BIG EASY: Casket Girls of New Orleans: Founding Matriarchs or Vampire Smugglers?

On a recent trip to New Orleans’ awesome Musée Conti Wax Museum, I was introduced to a brand new topic I had never heard of before: Casket Girls.

Mwa-ha-ha! Sounds creepy, no?

Sources vary on the specifics, but the basic story is that the city’s founders asked France to send over prospective wives for the colonists. They obliged and all these young girls showed up, bearing only as many belongings as would fit in a little “casket,” which appears to be the 18th century equivalent of an overnight bag.

Some accounts say they were fine young women, some say they were orphans, some say prostitutes. Some even say they’re the ones who brought vampires to New Orleans! And, yet, I’m told New Orleanians are proud if they can trace their heritage back to these women. Prostitutes? Vampires? Intriguing!

After exhausting my online search, I decided to get to the bottom of this. So, I headed over to the Ursulines Convent, where the girls were said to have resided until the nuns could arrange for marriages. Actually… first, I headed over to Croissant d’Or, a block north on Ursulines Avenue. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t open when the mademoiselles arrived in the 1720s, which is a shame. A sublime raspberry croissant and French Market coffee might have softened the blow of arriving in what must have been a sweltering, mosquito-infested swamp-village. But, I digress.

Wouldn’t you know? I arrived at the convent, only to find it closed for the day while they installed a new exhibit (the subject: Pere Antoine. Yet, another interesting historical Crescent City character and restaurant namesake. But, as luck would have it, a friendly employee who was coming through the gate was all too happy to share her considerable knowledge about the girls.

As it turns out, yes, France had sent plenty of shady characters over to populate New Orleans. Convicts, prostitutes, and all-around ne’er-do-wells -- but not in this group. Where did all the creepy vampire stories come from? The Ursulines ambassador shared a few theories. First of all, these girls endured a long and arduous journey across the Atlantic. At best, they were pale and gaunt from traveling below-deck much of the time. At worst, they were deathly ill. A nasty case of tuberculosis could cause a girl to cough up blood – hence the vampire link? Also, their suitcases were called “casquettes,” or “caskets.” A-ha. Nothing says Nosferatu like a coffin handbag!

But, wait – what about the infamous third floor windows, said to be nailed shut to keep in (or out?) the vampires? Pish-posh. I’m told those are fully functional hurricane shutters that weren’t installed until a century after the Casket Girls’ arrival.

So, there you have it. But, just because the Casket Girls didn’t bring ‘em, doesn’t mean they’re not here. Take one Vampire Tour or a trip to the Dungeon and you’ll be convinced.

For more on the Old Urusline Convent, visit http://www.gonola.com/2011/03/30/nola-history-the-old-ursuline-convent-in-the-french-quarter.html

To find other spooky tours, visit http://www.gonola.com/2010/10/27/7198.html


(This blog post originally appeared on GoNola.com)

BIG SCREEN: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (PG-13)

It would be so much easier to review this movie had I not read the book. I’d probably call it a rather bleak, Asian version of that old Bette Midler/Barbara Hershey sobfest, Beaches. Sort of lovely, but mostly just a manipulative little melodrama, designed to reduce women to tears. (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.) But after reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, it becomes clear that the filmmakers sucked all the beauty out of the original story. What a rotten shame!

The movie begins in modern day Shanghai, where a young executive named Nina (Li Bingbing) rushes to the bedside of her estranged childhood best friend, Sophia (Gianna Gun), who’s been critically injured in a traffic accident. While Sophia lies in a coma, Nina comes across a manuscript Sophia has been writing, which tells the story of an ancestor, named Snow Flower, and Lily, her laotong (a sort of arranged female friendship in which little girls pledge their love and fidelity to each other for all time). Lily marries up, Snow Flower marries down, and it creates a major problem in their relationship. Similarly, Nina’s star is on the rise, while she finds Sophia has fallen on hard times. The movie jumps back and forth from past to present, showing a parallel between the two relationships, while giving the audience a snapshot of the ancient Chinese traditions women once had to endure, including foot binding, arranged marriages, total submission, and countless other horrors.

Why the filmmakers chose to create this whole modern story line, which does not exist in the book, is truly baffling. It adds nothing to the overall tale, and it doesn’t really allow the audience to develop an intimate relationship with either pair of friends. Sadly, the movie completely missed out on most of the book’s vivid, detailed descriptions of the sights, the sounds, the smells, the emotions, and everything involved in the beautiful and horrible customs of ancient China. Why would they do that?! No idea.

This is definitely one of those cases where reading the book actually ruins the movie. If you’re unaware that it’s a cheap adaptation, it could serve as an excellent catharsis, should you need a good cry. Having said all that, I was grateful for the movie's cutting of corners in one instance... it took me two nights to get through the book’s description of the foot binding process. OMG! So much worse than I ever imagined. It was almost more than I could bear to read about the breaking of bones and bleeding and oozing and other horrific elements of the repugnant process that was forced upon little girls! I vowed that if they were as detailed in the movie, I’d probably have to leave. Luckily, I just had to close my eyes and plug my ears for a scant minute or so.

So, there’s that.

BIG EASY: Darwin the Dinosaur at the Contemporary Arts Center

If you’re anything like me, you have the best of intentions when it comes to providing your kid(s) with creative stimulation. But, if you’re anything like me, it happens much more infrequently than you’d like. A trip to a museum here, a music class there… oh, for a little inspiration.

Well, ask and ye shall receive!

I was fortunate enough to make it to opening night of Darwin the Dinosaur at Creative Arts Center New Orleans (CACNO) on Friday night with my husband and five-year-old son. I knew very little about it, other than it was described as a “glow-in-the-dark adventure." What I imagined would be a glorified puppet show turned out to be quite an amazing and original experience for us all.

Not unlike a live-action, neon Fantasia that combines puppetry arts and movement, it’s all about mesmerizing visuals and music from a dizzying array of genres -- and no dialogue. The basic storyline is about a professor who brings a dinosaur to life and teaches him compassion, then the dinosaur sets out to discover the world on his own. He encounters beauty and danger and love and heartbreak, all wordlessly expressed by larger-than-life creatures made of electroluminescent wire. Some creatures are extensions of the performers’ bodies, some are puppets – all seem to magically levitate in the darkness.

The show itself is innovative and inspirational, but the Q&A session that follows the show really allows the audience to appreciate the group’s ingenuity and enthusiasm. Creators Ian Carney (a Tulane grad who was raised in New Orleans) and Corbin Popp met while dancing in Twyla Tharp’s Broadway show Movin’ Out. After they discovered their mutual love for art, theater and technology, they formed a partnership. Together with their wives, they began to develop puppetry-based creatures (using "EL" wire and repurposed sports equipment and home improvement items!), and Darwin was born.

The show lasts an hour and, despite the volume and intensity, even kids under the age of two seemed to enjoy themselves (I think it would've rattled my kid at that age, but every kid is different). Don’t miss out! I swear you can feel unused portions of your brain being stimulated by this delightfully unique experience!

This week’s remaining showtimes:
Friday, August 19, 7pm
Saturday, August 20, 2pm
Saturday, August 20, 7pm
Sunday, August 21, 2pm

Tickets are $18 General Admission, $15 CAC members & students, $10 for children 10 and under.

For tickets or more information, call the CAC box office at 504.528.3800 or visit http://www.cacno.org/performingarts/event/2011/08/darwin+dinosaur/index.html

BIG SCREEN: The Help (PG-13)

It’s not all that often that screen adaptations live up to the original books, but, ladies and gentlemen – this one does! There are a few places where the filmmakers cut some corners where I wish they hadn’t, but overall, bravo!

The Help is the story of Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a recent college graduate and social misfit in 1960s Mississippi. Her dream to become a writer and her disgust with her friends’ ill treatment of their African-American maids converge in one fabulously controversial book project. She convinces some local maids to tell her stories of their relationships with their employers – the good, the bad, and the ugly – which ultimately creates a massive firestorm in an already volatile social climate.

I highly recommend that you read the book by Kathryn Stockett first, just to get the full experience of all the details and descriptions that couldn’t possibly have all been crammed into the screenplay. But, even if you don’t, the movie succeeds for two reasons: (1) it is pretty darn faithful to the book, and (2) the casting is incredibly spot-on.

It’s hard to pick the standout performance. Emma Stone proves she’s got serious big-girl acting chops as she seamlessly steps into Skeeter’s shoes and skillfully anchors the whole movie. Allison Janney plays her long-suffering, dry-witted mother with ease, and delivers one of my favorite lines of the movie: “Love and hate are two horns on the same goat.”

Sissy Spacek is a total hoot, despite her minimal screen time (someone, please cast her in some major roles again!). Cicely Tyson – wow! Still so beautiful, with a presence that leaps off the screen, even in a subtle performance like this. Ron Howard’s daughter Bryce Dallas Howard is a scene-stealer with her fabulously over-the-top portrayal of the truly witchy Hilly. But probably the singlemost excellent performance was that of Octavia Spencer as the mouthy firecracker, Minny. Paired with Viola Davis as her much steadier best friend Aibileen, she’s allowed to really push the sassy envelope with hysterical results.

People who are squawking about how the civil rights theme is just stirring up trouble and reopening old wounds have totally missed the point. In addition to providing perspective on some horrible injustices in our not-so-distant past, it’s a sweet and witty story about humanity. If you ask me, it’s a good thing to be reminded of how stupid, petty, and destructive stereotypes and prejudice can be, and to be shown an example of people rising above it all.

It’s hilarious, it’s heartbreaking, it’s heartwarming… a good, old-fashioned Southern charmer with substance.

BIG SCREEN: Another Earth (PG-13)

I like to take notes while watching a movie I plan to review. You never know if a line or detail that catches your attention might turn out to be crucial, or if some random thought that pops into your head might turn out to be a brilliant insight. In re-reading my scribbly notes on Another Earth, one line stood out: “Interesting concept, but I want to kill myself.”

Yeah. It’s a rather puzzling and bleak experience.

Rhoda Williams (played by the awesomely haunting Brit Marling) is a brilliant and beautiful teen who’s been accepted to MIT. She’s got a bright future ahead of her, but in her exuberance and youthful carelessness, she gets behind the wheel after a boozy celebration and destroys a man’s family.

Okay, so it’s a drama? A sad, cautionary tale? Not so fast.

On that very night, it’s discovered that there’s another planet, visible from ours, that turns out to be a carbon copy, with a duplicate population. Like, a person-for-person, mirror-image duplicate. Sort of like a parallel universe, except it’s a nearby planet.

A-ha. Is this really a sci-fi movie? Hold that thought.

Rhoda emerges from prison a few years later, a shell of a human being. She sleepwalks through life, and takes a job as a janitor who scrubs toilets as though she’s trying to scrub her psyche clean. In her search for some sort of, I don’t know, absolution or something, she (a) enters an essay contest to become one of the first to visit “Earth 2” and (b) winds up becoming the cleaning lady for the man (William Mapother) whose family she killed.

Of course, he has no idea who she is, and as their relationship progresses, she seems to breathe some life into his miserable existence, with the ever-present ugly truth precariously hanging overhead. Is she nuts? Is he going to go nuts? Why does she keep going back? The tension this creates is more nerve wracking than watching people get stalked by a psycho killer in a horror movie.

Which is great, if it’s a psychological thriller. But, is it? Not sure.

It’s no secret that I’m not exactly an astrophysicist or anything, but throughout the movie, I remained distracted by the sudden appearance of this other planet, so close that it’s visible to the naked eye. How did it get here? If it suddenly rocketed into our orbit, wouldn’t it throw us off our axis or screw with our gravity or something? I realized that probably wasn’t the point. So I put aside my disbelief and waited. For the point, that is.

This is a recurrent theme… the filmmakers seem to continually ask the audience to just trust them and go along for the ride. As if all will be revealed if you just resist questioning their motives and choices. Um, okay.

In the final scene, the surprising conclusion to the movie seems to finally explain the purpose of the movie, which I think is just to provide cosmic, spiritual, and/or psychological food for thought. So, all our questions are answered with… a series of new questions?

This is either really brilliant or a total cop-out. I lean toward the latter, but you be the judge.

All confusion and criticism aside, this Brit Marling girl is so stinking intriguing. She's beautiful, of course, but there's something so compelling about her -- depth? Intelligence? Well, she writes, directs, produces, and she graduated from Georgetown with a degree in economics. Yep, smart cookie.

Keep an eye on this one. Maybe someday she'll actually give the Hollywood boys' club a run for their money.