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Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Tag Archives: kurt cobain

Review: “Silent House”

11 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

adam trese, chris kentis, elizabeth olsen, eric sheffer stevens, haunted house, horror, kurt cobain, laura lau, martha marcy may maylene, silent house

“Who Can It Be Now?”

Grade: C+ (SKIP IT)

DREAM House. SAFE House.  FULL House’s Olsen twins and their kid sister Elizabeth whose Silent House is a mixed bag of a horror film and Elizabeth Olsen’s second major effort on screen (following last year’s “Martha Marcy May Maylene”).  There’s little doubt that Olsen’s star will continue to rise, but “Silent House” is hardly the film to pave the way: it’s a slow-burner that never quite ignites; it’s built on the hoariest of horror flick clichés – the haunted house – with an unspeakable crime at its center that’s scarier than any of the film’s few jumps and jolts.

As Sarah, Olsen is stranded inside a family vacation home already boarded-up and ready for sale.  She’s flanked by her father (Adam Trese) and uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens) who bicker in a jovial, brotherly way as Sarah packs up her childhood belongings and carries a lantern from room to room.  The creepiness of her Dad’s affect – is he looking out for his young daughter or looking down her low-cut shirt? – should tip any perspicacious viewer off to the film’s central trauma.  Sarah appears on edge and when something goes bump in the night, her father assures her: “Honey, it’s an old house.  They make noise.”  But this is a silent house, remember, and its worst memories are kept hush-hush.

The most noteworthy aspect of “Silent House” is its cinematography, particularly the moody aerial of Sarah perched on a rock by the water at the film’s opening.  Directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, “Silent House” purports to be shot in real-time and in virtually one continuous close-up shot of Olsen’s panicked pallor.  (Here, it follows in the footsteps of the Uruguayan Spanish-language original, “La Casa Muda,” released in 2010).  Perhaps Kurt Cobain screeched it best back in 1991: “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous/Here we are now, entertain us.”  The lights are out in “Silent House,” and since its real horror can’t be fully known (nor shown), you’ll likely find yourself less than entertained.

Poem: 12 Steps (An Elegy for Betty Ford and Amy Winehouse)

24 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by colincarman in Poems and Plogs (Poem-Blogs)

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

amy winehouse, betty ford, colorado, first lady, janis joplin, jim morrison, jimi hendrix, kurt cobain, rehab, vail

“Every time I went through, I used to put a cigarette between her fingers.”

– Betty Ford on a ceramic bowl adorned with two Greek goddesses, a bowl chosen by the Nixons to decorate the Yellow Oval Office in the White House

 

The two aren’t such strange bedfellows

Amy dying only days after Betty

I was in the Betty Ford garden with its yellow

Blossoms and columbines, its flowers like confetti

 

When I heard that Amy was dead at twenty-seven

Like Morrison, Cobain, Joplin and Hendrix

Is there good parking for rock stars in heaven?

Is there a life after green rooms and the quick fix?

 

In Vail, there’s a theatre in Ford’s name, a garden in hers

What a first lady she was, candid and considerate

Entering the yellow Oval Office in furs

Using Nixon’s bowl to hold her cigarette.

 

Across the pond, Amy Winehouse lost track

Of her power to remain our most soulful songstress

So she slid, finally, fatally, back to black

What a wonder, what a waste, what a legendary mess

 

Ford made “rehab” a household word

Winehouse sang its painful praises

One tragic, the other self-assured

The two knew the trouble when one trailblazes

 

 – Vail, Colorado

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