1922 Review (Film, 2017)

1922 Review (Film, 2017)

Robert J Gannon
Film, Reviews

It is not a popular opinion, but it is one that I've held for as long as I've seriously studied and written about horror. I believe that Stephen King is at his best in the short story format. The longer he writes a narrative, the more convoluted it becomes. His short stories, as strange as some of them are, focus on singular ideas and tell them well. The novels and even the novellas tend to derail themselves with more and more ideas until the ending bears little resemblance to the beginning.

1922 is one of the more interesting cases that teeters on the edge of changing my mind. Originally published as part of Full Dark, No Stars (an anthology of novellas), I found the novella to be an interesting mix of references to horror literature as a whole. There's a clear borrowed throughline from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat"--a mischief of rats replace the cat, but they prove just as immortal. He also riffs on small town murder and shockingly organized crime. The latter tends to stick to his short stories ("The Death of Jack Hamilton" is one of his best), but the former has received many cinematic adaptations--Misery, Secret Window, Delores Claiborne, and more. 

How to Talk to Girls at Parties Review (Film, 2018)

How to Talk to Girls at Parties Review (Film, 2018)

Robert J Gannon

After watching How to Talk to Girls at Parties, I feel safe saying John Cameron Mitchell is an underrated film director. His creativity is respected, but only when applied to other areas. The focus of his adaptation of his own musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch was on his performance, not how he translated a stage musical that takes place in the course of a single night on a single dive bar stage into something beautifully cinematic and believable. The focus on Rabbit Hole was, again, not on how a director helped shape a difficult stage play into compelling cinema, but Nicole Kidman's wonderful performance. Shortbus was treated as more interesting for concept than execution, again focused in on the bravery of the cast. It just seems that if a director can consistently get awards attention for different actors with every film he directs, he might be a very good director.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is, in many ways, a cinematic successor to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It's a very specific narrative driven by underground music, sexual frustration, and a belief that the narrative of the titans eating their young is historical fact, not fiction. 

On Integrity, Plagiarism, and Online Media

On Integrity, Plagiarism, and Online Media

Robert J Gannon
Web, Views

I've worked in arts education for over a decade year round teaching music and theater courses. I also spent the better part of three years hustling hard to get an English teacher position at the high school level. I'm still teaching music and theater, but my Bye Bye Birdie LARP adventure is suspended. The biggest lesson I try to teach any of my students is to act with integrity and compassion in everything they do.

English classes make that easy. If you plagiarize your paper--steal someone else's work directly, borrow ideas without attribution, or do the dreaded Ctrl-F and thesaurus combination, you fail and risk significant punishment. There is no gray area. You are expected to write and defend your own ideas. If you use someone else's work, you cite your source and make sure you get the last word in. Very rarely, you come across a student who does this and shows no remorse. They are the ones who wind up with major disciplinary records. 

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