Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Shaun of the dead / Universal Pictures, Studio Canal and Working Title Films present a WT2 production in association with Big Talk Productions produced in association with Inside Track 2, LLP ; produced by Nira Park ; written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright ; directed by Edgar Wright.

DVD-001127

Shaun of the Dead is an apropos watch during the Halloween season. This comedy is a homage to the zombie movie subgenre. In the midst of a zombie outbreak in London, Shaun fights zombies while simultaneously fighting for the heart of his ex-girlfriend. A whiney salesman, Shaun is an unlikely hero. Before proceeding with this review, there is one caveat: I hate horror movies. I am quite squeamish and I have never understood the popular fixation with zombies. Several of my friends recommended this movie to me over the years, but I could not compel myself to watch even a mock horror movie. Two factors contributed to me finally viewing this movie. First, I recently watched the superbly silly British television series Spaced. Created by overlapping visionaries, this show also features several of the actors who later starred in Shaun of the Dead. The Spaced characters are so loveable and quirky that I softened to the idea of a comedic zombie movie starring their actors. Second, I spotted Shaun of the Dead the first time that I perused the Monroe Library DVD collection. In addition to the blood, gore, and the undead munching on corpses, Shaun of the Dead has all of the dysfunctional relationships, moral indifference, and general cluelessness that was so entertaining on Spaced. Shaun of the Dead is worth viewing even if you do not like zombies.

- Malia Willey, Information Literacy/Learning Commons Librarian

Picnic at Hanging Rock. Picnic Productions ; a McElroy & McElroy Production produced in association with Patricia Lovell ; a film by Peter Weir ; screenplay by Cliff Green ; based on a novel by Joan Lindsay
Publisher Number: [S.l.] : Classic Collection, c1998.
Call Number: DVD- 001179

If you love mysteries, Victorian period pieces, or horror of an implied nature, then I have a film for you.  Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian film directed by Peter Weir, released in 1975.  The film closely follows the book of the same title by Australian authoress, Lady Joan Lindsay.

It’s St. Valentine’s Day, 1900, rural South Australia.  A party of upper class school girls and two teachers, from Appleyard College, are taking a day trip to Hanging Rock.  The field trip ends in tragedy, when three girls and one teacher mysteriously disappear somewhere on the rock.  To avoid spoiling the mystery, that’s all I will reveal plot-wise.  The narrative itself is worth the viewing, but the film has much more to offer.  Picnic at Hanging Rock is an excellent interpretation of Victorian ideals and attitudes, and how ill-suited they were to rural Australia.   Besides, all those pious, pretensions, unnatural and restrictive social rules of conduct, prove to be fertile ground for horror and high tension.   The ever present portraits of Queen Victoria loom down from practically every corner of the Appleyard School.  The constant pressure of potential impropriety builds upon itself, infecting the school, the town, and everyone affected buy the disappearances.

Australia is key to the story.  It could also be considered a character onto itself, perhaps even a corruptible element.  Many ambiguous avenues are explored, including the supernatural.   This is definitely the kind of film that leaves you with more questions than it answers.  The film is not without it’s over-the-top moments.  A few hysterics almost seem appropriate though, when portraying a tightly wound, oppressive culture.  Trying to enforce the confined, restrictive, Victorian ideals of England on a landscape as vast and wild as Australia, proves ultimately to be a lost cause.  Beautiful landscapes aside, photography is utilized to its greatest advantage throughout the film.  Images are used to set the stage as well as convey narrative and mood.  Costumes and set pieces are spot on, making it easy for the viewer to dissolve into the past.

Hanging Rock is an actual geological formation about an hour north of Melbourne.  Lady Joan Lindsay was herself a privileged school girl in Melbourne in the early 1900’s.   She is known to have based Appleyard College on her own school girl remembrances.  Even though the narrative is pure fiction, the historic everyday details feel quite true to life.  It’s also worth mentioning that this was one of the first Australian films to enjoy international distribution, with both acclaim and commercial popularity.  Picnic at Hanging Rock is so beloved that it is still screened annually on the grounds at Hanging Rock, Victoria, on St. Valentine’s Day.

-Michelle Melancon, Bindery Specialist (Baking with Medusa at Blogspot)

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Love is the devil: a study for a portrait of Francis Bacon. Written and directed by John Maybury.
Publisher Number: Strand Releasing Home Video: 9834-2
Call number: ND 497 .B16 S92 1988

I have to admit I love watching films about artists.  It’s amusing to seeing how creative sensibilities are translated and represented through movies.  The “at work in the studio” scenes are what I typically wait for.  In studio scenes, most movies tend to go for the over-dramatic, portraying some frazzled moment of feverish resolve.  Having done my time in art school, I’ve never known over-dramatic flailing  to be typical studio behavior.  So when I see a film that portrays studio time for what it is, sitting, staring at the wall, followed by moving things about, then staring at the wall again, you know you’ve found a good one.

Love is the Devil is an artist biopic worth seeing.  John Maybury‘s film is about infamous British painter Francis Bacon.  This film is many things, severe, horrific, unnerving, depressing, crude, and yes, sometimes over-dramatic.  But these are all words that could be used to describe Bacon’s paintings, many of which have even been used to describe Bacon himself.  I think what Maybury does best is create an impression of Francis Bacon without trying to explain him.

Maybury’s film is based on Daniel Farsen’s 1993 biography The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon.  Farsen was a friend of Bacon’s and a Colony Room regular, and that shows.  The viewer definitely has this fly-on-the-wall perspective through out the film.  Even though it all plays out like some relentless Greek tragedy, it simultaneously feels mythic and true to life.  The cast is excellent as well, with Derek Jacobi as Bacon, and Daniel Craig playing George Dyer.  Of course, I could go on and on about the sets, the cinematography, and how Maybury infused Bacon’s own imagery and obsession with confined spaces into key scenes, but such things are better viewed than described.

A warning to the conventional or faint of heart, this film contains moments of amorality, homoeroticism, nudity, sadomasochism, disturbing dream sequences, suicide, and down right crass behavior.  But it’s a film about Francis Bacon, the man who painted a screaming Pope flanked by sides of beef, unicorns and rainbows are not to be expected.  It is of course, all artfully put together.

An excellent companion to this film is The Brutality of Fact by British art critic, David Sylvester.  It’s a collection of transcribed interviews between Bacon and Sylvester spanning from 1962 -1986.  These interviews focus mainly on his work, techniques and ideas about art. It’s a frank discussion, in Bacon’s own words, about his obsession with images and his work habits.  So if you care to know more about Francis Bacon, especially his work, it’s well worth the read.

-Michelle Melancon, Bindery Specialist (Baking with Medusa at Blogspot)

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Bukowski: Born into this Pictures; From Earth presentation ; Directed and produced by John Dullaghan.
Los Angeles: Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2006.
Call Number: DVD-000370

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

-Excerpt from “Bluebird”, Charles Bukowski

A contemporary of the Beat Generation, the poet and novelist Charles Bukowski was born in Germany and raised in Los Angeles, California. After a period of travel in his youth, Bukowski returned to Los Angeles where he spent decades writing poetry, short stories, and novels in relative obscurity while living a rough and tumble personal life. A poet of the streets, Bukowski’s straightforward language details a life of booze, bars and women, but also humanity and love.

Despite Bukowski’s association with hard living, he was never a denizen of skid row.  Bukowski supported himself with various jobs throughout his life, including over a decade working for the United States Postal Service (the basis for his novel Post Office.) Success found Bukowski later in life. The first published book of his poetry, It Catches My Heart in its Hands, was produced in 1963 when he was 43 years old (a copy of this handcrafted book is housed in Special Collections and Archives.)  From there his fame, and notoriety, grew. Since his death in 1994 at the age of 73, books of Bukowski’s poetry and correspondence continue to be published, and new audiences continue to discover his writing.

A difficult person from a troubled background, Bukowski emerges from Born Into This as a complicated figure. Rough, crude, and often profane, Bukowski is also witty, intelligent and sensitive. Filmmaker John Dullaghan skillfully weaves interviews with Bukowski’s friends, family and well-known admirers along with footage and interviews with Bukowski from the 1970s and 1980s to produce a compelling portrait of a tenacious artist. Derided as a dirty old man, celebrated as the 20th century’s Walt Whitman, Born Into This shows Bukowski to be something of both, but also much more: a human being.

-Trish Nugent, Special Collections Librarian/Archivist