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This weekend I watched Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. Ah, the eighties. Shoulder pads and big hair on the women, more hair on Bill Murray, and action-comedy films with more dialogue than explosions. Ghostbusters especially feels dated, though not in a bad way; even the special effects stand up quite well. But there were more actors and fewer explosions than I would expect in a comparable present-day film, more money spent on extras and locations and less on crane shots or skyline flyovers. (Perhaps they didn't need to use the establishing-helicopter-shot-of-the skyline because they actually did film in New York City some of the time, as opposed to Toronto, where the urban exteriors for most American films seem to be shot.)
"Back off, man. I'm a scientist." Hee!
I think the ghosts in the movie work as a metaphor for the crime that was (I think?) particular rampant in New York in the early eighties. It's an urban-restoration fantasy.
About Ghostbusters 2 I can only ask why. Why was this film not on endless loop on every American tv channel at Christmas 2001? The Statue of Liberty walks through the streets of Manhattan to generate positive energy from the unhappy New Yorkers, and then uses her torch to smash the concentrated evil jello-mold thing! How is that not what we, as a nation, needed to see?
Last night I finally finished Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which I've been picking up and putting down for months. It's a remarkable group biography of four American Catholic writers, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. Picking it up as I did, however, without more than a few faint impressions about the Catholic Worker movement and knowledge of the names Merton and O'Connor, I wasn't able to really appreciate the interweavings of the four lives. I was busy trying to keep track of what decade the overall narrative was in, and to assimilate the brute facts of each life. Though it's natural enough given the literary focus of the book, it frustrated me that the subjects' personal connections were so glossed over. I particularly wondered about Day's relationship with her daughter and the phantom grandchildren who appear only to carry her coffin. It would be good to read it again, after reading a regular biography of Day, and some Merton, and the O'Connor stories that Elie makes the most of in his analysis.
In Buffyverse fanfic news, I highly recommend Facing the Heart in Darkness by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liz_marcs. It's a story about the New Council and Xander in Africa, told from the point of view of one of the holdovers from the old council, and it's terrific. It is also a work in progress, but it seems quite sure to be finished sooner rather than later.
"Back off, man. I'm a scientist." Hee!
I think the ghosts in the movie work as a metaphor for the crime that was (I think?) particular rampant in New York in the early eighties. It's an urban-restoration fantasy.
About Ghostbusters 2 I can only ask why. Why was this film not on endless loop on every American tv channel at Christmas 2001? The Statue of Liberty walks through the streets of Manhattan to generate positive energy from the unhappy New Yorkers, and then uses her torch to smash the concentrated evil jello-mold thing! How is that not what we, as a nation, needed to see?
Last night I finally finished Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which I've been picking up and putting down for months. It's a remarkable group biography of four American Catholic writers, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. Picking it up as I did, however, without more than a few faint impressions about the Catholic Worker movement and knowledge of the names Merton and O'Connor, I wasn't able to really appreciate the interweavings of the four lives. I was busy trying to keep track of what decade the overall narrative was in, and to assimilate the brute facts of each life. Though it's natural enough given the literary focus of the book, it frustrated me that the subjects' personal connections were so glossed over. I particularly wondered about Day's relationship with her daughter and the phantom grandchildren who appear only to carry her coffin. It would be good to read it again, after reading a regular biography of Day, and some Merton, and the O'Connor stories that Elie makes the most of in his analysis.
In Buffyverse fanfic news, I highly recommend Facing the Heart in Darkness by
liz_marcs. It's a story about the New Council and Xander in Africa, told from the point of view of one of the holdovers from the old council, and it's terrific. It is also a work in progress, but it seems quite sure to be finished sooner rather than later.