The Tomb of Ligeia and the World Series

In Poe's story "Ligeia" he refers to Ligeia's face as having "the radiance of an opium-dream" and The Tomb of Ligeia, like many of Roger Corman's films, has a dream-like quality.  In 1970, when I just had begun to take films seriously, I would go to see the films of Allan Dwan at MoMA in the afternoon and in the evening I would go to the Corman series at the Kips Bay Theatre, where the audience was sparse.  I prefer Corman's more obscure films, such as Teenage Caveman (evocative of the frailty of human existence) but the Poe films are very much true to the spirit of Poe's stories.  Not too long ago it was hard to see movies in their proper aspect ration, especially on VCR's or TV, but that has changed considerably now with DVD's and Turner Classic Movies and TCM showed The Tomb of Ligeia in all its wide-screen beauty, with blue candle drippings and space between actors that emphasized their emotional distance from one another.  There are certain similarities to Vertigo but the Hitchcock film soars with its Bernard Herrmann score while the score for the Corman (by Kenneth Jones) is both inadequate and inappropriate.  There has been little serious attention paid to Corman's films but Roger Corman:  The Millennic Vision (The University of Edinburgh Press, 1973) has an excellent essay on the Poe films by David Pirie.

Yes, the World Series is going on and the Fox coverage is so poor that last night they missed the final pick-off play because they were too busy showing fans in the stands! And, of course, the home run continues to play too big a part.  Mark Leibovich, in his article on Miguel Cabrera in the NY Times magazine, wrote "But while fans have been outraged over performance-enhancing drugs, they are also conditioned to expect the results."  Can't they be re-conditioned?  Maybe not.  Perhaps it is just too easy for sportscasters, who often have little knowledge of the game, to show home runs in the highlights, the beauty of a successful hit-and-run or sacrifice bunt being just too boring. My radical proposal would to make any fair ball hit into the stands an out.  Okay, maybe just make it the same as a foul ball.  But the worship of the home run has many negative effects on the game, from removing any margin of error for pitchers to preventing younger fans from learning about the complexities of the game.