Pondering the pigskin

Oge (who I just noticed is now a Texan!) will not necessarily be happy with this, but he won't be surprised by this admission either: I'm not really a football fan.

This may in part be due to my upbringing. My dad was not really a football fan and I went to high school in Peru where fútbol is something else entirely. That changed slightly when I went to college when, in order to be a freshman in relatively good standing, one went to football games. I therefore became a fairly ardent fan of the Big Green, even if we are currently 2-7. I didn't really understand the game all that well even then. This changed when, of all things, I joined the marching band my senior year (I switched to cymbals after playing the videocamera for a season) and I wanted to know when -- and more importantly why -- we had to start playing. (I also learned for the aforementioned Oge, the 'shmen on my hallway who played. And who derived great pleasure from tackling me in the hallway when I went to brush my teeth. Shall I describe what it's like having an offensive tackle doing something called the "turkey trot" on your chest while the rest of my 'shmen are looking on? I digress...) My dear wife played with the DCMB for five years and still can't really tell you what is happening on the field, but I finally picked up a cursory understanding.

This was not enough to turn my into a football fan, however. I don't really follow the NFL, nor do I really follow college football. After all, I teach at a school which happily doesn't have a football team (I've talked to the athletic director and she used the word "happy"). This also comes after having gone to graduate school at a place where football (along with basketball and hockey) was somewhat sacred: I shamfacedly confess that I never attended a game while I was there.

All this is meant to preface the peculiar things I'm feeling today, when NPR, colleagues at work and even my neighbors are asking me how I feel about the Michigan-OSU Game-to-End-All-Games this afternoon. (No, I didn't know they were both undefeated, although somehow i knew that Rutgers was.) And to be honest, with Angela and Xan out this weekend on Cape Cod and me here trying to get some serious writing done, I will reluctantly have to refrain from watching The Game.

But today?

Today, I feel like a Wolverine. Go Blue.

(UPDATE: So I lied, slightly. I have to make an appetizer for a birthday dinner tonight and I just turned on the game, where I discover it's 7-7. More perplexingly, however, I heard for the first time the opening strains of "O Fortuna" (from Orff's Carmina Burana) done by a marching band as fight music. I'm impressed -- and slightly disturbed. [Actually, I am more disturbed by this. Apparently, this is a common marching band thing?] But hey, Xan can actually sing that. I'm not kidding: he heard it on the radio the other day and has been happily screaming what sounds like "O Fortuna" all the time, appropriately fortissimo.)

As much as I wanted to be Satine...

Which NICOLE KIDMAN Character Are You?

"Grace Mulligan" in DOGVILLE

Whoa! No matter where you go, small town or large, we both know you'll be the center of things. So fill the empty places with mercy rather than judgment next time around, won't you?

(Take this quiz!)

Movie memedom

I was tickled to discover that I had been tagged by Nathaniel of The Film Experience for a particular movie meme -- particularly since it seems to be originating with him. I've therefore taken some time with these amusing, yet kinda thought-provoking questions.

1. Popcorn or candy? If forced to choose, definitely popcorn, with slight butter. But I came into movie geekdom thanks to the Dartmouth Film Society, whose twice-weekly screenings at the Hopkins Center were in a theater that did not allow food. As such, I am now happy and content to make it through a three-hour long flick without the need for sustenance. (Also, I only buy popcorn at independent theaters that desperately need my concession cash.)
2. Name a movie you've been meaning to see forever. I am almost embarrassed to say I have a PhD and I have still yet to see Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. I have seen the other nuclear-bomb film from 1964, Fail-Safe, which still freaks me out, but I really need to see Strangelove soon, or else my students will legitimately have reason to not respect me.
3. You are given the power to recall one Oscar: Who loses theirs and to whom? For years, I have been telling my students that the ever-fabulous Anna Paquin should have lost to the even more fabulous Rosie Perez, whose performance in Peter Weir's Fearless is outstanding. That said, Paquin's 12-year-old self does fine, nuanced work in The Piano, so she can still keep the statuette. Instead, I would take it away from Geoffrey Rush for Shine. I liked the movie at first, but then over time realized how much I despised it. Rush gets by and wins the award for the tired-and-true "I'm afflicted!" performance that is ultimately uninspiring. Not to mention the fact that the actor that does the real work in Shine is clearly the unheralded Noah Taylor. In 1997, I would have almost been happy with anyone else nominated that year when the indies took over the Oscars -- Ralph Fiennes for The English Patient, Woody Harrelson for The People vs. Larry Flynt, Billy Bob Thornton for Sling Blade. My choice, however, is a surprising one for me, given how happy I was at the indie revolution: I really wanted Tom Cruise to win for Jerry Maguire. I felt that the role stood out as being very old Hollywood in a very new way, that Cruise embodied the likes of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, but with a 90s spin. Cruise will never get a role like that again (and, quite frankly, I have soured on him as an actor considerably since), but I still think that was his year
   
4. Steal one costume from a movie for your wardrobe. Which will it be? If I'm allowed to cross-dress, I would chose almost anything from Carmen Miranda, who I have been threatening to go as for Halloween for years now, just because she is outrageous fun. But there's a bigger single costume item that I'd prefer more than anything: James Dean's iconic red windbreaker from Rebel without a Cause. It's classic, it's simple, and it's the coolest thing on film ever.
   
5. Your favorite film franchise is... the "Before Sun" movies by Richard Linklater, i.e. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, both with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I am eagerly awaiting Before the Noontime Sun and Before the Solar Eclipse, though I hope they have fewer car chase sequences than the other two. (Wait, this isn't a franchise?)
   
6. Invite five movie people over for dinner. Who are they? Why'd you invite them? What do you feed them? I'd probably have two dinner parties. Alfonso Cuarón, Billy Wilder, Atom Egoyan, Pedro Almodóvar and Francois Truffaut would probably produce some wonderful conversations between guys who really love the art of the movies; we'd have to have some wonderful seared duck, risotto and some good red wine. But I'd also love a gaggle of fun, spirited women who are icons in their own ways: Mae West, Katherine Hepburn, Emily Watson, Ingrid Bergman and Rita Moreno (with Kate Winslet also crashing the party) would make for lots of great stories, particularly after some good sauvignon blanc and lots of yummy hors d'oeuvres made with puff pastry and sauce.
   
7. What is the appropriate punishment for people who answer cell phones in the movie theater? Decapitation. That way, they can't talk or hear. As ringmaster at Telluride this year, I threatened patrons with immediate deportation to the (fictional) Central South Dakota Film Festival.
   
8. Choose a female bodyguard: Ripley from Aliens. Mystique from X-Men. Sarah Connor from Terminator 2. The Bride from Kill Bill. Mace from Strange Days. This is really simple: Mace from Strange Days. I would trust Angela Bassett with my life any day anyway, but the character is also the most even-headed of this group, and the only one proven to defend a grown man. (The fact that I actually have an article out there on Strange Days, the first one I ever got published, also helps.)
   
9. What's the scariest thing you've ever seen in a movie? How about the scariest thing I didn't see? I ran from the theater in college at the meathook sequence in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because I couldn't stand the sight of the girl getting hacked to bits with a chainsaw on a meathook. It took me three additional attempts at watching the movie before I finally discovered you don't see anything there, that my mind had filled things in just a wee bit much.
   
10. Your favorite genre (excluding comedy and drama) is? I confess to having a soft spot for two of the most unrealistic (and related) movie genres out there: the musical and the melodrama. That's why I really love Mexican cabaret melodramas (cabareteras) from the 1940s, since they combine the two genres so beautifully. You've never really lived until you've seen Aventurera when the exquisite Ninón Sevilla, fallen on bad times, sings and dances defiantly, only to discover that the mother of her rich, new lover is actually... the madam of the brothel that forced her into prostitution in the first place!! I also got to spend a 1-1/2 hour van ride with Ms Sevilla who turned out to be more than gracious and, in her 70s when I met her, still with the verve and spirit that she had in the movies years before.
    
11. You are given the power to greenlight movies at a major studio for one year. How do you wield this power? I would bring directors from outside the United States to see what they could do with a larger budget in English, perhaps in the hopes that they could become the next Billy Wilder who invigorates American cinema. Tops on my list: Lucretia Martel from Argentina, Christoffer Boe from Denmark, Wong Kar-Wai from Hong Kong (who is actually getting this chance), Alvaro Velarde from Peru.
    
12. Bonnie or Clyde? Bonnie. She is doomed, doomed, doomed and by the end when she asks him what he would change and he answers "nothing," she knows it -- and she sticks by him anyway. She's a class act.
    
13. Who are you tagging to answer this survey? (Three or more) Dan (aka JJ), who I am surprised didn't get tagged by Nat for this the first time around; Nell, because the world needs to know what the Movie Mom really thinks; Jenny, because she always has great responses to memes whenever I tag her; and Kathy, because I have a sneaking suspicion (as the medical doctor, shoe-happy, not-even-remotely-film-oriented person that she is) that she may have some fun answers to this meme.
    

Whew!

This will be a decidedly shorter post, despite the fact that I'm home about two hours before I was the last time. The reason for that is because, unlike last time, things went swimmingly at elections today. Our precinct (hooray for Woodmoor in Four Corners, even if I don't live there) had an unusually high turnout, with over 1400 people voting in an area that only has about 1100 households. We were consistantly busy almost all day, meaning I got no work done and I got to eat at 7:55PM. (We closed at 8.) I view this as an amazingly good thing: it means that people cared and cared hard. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in a long while, Maryland was actually in play this time around. Our two students, having gone through an exciting election last time, were almost disappointed that they got to do normal stuff this time around. At least one won't be back as a student volunteer... because she'll be 18 then and said she wants to now be a regular volunteer. Woohoo! Hooray for civic responsibility!

(Even better: as I type this, it appears that the good people of Pennsylvania have decided to finally clean the santorum off the Senate sheets.)

All this is not to say that things weren't exciting at out polling place. We did have the homeless man (living up to stereotypes, alas, for being drunk and crazy) who voted at around noon, then came back right before the after-work rush, claiming he hadn't actually voted. Some of my colleagues who lived in the area and knew he was (a) homeless and (b) that the house that was on the pollbooks had been sold to someone else a while ago wanted us to not let him vote; I, who processed him, felt that if he was on the pollbooks, he should be able to vote -- and so he did, the first time. The second time he came in, however, he claimed that he hadn't voted in one of the races and wanted to revote. When it was calmly explained to him that he had already voted, he became massively belligerent. Later, one of my colleagues explained to me that my usual method of dealing with angry people (smiling, reasoning, discovering how to assuage their fears) worked completely against me because my methods, alas, implies knowledge of logic. (I'm not kidding when I say that man was crazy.) We called 911 as we were trying to get him to vote provisionally which this time we knew would not count since he had already voted, but thought that it would get him to quiet down. His tirades at the entire polling staff were actually disenfranchising voters who were legitimately afraid to go in (not to mentione scaring the bejesus out of me and the other pollworkers, particularly when I realized that he wouldn't respond to normal methods). The police came quickly, however, and he was taken away in handcuffs, poor guy. Even as I was shaking afterwards, I still felt badly for him.

The best part? Our 12-year-old (male) helper arrived during all of this. (The custodian -- named Sonja, who is the best person ever -- had already gathered all the children from the hallways immediately upon finding out what was going on. "That's a code red," she later told me. "I don't care if school's in session or not. I just care about those kids not getting hurt." Can Xan go to the school this woman is at? Please?) I asked his mother to keep him outside for a while until things blew over (even though by this point the police had arrived); the boy, sensing excitement, insisted that they stay. Just like a 12-year-old.

Thankfully, the media stopped by long before this happen. (See, Priscilla? You missed out. WBAL got us on tape instead. I wonder if I came across as insightful or insipid...)

Oh yeah, and Marcy: The count was 22, almost all because of people who moved into the area and forgot to change addresses.

Ready, set...

Let's see. Alarm set for 5:00AM? Check.

Grading materials and copy of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime for Wednesday's class, to be completed during downtime (haha)? Check.

Pear-almond-chocolate chip muffins for morning yummies baked? Check.

Last-minute chief election judge materials read? Hmmm... I knew I had to do something still...

Good luck to everyone for tomorrow, until the next hurrah!

Mmmmm... Electronic ballots...

(The above is meant to be read in Homer Simpson's voice.)

We're almost at that time again: Election Day. This will prove to be interesting, what with tight races for both Senator and Governor in Maryland. As Chief Judge, all I care about right now is that we don't have a repeat of the hell of last time.

Then, I bought a whole bunch of stuff and made a crazily yummy curried lentil dip. This time around, I'm bringing different things:

• Pear-almond-chocolate chip muffins for brekfast
• Artichoke-green olive tapenade and spicy bean dip with crackers for snacks
• Maybe some flowers for the amazing school janitor who gets there at 4:00AM and doesn't leae until after we do at around midnight

Here's hoping things are better organized this time around. Hey, at least this time the BOE sent us a kit equivalent to Opening Procedures for Dummies. Marcy, I plan to count all the provisional ballots this time. And Priscilla, am I going to have to dress up nicely for Polish television?

"No, I don't want it."

Angela said she heard this yesterday, said (as it turns out) almost right after the cupcake shot shown below. I was skeptical, particularly since I was right there and hadn't heard it.

This morning, I heard him say it quite clearly. Spoken calmly, not even shouted.

Twice.

A sentence.

With a comma, even.

Picking up chicks

Well, I had to pick this chick up several times while trick-or-treating. And damn if the boy isn't getting heavier by the minute.

Folks, if you're wondering why people ever have children, one of the reasons is that on one day of the year, you can dress 'em up in silly-looking clothing and have them go out and beg for candy. Not for him, mind you, because he's not allowed to eat that much. I, however, currently have the carcasses of four mini-candy bars within reach. (Thanks to the Costco Hershey's bag, I had a Butterfinger, a Reese's peanut butter cup, an Almond Joy, and a Kit Kat, which is melting in my mouth as I type this.) If I were nice, I would bring some candy to class, but I'm forcing one class to watch Babel, so you can determine for yourself whether I'm nice or not.

Today was my day with Xan, so I brought him to campus in costume. The costume would have been perfect had it been a normal Octobery day; at 70 degrees, however, this suit was a little hot. (I bought this, by the way, on clearance at Old Navy -- a store I never even walk into -- last year for a grand total of five bucks, well spent.) The result was that the voices of nearly every person who walked by us went up by at least three registers upon seeing him in this suit. (This includes the I'm-too-cool-for-school frat boys who sit outside the student center all day to smoke.) Admittedly, I laughed for a full five minutes when I tried the costume on him for the first time the other day, perhaps because my rather un-American (read: not obese) child doesn't normally have a body shaped like this, which I found reminiscent of the main characters in the animated film Chicken Run.

The best part about these pictures, however, is not merely that they capture how adorably cute he really is: it's the fact that we'll have enough material from today alone to fully embarass him about 15 years from now. Mark my words.

Myself, I had a lot of plastic costumes growing up -- and my "homemade" costumes of later youth were not always terribly inventive. (I was a hobo for several years, I think, in junior high.) In graduate school, the creative juices started to flow more and for a couple years I went as Luka, which I thought was amusing, yet topical... until I discovered that people thought my masterful makeup job indicated actual bruises. (Shockingly, Angela refused to go as my mother one year.) I also managed to win a costume party contest as Speed Racer -- a natural for me since (a) my hair naturally creates that curl in the middle of my forehead if I don't use hair product, and (b) I managed to find a pair of white bellbottoms that gave me the perfect Speed silhouette. (Actually, those pants were a little tight. No, a lot tight. In the right spot. Let's just say I had to walk carefully for fear of hurting myself. I know, too much information...)

In my attempt to get everything done today, I didn't put too much effort into this year's costume for trick-or-treating, instead choosing to spike up my hair, wear all black and call myself first a Robert Smith wannabe (which became impossible when I remembered I only recently threw out all my old goth makeup, which had gone bad) and then merely a behind-the-scenes techie. Besides, I didn't actually have to teach today and I didn't want to distract from Xan's impact on his first outing on Halloween. I have threatened for several years now, however, to do something much more daring -- and wouldn't you know that next year the holiday falls on a Wednesday and I'm teaching Cinemas of Latin America again?

In any case, happy halloween. If anyone still wants some candy tomorrow, I still have plenty. (You still only get it if you come in costume, however.)

Drácula sounds much better with an accent (Vampire Blog-a-Thon)

Those eyes: terrible, desperate, yet exhilerating. They are haunted, haunting. And yet you can see how those eyes can hold you in their power, in their venerable thrall. The eyes of Dracula.

Well, not quite. They are, rather, the eyes of Drácula. Don't forget that accent; in Spanish, that would be a spelling mistake.

The coming of sound caused many problems for Hollywood in the late 1920s, but one of the biggest involved all those movie-goers south of the border: the exceptionally large Latin American market. Starting in 1930, Universal attempted to reach out to these patrons by filming many of their established hits with the same scripts now acted out by Spanish-speaking actors. (Indeed, the "Mexican spitfire" Lupe Vélez largely became a star through her lead roles in both the English and Spanish versions of 1930's East Is West and 1931's Resurrection.)

Only a handful of these films were made before 1931, but the most famous -- and certainly the only one of these films that is widely available -- is the curious case of Drácula. The Spanish version is largely the result of a cost-cutting measure executed by producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. to literally make two films at once: the English version, directed by Freaks auteur Tod Browning, would film in the daytime while the Spanish version, directed by George Melford (The Shiek), would film using the same script and sets that night. The Browning version catapulted star Bela Lugosi to international fame and is today considered a classic on its own terms.

Don't get me wrong: Lugosi's singular stare is the stuff made of legends and the man's debonaire interpretation of the Vampire-to-end-all-vampires is brilliant. As a movie, however, Drácula is far better.

I just finished watching both films at the same time, one on my television and the other on my computer and while both feature relatively similar scripts, the two are strikingly different. Lupita Tovar -- who plays "Eva" (not "Mina") and provides an introduction for the film for the recently produced multi-disc package done by Universal -- indicates that the actors even had the same blocking marks at night as the daytime English cast, but that means little when the camera is set up in a different place or is doing something very different. For example, one of the iconic shots of Lugosi comes early in the film when the camera slowly tracks into a close-up of Dracula's face, eyes highlighted by a band of very bright light. This happens to be the first time that we see him and it's a very effective shot. The Spanish version introduces Carlos Villarías simikarly but with no moving camerañ Melford saves it instead for an extremely impressive shot on the staircase when Renfield (played frenetically by Pablo Álvarez Rubio) sees him for the first time. Browning creeps us out with his magnificent moving shot -- but Melford puts us into Renfield's shoes in a far more effective manner by giving us a far more dynamic shot (shown here) when the narrative deserves it, not just because we should ooh and aah. In many ways, Drácula is also far more human than Dracula. Oddly enough, this is partially due to Villarías' hands, which are significantly smaller than the craws that Lugosi bends into shape. Mostly, however, the effect seems to come from how Melford frames Drácula and Renfield together as they interact rather than isolating them in individual (and isolating) shots.

But what about Eva? Ahh, here is where the real difference lies in the two pictures: the treatment of the woman. For all that she does in the English version, Helen Chandler plays Mina as cold and aristocratic, like most female roles of the time. In Stoker's novel, however, Dracula is far more sexual and the fact that mostly women fall under his thrall implies a certain explicit sexuality which is only implied in Browning's film.

Not so Melford's version. Freed from the binds of the fledgling Production Code, Melford was able to show much more of what Drácula does to Eva and, even if he doesn't show all-out sex, the evidence is far clearer. For one thing, the Melford version actually shows the bite marks as evidence to the viewer, something denied in the Browning version. And please: look at these images here. First, Eva is drawn to Drácula in the night. Helen Chandler would not be wearing the shapely, sheer dress with which Lupita Tovar saunters saucily onto the screen. Even from far away, we can see why Drácula wants her, not to mention what he wants her for. Of course, the implication here is that Eva wants it, too. This shot culminates, by the way, in Drácula lifting his cape and Eva coming under his wing, which he clearly brings down in order to "kiss" her on the neck. Yes, there is a lot of Eva-kissing in this film -- on the hand, on the neck, kiss-kiss everywhere. (Poor Mina never gets to have any fun in Browning's film.)

And just look at her after Drácula has finally had his way with her! Yowza. Doesn't she look like she's about to start singing "I Feel Pretty"? That's because she got some Drác blood in her! Tovar plays Eva in a far more carefree manner than Chandler throughout the film, but the looser attitude really comes across here with the plunging neckline, the loose devil-may-(literally)-care hair and a stance that says "I'm a WOMAN now!!" Her fiancé, Juan, says, "I can hardly believe it! You're a different woman now!" Guess what, bucko: she is. Maybe you should have gotten to her first. By showing us some of these scenes, Melford's version of the Stoker tale not only stays faithful to the novel with its implied sexual tension, but also simply makes much more sense. Give me Lupita Tovar any day... but only if she bites.

This posting is part of the 2006 Vampire Blog-a-Thon, featuring over 40 other blogs all talking about vampire movies. Thanks to Nathaniel at The Film Experience for putting forth the idea! Check this page for information on all the other blogs, although I particularly like these:

• As Little As Possible on Dracula: Dead and Loving It
• Gallery of the Absurd's take on the hypothetical Interview with the Antoinette
• Certifiably Creative's take on Countess Dracula
• Silly Hats Only and George Romero's Martin
• Low Resolution on From Dusk Til Dawn
• Goatdog's take on virtually all of Universal's other Dracula movies, an interesting companion piece to my own
• Burbanked's nostalgic look at vampire box-office gross predictions
• Queering the Apparatus and vampire lesbians
• Zoom-In's appeal for more critical work on The Addiction
• Stinkylulu's hilarious love for Blacula
• Nick's interesting pick of Bram Stoker's Dracula...
  
• ...which works as counterpoint to Screaming and Punching's take
  
• Tuwa tackling many vampire flicks
• Boobtubers consider that eternal question: Spike or Angel?
• Novaslim's what-the-hell-is-going-on-her? take on Grace Jones and Vamp
  

Oh yeah -- and Happy Halloween!

I *swear* I didn't say "if"...

It's like that feeling you get finding a song on the radio that you have a copy of in your CD collection -- say, Depeche Mode's "Dreaming of Me," which I caught the other day. You could listen to it any time you want, but there's a certain joy in finding it unexpected.

So it is that tonight I turned on the TV and discovered It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. All the old Peanuts specials make me feel this way, particularly the Christmas one. (Not so much the likes of It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown.) I don't plan on it, I just happen upon it and it makes me smile. Even if I would get a bag full of rocks.