Sorry to have been unavailable for much of this week, but in an unusual circumstance, out-of-town friends have descended on us for a few days -- so we've interrupted production on the next issue of VW to spend some time in the pleasure of their rare company, sitting outdoors, conversing on the patio over mild frosty intoxicants, grilling delicious meals under the sun, laughing and sharing entertainment.
So I haven't had time to blog, nor even time to watch much of anything since Sunday night's SOPRANOS finale. However, last night, I had the treat of introducing Roger Corman's Poe films to my friends' teenage son who has already made his own computer-animated Poe short without ever having seen Corman's trail-blazing work in the field. I chose PIT AND THE PENDULUM as his introduction, and he enjoyed it... almost as much as his mother did, who was shuddering anew while enjoying having her memory refreshed of a film that she saw back in the 1960s in her native Belgrade. We all loved the zinger ending, though Donna had to compromise it by asking how Barbara Steele's character got gagged after she had been tossed into the Iron Maiden.
To report some recent work I've done: my next SIGHT & SOUND columns will be devoted to DA Pennebaker's DONT LOOK BACK and Bret Wood's PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, respectively. Also, SIGHT & SOUND requested my participation in an upcoming forum in which various critics are asked to write about their choices for "Forgotten and Overlooked Films" -- I submitted a couple hundred words on LE ROMAN DE RENARD ("The Tale of the Fox"), the 1930-37 animated feature by Ladislas Starewitch (the family's preferred spelling -- he's Wladislaw Starewicz on the IMDb).
Also my VIDEODROME book for Millipede Press is currently in the layout stage and I am supposed to see some sample layout pages tomorrow. I'll report more fully once I've seen the pages.
