For certain movie fans, the phrase “Directed by Guillermo del Toro” elicits a certain tingling of expectation and excitement. Del Toro is one of the most forceful auteurs currently working in the speculative fiction film industry and while his early films were relative flops and are popular now only in a cult and fan market, Del Toro’s name now means big things whether it’s on films, games or books.

The man can and does more or less pick and choose his own projects, recently turning down the new Star Wars VII movie and famously working strictly to his own styles and visions.

A film directed by Guillermo Del Toro is dark and it’s fantastical, a seamlessly orchestrated narrative all playing out with a breathtaking artistic direction, even in his earliest and unappreciated pictures. Guillermo Del Toro is indeed a special genius.

The following is a list of five films that would have been improved a million times over had they been directed by Guillermo Del Toro.

Oz: The Great and Powerful

2013

Directed by Sam Raimi

When news came that Sam Raimi was directing a prequel to The Wizard of Oz telling the Wizard’s origin story, excitement mounted and anticipation was high. While Oz, The Great and Powerful was a visually captivating film everything else about it was flat and deeply disappointing. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Oz the Great and Powerful would have retained its artistic brilliance, the only the film has going for it, but also would have achieved given a sense of wonder slightly tinged with menace far more suitable to the plot than the fluffy piece of saccharine that Disney served up. Further, under del Toro’s direction, perhaps James Franco – who has proven himself a talented actor – might have also realised he needs to do a lot more than crack a grin to pull off a character that should have been portrayed with infinitely more depth.

One more thought to convince you this should have been a del Toro film – imagine what Guillermo del Toro would have done with flying monkeys!

Alice in Wonderland

2010

Directed by Tim Burton

I’m ducking for cover from Tim Burton fans as I write this. Burton’s take on the classically surreal tale of Alice in Wonderland was not bad as such, but it was lazy and relied too much on the sensibility that the standard Burton expectations would bring to the film without actually meeting those expectations and putting any of its remarkably strong features to work.The fact that Alice in Wonderland was made  into such a “family friendly” attempt at capturing the true weirdness of Lewis Carroll is ridiculously ironic, and Alice in Wonderland directed by Guillermo del Toro would have been quite the different and much better film.

On the first step, del Toro probably wouldn’t have teamed up with Disney’s The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast writer to put it together. In the next step a Wonderland from the pages of those famous del Toro sketch books would have lived up to the true dark weirdness it’s meant to inspire, rather than this token set piece.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

2013

Tommy Wirkola

Fairy tales have a special place in the world of Guillermo del Toro films – his masterpiece, Pans Labyrinth (2006) a mesmerising testament to how fairy tales should be. While this take Hansel and Gretel was infinitely better than expected – which doesn’t say much as I went in with very low expectations – it remained an action movie with a large busted heroine to the end.

The original story of Hansel and Gretel is indeed a dark and troubling tale and this movie did very little to do that dark fantasy aspect of its fairy tale roots any justice at all. Hansel and Gretel directed by Guillermo del Toro would have been a lot more frightening and wouldn’t have relied on gratuitous cleavage shots to propel Gretel through the story. As someone who’s keenly aware of the deep psychological side of fairy tales, del Toro’s version also would have likely told of a more harrowing psychological aftereffect the grown up witch hunters would have developed that would have extended far beyond this film’s lame inclusion of Hansel developing diabetes.

The Hobbit

2012

Directed by Peter Jackson

Oh, how close we were!

When del Toro signed on to The Hobbit and started work directing the picture, the world hummed along to a slightly different frequency as everything was suddenly right in the movie world. Alas, due to time pressures and other interferences on the film, del Toro passed his director’s chair to Peter Jackson.

Now, I absolutely rate The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It was a fantastic film, doing justice to the novel as a satisfying adventure tale, but also tying it in nicely to that other Middle Earth now known from the Lord of the Rings films.

Why do I think The Hobbit directed by Guillermo del Toro would have made the better film experience? Mainly, while Jackson owned Middle Earth from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I’ll never fault him on it, it would have added something new and intriguing to The Hobbit under the hands of a different director, just as the Harry Potter films were all different movies under the different directorial hands. Further, I’m not convinced The Hobbit directed by Guillermo del Toro would have been made into a trilogy and the fact that it has been expanded from its initial two part release, is my only source of doubt against The Hobbit so far.

Mama

2013

Directed by Andrés Muschietti

Now this is a curious one, as Mama was “Presented by Guillermo del Toro” and he was also the executive producer. Unlike, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, another of del Toro’s producing roles which was a brilliant movie under the direction of Tory Nixey,  Mama was lacking.

While it was still quite a good movie, it’s great premise fell short of delivery by an average cast and the way the story played out. It was never certain whose story this was meant to be, with the focus shifting between the three central adult characters in the beginning, middle and end. Maybe this was a narrative technique, but it left Mama a jarring story that should’ve been better. All of the classic del Toro elements are already at work – we have creepy kids in a shadowy house, an unseen malevolence and bugs. Bugs are important. Mama as directed by Guillermo del Toro would have taken all of these already favourable elements and lifted them just that little bit higher to turn an ok horror movie into an exceptional piece of work.

Are there any films you think would’ve been better if they’d been directed by Guillermo del Toro?

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Sparkleton is the new album from Grown Up Avenger Stuff, an alternative rock group out of  North Carolina.

This is the second release from the four piece ensemble and it boasts captivating, super energetic pop rock rhythms with a driving and razor sharp edge reminiscent of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs isn’t the only element of “reminds me of” going on through this album. Sparkleton has a strong 1990s rock feel to it, and by the end of my first listen, the checklist of bands I was reminded of looked something like: The Smashing Pumpkins, Hole and The Cranberries but at the same time, Grown Up Avenger Stuff is sporting a unique and undefinable sensibility you won’t have heard before.

This is a good album in all the ways that matter. The nicely fuzzy guitars are cut through with driving bass rhythms like all good rock should be and the whole thing is given an astounding strength by the astonishing vocals of front lady, Deirdre Kroener. If you take nothing else away from Sparkleton, it’ll be “Good Lord! That woman can sing!”

The album moves through hard and fast sounds combined with slower movements, all with impressive production values. The title track , the second on the list, is both tender and hard hitting and the standout track, ‘Pins‘ is a riot of fuzzed out pop and that intangible pure musical energy that no reviewer can put words to. Is that cheating at my job? Just listen and you’ll believe me.

During my first few listens I was tempted to think of Sparkleton as one of those rare things the music world puts out these days – a complete album.  For the most part, it stands as a cohesive whole, with each song complementing the others as they build towards a total concept. The only thing stopping me from claiming this as an absolute claim about the album is the 3^rd track, ‘The Beat.’ Before I start ranting here, let it be known this is a comment from a taste perspective and the negative issue I’m taking with the song doesn’t mean it’s a bad song. On the contrary, it’s just another place where the obvious passion and talent these guys have for the magic of music (or it is a science?) manifests. But let’s get on with it…

Whereas every other track wanders around grungy rock (but not grunge!)  with an alternative pop vein, ‘The Beat’ launches into a jarring cacophony with vocal stylings through the verses similar to the punchy rhythms of Les Claypool or Kasper Eistrup’s early efforts in Kashmir (which itself reminds me of Primus). The chorus fits with the rest of the album, as does the dramatic shift the song takes at about the two minute mark. Let it be said however, the final minute and a half makes the mess at the start listening to. This is hardly enough of a complaint to ruin a whole album, so overall Sparkleton is deserving of a world of praise.

Sparkleton by Grown Up Avenger Stuff is available for streaming and purchase from Bandcamp.

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In the culture of democratic publishing created by the Internet, just about anyone can put out an indie comic book.  While this gives rise to a whole new generation of fresh and exciting talent, it also means the indie comic industry is saturated with amateurs, hacks and wannabes. Fortunately Frank Candiloro, a comic artist, writer and animator out of Melbourne, falls into the former category. In Blood Across Broadway, one of eleven comic releases from the artist, we’re presented with a delightfully weird and truly innovative independent comic that captivates from the first to the last panel.

Blood Across Broadway kicks off in a Dracula style situation as the famed Nosferatu filmmaker, F.W Murnau arrives at the castle of vampire, Count Cartorius. Cartorius lives with his elderly and crippled vampire father, Morlook, doting on him at every turn. It’s not long before Murnau falls victim to his undead host, while old Morlook sits and listens to the violent death with regret.

Soon after the castle is visited by Al Jolson and the old vampire offers to protect him from Cartorius in exchange for dance lessons, and so the crippled vampire learns to dance.

Therein lies the greatest point of humour in Blood Across Broadway, as the Dracula-esque story is juxtaposed with the glamour of the Golden Age of the Broadway stage, providing the comic with its oddity and its curious appeal.

It’s fun and dorky, and never takes itself too seriously.  We’ve got vampires, dark and shadowy castles and bloody killing and yet despite these shadowy Gothic tones, it’s not by any stretch a serious story. I guess if you’re going to do a vampire story these days, why not make it about a crippled vampire with dreams of the Broadway stage? It’s not like the genre is in danger of getting any more ridiculous.

The relationship between Cartorius and Morlook is also quite funny as we’re given undertones of a serious soap opera style family drama as the son has no respect for his father’s love of music or dreams of the stage. We’re so often thrashed about the head with stories with young people with dreams of stardom overcoming obstacles, the reverse here is amusing, to say nothing of the fact that it’s an all singing all dancing elderly vampire. The scene that has Al Jolson convincing Morlook that his disability is only a matter of willpower packs a laugh, and it’s not the only moment that stirred a laugh out loud chuckle in this reader.

Visually, Blood Across Broadway is a genre unto itself. The art is entirely black and white, drawn with sharp angular shapes rather like a lino-cut. This heavily stylised aesthetic means the emotion on the characters faces is also stilted and jagged, but rather than detract from the story it really adds to the overall humorous impact.

Other reviewers have criticised Blood Across Broadway in saying the story takes too long to take off and the reader is left wondering for too long where the tale is headed. There is indeed a slowness to the first act, but I disagree that this detracts from the story. Rather I think it works to the comic’s advantage. We’re set up with this strange Gothic scenario, peppered with oddities like the arrival of Murnau and Jolson as characters, and then these oddities build into the humorous intent of the tale. Jumping directly into Morlook’s pursuit of the stage would have significantly lessened the impact and the point of the whole comic. All good jokes need careful foregrounding and Blood Across Broadway has exactly that.

Overall, Blood Across Broadway is a stellar effort from a creator who obviously has a great love of the comic form and wider popular culture. Frank Candiloro demonstrates a deftness in putting together a wry tale using familiar elements in completely a fresh format. Anyone with an interest in the Australian independent comics scene needs to get themselves acquainted with this gem of a book, as does anyone with an interest in the comic medium at all. It’s unique and compelling. it’s tender, a bit nasty and altogether enjoyable.

Pick up a copy of Blood Across Broadway and find out more about Frank Candiloro on his website.

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Recently, someone encouraged me to write a few science fiction pieces with a positive outlook, maybe because there is a dominance of dystopian science fiction; a preponderance of horror and gloom within the genre. I get told that science fiction is often too gloomy in its outlook, needlessly creating bleak visions of the future as if to deter our civilization’s progress. We only need to name a few examples among movies for this to seem true: Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), Minority Report (2002), and a world of others. The conclusion is that writers of science fiction have consistently tried to send out warnings about where our civilization is going and we have ended up with a barrage of dystopian science fiction.

Science fiction is a good medium for making social forecasts about ethical crossroads that may arise in the future. This leads repeatedly to dystopian science fiction, forecasting an extremely dangerous or gloomy world and the dark side of progress. Although it may seem healthy to try to warn people about the dark side of progress, it may in fact be retarding our advancement in some ways, and so other writers prefer to lead a utopian vision of the future instead. The best example of utopian science fiction is probably found in the underlying script of the Star Trek franchise over the decades. Without criticizing specific franchises in depth here, I wish to reflect on the choice between utopian and dystopian science fiction in this article from my point of view as a fiction writer.

Dystopian settings are easier to think up rather than utopian ones, and perhaps they are also more thought-provoking at first glance. It is much easier to hook readers and or viewers with a plot in a dystopian setting, making this the first choice when developing a science fiction story. Who is entertained by the prospect of a perfect world emerging in the future due to huge strides in technological and social progress? Throughout Star Trek the plot is often cultivated in spite of its utopian premises by presenting the antagonists as an obstruction to progress rather than representing a dark side of progress in the antagonists.

Whether a story is utopian or dystopian science fiction is not determined by the abundance of villains, violence or destruction within the story. For example, the plot could be about a utopian society and characters being attacked from outside or undermined by antagonists who want to regress to an inferior state. This way, progress is wholly glamorized and it is the reactionary side that is vilified and warned against. This is an alternative to portraying the dark side of progress, the threat of risky innovations and developments, e.g. artificial intelligence, as the antagonistic side in the plot.

Some might argue that science fiction is necessarily dystopian, that the entire basis of science fiction is actually to warn against social technological progress rather than to encourage it. Books that are considered to be founding installments in the science fiction genre include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which presented the danger of humans playing god with science. On the other hand, Asimov’s I, Robot (1950) and Foundation (1951) definitely lean more towards a utopian view than a dystopian one, because they indicate some sort of eventual desirable destination for society through innovation and progress. Even though they depict upheavals in their plots (because this is necessary in any plot) the story is about overcoming challenges and the eventual triumph of the spirit of progress over regressive and backward influences.

Science fiction video games overwhelmingly present dystopian scenarios, but this may simply be necessary for them to offer challenging gameplay rather than representing the attitudes of the games’ writers in some way. My favorite example is Dead Space, which places an engineer as the main protagonist and presents some marvels of technology, but the plot basically revolves around a future rise in murderous religious cults who misconstrue the staggeringly destructive results of alien contact. The game seems to depend on a strong dystopian element, with a repressive government and a fanatical religious organization being the only two players really driving the events of Dead Space.

One of the justifications for dystopian elements in science fiction storyboarding is that the goal of literature is often to draw attention to problems, injustices and corruption in the real world because contemporary society is filled with them. By creating a plot that departs from real social ailments, the writer risks removing the readers so much from the story that they will be incapable of identifying with the protagonists. Readers prefer to see protagonists going through a more extreme version of things that have parallels in the real world, for example, wars, disease or confrontations with nature.

There is a way of creating a more utopian version of science fiction, but it requires human (or equivalent to human) antagonists who are trying to retard progress in some way within the story. Star Trek does this well, because the protagonists represent an enlightened and advanced future, as many of Asimov’s characters do. This serves some good role for encouraging progress in the real world, rather than just creating another story that situates antiheroes in a gloomy technological future where they proceed to become victims of fate and presenting just another piece of dystopian science fiction.

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Shadowland is an indie comic written by Tobias Elmore and illustrated by Ken Bastard. It’s by and large a cop story with a mysterious supernatural undertone, and for a self-produced indie comic, Shadowland has some admirable qualities although there’s a lot of room for improvement overall.

The story opens with Detective Ian Gates waking up in hospital where he’s been unconscious for two days. The volume follows Gates’ recollecting the events that landed him in hospital as his amnesia clears – his wreck of a personal life, his epic whiskey bender and somehow ending up saving the mayor’s daughter and killing two thugs in the process as well as an encounter with some kind of malevolent supernatural creature. As Gates tries to piece together what has happened to him, he’s also getting the hard word from his Lieutenant and internal affairs.

Shadowland is a generally passable and quite typical cop story even with its supernatural themes. Ken Bastard’s black and white illustrations are reminiscent of something we could have expected from a hard boiled dick strip in a newspaper fifty or sixty years ago and even though the story is set in the modern era, that old school quality is a big part of the charm of this indie comic. Because Shadowland is operating within such a formulaic genre, it also lets us forgive, just a little bit, that this is a deeply formulaic story. The characters are two dimensional types and we’ve seen them all before in just about every cop comic, movie, TV show or book ever made. The dialogue too is pedestrian and uninspired.

The grungy aesthetic of the self-produced indie comic together with the hardboiled detective story could have been a fantastic playground for some innovative storytelling with interesting characters pushing the edges of such stiff genre boundaries. It’s a shame though that Shadowland for the most part just contributed to the clichés of the genre without any sense of even trying to do something new.  By the time the supernatural elements come into the story at the end and the major drawcard of the story starts to raise its head, I was already less than interested in the story and the characters to really pay it that much attention.  On their own though, these dark otherworldly mysteries were nicely done and really suits the gritty styles of the visuals. I think the book as a whole would have benefited enormously by giving us more of a glimpse of this earlier in the story and spent less time with the dull interchange between the Detective and his Lieutenant.

Stylistically, again, the visuals do suit the subject matter. Ken Bastard’s sharp lines and black and white angles give a nice shadowy tone to the book. Some panels though do look a little overdone, though this is often more to the fact that this is so dialogue heavy and there are often far too many words jammed into each bubble. Too many words and a poor choice of letting made for some difficult reading at some parts. And I can’t not mention a few occurrences of some misplaced apostrophes of ownership. It happens. The cover art doesn’t do any justice to the interiors. As a concept it’s fine, but the colouring is messy and those blood splatters just look amateur.

Overall, as a first release indie comic, Shadowland is a decent effort and I’m sure die-hard fans of the genre will get a mild kick out of it.

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Who are the most powerful women in popular culture? Before you look at any of the names below, how many truly powerful women in popular culture can you think of? Chances are that when the most influential creators in pop culture are considered, most of those names – the most powerful filmmakers, comic creators, music artists, TV creators – are going to be men. Whether there’s anything particularly wrong about this is a topic for anther discussion, but for now we’ll settle on saying that for whatever reason women in popular culture are overshadowed by their male counterparts, it’s not like there aren’t women out there doing interesting and culture changing work in their respective pop culture fields.

Days after Oprah Winfrey was named Forbes’ most influential celebrity, yet again, I find myself wondering if Oprah really is the best we can do when it comes to looking at the most powerful women in popular culture? Sure, Oprah is pop culture royalty and her influence and the power of her reach can’t be denied. But Oprah is not the be all and end all of the most powerful women in popular culture. Luckily.

So, in an effort to bring to light some of the women in the world who are creating game changing texts and making indelible marks on their field with truly special creations, this article gathers 5 of the most powerful women in popular culture. These ladies aren’t the single names in their field, but are a carefully chosen representation. These are 5 OF the most powerful women in pop culture, not THE 5 most powerful women so as always with these types of lists, there’ll be omissions and there’ll be controversies. Let us know what you think about the choices in the comments below!

TV

Tina Fey

When it comes to contemporary TV culture, there aren’t many more influential people, women or men than Tina Fey. Elizabeth Stamatina “Tina” Fey established her success on Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 2006, with a returning appearance in 2008 with her now classic (and arguably election influencing) Sarah Palin impersonations. She has written, produced and starred in a few comedy movies, but it her work on 30 Rock that firmly established Tina Fey’s position in this list of the most powerful women in popular culture. Tina Fey starred in wrote, produced 30 Rock and has bagged just about every TV award she could be nominated in for her work on the acclaimed series.

“I do feel an obligation to work at the top of my intelligence,” Fey said in an interview with The Vine. Whip smart and funny as hell, Tina Fey has forged a place for women in television and comedy, both vastly male dominated cultures. She’s become a kind of feminist hero without being overtly political about gender, which makes her position all the more admirable and in a lot of ways, more authentic.

Music

Madonna

I’ve said before on this site that Madonna is a polarising force in popular culture. But love her or hate her, no one can deny the profound influence Madonna has had over popular culture as a whole and pop music in particular. The opening of this list says that this selection isn’t necessarily THE most powerful women in popular culture. The exception to that is Madonna – hands down, THE most powerful woman in popular culture when it comes to music. From the moment she emerged onto the dance charts in 1982 with her first single, “Everybody” Madonna’s music has been a genre changing force to be reckoned with. Where other celebrities have had their moment and moved on, Madonna is the only pop star who has remained culturally relevant for this long. As a celebrity, she has been in complete control of every nuance of her career, has never had any real scandal that she herself hasn’t orchestrated and has been a beacon of ultimate performance – her own physicality, the spectacle of her shows and the sheer tenacity she has displayed in every aspect of her multifaceted career as both pop star and business woman.

Madonna is the highest selling female recording artist of all time (and fourth highest selling musician behind The Beatles, Elvis and Michael Jackson), and her live shows have broken every record there is. Stylistically, there hasn’t been one pop song on any music chart at any time since the mid-1980s that doesn’t show some influence of something Madonna has already done. Queen of Pop? When it comes to ranking the most powerful women in popular culture, Madonna is getting closer to Goddess status.

Comics

Jo Chen

The comic industry is yet another male dominated sphere of popular culture, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t women making big waves in comics. A large portion of the most powerful women in comics are working in Japanese manga with very few women reaching influential status in more mainstream comic industries. Jo Chen has her feet in both camps. The Taiwanese artist has made her name with her exquisitely painted comic book art, particularly in covers and has arguably been influential in bringing comic covers, as opposed to interiors, back to prominence as a crucial part of the medium and even as standalone pieces of art.

Jo Chen has been working in the professional industry since she was 14, moving into the American comic industry in 2000 with her work on the Racer X mini-series, part of the Speed Racer franchise. She’s worked on a range of American comics from DC and Marvel, while continuing to work in Manga, but has most recently shot to international prominence with her work on Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 series, and continues to work on Joss Whedon comic projects including Runaways with Brian K Vaughan, Buffy Season 9, Angel and the Serenity comics.

As one of the most powerful women in popular culture, Chen’s work doesn’t overtly operate in any type of feminist genre, though perhaps since she has reached her highest prominence with the Buffy comics, a strongly feminist text, the feminist positions of her work may be inferred. In an interview with SlayerLit, Chen spoke of the male dominance of the comics industry: “In the West, the industry has been male dominated for so long because the subject matter of superheroes (the majority of Western comic books) didn’t appeal to girls, by and large… It’s a guy thing. If girls can’t identify with it, then they won’t buy it. If they don’t buy and read it, then why would they want to write it, draw it/follow it as a career path? There is no mystery to the way things have evolved, regarding male and female demographics and the sexes as players in the industry.”

Books

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is literary royalty, reigning in novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry and criticism. Her work has won numerous high profile literary awards and she is popularly and critically regarded as one of the greatest novelists of the 20^th and 21^st century. Generically, Margaret Atwood’s writing is classified as “literary fiction” though she has numerous influential works of speculative fiction, – she famously resists the term “science fiction” – predominantly in the dystopian future subgenre, especially with The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and the environmental apocalypse series of books, Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and the forthcoming third in the series, Maddaddam (2013).

Atwood’s work has long held a strong feminist vein, and she is lauded as a feminist figure. Many of her works contain strong female characters, often at odds with the patriarchy, though she has been hesitant to apply the feminist label to herself and her work. That Margaret Atwood has such strong connections to the feminist culture doesn’t automatically include her in the ranks of the most powerful women in popular culture. She’s included here as a literary voice and talent, a figure whose commentary and criticism as well as her own creative output holds a significant sway of public opinion, be that in the literary world or further afield where she is also quite influential in environmental activism and wider political action.

Film

Lana Wachowski

This may be a slightly controversial inclusion due to the fact that Lana Wachowski was once Larry Wachowski and made her deepest impressions on popular culture when she was a man. Either way, the Wachowski siblings, Lana (then Larry) and Andy stopped the world in its tracks with The Matrix in 1999, and the follow up films in the trilogy, making The Matrix one of the most successful and cultural influential blockbuster movies of all time. Following The Matrix films, the Wachowskis adapted Alan Moore’s cult graphic Novel V For Vendetta (2005) and have most recently adapted David Mitchell’s Booker Prize winning novel, Cloud Atlas (2012), to the screen.

There’s a fair bit of speculation as to exactly when Larry become Lana. Neither Lana nor her brother, Andy have spoken at length about the transition, both of them being media shy personalities as it is, though speculation is that it was sometime after the Wachowski’s made Speed Racer in 2008.

What do you think? Who would make your list of the most powerful women in popular culture?

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Sky and the Dark Night is the third EP release from Australian rock band, Monks of Mellonwah. What’s most interesting about this release is that while it’s a 4 track EP, each track is part of the same larger three part song, with the fourth track a complete mix of the trilogy.  You can listen to the whole EP free on the Monks of Mellonwah bandcamp site, here.

The Monks of Mellonwah are a four piece group out of Sydney and are made up of Vikram Kaushik on vocals and Guitar; Joe de la Hoyde on lead guitar; John de la Hoyde  on bass; and Joshua Baissari  on Drums. They find their roots in progressive rock along the lines of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but listening to Sky and the Dark Night, we hear a far more contemporary sound that brings The Monks of Mellonwah a lot closer to a type of new prog rock generation, in the same vein as something like Muse but without sounding quite so epic.

The first track of Sky and the Dark Night, part one of the larger song, comes in with haunting orchestral tones from some deep strings and horns. It’s slow but builds steadily to a gutsy crescendo as more and more layers chime in, a military drum beat is added and then finally a slow dissolve into the second track, part two of the song. Part two has the same orchestral undertones but is far more of an alternative rock song, with the band’s Muse sounds most obvious in this track. Some 1970s style guitar riffs alongside those strings from earlier add a nice hint of a Led Zeppelin-esque quality, but again there’s nothing here quite as epic as real 1970s progressive rock.

The transition to the third part of Sky and the Dark Night isn’t quite as smooth as the first two segments, though the soundscapes are rather similar. Indeed, part three sounds like a completely different song rather than a part of the whole single continuation. This isn’t by any means a negative, indeed track three is the Monks of Mellonwah’s most interesting moment in the whole EP as 1980s  guitar rock riffs start to melt into a smooth and hypnotic dance track, overlaid by Kaushik’s haunting and almost angelic vocals.  That’s essentially where the EP ends as the fourth track brings it all together again in the full mix of the trilogy.

Lyrically, The Monks of Mellonwah have put together a rather maudlin collection, with the angsty lyrics suiting the dark shadows of the music. Sky and the Dark Night is a highly polished recording, with clean and crisp sounds even in its most heavy rocking moments. This record doesn’t have the raw edgy sound I typically associate with a lot of alternative Australian rock bands, indeed there isn’t anything here that sounds uniquely Australian at all. Not that that’s a bad thing – I’m not saying that all Australian rock bands need to sound like Australian rock bands, but thinking of this country’s more enduring rock bands – The Saints, You Am I, Midnight Oil, Radio Birdman, and even the more anthem oriented likes of Silverchair, or more polished user friendly rock of an Australian rock band like Powderfinger – The Monks of Mellonwah are operating on a completely different audio track. But Australian Rock it is indeed, and it’s heartening to see a small scale band like Monks of Mellonwah start to stand up and get noticed on the international stage.

Last year The Monks of Mellonwah won ‘International Rock Artist Of The Year’ at the Los Angeles Music Awards and ‘Best Indie Rock Band’ at the Artists In Music Awards. Sky and the Dark Night will be released this April and will be followed soon after by their first full length album, produced by Keith Olsen.  The Monks of Mellonwah are also just about to kick of a US tour.

If your musical tastes tend towards the harmonic style of orchestral rock with an electronic edge, then do wrap your ears around Sky and the Dark Night. In fact, anyone with an interest in the complexities and variations of a whole world on interesting things going on in the world that is Australian rock bands should definitely have a listen to Monks of Mellonwah.

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FX’s award winning horror TV series, American Horror Story uses just about every familiar device of the horror genre, and yet the show has maintained complete originality for two seasons. The reason for this is that in both seasons of American Horror Story, the interplay of characters and plot has let us experience these horror clichés from a new range of angles. Further and even more crucial to the show’s distinctive qualities is the fact that in each season of American Horror Story, the season’s respective settings are the main characters. The main character in American Horror Story: Murder House (2011) was the haunted house itself, likewise the main character in American Horror Story: Asylum (2012) was the Briarcliff Manor insane asylum.

Setting As Character in Wider Fiction

Using setting as character has a long tradition in storytelling. When setting is used as character, places – be they geographical locations, individual buildings or both – have a profound and intrinsic influence over the characters and plot events within the narrative, so much so that without that setting, the narrative events would have been significantly different.

In Mervyn Peake’s classic fantasy series, Gormenghast (1946-1959) the crumbling Gormenghast castle connects all characters, events and all motivations. Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca (1938) opens with the classic line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Throughout the novel, the Manderley estate comes to embody the essence of all of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in being haunted by the spectre of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca.

In China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series of novels, the city New Crobuzon has its own personality and effect on characters. Even when a Bas-Lag novel is not itself explicitly set within the city, The Scar (2002) for example, New Crobuzon itself is a driving influence of the main characters.  Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels has a similar function as an almost living and breathing character within the books that has an ever present sway over characters and events even when they are not actually within the city itself.

The Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining (1976) is another example where setting becomes character. The Overlook has a profound influence over events and other characters simply by being the setting. Would Jack Torrance have been broken in the way that he was had he lost his mind in any other setting? Or would he have lost his mind at all? Certainly, Jack has leanings to madness, is an alcoholic, has a raging temper and his life isn’t exactly stable before taking the job at The Overlook, but it’s the hotel itself that possesses him through the weakness of his existing troubles, and as such it is the hotel that drives the horror and the entire story forward.

American Horror Story season one sees a similar situation. When the Harmon family move into the haunted house they already have their troubles in place but it is the experience of the murder house specifically that brings everything to its horrific climax and conclusion.

American Horror Story: Murder House (Season 1)

American Horror Story season one brought us all of the trappings of the typical haunted house story, and there isn’t really anything here we haven’t seen before. The grisly secrets in the basement; the sinister image of the child’s toy (in this case, a ball) moving along by itself with a steady cam tracking brings thoughts of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining (1980). The Harmon family moves into the house with its gruesome history and falls under its sway, just the Lutz family in The Amityville Horror (1979/2005) and a host of other haunted house stories. The show also draws on America’s own real life horror history bringing familiar tales of the famous Black Dahlia murders and the Columbine State shootings (or similar events) into this season’s plot. All of these scenarios are all very familiar to us and yet the story maintains a freshness. This is for the most part due to its finely crafted characters – the Harmons themselves; Moira, the ghostly double-faced housekeeper; Tate the murdering teenager with the soft side we can’t help but feel a sympathy for; and the show’s most outstanding character, Constance Langdon whose Southern American Gothic sensibilities bring a mesmerising sense of elegant menace to the show, executed to perfection by the incomparable Jessica Lange.

Constance Langdon, Characters and The Murder House

Constance is one of a few living characters with a connection to the truth of the murder house and it’s through Constance that the Harmons start to glimpse the dark realities of their new abode.  As so much of her own haunted past is tied up in that house, Constance is the strongest connection between the living and the dead and the house is, in a way, able to express its own characterisation through her.

Despite the fact Jessica Lange stole the show with what was the hands down best performance in the entire series, the main character in American Horror Story Season One continues to be the house itself. The murder house is the principle driving force that connects every character, living and dead; it connects past to present and it’s that address that keeps the dead clinging to the living world which is the entire premise of the series.

Each set of characters in American Horror Story: Murder House has their own individual chapter in the overall story giving the season its own internal anthology as each new generation of ghosts is introduced. Without the house, there is no cohesion to this internal anthology. The house ties everything and everyone together and then finally brings the Harmon family and their own tragic lives into the history of its own walls as they themselves become part of it.

American Horror Story Continues

When the first season of American Horror Story finished, every narrative thread had ended and all characters were complete. Since the many storylines had their respective and collective closures, there wasn’t anywhere else for the plot to move. The house had been explored, every character nuance of its walls explained and now exhausted.  The only other way a series two could have come out of this same story was to have another living family move into the house and for the same situations to play itself out again, this time with the Harmon family as the principle ghosts. This would have been a ridiculous creative move in terms of story as well as the show’s esteem and success. But there had to be another series. This was a successful show with high production values, a talented cast and for all its flaws overshadowed by its many stellar qualities, audiences and critics just loved it. Enter American Horror Story: Asylum – a completely new story with many of the same cast.

American Horror Story: Asylum (Season 2)

Where Murder House brought us all of the trappings of a haunted house horror story, Asylum did the same as a collection of every sinister story we’ve ever seen or read about mental institutions, mad scientists and demonic possession. Oh, and then there was that alien story, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Although season two of American Horror Story was a different setting and story, the new series essentially used the same overarching effect as season one – the present and the past haunted in and by a horrific setting, this time the Briarcliff insane asylum. Like the Murder House, Briarcliff has its own dark personality, its own dark force and is the principle driving point of the narrative and all of the characters in the series. Just as the Murder House was the main character in Season One, Briarcliff Manor is the main character in American Horror Story season two.

American Horror Story: Asylum – Cliché and Multiple Plots

There seem to be two complaints of American Horror Story season two that spark the most ire in critics: the series had too many clichés and too many plots.

While the series did draw heavily on tropes of the insane asylum as a disquieting setting it uses these generic standards to a different overall effect. We’ve seen insane asylums in horror settings (In The Mouth of Madness – 1994), we’ve seen the megalomaniacal care staff (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest – 1975), and we’ve seen countless priest, nun and satanic possession interchanges, serial killers, alien abductions, mad scientist experiments. Yet, in season two of American Horror Story, these familiarities aren’t cliché as they still succeed in their intended effect. Generic standards let us know what to expect from a text but then strong characterisation and different nuances of the plot lines add entirely new dimensions to the overall familiarity.

The most often complained about storyline in American Horror Story is the alien subplot.  Nothing really tangible ever comes of Kit’s alien storyline, a fact that’s upset a lot of critics and viewers. Perhaps it’s simply a case of poor TV writing, but the unexplained resolution does add to the mystery and the weirdness of the entire story which may be its overall point. The interconnection and muddled nature of the many plot lines contributes to an overall sense of madness within the series, and as such the multiple stories and hazy endings can be seen less of an unnecessary confusion and more of a satisfying effect. Again, this all comes back to understanding Briarcliff as the show’s central character.

Briarcliff

This maddening effect of multiple plotlines is able to be executed because the real central character of the show is Briarcliff.  Briarcliff ties everything together in motivation, in cause and in effect. When that’s understood, all criticisms of the show’s multiple plots lose ground.

In the first part of the season, the show’s central antagonist characters – Jude, Doctor Arden, the Monseigneur, Thredson, and even the Devil –are performing their own versions of evil or at least a basic wrongness, and the good characters are trying to escape the wrong doings of these people.  As the series progresses, the clear lines between the basic good characters and the basic bad characters are blurred to the point of erasure as the bad characters themselves start to suffer at the hands (or walls) of Briarcliff. When the estate is repurposed as a prison ward, more evil continues even though the original wrong doing people have been vanquished. It’s Briarcliff itself that’s the threat, not its individual inhabitants.

Sister Jude, Character and Briarcliff

In Sister Jude, Asylum gives Jessica Lange the front stage that her Murder House character needed. Jude is a fallen woman, an alcoholic lounge singer turned nun who runs the Briarcliff Manor insane asylum. She’s tough as hell and righteous as sin, and despite her nun’s habit the other habits she’s renounced for God make their way back. She lusts after Monseigneur Timothy, attracted to his power and his holiness as much as she is his physicality, and hiding all of that in the shape of her sexy red lingerie worn under her neck to toe habit. Jude isn’t quite so megalomaniacal as Nurse Ratched from Miloš Forman’s adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) but that threat is still though it’s a different display of power.

The American Horror Story characters function individually as parts of the whole that is Briarcliff. Jude embodies one part of Briarcliff’s character – the dominion of order and administration at the hands of a power that’s meant to be humbly serving the greater good. Monseigneur Timothy embodies another aspect as the absolute corruption of that power to his own means. Sister Mary Eunice takes another character as the perversion of that power, and Doctor Arden wraps all of these aspects together but instead of the Church, his power is science. Thredson’s power is also science, the new breed of psychoanalytic theory, but of course his has an even darker side.  Lana is not only fighting against Jude or Thredson in her efforts to escape, but Briarcliff as a whole being – the entire corruption, the perversion and the power be that of the church or the visions of science, with both Doctor Arden and Doctor Thredson as two very different sides of that scientific authority.

Every kind of evil is present in Briarcliff and the asylum continues as its own form of hell even after the Devil himself has left. Kit and Lana were able to function as the saviours as they were the two people who didn’t belong there and had no real connection to the place so they didn’t form any part of its character. It’s only when we see Briarcliff ended that we have the drawn out resolutions finally find their closure.

American Horror Story: Coven (Season 3)

As news of American Horror Story season three starts to surface around the web, we see the creators will be taking their award winning horror anthology formula the iconic location, New Orleans.

Earlier this year, rumours American Horror Story: Salem flooded the Internet with speculation the show would take on the historic Salem witch trials. The creators have since revealed season three will indeed be a witch story but rather, American Horror Story: Coven and have started filming in Louisiana. Speaking to the media, the creators have said their new series will focus on location, and the show’s researchers have been examining the most haunted places in America.

With the deeply rooted Southern Gothic traditions of Louisiana, we can already get a general idea of what the new may be like because of its strong connection to place and so American Horror Story season three looks to be following the patterns of its predecessors in positioning its setting as character.

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Django Unchained is the latest entry into the Quentin Tarantino movie hall of fame, and it’s typical Tarantino in every way possible. A 2 hour and 40 minute hour long western, Django Unchained tackles slavery era America in a story about a freed slave, Django (Jaime Foxx), who travels the country in search of his wife accompanied by a German bounty hunter. While it’s not a bad watch, Django Unchained is generally unengaging and nowhere near as good as previous Tarantino works, and the current attention it’s getting from the Academy, including a Best Picture nomination, is frankly astonishing.

After wily dentist turned bounty hunter, Dr King Schulz (Christoph Waltz) frees Django to help him track a man, they join forces on a quest to find and rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda from her slave owners. The pair travel an epic and blood soaked journey across the country meeting the standard range of chattering typical Tarantino side characters and find Broomhilda in the possession of a dastardly yet charismatic plantation owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). From there we’re served a grisly platter of more blood, more violence, more gut splattering close ups as the revenge story takes full circle into its heroic happy ending.

With a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino still rocking the upper echelons of Hollywood’s A+ List, there’s any wonder anyone still argue against the idea of cinema auteur theory. Django Unchained is Tarantino, used as an adjective, in its every detail. Now, with masterpieces like Pulp Fiction (1994) or Kill Bill (2003-2004) in that category, that might not be a bad thing. But as the credits started to roll and the spaghetti western score we’ve heard before filled the cinema as those B-grade style intertitles flash their information across the grainy screen, there was no element of excitement, no enthusiasm or wondering what type of journey the obviously talented storyteller will be taking his audience on this time. Oh, this is a Tarantino western, we think. There’s the B-grade genre pastiche. There’s the Carradine cameo role.  There’s the Ennio Morricone soundtrack. There’s the fast zoom to a detail.  Django Unchained is Kill Bill, with a slave man instead of a Bride, a wife instead of a daughter, and slave owners and hillbillies instead of martial arts masters and Samurais.

The story itself seemed to rest on the security that this is what happens in a Tarantino movie so we don’t even have to try to make it any good. Even in the leads, Dr Schultz and Django, two of the strongest characters in the film, the movie lacked depth and interest.  Dr Schultz’s character alone, played brilliantly by Waltz, could have made for an excellent story. So too could an isolated version of Django’s revenge tale been stunning on its own, but put together to guide the whole film, the two characters were robbed of deeper treatment. The same is said for Broomhilda. Hildy is set up to be an epic legend of a woman. The film even goes so far as to equate her and Django’s story to the legend of Siegfried and Brynhildr and parallels that rescue narrative throughout. But unlike her inspirational namesake, Broomhilda’s character is nothing more than a two dimensional figure, a point for Django to reach and a prize for him to claim. Perhaps it was just the onscreen chemistry between Jaime Foxx and Kerry Washington, but I never felt any sense of this epic love the pair are meant to be joined by.

By far the most enjoyable character in the film was Calvin Candie. Now, anyone who listens to me talk about Leonardo DiCaprio for more than a couple of seconds will get a good idea that I harbour an intense dislike for the man. I think What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) was the single high point of his career and have seen many otherwise fine films ruined by his very presence.  But DiCaprio’s role in Django Unchained has done the miraculous and made me think twice about dismissing Leo as the overrated dilettante I had always believed him to be. In the role of the Southern not-so-gentle gentleman, DiCaprio shines to the point where anyone sharing screen time with him fades into the background, except perhaps for the fine performance of the almost unrecognisable Samuel L. Jackson, playing Candie’s sycophantic slave. The details of Candie’s character specifically were still as underdeveloped as the rest of the cast, but DiCaprio’s execution of that character was so robust and exuberant, the shortcomings of the screenplay were barely even noticed. Contrast this with the passive stance Foxx held through most of the films (whenever he wasn’t rounding of bullets into enemy guts that it) to see what a difference acting makes to character delivery.  If Django Unchained should take away any award this season, it should be for swaying my opinion on Leonard DiCaprio.

And speaking of awards, Django Unchained is up for 5 Oscars this year including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actor (Waltz). Waltz? Definitely. Cinematography? OK. But Screenplay and Best Picture? With a made-for-Oscar film like Lincoln (2012) also up for the Big Prize, there would little doubt Django Unchained would even stand a chance, but since it’s already taken out the American AFI award for Movie of the Year we could actually have a contest here. Why? It’s expected.

Just as it is with Woody Allen movies, when faced with a new Tarantino picture, people seem to naturally assume the film will possess some level of innate quality that automatically sets it high above anything else. That’s one reason why Django Unchained could be attracting so much unwarranted critical acclaim. The other, and probably more likely reason, is the sympathetic and simplistic way the film pitches its picture of slavery and slave owners.

Of course, I’m not defending anything that would even remotely sympathise with slave owners or defend slavery (so put those damning comments away for now), but it seems to me that Tarantino has taken an easy route of positioning anyone pro-slavery as the bad guys and the laughable idiots. We see the army of KKK riders whinging about not being able to see properly through their head bags and we’re allowed to laugh at them as they ride off on their lynching attack. They’re a pathetic, bumbling laughable lot and not at all threatening, and casting Jonah Hill as one of their main underlines this point. We’re put in a position to look down on these enemies from a moral and social height and shake our heads as we imagine the misery of a world where the sight of a black man riding a horse was pure scandal. Much like we saw with the Nazis Tarantino’s last film, Inglourious Basterds (2009), it’s an easy tactic to muster emotional engagement in a film where the antagonists are already socially and historically loathed en masse. That said, Inglourious Basterds was a far better picture overall and was far more able to get away with it.

Generally, die hard Tarantino fans will get enough out of Django Unchained for their money, though I’d be surprised if anyone would rank it as one of his better works. For the casual film goer, Django Unchained doesn’t really offer anything much at all, and for what it does offer, you’d be better off sitting down with a copy of Kill Bill to see what Tarantino in his finest form can do with a revenge movie.

Django Unchained Movie Trailer

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Alfred Hitchcock was a legendary figure of epic proportions (read what literal interpretations you want into that).  With any personality of this kind of legendary status, particularly when that legend is shrouded in as much dark mystery and macabre notions as the Hitchcock story, there’s always going to be a fascination with an idea of the real man behind the legend. This is what Sacha Gervasi’s film, Hitchcock (2012) attempts to unveil.

Hitchcock is a biopic screen adaptation of Stephen Rebello’s book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (1990) except unlike the book, this movie shifts the focus away from Psycho (1960) and applies it to Hitchcock’s personal life with an attempt to create a human man out of this almost mythical figure. The legend of Alfred Hitchcock is coloured with as many dark and odd tales as his films, but the story we’re getting in Hitchcock is one about a man (Hitchcock played by Anthony Hopkins) who wants people to like his movies, a man who fears losing all of his money and his reputation, and a man beset with anxiety over his wife, Alma’s (Helen Mirren) fidelity. This isn’t the story of the darkly eccentric and obsessed Alfred Hitchcock, although those elements are certainly touched on in this film, but is a rather sympathetic portrayal of Hitchcock and one that could be just as real or just as fabricated as any other legend in the Hitchcock mythology.

There’s an old folktale in Hollywood, of Alfred Hitchcock giving the then child Melanie Griffith a macabre gift – a doll model of her mother, Tippi Hedren from The Birds ( 1963) laying in a coffin. Hitchcock was notoriously obsessed with Hedren, and the way she tells it now his approach to her was nothing short of manic sexual harassment and abusive megalomaniacal control. Hitchcock’s sinister obsession with Hedren is the subject of another current biopic, HBO’s The Girl (2012), starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller, directed by Julian Jarrold.

Hitchcock’s obsessions with his leading ladies, the ever ice cool and always dazzling Hitchcock blondes, are a significant part of the overall legend, so of course Hitchcock  needs to touch on this aspect. But it’s not a defining feature of the man in this film. We see him grow interested in Psycho’s Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) and we’re teased with the backstory of his relationship with Vera Miles (Jessica Biel) – once obsessed now cold and contemptuous with a hint of predation as he watches her undress through a Norman Bates style hole in the wall.

This Hopkins Hitch is still the dark and brooding perfectionist. We glimpse his bizarre and obsessive edges in the scene where he demonstrates how best to slash Janet Leigh in the famous Psycho shower scene, and as he talks Leigh through her character motivations as they shoot the driving scene, a performance from Hopkins with a lingering taste of Hannibal Lector.  But this infamous Hitchcock is never the focus in this movie. Instead we’re asked to feel sympathy for the man as he lays awake at night worrying about anything else a regular man would worry about, a man who above all other concerns, adores his wife; a wife who constantly chastises him for over eating. Hopkins Hitchcock is a human Hitchcock where Jones’ Hitchcock plays into the nefarious side of the legend. Film critic, Bill Gibron asks ‘Which Hitch is the Real Hitch’, comparing the performances in the two current portrayals.  Both are as equally valid as the other as two legends in the same mythic cycle of a public figure so legendary that even the real life man has become a character. As Gibron says, “Alfred Hitchcock is, was, and remains a cinematic legend…one that’s perhaps too big to encase in a single, celluloid statement.”

As a fan of Alfred Hitchcock films and horror thrillers in general, I came to Hitchcock looking for the version of the man that appealed to me most – the dark legend, and since I didn’t exactly get it, the film felt a little soft.  We do see a Hitchcock dark side developing. We see the obsessed man constantly followed by his spectre of his subject, the real life killer and inspiration from Robert Bloch’s book Psycho, and we see his mind weakening under stress. In the Alfred Hitchcock Presents style coda, we see his next film will be The Birds, which is of course where the dark fascination with Hedren begins. In this sense, Hitchcock could be a developmental tale. Throughout the movie we see Hitchcock’s iconic silhouette, usually as he’s lurking in doorways and all of the promotional material plays with the same icons, usually showing Hopkins Hitch weilding the iconic Psycho knife. So Gervasi is still playing with the idea of this foreboding “Psycho” symbol but always returning to the sympathetic man. Some can see this as a rounded portrayal, but I felt it as uncertainty from a film lacking the confidence to go either way.

Next to Hitchcock’s wavering characterisation there was another disappointment in this film, and that’s the treatment of Psycho. Psycho was a defining moment in Hitchcock’s career and the movie plays with this idea in that Hitchcock knows that this film is either going to make him or break him. But the movie lacks justice to the classic film and isn’t really about the making of Psycho at all, despite the title of the foundation book. Instead, Psycho becomes a backdrop to other personal developments but it is still used as the dangling carrot of appeal and interest. We see little snippets of the Famous Things – the sets, the music, the costumes. In one scene we get a long running shot following the water pipes for the shower scene and yet the rest of the behind-the-scenes material for that scene is given cursory treatment. If it wasn’t so important that audiences get a good close up look at what happened during the making of that scene and how it was put together, why give so much attention to those pipes?

Because Psycho is such an iconic and endlessly loved film now, it did feel like everything that was pitted against the movie in Hitchcock was being ridiculed, even Hitch himself when arguing that the famous shower violins music shouldn’t be used in the scene. It was a bit like the film was setting us up to mock the naysayers from the position that we all know so much better now. This creates a sense that the resistance to Psycho wasn’t all that significant and lessens the overall impact of Hitch’s fears that his movie will fail.

I can’t imagine Hitchcock would be a particularly enjoyable film for an audience who didn’t already know a lot about the movie or the industry at the time. It’s rife with cinematic in-jokes and references and assumes the viewer has a decent knowledge of the real story. That said, there’s probably enough of the personal saga to keep an emotional connection. It’s interesting though that Alfred and Alma’s daughter, Patricia wasn’t mentioned in the film especially as she played a small role in Psycho.

This all isn’t to say that Hitchcock is a bad movie. It’s not. Every performance was faultless. Anthony Hopkins was completely lost in the folds of flesh as he actually became Alfred Hitchcock. Giving the enigmatic figure of Alma Reville equal footing alongside Hitch was a fine move for this film and Helen Mirren brought the character, who has always in the background of the Hitchcock legend, well into the foreground with her brilliant portrayal. James D’Arcy was an effortless Anthony Perkins, almost indistinguishable from the real man. Even Scarlett Johansson, who I usually find keeps her roles at a distance to her actor self, was convincing as Janet Leigh.

Come to Hitchcock looking for expert portrayals of truly fascinating real life characters and you shouldn’t be disappointed. Don’t come to this movie looking for a making of Psycho story, and don’t come to it looking for the man who gives a small girl a death effigy of her mother. Hitchcock is just another legend to add to the mythic cycle that is Alfred Hitchcock.

Kate Krake

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