{"id":262,"date":"2004-09-15T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-15T16:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=262"},"modified":"2004-09-15T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-15T16:37:00","slug":"262","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=262","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Magic noir<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Back to my ongoing series on literary and cinematic paganism: over the weekend M. and I watched Cast a Deadly Spell<\/em><\/a> (HBO, 1991), which attempts to blend 1940s-style film noir<\/em> with magic. In fact, the movie begins with the statement, “The year is 1948. Everybody uses magic.” Everyone, that is, but private eye Philip Lovecraft (the craggy-faced Fred Ward<\/a>) whose character bears no resemblance to the semi-reclusive writer<\/a> from Providence, R.I. Julianne Moore<\/a> plays his girlfriend, a cabaret singer. I would pay to watch Julianne Moore wash dishes, but this movie is just Who Framed Roger Rabbit<\/em><\/a> for occultists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magic noir Back to my ongoing series on literary and cinematic paganism: over the weekend M. and I watched Cast a Deadly Spell (HBO, 1991), which attempts to blend 1940s-style film noir with magic. In fact, the movie begins with the statement, “The year is 1948. Everybody uses magic.” Everyone, that is, but private eye […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-262","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1066,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1066","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":0},"title":"Encountering the Evil Librarian","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"She is evil because when I stopped by her office for a chat, she forced me to look at four large cartons of books recently \"weeded\" from the university's literature and criticism shelves, forced me, I tell you, with the magic words, \"They're free. Take as many as you want.\"Many\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2510,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2510","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":1},"title":"Lovecraft’s Magick Realism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"H.P. Lovecraft claimed to be a total materialist, so how did his stories become so involved with the realms of the esoteric and magical? Eric Davis, in an essay titled \"Calling Cthulhu,\" writes, This phenomenon is made all the more intriguing by the fact that Lovecraft himself was a \u201cmechanistic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"magick\"","block_context":{"text":"magick","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=magick"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1596,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1596","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":2},"title":"More Field Work from Miskatonic University","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It began with the unprecedented Vermont floods of 1927 . . .and a visiting scholar's investigation. Check the blog and trailer of a noir-ish movie in progress based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness. Very well done! Is Lovecraft the \"shadow\" of Zecharia Sitchin? (Via Odious and Peculiar)","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11292,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11292","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":3},"title":"“The Witches of Manitou”\u2014More than an Urban Legend","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The old spa town of Manitou Springs, located in the foothills west of Colorado Springs. Photo by Mark Reis, ( a former newspaper co-worker of mine) from the Colorado Sun. Click to embiggen. The Colorado Sun, an online news site, dropped this into my inbox yesterday, giving M. and me\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"The old spa town of Manitou Springs, west of Colorado Springs","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":981,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=981","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":4},"title":"Shroom the Book, Shrooms the Movie","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Still on the entheogenic theme ... Andy Letcher, author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, lent his expertise to a horror film in this YouTube video: I liked his book, so I suppose that publicity for it is a Good Thing. Actually, Shrooms -- now on DVD\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0060828285","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1482,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1482","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":5},"title":"Ten Worst Movies about Witches and Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogger Gus diZerega polled his readers on \"The Ten Worst Movies Depicting Witches and Other Pagans.\" Readers differed on The Craft: \"As a movie, I don't think it was too bad. But their portrayal of witches as goth teenage girls with (somewhat severe) psychological problems just rubs me the wrong\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}