Here's To A Happy Thanksgiving!

That's the newly slenderized me, toasting you in a photo taken last weekend at the WonderFest Reunion, an informal gathering of friends who enjoy each other's company, choice liquid refreshment, and the best sushi in the world. (Sapporo in Bardstown, Kentucky -- and it's not just me who says this; I also have it on the authority of sushi lovers from New York and Los Angeles and places in between, and I can personally attest to its superiority to what you can find in Toronto and San Francisco.)

Not that I would report it here, but I have no idea what I weigh at the moment. I stopped weighing myself because my weight loss seemed to hit a wall after I'd lost about 30 pounds, as my swimming regime started adding more muscle to my frame. It was discouraging to see the number on the scale staying the same, or sometimes going up a bit, so now I focus on those happy results that can be seen or measured -- for instance, I've gone down six notches on the belt I wore last summer. It was startling, in a nice way, to see myself in the reunion hotel's full-length mirrors, where I saw my former pear shape replaced by a midsection that goes pretty much straight up and down. Whatever I may weigh, it's my best weight in, I'm guessing, the past 20 years, and I'm in better physical condition now than I've been for most of my adult life. We haven't been back to the pool since we've been home (we're going back tomorrow), so I've been substituting a daily uphill mile walk on the treadmill and 100 abdominal crunches with a 40-pound weight, along with a few other exercises on the home gym.

I should apologize for not being here very often lately. Life is in the fast, interesting and sometimes stressful lane. We're far behind schedule on the next issue and will be jumping into another immediately after finishing. I'm taking a break from my work on the ME AND THE ORGONE screenplay to work on two outside writing projects, originally due in December but now due in January: a short story (that's turning into a novella) for an anthology of fiction based on the music of Nick Cave and a contribution to Filippo Brunamonti's forthcoming book about my dear friend Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni. My personal correspondence has also lately taken big chunks out of my days. There's so much to juggle that there's next to no time to do anything else, and to be honest, writing about movies has become something I only do when I absolutely have to do it. But I expect Video WatchBlog will be hosting another survey of VW's Favorite DVDs of the Year, which will probably start posting on December 15th, and you'll certainly see some other activity here before then.

In many ways, this has been the most amazing and transformative year of my life, and I have much to be thankful for, today: another blessed year with my adored and loving partner, and the unforgettable week in Los Angeles we shared; my core group of friends, mentors, muses and confessors; a new approach to living which has led to a renewed sense of inspiration, the production of good work, and an awareness of exciting things still ahead. I'm also thankful for the popular and critical success of the Bava book, for the awards it has won, for having finally made human contact with the Bava family by meeting Lamberto last month, for VW's ever-dependable roster of contributors, and for the millionth hit and visit to this blog!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Two Announcements

Donna has asked me to announce that we are currently offering a Holiday Discount on all of our products and services at http://www.videowatchdog.com/. Just click on the link on our home page, and you'll be led to a special code that will help you save 10% on your next order of $20 or more. That's almost $30 off the cost of the Bava book alone!

Secondly, by popular demand (truly), we have finally launched a VW CafePress store at www.cafepress.com/videowatchdog. Some of you have been pleading with us for years to reissue our classic design black VW T-shirt, and it's finally available again, along with some other designs and a plethora of other VW logo products (including coffee mugs!), as well as some items bearing Charlie Largent's "Mask of Satan" design from the binding cover of the Bava book. Even more "Mask" items will be added to the page sometime next week! A nice place to do some one-stop-shopping for that hard-to-please VIDEO WATCHDOG reader in your life.

How The West Was Reviewed, plus Quantum Notes

My "NoZone" review of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, featured in the December 2008 issue of SIGHT & SOUND (pictured), is now up on their website here. Furthermore, Kim Newman has a superb review of QUANTUM OF SOLACE in this issue, but you'll have to buy the magazine -- or at least rifle its pages on the newsstand -- to read it.

I saw QUANTUM OF SOLACE myself this week and agree with the general condemnation of the opening action sequence, which is so chaotically shot and edited that it's impossible to really tell much of what's going on or feel any of the consequences. I did notice that it was shot around a road tunnel location that features prominently in Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK. Of course, feeling (or rather not feeling) is one of the movie's big themes, so it's possible that emotional disconnection is what director Marc Forster was going for here, but that doesn't excuse bad filmmaking. Basically, if an action sequence already has ten or more different things happening, often half of that number in frame at any given time, its success is reliant on the audacity of its staging, on mise en scène, and not on hopped-up, Avid-happy editing. The sequence looks well-planned, just poorly executed -- the stunt people must have been particularly pissed to see how the risks they took were glossed over by fashionably overdriven editing technology. Follow that with a dullish main titles sequence (not by Daniel Kleinman) and a Jack White theme song ("Another Way To Die") that's... um, not bad on its own terms, just inappropriate and unmemorable, and QUANTUM OF SOLACE is basically a lame horse before it has a chance to get out the gate.

Daniel Craig protects Olga Kurylenko in one of the better scenes from QUANTUM OF SOLACE.

But it gets better. The sequence in the opera house I found impressive, both in its staging and in its absolutely coked-out, numbed-up state of abstraction, but also because it gives this rather stripped-down adventure an opportunity to showcase some of the worldly opulence that defines what a Bond film is, or at least should be. Daniel Craig is a compelling Bond once again, though Bond himself doesn't continue to evolve in this continuation of the CASINO ROYALE storyline; in a sense, QOS betrays the final shot of the previous film by putting Bond back on the faster-and-furiouser "how 007 became such a hardass" track. I was impressed by leading lady Olga Kurylenko (who incidentally was the vampire lady from PARIS, JE T'AIME featured on the cover of VIDEO WATCHDOG #144), all the moreso because she's the first Bond girl who isn't treated as a Madonna or a whore (or at least a disposable luxury item); he can see that she's damaged goods like he is, and doesn't take undue advantage. The films have come a long way from women with names like Pussy Galore and Holly Goodhead, and as Daniel Craig's Bond develops, it will be interesting to see what genus this series replaces them with. (Actually, there is a character here who's named on the cast list as Strawberry Fields, but she insists on being called "just Fields." Even so, Strawberry Fields isn't quite the same as calling her, say, Tempest Geespot; it actually harkens back to the Sergeant Pepper who worked at Scotland Yard in the Edgar Wallace krimis of the late 1960s, a proper if unintended tip of the hat to a film series that helped inspire this one.) Mathieu Amalric gives an interesting performance as the villain, but I've grown tired of his kind: the scrawny, decadent, greedy entrepreneurs who engineer outrageously contrived plots to garner them more worldly power than their apparent billions can provide. This kind of greed may be true to post-Gordon Gecko capitalism, but Bond villains should be larger than life and their plans should build to grandiose coups de theâtre, not bigger and more corrupt business deals. The movie strikes a genuine frisson with a passing visual reference to GOLDFINGER, but as good as it looks, as tragic a note as it strikes, it doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny; it's one of those ideas that is almost good enough to work but, almost immediately, shows a bankrupt brain trust raiding the franchise's jukebox for greatest hits. (I'll take advantage of that music analogy to add that I admired David Arnold's score, among his best and most original work for the series.)

I guess what I'm saying is that they should have saved this image for a proper remake of GOLDFINGER -- and I hate to say this, folks, but Fleming only wrote so many books and, if Barbara Broccoli and company are desperate enough to call their latest blockbuster QUANTUM OF SOLACE, remakes are inevitable. But look on the bright side: they might consider being faithful to the books the second time around. It worked for CASINO ROYALE.

PS: On a different topic, I want to send positive thoughts to my favorite living novelist, J.G. Ballard, on the occasion of his 78th birthday. His most recent volume of autobiography, MIRACLES OF LIFE, confessed that he is now living with advanced prostate cancer and I hope the day is at least passing comfortably.

Starting Our Second Million

This is the 795th posting here at Video WatchBlog, and I'm making it to proudly announce that VWb has just logged its one millionth visit -- and it only took us (us? YOU!) three years, one month and twelve days! Our millionth visitor, hailing from Denver, Colorado, logged in at exactly 7:44:01 pm. Maybe it was you!

Earlier this year, on February 22, I noted our one millionth hit, or page visit, but this is a different sort of milestone. Hits are a page count, driven up when the people who come to Video WatchBlog are curious enough to browse through its back pages (as I encourage everyone to do); the visits, on the other hand, are a head count of the folks who have come here to see what's new. I'm thankful to and appreciative of both varieties. I'm just happy that so many of you continue to come here on a regular basis -- something I'm still only aspiring to do.

VW 145 On Newsstands Now

I've been tardy about mentioning this, but there is a new issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG on newsstands now. A couple of correspondents have given us some good-natured ribbing about Rob Zombie's placement on the cover, but I make no apologies: if we can grab someone's attention with Shane Dallmann's attentive coverage of the Zombie oeuvre, or with Eric Somer's reviews of Greg McLean's WOLF CREEK and ROGUE, and thereby introduce them to the work of Georges Méliès and the wider world of fantastic cinema beyond, then we're doing our job. And even though Zombie's work is considered "alternative" and "extreme" by the real world, I daresay this is probably the most subversive and revelatory issue of anything that's catered to Zombie's following. For instance, this issue also boasts what the Swedish distributor of SWEDEN, HEAVEN AND HELL cheerfully calls "an insane amount of coverage" of that film -- and it was apparently enough to freak out at least one former MIDNIGHT MARQUEE reader whose subscription we stepped in to fulfill. So it may not be everyone's cup of Aquavit, but it's sure as hell mine; VW 145 is actually one of my favorites in our 19-year history, so please be daring and seek it out.

For a full rundown of the issue's contents, and a free sample, click here.

It's Ennio's Eightieth

"Now that you've called me by name..."

Enzo Santaniello as Timmy McBain in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

If I had to trace the exact moment when the full weight of cinema's importance came crashing down on me, I could draw a straight line to that moment in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST when little Timmy McBain comes running down the corridor of his family's farmhouse and stops cold and incomprehending at the sight of his family's slaughter. The bodies remain offscreen as Tonino delli Colli's camera holds tight on his face, but the power of his trauma is conveyed by the long-delayed introduction of music into the film -- Ennio Morricone's music, Alessandro Alessandroni's distorted electric guitar foregrounded against a full orchestra whose rising and falling, mathematical cadence seems to count the last grains of time left to this young orphan's life.

Today, Ennio Morricone -- far and away our greatest living film composer -- marks the 80th anniversary of his birth. He is well aware of the impact and significance and, I believe, unmatchable quality of his Italian Western music, to the extent that it deeply annoys him, so I do not propose to write not much more about it. Instead, I would like to use this occasion to discuss my own lengthy prowl through the Maestro's back catalogue in search of music that, for me, would be capable of rivaling the unforgettable shock of my initial introduction to his work.

There is obviously no shortage of music of the highest quality in Morricone's filmography, found in pictures as well-known as THE MISSION or CINEMA PARADISO, or as beloved as DANGER: DIABOLIK, or as obscure as Veruschka and Meti una sera a cena. He has also written music that has imbued some otherwise tepid films with the very deepest and richest of emotions -- Adrian Lyne's version of LOLITA comes to mind, a film I like primarily because of what Morricone's music does for it. As surely as Morricone coined the musical landscape of the Italian Western, he did the same for the Italian thrillers of the 1970s, beginning with Dario Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, but continuing with his THE CAT O'NINE TAILS (plausibly one of Morricone's Top 10) and FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, and carrying on with other examples such as WHO SAW HER DIE? (a particularly brilliant session), SPASMO, and the underrated Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle Peur sur la Ville. I don't think it is possible to say of any other composer short of Bernard Herrmann, but the effect of Ennio Morricone on our understanding of the language available to cinema has truly been incalculable. But the full breadth and depth of that contribution is oh, so tempting to calculate.

Morricone's immensely moving, lyrical and magisterial score for OUATITW is an almost impossible act to follow, and yet he has "followed it" to say the very least. He has, in fact, continued by writing nearly 400 additional scores, with his current IMDb total reaching a staggering and unchallenged 486 film scores to date! His artistic achievement to date is already of such monumental proportion that one almost feels the need of two lifetimes in order to do it justice as a listener and commentator.

I recently posted here about Morricone's soul-stirring pop song "Se telefonando," which comes as close to his own standards of perfection as anything else I've heard -- but it's not film music. It was only within the past year or so that I finally heard something else from Morricone's catalogue that I believe -- in its romanticism, melancholy, majesty and drama -- stands as a true equal to the likes of such outstanding OUATITW tracks as "Jill's America" or "Man with a Harmonica." That cue is "Amore come dolore" ("A Love Like Sorrow"), a haunting 6:10 piece from Luciano Ercoli's 1970 giallo thriller Le foto proibite di una signora per bene. You can find a full rundown on the different issues of this soundtrack album and the various compilations on which its cues have been included here.

Le foto proibite di una signora per bene, which is available on DVD from Blue Underground as THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION, is only a passable giallo but it is one of the genre's greatest soundtrack albums. The music runs the full spectrum, from breathy bossa nova pop to organ-driven discotheque tunes (I can't help feeling that Radley Metzger would have killed to have "Allegreto del Signora" in his CAMILLE 2000) to some of the Maestro's best thriller music: suspenseful tracks that seem to accrue more and more silken spiderwebs and eerie lighting as they slither from beginning to end.

But when the album reaches "Amore come dolore," time stands still. I wish I could play it for you, but the best I can do is direct you to this not-always-work-friendly YouTube trailer for the film, which is mostly scored with the piece in question. Since I can't play the music for you in its entirety, the best I can do is to describe it as best I can:

It opens with a vulnerable, naked-sounding piano signature being tapped out on two notes by a single hand, which gains in complexity when it is joined by another hand playing doublets of three complementary notes, which lend the initial signature greater poignancy. A muted trumpet enters, so softly as to be easily mistaken for one of the deeper woodwinds, carried on a river of strings almost hesitant to veer away from the one or two sustained notes that most concern them -- and with the dawning sound of the muted trumpet, the piece acquires a sense of hopeful momentum as the sound of the strings seems to double, triple, with all the disparate components still searching for proper unity. As the lovely ostinati continues, it finally reaches a point (at 1:20) when electric bass enters to ground everything into a strong and coherent, almost jaunty emotion. At this point, pizzicato strings enter, echoing the initial piano notes, and these are soon doubled on electric piano, brightening the same notes that sounded so sorrowful in their initial solitude. As the piece reaches its halfway point, something happens to undermine the coherence and security of the melody: the piano notes tremble and a snare drum rattles as the orchestral strings stretch and bend, in the manner of wary sighing, over a further repetition of the initial piano signature, abruptly darkening the atmosphere of the piece. Slightly after the four minute point, the composition returns to square one with the piano signature repeated solo, and once again, the introduction of the strings and the muted trumpet bring a measure of hope that sounds more bittersweet in recovery after the middle part's unsettled detour.

Considering the title that Morricone chose to give this composition -- and "Amore come dolore" really has nothing to do with anything in the story of Ercoli's film, suggesting that the piece was either written independently of the film or had some other meaning for its composer -- it may be a musical representation of love found, love threatened or possibly abandoned, but love also recovered as the opening theme is once again recovered from its loneliness by a measure of optimism.

Upon discovering this music, I immediately added the Le foto proibite soundtrack to my iPod (which contains very little other soundtrack music, not even OUATITW), but it was "Amore come dolore" that I continue returning to, even today. I consider it one of Morricone's indisputible masterpieces; at six minutes and change, I find it always takes me on a musical journey as complete and fulfilling as, say, Pink Floyd's "Echoes." It's no surprise that, in the last decade particularly, "Amore come dolore" has become one of Morricone's most anthologized pieces.

I was into my obsession with this track for close to a year before it dawned on me that I didn't really know anything about the movie it was from. When I finally looked up THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION on the IMDb, I was flabbergasted to discover that it was scripted by my friend Ernesto Gastaldi, with whom I've maintained a warm personal correspondence for the past fifteen years. (In fact, Ernesto is interviewed in a featurette included on the Blue Underground disc -- as I happily discovered once I got around to watching it.) I was so pleased for Ernesto -- imagine having Ennio Morricone respond to something you have written with one of his finest pieces of work! -- that I couldn't resist writing to him and telling him how I had fallen under the spell of "Amore come dolore." He didn't remember the piece, so I sent him an mp3 file so that he could experience it for himself. He replied to me: "Wonderful music! I don't remember it as the soundtrack of my movie, [but] that music is perfect by itself."

Indeed it is. The full Le foto proibite soundtrack album, and individual cues from it, are available for download at MSN Music here. Whatever music you choose to ring in this milestone in the Maestro's life, I'm sure you'll join me in wishing Ennio Morricone many more years of health and joyous productivity.

New Books from Weaver and Schow

I am pleased to note that I'm not the only VIDEO WATCHDOG contributor with a new book out. In yesterday's mail came the latest hardcover from ace interviewer Tom Weaver, bearing the clever title I TALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (McFarland and Company, $45).

Included in this new compendium are "Interviews with 23 Veterans of Horror and Sci-Fi Films and Television, including COLOSSUS THE FORBIN PROJECT's Eric Braeden, Robert Conrad of THE WILD WILD WEST, James Darren, Robert Colbert and Lee Meriwether of THE TIME TUNNER, '50s kid star Charles Herbert, THE QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE herself Laurie Mitchell, HORROR HOTEL's Betta St. John, THE RAVEN's Olive Sturgess and more than a dozen others, including the hardcover debut of Tom's interview with THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE child star Ann Carter, which originally ran in VW. This is reportedly Tom 's 19th book, and I believe it's his twelfth collection of interviews, not counting McFarland's retitled paperback collections. It's amazing that he continues to find such top-drawer people to talk with, but it reflects the skill he applies to the job. As always, Tom dedicates this latest Q&A collection to past interviewees who have passed on since the last one; this book is dedicated to 32 people, which in itself is a testament to the value of the history Tom has been compiling.


Also now in bookstores is David J. Schow's GUN WORK (Hard Case, $6.99), his opening salvo as a contributor to the Hard Case Crime paperback series. I haven't read it yet, but it's my understanding that DJS undertook this book as a sort of lark, as a fan infatuated with the series, which revives the sleazy crime potboiler paperback genre of yesteryear, with reprints of classic long-out-of-print fiction by the likes of Mickey Spillane, Lawrence Block, Robert Bloch and George Axelrod, and new works in the milieu by such steel-eyed idolators as Max Alan Collins, Richard Aleas (a beard for the Hard Case line's founder Charles Ardai) and Christa Faust.

David supposedly wrote this book faster than a speeding bullet, but it turns out that's a key ingredient in the winning recipe for this type of thing. He knows his firearms anyway, and a thing or two about the ladies, I'm sure, and it's all paid off in what is being appreciated as a real knack for this sort of down-and-dirty storytelling. GUN WORK just scored an enthusiastic review at Bookgasm, and if you ask me, a label like "gun porn" just might have more staying power than "splatterpunk."

Dear People

I've only just learned that production assistant Betty Moos died last month, on October 4, at the age of 79. I knew Betty for close to 30 years by phone as the warm and friendly voice of Joe Dante's production office. Long before the one and only time we met in person, Betty would take my calls and ask me nicely to hold for Joe, always adding a "dear" or a "sweetie." I was probably just another caller to her, certainly was in the early years, but she always made me feel welcome and comfortable -- like we had years of friendship behind us. This is a rare commodity in humanity, much less the film business, and I always hoped that Betty would somehow be part of the team behind the movie Joe and I are still trying to make together. I'm deeply sorry to learn of Betty's passing, and I've privately extended to Joe -- as I do to everyone who loved her -- my condolences on the loss of such an irreplaceable and longterm associate, confidant and good friend.


I met Betty only once, in Joe's office in 1993, around the time MATINEE was arriving in theaters. Joe and I had known each other by phone for 13 years at that point, but it was our first-ever meeting. Betty volunteered to commemorate the occasion by snapping a couple of pictures, and this is one of them. Thank you, dear.

As it happens, I went directly from Joe's office that afternoon to the Ackermansion, where I had a two-hour private visit with Forry Ackerman -- our second and last meeting. It was reported this weekend that Forry has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and isn't expected to live much longer. Upon receiving the news, he asked to be released from the hospital so that he might spend his remaining time at home, visiting with friends and fans. This thread on the Classic Horror Film Boards contains some participatory reports from this final "Open House" from monster kids Rick Baker and Bill Warren, and many others who hold Uncle 4E dear. You'll find a message there from me, too.

Bava Book Wins International Horror Guild Award!

The INTERNATIONAL HORROR GUILD AWARDS for WORKS from 2007

NOVEL
The Terror. Dan Simmons (Little, Brown & Company)

FICTION COLLECTION
Dagger Key and Other Stories. Lucius Shepard (PS Publishing)

LONG FICTION
Softspoken. Lucius Shepard (Night Shade Books)

MID-LENGTH FICTION
"Closet Dreams". Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts 10: PS Publishing)

SHORT FICTION
"Honey in the Wound". Nancy Etchemendy (The Restless Dead: Candlewick Press)

ANTHOLOGY
Inferno. Ellen Datlow, editor (Tor)

NON-FICTION
Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark. Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog)

PERIODICAL
Postscripts. Peter Crowther & Nick Gevers, editors (PS Publishing)

ILLUSTRATED NARRATIVE
The Nightmare Factory. Thomas Ligotti (creator/writer), Joe Harris & Stuart Moore (writers), Ben Templesmith, Michael Gaydos, Colleen Doran & Ted McKeever

ART
Elizabeth McGrath for "The Incurable Disorder", Billy Shire Fine Arts, December 2007

PETER STRAUB, named earlier as the year's LIVING LEGEND, was honored in an essay by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz (http://horroraward.org/peter_straub.html or download as a document: http://horroraward.org/peter_straub.doc.)

About The IHG Awards

The International Horror Guild Awards recognized outstanding achievements in the field of Horror and Dark Fantasy. Nominations are derived from recommendations made by the public and the judges knowledge of the field.

The IHG Living Legend Award is determined solely by the judges. Living Legends are individuals who have made meritorious and notable contributions and/or have substantially influenced the field of horror/ dark fantasy. Previous recipients are Ramsey Campbell, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Gahan Wilson, Stephen King, Richard Bleiler, Charles L. Grant, William F. Nolan, Alice Cooper, Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, Hugh B. Cave, Edward W. Bryant, Richard Matheson, and Harlan Ellison.

Edward Bryant, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Ann Kennedy Vandermeer, and Hank Wagner adjudicated for the final award year of 2007. William Sheehan and Fiona Webster have also served as judges. Paula Guran administered the award beginning in 1996. The awards were overseen by a non-profit corporation, The Mirabundus Project, Inc.

For additional information on the International Horror Guild, please contact info@horroraward.org.
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Donna and I are honored and delighted by this wonderful news! We extend our heartfelt thanks to the IHG judges and membership, and our congratulations to all the other recipients and nominees!