Books into Celluloid: Nightmare Alley
Written by Kelly Cozy Thursday, 04 June 2009 19:13
Nightmare Alley
Directed by Edmund Goulding
Released in 1947
Cast: Tyrone Power
Joan Blondell
Coleen Gray
Helen Walker
A sleazy but smart pulp novel makes for a sleazy but smart noir film.
The story
At a seedy traveling carnival in Depression-era rural America, amateur magician Stan Carlisle is making a name for himself. But he’s not content fleecing the rubes for nickels and dimes. He wants more. When he gets hold of a number code he sets himself up as a mentalist; he hooks up with the carnival’s Electric Girl Molly and the two of them start working in vaudeville. But that’s still not enough for Stan and his grudge against anyone who has more respect and money than he does. He joins forces with Lilith, a coldhearted psychiatrist. Using the information that Lilith gives him, Stan reinvents himself as a spiritualist with the power to help people contact their dead loved ones. And when an industry magnate offers Stan a fortune to put him in touch with his dead lover, Stan leaps at the chance…and at his downfall.
The book
In terms of its basic story arc, William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley doesn’t have much to set it apart — cynical protagonist with a chip on his shoulder tries to better his lot in life by breaking society’s rules, only to get a comeuppance and end up worse off than he was. It’s the book’s carnival setting that gives the story its unique flavor: Gresham’s protagonist starts as an ambitious small-time magician and ends up the lowest form of carnival life — the geek. And though Stanton Carlisle soon shakes the carny dust off his feet to become first a vaudevillian and then a spiritualist minister, he never stops being a flim-flam man — all that has changed are the monetary stakes and the penalty for failure. It’s significant that the Tarot card illustrations that open each chapter start with The Fool and end with The Hanged Man.
Thoughts on “The Village”
Written by Dhes of Yuggoth Tuesday, 12 May 2009 20:32
Can a movie be all bad if it makes you think? Dhes of Yuggoth (her pen name) devotes her thoughts to this question...
Although M. Night Shyamalan’s
The Village has been gone from theaters for some years now, I have finally
gotten around to watching it. Many of the reviews at the time of its release were
scathing, and several venerable critics renounced it as utterly laughable. I therefore
fully expected to roll my eyes at the thing and afterwards fling it aside like so
much ridiculous tripe. But I wanted to see for myself exactly what they were talking
about before rendering final judgment on the matter. What I saw was indeed a flawed
piece of film, but, much to my surprise, I found it impossible to toss aside. Indeed,
I wanted then to even love it, but I found that impossible, too. It has found a
strange little niche, it seems, in that shadowy grey area between forgettable nonsense
and sublime cinema.
The movie left me with something far deeper and more profound than it should have, and therein lies its quasi-redemption. Buried in the mud and the dross is a nugget of philosophical finery, something to turn over in my head for a time. Any movie that can accomplish this has a measure of value which makes watching it worthwhile.
In The Village I saw an allegory for many of the movements we see in the world today. In it I saw something akin to the religious communities that seek to turn back the hands of time to a simpler era: home schooling, isolationism, gated communities, compounds and more. All of these are ways to limit what can reach us and our children in our lives, what can touch us, and therefore, what can harm us. At the heart of each are issues of control, fear, and the desire to feel safe from a world gone mad. When feelings of insecurity rise, so too does the desire for more and more extreme solutions — heartfelt, but drastic.
The Village is the
story of Covington Village, a colony created by its elders where they can be free
to pursue their hopes and dreams and preserve innocence and hope for their children.
It seems the most noble of causes, and indeed, colonization has been an answer to
previous generations who sought to leave the rest of the world behind in search
of a better life. In the 17th century, those seeking religious freedom
traded the sorrows of persecution for the hardships of forging a new life in a new
land that has since become the United States. In the 18th century, this
impulse continued as the colonies expanded and gained independence. There were still
new worlds to conquer, and in the 19th century, those who tired of the
harried pace of city life in the East struck out for the untamed West. But, now,
where else is there to go? No worlds are left to conquer, but colonization somehow
manages to continue.
Q and A with Michael Malone
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 00:00
BookBalloon is pleased to host author Michael Malone for a Q&A session May 4-6. Bring him your questions and comments in the Forum. Registration is free.
One of the best-loved voices of the new American South, Michael Malone is the author of ten internationally acclaimed novels, including the classic Handling Sin, Uncivil Seasons, The Last Noel, and the New York Times bestseller The Killing Club.
His new novel, The Four Corners of the Sky, has just been released.
He is currently at work on Dark Winter, a sequel to his “Hillston” series of novels.
He has also written plays, television programs, a collection of short stories titled, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac: Stories of 12 Southern Women, and two books of non-fiction, one on film, one on Jungian typology, as well as innumerable essays for such magazines and journals as Harper’s, the New York Times, Playboy, Partisan Review and the Wilson Quarterly. He is currently developing a musical of The Maltese Falcon.
Among his prizes are the O Henry, the Edgar, the Writers Guild Award and an Emmy as head writer of ABC's "One Life to Live." He has taught at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania and Swarthmore and is now a professor in the Theater Studies Department at Duke University, where his wife Maureen Quilligan is the R. Florence Brinkley Chair in English.
They live in Hillsborough, N.C.
Amazon's Censorship Policy
Written by Gary Glass Sunday, 12 April 2009 20:42
Mark R. Probst writes on his blog that Amazon.com has instituted a new policy of excluding from sales rankings and some searches books which they deem to have adult content. Guess what they consider to be adult? Playboy centerfolds? Nope. Racist rants? Nope. Pornography? Nope. What then? Mostly, gay and lesbian literature. For instance? Here's a few examples:
- James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room
- Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain
- Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man
- Edmund White's The Beautiful Room Is Empty
- Robert Adrich's Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History
- E M Forster's Maurice
- Mary Renault's The Charioteer
- Dr. Nathaniel Frank's Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America
- Rictor Norton's Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830
- Vito Russo's Celluloid Closet
- Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Catch Trap
- Randy Shilts' Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military
And many many others. There's a growing list here: Meta Writer.
What is the significance of this? As one of our members, a writer and bookseller, succinctly put it: "If the rankings are pulled, the books won't show up in bestseller lists or many searches."
BookBalloon is an Amazon affiliate. Amazon is an outstanding research tool for readers. But I am disgusted by this. It is censorship plain and simple. Help me protest this. Demand that Amazon reverse this policy.
- Go here to sign a petition: In protest at Amazon's new "adult" policy
- E-mail Amazon directly: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
- Write or call or fax Jeff Bezos, CEO:
1200 12th Avenue South
Seattle, Washington 98144-2734
United States
Phone: 206-266-1000
Fax: 206-622-2405
Books into Celluloid: Catch-22
Written by Kelly Cozy Thursday, 26 March 2009 15:23
Sometimes all the talent in the world can’t make a successful movie adaptation.
The story
It’s late in World War II, and Air Force Captain Yossarian is in one hell of a bind. Like every other man in Colonel Cathcart’s battalion, he’s flown a ridiculous number of missions. Yossarian knows it’s only a matter of time before his luck runs out and he’s killed. But he learns that while only a crazy man would agree to fly more missions, by asking to be sent home he proves that he’s sane, and therefore fit to fly. It’s a catch, and it even has a name: Catch-22.
The book
Catch-22 has become such a part of the culture that even people who haven’t read it or seen the film adaptation know what a “catch-22” situation is. Because of this, people who haven’t read the book may feel they know what it’s about, which is a shame; while the joke of catch-22 is funny (and like all the book’s jokes it turns dark in the book’s last few chapters), there’s much more to the novel than that joke.
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