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Oct. 15th, 2009 @ 08:34 am The Phantom Project: The Phantom of the Muppet Theater by Ellen Weiss
Current Mood: peaceful
Current Music: Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
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Muppets!


The Phantom of the Muppet Theater by Ellen Weiss, 1991
Grade: C

Muppets!

Man, I love the Muppets. I can't help myself. It's some wacky combination of childhood security (puppets! Happy puppets! They sing and dance!) and adult hilarity (oh, the tongue-in-cheek jokes I did not get as a kid) that I find completely irresistible. Someday I'm going to own the entire run of The Muppet Show and spend a whole week in my PJs watching it. But I digress.

( Dual Muppet Phantoms! )

There's nothing spine-chilling going on here, but, eh. Who cares? Muppets! It's light, fluffy, child-friendly entertainment, and that's okay with me. The adult themes and Gothic trappings of the original would have detracted from the aim of the picture-book, and it doesn't suffer for their absence; besides, it is, unsurprisingly, very cute.

Also, god damn do I love me some Muppets.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Oct. 13th, 2009 @ 09:44 am The Phantom Project: Erik: the Phantom of the Opera from Crysys Games
Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: Ominous computer chords! Ominoussss!
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Erik: The Phantom of the Opera from Crysys Games, 1987
Grade: C

Anne: Oh, man, baby. Look at the cover of this eighties game. Look at it. It is spell-binding.

John: What the hell is going on on that cover?

Anne: He looks like a bad-tempered Chinese man with gorilla hands and a serious need of hair gel. And is that a lamppost growing out of the Garnier?

John: Why does he have an axe?

Anne: I have no idea, but I think I'm delighted. It could be a holla to the 1983 movie.

John: But that makes no sense. He won't use an axe in the game!

Anne: OR WILL HE?

John: I'm not playing this.

( Oh, but he did play it, folks. Because I forced him. )

So here is my challenge to you, internet children: if anyone else out there has played this game to completion or is so excited by this review that they go out and do so, tell me about it! Is the C grade still applicable? Is there anything interesting going on in later stages of the game? Are we complete video game failures because we can't beat a game written on an 8-bit computer?

We probably are. I would not be surprised.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Sep. 25th, 2009 @ 12:05 pm The Phantom Project: Phantom of the Opera by Walter Murphy
Current Mood: good
Current Music: Saliva - Ladies and Gentlemen
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You know what's great for taking your mind off your dental woes? Disco.


Phantom of the Opera by Walter Murphy, 1978
Grade: C

Walter Murphy is a dude who, back in the seventies, made something of a name for himself by re-arranging classical music in disco form, thus fusing sparkly electronic music with classical tone patterns. These days, some may be entertained to learn, he is composing (and winning Emmys for!) music for the Seth MacFarlane animated TV series Family Guy and American Dad.

This particular piece is a bit odd to categorize, because it's not technically a musical--it was never intended for staged dramatic performance as far as I know, and has no script attached--but also not really just a concept album, since it directly follows the Phantom story from beginning to end. In the end, I just ended up referring to it as "the album" all the time, because damn if I know what to do with it. Damn thing is very hard to find on cassette tape and has never been released on CD; it's much more common on second-hand LP and 8-track, though, so if you've still got a player for either of those around, the wonders in store may still be available to you.

( Murphy, take us to funkytown! )

It's certainly a very different take on the story, and interesting because I haven't seen anything quite like it before; however, the music, even allowing for the change in cultural tastes since the disco period, is less than impressive, and the format doesn't allow for a lot of really in-depth examination of the material. But it really is interesting, and a good effort at translating a subject into a difficult medium, so if that sounds intriguing to you (or if you just love you some disco and love you some Phantom and see a bright, beautiful possibility on the horizon) it would definitely be worth a look.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Sep. 18th, 2009 @ 12:14 pm The Phantom Project: The Climax, directed by George Waggner
Current Mood: cold
Current Music: 30 Seconds to Mars - The Kill
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Oh, old movies. The longer I work on this project, the more I find that I'm coming to adore you.

This is not, despite appearances, a movie about orgasms.


The Climax, directed by George Waggner, 1944
Starring Boris Karloff, Susanna Foster, and Turhan Bey
Grade: B

When I started this project, I dismissed this film... in fact, I dismissed it multiple times. It kept coming up, since it was filmed as a sequel to the 1943 Lubin/Rains Phantom of the Opera, but because the script had been substantially changed and Rains himself, the very recognizable Phantom that carried the first film, had pulled out of the project, I kept ignoring it anyway. It wasn't until fairly recently that finally, after revisiting some summaries and convincing myself that maybe this wasn't going to be as unrelated as I thought it was, I decided it deserved to be included. Geez, Anne... bitter over the occasional unrelated piece of material you spent money on, or what?

Then, of course, it was only available in rare out-of-print VHS format, or as part of a large DVD collection of Boris Karloff's films. Such is my life.

( But I persevered! And so did Karloff's character in this film. )

Surprisingly, because it's somewhat forgotten in the annals of Universal horror, I thought this was in fact a better film than the one that preceded it (not by a lot, but nevertheless); the time spent on the suspense rather than on gratuitous humor made things much more cohesive and immersive, and Karloff's performance is so strong that I could probably watch him skulk about for days, even if nothing happened. Not the most fantastic of films, but definitely one to enjoy again, and a really interesting look at source material for a lot of later versions,

This was, incidentally, nominally based on several preceding films and a play by Edward Locke, also titled The Climax and also dealing with an opera singer. However, the actual plots of the play and this film bear one another very little resemblance; it's more likely that a few elements were borrowed from Locke's play, but that the majority still comes from the original plan to create a sequel to the Phantom story (and this is, in fact, the very first Western sequel to the story, being predated only by the 1941 Chinese sequel to Ye bang ge sheng).

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Sep. 11th, 2009 @ 11:58 am The Phantom Project: Angel of Music by D. M. Bernadette
Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Sara Bareilles - City
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Sigh. This book... I don't even know.


Angel of Music by D. M. Bernadette, 2002
Grade: F

This book is sort of a tragedy. Here we have an author whose grasp of some of the story's themes is actually not that bad; yeah, some of them are swings and misses, and some of them are downright stupid, but she gets it right here and there. However, even when her plot is coherent, the book is so severely retarded by what can only be described as a supreme lack of writing ability that it becomes actually difficult to read. This book is so poorly written that it is literally almost unreadable.

( And then, of course, there are its other problems. )

I didn't want to give the book a failing grade; it really did show glimmers of interesting ideas here and there. But I had to be honest, and honesty says that I would never, ever, ever recommend this book to anyone, no matter how interesting the idea buried on page 264 is, and I would never, ever, ever read it again, not even if I were sentenced to life in a blank white bubble with no other sources of stimuli. It tried, but it ultimately completely failed to tell its story; and, if I'm still being honest, said story wasn't much good, anyway.

Is it un-academic to put a sad face in my review? I feel like one is warranted.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Aug. 9th, 2009 @ 02:19 pm The Phantom Project: The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked, directed by David J. Skal
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Current Music: Man of La Mancha - It's All the Same
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Nonfiction time! This is a short documentary on a few of the Phantom's film incarnations, with some interesting historical background thrown in.


The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked, directed by David J. Skal, 2000
Narrated by Scott McQueen

Ahhh. You know, I hadn't realized how much I loved some of these old versions until I saw that glorious 1943 footage and heard Susanna Foster's lovely voice. It was such a refreshing change after some of the more recent reviews I've done. The 1943 film is, by far, not one of the best films out there, but, by god, it makes me happy to see it again.

At any rate, this is a short, one-hour documentary that was included exclusively on some versions of the DVD release for the 1943 Lubin/Rains film (I hear that it might also be available on the internets, but don't quote me on that). Since it's mostly circulated by Universal Studios, it's not surprising that it primarily deals with the three Universal-owned Phantom productions: the 1925 Julian/Chaney film, the 1943 Lubin/Rains film, and the 1962 Fisher/Lom film. The documentary is introduced by its writer, Scott McQueen, who puts on a very schmaltzy little show that still manages to be cute enough not to offend (it might also have something to do with the fact that he reminds me vaguely of my grandfather).

( Universal Pictures says: Stop paying attention to other peoples' versions of the story! )

The documentary is interspersed with several shots of some of the rarer posters and promotional stills from all three films, particularly the 1925 Julian/Chaney one. I don't believe I saw any that weren't included in the excellent 1999 Riley tome on the subject, but it's a very nice inclusion for those who haven't read that book or who are just looking for a quick, informative history lesson.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Aug. 5th, 2009 @ 12:11 am The Phantom Project: Progeny by Becky L. Meadows (Part 2)
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: The Secret Garden - Wick
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Part two! In which we discover that Anne can and will self-medicate.

( But I don't WANT to read the rest! )

The single worst problem that this book has--beyond the theme assassinations, beyond the grammatical mistakes and homophone genocide, beyond the intensely overdone prose and beyond the throttle-worthy protagonists--is that it cannot show a moment of emotional content or character growth to save its life. Instead, every shift in emotion or nuance of motivation is told to us in excruciating detail, ad nauseum, constantly force-feeding the reader a steady diet of indisputable facts about the characters' inner workings that not only bogs down action but makes for spell-bindingly boring reading. The characters, for all their careful description, are flat as pancakes because they are never given any opportunity to act without constant, maddening analysis and explication.

This book is purgatory.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Aug. 5th, 2009 @ 12:10 am The Phantom Project: Progeny by Becky L. Meadows (Part 1)
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Secret Garden - Winter's on the Wing
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I was hard on Nancy Pettengill's Journey of the Mask, the last self-published novel I read. I said some unkind things about it. I believe it squeaked in at a final grade of C- by the skin of its teeth. This book makes that book look like the pinnacle of self-published literary achievement.


Progeny by Becky L. Meadows, 2001
Grade: D-

Most of my thoughts here can really be summed up as follows:

What the hell is going on in this book?

( The interwebs tell me that a lot of people really like this book. To you people, I offer apologies in advance, because I am about to disagree with you. A lot. )

Either I need to get less verbose, or these books need to stop giving me so much to say. The rest coming in part two!

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Jul. 19th, 2009 @ 11:14 pm The Phantom Project: Phantom of the Megaplex, directed by Blair Treu
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Doris Day - Hooray for Hollywood
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Yay for the movies!


Phantom of the Megaplex, directed by Blair Treu, 2000
Starring Taylor Handley, Rich Hutchman, & Mickey Rooney
Grade: C+

You know, I didn't really expect much out of this. Disney Channel original movies don't exactly have the highest reputation for cinematic quality, and I was pretty much resigned, going into it, to the fact that I was probably going to want my 89 minutes back. But, you know, it wasn't all that bad. In fact, parts of it really entertained me. Other parts were, of course, kind of terrible, but we can't have everything in life.

( You know what? Jolly old men make me happy. )

It's nothing special as a film; it's got some good ideas, and nothing is spectacularly bad, but mostly it just coasts along on the same comfortable Disney childrens' movie formulas. As a result, I was neither annoyed nor particularly joyous about watching it, and the entire experience would have been totally forgettable if not for Mickey Rooney and his adorable antics. The parallels between this and previous films, particularly the homage to the 1925 Julian/Chaney film, are interesting, but ultimately it's a nice enough but thoroughly unspecial interpretation.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Jul. 12th, 2009 @ 01:12 pm The Phantom Project: Journey of the Mask by Nancy Hill Pettengill (Part 2)
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Current Music: Dido - Life For Rent
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Round two: Fight!

( Erik's so special! He knows the future! )

In the end, oddly enough, I have to admit that Pettengill made me care about her fucked-up protagonists. I did want to know what their damage was, and I did want to know what happened to them at times. The problem was that they really weren't Christine and Erik; they were some other protagonists wearing their faces, and while that makes for all right pleasure reading, it does not make for a fabulous Phantom story interpretation. The book squeaked by with a passing grade because Pettengill has her moments, and does manage some real emotion in some of them, but the majority of it was something of a trial, and I don't think I'd ever pick it back up and go through it again just for those few glimmers of light.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Jul. 12th, 2009 @ 01:10 pm The Phantom Project: Journey of the Mask by Nancy Hill Pettengill (Part 1)
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Vienna Teng - Augustine
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It's not really this book's fault that I haven't posted a review in almost over a month, but it also didn't help me out very much.


Journey of the Mask by Nancy Hill Pettengill, 2002
Grade: C-

It's been a while. I know. But I'm back, and I come bearing a review of a questionable book. I say questionable because I questioned it continually, sometimes in genuine curiosity, and sometimes in rhetorical exasperation.

( When psychotic killers get married: next on Springer. )

Holy cats, the review is too large for LJ (again). When I return, I return with a vengeance. Part two to come in a moment!

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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May. 22nd, 2009 @ 09:14 am The Phantom Project: The Pinchpenny Phantom of the Opera (Addendum!)
Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
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Back in January, I reviewed a little tongue-in-cheek musical called The Pinchpenny Phantom of the Opera by Dave Reiser and Jack Sharkey. At the time, I whined a little bit, because while I thought it was a decently entertaining little show for what it was trying to accomplish, I had no way of ever hearing any of the music since the score isn't available and no cast recording was ever released. I read the book, groused about the lack of sources for the music, and then went my merry way to other materials without thinking too much about it.

But a few weeks ago, much to my surprise, Dave Reiser dropped me an email and offered a rare treasure: the demo recording of the show that he still had on cassette tape, from long ago (eons, in fact--in the eighties) when he and Sharkey were pitching the show. Having read my review, he mailed me this--one of few recordings of the show in existence--so I could content my little heart by finally being able to evaluate this show's musical content as well as its book.

( Musical snapshot! )

In the end, the music isn't spectacular, but it's not intended to be, after all. It fits perfectly with the show's self-referential little world, and is entertaining enough for audiences to enjoy themselves no matter how low budget everything ends up being.

Twenty-five cheers for fabulous composers who are kind enough to go out of their way and help me out. Made my day!

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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May. 10th, 2009 @ 03:31 pm The Phantom Project: The Phantom Cat of the Opera by David Wood
Current Mood: full
Current Music: Nickelback - How You Remind Me
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Ahh. After the psychological stress of the Forsyth novel, this was just the ticket.


The Phantom Cat of the Opera by David Wood, 2000
Illustrations by Peters Day
Grade: A-

This is essentially a retelling of Leroux's story in redacted form for children, except that the author and artist collaborated to insert human-like cats in the place of the familiar characters, all without the slightest hint that their feline protagonists are out of the ordinary. The result is a sumptuous, adorable picture-book full of cats in nineteenth-century garb, often complete with monocles, re-enacting the dramatic events of Leroux's tale.

Anthropomorphic cats + opera ghosts. What is not to love here?

( There's just so much cuteness! It's so cute! )

In the end, the greater redemption comment is mostly swallowed up by the removal of the character's sins, but other powerful morals, including the idea that emotions cannot be forced on others and that coercion is not okay, remain intact and relevant for the youngsters. The whimsical transformation of the cast into felines doesn't detract from the story at all; in fact, were you to read the text without looking at the pictures, you would never know that the switch had been made. This is a very cute version for children that still retains its suspense and is not dumbed down, and I'd recommend it to parents if only it weren't so damn hard to find.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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May. 5th, 2009 @ 02:24 pm The Phantom Project: The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth (Part 2)
Current Mood: enraged
Current Music: Stabbing Westward - What Do I Have To Do?
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So I read the actual fiction part of the book a full three days after I read the preface, because there was still boiling indignance and I wanted to give the text a fair reading without bringing in my opinion of the author's nonfiction statements. I returned refreshed and mellow, a cocktail in one hand a bowl of popcorn in my lap. Let's do this thing.

This is not a retelling, as we've been mostly used to seeing, but a sequel to the events of Webber's musical.

( Making sense is for wussy little nancy-boys. Bring your brain bleach. )

God. Damn. That actually hurt.

This book took everything I detested about the Siciliano novel--complete reworking of characters without justification, ridiculous contrivances to push extremely heavy-handed morality--and magnified it a thousand times, while adding truly unfathomable feats of stupidity in its plotting in order to achieve a level of true awfulness. The only reason it's not getting a failing grade is because it's not written too badly from a technical standpoint, and because there are glimmers of enjoyment here and there, usually when Forsyth goes off on a blessed tangent and stops trying to ram his cockamamie plot down our throats.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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May. 5th, 2009 @ 12:52 pm The Phantom Project: The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth (Part 1)
Current Mood: disgusted
Current Music: chantal Kreviazuk - Feels Like Home
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Oh, my god. People kept telling me about this book, but I wasn't listening because I like to find things out for myself.


The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth, 1999
Grade: D-

I'm not sure what I was expecting here, really. I mean, I was aware that a lot of people greatly dislike this book, but then again, a lot of people greatly dislike the Argento/Sands film, and I kind of enjoyed that in a crazy way. Forsyth is a very well-known British author of political and military thrillers, so I was kind of intrigued to see how he was going to handle a plot that didn't really involve those all that much. I really wandered into this book thinking blithely, oh, it couldn't be that bad. Everyone is probably just overreacting.

Oh, Anne.

( Two reviews for the price of one! First, we'll review just the preface. )

Coming in post number two: the actual book. I read that, too.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Apr. 28th, 2009 @ 11:41 pm Whining about change
Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: Plumb - Damaged
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Gah. Of course, PBwiki, which hosts my Phantom website, decided today would be an awesome day to change its name to PBworks and consequently change my URL completely.

Bastards. Now I have to go change every page that links to it. Sigh. For those interested, the new URL is http://phantomproject.pbworks.com.

Cue the whining about change.
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Apr. 9th, 2009 @ 10:51 pm The Phantom Project: Phantom X, directed by Paul Thomas
Current Mood: peaceful
Current Music: Bon Jovi - You Give Love a Bad Name
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That's right, boys and girls. It's time, once again, for porn. The cover of this particular film entertains me, with the Phantom sort of popping in from the side there, like he wasn't supposed to be in the picture but jumped in at the last second.


Phantom X, directed by Paul Thomas, 1989
Starring Jamie Gillis, Aja, and Mike Horner
Grade: D

Those who are eagle-eyed may have noted Jamie Gillis' name there; he is in fact the same guy who played the Phantom in the contemporarily-released Phantom of the Cabaret. Apparently he found a niche that he liked.

This is the earliest of the Phantom-themed adult films on my list (if there are others made earlier, I have yet to discover them), and it tries surprisingly hard. In the end, of course, it's just ridiculous, but... well, it does try.

( That, in fact, is my mantra for this film. They tried. )

They tried so hard (snort, giggle) to make this an adult film that actually featured a plot and some interesting ideas. They really did, and I have to give props to Thomas and his crew for that. But, sadly, the execution was still pretty awful, and the total throwing of logic to the winds at the end of the film stopped it from ever being able to aspire to anything above the D range (in fact, D might be kind of generous, but like I said, they tried). I'd place it head and shoulders above all the other Phantom-based adult efforts--but compared to more mainstream film and literature, it still looks very shoddy and sad.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Apr. 2nd, 2009 @ 06:44 pm The Phantom Project: The Phantom of the Opera by Philip J. Riley
Current Mood: sympathetic
Current Music: The Presidents of the USA - Video Killed the Radio Star
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This book is absolutely fabulous and amazing. Go buy it.


The Phantom of the Opera by Philip J. Riley, 1999

As always with nonfiction works, there's no grade, but I almost wish I were grading it, so I could give it a big sloppy A. This book, which is a monstrous, painstaking, and in-depth look into the making and history of the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney, is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best examples I've seen of someone translating their love for a subject into a fantastic and informative treatise. I've mentioned before that I'm not a film student, but now, I almost want to be. That's how excellent this book is at what it does.

( Oh, my god, the research for this beast must have taken years and years and years. )

In the end, this book managed to do what the 1974 Levitt/Cassidy film, despite its very focused efforts, could not: it made me intensely nostalgic and, at least for a little while, invested in an art form that I had only peripherally acknowledged. Riley's passion for the silent films of yore and his sorrow over their destruction is tangible, moving, and eloquent. His heartfelt hope that the film will at some point be restored and his dedication to the preservation, at least in word, of the silent film era, is best summed up in the final quote from actress Lillian Gish that he includes at the end of the book:

"We are the only civilization in history to have a visual, moving record of our time. How will history remember the America of the 20th century? As a people who worried more about filling their wallets while they let their most valuable national art treasures crumble to dust? Or will we preserve that moving image to show our children how great a people we were?"

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Mar. 28th, 2009 @ 08:25 pm The Phantom Project: The Mask by Donna Lee Poff
Current Mood: unimpressed
Current Music: The Beatles - Help
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Oy vey.


The Mask by Donna Lee Poff, 1998
Grade: L for LoL

I know that the people who insist that I've left an important book off my list mean well, but... some books do not need to be on my list. They just don't. This is one of them.

Despite the mask on the cover, which hilariously resembles the one from the 1989 Pachard/Gillis adult film, this book has nothing whatsoever to do with the Phantom story, which became apparent after about four chapters of reading. A slightly disfigured dude does not a Phantom story make, especially when he does nothing else related over the course of the entire novel. And I have to say, I'm pretty glad it turned out not to be a book I had to finish, because Mother Teresa would have said bluntly that it sucks. I mean... there's some entertainment value in terrible dialogue, bad prose, and wild anachronism, but I can only take so much "tis"ing and "thee"ing in inappropriate places. It's bad for my constitution and my complexion.

A sample for you--the very first three paragraphs of the book:

"His journey had ended, but the wanderer felt neither joy nor relief. Futility hung upon him like a cloak of lead.
Far had he traveled and for many years.
But all he had achieved was to return to where he began."

No, no. No need to thank me. It's my gift to you. So, anyway, totally unrelated, so I'm off to do something more productive with the next book.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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Mar. 25th, 2009 @ 12:10 pm The Phantom Project: The Phantom of the Opera by William R. Sanford & Carl R. Green
Current Mood: headachy
Current Music: Finian's Rainbow - How Are Things in Glocca Morra?
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Intrigue lurks in the most unexpected of places.


The Phantom of the Opera by William R. Sanford & Carl R. Green, 1987
Grade: C

Talk about things you weren't expecting. As you can probably tell from Claude Rains up there, this is a little novelization for children based on the 1943 Lubin/Rains film, with various still shots from the film (including, I think, a few that didn't actually make it into the final cut of the movie). The writers, in their prologue (not much of a prologue, really more of a foreword), claim to have based the text entirely on the original script for the film, which was written by Eric Taylor and Samuel Hoffenstein.

( So what, exactly, is the big deal that's so unexpected? )

The reason that this version got graded down from the film is that, sadly, the writing is impressively unimpressive, even for a kids' book. Possibly in order to keep the length down, there are buckets and boatloads of telling going on instead of actually showing the reader what's happening, and the sentences are choppy and difficult to take an interest in because of it. I realize that kids don't have the attention span or vocabulary for high art yet, but I'd still want my kids reading something that was an example of decent writing for their reading level, and your average kid's interest is usually kept much better by showing them a scene rather than just telling them, "The character did this." The book was really interesting for me--but interesting for academic reasons. I'd have been bored as snot reading it for fun.

(Cross-posted from The Phantom Project.)
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