'30 Days' is a modern classic horror film
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Josh Harnett (right) gets ready to take on the leader of the vampires, Marlow, played by Danny Houston in the climax of the well-done horror movie, "30 Days of Night."
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By G. Michael Dobbs
Managing Editor
I've been on the couch watching a wide variety of DVDs this past week from Chinese detective movies to the Academy Award winning "Let There be Blood.
Thirty Days of Night
I first became seriously interested in movies through horror films that remain a great love of mine. I hate the current crop of horror snuff movies and yearn for stories that do more than repeat scenes of torture.
I found what I think is a great modern horror movie in "Thirty Days of Night." This film has an intriguing narrative foundation: vampires invade the Alaskan town of Barrows during the winter when the sun doesn't rise. Based on a graphic novel written by Steve Niles, the film expands this key premise to include a character-driven story about the handful of survivors dedicated to save themselves by eluding the vampires for the 30-day sun-less period.
In the fun and informative behind-the-scenes extras, director David Slade said how he wanted to be true to the graphic novel and have scenes of violence and blood, but didn't want to follow the current trends of extreme gore. He doesn't, to his credit, and the result is a film with enough visceral thrills to satisfy younger audiences without turning off older horror fans such as myself.
Josh Harnett does a great job as the sheriff of the small town dealing not only with the vampires, but also with a relationship with his estranged wife played by Melissa George. Danny Houston is effective as the vampire chief, who is far from any vampire portrayal by Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee.
For more information, log onto www.30daysofnight.com.
There Will be Blood
When a friend asked me if I liked director Paul Thomas Anderson's epic depiction of a misanthropic oilman during the early days of the 20th century, I wrote, "It's the best Erich Von Stroheim film never made by Erich Von Stroheim."
Von Stroheim was the Austrian-born actor and director whose silent films were notorious for their epic qualities, morally ambiguous characters and a worship of realism. His best-known film, "Greed" was adapted from the social realism novel "McTeague" by Frank Norris and Von Stroheim allegedly filmed the novel page by page. The result was an eight-hour final cut that was taken from the director and edited down to a standard theatrical length.
By the way, I'm a huge Von Stroheim fan.
"There Will be Blood" has much of the same feel and approach as Von Stroheim's films. The movie takes its time with an eye to realism to build its character study of Daniel Plainfield, a man determined to build his fortune through oil. The chase for oil money is only one of two things in Plainfield's life the other being his adopted son who seldom leaves his side.
Although Anderson tells his story on a large scale, it never strays from being a character study and a look at the relationships between Plainview, his son and a young man Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano). Sunday tells Plainfield of oil that is on his father's property in the hopes that Plainfield will fund his church. Sunday believes that he is a healer.
When Plainfield doesn't pay Sunday all that he should, trouble erupts.
I won't say much more about the plot, except to say that while I found the film compelling, I was never allowed to find out what actually makes Plainfield tick. There was always a distance between the film and the audience. Daniel Day Lewis puts in a bravura performance patterning Plainfield's voice after the distinctive sound of the late John Huston. It takes a little to get used to, but he pulls it off.
If you're thinking the DVD extras would add more illumination to the film, guess again. There is no commentary from Anderson and no making-of feature. There is a 15-minute assembly of footage with the detector's reference material showing how close he was in re-creating the era and one unused take from the restaurant scene. There is also a 1923 educational film on the petroleum industry.
I have to say the extras in this package underscore the art house pretensions of the film, which are its weakest point. And I should add, Von Stroheim viewed himself as a popular filmmaker. He was a tad pretentious in adding "Von" to his name, though.
Mr. Wong Detective: The Complete Collection
Here's a thorny little set of B-movies from Monogram Pictures from the late 1930s and '40s. White actors in blackface are generally unacceptable, so what about white actors portraying Asian characters?
Boris Karloff played James Lee Wong, a character that first appeared in short stories in Collier's magazine. The Wong movies were clearly designed to compete with the popular Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto movies, both of which had non-Asian actors playing Asian detectives.
As films themselves, the Wongs were clearly top of the heap for Monogram, which meant they were a notch below the other two series made at 20th Century-Fox. Especially for fans of B-movies and Karloff, they are fun. Wong is a cerebral detective which contrast with the less-than-observant cop played in the films by B-movie stalwart Grant Withers.
The issue of whether or not these films are racist, though, remains a question, especially in the last film of the series in which Keye Luke plays a new version of the character. Seldom did Asian actors get to headline a film. Luke, who had starred with Warner Oland in the Charlie Chan series, told me in an interview that studios were not about to risk the budget of a major film by casting an Asian in a starring role, when they could use a bankable star with make-up.
Well, if you can look past the inherent racism in the films, these films can offer some low-budget thrills.
For more information, log onto www.vcient.com.
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