Exploding plastic inevitable.
Factory strobo seizure.
A day.
Cross-dressing horror.
Bates. Hoover.
A Bundy log.
A slick exterior. Petrified.
We hold out hope.
Umbrellas.
Craven (brisure).
A strange look and a mystery.
-PD
Tag Archives: Norman Bates
Hard Candy [2005)
Norma Bates.
[sic]
Meets Paul Kersey.
Vigilante.
You know…
It’s not often I watch horror films.
I had a bad experience once with the schlock of the genre.
Sleepwalkers (1992).
I never really forgave Stephen King for that one.
But perhaps the story was just muffed in the inept hands of Mick Garris?
Well, whatever the case may be: Hard Candy is compelling cinema.
Yes, charge me with the crime of our age.
The worship of youth.
Ephebophilia is hammered into our heads by the nonstop spectacle.
It is chronophilia from 15-19. Age range.
You’re attracted to young people.
So many nuances.
There’s hebephilia. 11-14.
Perhaps it is this which is most germane to our film.
Ellen Page is a star.
Sure, it’s a bit trendy…after Monster in 2003.
But I’ve seen that one…and Hard Candy is more compelling.
Ellen Page is more compelling.
Page plays a 14-year-old named Hayley.
Such a quintessential name. Like Caitlyn (and its derivative spellings).
Top hit? [Sponsored content?] Hayley Williams of the band Paramore.
Youth.
Hayley Williams. 27. Looks plenty young.
The worship of youth.
Red hair. Porcelain skin. Not a wrinkle in sight.
Hayley [sic]. Peak U.S. popularity in 1990s.
Et voila! Hayley Williams born 1988. That’s about right.
How about Haley? Also peaked in the 1990s. And about three times more common than the Hayley spelling.
[This is the honors-student logic of Hayley Stark in our film. Really a genius detail.]
Let’s try Hailey. Oooh! Most popular yet! And peaked in 2005 🙂
There’s also Haylee (trailer-trash rare…peak 2009), Hayleigh (a recent trend peaking in 2011…almost with a Cajun ring to it), and the ultra-rare Haylie (a dainty spelling which peaked in 2007).
These are the keys to the safe.
Yes, it’s a very bad day for Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson).
Hell of a performance.
To wake up with your balls in your mouth.
Not just a figurative Quantum of Solace reference.
Sure, it’s a bit like Misery with Kathy Bates.
So, see: the Norma Bates wisecrack wasn’t so off in another way.
Let me clarify.
Hard Candy is not a great film, but it’s pretty damned good.
The direction is good.
Patrick Wilson is good.
The scenario/script is good.
Ellen Page is great.
She’s not perfect.
There’s a few moments when the tension is so ridiculous that she almost breaks character.
Not a relaxing movie.
My first “horror” review.
I love Psycho. It’s artful.
But chasing Hitchcock down that path can be a very treacherous exercise for auteurs.
David Slade does a fine job.
This film most certainly does not suck.
But again, Hulu: I just wanted to watch a fucking comedy.
And your dramas still blow.
Ended up in horror.
God damn, you people suck at your jobs.
-PD
SNL Season 1 Episode 16 [1976)
I started writing about TV ostensibly as reportage on this medium relative to cinema.
With this particular episode of Saturday Night Live, the two converge in a unique way.
The host is Anthony Perkins.
Cinephiles will probably know him as Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s indispensable Psycho (1960).
Really, this is a remarkable installment of SNL.
Perkins actually delivers a sort of anti-monologue.
In another unnamed scene, he acts as a psychologist who relies on the power of show tunes (specifically “Hello, Dolly!”) to cure a hopeless case (Jane Curtin).
Perkins is magnificent throughout this odd marriage of the disposable and the timeless.
But we must also mention Chevy Chase.
By this time, Chase was becoming the star of the show.
I almost feel bad for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (not to mention all the other talented players), but Chase lived up to the opportunity.
What is apparent in this particular show is that Chevy Chase was/is as talented an actor as Anthony Perkins.
I know that statement reeks of provocateuring, but I believe it to be true in several ways.
Namely, Chase was able to keep a straight face during some hilarious bits. Put another way, it’s hard to be serious while evoking laughter.
We see Perkins have more trouble with it. It’s not easy. And so Chevy Chase has probably been unjustly maligned as a mediocre actor when the opposite is true.
Witness, for instance, the opening sequence of this March 13th airing. It is highly-intelligent humor. I could see Samuel Beckett getting a kick out of it.
And so the writers would get credit. Yes, it is a brilliant concept. The show had been toying with more-and-more self-referential humor. Not to give too much away, but the first skit is the equivalent of writing music ABOUT MUSIC!
I’ve done it. Truly, it takes a damaged soul to end up at such a twisted place.
And so thank God for Saturday Night Live…these outcasts and miscreants who gave the world a laugh starting in 1975.
They were always surprising. That’s the key. Even with the trademark “fall” at the beginning of the show. Something in each episode is astounding. Cutting-edge. Leading-edge. Bleeding-edge.
This show is no different. What a masterstroke to pair Anthony Perkins with Betty Carter.
At first, I was thinking Betty Davis. I mean, come on: this was 1976!
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Betty Carter is magical here (particularly on her first number).
I’ve never been into jazz vocalists. I know the big names. Ella Fitzgerald. Sarah Vaughan.
They never did anything for me.
I hate to admit that.
I can listen to instrumental jazz all day. It is divine!
Indeed, the only jazz vocalist who mattered to me was Billie Holiday. Particularly her last album Lady in Satin.
But Betty Carter is something different.
It’s real. Bebop VOCALS. Not a bunch of showoff scat singing.
Betty Carter sang like a horn player.
Saxophone…Coltrane.
When she locked down on a note she held it…like it was keyed in her blood.
What breath control!
It’s real stuff.
If you want to hear a little bit of New York in the 70s, here’s a bit of jazz to do any place proud.
Carter was from Flint, Michigan, but she sounds right at home broadcasting from the biggest stage in the world.
There’s TV, and then there’s SNL.
-PD
Notorious [1946)
The key in Ingrid’s hand. The ring on Grace’s finger. It’s not her key. It’s not her ring.
Rio is beautiful…even in black and white. Only Hitchcock could make it so. Christ of the Andes. The greatest creator of forms of the 20th century.
Icy. Pithy. Notorious is stoic Cary Grant. And this shall be a terse dispatch.
It’s a very fine vintage…1946…1940…1934. I pity the sommelier assigned to this house of horrors. God forbid he pick the 1934. You can tell, old man, when a seemingly-polished chap makes a completely inappropriate choice of wines. Strangers on a train bound for Zagreb. Yes, a keen eye for detail is certainly not to be underestimated.
T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) knows every trick in the book. When to bluff. When to kiss.
It is only when matters of the heart come into play that the C.I.A. has no official manual. It will never be declassified. Because it doesn’t exist. The manual is Petrarch. Shakespeare’s sonnets. The manual was written long ago. It is no secret. Only a mystery.
We will kill her off slowly, they say…on the installment plan. She will gargle in the rat-race choir. Until Devlin comes with his pointed threats to bluff with scorn and Claude Rains is left like a groom standing at the altar…except it’s not his wedding, it’s his funeral.
It’s the way they killed Sindona in Voghera. Poison in the coffee. C.A.B.A.L. It’s not a Fleming invention. Far older than that. And I.G. Farben…not a fanciful name plucked from Hitchcock’s imagination.
Mata Hari. Theda Bara. Arab Death.
MacGuffin. Mackintosh. Scotland Yard.
This was the first time Hitchcock was really in charge. Byb-bye David O. Selznick.
Ben Hecht. Clifford Odets.
This is really loose crap.
That’s a quote. ” ”
This is a puzzle, dear friends. This is your dossier. Jigsaw. Fragmented.
It is Vivre sa vie. The back of a head only. Cary Grant’s black hair. A man, as yet, with no name.
Susan Sontag was on a different mission. We defer to Cahiers du Cinéma. To Henri Langlois.
These are our agents. Our “Wild Bill” Donovans. Our O.S.S.
She may not sniff it through a cane on a supersonic train, but it still makes me laugh. Murnau more now than ever.
A full 360°. The subjective, drunken camera. We have suspicion of Grant from the start–is that fizzy aspirin or a glowing glass of milk?
The con man exploits your trust. What was the bait?
It is like Dostoyevsky. We feel sympathy for Norman Bates just as we do Raskolnikov.
Yes, sometimes…Mother Sebastian, we are protected by the enormity of our stupidity. Forrest Gumption.
The key was stolen. The key brought such luck. The key was passed on. And now, Mr. Hitchcock, the key has been returned.
Thank you.
-PD
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