village streets.  After all these years…this film is still ALIVE!   IT’S ALIIIIIIIIVE!

Step Two:  Settle in with a glass of wine or a cup of tea, get cozy and watch a classic ghost story.

• The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) — Deborah Kerr’s performance and Freddie Francis’ cinematography make this a near perfect adaptation of Henry James’ potboiler “The Turn of the Screw”. 
• If you care to watch something more modern, the recent spins on the same psychological horror, 2001’s The Others (anchored by Nicole Kidman) or 2007’s The Orphanage (anchored by Belen Rueda) would also fit the bill quite nicely.

Step Three:  Break out the popcorn and have a hell-of-a-time with these creepy ”fun-scary” hits.

• Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) — Really?  Did you think this wouldn’t be on the list?  For the love of all that is holy, please make sure you watch the Carpenter original and not Rob Zombie’s ridiculous Hillybilly-deluxe retread. 
• Fright Night (Tom Holland, 1985) — This Rear Window-inspired tongue-in-cheek vampire romp is one of my all time favorites from childhood.  Comes complete with a kick-ass totally ’80’s theme song and awesomely grotty make-up effects.
• Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi, 2009) — Gypsy curses, nasty demons, mortgage re-financing, cheesy effects, a smoking-hot Alison Lohman and a talking goat made this the most fun I have had at the movies in years.  Raimi pulls out all the stops and all the eyeballs and drains all the embalming fluid along the way.  Enjoy.

Step Four:  Get artsy.

...another beautiful day at the beach.

• Nosferatu (Werner Herzog, 1979) — Okay, so F. W. Murnau’s 1922 original is iconic and undoubtedly one of the most celebrated classics of silent film and German Expressionism.  But Herzog’s brilliant update compliments, enhances and celebrates the original while creating its own ghastly imagery.  This is that rare case where the remake might be better than the source.  Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani are like tortured images from gothic paintings and etchings come to life to become undead.  More of a meditation on vampire iconography in film and the mythology that haunts our minds, from the skull-and-bones opening credits to the Wagner-themed journey to the Count’s castle to the dire closing shot of the sand blowing over the beach, this is the most artistic horror film ever made. 

Finally:  Watch the greatest horror film ever made.

What film combines the iconic imagery, the psychological horror, the ghosts, the classic performances, the genuine scares and the artistry?

• The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) — Kubrick’s eerily symbolic and painstakingly detailed re-working of Stephen King’s hack-novel is a masterstroke of filmmaking hubris.  Here’s that rare instance where the film adaptation is better…way better…than the book.  In fact, I would argue it exists in a whole different universe.  The music…the maze…the pacing…the blood…the elevators…and those hallways are the stuff of nightmares.  All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.  And anyone who puts together a Halloween Horror Film Festival without The Shining should be axed.

Danny, won't you come play with us...forever?

Written by David H. Schleicher

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Check out the great thread on Kubrick’s masterpiece, The Shining, over at Wonders in the Dark.

For a comparison of The Innocents with its source material, “The Turn of the Screw”, read my previous article, Turning the Screws.

Here’s my original review of The Orphanage.

And check out my raving about Drag Me to Hell.

So what’s your favorite horror film?  What movie scared you the most?  What would you include in your own Halloween Horror Film Festival?  Speak your mind in the comment box.