THE THINGS

I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.

I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.

The names don't matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.

I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wearing Blair.  MacReady has told me to burn Blair if he comes back alone, but MacReady still thinks I am one of him. I am not: I am being Blair, and I am at the door. I am being Childs, and I let myself in. I take brief communion, tendrils writhing forth from my faces, intertwining: I am BlairChilds, exchanging news of the world.

The world has found me out. It has discovered my burrow beneath the tool shed, the half-finished lifeboat cannibalized from the viscera of dead helicopters. The world is busy destroying my means of escape. Then it will come back for me.

There is only one option left. I disintegrate. Being Blair, I go to share the plan with Copper and to feed on the rotting biomass once called Clarke; so many changes in so short a time have dangerously depleted my reserves. Being Childs, I have already consumed what was left of Fuchs and am replenished for the next phase.  I sling the flamethrower onto my back and head outside, into the long Antarctic night.

I will go into the storm, and never come back.

 

Read the rest.

SEPTEMBER IS CARPTEMBER

In honor of the quickly coming Halloween season (yay!), it seems fitting to dedicate an entire month to the man who wrote and directed the ultimate October homage: 1978's Halloween.

Every day of September will serve up a slice of that wonderful Carpenter flavor, leading us into another celebration: the Halloween season (my fave). Check back here tomorrow and every day after to get your Carpenter fix. The plan is to cover some of Carpenter's less discussed films in hopes of mixing things up a bit. (I won't be writing in detail about Halloween or The Thing. I'm not sure I could ever possibly add anything else to what's already been written about them.)

In the meantime, feel free to hang out here and ogle that young, virile stud in his prime! (He's 71 now, btw.)

SECRETS OF CELLE NEUES RATHAUS

This one honestly gave me the creeps.

SKEL

REMEMBERING 'HANNIBAL' (2013-2015)

It feels dirty to use the word "reboot" when talking about NBC's short-lived but very beloved series Hannibal, but technically, that's exactly what it is. Iconic characters were plucked from Thomas Harris' celebrated novel series and reimagined, regendered, and reintroduced for newer audiences. But unlike Batman, Superman, or James Bond, the act of ever daring to think you could fill the shoes left behind by Anthony Hopkins, whose three separate performances as Dr. Hannibal Lecter earned one Academy Award and hundreds of millions at the box office, bordered on blasphemy. Props to Brian Cox for originating the on-screen version of the character in Michael Mann's underrated thriller Manhunter, but with that out of the way, Hopkins' iteration was always going to go down in history as the definitive take on the character. And that's because the character of Hannibal Lecter doesn't lend itself to semi-annual change-ups like the array of comic book heroes or international super-spies that by now have established the understanding that, yeah, every five to ten years, a new face is going to step up to play them. So when the Hannibal series was announced, everyone was very taken aback by the news, and rightfully so. You mean to say the same network that aired The Voice and America's Got Talent and, ugh, Grimm, had the gall to think they could not only do the Lecter series justice, but could sidestep TV standards and practices and include the grisly gore for which the novels and subsequent adaptations became known? It was one of those ideas that looked and sounded like a disaster, and it easily could have been, but Hannibal not only overcame everything stacked against it, and not only did it somehow out-gore HBO, it's likely to go down as one of the most beloved television series of all time, even if the audience wasn't there for it.

And it went off the air exactly four years ago today.

All the credit in the world goes to show-runner Bryan Fuller, who did the smartest thing anyone could have possibly done in his situation: kept the bare essentials of the series, maintained the most iconic and necessary aspects, and jettisoned the rest – enough to provide familiarity and keep the readers and film fans happy, but enough to create the distance needed so it didn't feel like holy ground was being desecrated. The casting also certainly didn't hurt, as it was impeccable nearly across the board (except for Scott Thompson, who, though lovable, was definitely miscast). Is it too early to predict that Mads Mikkelsen's take on Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter has become the new definitive version? Probably, although you'd likely have a legion of Twitter fans ready to preach that gospel. One thing is for certain, Fuller's Hannibal is the first visual medium to accurately portray the very damaged soul that is Will Graham, in keeping with his depiction in the first novel, Red Dragon. Though this was touched on with Manhunter, William Petersen's take was more distant and cold rather than haunted and broken. And gosh knows what Ed Norton was trying to do with Red Dragon besides cash a check to fund 25th Hour, but except for a moist brow and pit stains, his Will Graham seemed pretty all right. But this version of Will Graham is utterly damaged, and that's evident from his very first on-screen appearance during which he's walking through blood impossibly frozen in mid-air in the same way stars look plotted into the night sky – and this as he babbles to himself in the first person...as the serial killer responsible for the carnage.

Once you wipe away the serial killers, the violent art, the cheeky and recognizable mannerisms of Hannibal Lecter, and the touchstones of a post-CSI television landscape, what's revealed is what Hannibal was actually about the entire time – that two men from very opposite sides of the spectrum could develop mutual love for each other, and through their opposite natures struggle with this love and what it means. And this isn't to write off Hannibal as some underlying gay drama about two men in the closet, because that would just cheapen what Fuller intended. The love on display between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter can be anything you want it to be – friendship, romance, brotherhood, or other. The kind of love doesn't matter – it's window dressing – but just that it's there, and that it's challenging both of their respective natures, is what's made the show so compelling.

Hannibal was a critical favorite from its first episode, and what little audience tuned in did so with devotion. But, as some folks know and some don't, it doesn't matter how devoted the audience is, how beloved the characters are, and how much praise the show receives from critics. If no one's watching the show, then no one's watching the ads, and if no one's watching the ads, then companies aren't going to buy the ad time, and without that revenue, there is no show. That's the long and short of it, and it sucks, but that's business. So call it really misguided that NBC treated Hannibal like a ping pong ball, changing its air day three separate times, two of which occurred during the struggling final season, which saw it transition from a straightforward procedural/serial killer program to a European-set, esoteric, dreamlike quasi stage play filled with characters musings about their identities and natures and all kinds of heavy ideas that aren't going to grab newer audiences. (Not even scenes of kaleidoscopic lesbianism lured in the newbs.)

The third (and final?) season of Hannibal is disappointing only in the sense that, had it all gone according to plan, it would have instead served as the exact middle of the series' overall run. Seasons four through six were set to adapt all the other books, including the maligned Hannibal Rising, and conclude with a season of entirely original material, keeping both avid readers of the novels and viewers of the show entirely in the dark about how that would all end.

That didn't happen.

Instead we received a smidgen of Hannibal Rising married to a fleshed-out version of Hannibal and the third act of Red Dragon.  Though it was never part of the plan, Fuller and his show-runners did an excellent job of closing out all the lingering story lines, minus the somewhat abruptness of season three transitioning yet again halfway through – but only to include what was meant to come much later. Yes, it was certainly disappointing that the series never matured to the degree of reaching the story arc of The Silence of the Lambs – the most famous novel and adaptation of them all – but what's even more disappointing is never getting to experience how Fuller's version of that arc would have looked, or potentially seeing Will Graham and Clarice Starling on screen together. (Gasp! My nerd heart!)

Hannibal also liked to have its fun, and not just within Thomas Harris' Lecterverse. A fair number of homages and nods to other famous horror properties were sprinkled throughout. Some of these were very under-the-surface, including a brief moment during season three while Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) is shopping in a store filled with fine looking dinner table decor where a slight riff on selections from Goblin's score for George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead can be heard on the soundtrack. (Amusingly, Romero himself enjoyed a brief cameo in The Silence of the Lambs, along with famed producer Roger Corman, who gave Jonathan Demme his start in directing.) And then, of course, there's the cameo from the bathroom featured in The Shining:

Bryan Fuller has openly stated (lovingly) that he wanted Hannibal to maintain the certain level of pretension that was evident in the writing of Thomas Harris' series. Not only is that approach present in the philosophical and at-times poetic dialogue, but in the flawless production design and visual presentation – lots of slow motion, lots of reverse engineering, but never in a way that feels exploitative. The visual tricks serve the show's aesthetic and the minds of its characters. Even if the plot or characters of Hannibal do nothing for you, there's no denying it's a gorgeous show to look at. Colors are vivid, though they often depend on shades of gray. Shadows drape across nearly everything; even scenes set in the height of daylight maintain a certain darkness. Detail is as fine as Dr. Lecter's smashing wardrobe.

Sometimes it's the less showy audio presentation that makes for the most immersive experience – this is the show's design. Hannibal is a very intimately presented show, showing restraint and preferring the sound of moving air over garish and cheap Foley effects. The unorthodox and unusual musical score by composer Brian Reitzell (30 Days of Night), filled with clangs, bashes, and non-melodic ominous tones created a sound that would somehow define a show that was, itself, without definition. Working well in tandem with the show's quiet design, Reitzell's musical design – relying often on the pounding of drums with loosened drum heads and slamming metal – would shatter the perceived solitude induced by the art-like images to unnerve the audience with little effort.

To reiterate, NBC kept Hannibal going for as long as they could while remaining fiscally solvent. Unfortunately the viewership wasn't there to justify keeping the show on the air. In this age of Hulu and Amazon/Netflix Originals, everyone held out hope that the series would be picked up by another distributor. For a while, Fuller et al. were hopeful – and media websites were goodheartedly but irresponsibly muddying the waters by predicting the series would "likely" be picked up – but so far, there have been no firm developments in this regard. Maybe we can look at Lionsgate calling its home video release simply "Season Three" rather than "The Final Season," which has become the home video tradition for television swan songs, as a sign of hope that we haven't seen the end of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal.

Does season three mark the end of Hannibal, or is there life in this new universe yet? Fuller et al. are optimistic about completing the arc in movie form, which is a nice idea but seems unlikely. How does one adapt a series that was cancelled due to low viewership into one or several films if funding has proven to be an issue? If anything, Fuller has established he's full of surprises, so never say never. The final moments of season three work well as both a season finale and a series finale, so should this, indeed, be the end of the strangest courting ever made, let it not be said that Hannibal didn't go out in style. 

HANNIBAL TELLS BAD JOKES

I'd forgotten all about this tumblr. This is one of my favorite things.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

At this rate, Hannibal Lecter has achieved pop culture status, and when a horror figure reaches those heights, that’s pretty big. By now, he’s the James Bond of horror, having been played three times in three very different takes on the character, but all of them appropriate for the mood of the film — or television series — utilizing him. (I’m not commenting on anything having to do with Hannibal Rising, the very film about which you’ve forgotten. In my mind, it doesn’t even exist.)

The Silence of the Lambs is looked upon as the definitive adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel series while also introducing the definitive depiction of Hannibal Lecter, as essayed by Anthony Hopkins. Both are correct. Though my love and respect for Manhunterhas increased over the years, and though I’m sort of in love with Mads Mikkelsen’s version of Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs’ legacy is the most deserved. And there are many reasons to proclaim its superiority over the remaining explorations, due in no small part to its willingness to embrace the dark subject matter of the source novel (something Manhunter shied away from), its across-the-board tremendous performances, and its immortal design. I say immortal because The Silence of the Lambs looks like it could have been shot yesterday, rather than thirty years ago. Where Ridley Scott's Hannibal moved the titular character front and center into a sillier and more visceral experience — a reflection of the source novel — and 2003’s Red Dragon seemed like a move more obligatory than artistic (and a bit too familiar), The Silence of the Lambs was a filmic pioneer in that it plunged into the world of real, actual crime investigations with an emphasis on forensics and postmortem techniques. The source novel for Manhunter, Red Dragon, had its fair share of this as well, but Michael Mann shed much of it from his screenplay, choosing to focus more on the psychological implications suffered by Will Graham (William Peterson) from his uncanny ability to deeply engage with the mind of the serial killer he was hunting. The Silence of the Lambs, both novel and film, resurrects this emphasis on federal investigation, almost feeling like a do-over of the previous novel and film. It is, after all, about someone working on behalf of the FBI to interview a known serial killer in hopes of catching another serial killer. Because of this, it feels more scientific, and hence, more intellectual. And the relationship between FBI Agent Trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and the cannibal, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), offers a very different vibe. If ever there were a film about serial killers and cannibals and mutilation and psychosexual perversions that could also, just faintly, just minutely, be sexy, it’s The Silence of the Lambs.

Speaking of sexy, by design, The Silence of the Lambs isn’t attractive. It’s dour, dark, and bleak — not a single sequence shows the sun, nor takes place in any kind of bright and welcoming environment. And once the film is approaching the final act, dealing with Buffalo Bill’s dungeon and house of horrors, the amount of scum and ugliness is at its fever pitch. Color is almost nonexistent. Everything is brown and gray and beige and neutral, although Demme finds ways to play around with colors to a purposely nauseating effect, most notably in the pre-interview sequence where Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald) is walking Starling to Lecter’s cell and showing her photos of the nurse Lecter had viciously attacked, all of which is bathed in a sickening red hospital light.

Hopkins and Foster walked away with best actor and best actress statuettes at that year’s Academy Awards, and I’m over the moon that a genre picture was recognized by the typically anti-genre organization in any capacity, but having said that, Ted Levine gives the film’s best performance, period, and that he didn’t come home with his own statue is a shame (although he would have been in direct competition with Hopkins, which would been interesting). Levine’s contributions to The Silence of the Lambs’ enduring legacy is often swept aside in favor of Hopkin’s flamboyant and lovably sadistic Hannibal Lecter, but it’s Levine’s bravery and unhinged performance as Buffalo Bill that gives the film its real sense of danger. Your monster movie (and this is a monster movie) is only as scary as its monster, and in this regard, The Silence of the Lambs is brutally scary. “I ate his liver with some fava beans” might be a popular quote, but, “It puts the lotion in the basket” is the line that’s far more quoted (for some reason).

It’s been two years since director Jonathan Demme passed away, but it still feels like such a recent loss for the horror genre and the filmmaking world at large. (We’ve lost way too many horror directors over the last 5 years – I’m personally still reeling over the losses of Wes Craven and George Romero.) It’s been especially sad seeing Demme appear in the supplements included on the Criterion Collection release where he looks young and healthy, knowing that the director of one of the most respected genre pictures of all time is gone. 

Both this and Night of the Living Dead are two of the most mainstream releases that Criterion have released in a while, and it’s kind of fitting that both were released at the same time — as if in a way to honor both directors who are no longer with us, and who will both be sorely, sorely missed.