THE LONG SHADOW OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

          It began as a response to isolationism.
          During WWI, Germany could import no films. This resulted in an influx of highly original material expressing thoughts and emotions through strikingly stylized cinematic elements: Dark, angular worlds reflecting a purely subjective eye.
          Stories featuring themes of madness, betrayal, and mind control flowered in an environment of artistic freedom throughout the 1920s. In particular, the work of Robert Wiene, F.W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang influenced contemporary filmmakers and continue to do so nearly a century later.
          Witness the geometrically absurd angles of the first horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921). The distorted scenery and optical effects (including painted shadows) are routinely reflected in the films of Tim Burton. Three of the biggest heavyweights in film--Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Stanley Kubrick--owe much of their aesthetic and many of their techniques to German Expressionism.
          Expressionism is a form of Gothicism, which itself arose largely as a need to process the events of the French Revolution.
          To compare James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with its predecessor, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) is to see homage, to put it kindly, at its fullest extent. Indeed, horror films and film noir result directly from German Expressionism.
          Bluntly stated, these directors were simply way ahead of Hollywood.
          From The Maltese Falcon and The Third Man to Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner, the influence of Expressionism, with its emphasis on the exaggerated and the surreal, cannot be overstated. To look at Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands is to see Conrad Veidt as the Somnambulist in Caligari.
          Just as Franz Kafka emphatically did not write The Metamorphosis in hopes of appealing to a readership looking for stories where people turn into big bugs, the Expressionists produced unprecedented films of emotional depth, often eerily prescient of events to come, which work precisely because realism is done away with entirely.
          Eventually, Germany did import films, and this highpoint in cinema took an inevitable nosedive. But like fine wine, Expressionism only gets better with age.

Stewart Kirby writes for

You've read the movie reviews...now read the books.


You haven't lived till you've died.

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DECADES OF EXPERIENCE

Well howdy there.


Check this out: I've written over a thousand published articles in multiple periodicals. My work has appeared in This Week News and Review, The North Coast Journal, The Trader, The Independent, and more. I've taught Creative Writing and I've had a radio show reading one of my own books as well as the works of others. My clean, muscular prose engages readers around the world, and I have never missed a deadline. Decades of experience gird these journalistic loins. Whether my topic is self-assigned or appointed, I will write the most interesting article in the paper. It's what I do. And by the way, I also created my own literary genre, Redwoodpunk.


Scroll on down, peruse away, and see for yourself.


For the FULL HUMBABA CYCLE STORY LIST, click the link:
http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2015/04/full-humbaba-cycle-story-list.html













To read my article SURFING WITH SHARKS, click the link:
http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2013/10/surfing-with-sharks.html

"IT" A HIT

          A hit, a very palpable hit.
          Twenty-seven years after the made-for-TV movie, It returns. And how wonderful, because in Stephen King's novel, the terrifying entity returns to the town of Derry, Maine, to feed on fear and human bodies every twenty-seven years.
          The star, Bill Skarsgard, who plays Pennywise the Dancing Clown, is also twenty-seven.
          One gets the impression that Stephen King films never live up to the novels. Not so. Many great films come from his work. The differences between print and film are such that many efforts do fall short, but just look at the list of classics: Carrie, The Shining, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery.
          And now It.
          This film focuses on a group of thirteen year-olds plagued by bullies, their parents, and an evil clown in the late-1980s. The story begins with the loss of little Georgie (Scott). A year later, his big brother Bill is still obsessed with trying to find Georgie. But we know it was a clown down in a gutter that got him.
          The clown tries to get other kids, too. Like Freddy Kruger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pennywise has godlike powers of evil and can basically do anything. So perhaps in some sense It is not totally realistic or adequately explained, but with so many great evil clown moments, who cares?
          Since 1990 technology has finally advanced to the point where we can see this story as King intended. During the course of the film, admirers of the writer's work cannot help but turn frequently to one another with upraised thumbs. The way the clown rises from the murky waters of a flooded basement, flivvering angrily toward its prey--the way the clown appears from behind a collection of blood-red balloons, perhaps with the sound of a broken music box winding down--the way the clown's long sharp teeth sink into a child's flesh--these are the sorts of cinematic moments which can only be described as sublime, as true fans of King's work will attest.
          The filmmakers wisely do what King does in his book: Marble the great Pennywise stuff with the good other things--the real-life laughs and horrors the kids go through hanging onto each other for support. Featuring entertaining dialogue among the kids similar to Stand By Me, It posits that the true horrors are often found at home with freakishly monstrous parents. In real life, young brothers aren't so syrupy with their displays of love, thankfully enough, and it is doubtful that a sexually abused teen would be as comfortable and well-adjusted as the one depicted in this film, but we can overlook such weak points easily enough because so much of It flat out delivers.
          Well worth a trip to the big screen.


IT
Starring Jaeden Lieberher,
Jeremy Ray Taylor,
Sophia Lillis,
Finn Wolfhard,
Chosen Jacobs,
Jack Dylan Grazer,
Wyatt Oleff,
Bill Skarsgard,
Nicholas Hamilton,
Jake Sim,
Logan Thompson,
Owen Teagre,
Jackson Robert Scott
Directed by Andy Muschietti
Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga,
Gary Dauberman
Based on the novel by Stephen King
\Runtime 135 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for

Like evil clowns, do we?
Check this one out:

If there's one thing clowns hate,
it's a stinkin' coulrophobe.


To read the short story CAPTAIN HIDE, click the link:
http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2015/04/captain-hide.html


But wait, there are still more evil clowns.


This one's getting started:

To check out AXKLOWN, the world's first serial killer superhero, click the link.
http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2017/04/axklown.html

85 YEARS OF "FREAKS"

          In 1932, riding the wave of success he enjoyed the previous year with his smash hit Dracula, director Tod Browning was given free reign for his next project. Expand this latitude further considering the Hays Code limiting film would not be in effect for two more years.
          Yet the product which resulted from such promise so disgusted audiences, Freaks quickly ruined Tod Browning's career.
          In this story featuring a circus community, diminutive Hans (Earles) loves Cleopatra (Baclanova), the beautiful trapeze artist. She in turn loves the circus strong man, Hercules (Victor). At first she finds little Hans' big interest in her amusing, but when she learns of his inheritance, she decides to actually marry him with the plan of killing him to inherit the fortune herself.
          When Hans' sideshow freak friends learn of Cleopatra and Hercules' plan, they take matters in hand...or with whatever they've got.
          Some of the performers lack limbs altogether. (And yet can still roll a cigarette!) Others shock viewers more deeply. Schlitze, for example.
          Born micro-cephalic, standing 4' 2", his family sold him at age 9 to a traveling sideshow. When the camera shows such clearly challenged individuals, and audiences see that, this time, Lon Chaney is dead, and the special effects are real, audiences respond viscerally.
          The film was reviled. Pulled from release, banned.
          No one saw it for what it was:
          A powerful Great Depression statement concerning the defeat of the scheming minority privileged by the abused and hideous masses.
          From Browning's perspective, the reception of his film was the real horror. He had left a well-to-do family at 16 to travel with the circus. He had become inured long prior to sights others find unforgivably offensive. As a filmmaker he drew on what he knew. He was, as Stephen King says, "playing for keepsies."
          Browning finished out the bulk of the decade with only four more films, two of which wherein he went uncredited. The good one, Mark of the Vampire, stars Lionel Barrymore and features Bela Lugosi in a cameo.
          Harold Russell, not a professional actor, yet missing both hands, won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). In that case, conventional wisdom said that impact would have been lost to cast an actor merely acting.
          In the case of Freaks, an innovative director embraced verisimilitude, yet lost conventional access to film for simply doing his job too well.


FREAKS
Starring Harry Earles,
Daisy Earles,
Wallace Ford,
Leila Hyams,
Olga Baclanova,
Henry Victor,
Josephine Joseph,
Schlitze
Directed by Tod Browning
Written by Tod Robbins,
Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon
Runtime 64 minutes




Stewart Kirby writes for

Check out this short story!

http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2017/05/krazy-kartoonz.html
CLICK THE LINK for KRAZY KARTOONZ