The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide: The Measure: Film

Werewolves, Vampires, Tweens, Twilight, New Moon, I am Tired, Meh

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jonny Diamond) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:01:00 -0500

Because the most important movie of OUR TIME is coming out tonight, we decided to give into America's craze for Vampires vs. Werewolves and round up some of our favorite clips of the genres' respective money shots: The wolf transformation, and the vampire suck. Here are two (just a taste), followed by like a billion after the jump. (Thanks to intern Deirdre for her tireless YouTube searching...)

An American Werewolf in Paris
This is probably the least sexy Julie Delpy nude moment you will ever see on screen, though not as laughable as some of those scenes with Ethan Hawke in those dumb sunrise/sunset movies.

Interview with a Vampire
"Dear Brad,
Thanks for showing me who I really am. These feelings I've been bottling up for so long were finally released on set with you and I can't tell you how wonderful it is. Today, I am a new man. A gay man. Ever yours, Tom Cruise.
P.S. I think this all started (me being gay) with Lea Thompson on the set of All Right the Moves."

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Tim Burton is a Lot Funnier Than His Marketing Managers Let On

editor@thelmagazine.com (Henry Stewart) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:44:00 -0500

My colleague Benjamin Sutton should have a fuller review of this show up soon, but in the meantime here's a brief impression:

Though Tim Burton has a few comedies, or at least comedy-hybrids, on his director’s resume, his name doesn’t conjure thoughts of hilarity: instead, he is known as the Modern Master of the Macabre, the social misfit with an imagination toggling between the eerie and nightmarish. And so the highlights of the new MoMA lifetime retrospective, which features film screenings and several galleries of sketches, storyboards, video projects and movie artifacts, aren’t the pieces that conform to the familiar conception—in which the curators revel reductively—of the troubled artist eager to reject the suburban manicurerie of his youth, though die-hard fans (often with hair of unnatural hues) will appreciate the rarae aves: the Vincent models behind glass, the Batman hoods, the commercials, music videos, early work for television, recent flash animation projects, and the career-spanning character sketches, so rich that they make one wish some of his live-action features (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory especially) had been animated (by hand) instead. No, the most revealing works adorning the museum walls are the sketchbook pieces that reveal an intimate lighter side, particularly those in a series from the 80s that might have felt at home as single-panel cartoons in a magazine circulated only in the afterlife.

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Your Weekend at the Movies, "Just to See What All the Fuss Is About"

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jesse Hassenger) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:56:00 -0500

New Moon: The continuing adventures of Weirdface & Twitchy, and by "adventures" I mean moping in and around trees. New Moon: Revenge of Twilight looks to sink to new depths of unintentional minimalism by sidelining the main vampire in Italy for most of the movie, providing what I assume will be an ineffective werewolf substitute. It's definitely a werewolf, though, rather than a more interesting wolf-man: in a flash, that muscley guy who almost got fired after the first movie morphs into a T-shirt-ready all-fours wolf, not some kind of badass hybrid. I will see this for the same reason I sometimes flip to the Disney Channel: because bad stuff that people between the ages of ten and eighteen enjoy is inherently more interesting to me than plain old regular bad movies and TV shows.

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Wes Anderson Knows He's Made the Second Greatest Animated Fox Movie of All Time

editor@thelmagazine.com (Mark Asch) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:29:00 -0500

So, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is a delightful dioramarama that gets the best out of its director's obsession with controlled play; perhaps due to its natural, sweet address to kids, his usual unresolved conflicts—chiefly, the problems of stepping out of a world of your own making and understanding the needs of others—feel less petulant than in his prior film (and less precious than in another recent film we could name).

It also features, as the background music in an early, pastoral scene, the song "Love", an Oscar-nominated number from Disney's 1973 film of Robin Hood, the movie your film editor watched more times than any other movie in the years before he watched The Princess Bride more than any other movie.

In Disney's Robin Hood, of course, Robin Hood and Maid Marian are loving foxes as well. Roald Dahl's Mr. Fox (the book was published in 1970) is himself a Robin Hood figure, a dashing, justified thief who, along with his gang of fellow-animals (badgers, rabbits, etc in both Disney and Dahl), risks life and limb to steal from comically greedy English landowners.

Is the song in question embedded after the jump? Oh gee I don't know better click on the jump and find out.

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Omar Bin Laden Interested in Peacemaking Role at UN. Yes, That Bin Laden.

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jonny Diamond) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:21:00 -0500

You know, we can't all be held accountable for the sins of our fathers. Omar Bin Laden agrees with me, and is just kind of bummed about his dad, Osama. The fourth son of the skinny old terrorist demagogue [pictured, btw, second from the right in happier, pre-demagogue times] told the New Statesmen, wistfully:

Although my father was stern and did not hesitate to use his cane, there were good times when he stopped his war plans and played with us.

Which is kind of like how my dad would sometimes stop watching Canadian football and tell me to get him a beer. Lil Bin Laden also revealed a possible career path, demonstrating a pretty shrewd sense of the current American political climate:

I would like to be in a position to promote peace. I believe that the United Nations would be ideal for me.

C U THERE! Also, he likes horses.

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Famous Vampire Robert Pattinson Would Appear Nude On Film for Money

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jonny Diamond) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:51:00 -0500

Yes, we know. Here is some news about famous handsome person Robert Pattinson. He would appear naked. On film. When not asked whether that would include full frontal, Mr. Pattinson did not deny it. Which means he'd totally show peen. All of humanity to rejoice.

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Postwar Italian Cinema + Gogol = Comedy Gold

editor@thelmagazine.com (Simon Abrams) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:55:00 -0500

Though the Film Society at Lincoln Center has done the general public the serve of screening the rarely exhibited Alberto Lattuada's The Overcoat (1952) this afternoon and tonight, they're doing it during the wrong program. The Overcoat will screen as part of "Life Lessons," the FSLC's more-than-comprehensive collection of Italian Neo-realist films, even though it is more like a traditional entry in the "Commedia all'Italiana" cycle of films.

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Your Extremely, Like Really, Like Incredibly Apocalyptic Weekend at the Movies

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jesse Hassenger) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:03:00 -0500

2012: I am so not even kidding when I tell you I am fucking pumped for this movie, like a bro before a beer-pong tournament. From what I've seen, it looks like the filmmakers made a list of notable monuments that had not yet been pitilessly destroyed in a movie, then destroyed them all on their supercomputers. Then they made a second list of monuments that had already been pitilessly destroyed in a movie, then destroyed them all again on their supercomputers, but in far worse and more elaborate ways, like having an aircraft carrier ride a tidal wave into the White House somehow, or having a tornado drop the Great Wall of China into a volcano (I'm just assuming that second thing happens in the movie, because I'm assuming the filmmakers also had a computer program running through every possible combination of monumental destruction and pitiless loss of CGI lives). Said filmmakers include director Roland Emmerich, master of the extremely stupid large-scale spectacle. One of his massive-disaster movies delivers the stupid, stupid goods (Independence Day) while another mostly doesn't (the one where the cold chases people around a building). Although: the two-and-a-half-hour running time brings to mind my younger days, when I was totally pumped to find out the Godzilla remake was going to be about two-and-a-half hours, because I assumed, erroneously as it turned out, that it would have ten minutes of plot and 130 or so of Godzilla smashing the ever-loving fuck out of the world. That, for the record, is the folly of Emmerich's Godzilla, not that it doesn't have a dude in a suit: that its destruction is far less spectacular than a Godzilla-as-natural-disaster movie warrants. Looks like my incompetent German friend saved all of the goods for what I'm hoping will be a marathon of ridiculous apocalyptic crap that's nowhere near as actually-effective as, say, War of the Worlds or Cloverfield. You've had the best, Emmerich seems to be saying; now it's my turn (again).

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Please Please Me Will, in Fact, Please You

editor@thelmagazine.com (Henry Stewart) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:15:00 -0500

Imagine if Woody Allen had followed Annie Hall with Take the Money and Run! Emmanuel Mouret, unfortunately, now joins the list of comic directors—Wes Anderson, Christopher Guest—who succeeded poignant, mere-comedy transcending near-masterpieces with follow-ups that signal artistic regression. Coming on the heels of the sumptuous and heartbreaking Shall We Kiss? (Un Baiser s'il Vous Plaît), the hilarious and handsomely shot Please Please Me! (Fais-moi plaisir!) (which closes BAM's New French Films series on Sunday) is a goofy, mostly physical comedy about a day and night in the life of a man (Mouret) desperately seeking, a la Curb Your Enthusiasm’s fourth season, some girlfriend-sanctioned, extra-relationship relations.]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Tim Burton Directs Trailer for Tim Burton Exhibition at MoMA

editor@thelmagazine.com (Benjamin Sutton) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:45:00 -0500

The blockbuster exhibition of the winter (sorry Urs Fischer), MoMA's Tim Burton retrospective, opens in a little over a week (November 22). Just in case you were thinking of forgetting, the museum commissioned Burton to direct a cute promo for his show. It's a typically Burtonesque affair, with a steampunk Frankenstein monster-ish robot inflating balloons that look like they were designed by Niki de Saint Phalle. Check it out after the jump. (Design:Related)

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Jerry Lewis Demands Respect for the Way He Made You Giggle Like a 12-Year-Old

editor@thelmagazine.com (Mark Asch) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:32:00 -0500

Jerry Lewis's cross-eyed, pained schtick tests (often testily) the limits of our sympathy for the loser underdog. His put-upon characters pull faces to demand our attention, force a decision as to whether they're pitiful or pathetic; if early Adam Sandler ever struck you as the declawed version of something, this is it. Writing about Anthology's Directed by Jerry Lewis series, which begins tonight, J. Hoberman drops some psychoanalytic science; The Errand Boy, playing tomorrow night and next Wednesday night, is an allegory for the popular lowbrow comic's career, on the terms of his own insecure psyche.

This self-professed "idiot" plays Morty S. Tashman ("What's the S for?" "Scared. I'm frightened at a lot of things."), a gofer used as a patsy by the head of "Paramutual" Pictures, who wants an on-set mole. Paramutual is full of petty tyrants, slobbering sycophants, bellowing auteurs and death-scene divas, and bumbling Morty wrecks the Hollywood studio, gag by gag: unleashing a flurry of script pages in the typing pool; spraying a firehose of champagne all over a period-piece set; knocking down a domino row of suits of armors (then revealed to be filled with extras); singing off-key during a dubbing session, and tapdancing his way through the fourth wall in an elaborate crane shot.

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At Performa: Man and Machine Film Program

editor@thelmagazine.com (Alexis Clements) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:47:00 -0500

“The more perfect the machine, the less noise it makes.” This from Luigi Russolo, one of the more prominent Futurist composers and author of yet another one of the group’s important manifestos, The Art of Noises.

One of Russolo’s primary innovations both for the Futurists and for noise enthusiasts since, was his creation of noise-intoners (pictured). These intoners were literally a series of machines that created a variety of mechanical sounds that Russolo composed for and used to perform live soundtracks for silent films being made by his cohorts in the Futurist movement. It’s this last purpose that was brought back to life last night during a screening of three films at Anthology Film Archives as part of Performa 09.

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Sam Fuller's Art of Gracelessness

editor@thelmagazine.com (Cullen Gallagher) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:31:00 -0500

Samuel Fuller's movies are equal parts street corner and gutter, a combination of two-inch-headline journalistic hullabaloo and pulp poetics. Andrew Sarris called him "an authentic American primitive," while Dana Polan described him as "the opposite of graceful; his style seems to suggest that in a world where grace provides little redemption, its utilization would be a kind of lie." This one-of-a-kind, immediately recognizable persona is on full display in Sony's seven disc box set The Samuel Fuller Collection, which pulls together seven hard-to-find films that the cigar-chomping filmmaker was involved in, none of which were previously available on DVD.

Among the most coveted of Fuller's works featured here are The Crimson Kimono (1959) and Underworld U.S.A. (1961), two stories of crime and society told from opposite ends of the moral spectrum: one from the cops, and one from the crooks. In the tradition of 1930s Warner Bros. gangster pictures such as The Public Enemy (1931), Underworld U.S.A. is a street-punk picaresque, beginning with a teenage Tolly Devlin rolling drunks in alleys. After witnessing the murder of his father by four shadowy figures, he begins a life-long quest to uncover the identity of the murderers and exact revenge. However, it isn't until twenty years later that Devlin (now played by Cliff Robertson) gets his chance. Working for both the mobs and the cops, he ruthlessly plays both ends against the middle in a vigilante attempt at taking down organized crime.

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Happy Robert Ryan Centennial, Everyone

editor@thelmagazine.com (Mark Asch) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:51:00 -0500

Robert Ryan, in your film editor's opinion the greatest actor in the history of cinema, was born 100 years ago today, in Chicago. The Chicago Reader is all over the occasion, offering the expected rundown of his iconic performances (well, some of them, there were a lot), alongside Reader film editor J.R. Jones's feature about his life, which draws from a rather fascinating primary source. In the 50s, Ryan wrote a letter to his three children: "The time might come someday to one of you—or all of you—when you become curious about my early life. If that should ever happen, you will have this record to tell you." The Reader has the full letter; both it and Jones's article offer a rich history of Chicago life and politics in the early twentieth century, and paint a revealing picture of the eloquent, introspective, guarded actor. Which should come as no surprise, really.

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Learn to Dodge Bullets, Drag Ocean Liners Over Mountains at Wener Herzog's Rogue Film School

editor@thelmagazine.com (Robert Tumas) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:02:00 -0500

The faculty of the Rogue Film School, lecturing students in Taking an Insane Method Actor with a Messiah Complex into the Dark Heart of the South American Jungle 101.

Werner Herzog has never been one to back down from a challenge, and for that matter, neither have the young filmmakers who are his fans and idolaters.�Previously, these disciples of cinematic truth could only dream about matching the achievements of their messiah of film, but thankfully, after years of listening to them speak in tongues and German accents, Werner Herzog has answered their prayers. The�Rogue Film School, in Los Angeles, is set to open sometime next year, and plans to teach participants, among other things, how to be Werner Herzog, as taught by Werner Herzog.�If you've got 25 bucks, and are 18 years of age, you can apply to go there for a weekend seminar, and if you get in, then it will only cost you 1,450 more of those bucks.�Although it is unclear just what one will learn there, under the direct tutelage of the 'Zog, the Rogue most certainly "will not teach anything technical related to film-making,"�and seems instead to center its mission on "poetry" and the "ecstasy of truth..." �The site goes on to say:

Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics. Self reliance.�
Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.

Well, whatever happens, we can only hope that there will be a course on how to sport this badass 'stache and stare poignantly at the camera while doing so.

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Method Man Starring in 3D Movie About Life in the 'Hood

editor@thelmagazine.com (Benjamin Sutton) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:32:00 -0500

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Shoalin Island rapper Method Man—who last made headlines when he was arrested for owing the IRS $33,000—is set to star in something called The Mortician. There's very little information available regarding the film, but it's apparently a 3D movie being written and directed by Gareth Maxwell Roberts about growing up in the ghetto. IMDb claims it will be a thriller shot in Louisiana slated for release in 2010, and did I mention it's going to be in 3D?

Given the most frequently recurring motifs in Meth's music and his various screen roles to date, I think we know what to expect from The Mortician: 3D bongs, 3D joints and 3D gunfights. I hope he really gets into the role and grows back the dreadlocks he wore at the beginning of his career. Also, the choppy fronts he's wearing in the image at right. Now that would be thrilling in 3D! (HipHopWired)

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Your Apparently Christmas-season Weekend at the Movies

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jesse Hassenger) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:15:00 -0500

[image-1]Wow! Five different movies that I would totally go see at some point, all coming out in a single weekend. This obviously can't last all month; you should probably save one or two of these for New Moon weekend.

The Box: When I first heard that Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales was adapting a Richard Matheson short story that had also been a Twilight Zone episode, it all seemed strangely simple. Why would Kelly, whose two movies have so entertainingly (if puzzlingly) overflowed with insane ideas, focus so intently on a story that can apparently be told in under an hour? According to the trailer, the answer is apparently that a simple short story provides a study handle from which to fly off. Kelly's version of the story, in which a financially strapped couple is given the option of pressing a button that will anonymously murder a strange for a payment of one million dollars, seems to go off in his customary crazy-ass directions, with a half-faced Frank Langella and lots of dead-eyed minions and a chilling Cameron Diaz attempt at a Southern accent (that said, she's an underrated actress). Obviously I am way on board. [Jesse, you will not be disappointed, which is to say good luck being this cogent about the movie after you've actually seen the damn thing. -Ed.]

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In Defense of White Movie Critics

editor@thelmagazine.com (Mark Asch) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:10:00 -0500

Now, nobody hates white people more than I do (that I know of). But in his cover-story pan of Precious this week, the New York Press's Armond White makes nameless caucasian film critics and audience members into straw men in a way that's both problematic and inaccurate. Which is a shame, because he's also spot-on about why Precious is a much worse movie than many reviewers seem willing to let on, and about the inadvertent condescension in their liberal-guilty reviews.

Here's some great selections from the barrage he unleashes on the movie:

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So a drifter, a prostitute, a priest, a miner, and his deaf-mute daughter walk into a South American jungle...

editor@thelmagazine.com (Cullen Gallagher) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:05:00 -0500

A drifter, a prostitute, a priest, a miner, and his deaf-mute daughter walk into a South American jungle. It sounds like the start of a joke, but it happens to be the set-up for Luis Buñuel's anti-colonialist adventure-satire Death in the Garden (1956), just out on DVD from Microcinema International. When Chark (Georges Marchal, of Buñuel's Belle de Jour and The Milky Way) stumbles through a town square past a firing squad, he finds himself in the midst of a revolution. Martial law has shut down the local mine, but its workers refuse to leave without a fight. With violence escalating and Chark and the miner Castin (Charles Vanel, of Clouzot's Diabolique and The Wages of Fear) wanted by the police, the disparate group takes to the jungle in hopes of escaping to Brazil.

Buñuel frequently uses stories of survival (or the lack thereof) as political commentary, and though his targets have spanned the gamut of social classes, his favorite victim by far is the bourgeoisie. Whether it is the party guests that can't even manage to sit down to dinner in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) or the manage to leave the living room in The Exterminating Angel (1962), Buñuel makes clear their lack of resourcefulness even within the limits of their own domain. If they can't survive in the deceptive comfort of their own homes, how could they possibly last out in the jungle, with no food, no guide, no map, and the military on their trail? Therein lies Buñuel's straight-faced humor: taking the adventure scenario absolutely seriously adds to the subversive undercurrents.

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Was a Crowd of Trench-Coated Men Standing Outside Your Window Brandishing Boomboxes Yesterday?

editor@thelmagazine.com (Benjamin Sutton) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:42:00 -0500

According to Cinematical, a Lloyd Dobler flash mob took to the streets of Manhattan yesterday to promote the release of the 20th anniversary DVD of Say Antyhing—which, you may recall, played a crucial role in the development of late-80s blockbuster cinema. That's them posing dramatically on the steps of the Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue, though you might have also spotted them looking for love in Washington Square Park, Rockefeller Center, Times Square or Union Square. I hope that when the 15th anniversary edition of Kazaam finally comes out (two years and counting!) there's a similarly awesome guerrilla marketing campaign.

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Rhino, elephants, buffalo... and John Wayne

editor@thelmagazine.com (Miriam Bale) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:48:00 -0500

Hatari!, which plays tonight at BAM, is an experimental film, and a dare. "So you think you're a director?"�Hawks seems to be asking. Well, why don't you try and throw herds of zebras, giraffes, monkeys, baby elephants and more uncontrollable animals into the mix with a Benetton ad motley crew of mediocre actors with indeterminate accents, plus John Wayne, and from that make a controlled casual masterpiece, perhaps the most Hawksian film of all. All the dialogue is purely rhythmic, conveying little character or story—instead it just glides the riveting action along. In fact, there's only one character, the group, and the main narrative tension is in breaking in the new girl, a high strung Italian named D'Allesandro (so Dallas, natch) into the group's rhythms and codes. As Waynes sums up, "Rhino, elephants, buffalo... and a greenhorn."

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That Character in the Wheelchair? It's You.

editor@thelmagazine.com (Henry Stewart) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:33:00 -0400

Any horror movie worth its celluloid needs to produce a visceral response in the viewer. And, because these films are thus so concerned with the relationship between the seat-filler and the image, horror movies, more than any other genre, regularly explore issues of spectatorship.

This has been especially true lately: as I wrote in my review of A Perfect Getaway, “each in their own way, to varying degrees of success, Vacancy, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead and Quarantine have [grappled with] the relationship between the camera and the viewer, between screen and spectator.” (Add to that Paranormal Activity and the superlative French thriller Them.) But it’s also been the case for decades, though perhaps in a less conspicuous manner.

One motif that runs, historically, through the horror genre is the wheelchair-bound character, who appears in films from at least the 1950s through The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), The Changeling (1980) and Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), as well as many others, some of which are discussed after the jump; more often than not, this person serves as an audience surrogate. After all, who is more like the movie watcher, stuck in their seat, than the paraplegic? Or the broken-legged?

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"Like wearing a costume directly on your brain."

editor@thelmagazine.com (Nicolas Rapold) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:36:00 -0400

Tomorrow, on the second day of their Halloween-timed Freak Cats series, BAM screens Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 curio House. A report:

Like wearing a costume directly on your brain, this New Wave-playful Japanese nutbar deserves a slot on your Halloween itinerary. Seven BFF teens named Gorgeous, Fantasy, Kung Fu, Mac, etc. visit a spooky auntie’s country house, overseen/possessed by a white Persian cat. A Beetlejuicean assortment of things come alive—chandeliers, logs, mattresses, piano—and fly around, change colors, or eat people. Best of all is the pre-Evil Dead, proto-80s-MTV filmmaking—a scissoring together of hyperventilating gloss, collaged camera effects, stop-motion, pink painted sunsets, fake wind, and oddly cut shorts. Not aiming for coherence, this occasionally scary, always on-the-edge effort was the full-length debut of a director who shot experimental reels, commercials, and eventually quite popular features.

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Your Morbid Weekend at the Movies

editor@thelmagazine.com (Jesse Hassenger) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:56:00 -0400

This Is It: Already a moneymaker before the weekend even sets in, I can't help but read the title of the Michael Jackson rehearsal doc This Is It as a carnie-barker cry (just in time for Halloween): this is it, this is it, this is all you get of Michael 'cause he's dead, so step right up and have a gander! I know it's supposed to be a tribute to the fallen Jackson's artistry in his final days, but it skeeves me out, as does all of the trailer-and-interview blather about how Jackson and his cohorts were putting on a multijillion dollar fifty-night series of stadium concerts for l-o-v-e, world peace, and the rainforests. I'm happy to hear that Jackson wasn't a complete mess before he died; I'm just as happy not to watch the rail-thin proof that he could still shake it.

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Quoth The Raven: "How the hell should I know?"

editor@thelmagazine.com (Andrew Schenker) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:34:00 -0400

[image-1]The first and funnier of the two early-60s teamings of the so-called triumvirate of terror (Vincent Prince, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff), Roger Corman's The Raven (screening tomorrow and Sunday at Anthology Film Archives as part of an extensive Corman series beginning tonight) represents the comedic center of the director's 8-film Poe cycle. While other entries in the series veer toward the humorous, with this 1963 offering, Corman places the horror setting at the strict service of the comic. Starting out in an atmosphere of dense gothic brooding, with Price intoning the opening stanzas of the eponymous poem in the study of a gloom-sealed castle, the opening's moody self-seriousness (and by extension that of the earlier films in the cycle) is quickly subjected to a rude deflationary poke. When the raven appears gently rapping at Price's chamber door (or, in this case, window), he asks the bird if he shall ever see his lost Lenore. "How the hell should I know," replies the creature, sounding suspiciously like Peter Lorre. "What am I, a fortune teller?"

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