Film Review: TWIXT (2011)

Between The Rainmaker (1997) and Youth Without Youth (2007) director Francis Ford Coppola has mostly stayed to producing films.  Since Youth Without Youth he has been directing a new film every two years including Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011).  Each new film that he does is Coppola finding new ways to tell different types of stories that are not typical.  Twixt is Coppola’s way of trying to tell an old story in new way. 

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is an aging writer of supernatural novels who is on a book store.  He finds his way into a small town that’s a stop on his tour that also happens to be the location of a notorious murder.  Just as Baltimore is leaving town Sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern) comes up to him wanting to know if he would like to collaborate with him on a new novel that involves the town’s latest murder victim.  It seems that the body of an unknown girl has been found with a wooden stake in her chest.  Needing something new to write about Baltimore agrees to the collaboration but soon discovers that the only way to find the “real” story is to go into a deep dreamlike state where he meets odd characters of the town including a goth-like young girl by the name of V (Elle Fanning) and Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) who will help him find his new novel that will put him back on the map.

Twixt is Coppola trying to channel his inner David Lynch by way of Twin Peaks but the film is not filled with any interesting characters nor does Kilmer’s Baltimore make for as interesting a main focus as Kyle MacLauchlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper.  The overuse of CGI in the dream sequences leaves a lot to be desired.  This is a lesser film from the director whose glory days such as The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979) seem far in the distant past.

Book Review: BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden

Both Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden are premiere writers on their own.  Mignola created the world of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. (The Bureau of Paranormal Research & Development) and Golden has written the thriller series Body of Evidence (as well as several Hellboy stories), so when their talents come together for Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire it is nothing but pure magic.  This is an illustrated novel with images by Mignola himself.

Lord Henry Baltimore is a soldier of World War I who accidentally awakens the wrath of sleeping vampires on the battlefield.  This first encounter leaves him forever scarred yet also marked by the vampires who become a plague upon mankind.  Years later he secretly gathers up three individuals whom he has encountered who would believe in his cause and might help him stop this plague once and for all.  As these three individuals await Baltimore’s arrival in a tavern each relay their own encounters with Baltimore and why he has become obsessed with ridding the world of the vampire plague as well as why they were all gathered in the first place.

Mignola and Golden uses the recollections of Baltimore’s associates to paint the reader a picture of who Baltimore is and how he became the ruthless vampire killer that he is.  Using the WWI as a backdrop for the origins of the story is a new twist on this style of adventure (but nothing new to Mignola who uses WWII as a backdrop for the origins of Hellboy) as well as using the vampires as the reason for the plague that kills indiscriminately from town to town.  There are many parallels between Baltimore and Hellboy besides their origins.  Both have a deformity, Hellboy with his right hand and Baltimore with his left leg (which he lost during the war and has now been replaced by a wooden contraption that allows him easy mobility).  Both have myth and legend interwoven within the story.  Hellboy uses elements of myths and legends from all over the world while Baltimore is infused with references from Hans Christian Anderson’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier among the typical vampire lore.

Baltimore is one of those books that doesn’t just infuse it with the myths and legends of the past but it also becomes a part of those stories of myths allowing Baltimore himself to become a legend.