Joan Lecture Series A Success

M J Maddox — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:34:22 +0000

The turnout was small, but participation was enthusiastic for the 3-session lecture series on Joan of Arc that I did for the Osher Institute in May.

A tornado passed over during the first session, but all we did was head for the basement and then return to the lecture room.

There’s not much that I enjoy more than talking and writing about Joan of Arc. For the series I made two powerpoint presentations and a viewer’s guide. The guide is called A Joan for All Seasons. It presents the historical record that exists about Joan and compares the known facts with tradition and cinematic interpretations. At the moment it treats the six best-known (in the U.S.) movies about Joan of Arc, but I may decide to expand it to include the Jacques Rivette two-parter with Sandrine Bonnaire.

Jacques Rivette's The Maid

Osher Lectures May 10, 17, 24

M J Maddox — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:57:21 +0000

from A Joan for All Seasons

My viewer’s guide to six 20th century movies about Joan of Arc, A Joan for All Seasons, is finished. I’ll be making it available on CD to participants in the lecture series I’m giving for the Osher Learning Institute at the University of Arkansas. A print copy will be available later.

The Osher program will consist of three sessions:

Monday, May 10

The Historical Joan of Arc, 4-5:30 p.m. Fayetteville GC, Room 107: what is known about her from the historical record.

Monday, May 17

The Cinematic Joan of Arc, 4-5:30 p.m., Fayetteville GC, Room 107: how she has been portrayed in six 20th century movies: Joan the Woman (1918), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Joan of Arc (1948), Saint Joan (1957), Joan of Arc (1999), The Messenger (1999).

Monday, May 24

Showing of Victor Fleming’s uncut version of Joan of Arc, 2-5:30 p.m., Fayetteville GC, Room 107.

The contents of A Joan for All Seasons:

PART ONE: The Historical Joan

Introduction

Joan’s Personal World

Joan’s Political World

Joan’s Mission

Joan’s Military Career

Joan’s Last Year

Joan’s Afterlife

PART TWO: The Cinematic Joan

Overview

DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1917)

Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948)

Preminger’s Saint Joan (1957)

1999 The Times

Duguay’s Joan of Arc (1999

Besson’s The Messenger (1999)

Conclusion

Movies About Joan of Arc

M J Maddox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:12:26 +0000

My fascination with the story of Joan of Arc (1412-1431) shows no sign of abating. When I finished my 2004 Ph.D. dissertation about her and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Keeping Her in Her Place: the Perpetual Imprisonment of Joan of Arc, I thought I was done. Then, in 2008, I returned to the subject in order to prepare the dissertation’s publication as Portrayals of Joan of Arc in Film.

Now, as 2009 draws to a close, I’m back to Joan. I’ve transferred six movie reviews from another site to this one. And I’m preparing another book, this time one not intended for an academic audience.

A Joan for All Seasons is a viewer’s guide to Joan of Arc movies, chiefly the six major Joan movies made during the 20th century by Cecil B. DeMille, Theodore Dreyer, Victor Fleming, Otto Preminger, Christian Duguay and Luc Besson.

The guide is arranged in two parts. Part One summarizes the facts about the historical woman known as Joan of Arc. Part Two describes six major films made in 1917, 1928, 1948, 1957 and 1999. The effect is to show that the Joan of the films owes more to the periods in which the movies were made than to the historical reality. Into every generation a Joan is born!

For brief reviews of the six films of my studies, see this new page: Joan of Arc Movies.

Copies of Candlestick Still Available

M J Maddox — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:03:00 +0000

My juvenile time travel novels, The Secret of the Silver Candlestick and The Secret of the Painted Idol, are out of print, but a few copies of the first volume are available and can be ordered from Amazon or directly from me.

Here’s the back cover blurb for Candlestick:

TRAPPED IN A TIME VORTEX
Moshe and Kevin had no idea that the mysterious silver candlestick from the Holy Land would transport them through time–back thousands of years.
Life in the time of Moses is exciting when everyone thinks you’re princes from an exotic foreign country. But Moshe and Kevin quickly discover that they have troubles–big troubles. Like becoming slaves to power-hungry Lord Korah–the enemy of Moses and Aaron…And working in a foul-smelling tannery with a man who likes to chop up sheep while they’re still alive.
What can Moshe and Kevin do when Lord Korah forces them to join his evil plot to take control?
How can they stop him?
But most of all…
How can they get back to the twentieth century?

The books were published in 1984 and 1985, respectively. A German translation of Candlestick was published in 1990 as Das Geheimnis des goldenen Leuchters.

Now that I have fulfilled all my duties as teacher, mother and child, I’m ready to get back to writing fiction. I may even revive Moshe and his friends for another adventure, this time into the future.

See ALTER-EGOS for an explanation of the name on these books.

Starting Over

M J Maddox — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:29:57 +0000

I’ve done it again–lost all the articles I composed directly into Wordpress. Just in case anyone else out there is as inexperienced as I am, here’s a word of caution. Compose your articles in your word processing program and save them to your own hard drive. THEN upload them to your Wordpress blog. I keep failing to heed my own advice and now I have to reconstruct several carefully written pages that I composed directly into Wordpress.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

M J Maddox — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:29:07 +0000

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson (Based on Oil by Upton Sinclair)

Main Cast Members
Daniel Day-Lewis: Daniel Plainview, a driven misanthropist who makes a fortune by drilling oil and cheating landowners. His devouring hatred of humanity is never explained.
Dillon Freasier: H.W., the son who accompanies Plainview as he persuades landowners to lease him their land for oil exploration.
Paul Dano: Paul Sunday, the son of a religious fanatic who beats his daughter if she refuses to pray. Paul seeks out Plainview to tell him about the oil on his father’s land. Once having done so, he disappears from the story.
Paul Dano: Eli Sunday, Paul’s religious brother. He heads the church of the Third Revelation whose congregation is made up of the landowners Plainview is exploiting. Eli is as greedy and as ruthless as Plainview, but his area of exploitation is religious prophecy. He becomes a successful radio evangelist.
Sydney McCallister: Mary Sunday as a child. She grows up to marry H.W.
Kevin J. O’Connor: Henry, Plainview’s long-lost half brother.

Maybe because I’d not seen any previous film made by Daniel Day-Lewis, when I watched There Will Be Blood I didn’t know that I was supposed to be overwhelmed by his acting. Certainly his portrayal of mad man Daniel Plainview maintains its maniacal intensity from start to finish, but until I watch Gangs of New York or My Left Foot, I have nothing to compare it to.

The fact that I watched the movie in several sessions is evidence that I found it less than gripping. Many of the scenes are dimly lit, showing Plainview and other characters in shadow or covered in dirt or oil. The sequence of the burning oil derrick is spectacular and may be the reason Robert Ellsworth won an Oscar for best cinematography, although I expect much of it was achieved with digitalized effects.

There Will Be Blood is loosely based on the 1927 novel Oil by Upton Sinclair.

Very loosely.

As Sinclair wrote after seeing the first film based on one of his novels,

it is the amiable custom of the film producers … to take an author’s name and the title of his book, and then write an entirely different story of their own, which they think will please the public better.

In the case of the film based on Oil, Director Anderson changed the title as well as the story.

In the novel the father and son–James Arnold Ross senior and junior–are in a mutually loving relationship from beginning to end. The conflict between them arises as the son– in the novel the point of view character–rejects the business tactics that enrich a few and devastate the lives of the many.

So, apart from the fact that it is not faithful to its source, what are the qualities of There Will Be Blood that garnered it eleven Academy Award nominations and two Oscars?
According to a commentator on the IMDb website, viewers either love this movie or despise it. I can’t say that I despise it, but I certainly don’t see what all the fuss was about.

I suppose I relate to a movie most easily when I can identify with one or more of the characters. In order to do that, I have to know something about them. Ideally they will share my ideas of right and wrong, but even if they are outside the law, I can still find some measure of empathy for the criminal who has some code of honor, no matter how skewed. For example, Leon in Besson’s The Professional, or even the relentless assassin in No Country for Old Men.

There Will Be Blood is devoid of characters to relate to. The two main ones, Plainview and Eli, are evil, deranged men who exploit people the way oil barons exploit natural resources. The little boy H.W. is as inscrutable as Plainview. When the grown up H.W. confronts Plainview and tells him that he loves him, one can only exclaim Huh?! The film-maker has shown us nothing to lend any credibility to the statement.

No Country for Old Men is implacably cruel, but I get it. I watched it reluctantly, prepared to hate it and came away an admirer. It’s savagely violent, but it is art and it says something worth saying.

There Will Be Blood is an ugly film with no redeeming story, theme, or point. It’s as if its only reason for being is to provide a platform for Daniel Day-Lewis’s impersonation of John Houston.

Hmm. Maybe I do despise it.

And while I’m at it, the musical score, which got an Academy Award nomination, sounds as if it were pieced together for some other purpose, and, except for the title, the Gothic lettering on the credits is impossible to read.
—
Further Reading:
Upton Sinclair, Lost in the Hollywood jungle

`There Will Be Blood,’ Upton Sinclair, and religion
My review of No Country for Old Men (2007)

Maeve’s Tips July 2007

M J Maddox — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:42:26 +0000

NOTE: Links not active in Archives View. Go to original post.

* 31: Lying in State: Changing Perceptions Change Language
* 29: Less is More When it Comes to “Unique”

* 28: Who Is My Neighbor?
* 26: Orwell: Timeless Guidelines for Writers
* 24: Folks versus People
* 24: English Spelling is Not Total Chaos
* 19: “Putting on Airs” or Expressing One’s Thoughts?
* 17: Breaking the Lockjam and Buttoning Down the Hatches
* 16: Less/Fewer; Number/Amount: Still Salvageable
* 14: Where and Whence
* 12: Dealing with “he said” and “she said”
* 11: Five Frequently Misused Verbs: Go, Come, Write, Give, and Eat
* 10: Loose or Lose?
* 09: Lay/Lie: Moribund, but Not Dead Yet
* 05: Idiomatic English
* 04: Mind Your -ed’s
* 02: Prepositions for the Perplexed
* 01: When to use “on” and when to use “in”

Maeve’s Tips June 2007

M J Maddox — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 21:25:55 +0000

NOTE: Links not active in Archives View. Go to original post.

* 29: Consistent Style Sheet Eliminates Value Judgments
* 26: Me, Myself, and I

* 25: Careful with Words Used as Noun and Verb
* 22: The Possessive Apostrophe
* 21: Whatever Happened to “Arrested”?
* 21: Beware the shifting tense
* 19: All Pronoun Cases Are Created Equal
* 18: The Gentleman Fled on Foot
* 13: Advertising May Be Harmful to Your Spelling
* 07: I Hate “Kids”
* 03: Beware of “Whom”

Maeve’s First Tip May 2007

M J Maddox — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:20:12 +0000

NOTE: Links not active in Archives View. Go to original post.

This, my first post to the site, remains one of the most commented on.

30: Let the Word Do the Work