Tea at Trianon: The Raven (2012)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Raven (2012)

Author Nancy Bilyeau is interviewed after seeing the new film. (This interview is more entertaining than the film might prove to be.)

Nancy: John Cusack is a great actor, and there’s a germ of a good idea in this, to do a film on Poe and use his own eerie poems and frightening stories. But instead we’re left with a misbegotten mess. It’s like when bad movies happen to good actors–and good ideas.

Bruce:The premise is a serial killer is using Poe’s ideas to commit real crimes, but the movie is like a vile mix of Sherlock Holmes, with Cusack channeling Robert Downey Jr. and the Saw franchise, with gory, torture-porn violence. (Read entire interview.)