TIME magazine features the piece “10 Questions” with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro from the new September 5 issue which is online today and which will be on newsstands tomorrow. Here is an excerpt from the interview with questions and responses of interest to the focus of TheoFantastique:
You have an interesting living situation, with a house, separate from your family, for just your books, your posters, your art and your work.
As a kid, I dreamed of having a house with secret passages and a room where it rained 24 hours a day. The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you’ve been harboring since you were 7.
What did your wife have to say about that?
She was happy. When you’re 7, your mother throws away your comic books. When you’re 40, you should be able to prevent that.
How do you deal with people who think of the fantastic as infantile?
I try to avoid long conversations with them. You cannot convince a Buddhist to become a Protestant any more than you can convince a person who embraces realism as the highest form of art that fantasy is an equally important manifestation. It’s impossible.
You speak as if your art is your religion.
It is. To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I’m telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously.
Matinee (1993) by Joe Dante, is a marvelous yet neglected comedy film tribute to 1950s science fiction/horror. It brings together a number of elements, from 1950s science fiction to the showmanship of William Castle to the cultural tensions and fears of doomsday associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis. A facet of Matinee is the film Mant! that plays in the theater during the course of the movie. That great film within a film is copied below for all those that love 1950s science fiction. For those interested in adding Matinee to their collection, it can be purchased on DVD. Spine Tingler!: The William Castle Story, is also highly recommended.
There are stimulus plans, and then there are stimulus plans. In one of the strangest intersections between the fantastic in popular culture and politics, an economist is drawing upon the idea of alien invasion to get us out of the recession. As an opinion piece in The Week writes:
There’s no shortage of ideas on how to help the faltering economy, but Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has come up with what has to be the oddest suggestion yet: Fake a looming invasion from outer space. In an interview with CNN, Krugman cited “a Twilight Zone episode in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time… we’d need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.”
In the analysis of the idea that continues it notes a major flaw in the idea:
The trouble is, that theory has been “debunked by economists on both the right and the left.” It wasn’t war-time spending that sparked the postwar boom — it was the return to normalcy after years of privation and rationing, and the role our unscathed industries played in rebuilding the ruins overseas.
Beyond this financial critique I’d like to add another for what it’s worth. When I first heard the source cited for this idea, an episode of The Twilight Zone, I scratched my head trying to remember which episode the economist might have in mind. It turns out it was not The Twilight Zone, but rather the source may be found another very good science fiction program from the same time period, The Outer Limits, in an episode titled “The Architects of Fear.” This episode can be watched in entirety at Hulu.
It is curious that in order to pull us out of our economic malaise that we are now reduced to drawing upon science fiction. But does the Obama Administration really want to be associated with The Architects of Fear?
CALL FOR PAPERS
“MYTHOS: Screening Classical Mythology on Film and Television”
An area of multiple panels for the Film & History Conference on “Film and Myth”
September 26-30, 2012
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
www.filmandhistory.org
Deadline: June 1, 2012
From the earliest beginning of cinema, and throughout the history of screen entertainment, filmmakers and television producers have returned to the narratives and images of classical mythology for subject matter and motivation. Numerous films and television series have been based on ancient Greek and Roman mythological and heroic archetypes (The Matrix; The Lion King), while others take classical literary plots and motifs from the great epics and tragedies and adapt them to the screen (A Dream of Passion; O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Some films and television series even set themselves in an imagined “ancient mythological world” full of gods, heroes, monsters and femmes fatales (Xena: Warrior Princess; Hercules: The Legendary Journeys). Why do the classical mythological narratives and images remain such a powerful source of ideas and inspiration for modern filmmakers and television producers?
This area, comprising multiple panels, will treat all aspects of classical mythology in films and television programs. Papers may explore recreations of ancient myths in “real time” (Clash of the Titans; Xena; Hercules) or adaptations of classical myths and narratives in modern settings (Moulin Rouge; Unforgiven). Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
The Hero’s Journey
Features and Creatures of the Underworld
The Katabasis Myth of Descent and Return
Greek Tragic Myths on Screen
The Odyssey and the Nostos-Myth on Film
Pandora and the Myth of the Manufactured Woman
Homer’s Iliad and the American Western
Myths of Transformation and Metamorphoses
Amazons on Screen
The Dionysian Nature of the Cinema
The Orpheus Myth
Olympian Gods in Modern Settings
Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter.
Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by June 1, 2012:
Monica S. Cyrino, Area Chair, 2012 Film & History Conference
“MYTHOS: Screening Classical Mythology on Film and Television”
University of New Mexico
Email: pandora@unm.edu
Over the weekend I took the advice of 20th Century Fox years ago when it encouraged audiences to “Go ape!” and I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes. My expectations for cinematic failure were thankfully never realized, and instead, the film is very well done, and a welcome addition to the Apes franchise and mythological canon.
I wrote a review of the film for Cinefantastique Online titled “Rise of the Planet of the Apes: A Welcome Addition to the Apes Mythological Canon,” which can be found at this link. Here is an excerpt.
The bar was set high in 1968. The original Planet of the Apes combined a number of elements to make science fiction history. These included good source material in Pierre Boulle’s novel, a solid screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, A-list actors including Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall, John Chamber’s groundbreaking makeup effects, Jerry Goldsmith’s daring score, and Franklin Schaffner’s direction. In addition, the story interacted with cultural and social anxieties and issues of the late 1960s, including the potential for nuclear annihilation, racism, as well as evolution and religious fundamentalism. Rise of the Planet of the Apes has continued in this vein, not only providing amazingly realistic apes through its motion-capture CGI, but by combining the special effects necessary to convey the story realistically with contemporary cultural issues, including biomedical ethics and non-human animal rights. In this way the film provides something for those looking for little more than a summer thrill through science fiction cinema, as well as for those interested in speculative fiction as a foil for social reflection and commentary.
Although they were once considered a medium suitable only for children’s literature, comic books have increasingly become a vehicle for serious social commentary and, specifically, for innovative religious thought. Practitioners of both traditional religions and new religious movements have begun to employ comics as a missionary tool, while humanists and religious progressives use comics’ unique fusion of text and increasing fervor with which the public has come to view comics as an art form and Americans’ fraught but passionate relationship with religion. Graven Images provides an opportunity for discussion of cutting-edge artistic and social issues by exploring the roles of religion in comic books and graphic novels.
In essays by scholars and comics creators, Graven Images observes the frequency with which religious material — in devout, educational, satirical, or critical contexts — occurs in both independent and mainstream comics. Contributors identify the unique advantages of the comics medium for religious messages; analyze how comics communicate such messages; place the religious messages contained in comic books in appropriate cultural, social, and historical frameworks; and articulate the significance of the innovative theologies being developed in comics.
TheoFantastique Podcast 2.4 features an interview with A. David Lewis, a national lecturer in comics studies, an award-winning graphic novelist, and a PhD candidate in Religion and Literature at Boston University. In this interview we discuss comics and the academy, and specifics related to Graven Images, including Superman and Christ-figures, evangelicalism and the comic medium, and Western esotericism in comics and popular culture. TheoFantastique Podcast 2.4 can be listened to here, and at iTunes. Graven Images can be ordered through the TheoFantastique Store.
TIME magazine features the piece “10 Questions” with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro from the new September 5 issue which is online today and which will be on newsstands tomorrow. Here is an excerpt from the interview with questions and responses of interest to the focus of TheoFantastique:
