I'm starting to hear from our contributors that their copies of VIDEO WATCHDOG #127 have arrived. Other subscriber and distributor copies were mailed out Tuesday (Monday being Columbus Day, a mailing holiday), so they should be reaching everyone else shortly. Some of our First Class subscribers may have even received them in time for this Friday the 13th weekend. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to reading any responses.
A lot of new doors opened for me this past week, and I look forward to sharing some happy news about a number of new projects in the coming weeks, once everything is in writing.
Finally, there is sad news from Rome announcing the death of film director Gillo Pontecorvo at age 86. A political filmmaker, Pontecorvo was best-known for his riveting and truly neorealistic THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966, featuring one of the great Ennio Morricone scores) and the Marlon Brando-starring BURN! (1969), a study of the profitability of creating wars. In one of the more inspired jokes in John Landis' film THE STUPIDS (1996), Pontecorvo was one of several "intellectual" directors who gamely agreed to appear in bit parts; the others included Costa-Gavras, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan.
