Word: doves
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Wings of the Dove, of course, doesn't have any more chance of making $100 million dollars than Interview With the Vampire had of winning Academy Awards. Which is unfortunate, because of the two, The Wings of the Dove is the far superior--and scarier--vampire movie. Millie, unlike any character in Interview, is hugely sympathetic without being boring, so we are much more horrified by Kate's predatious approaches than we are by Lestat's. Also, as the film rolls on, Millie's skin whitens and her eyes sink back in her skull. We can literally see Kate...
...point is not to disparage Interview With the Vampire, which was a fine film with plenty of chills. The point is that Wings should be incredibly satisfying to the earlier film's audience, if only that film's audience would go. As things stand, The Wings of the Dove is being sold as a Merchant Ivory picture and shepherded into theaters like Sony Harvard Square where no one would think to look for scarefests, however high-class and subtle...
Worse, those members of the broad popular audience who supported Interview and are aware of The Wings of the Dove may assume they wouldn't be interested because the new film is "too art-house," or "too genteel," or "too Bradless." Not much one can do about that third objection, but the other two represent false divisions imposed by film marketers or, indeed, by audiences themselves...
...films are unfairly ignored by mass audiences, more commercial films are spurned with equal injustice by self-appointed cineastes. If the artificial line drawn between "art" and "commerce" at the movies is erased, and mass audiences can be persuaded toward art films like The Wings of the Dove, then the traffic should rightfully move both ways. The Kendall Square crowd should give a chance to Hollywood's special-effects gizmos, which are more interesting, provocative and even political than film snobs will allow...
Certainly, one need not engage Starship Troopers in an ideological discourse to have a damn good time watching it. Nor, however, does The Wings of the Dove lack some solid, unintellectualized, "pure" entertainment value. The point is that most films offer something for the mind and for the adrenals, and they deserve to be seen by a wider audience than niche-marketing allows. Film has prodigious potential as a unifying medium, and as a mouthpiece to circulate all sorts of ideas across broad swaths of the public. That potential is undermined, and our intellectual and social development stunted...