BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: THE MIST

The Mist (2007)

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• Thomas Jane,
• Marcia Gay Harden,
• Laurie Holden

Frequent Stephen King collaborator Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) teamed with the celebrated horror author once again for this tale of terror concerning a small town engulfed by a malevolent mist, based on a story originally published in King's 1985 horror anthology Skeleton Crew. When a thick fog descends upon a rural community and claims the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught outside, a small band of survivors seeks refuge in a local grocery store. Now trapped in a darkened cloud of pure horror, the frightened denizens of the town are forced to fend off an advancing horde of murderous monsters. Punisher star Thomas Jane heads up an ensemble cast that includes Andre Braugher, Laurie Holden, William Sadler, and Marcia Gay Harden. – AllMovie Guide

64% liked it

R, 2 hr. 5 min.

Director: Frank Darabont 

November 28, 2010: First Sunday of Advent (Year A)

The next time you watch The Shawshank Redemption, ignore the unnecessary final shot and just close your eyes as Morgan Freeman gives his final monologue on the bus. "I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.” Just fade to black right there. You don’t need to see if Red and Andy get to give each other a big hug on the beach because it’s the hope they express which is the heart of Shawshank and the true note on which the film should end. I bring this up because in order to really appreciate The Mist, you have to see it as a bookend to Darabont’s earlier film. While Shawshank is a meditation on the necessity of hope, The Mist is an exploration of what happens when people abandon it.

Now, despite that heady introduction, The Mist is still a bona fide B-movie at heart, complete with bug-eyed monsters hell bent on brunching on a beleaguered humanity. And while those humans are all paper thin stereotypes, especially Marcia Gay Harden’s poorly written religious fanatic, it doesn’t matter too much once the tentacles start tearing through the doors. You want people armed with flaming mops fighting mammoth mutant mosquitos? Well, this is your movie.

Unfortunately, the ending sours a lot of people on The Mist. And I’ll admit, on the surface, it’s cruel. Heck, being told you’ve lost your job, your house burnt down,  and your dog has cancer all on the same day is less cruel than the ending of this movie. But if you watch The Mist in the context of it being a kind of anti-Shawshank Redemption, then the ending is exactly what it should be, a perfect allegory on the consequences of giving up hope and succumbing to despair.

Here at the start of Advent, it’s good to remember that hope is not just a feel good motivational word. As one of the theological virtues, the practice of hope actually does something to us. According to the Catechism, hope actually adapts man's faculties for participation in the divine nature. “The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.” And if we can get a movie like The Mist, which illustrates the repercussions of turning our backs on hope while simultaneously offering up scenes of shoppers assaulted by hideous flesh chomping spiders… all the better I say.

CUTAWAYS: DON CAMILLO

Pick a blog, and I mean any blog, and you’re likely to run across a post dealing with the Pope’s alleged endorsement of condoms. Read them all and draw your own conclusions. But in the midst of all the hoopla, it’s The Deacon’s Bench who scoured the original article which started all of the chattering and dug up a fact which really caught our attention here at the B-Movie Catechism. In short…

What does the Pope watch on TV?

According to the AP, Pope Benedict XVI’s new book will reveal that the Pontiff “enjoys watching TV at home in the evenings with his secretaries and the four women who take care of his apartment, preferring the evening news and an Italian TV show from decades ago "Don Camillo and Peppone" about a parish priest and his bumbling assistant.”

Now, I had never heard of Don Camillo and Peppone, but a quick cruise around the Internet reveals it was a pretty popular series of books, movies, and TV shows in many European countries. And my interest was really piqued when I learned that, along with the priest and his friend/foe the communist mayor (not bumbling assistant, apparently AP can’t even Google correctly), the third major character in the series was the Voice of Jesus which would periodically emanate from the large crucifix in the church, especially when Don Camillo needed chastising for his quick temper. Take this scene, for example, in which the irate Don insists on going through with a procession against the wishes (and threats) of the mayor. While the priest is angry and defiant, Jesus seems a bit relaxed about the whole thing.

That works for me. Thanks for the excellent recommendations, Your Holiness. And it just so happens that the first two Don Camillo movies are available at Netflix, so I know what I’m watching this coming week.

But it got to me thinking (which is always trouble)…

With the scores of remakes of foreign films we’re constantly deluged with here in the States, what would a modern American remake of Don Camillo look like? Well, I have a few ideas.

First off, Don Camillo (inexplicably played by Seth Rogen) would be wracked with conflict about his call to the priesthood AND about the very existence of God Himself. In fact, he would be strongly tempted to leave the priesthood and move in with one of the local prostitutes (played by Jessica Alba) with whom he has fallen in love. This time around, he would be completing the processional as a sign of rebellion against his bishop, who ordered the ceremony be discontinued because it somehow encourages people to question the authority of the Church.

The communist mayor (played by Sean Penn) would no longer be portrayed as an oafish thug, but rather a determined champion of the common man doing his best to deliver the village from the clutches of the despotic power hungry Church AND protect them from the plans of an evil American businessman (played by Alec Baldwin) who recently arrived in the village to exploit the local Maggot Cheese producers.

The dog, who can now speak, would be completely CGI and voiced by John Stewart. The dog would continuously make snarky comments deriding the entire cast for their belief in anything whatsoever, but when confronted about his asinine remarks, would only reply, “What? Nobody takes what I say serious. I’m just a dog.”

The Voice of Jesus would be played by Sara Silverman because, gosh, wouldn’t that be so edgy?

Anyway, that’s my idea of what a modern Hollywood remake of Don Camillo would look like. Feel free to chime in with your own suggestions. Or if you want to come up with a remake of your own, here’s a scene from the second film in the series. Have fun.

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU: VILLAINY!

Every now and then something or someone in the blogosphere gives me a wild hair and I just have to run with it. This time, it’s LarryD over at Acts Of The Apostasy with his recent post on the reaction of the nefarious super-villain group SCHISM to the recent election of Archbishop Timothy Dolan to the presidency of the USCCB. The post is hilarious, but down in the combox one of Larry’s astute readers, after reflecting on the character of Cosmic Girl, noted that he was “a bit afraid of what her costume might end up looking like.” Which got me to thinking…

Now, please forgive the quality, but all I had available at the office this morning was a legal pad and a cell phone to take the picture with. But I think the general idea is there.

For my rendition of Cosmic Girl, I decided to include a few things LarryD didn’t mention, but I was sure would be there. Things like:

A crystal wand to channel the power of the Spirit of Vatican 2.

Wonder Woman style wrist bracelets to symbolism years of male oppression in the Church.

Special vest buttons to symbolize Cosmic Girl’s respect for all religious traditions (though a Christian symbol is conspicuously absent).

And, of course, a nice tweed skirt to make her adventuring all the more comfortable.

So there you have my version of LarryD’s Cosmic Girl. Cower in fear before her villainy!

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P.S. It’s all in good fun, folks. While I’m opposed to some of the sister’s ideas, I’m sure the lady herself is probably a sweetheart. And I hope she forgives the unflattering image as my caricature skills are poor to say the least. And please, LarryD, don’t sue for copyright infringement.

HONORING THE HORRENDOUS

As you’ve probably heard by now, prolific film producer Dino De Laurentiis has passed and his funeral will be held this coming Monday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. Now if you were a kid in the 70s like me, then you probably became familiar with Mr. De Laurentiis through his efforts to bring the 1976 remake of King Kong to fruition. Yeah, I know. The greatest generation got the classic original with Willis O'Brien's brilliant stop-motion animation, the latest generation got Peter Jackson’s lavishly bloated CGI love-fest, and us… we got a crusading bearded liberal being chased by a guy in a monkey suit. But what the heck, it was the 70s! I saw Dino’s Kong  in the theater and I still watch it today. It’s too much fun not to.

Okay, so not every film the man was involved with was a classic, but he does have some really good stuff in his 500+ film oeuvre, including what many regard as one of the greatest of the old school Biblical epics, Barabbas. He was nominated for over 35 Oscars and won the Irving G.Thalberg Memorial Award for “demonstrating a consistently high quality of motion picture production”. It’s just that for every Serpico to his credit, there’s also a Mandingo. Face it, there’s a reason Michael Medved called him "Dino De Horrendous". But we bad movie lovers certainly don’t hold that against him. I mean, come on, just think of all the things we would have missed without him.

We might never have heard Arnold Schwarzenegger explain that what is best in life is “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

We might never have gotten to see a greasy underfed Sting prance around in his speedo and menace others with pointy weapons.

We might never have seen Bruce Campbell fight the Army of Darkness.

We might never have gotten to see a greasy underfed Grace Jones prance around in her speedo and menace others with pointy weapons. (Or was that just Sting again in blackface? I’m not really sure.)

We might never have seen Gary Busey get his butt kicked by a priest turned werewolf.

We might never have gotten to see a not so greasy, not at all underfed Brian Blessed prance around in his speedo (and a pair of goofy looking wings) and menace others with pointy weapons.

We might never have seen Barbarella. (Okay, I don’t know if that would have been a good or a bad thing, but at any rate, we never would have seen it.)

All I’m saying is that guys like De Laurentiis understood the universality of film. He knew there was space on the shelf for Federico Fellini’s La Strada and for Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, so he got them both made. The way Dino De Laurentis “indiscriminately mixed the high-minded with the schlock” was considered a limitation by critics like The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy, but for obvious reasons, we consider it a strength around these parts. God bless you, Mr. De Laurentiis, and may He grant you eternal rest and let perpetual light shine upon you.

BMC MOVIE OF THE WEEK: RAZORBACK

Razorback (1984)

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• Gregory Harrison,
• Arkie Whiteley,
• Bill Kerr

Before he directed the cult classic Highlander (1986), music video creator Russell Mulcahy adapted this stylish, tongue-in-cheek horror film from the novel by Peter Brennan. Gregory Harrison stars as Carl Winters, a grief-stricken American husband who has come to a remote corner of Australia to seek answers in the death of his wife, a TV journalist who was investigating a story on kangaroo poaching. Carl meets Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr), a man obsessed with hunting down what he says is an enormous razorback boar that consumed his grandson. Although he was acquitted, most of the locals believe that Jake murdered the boy himself and invented the crazy story about a giant pig. Jake tells Carl that he believes the razorback is also responsible for his wife's death. At first skeptical, Carl becomes a believer when he encounters the beast. He and Jake track it to a dog food processing plant, where the owners are illegally butchering kangaroos for industrial use. The factory operators are also feeding the dog food to the gigantic razorback, increasing its size and carnivorous appetite. Joined by farmer Sarah Cameron (Arkie Whiteley), Carl and Jake set out to kill the powerful mutant.

49% liked it

R, 1 hr. 35 min.

Director: Russell Mulcahy

November 7, 2010: Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

Sure, it sounds like a bad SyFy channel original (as if there are any good ones), but surprisingly enough, Razorback is probably the finest giant flesh eating killer pig movie you’ll ever see.

First time feature director Mulcahy exercises his music video chops (Total Eclipse of the Heart!) to turn the Australian outback into a surreal fog-laden landscape. (Tell me again, why are there junked automobiles in the trees?) And the script by cult favorite Everett De Roche (Long Weekend, Patrick, Road Games) constantly keeps you off-kilter. Forget your safe All-American no-kill list here. Kids, dogs, animal rights activists… they’re all among the first to go. Plus, the mechanical pig doesn’t disappoint. It’s huge, filthy, and despite the fact that it’s on film, quite smelly. In fact, by the time the climax in the rather unsanitary dog food factory rolls around, you might just develop a deeper understanding of why the ancient Jews readily agreed to civil laws which forbade the eating of pork altogether.

Actually, there are a number of theories postulated as to why pork was proclaimed unclean to the Jews, ranging from the obvious health risks presented by porcine parasites to the use of swine in the sacrificial rites of nearby pagans. Whatever the reason, the important thing was that the Jews not eat the stuff. So important that, as we see in this week’s reading from 2 Maccabees, they were willing to face torture and death rather than take a single bite of bacon.

These days, of course, we gentile types can pop open a pack of pork rinds guilt free because Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Old Covenant. And in doing so, the Catechism tells us, He perfected the Jewish dietary law “by revealing its pedagogical meaning through a divine interpretation "Whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him… What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts."

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore stories like the Maccabeean tale of the seven brothers that deal with “The Law”. In a June 2002 address, the soon to be Pope Benedict XVI noted of Jews who fervently observed the ritual laws, “They were convinced that everything depended on being in the right relationship with God, on knowing what pleases Him and what one can do to respond to Him in the right way. For this reason, Israel loved the law: from it, they knew God's will, they knew how to live justly and how to honour God in the right way: by acting in accord with his will, bringing order into the world, opening it to the transcendent.” That’s a philosophy we can all bring to our own religious practices, regardless of whether or not we get to have a ham sandwich for lunch or not.

SHORT FEATURE: THE EGGS-O-CIST

Considering some of the movies reviewed here, it should be obvious that shame is not really a big concern. That being the case, I am unashamedly ripping off this video which just showed up over on Kindertrauma. Enjoy…. The Eggs-O-Cist!

What the…? So you mean to tell me that Father Merrin & Father Karras died for nothing? All little Regan really needed to get over her affliction was just to get hooked on an hour long infomercial? I knew it! Buying new crap solves everything.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

As Pope John Paull II noted in his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, “we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment… contrary to what is good and to true happiness. This super-development, which consists in an excessive availability of every kind of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups, easily makes people slaves of "possession" and of immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the so-called civilization of "consumption" or "consumerism," which involves so much "throwing-away" and "waste." An object already owned but now superseded by something better is discarded, with no thought of its possible lasting value in itself, nor of some other human being who is poorer. All of us experience firsthand the sad effects of this blind submission to pure consumerism: in the first place a crass materialism, and at the same time a radical dissatisfaction, because one quickly learns - unless one is shielded from the flood of publicity and the ceaseless and tempting offers of products - that the more one possesses the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.”

Papal encyclicals aren’t necessarily infallible, of course, but science seems to back up the Pope on this one. Andrew V. Abela, assistant professor of marketing at the Catholic University of America, writes that “the empirical evidence… indicates that consumerist attitudes are associated with reduced consumer well-being. People who are more consumeristic tend to have lower satisfaction with their lives, a greater tendency to compulsive spending, higher incidences of depression, and also lower ethical standards. Tim Kasser, in his recent book summarizing research in this area, concludes that there are “clear and consistent findings” that people who are focused on consumerist values have “lower personal well-being and psychological health than those who believe that materialistic pursuits are relatively unimportant.”

Given that our economy isn’t doing so well right now, I don’t suppose it’s a popular notion to suggest that we refrain from buying new stuff to replace the old stuff that still works. But if JPII was right, and evidence says he was, maybe we should at least consider it. Me, I was finally thinking about giving in and going Blu-Ray this year as the recent release of The Exorcist in that format is very tempting. But I think I’ll skip it now and stick with my perfectly fine DVD. Besides, do I really need to see every pore on Max von Sydow’s nose or be able to count every chunk in Linda Blair’s vomit? Nah, I think I can find a better use for that money.

CUTAWAYS–NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2

Need a break from politics? Me too? Republicans, democrats, bleh. You know what this country really needs right now? More old school nuns armed with yardsticks! I bet that would straighten a few people out. Don’t believe me, just ask the demons in the following montage. (WARNING: gooey monster stuff near the end!)

I say give the Sisters 36 inches of cork-backed stainless steel straight edged justice and let’em loose in the halls of Congress. Whap, whap, whap! We’d have this country straightened out in no time flat.

Okay, okay, spare me the chastising. I’m well aware that the above is a cliché and that nuns throughout history, habited or not, have carried out some of the hardest and most thankless ministries the Church has had to offer, often with little thanks and rarely with rulers in their hands. So I’m not trying to perpetuate an old stereotype.

But, man, I’d love to see a congressman, any congressman, take a rap across the knuckles. Just once.