Tag: Lucy

Charlie Brown, He’s No Clown: Snoopy, Come Home & Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown

CHARLIE BROWN, HE’S NO CLOWN: SNOOPY, COME HOME & RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN

Charlie Brown and the “Peanuts” gang first appeared as “Li’l Folks” in 1947, debuted as “Peanuts” Oct. 2, 1950, and launched into Sunday papers on Jan. 6, 1952.

Multiple generations came to love Charles M. Schulz’s creation through TV specials, movies, merchandise, and newspapers.

I learned to read at no later than the age of 4 by perusing copies of my grandparents’ Pittsburg Morning Sun and I remember “Peanuts” being at or near the top of the comics page along with “Garfield.” Then, it was (in no particular order) “Blondie,” “Alley Oop,” “Beetle Bailey,” “Doonesbury,” “Family Circus,” and “Calvin and Hobbes.” Sure, I missed a strip or two in this nostalgic reverie.

I later wrote for the Morning Sun (considerably downsized from 2009 through 2014 with sadly more considerable downsizing to come) and I scrapbooked a few strips that particularly tickled my funny bone. You might not believe how much feedback we received about our comics page, but I have found that obituaries, comics, and sports form the backbone of a small town paper. I remember editors grumbling about how readers were still upset years later about what happened with the Sunday comics not being in color and not having their own little section … and I said that I am one of those readers mad about that, as well as the Sun dropping a Monday paper.

Anyway, we have to ask one of the five W’s: What makes “Peanuts” so unique in the first place and even still today?

First and foremost, indelible characters who resonate with readers and viewers. Just as a little exercise, let’s rattle some of them off and I bet that we don’t even need to cheat and consult Google or Wikipedia. Let’s see, we have Schulz’s alter ego Charlie Brown, of course, Linus and his security blanket, Schroeder and his toy piano, Lucy Van Pelt, Peppermint Patty, Marcy, little sister Sally Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, and Pig-Pen (the Walking Dust Bowl). Over the years, I myself have called a child or two “Pig-Pen.”

Recently, one quarantine afternoon I decided to watch Charlie Brown cinematic adventures SNOOPY, COME HOME (1972) and RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN (1977) back-to-back.

SNOOPY, COME HOME took me by surprise with its emotional punch and I’d rate it even higher were it not for the presence of so many songs written by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman that feel like padding to inflate SNOOPY, COME HOME to a running time of 80 minutes.

Snoopy receives a letter from his previous owner Lila, who’s sick in the hospital, and Snoopy and Woodstock set out upon a grand adventure to reach her. Charlie Brown and his friends face the possibility that Snoopy will return to his first owner and that whole plot development provides the emotional sucker punch right to the guts. I’ll admit to getting a little misty-eyed when the gang throws a farewell party for Snoopy.

Meanwhile, throughout his adventure, Snoopy encounters “No Dogs Allowed.” We are talking libraries, beaches, buses, seemingly everywhere our favorite little beagle turns. That’s no way to treat a star the caliber of Snoopy. These people must be somehow unaware of “Peanuts” and they must have never heard the songs “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron,” “The Return of the Red Baron,” and “Snoopy’s Christmas.” What kind of people are these?

After being driven away from the library, Snoopy picks fights against Van Pelt siblings Linus and Lucy, and we are suddenly in Laurel and Hardy territory with big laughs from violent slapstick (though not as violent as say the Three Stooges and still within the ‘G’ rating). Fans have taken Snoopy vs. Lucy and scored MORTAL KOMBAT and ROCKY to it.

Also, during his adventure, Snoopy encounters his worst nightmare, a little girl named Clara who has the unmitigated audacity to call him “Rex.” Snoopy and Woodstock barely make it out alive.

In the end, “No Dogs Allowed” benefits Charlie Brown, Snoopy, etc.

RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN proved to be a mere meager diversion after SNOOPY, COME HOME.

That’s right, RACE FOR YOUR LIFE is nothing more than a pleasant way to spend 77 minutes with characters that we like.

It does not have the dynamic emotional range of SNOOPY, COME HOME and the river rafting race does not rank with the use of baseball and football in CHARLIE BROWN’S ALL-STARS and numerous gags in strips and TV specials, respectively.

Upon further reflection, the special appeal of the Charlie Brown TV specials and SNOOPY, COME HOME is that adults have the ability to take away more from them than children, without ever feeling that we are being lectured or hearing a sermon. That’s ironic, given the relative absence of adults in “Peanuts.”

SNOOPY, COME HOME ***; RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN **1/2

Nosferatu (1979)

NOSFERATU

NOSFERATU (1979) ***1/2

German director Werner Herzog’s NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE has often been described as a “slow burn” horror film and every critic seems to want to sound a fire alarm that it’s not the average “creature feature” with cheap thrills every few minutes and that it will disappoint most horror movie fans.

The former is certainly true and I cannot speak for the latter except to say this horror movie fan liked it. I’ll be honest, I did not much enjoy it the first time watching it a good 20 years before my return viewing. I remember having a more neutral reaction that first time. Not sure why.

Looking up “slow burn,” I find that it means “a filmmaking style, usually in narrative productions, wherein plot, action, and scenes develop slowly, methodically toward a (usually) explosive boiling point.”

NOSFERATU definitely fits methodical and perhaps only slow to viewers raised on Attention Deficit Cinema. I’d rather say that Herzog’s remake and F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 masterpiece subtitled A SYMPHONY OF HORROR both move at their own leisurely pace. They play more like fever dreams than the average horror movie.

NOSFERATU does not fit the back end of that slow burn definition, because there’s not an explosive boiling point. Certainly not anything resembling the stereotypical big bang grand finale to a standard Hammer Dracula picture.

Herzog marches to the beat of his own drum. That’s for sure and thank God for that, just as we should be thankful for every great director. I consider his AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD to be the best film I have seen from 1972 and I would put it on a list of the greatest films ever made. LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY and GRIZZLY MAN are on my top 10 lists for 1997 and 2005, respectively. Les Blank’s documentary BURDEN OF DREAMS, which chronicles Herzog’s great adventure making FITZCARRALDO, also makes my top 10 list for 1982. Ramin Bahrani’s 18-minute PLASTIC BAG, a top 10 entry for 2010, utilizes Herzog as its narrator.

I know that NOSFERATU was my first time watching a Herzog movie and I believe I had not yet seen the Murnau original. To be sure, I was more equipped watching NOSFERATU for a second time.

More than anything else, images stand out. Brilliant images are the heart of both the 1922 and 1979 films and both Murnau’s and Herzog’s filmography.

Musophobes should not watch NOSFERATU, because rats take over the screen at crucial points late in the picture. The rats are the source of some legendary stories: Herzog said the rats were better behaved during the shoot than star Klaus Kinski and since real grey rats proved to be unavailable, white rats were given a grey makeover, for example.

The rats call to mind the monkeys from AGUIRRE.

Of course, there’s every time Dracula (Kinski) is on the screen. Since copyright was not a concern for Herzog like it had been in 1922 for the first NOSFERATU, Herzog returned names like Dracula, Jonathan Harker, and Lucy to his version. Dracula’s look echoes Max Schreck’s iconic Count Orlok and both vampires are radically different from the classic bloodsuckers played by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, as well as just about every other vampire in cinematic history. Herzog and Murnau both show how it is more of a curse to be a vampire and make it far less of a power trip. Herzog’s Dracula and Count Orlok are not suave and debonair, and their striking physical appearances echo vampire folklore. We also have far more complex reactions to the vampires played by Schreck and Kinski, since we feel more empathy for them.

Around her mid-20s at the time she made NOSFERATU, French actress Isabelle Adjani already had a strong claim on the title of most beautiful woman in the world. NOSFERATU did nothing to refute that.

Thinking about the various Jonathan Harkers over time, Bruno Ganz’s performance ranks better than David Manners in the 1931 DRACULA and Keanu Reeves in the 1992 DRACULA. He certainly goes through a wider emotional range than either Manners or Reeves, who are both “mannered” in their performances.

Ultimately, NOSFERATU leaves one with feelings different from how we normally react to a vampire picture. There’s not the standard euphoria that we experience, for example, when Lee’s Dracula spectacularly bites the dust. Instead, we are more pensive and melancholic than excited and thrilled.