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Last of the Mohicans.<\/b>\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\nAs brought to life with Daniel Day Lewis as Hawkeye, Last of the Mohicans<\/i> hearkens to that colonial time that, by my feelings, still resonates with the fall.\u00a0 I would probably watch this closer to October or late September, but given our penchant for watching spook movies and supernatural fare during that time, there just isn\u2019t room. So it\u2019s off to the month of November. The movie is based, fairly loosely, on the book of the same name.\u00a0 But in many ways it simply takes the basic story arc and discards much of the nuance that Cooper brought to the novel.\u00a0 Cooper\u2019s novel was a celebration of American life on the frontier, a critique, as well as an attempt to understand the lives of the American Indians whose lands we were quickly overtaking.\u00a0 In this film version, there is little subtlety.\u00a0 Released in the shadow of Dances With Wolves<\/i>, there isn\u2019t much imagination needed to figure out who the bad guys are.\u00a0 Or, at least, who the incompetent guys are.\u00a0 Watching this, you\u2019re almost shocked that the Europeans could in any way overtake the far superior Indian society. <\/div>\n
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Unlike the novel, where Hawkeye is a bridge between the two cultures, observing and critiquing both while also advocating their better parts, in this version, Hawkeye is Indian in all but genetics.\u00a0 He has virtually no connection to the Christian Western culture, contempt for everything to do with it, and joins the other Indians and frontiersmen in their basic loathing and disregard for almost everything to do with their English and Western roots.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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Yet it was still in the 90s, and so the actual settlers were still considered innocent victims, and the sinister Magua, played brilliantly by Wes Studi, reminds us that not all Indians were capable of dying for the sins of humanity. \u00a0\u00a0Something that, by today, most treatments have forgotten as the Native is elevated to almost godlike status, and the hapless frontiersmen to the role of the demonic. <\/div>\n
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The Hobbit (Rankin\/Bass version) <\/b><\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/715\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-dzNtbcfIzI0\/VkdHgXjbw-I\/AAAAAAAAGbQ\/X0xQFBnhJ-k\/s400\/Rank%20and%20Bass%20Hobbit.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/div>\nFor my money, still the best film adaptation of a Tolkien work. Rankin and Bass\u2019s The Hobbit<\/i> is required viewing for our family in November.\u00a0 It was in November that the special originally aired.\u00a0 I only paid scant attention to it then.\u00a0 I had not heard of Tolkien at that point in my life.\u00a0 Nor was I overly interested in fantasy or myth.\u00a0 That would come later.\u00a0 My interests were mostly in history, especially the history of WWII. \u00a0If anything, my imagination had just taken a turn thanks to that little film about some spaceships and aliens in a galaxy far, far away.\u00a0 Still, I remember sitting in our family room (which was really just an old bedroom), with the TV on.\u00a0 I was playing with some toys, and this came on.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t interest me then.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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By college, I had discovered Tolkien and read his works.\u00a0 At first LoTRs more or less bored me, but I did find the Hobbit enjoyable.\u00a0 And what\u2019s more, I remembered the special when I first read the book, and was pleasantly surprised at how it established a basic understanding of the plot and the characters and the basic themes.\u00a0 Sure, there was no Arkenstone nor was there Beorn.\u00a0 But there was nothing added (hello, Peter Jackson).\u00a0 If nothing, I was bothered by the short treatment Thorin received.\u00a0 Otherwise, the acting talent, the background scenery, and the fealty to Tolkien\u2019s \u2018old world antiquity\u2019 that the basic design has, still holds a place in my heart.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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I know many can\u2019t stand it.\u00a0 Even in its day, it had its detractors, especially when it comes to the conceptual design of some of the character classes (dwarves and wood elves especially).\u00a0 Still, after Jackson\u2019s introduction of beardless, beefcake dwarf heartthrobs with elven love affairs, all of that license seems rather tame today.\u00a0 For us, it is a throwback to a time when fantasy was not yet mainstream or a billion dollar genre, when concepts of Toklien didn\u2019t include endless CGI murals, but instead had a simple candle with an open codex to remind us of the pre-modern world that the author himself envisioned. <\/div>\n
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Devil and Daniel Webster<\/b><\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/715\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-Vq7jJxQXPns\/VkdHf7sIuwI\/AAAAAAAAGbE\/YIM0wyb2U0I\/s400\/Devil%20and%20Daniel%20Webster.JPG\")
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<\/a><\/div>\nBased on the short story of the same name, and originally released under the title All That Money Can Buy<\/i>, this film is most enjoyable when the late, great Walter Houston is chewing up scenery as none other than Old Scratch himself.\u00a0 It\u2019s really a retelling of sorts of the old Faustian Bargain.\u00a0 James Craig is capable enough as Jabez Stone, a New England farmer who is down on his luck, and lashes out in a fit of rage that he would sell his soul for a break.\u00a0 In comes Walter Houston with just the answer: Money and all it can buy.\u00a0 Of course we know how that goes.\u00a0 At first fortune shines on gentleman farmer Stone, b
\nut pretty soon the lures of Hell begin to corrupt him.\u00a0 Eventually he finds his life falling apart and tries to get out of the bargain. \u00a0Old Scratch will have none of it, and it\u2019s the almost godlike Daniel Webster, played wonderfully by the always solid Edward Arnold, who steps in and saves the day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
\nut pretty soon the lures of Hell begin to corrupt him.\u00a0 Eventually he finds his life falling apart and tries to get out of the bargain. \u00a0Old Scratch will have none of it, and it\u2019s the almost godlike Daniel Webster, played wonderfully by the always solid Edward Arnold, who steps in and saves the day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
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In addition to being seeped in old colonial era frontier feel that I associate with fall, and the New England life that one naturally places at the foot of traditional Thanksgiving, the movie is noteworthy for being positive in its appraisal of America, while not hesitating to speak to its sins, albeit through the mouth of the Devil himself.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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Mayflower: Pilgrim\u2019s Adventure<\/b><\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/715\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-ogH6D3jEXAI\/VkdHf4caE1I\/AAAAAAAAGbY\/LxnA31ytg9c\/s400\/Mayflower.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/div>\nThe myth of myths is one of the banes of history.\u00a0 That is, the idea that people always believed what most probably never did, and therefore we must over emphasize things in ways that are probably as wrong as any myths people are supposed to have believed in the first place.\u00a0 So we have the now maligned pilgrims, treated as if they were worshiped as gods when, as early as I remember, we merely celebrated their courage and forbearance, and the promise of what could have been with the aid they received from the local American Indians.\u00a0 That was about it.\u00a0 And that was as early as first grade, c. 1972. \u00a0Yet we must emphasize the scandal, the bad, the negative.\u00a0 We must do that to offset that pesky myth, which from what I\u2019ve found, has never really existed.\u00a0 Just like I hear people say we have to stop the myth that Columbus went out to prove the world was flat! The only time I heard that was in Bugs Bunny reruns.\u00a0 As long as I remember, we were taught that Columbus did not do that.\u00a0 Same with the pilgrims.\u00a0 And so this special dared, in its day, to try to show the complexities of relationships between the passengers on that fateful voyage, and expose some of the warts and all of what went on.\u00a0 Compared to treatments that the poor pilgrims receive today, the movie is almost mythical in its own right.\u00a0 And perhaps that is what defines a myth.\u00a0 When a new generation rises up and no longer sees things through the same subjective prisms, the other ways must simply be because of myth. <\/div>\n
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Nonetheless, the movie itself is credible enough.\u00a0 Anthony Hopkins does a good job as Captain Jones, and Richard Crenna and the rest of the cast and film manages to maintain a sense of respect without mock sentimentality or that tiresome sense of irony that marks so many modern historical flicks. <\/div>\n
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The Exorcist<\/b><\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/715\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-Eyl9F4tYWs4\/VkdHhlRoXeI\/AAAAAAAAGbo\/So6AN90BM1I\/s400\/the%20exorcist%20II.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/div>\nPerhaps the most intense movie of terror ever made. I\u2019m not sure why, but this is November viewing for me.\u00a0 At the beginning of the movie, some Tricks-or-Treaters are shown running by under some fall foliage.\u00a0 It must be Halloween at the start of the story.\u00a0 Since no other holiday is mentioned, I imagine the events unfold over the next few weeks.\u00a0 By the end, the coldness of the weather is emphasized, trees are bare, but no snow or snowfall.\u00a0 So I imagine it is mostly through the month of November that the story happens.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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As a result, post-Halloween November is the perfect time for this. Not to mention that November is when the fall becomes the season of dead.\u00a0 The vibrancy of fall is usually, by now, a thing of the past.\u00a0 \u00a0Bare trees, brown and dried leaves, withered shrubs and browning grass all mark the turn toward the deadness of winter.\u00a0 It is, not unsurprisingly, this season when Satan attempts to explode into the world by seizing none other than strange Regan, daughter of non-religious, morally ambiguous actress.\u00a0 The acting is first rate, the possession scenes still intense and shocking ever after all these decades.\u00a0 <\/div>\n
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It\u2019s a nice reminder of good old fashioned good vs. evil, and so\u00a0 well known that nothing else needs to be said. <\/div>\n
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