Day: October 13, 2011

Thrilling Thursdays: Hocus Pocus

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Cover of "Hocus Pocus"
Cover of Hocus Pocus

Confession:  I totally love Hocus Pocus.

You might not remember Hocus Pocus.  It was a live-action Disney film released in 1993.  It was about Max (Omri Katz), a sarcastic kid from California who has just moved to Salem or some other random Northeastern town with his parents and kid sister Dani (Thora Birch, pre showing her boobies in American Beauty).  The town has this curse involving the resurrection of the Sanderson sisters, three dead-ish witches who ate children’s souls back in the 1600s and can be brought back by a virgin lighting a special candle on Halloween.   And, of course, said candle is just sitting around in a museum, waiting to be lit.  And of course Max, being a sarcastic virgin, lights said candle on Halloween and releases these 17th century witches into the 1990s.

Now the witches are by far the best part of the movie, they are:

Sarah Jessica Parker as sexy, clueless Sarah Sanderson.

Kathy Najimy as chubby, stupid Mary Sanderson.

Bette Midler as awesome, scheming, red-headed Winifred “Winnie” Sanderson.

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Work of Art, Jerry Saltz’s Recap of Episode 1

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Every week Jerry Saltz writes a recap of Work of Art for NYMagazine.  In case you forgot, Mr. Saltz is one of the judges on Work of Art and he is also the senior art critic for NYMagazine.  I enjoy the recaps almost more than I enjoy (or hate-enjoy) the show.  They help explain the reasoning and critiques of the judges and also de-mystify the reality show process.  For instance, the judging committee is told nothing about the contestants.  Everything they learn they learn via the critiques or by watching the television show.

I also love the recaps because of the comments section.  Mr. Saltz (okay, I’ll call him Jerry, because that’s how I talk to him in the comments), takes the time to read all of these comments and often responds to them.  He encourages his readers to talk about and write about and think about art; I love how he wants to make art and art criticism less scary and more popular.  I hope that he succeeds.

Each week I’ll be posting the link to Mr. Jerry’s recaps and I’ll also be quoting a selection from the article.  Jerry opened his recap this week by explaining why he does this show.  I don’t think he needs to explain: he enjoys it and he finds it fun, why does he need to apologize for participating in something that much of the art world deems silly and inconsequential?  He shouldn’t need to apologize, I’d like to think he’s beyond that point in his career.  I guess the art world doesn’t work like that.

So, here is the link Jerry’s recap and here is some good stuff from it:

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