It is difficult to summarize the plot of “Transformers” in just a paragraph, and it is very boring if you do not have a voice with the awe-inspiring narrative capacity of Optimus Prime.  However, in a nutshell, this adaptation of the eighties cartoon, which in turn was based on a series of Hasbro toys, is that a race of gigantic metal aliens, the Cybertrons, able to transform into an array of mechanical objects (mainly types of vehicles), arrive on Earth in time to disrupt the pathetic attempts at romance made by teenager Sam Witwicky, played by Shia Labeouf.   But why? you ask.  To save the world, of course

Apparently, a couple hundred of years before Sam was born, his ancestor happened upon an evil member of this alien race, called Megatron, who was searching for a cube of radiation, know to the Cybertrons as the All Spark.  Thus, the Autobots (good Cybertrons) arrive on Earth in order to save the humans from the Decepticons (bad Cybertrons).  And poor Sam is stuck in the middle of it all. 

Despite the simplicity of the good vs. evil plotline of this film, there are some very thoughtful aspects to it.  Most plainly is the amazing CGI used for the robots themselves.  While occasionally the speed and fluidity of the transformations can be a little unsettling, the Cybertrons do not appear cartoonish on film, unlike, perhaps, Yoda in the Star Wars prequels, or the wolves in “The Day After Tomorrow.”  The gigantic machines look like a real, giant, metal alien might look, and are not jarring in comparison to the real environment and people around them

Another remarkable aspect of this film is the presence of such strong female characters.  Classmate of Sam, Mikaela, played by Meghan Fox, and Maggie, a genius government analyst, played by Rachel Taylor, are side characters that merge bravery, nobility, intelligence and breasts.  In a film consisting of very little character depth, mainly riding on its action sequences and convoluted plotline, Mikaela, Sam’s love interest, has more character development than any other person on screen.  Her sassy, no-nonsense spirit at first seems trite and annoying, but when she is faced with bizarre challenges, and rushes to meet them without flinching, she proves herself to her audience.  Her heroic attitude does not seem forced or false, and she does not seem to want to help in times of crisis in order to show-off, but simply because she wants to be of help.  This sort of character is refreshing and appreciated.  Why can’t she be the main character?  Compared to her, Sam Witwicky is self-centered and wishy-washy.  Bumblebee should be her guardian.

Along with the lack of character development, there was also a lack of memorable or noticeable background music.  The action scenes could have been even more pulse-pounding with a cool soundtrack blaring in the background; as it is, the music used can hardly be recalled.

The best part of the action scenes were when the Cybertrons would transform in the middle of fighting.  The film is called Transformers, after all.  Starscream takes the cake, however, when he zooms in and out of the F-22 formation, transforming to smash a plane out of the sky, then transforming back into his disguise.  Furthermore, his barrel rolls between buildings looked spectacular.

However, when it comes to the Cybertrons’ personalities, Bumblebee has to win for most congenial.  Bumblebee transforms into Sam’s camaro, and he plays his role of guardian to Sam so well that he gets himself battered, bruised, and bagged by one enemy after another.  When his mournful blue eyes turn toward the screen, one cannot help but think of a little, loyal, lost puppy. 

Ambiguity is a core fixture in the moral code of the western in general, and Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado in particular.  There is a certain necessary correlation between having morally tilted characters in westerns, considering they would have to be a little dishonest and hardened in order to survive on lands rightfully belonging to Native Americans according to treaties signed by the government. 

Even Silverado’s heroes lean more toward the knightly end of the moral spectrum than a lead character in a film like The Searchers, for instance.  However, that does not mean that the heroes have unblemished records.  The main characters in Silverado have sordid histories, but the audience follows their point of view and side with that group more readily.  However, there is a thin line dividing the good guys from the bad guys in the film.  Sometimes good guys are presented as bad guys, depending on which side of the law the group of friends (including Emmett, Paden, Jake, and Mal) are on at the time. 

For example, two sheriffs depicted in the film have a common position and status.    A sheriff is generally thought to be a moral archetype, which is the type of characters Kasdan was trying to represent in the film.  A sheriff represents peace, justice, and order, and while Sheriff Langston and Cobb are both given charge of their respective towns, they are appointed and accept the jobs with differing motives. 

Langston, of Turley, is a seemingly fair, efficient, proper, and morally upright character.  He throws people out of town occasionally, but only in order to keep the peace.  Despite his position as peacekeeper, and because he plans to hang Jake and Paden, Langston becomes a “bad guy” in the film, although the reason the two heroes are sentenced to hang is because they each murdered somebody.  The sheriff is simply doing his job

Meanwhile, Cobb, the unlikely sheriff of Silverado, was appointed by the rich cattle family in town, the McKendricks, in order to have an authoritative ally.  Cobb, who used to be the leader of an outlaw gang, now has his former gang members deputized. He is sly, deceitful, murderous, and shameless, and greedy.  He is not afraid of hurting anybody to get what he wants, which is usually hurting somebody else.  His victims include children, families, innocents, and his own friends.  He abuses his power as sheriff, such as when he ambushes Mal Johnson with his posse of deputies; he pompously declares, “We’re gonna give you a fair trial, followed by a first class hanging

The fact that these contrary sheriffs are pitted in some way against the heroes of Silverado demonstrates the tightrope morals of the characters themselves.  Each character is accountable for committing some immorality.  Emmett and his brother, Jake, are guilty of murder.  Paden once rode with Cobb’s gang of outlaws, as well as killing off men who waylaid him and robbed him clean.  Mal, as far as the audience knows, has not killed anyone when his character is introduced, but he abandoned his family farm when he was young to find work in Chicago. 

Abandoning family is a just as big a crime in the film as murder, it seems.  After Mal left his mother died, his father’s home and ranch was burned out by the McKendricks, and his sister, Rae, was forced to become a saloon girl.  Also, Emmett makes a point of telling Paden that he has to rescue Jake from hanging because Jake is Emmett’s brother, and he can not tell his sister that he let their brother swing.  Furthermore, Paden loses the trust of Cobb and his former riding buddies after he abandoned them during a chase in order to tend to a stray dog one of the men had shot. 

Family is a value that helps those in the “wild west” maintain their humanity, and if someone throws family away, it is an inhuman crime. Because the heroes are not entirely moral, the audience must find a different reason to choose them over Cobb and the McKendricks.  This alternate sign is the motive the characters have to commit their crimes.  Paden, Emmett, Mal, and Jake kill many enemies throughout the story; however, they do not kill out of greed, but out of self-defense and necessity.  In Turley, Jake and Paden each kill a man, both out of self-defense.  Although Langston is correct in attempting to dissuade random acts of violence in his town, he and the jury do not take into account that the man Jake killed attempted to shoot him first.  Meanwhile, Paden’s victim also drew first, and he was one of the men who ambushed Paden at the beginning of the film.  Emmett is also a victim of overzealous justice.  The film begins with Emmett fresh from Leavenworth after being sent up for murder of the McKendricks’ father.  Emmett also killed out of self-defense, but that detail was ignored.

In the scene where Paden, Emmett, and Mal sally forth to save Jake and his young nephew, Augie, the McKendricks have about twice as many men as the main group.  The group is outnumbered, and the McKendricks have started the battle by kidnapping the trio’s comrades; thus, the heroes are in the right when they kill off their combatants

Another example is when Mal goes to his sister’s bedside, after she has been shot by one of Cobb’s men.  There he finds Slick, a dishonest gambler who is under the protection of Cobb, and has lately become a regular patron of Rae.  Earlier in the film, Rae asks Slick to help her brother, but instead Slick helps Cobb entrap Mal.  Later, Mal knows he was betrayed, and feels justified in killing him when Slick pulls a gun on him.  Slick is also guilty of further damaging the strength of Mal’s and Rae’s family by further degrading Rae’s decency.

While the heroes are defending them and theirs, the villains kill for more shallow reasons.    Mal and his father have some good farm and cattle land, burned out by the McKendricks who hope to scare the owners away.  Ethen McKendrick has a vendetta against Emmett, being not quite satisfied with Emmett’s punishment.  The film actually begins with Emmett being ambushed by faceless men, determined to kill him.  Later, by matching Ethen’s brand with the brand of a confiscated horse, Emmett determines that Ethen had sent a killing party out to accomplish what the jury had not.  The McKendricks and Cobb go on the offensive when Emmett and his group get to town, they kill Mal’s father in order to steal his land.  Although Mal does not save his father, he manages to thwart Cobb’s deputies’ efforts to kill Emmett.  In retaliation, the McKendrick men attempt to kill Emmett’s sister and her family in order to lure Emmett out of hiding. 

In the end, of course, each hero kills his complementary villain, Emmett kills Ethen, Mal stabs Slick, and Paden shoots down Cobb.  Added to the contradiction in the sheriff motif, the fact that Paden has to kill Cobb, despite him being Paden’s father figure, goes against the rule of destroying ones family.  However, once Cobb starts hurting Paden’s friends, and forcing Paden to stay on the sidelines, Cobb becomes a destructive force in the metaphorical father/son relationship they have developed. 

It can not be said that Silverado is a reflection of the moral code our country holds today.  The audience of the film is expected to give more weight to the crime of deserting family than to shooting other people one by one.  It may, however, demonstrate the morals held by those living in the western era, where they lived by laws they made themselves.  In the end of the film, the four friends are redeemed because they come back to help each other.  The group becomes its own little family, and Mal, Paden, Emmett, and Jake are forgiven, despite the wrongs they committed in the past.

“Luhrman’s lack of ambiguous characters in Romeo and Juliet”

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has characters with flaws and strengths, which is what makes the characters so rich.  However, Baz Luhrman adds qualities to the characters not found in the play itself, which change the characters from ambiguous to either evil or perfect people.  Tybalt is the worst victim of Luhrman’s changes.  Tybalt, in the play, is on par with Romeo, he is no worse a person and no better.  It is inferred, through Juliet’s reaction to his death, that they were almost as close as Juliet and Romeo, if not closer because of their kinship. 

However, in the film, Luhrman adds pieces to Tybalt’s character, such as his liaison with Juliet’s mother, so that he is extraordinarily “evil.”  In the party scene, where Romeo and Juliet first meet time, Tybalt is dressed, most conspicuously, in a demon costume, with horns and a goatee.  Meanwhile, Juliet is clad in an angel costume.  The symbolism couldn’t be clearer.  Tybalt and his gang are depicted as bloodthirsty bandito types.  In the scene before he slays Mercutio, Tybalt stubbornly beats Romeo, ignoring the pleas for peace, and ends up callously stabbing Mercutio.  In the retelling of the play in the movie of West Side Story, the brawl between Bernardo, the Tybalt character, and Riff, Mercutio, is violent, but the extent to which it goes, Riff running belly first into Nardo’s knife, is accidental.  There is no calculation or satisfaction in the killing. 

In Luhrman’s version, Tybalt is shocked by what he has done, and there is almost a pitiful attitude about the young man, but there is not enough innocence played into his character throughout the rest of the movie for the audience to feel too bad about his predicament.  By clearing the borders between good and evil with his characters, and having Tybalt be the vengeful, philandering, murderous scoundrel, and depicting Mercutio as a fun-loving, loyal friend, an innocent bystander caught between the feud of two families, Luhrman manages to rid the audience of the pesky reservations about Romeo killing Tybalt.  Tybalt is evil, has been for most of the movie, he deserves no less than being shot through the heart.  In West Side Story, Riff and Nardo both have bad characteristics, but they also show heroic sides.  Riff, like Luhrman’s Mercutio, stands by his friend till the end.  Nardo, however, is given the opportunity to show his good side by his kind and protective treatment of Maria, the Juliet character.  Thus, when the two gang leaders are killed, the audience is moved by it.  The characters are all innocents forced to survive in a hateful, bigoted world. 

On the other hand, Luhrman’s Tybalt is the devil, destroying all peace treaties sought for by Juliet, the angel, and Romeo, her knight in shining armor

The religious symbolism in the movie is not only evident, but smashes the audience over the head as often as possible.  With the crucifixes, the burning hearts, the statues of the holy virgin and her holy son, there comes along the idea of good versus evil.  The Lord Almighty, God, versus his fallen angel, Satan, Beelzebub, the Prince of Darkness.  The Devil versus the Angel.  Thus, when the lines of morals are blurred, like with all good rounded characters, there is always a debate over who is right and who is wrong.  In Pirates of the
Caribbean, Governor Swan says, “Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course.”  Things in the world aren’t always black and white, at times; solutions are in the gray area.

And following right on the heels of the Die Hard sequel, British smash Hot Fuzz squeals onto U.S. screens.  From the awesome creators and stars of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz is an excellent satire of action films, starring a huge British cast, lead by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Nicholas Angel (played by Simon Pegg) is also a super cop, only stationed in London, where they do not carry guns.  Instead, makes use of his razor sharp ball point pen and fully loaded notepad.  However, the rest of the London PD does not appreciate the wonderful job Angel is doing, and he is transferred to the small, rural town of Sanford, Gloucestershire. 

There he chases after graffiti vandals, shop-lifters, and runaway geese.  His only consolation is making friends with Constable Danny Butterman, the Chief Inspector’s son, who introduces him to the awe-inspiring world of shoot-em-up movies. Hot Fuzz would keep the audience guessing “What’s next?” if they weren’t laughing so hard.

Over a decade has gone by since John McClean last waged war against terrorism, but here he is, in the new film, “Live Free or Die Hard.”  Bruce Willis is back as the super-cop, guns and puns blazing.  Only this time, the enemy isn’t as simple as trigger happy Russians; McClean is up to his ears in techno jargon that can’t simply be solved by driving a tank into someone. That is where Matthew Farrell (played by Justin Long) comes in; he is a young hacker that lends his brains to McClean’s ultra-violent machismo.  Farrell is McClean’s youngest sidekick yet, which lends a ‘father/son’ dynamic to their relationship. 

Tim Olyphant, who plays the main villain, manages to keep up with McClean’s smart-aleck quips.  Although he has absolute cold-hearted moments, he also demonstrates some depth, which makes him more human than any of the other Die Hard villains. However riveting the plot is, it cannot compare to the explosive, heart-thumping action sequences.   As over-the-top as McClean driving a car into a helicopter may seem, true Die Hard fans cannot help but pump their fists in the air, because McClean is Just That Cool.

How fantastic it would be if the nanny got prettier the nicer her charges acted. You would start out with the old hag from Don’t Tell Mom, the Babysitter’s Dead, and end up with Alicia Silverstone, from The Babysitter. What better incentive for good behavior? Unfortunately, such characters are relegated to fairy-tales and storybooks. However, Nanny Mcphee, a new film directed by Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) and adapted by Emma Thompson, gives audiences an opportunity to forget about the evil sitters of their own realities, and peek at the world of the Brown family and its eccentric caretaker.

Nanny McPhee is the story of the unruly Brown children: Aggie, Sebastien, Christianna, Lily, Eric, Tora, and Oglington Fartworthy, I mean Simon (Thomas Sangster). After the sudden death of their mother during Aggie’s birth, the children feel abandoned as their father struggles to keep the family financially stable. The children act out by scaring away every governess their father hires, until Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson), a frightfully peculiar person appears on their doorstep and tortures the children into behaving. Nanny 911 for the fairy-tale world.

Thompson is a sight with a blotchy, bulbous nose, a hairy caterpillar standing in for her eyebrows, a snaggletooth capable of opening a can of beans, and two black warts with unsightly hairs sprouting out the middle. She bares a striking resemblance to actor Pete Postlethwaite. As the children learn the lessons she has to teach them, her gruesomeness melts away.

The film is based upon Nurse Matilda, written by Christianna Brand in the sixties, exhumed from the tomb of pre-Harry Potter novels such as the original, hard-nosed Mary Poppins and the devious, devilish tales of Roald Dahl. The film does an admirable job of transferring the tale from pages to projector without losing the fantastical quality that only British children’s novels seem to possess.

The most striking ingredients of this imaginative film are the colors used in the set décor, costumes, and characters’ physical features. Each set of characters are represented by their own color schemes. The members of the family, led by their widower father, Cedric, played by Colin Firth, are decked out with rich shades of green, blue, and red. Their clothes, which in typical cartoonish fashion rarely changed except for special occasions, are hunter green, avacado, azure, claret, or auburn, while their Sunday bests are pure white. The Brown’s cook (Imelda Staunton) sports bright red hair, sticking out at impossible angles, mirroring her excitability and flaming temper, and the children’s cold, impersonal great-aunt (Angela Landsbury) wears icy blue tresses.

There is a particular design for each room in the Brown home, all incorporating the family colors. In Cedric’s study, the wall behind his desk is painted lime green. His and his late wife’s chairs stand before the fireplace, one a Charles II armchair, embroidered in forest green, and the other a wingback, upholstered in soft burgundy, with gold fringe around the legs. The exaggerated color schemes and furnishings add to the fairy-tale quality of the film.

The acting in the film is especially commendable. Each child in the film manages to emit their own personality, even some with minimum amounts of lines. Amid films like Kicking and Screaming or The Bad News Bears and Nanny McPhee or Peter Pan, there is a stark contrast in the way the child actors are written for and directed.

Americans are harsh and abrasive in their delivery. Their lines are usually so mature and arrogant that they seem awkward acting the parts. Dakota Fanning, for instance, is always cast in insipid roles, where she always knows better than the adults around her. British child actors, such as Thomas Sangster, who plays the eldest Brown child, are given far more realistic lines and direction. They seem awkward when they are meant to seem awkward, not when they are supposed to be lecturing their parents or cursing out a fellow student. In one scene in Nanny McPhee, Sangster is urged by his siblings to confront their father about whether he is planning to remarry. He holds himself perfectly as he acts with Firth, just as a young child would when put in such a situation, slouched and shy, afraid of saying the wrong thing.

While the focus of the film is on the children, the adults get their share of screen time. Firth is especially gleaming, as the doting but distant father. Cedric spends much of his time working as an undertaker, worrying about how to keep out of debtors’ prison while holding his family together. Every decision he makes is after lengthy deliberation as to what is best for his children, and Firth manages to make the anxiety and worry clear in his character. It is a different role than he’s known for: Mr. Darcy in the BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, and his reincarnation in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Cedric Brown, a character who wears his heart on his sleeve is a complete one-eighty from the chilly, impervious personage of Mr. Darcy.

Nanny McPhee manages to be whimsical and sincere simultaneously. It has a moral that touches the audience in a way that most current films, geared toward children, seem to side-step. It is a particularly good movie for adults to share with children; it is not simply an immature plot-line with grownup humor thrown in for the poor parental figures forced into going with their kids.

Most of the perspective in The Third Man is from Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), which is why much of the film is off-kilter and twisted. Visual technique tricks are used to convey a sense of imbalance on the part of the characters, techniques like canted frames, redundant shots, exotic locales, and use of shadows. When Martins is first introduced, he happens to saunter right under a ladder propped up against his friend’s building in Vienna. This reflects Martins’ down-to-Earth persona, showing a non-superstitious, practical character that is only interested in facts and justice.

However, the straight forward path is not really open to Martins. He has not seen his friend, Harry Lime, in some time; Martins is in odd surroundings and among strangers; he does not know what post-war Vienna is capable of turning a man into. Because of this, the western writer is left with a mystery that keeps twisting upon itself, which is shown to the audience by the canted, or slanted frames. The shots symbolize Martins’ off balance mental position. When Martins gets drunk, he sees Lime, but when he chases after, Martins is only chasing Lime’s enormous shadow. His seeing and chasing a known dead man further pushes the envelope of Martins’ sanity. When Martins and Lime are in the Ferris wheel, Martins starts out with one idea, and when they come out, Lime may have convinced him of another. The audience can also see the view changing outside the window as their box rotates.

In the same vein as the warping of perspectives, there is the redundancy of the chase scenes. At first Martins gets chased around, through a building, and down a pile of rubble. Later in the film, Lime gets chased down the same pile of rubble, proving that their positions have switched. Lime’s character is constantly conflicted; he is a greedy crook, willing to kill or drive insane for his own profit. However, he is still Martins’ childhood friend, and Anna Schmidt’s lover. He is the only person Schmidt’s cat likes. He seems intelligent, clever, and charismatic, but he is also a crook and a murderer. Lime’s personality is reflected in the Ferris wheel, because his personality and justifications are constantly changing. These fluctuations catch up with him in the end, however, in the final chase sequence. The twisting labyrinth of sewer underground is a come-to-life map of all the lies Lime has told, and he is being closed in upon on all sides. In the end, Martins shoots his friend out of mercy rather than malice.

You are in a darkened hallway on the second floor of a New England mansion. You are dressed in only a nightshirt and underwear, because you were awakened by a scratching noise coming from the attic above your room. It is storming outside, lighting flashes every few minutes, and rumbling thunder echoes throughout the house and throughout your bones. You have a flashlight in hand, because the storm has knocked over a power line somewhere, and you now have to suffer for it.

You make your way down the hallway; worn, wooden planks creak under your bare feet. The noise causes you to wince, and pause a moment, listening again for the scratching from upstairs. The staircase that pulls down from the ceiling is opened and waiting for you. You put your foot on to the first step, and you cry out. There is a sticky wet substance on the stairs, leading into the darkened abyss above you.

Or perhaps the house is in the Deep South, or maybe in California somewhere. You could be exploring a basement instead or maybe a wing of a library or hospital, or a cabin at your summer camp. You could be an older man, or a teenage girl. Regardless of setting or characters, you are most likely in a horror movie.
I’m not quite sure the attraction people have towards scary stories and scary movies. I’m sure there are many psychological essays I could read on the subject. The basic reason I can see is the adrenaline high viewers experience when a masked man brandishing a chainsaw or a ghost pops out at the main character. Viewers react differently. I hug my stuffed frog or Scooby-Doo, my best friend chirps and covers her face, and my little brother cracks a joke. Movie goers seek out different types of horror films. Some prefer the serial killer series with Jason, Freddie, or Sydney Prescott. Others enjoy monsters and ghouls like Dracula, Swamp Thing, the girl in the Ring, or It. I personally make it a goal to watch any ghost movies I can find, in the hopes of finding one that adequately creeps me out. So far The Others and What Lies Beneath are the most successful for me.

I do not believe there are enough ghost films. There is an abundance of novels about ghosts. R.L. Stine, for instance, is a genius at writing juvenile horror novels. There are many, many short stories focusing on Victorian ghost stories, where the soul or a slice of soul of a person who passed away is forever trapped in this world, maybe recreating their deaths, or maybe simply making the new tenants of their homes miserable. I would describe these stories as eerie. Most Victorian ghosts are not capable of hurting people still living, unlike monsters, poltergeists or Asian ghosts. Instead, the ghosts hover around, scaring passers-by. I see eerie ghost movies as more successful horror experiences than a blood fest like The Hills Have Eyes or I Know What You Did Last Summer. There is much speculation over whether or not apparitions exist, many believe, many don’t. However, serial killers and killer clowns are much less prevalent. If a movie-goer leaves a ghost movie and walks to his car, then sees a flash of white out of the corner of his eye, it could quite possibly be a ghost on his tail. Meanwhile, if he leaves a slasher film and notices the same car following him or over ten miles, he may think it’s a serial killer, but how likely is that assumption?

Music plays a large role in horror films. Jaws is a prime example with the low staccato notes cueing it viewers to an inevitable attack. While watching The Grudge, viewers know immediately when something is about to spring out at them because the music either swells, or almost disappears. What would happen if a horror film disregarded the crutch of music? What if the audience was taken by complete surprise when the little girl’s ghost appears in the mirror? Or if the cheerleader gets her throat cut in the locker room shower? It would change the horror movie watching experience.

The most annoying aspect of horror movies is the lack of character development. The filmmakers expend the majority of their energy on developing unique twist endings, disgusting and disturbing mis-en-scene, and exotic settings, but the characters go wanting in personalities and sympathy. The characters in Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th are barely introduced; the movie simply starts with characters we do not even care about, who start to get killed. The gore that accompanies the murders is the only thing to involve the audience.

With more focus on characters and the changes they experience, the audience will not be forced to depend on a hackneyed, cliché plot to carry the film, but will enjoy watching the character reactions and growth instead. How are audience members supposed to sympathize with a character slain by a serial killer or monster, or plagued by a ghost, if they do not know the character’s feelings or personalities?

The genre of horror in film is very prevalent; there are ghosts, mutants, zombies, vampires, and murderers. The films have the ability to make the most mundane, everyday tool, such as a shed or a mirror or a kitchen knife, a symbol of evil. For nearly a month after I watched Ringu, I avoided dark television screens for fear of the ghost appearing in the glass. I still shy away from mirrors in the dark because of the Bloody Mary story. When I watch What Lies Beneath at my mother’s house, I avoid the bathroom with the claw-foot tub, on the off chance that a ghost has filled it up with steaming hot water. Miniscule details of horror films stick with us long after the plots of the films fade away. I am still wary of sleeping in rooms with treadmills since watching Arachnophobia when I was about seven years old, and that was a horror comedy!

Despite the United States being such a young country, it has acquired some pretty interesting mythologies in its paltry couple of centuries. The ideas of George Washington and Abe Lincoln as being unable to tell lies; the courtliness of the Deep South; the Italian and Irish mobsters of the East; Zorro defending the peasants out west; and not least of all, the cowboys of the old west. For decades, different forms of media have tapped into these legends, and with a little bit of tailoring, have turned them into films, books, TV shows, and songs about the mythologies of America.

“Deadwood,” a fairly recent HBO series, is an example of an adaptation of American myths and legends. David Milch, creator of the hit series “The Sopranos,” originally approached HBO with an idea set in ancient Rome about the secret police. Milch was interested in a show where the main conflict is a place with no system of governing; a place saturated in lawlessness. However, he was told that another Roman show was already in the works (“Rome”) and they suggested he set his show in a different locale, and suggested Deadwood, a town that was situated in the Black Hills of Dakota, on land that had been set aside in a treaty for the Native Americans. The settlement was in a precarious position because they were in Deadwood illegally, they had to be careful of their actions, because if they drew the notice of the United States’ government, they would be booted out and harangued. Thus, the hardworking people were left to be walked over by the criminals because setting up their own law system would be a direct affront to the Union’s government.

Because of the wealth of the area, and the fact that it was a blind spot for the American justice system, Deadwood was a hive of colorful characters. One of the most legendary figures that graced Deadwood with his presence was “Wild Bill” Hickock, along with his companions Charlie Utter and Calamity Jane. These, as well as other real life people, are the characters David Milch has arranged for “Deadwood.”

Because of the recency of the Wild West era, the United States has the benefit of actually being able to see the characters its legends are made of. Photographs of “Wild Bill,” Calamity Jane, Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock, and Jack McCall exist, so Milch and his crew have good examples to work from. These photographs and biographies are good starting points when turning Keith Carradine into “Wild Bill,” with long, wavy hair, broad-brimmed hats, and heavy, expensive coats. Historians even have letters and diary entries written by “Wild Bill,” and they add to the character’s development. That detail sets the American West legends apart from legends such as Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, and Trojan heroes.

The fact that there is proof our legends existed makes “Deadwood” seem much more realistic and intense. Of course, Milch and his co-writers take many liberties in their depictions, as all of Hollywood does. However, there is a striking difference between HBO’s series and former television shows such as “Bonanza,” “Gunsmoke,” and “Have Gun Will Travel.” The show is even different than classic westerns starring John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Jimmy Stewart. There is realism about the show; a dirty, vulgar, unromantic lens the Old West is shown through.

One of the most striking aspects of the show is the character presentations. Each character is realistic in the way that they have redeeming qualities, but are also burdened with some sort of flaw. Al Swearengen, the crime boss slash saloon keeper, (played by Scottish actor Ian McShane) is a hardened man that treats everyone with suspicion. He is constantly on the watch for an easy mark or a possible enemy. When prospective hardware storekeepers Seth Bullock and Sol Star (Timothy Olyphant and John Hawkes) mosey into town and rent out a tent space in front of Swearengen’s Gem Saloon, he drives a hard bargain with them, in order to be assured that they aren’t looking to set up a competing saloon. Swearengen also runs a brothel out of his saloon, and keeps his whores on a short leash, often resorting to beating them in order to get his way. He sets men up for cons and plays them like player pianos, killing them once they have served their purpose. Despite his wickedness, at times he does show pity on his favorite prostitute, Trixie (Paula Malcomson), and at one point feels ashamed of roughing her up.

“Wild Bill” is a legendary lawman and gunfighter, but in the first episode he tells a newspaper man that he is in Deadwood avoiding a warrant in one of the states. The Doc Cochran (played wonderfully by Brad Dourif) kowtows to Swearengen, cleaning up the messes his men and women make, and keeping everything on the down-low; however, he does not agree with Swearengen’s method of controlling the town, and he often tries his best to help the Gem prostitutes. All of the characters are fleshed out and three-dimensional. Each one has pros and cons to their personality. Calamity Jane means well, and is loyal to Bill to a fault, but when the manure hits the ceiling, she crawls into a bottle for a few episodes, and does not reemerge until she is comfortable with herself enough to help others.

What is very interesting about the show, which is different from films like Unforgiven or The Searchers, “Deadwood” does not apologize for or justify the flaws the characters have. It is not fully explained why Jane is an alcoholic, although it s know from history books that she was abused growing up, which caused a whole slew of neuroses; and when the ridiculous, idiotic Jack McCall shoots “Wild Bill,” there is no real explanation, except that Bill humiliated McCall in front of their poker buddies. The characters are not given exact reasons for why they do bad things, which is closer to real life. Real life is not a cut and dry cause and effect chronology.

In an hour and a half film, there must be cause and effect to keep the plot rolling along, but in real life, something can happen in a person’s life that does not resurface again for decades, and it is not always easy to realize the cause of certain actions. It is not to say that the characters in “Deadwood” do not feed on motivation, it is simply that it never dwells on exposition of characters’ histories, which is uncommon in most adaptations of legendary figures. The fact that we simply receive snippets of the back stories of characters draws the audience into the story even more intensely. It is no longer a story read in some children’s book of Old West heroes, but the legends become real people, having real experiences.

“Deadwood” does take liberties, all historical adaptations have to, considering we never know exactly what Seth Bullock’s internal conflicts were about “Wild Bill” being shot. Perhaps the two barely knew each other, they may not have at all; however, it makes for good story-telling if they are friends or father and son type figures. However, it is an excellent way to present legendary figures in a way that makes them more tangible, more human, and more identifiable.

V for Vendetta, the new comic book turned action movie, has several folks shaken up because of the disreputable message it tries to emit. V for Vendetta most definitely had a political message that it was trying to convey, and it conveyed it quite well. However, the political message layer inside of super hero movies is not a novel concept. What is unusual is that usually it is Superman, Batman, or Spiderman fighting terrorism, instead of wreaking it. However, the vigilante aspect is still the same.

The film made me a little uneasy with its blatant glorification of violence. Despite the main hero being well-spoken, well-read, and practically a genius, it is a little sad that the end message was it doesn’t matter how intelligent somebody is, they still need to be adept at sword play in order to win out in the end. It is a gratuitous display of human nature. It was nice that V actually spoke, and spoke often, not just in one line quips. He was verbose, oozing with intelligence, especially in his introductory monologue, where he spouts nearly fifty words beginning with “v.” Hugo Weaving’s voice, soothing and lyrical, lends itself very nicely to the hero. It was good to hear that he was not mimicking Agent Smith at all, but giving V a completely different sound.

The setup of the new government of Britain is a little weak; there are a few holes in the description of the society’s construct. Officers police the streets after curfew, zero in on innocent passers-by such as Natalie Portman, but instead of giving them a citation or a warning, threaten violence if they do not spread eagle and accept a full body cavity search. The lead Police Inspector, Eric Finch, played with his usual lack of bravado by the stern Stephen Rea, is at once the most loyal officer in Britain, and the least. Finch obviously has his doubts when it comes to the Chancellor’s method of rule, but he is still entrusted with top-secret information and very important missions.

Stephen Fry, meanwhile, also destabilizes the audience’s view of the society. As talk-show host Gordon Dietrich, he airs a wild, farcical romp featuring a few Chancellor look-a-likes being mocked by a fake V in front of thousands of viewers. Then, later in the film, the audience is supposed to be surprised when the authorities break into Dietrich’s house, bag him up, and haul him away. This is a country that has banned artwork, books, films, and music that holds any negative connotations toward the government; of course you are going to be arrested for poking fun at the dictator!

As my seventeen year old brother pointed out, even the forefathers of this country were, at one point, considered terrorists. They felt compelled to take up vigilante arms against forces they viewed as unjustly oppressive and fought back. It is only once those righteous freedom fighters have become the tyrants that they view the new up risers as violent zealots.

This piece of social déjà vu fits into the Vendetta scenario. V was created by the government while they were experimenting on methods of containing the populace and making Britain safe, thus sacrificing poor V for the good of society. However, as a vigilante, V is willing to sacrifice a few people, including evil authority figures, in order for Britain’s people to once again be free to truly live. Thus the see-saw of the law versus the vigilante continues to teeter.

I only watched about two-thirds of The Hills Have Eyes, the other third I had my head buried in my boyfriend’s shoulder, in order to avoid the gore and violence. I went into the movie without any background information, only that it was “scary.” Turns out, it is simply a reworking of Wrong Turn, another gore fest I was not particularly thrilled with, which involved inbred, Appalachian backwoods people savagely cannibalizing a group of yuppie twenty-somethings whose cars break down.

The Hills Have Eyes, a remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 film, takes place in a New Mexico desert, where nuclear bomb tests had been conducted during the bomb test craze in the 50’s. The beginning credits, similar to Wrong Turn’s beginning, a montage of mushroom clouds billowing near house mock-ups to test the affects of the bombs, spliced in with aged photos of deformed human specimens.

The audience eventually meets a family traveling through on their way to San Diego. It’s a nice family: father, mother, two daughters, one son, a son-in-law, and granddaughter, and two annoying German shepherds named Beauty and Beast. Despite a couple hitches, such as the fact that daughter number two was not permitted to go to Cancun for Spring Break and the unexplained feud between Big Bob and Doug, the wimpy, cell-phone salesman son-in-law, the Bukowski’s are shown to be a pretty happy family. They are doomed from the start. The family’s SUV breaks down, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by the mutated desert people.

Hills grabs the audience by making the sacrificial outsiders members of a loving family, unlike the group of annoying strangers that meet up in Wrong Turn. Closer relationships help the audience to identify and sympathize with the characters easier. One of the most engaging scenes is when one of the husbands stumbles upon his dying wife; there is a sincerity in the scene that almost makes up for the bloodbaths to come.

The good scenes in the film are the moments when the audience can put themselves into the characters’ positions. They can ask themselves, “How would I feel if my wife died in my arms?” Later, the unexpectedly heroic son-in-law is locked in a cooler of blood and hacked off body parts. Again, we audience members are given a bizarre scenario to contemplate. It is a little more difficult, however, to imagine ourselves fighting in the gory battle scenes.

There is something disappointing in the fact that films like Hills and Turn are pushing back in place the prejudice mentalities movies like Mask and The Elephant Man worked hard to erase. Audiences are conditioned to equate deformity of face and body with perversion of mind. One does not necessarily lead to the other, but the more inbred and mutated characters Hollywood spews out, the fewer chances actual persons with deformities or mental problems have in being recognized as real people, worthy of respect and care.

There is one redeemable mutant, Ruby, who happens to look and act less disgusting than the others. It is almost possible to imagine her going with the “normal” family and living a regular life. However, that does not happen, she’s still a mutant, and in the boundary rules of the film, she is not acceptable enough to end happily ever after.The Hills Have Eyes is perfect to watch when in a bloodlust mood. By the second half of the movie, the camera lens may as well have been coated with a layer of blood, because that is about all we see during those forty-five minutes. However, it is not imaginative enough to be called a scary movie.

Some of the cinematography of Robert Rodriguez’ film is very much reminiscent of Mexican art films. Although Desperado is a big-budget blockbuster, the style gives away its origin of El Mariachi. The fight scenes are so smooth and flowing, they look like a dance, the way Bandaras’ hair flows behind him; it is very different from the crew cut actions heroes from American like Bruce Willis or Vin Diesel.

The most breathtaking scene was after Bandaras had been stabbed several times by an enemy’s throwing knives. He was bleeding profusely, with make shift tunicates here and there. Around a corner he spies his little boy friend, who wants his help with playing his guitar. Bandaras follows the boy down a building, leaning up against the wall to support himself in his weak state. The little boy walks ahead of him, on the far right of the screen, then Badaras follows a few steps behind, a little of center of the camera. The last half of the screen focuses on the blood trail along the wall at Bandaras’ shoulder height. The scene elicits so many emotions from the viewer: pain, empathy, disgust, but there is also a beautiful quality to the shot, like a graphic novel picture, come to life.

Although the main characters (Steve Buscemi, Antonio Bandaras) are seemingly good hearted, and enjoyable to watch, the rest of the characters in the film are flat. Even Salma Hayek’s character, towards the end, becomes less interesting to watch. She is no longer Bandaras’ anchor to the real world, she becomes like him, wanting Bucho dead, despite consequences. Bandaras does an excellent job of showing the duplicity of his character, how he is, inside, a good, kind, person. He shows that with his interactions with the little boy. However, he has been forced to turn to murder, and the pain of it shows on his face. Meanwhile, the villains, like Bucho or the assassin, played by Danny Trejo, show no regret for what they do. They are flat bad guys, with a few funny scenes. Trejo is meant to be this daunting figure, and starts out as such, cleaning out beneath his fingernails with his cross-shaped throwing knife. However, despite his ferocity, he is taken down by Bucho’s men without too much of a fight. His character has a teeny-tiny fight scene, compared to the amount of destruction Bandaras reigns down.

This being a film school, many students know of or have seen the 1936 “documentary” Reefer Madness, the propagandist film which attempts to warn children and their parents about the “new drug menace,” reefer (aka marijuana, Mary Jane, cannabis). The basic storyline from the original film (including direct quotes) was resurrected, parodied, and exaggerated into a satirical musical which was staged off Broadway. Then, with some of the actors from the stage, the play was written into a film script and debuted at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival as Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical.

Nowadays, with reefer being arguably less dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol, the exploded alarm over marijuana translates well into satirical comedy. Even viewers, like me, who know nothing about weed, still get a kick over the violent, sexual, and over-exaggerated affects the joints have over those in the movie that smoke them. Dope instantly turns women into sexual maniacs and men into cannibals.

If the satire isn’t funny enough, there are some clever, catchy musical numbers throughout the film, peopled with zombies, saints and hula girls, with cameos by Jesus, Satan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Shakespeare, and Neve Campbell. All the actors provide their own dancing and vocals, which make for impressive dance numbers.

Alan Cumming stars as the prophetic government agent who goes town to town informing ignorant parents about the marijuana menace. Just because they don’t know about it, or have heard differing views, does not mean their children are not in horrifying danger. Amidst the ridiculousness of the tale, the film makes some excellent comments on present-day politics and society. Cumming also turns up in a few of the other scenes and musical numbers, in the role of the narrator.

The film is surprisingly silly, with random lines such as “softer than a pillow stuffed with bunnies.” Its packed full of groan-inducing catch phrases popular in the 1930’s, such as “shake a wicked calf,” “skirt,” “hip cat,” “doll face,” and “take it on the heel.” The actors have hilarious delivery, especially Kristin Bell, one of the original actors from the stage production, who plays the teenage heroine Mary Lane. Bell shifts between sweet, innocent, ditzy, high school sweetie, with tight blonde ringlets that wiggle every time she speaks, and a more modern idiom where her voice lowers and she speaks quicker, with less sweetness.

Mary and her soon-to-be steady, dimpled, well-rounded boyfriend Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell, another original actor from the play) star as star-crossed lovers who are seduced by the local reefer peddlers (Steven Weber and Ana Gasteyer).Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical will be presented by the Purchase Film Society on February 12, at 9 p.m., in the Student Center. Tell your friends!

Tell Your Classmates!

Recently I was told about this school, SUNY: Purchase College, a self-proclaimed “liberal arts” school, which, in my opinion infers a thinly disguised socialist, anti-patriotic institution, doing its best to corrupt the minds of eager, impressionable youths. With its lax morals and radical ideals, this state school has made itself open to the perils of alcohol and drug abuse. Normally, I would not openly challenge anything governmentally endorsed, but with the nation in such a precarious position, it is up to every citizen to point out when he or she witnesses loose principles.

It is because of this “liberality” that I find it imperative to encourage the students of this college to attend the screening of the recent Showtime film Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical, a remake of the classic 1936, fictionalized portrayal of the dangers of marijuana use, which rivals that of heroine, cocaine, and fornication. This film seeks to enlighten its viewers about the dangers the cannabis drug holds for adolescents and adults alike, with exciting musical numbers to add emphasis where needed.

Alan Cumming, a talented, versatile actor, with undoubtedly high morals, portrays a prophetic figure that provides important information about marijuana to alert parents, in much the same way that the Purchase Film Society members are good enough to inform their fellow students. Cumming’s character presents the true story of the degradation of star-crossed lovers who fall into the hands of shady dope peddlers. Kristin Bell, Christian Campbell, Ana Gasteyer, and Steven Weber also star in this informative docu-drama.

The film does an admirably job of adding humor to the story, which the original sadly lacked, in an effort to attract a younger demographic. Some of the lines are purposefully passé, such as “shake a wicked calf,” “hip cat,” “doll face,” and “take it on the heel.” Despite these dated colloquialisms, the message is still the same as it was in1936: Marijuana kills!

It is because of this imperative message that we can look past some of the more controversial material in the film. There is some allusion to murder, incest, premarital French-kissing, as well as depictions of Satan sodomizing a young girl and Jesus Christ performing a lounge act, but, it is all for the cause.

Some people have said that this film is actually satirizing the original film, going to the extreme right in order to portray the 1930’s mentality as behind the times and confused, as well as misguided and ignorant. They say that marijuana is actually safer than, say, alcohol or, even, cigarettes, which cause cancer nowadays. However, I believe that it was the scheme of the filmmakers to con lefties into thinking the film is on their side, so they will go see it, and not snub it in their close-mindedness.Reefer Madness: the Movie Musical will be shown February 12, at 9 p.m., in the Student Center. Be sure you and your friends are in attendance; your eternal soul may depend on this knowledge.

The formula for a rock and roll biopic is pretty familiar by now, especially from early on, in the 50’s. A good ole’ boy from humble beginnings feels the pull of scandalous music, much to the chagrin of his family. When he’s all grown up, he sets his mind to becoming a star, and whether after hardship or terrific ease, manages. Then comes the hard life of touring: drugs, alcohol, and women. These forefathers of rock did, in fact, have similar back stories. However, you see one plastered, drugged up, philandering musician, you’ve seen them all. The rock and roll biopic has entered cliché. It is up to the filmmakers to approach such a film with novelty in order to make the tired story interesting to jaded audiences. With the help of some good character development, an excellent cast, and a toe-tapping soundtrack, Walk the Line manages to break the biopic mold enough to stand out.

It is obvious, even to an ignorant viewer like myself, that the story of Johnny Cash’s life writer and director James Mangold presents is a neatly compressed, romantic interpretation of a very conflicted, very complicated artist. Mangold presents everything with a slant, asserting that every decision Cash makes spurs from how he is treated by the woman he loves: a debatable conclusion.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny Cash, and Reese Witherspoon plays his second wife, June Carter. The stars were actually handpicked by Cash and Carter before the couple died five months apart from one another. Throughout the film, Cash pursues Carter, despite still being married to his first wife. The very beginning of the film flashes back to Cash’s childhood when he was known as J.R. The country boy, infatuated with music, quizzes his brother about which member of the famous Carter family is singing on the radio, and it happens to be June. Later, as a young man in the army, Cash moons over a magazine with Carter, the Opry’s loveable daughter, on the cover. In the meantime, he is writing the song that will eventually catapult him into fame. Mangold never blatantly says “June is the reason Johnny breathes,” but he leaves little for the audience to guess at. In the film, when Carter and Cash finally become close friends, and she rejects the possibility of anything closer, Cash instantly turns to booze, black pills, and fan girls. The premise that Carter is the cause of Cash’s self-destruction takes away from the drama of his actual shame, although Phoenix does a good job of representing the star’s decline.

The character development, particularly of Cash, is done extremely well. In the beginning, Mangold and Phoenix pull us into Cash’s life, making us viewers as uncomfortable in his mundane routine as Cash is, especially with his talent smoldering in the background. With the help of Cash’s back story and the charisma Phoenix evokes as the legendary star, we feel for him and like him. Thus, while some films either apologize for their stars’ ruin or glorify the path they choose, Walk the Line portrays the circumstances in a way that makes us want to shake some sense into Cash, knock him around a little. We know more than the characters do; we know that the only place drugs and alcohol lead is to tragedy. Furthermore, we grow to like this movie version of Cash, and we do not want him to meet a tragic end. I like that the film does not support Cash’s decisions. It makes for a trustworthy film when the filmmakers like the characters as much as the audience does.

I also like that, even during Cash’s difficult time, the movie maintains its humor. For me, it is reminiscent of my grandfather and his siblings, how they have funny stories that take place in times when things weren’t going so well. It is from that solid Christian, mid-western sensibility that you have to take the bad along with the good. At one point in the film, Carter stumbles upon the battered Cash in a store, with shades on, musing over two children’s books, wondering which to get his daughter. He is seen from Carter’s point of view, and we can’t help but chuckle at the intense look of concentration on his face as his inspects the book of paper dolls.

The other aspect that makes Walk the Line so commendable was the musical performances. What sets this biopic apart from the pile of clichés is that while this is a movie about Johnny Cash and the stars of his era, it is almost primarily an extended performance video. The actors sing for themselves and even play their own instruments. Phoenix managed to match Cash’s voice in a way that may have made the late-star uneasy, considering the gravely, resonating tone was his trademark. Witherspoon doesn’t sound similar to Carter, but she learned to play the autoharp for the role. Shooter Jennings assumed the role of his father, Waylon, and mournfully croons “I’m a Long Way from Home” in a timbre that brings tears to my eyes, especially since I’m 2,500 miles away from my own town in Idaho. The soundtrack provides a nice background for the film. “Ring of Fire” is used in a montage of scenes depicting the frenzy of touring. In staged musical numbers, the camera and lights are basically filmed concerts, only the singers are pretending to be other people.

I did not come out of this movie with a love of Johnny Cash or June Carter, exactly, although I had an appreciation for their lives, of which I know I’d only had a sampling. I saw this film as an example of actors being used to their fullest potential. This movie, to me, simply showcased the talents of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Tyler Hilton (Elvis Presley), Shooter Jennings, and Waylon Payne (Jerry Lee Lewis) were not huge elements of the film, but they will probably get a lot of notice because of their participation.

Hitchcock not only connotes the figure of a portly, balding English gentleman that often pops up at odd times in movies, but also evokes particular images, sounds, colors, and especially feelings that we associate especially with him. My mother and father often chide us kids for our pooh-pooh attitudes about The Birds. “That was scary stuff when we were kids,” they tell us. For some reason, I just can’t muster too great a fear for seagulls. I do, however, have an innate suspicion of nuns because of Vertigo. The romances in Notorious or Rebecca are cool enough to keep from getting sappy. The humor of Cary Grant getting forcibly sloshed in North by Northwest, or eluding French police in To Catch a Thief, crackles with dry wit.

Hitchcock’s final movie, Family Plot (1976) continues with Hitchcock’s usual MO, but there is something different in it. Hitchcock’s later films seem to be sillier than his earlier work. The number of times Harry’s body in The Trouble with Harry gets buried and exhumed in only one day is an example of the absurd situations in which the characters entrap themselves. However, at least with Trouble the romantic leads were similar to Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in their cool repartee. However, what makes Family Plot so loveable is that Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern are anything but cool and collected.

In one memorable scene, the bad guy tampers with Blanche’s (Harris) car as George (Dern) is driving. The accelerator becomes stuck and the brakes won’t work. They don’t discover the problem until they’re barreling down a busy mountain road. As Blanche criticizes his driving, George does his best to dodge vehicles, steep drop-offs, and (not least) his girlfriend’s flailing limbs. In a frenzy, Blanche even grabs a hold of George’s tie as she twists madly in her seat. It is the funniest scene I’ve ever seen in a Hitchcock film. It is as if he simply said to Harris, “Act scared,” and to Dern, “Keep driving.”

In Family Plot, Blanche is a phony psychic who teams up with her con-man boyfriend to find the long-lost heir for Blanche’s millionaire patroness. The story gets crazier the closer the pair comes to finding the prodigal nephew, considering he’s a villainous jewel thief.

As intriguing as the plot is, the relationship between Blanche and George is even more entertaining. They often talk about sex–either in suggestive euphemisms or by yelling at one another–because Blanche wants some and George is too tired. They are adorably banal.

George’s crazy red hair, sticking straight up, and his voice, vaguely reminiscent of Fozzy Bear, contrasts him with the smooth Cary Grant of To Catch a Thief, clever con-man detective though he may be. Blanche is endearing, and often acts more like a little girl than a grown woman.

Overall, the jewel thief villain and his gorgeous girlfriend side-kick are more akin to Hitchcock’s usual romantic leads, but that’s what makes the movie so wonderful. Blanche and George are milestone characters that exemplify Hitchcock’s switch from classical Hollywood, with its illusions of perfection, grace, and sophistication, to the more modern approach to cinema, with clumsy down-to-earth leads. Blanche and George are no longer characters the audience idolize and admire, but they are the type of folk viewers can identify with.