Blog Portfolio or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

When I first started the MA in Modernities back in September, we were told that we would be required to maintain a blog as part of our EN6009 module. We had to to contribute about 800 words a month, and use this blog to develop our own research interests and academic voice. I. Was. Petrified. I didn’t know the first thing about blogging. At first, it was a real challenge for me to establish the right tone for my blog – I wanted a voice that was both casual and intellectual. Once I started the blog, however, I found it to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of my MA. Over the course of the six months, I have published ten blogs, ranging from postmodernism in film to aspects of adaptation.

The very first words I put on my blog consisted of an About section. This was basic and just a way of introducing myself and my interests as well as familiarising myself with WordPress:

My name is Zoe McCormack and I’m a 22 year old from Waterford. I received my BA Double Honours in English and History from Maynooth University in 2015. I am currently continuing my studies with the MA in Modernities: American and British Literature and Film in UCC. I would describe myself as a film fanatic and literature lover. My own academic interests are extremely eclectic and include Gothic literature, twentieth century theatre, and postmodernism in American cinema. With this blog, I hope to explore my own intellectual interests and showcase my research journey as the academic year progresses.

While I’m still crazy about film and literature, I feel that, as my blog developed, so too did my interest in film. When I initially started the MA, I was sure that I would be dividing my time between literature and film. However, as the year progressed, it became clear that my true interest lies in film, and the research blog definitely helped me explore that interest.

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[Credit: Dimension Films]

Aside from the ‘About’ post, my blog on Postmodernism in the Scream Franchise was my first ‘real’ post. I think that my blog has definitely improved since then, but it actually remains my favourite post to date, perhaps because I love the Scream Franchise so much. Postmodernism is my favourite theoretical area, and I’m very interested in postmodernism in film. I had also been watching Scream in the run up to Halloween, so thought it would be perfect to combine the two areas for my post. I began the blog post by contextualising the Scream movies and then moved into discussing the self-reflexivity of the franchise, alongside Scream‘s subversion of genre tropes:

It is important to point out that these films not only mimic the slasher genre, they also subvert it. This is most evident in the concept of the ‘final girl’, a stereotypically virginal tomboy who, it appears, uses her chastity to outwit a killer – think Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. We are presented with something entirely different in Scream. Instead of the formulaic virgin, we get two complex, relatable ‘final girls’ in the form of Sidney and Gale. Indeed, Sidney is actually allowed to survive ‘post-coital death’ at the end of the first film, defeating her psychotic boyfriend (Wee 55). Gale, the amoral news broadcaster, is a far cry from the bright young ingénue that typically evades death in the slasher movie. Both of these characters possess an actual voice in these movies, as opposed to the objectified female victim that is so prevalent in other movies of the genre.

In retrospect, my first blog is maybe too basic in terms of presentation. While I do have some pictures and video clips, I did not use any hyperlinks, and my pictures are not as clear as they could have been. I was also still trying to find a suitable tone for blogging. My Scream post is too verbose, and has something of an academic vibe. However, this post did set the precedent for my blog as a whole, with the majority of my posts revolving around film, TV, and postmodernism.

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[Credit: Wikipedia]

As part of our EN6009 assessment, we were required to blog about at least two research seminars. On the 13th of November, I posted my second post on M. W. Booth’s seminar Inuit Women in Early Modern London: Caubvik Sees Cymbeline at Covent Garden. This seminar focused on the viewing of Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline in Covent Garden in 1772 by a group of Native Canadians. As this is one of Shakespeare’s lesser known works, you can look at the trailer for Cymbeline below:

This was the first research seminar I had written about, and I was mindful about getting the tone right. I wanted to make the content of Booth’s talk clear for anyone reading my blog who had not attended the seminar. In order to do that, I divided my post into the three sections that were covered at the seminar: the play Cymbeline itself, the concept of cognitive theory, and the viewing of Cymbeline by Caubvik, a Native Canadian woman:

As she possessed little to no English, Caubvick would have to visually interpret events on stage in order to understand the plot. Booth gives an example of this – at the beginning of the play, there is an instance of gift exchange between Imogen and Posthumus. Booth argues that this would resonate with Inuit audience members, who were often painted or photographed wearing jewellery. Indeed, Booth goes a step further by arguing that an Inuit woman such as Caubvick had a better understanding of the play than the famous critic Samuel Johnson. This is because an indigenous person would have looked past the historical inaccuracies that Johnson loathed in the play, thereby aiding a better understanding of Cymbeline. While I do not fully endorse this view, I do find Booth’s argument of the importance of visual understanding to be a compelling one.

Although I did not know much about Cymbeline or cognitive theory before the seminar, this post did showcase a more critical voice in my blog as I attempted to both summarise and engage with the content of the seminar.

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[Credit: Netflix]

My third blog post, posted exactly a month later on December 13^th, saw a return to my personal research interests of film and TV. I decided to do a post on Stranger Things and Nostalgia. We had been looking at Frederic Jameson’s theories of postmodernism as part of our Theories of Modernity class. I was particularly intrigued by Jameson’s notion of the nostalgia film as using the past to evade the present. As I had watched Stranger Things twice over the summer, I couldn’t help but apply Jameson’s theory to The Duffer Brothers’ hit show, by focusing specifically on how Stranger Things plays tribute to Steven Spielberg’s ET (1982):

Both plots centre on aliens and developing friendships in the face of adversity. In Spielberg’s film, this friendship develops between ET the alien and Elliott. In Stranger Things, it is between Eleven, a young girl with special powers, and Mike. The character of Holly, Mike’s younger sister, complete with blonde pigtails and dungarees, is also aesthetically similar to Elliott’s little sister Gertie, famously played by Drew Barrymore. These subtle similarities go a long way in inviting comparisons between Stranger Things and ET, which helps create the air of nostalgia that permeates the show.

I credit this post with helping me find my blogging voice. While I did include academic citations, my overall tone was much more relaxed. In terms of presentation, I began using collages in this post, which helped provide a visual aid when directly comparing aspects of Stranger Things to ET.

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[Credit: Abbey Theatre]

My first (and only) blog post that deals directly with literature was my January post – The Play’s the Thing: Marina Carr’s Adaptation of Anna Karenina at the Abbey Theatre. I had the opportunity to see Marina Carr’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s famous novel at the Abbey over the Christmas break and I was obsessed! I wanted to use my blog in order to both review the play, and to examine its strength as an adaptation by looking at what was altered for the stage:

The most notable alteration to the novel is the injection of Irish humour into a story set in Tsarist Russia. Although the bizarre mix of Irish colloquialisms and Russian society may seem absurd, the combination is effective in uplifting a tragic morality tale, and did go down very well with the audience. For example, Stiva greets Levin’s housekeeper with the phrase “how are you, me old petal”, a phrase not often heard in a Tolstoy novel, but one that works very well in an Irish context (Carr 67). Carr’s adaptation can also be seen as possessing more feminist undertones than the source material. This is clear as the play includes satirical dinner conversations regarding the “woman question”, an inclusion that definitely resonates with a post-US Election audience, as Prince Sherbatsky asks his wife “Are you fit for power?” (Carr 95).

This post was really enjoyable for me to write: I had not only loved the play, but have been interested in adaptation since my undergraduate studies. Although I had predominantly looked at novel to screen or stage to screen adaptations, it was fascinating to see a stage adaptation of a novel as famous as Anna Karenina. Unfortunately, there were no clips or trailers from the play for me to include in my blog post, but I did include as many pictures as I possibly could. Because most of my posts dealt with visual mediums such as film and theatre, it was very important for me to include visuals in my blog.

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[Credit: Wikipedia]

February was one of my most prolific months as a blogger, with three posts across the month. The first of these was a reflection on our Wikipedia Editathon, which took place on the 8th of February. I titled the post Something Wiki This Way Comes: Wikipedia Editathon 2017. The Wikipedia Editathon was part of our in-class assessment for EN6009. Our task was simple: pick a Wikipedia page of your choice, somehow related to your thesis, and edit it to improve it for other users over the course of our two hour class. We also had to live tweet during the assignment, which I found hugely enjoyable. Initially, the very concept of the assignment confused me: I did not think an MA student was even allowed THINK the word Wikipedia, let alone contribute to it! I decided to update the Wiki page of the 1961 film The Innocents. I am doing my thesis on women in gothic film, and am going to use The Innocents in my research. It is an often overlooked film, so I thought it would be the perfect option to use on the day; I decided to focus on the ‘Reception’ section of the Wikipedia page:

When approaching this section, I wanted to include some film reviews from the time of release, along with more modern reviews in order to indicate the critical reception of the movie both in 1961 and in the 21^st century. This approach actually proved quite interesting, as it showed how the movie grew in esteem over the years. Current film critics, such as Peter Bradshaw and Tim Robey, praised the film, with both critics awarding it five out of five stars. Critics contemporaneous with the film’s release, however, were not as enthusiastically kind. Bosley Crowther, writing for the New York Times in 1961, more or less referred to the film as boring. In order to expand the ‘Reception’ section of the Wikipedia page, I included more detailed accounts of these reviews, as well as providing citation, in order to give the curious reader an indication of how the reception of The Innocents changed over fifty years.

An example of some of the live tweets that I included in my blog post about the Wikipedia Editathon

The blog about our Wikipedia Editathon was unusual as it was my first reflective blog. For this reason, I consider this blog more descriptive than my previous entries. This style of blogging would become essential for future blogs on our Textualities conference.

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[Credit: Wikipedia]

I posted my sixth blog post on the 23^rd of February after attending a research seminar given by Meadhbh O’Halloran, a PhD candidate in UCC’s School of English. This seminar was entitled ‘Disrupting translatio imperii: Virgil, Marlowe and the Medieval Dido’. Although I had attended more than two research seminars over the course of the academic year, I decided to do my blog post on this one as it was my favourite. Much like the Cymbeline seminar, this too was well outside my intellectual jurisdiction, as I had no real expertise on Virgil, Marlowe, or Dido. I think my lack of knowledge actually contributed to my interest in the topic, as it was an area I had never dealt with academically. The seminar looked at the way Dido, the Queen of Carthage, was depicted in literature, from Virgil to medieval writers to Marlowe. O’Halloran also looked at performance history and audience expectation, an aspect of the seminar I found the most fascinating:

Rather interestingly, the first production of the play was performed by a troupe of boy actors under the age of twelve. The expectations of the audience are therefore thwarted: expecting to see an Aeneas that is strong and masculine, they are instead treated to a young child. This casting solidifies Marlowe’s representation of Aeneas as weak and cowardly, and works against the notion of the noble father of Britain.

Because I had never actually seen a theatrical production of Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, I also included a trailer to a 2013 production by the Marlowe Society in my blog post, in order to lend a bit of context to the play. You can check out the trailer HERE.

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[Credit: Wikipedia]

My last post of February examined the notion of Hollywood on Film. The reason for this post was because La La Land, a movie about Hollywood, had received a record-tying number of nominations for the 89^th Academy Awards. I decided to look at films that dealt with Hollywood, and how they either fall into satire or homage. I considered five films in total: La La Land, Singin’ in the Rain, Maps to the Stars, Mulholland Drive, and Sunset Boulevard. I decided that for the sake of clarity, I would look at each film separately, as opposed to taking a comparative approach:

Billy Wilder’s caustic story of the delusions of a washed up movie star has practically ingrained itself into popular culture with its sharp dialogue and the sureness of Wilder’s direction. Gloria Swanson, herself an actress whose heyday was well behind her, plays Norma Desmond, a deliciously disturbed Miss Havisham figure, with camp aplomb. Sunset Boulevard is essentially a film noir, opening with the dead body of a writer who then proceeds to provide the voiceover for this dramatic tale (American Beauty, eat your heart out!). The film also includes cameos from Buster Keaton, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and Cecil B. DeMille. In short, it’s a classic.

While I like the look of this blog, I do feel, in hindsight, that I could have been much more forthright in my own opinion. The post does usefully summarise and give some level of detail regarding each film, but my own rating is completely missing from it. Perhaps an injection of my own view of each film would have contributed to making the blog post a little bit more interesting and personal.

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[Credit: Textualities]

My next two blog posts revolved around our Textualities Conference, aka, the thing that haunted my dreams for six months! Because I had signed up to live blog for Panel 2, my first Textualities post was just that, a live blog. This was quite the challenge for me as I had to keep up with what each speaker was presenting on and blog about it as it happened. The live blogging was one of the highlights of the conference even though I’m still not completely sure what tense I was writing in:

Haley kicked off panel 2 by introducing each speaker by their name and presentation title. Up first is Annie Curran. Annie’s presentation is entitled ‘The Star Director: How John Huston’s Image is Challenged in Fiction’. Annie’s presentation begins strong by giving a short introduction to John Huston and his work.

My next Textualities blog post was our Mini-Conference Reflection. I was so nervous about the conference in the weeks leading up to it. I did enjoy looking back at the conference when doing the post as it was definitely the highlight of my MA. I decided to do my presentation on the double in Black Swan (2010), as I felt that I would not have enough time to discuss all of the ideas that I will cover in my thesis:

I can’t lie, I was initially petrified about the notion of presenting in public – especially using PechaKucha. The format of PechaKucha is 20 slides at 20 seconds each. However, on the day, it was actually fine and the PechaKucha layout actually helped me be more concise when getting my points across.

Much like my Wikipedia Editathon post, my two Textualities posts were perhaps overly descriptive and narrative driven. However, I did include my very first Gif, which was a win for me!

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[Credit: Twitter]

My last blog post was the one that I enjoyed writing the most as it focused on the Top 5 Stephen King Adaptations (in my opinion, at least!). I have been a constant reader of King’s novels since childhood, and have genuinely loved some of the adaptations of his work. The idea for the post came from a Twitter conversation I had with Dr Donna Alexander about the general awesomeness of King as a writer. I am also including Carrie (1976) in my thesis, so I was anxious to write about that particular film at some point:

Number 1 goes to one of my favourite novels AND films of all time. Carrie tells the story of a telekinetic teenage girl who is bullied by her classmates and emotionally suffocated by her religious and overbearing mother. The story is poignantly horrific and relatable. While there are obvious supernatural elements in both the novel and the movie, Carrie is, at its core, a story about the cruel bullying of an unusual girl. The reason it is number 1 on my list is due to its  strength as an adaptation. The novel tells Carrie’s story through the use of newspaper clippings, psychology papers, letters, and extracts from books. Despite these complications, Brian De Palma’s film transforms the novel into a linear narrative.

I feel like this blog was my most fully realised in terms of the use of media. I used a lot of high definition pictures, videos, and hyperlinks, and included them at relevant intervals to better the post. By using a ‘Top 5’ format, it also conformed more to a generic blog than my other, more academic, endeavours. After my ‘Hollywood on Film’ post, I was conscious of making the blog more personal and sharing some of my own views and opinions on each film, which I feel I did achieve in this post.

Despite my initial nervousness and cluelessness, the research blog was something I really enjoyed contributing to each month. It was my way of writing about topics that I was interested in, but would not be able to do a viable thesis on. It also helped to point me in the direction of my thesis: it became apparent quite early on that my predominant area of interest lay in the realm of film studies and not literature. This  blog also provided me with a new skills set and way of expressing myself, and I think blogging is something that I will continue to do!

Works Cited:

Booth, M. W. “Inuit Women in Early Modern London: Caubvick Sees Cymbeline at Covent Garden”. Research Seminar. University College Cork, Cork. 2 Nov. 2016. Lecture.

Carr, Marina. Anna Karenina: Adapted for the stage from the novel by Leo Tolstoy. London: Faber and Faber, 2016. Print.

Carrie. Dir. Brian De Palma. Perf. Sissy Spacek. United Artists, 1976. DVD.

King, Stephen. Carrie. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013. Print.

McCormack, Zoe. ”About”. Web log post. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 10 Oct. 2016. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Homage and Satire: Hollywood on Film”. Web log post. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 26 Feb. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ””How Meta Can You Get?” Postmodernism and the Scream Franchise”. Web log post. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 11 Oct. 2016. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Research Seminar: ‘Disrupting translatio imperii: Virgil, Marlowe and the Medieval Dido”’. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 23 Feb. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Research Seminar: ‘Inuit women in Early Modern London: Caubvik sees Cymbeline at Covent Garden”’. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 13 Nov. 2016. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Something Wiki This Way Comes: Wikipedia Editathon 2017”. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 12 Feb. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Stranger Things and Nostalgia”. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 13 Dec. 2016. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”#Textualities2017: Panel 2”. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 10 Mar. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Textualities 2017: A Reflection”. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. WordPress, 14 Mar. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”The Play’s the Thing: Marina Carr’s Adaptation of Anna Karenina at the Abbey Theatre”. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. 12 Jan. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

—. ”Top 5 Stephen King Adaptations”. Zoe McCormack: MA in Modernities Research Blog. 16 Mar. 2017. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017. Web.

O’Halloran, Meadhbh. ”Disrupting translatio imperii: Virgil, Marlowe and the Medieval Dido”. Research Seminar. University College Cork, Cork. 22 Feb. 2017. Lecture.

Scream. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Neve Campbell. Woods Entertainment, 1996. DVD.

Stranger Things. Created by the Duffer Brothers. Perf. Winona Ryder. Netflix, 2016.

Sunset Boulevard. Dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. Gloria Swanson. Paramount Pictures, 1950. DVD.

The Innocents. Dir. Jack Clayton. Perf. Deborah Kerr. 20^th Century Fox, 1961. DVD.

Literature and IT Review

My thesis is currently entitled ‘Damsels and Deviants: Women in the Gothic Horror Film’. This dissertation will attempt to examine the depiction of women in a selection of films with a gothic theme. It is my intention to show that there is a doubling of women in these films, with women represented as either damsel or deviant. The movies I aim to look at are Black Swan (2010), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Carrie (1976), Crimson Peak (2015), Rebecca (1940), and The Innocents (1961). I propose to take a comparative approach to these films in order to highlight how both narrative techniques and cinematic techniques contribute to this doubling. In terms of narrative, my thesis will focus on issues of sexuality, the mother/daughter relationship, and the connection of both women to the Gothic space or house. When looking at cinematic techniques, I will examine the use of costume design, production design and visual motifs such as the use of mirrors to show how women are visually set in opposition.

The sources I will be using consist of books and articles on gothic film and literature more broadly, alongside film specific readings. The general sources provide a useful overview of gothic tropes that can then be applied to the films that I will be using. Of particular note is ‘The Gothic: A Literary Genres Transition to Film’ by Charlene Bunnell in Planks of Reason (Scarecrow Press, 1984). This chapter usefully highlights the key characteristics and devices of gothic film, and identifies the setting, the double, the supernatural and the narrative journey as the four “stock elements” of gothic film (Bunnell 82). Although this reading does not use filmic examples that are relevant to my thesis, I plan to apply Bunnell’s definition of gothic film to my own research.

 

 

I will be relying heavily on Helen Hanson’s book Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film (I.B. Tauris, 2007). While still providing a general view, Hanson’s book focuses specifically on women in the gothic film. Hanson looks at the woman in the gothic film in terms of her narrative journey and in the context of feminist film criticism. For this reason, Hanson’s work will be of particular benefit to me when I discuss the narrative techniques of the six films in question.

 

 

I will also rely on film specific sources when conducting my research. Because Black Swan (2010) and Crimson Peak (2015) are quite recent, there is little to no scholarship on them as of yet. Because of this, I plan to apply general feminist and gothic theory to these films in particular. I will use Freud’s work The Uncanny, due to its theory of the doppelganger, which is of particular use when looking at Black Swan, a film obsessed with doubles (Penguin Books, 2003). I will also employ Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness (Titan Books, 2015). Written by Mark Salisbury with a foreword by Crimson Peak director Guillermo del Toro, this is a very valuable work that discusses the film quite extensively. Each character has a chapter that covers everything from personality to mise en scène. This is of particular importance to my thesis, due to a focus on cinematic as well as narrative techniques. There are also documentaries on both films, available on their Blu-ray releases. These include documentaries on costume and production design, as well as narrative and character studies. My main focus on Black Swan and Crimson Peak will be to show how the films themselves actually double earlier films. Crimson Peak plays direct homage to both The Innocents and Rebecca, and Black Swan is very reminiscent of Carrie.

 

Despite being released in 1961, I have come across very little academic study of Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961). Because of this, I will be depending on a BFI Film Classics companion book to the film by Christopher Frayling (BFI, 2013). This is a useful work as it contextualises the film in the greater canon of gothic horror films. I will also utilise the ‘special features’ of the Blu-ray version of the film as well; such as interviews and documentaries.

Rebecca (1940), Carrie (1976), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), on the other hand, do have existing academic scholarship on them already, which I plan to engage with in my thesis. There is a myriad of suitable journal articles relating to Rebecca. Of particular use to my research is Diane Waldman’s ‘“At Last I Can Tell It to Someone!”: Feminine Point of View and Subjectivity in the Gothic Romance Film of the 1940s’ (Cinema Journal 23.2). Waldman’s article places Rebecca in the context of the female gothic film that dominated 1940s Hollywood. I will also be depending on the book Out in Culture (Duke UP, 1995). This work contains an entire section on the career of Alfred Hitchcock, including an essay by Rhonda J. Berenstein entitled ‘“I’m not the sort of person men marry”: Monsters, Queers, and Hitchcock’s Rebecca’. This essay is relevant to my research as it considers the sexuality of Joan Fontaine’s unnamed character, creepy housekeeper Mrs Danvers, and the absent titular character Rebecca.

When looking at Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Carrie, I will be using a selection of journal articles and chapters in anthologies. The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, edited by Barry Keith Grant, will be of great use in my thesis (University of Texas Press, 2015). I will be focusing on two chapters in particular; Christopher Sharrett’s ‘The Horror Film in Neoconservative Culture’ and Shelley Stamp’s ‘Horror, Femininity, and Carrie’s Monstrous Puberty’. Sharrett’s essay deals with Bram Stoker’s Dracula in terms of female sexuality which is a narrative process that is significant in my own thesis. Stamp’s chapter on Carrie encompasses an analysis of the mother/daughter relationship that is central to the plot. Again, this will aid my research as the mother/daughter relationship is important when comparing Black Swan to Carrie.

When I conduct research for my thesis I will engage with the aforementioned scholarship. Concerning my use of IT for the MA thesis, I will avail of the online resources of UCC’s Boole Library. Databases such as JSTOR and Project Muse are very useful ways to gain access to articles, and are hugely helpful for my research. Because my thesis is focusing on film, I will also be watching these movies, along with any ‘special features’, such as making of documentaries, behind the scenes footage, cast and crew interviews, etc.

Top 5 Stephen King Adaptations

2017 is basically the year of Stephen King adaptations – King fans can expect to see Idris Elba as Roland in The Dark Tower in July and It: Part One – Losers’ Club hits cinemas in September. I’ve had Stephen King on the brain lately, so now is as good a time as any to count down the 5 best screen adaptations of King’s novels. This list is entirely subjective and personal and does not claim to be definitive!

5. It (1990)

[Credit: ABC]

Number 5 on the list is the TV adaptation of It. It tells the story of 6 members of The Losers’ Club, both in childhood and adulthood, as they attempt to outsmart Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a terrifying entity who murders children in the small town of Derry in Maine. Although It is far from my favourite Stephen King novel, it actually works really well as an adaptation. The atmosphere is eerie, the characters are well-developed and there are standout performances from John Ritter as the lovable Ben Hanscom and Tim Curry as the creepy clown who will haunt your dreams – possibly forever. Oh, and Seth Green (Oz from Buffy) is in it so we all win! Check out one of the creepiest scenes below:

4. The Shining (1980)

[Credit: Warner Bros.]

The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is considered a masterpiece of horror cinema, and it is easy to see why. The film uses Freudian allegory and striking visuals to create an ambiguous and disconcerting cinematic experience. Although a great film, The Shining is not a very faithful adaptation. Kubrick completely changed the ending of the story, made the character of Wendy intolerable and added the maze that is so crucial to the movie. King himself feels that the main difference between the novel and the film is the novel’s warmth as opposed to the cold detachment of the movie. This is interesting when considering the endings of both the book and the film. The novel has the Overlook Hotel burn to the ground, whereas the movie has Jack Torrence freeze to death! You can hear King discuss his thoughts on the movie HERE.

3. Stand by Me (1986)

[Credit: Columbia Pictures]

Stephen King is perhaps best known for his horror stories. However, Stand by Me, the ultimate coming of age story, is based on King’s 1982 novella entitled The Body. The movie is set in 1959 (1960 in King’s tale) in Oregon (Maine in the novella). Despite these minor changes, both the short story and the movie focus on one summer in the life of 4 friends on the cusp of adulthood in small town America as they go on a journey to find the missing body of a teenage boy. There is a sense of nostalgia surrounding the film and the cast list reads like a who’s who of up and coming young talent from the 1980s; including Corey Feldman, Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell, Kiefer Sutherland and River Phoenix. Heads Up: You will shed tears at the end. You can watch the trailer below:

2. Misery (1990)

[Credit: Columbia Pictures]

Number 2 on our list goes to Misery, based on King’s novel of the same name. Starring James Caan as author Paul Sheldon alongside a scary good Kathy Bates as crazed fan Annie Wilkes. The plot revolves around an author who is held captive and terrorised by a super fan due to his decision to kill off her favourite character Misery. The film is a hugely enjoyable white knuckle thriller that will chill your bones. Also, I’m a huuuuuuuge Lauren Bacall fan, so any movie with Bacall is a keeper in my opinion!

Incomparable Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall appears in the movie [Credit: Columbia Pictures]

Kathy Bates was so convincing as the psychotic Annie that she even picked up an Oscar for Best Actress at the 63rd Academy Awards.  Check out Annie in action in the scene below:

1. Carrie (1976)

[Credit: United Artists]

Number 1 goes to one of my favourite novels AND films of all time. Carrie tells the story of a telekinetic teenage girl who is bullied by her classmates and emotionally suffocated by her religious and overbearing mother. The story is poignantly horrific and relatable. While there are obvious supernatural elements in both the novel and the movie, Carrie is, at its core, a story about the cruel bullying of an unusual girl. The reason it is number 1 on my list is due to its  strength as an adaptation. The novel tells Carrie’s story through the use of newspaper clippings, psychology papers, letters, and extracts from books. Despite these complications, Brian De Palma’s film transforms the novel into a linear narrative. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie give perfect performances as outcast Carrie and her fanatical mother Margaret. Both actresses even scored Oscar nominations for their work in the film, a feat that is highly unusual for a genre film. Spacek, in particular, gives a heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of a sensitive person pushed one step too far. As relevant today as it was in 1976, Carrie is a tragic horror and modern classic. Check out the infamous prom scene below:

 

Works Cited:

Carrie. Dir. Brian De Palma. Perf. Sissy Spacek. United Artists, 1976. DVD.

It. Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace. Perf. Tim Curry. Warner Bros. Television, 1990. DVD.

Misery. Dir. Rob Reiner. Perf. Kathy Bates. Columbia Pictures, 1990. DVD.

Stand by Me. Dir. Rob Reiner. Perf. Wil Wheaton. Columbia Pictures, 1986. DVD.

The Shining. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Jack Nicholson. Warner Bros., 1980. DVD.

King, Stephen. Carrie. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013. Print.

—. It. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011. Print.

—. Misery. London: Hodder Paperbacks, 2011. Print.

—. The Body. London: Longman, 1999. Print.

—. The Shining. London: Hodder Paperbacks, 2011. Print.

 

 

 

 

 

Homage and Satire: Hollywood on Film

The 89^th Academy Awards takes place this Sunday, the 26^th of February. For us film fanatics, the Oscars is basically Super Bowl Sunday, so it’s pretty exciting stuff! With that in mind, it’s time to turn our attention to Hollywood’s greatest obsession – itself. Almost as long as there have been movies, there have been movies ABOUT movies, ranging from wholesome homage to biting satire. Before the big night, let’s look at self-reflexive movies about Hollywood, including ingenuous tributes to the industry, like La La Land and Singin’ in the Rain, whilst also looking at more scornful efforts such as Maps to the Stars, Mulholland Drive, and Sunset Boulevard.

La La Land

[Credit: Summit Entertainment]

It makes sense to start with La La Land, the movie that is nominated for a record-tying 14 awards at this weekend’s awards show. La La Land tells the story of the relationship between aspiring jazz club owner Seb (Ryan Gosling) and wannabe actress Mia (Emma Stone). The film is a breathtakingly beautiful homage to a classical Hollywood that no longer exists, while also remaining contemporary and original. As such, it invites comparisons with Singin’ in the Rain: they’re both musicals and pay tribute to the Hollywood dream factory, with Ryan Gosling even swinging out of a lamp post at one point! Although the opening scene/number is a tad saccharine, the movie is actually a bittersweet tale of the triumph of ambition and career over love.

La La Land is very reminiscent of Singin’ in the Rain [Credit: Summit Entertainment and MGM]

Singin’ in the Rain

[Credit: MGM]

Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the film by which subsequent movie musicals will forever be compared. The story is relatively simple: a famous silent movie actor, Don Lockwood (the inimitable Gene Kelly) has to reinvent himself for the onslaught of the sound era, with the help of love interest Kathy Selden (an effervescent Debbie Reynolds). According to Sharon Buzzard, viewers enjoy a “dramatization” of how sound came to the screen (21). Indeed, through its plot, Singin’ in the Rain charts the change from silent pictures to talkies, thereby celebrating Hollywood history. This toe-tapping musical is filled with the spectacular dance numbers ‘Gotta Dance’, ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’, and ‘Good Morning’. But perhaps more significantly than that, Singin’ in the Rain provides a poignant insight into an industry in flux, by looking at Hollywood’s attempts to move into the ‘talkie’ era. The difficult transition from silent film to talkies is hilariously evident in the clip below:

Maps to the Stars

[Credit: Entertainment One]

Peter Bradshaw, writing for The Guardian, referred to Maps to the Stars (2014) as an “exquisitely horrible” depiction of contemporary Hollywood. In fact, it is actually extremely difficult to think of a satire more biting than David Cronenberg’s modern masterpiece. The ensemble piece is populated with a range of kooky and deranged characters, from incestuous pyromaniacs to drug-addicted child stars. The scene-stealer of the film, however, is Julianne Moore as Havana Segrand: an aging actress desperate to step out of the shadow of her famous late mother. The film is a case study in Freudian neuroticism, and is well worth a watch for any fan of Cronenberg’s specific brand of body horror and humour. You can check out the trailer below:

Mulholland Drive

[Credit: Universal Pictures]

Named by BBC Culture as the best movie of the 21^st century and by far the scariest film on this list, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a poisonous ode to Hollywood. The first half of the movie focuses on Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress fresh off the plane to LA, who meets and falls in love with Rita, an amnesiac woman who recently survived a car accident. In the second half, the film basically folds in on itself, and the audience is never really sure who is who and what is actually going on! Because of that, I’m not going to spend too much time explaining the plot of Lynch’s magnum opus. Described by Todd McGowan as a “critique” of the fantasy that we, as viewers, associate with Hollywood, Mulholland Drive is a frightening and tragic story of the hollowness of Hollywood, and the people it chews up and spits out. You can watch Betty’s audition scene here.

Sunset Boulevard

[Credit: Paramount Pictures]

Joan F. Dean describes Sunset Boulevard as one the most “acerbic” films ever made about the movie business, and it is not difficult to see why (89). Billy Wilder’s caustic story of the delusions of a washed up movie star has practically ingrained itself into popular culture with its sharp dialogue and the sureness of Wilder’s direction. Gloria Swanson, herself an actress whose heyday was well behind her, plays Norma Desmond, a deliciously disturbed Miss Havisham figure, with camp aplomb. Sunset Boulevard is essentially a film noir, opening with the dead body of a writer who then proceeds to provide the voiceover for this dramatic tale (American Beauty, eat your heart out!). The film also includes cameos from Buster Keaton, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and Cecil B. DeMille. In short, it’s a classic. Watch the most famous scene from the movie below:

Works Cited:

Bradshaw, Peter. ”Maps to the Stars review – David Cronenberg at his Jacobean best”. The Guardian, 25 September 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/25/maps-to-the-stars-review-david-cronenberg.

Buzzard, Sharon. ”The Do-It-Yourself Text: The Experience of Narrativity in Singin’ in the Rain”. Journal of Film and Video 40.3 (1988): 18-26. Print.

Dean, Joan F. ” “Sunset Boulevard”: Illusion and Dementia”. Revue française d’études américaines 9.19 (1984): 89-98. Print.

La La Land. Dir. Damien Chazelle. Perf. Ryan Gosling. Summit Entertainment, 2016. Film.

Maps to the Stars. Dir. David Cronenberg. Perf. Julianne Moore. Entertainment One, 2014. DVD.

McGowan, Todd. ”Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch’s Panegyric to Hollywood”. Cinema Journal 43.2 (2004): 67-89. Print.

Mulholland Drive. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Naomi Watts. Universal Pictures, 2001. DVD.

Singin’ in the Rain. Dir. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. Perf. Gene Kelly. MGM, 1952. DVD.

Sunset Boulevard. Dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. Gloria Swanson. Paramount Pictures, 1950. DVD.