My apologies for ghosting you during this time leading up to Halloween. I didn't intend to be off my blogging duties for the better part of three weeks, but it's been an unusually busy period, even for me - I've done several audio commentaries in a row, I'm working on a new short story, I read five thick Michael Moorcock novels, and Dorothy and I have been polishing our songs before they go into mastering, and also into submission for a songwriting competition.
Some recent work has already returned as holiday harvest. As I write this, I've just received advance copies of my next two audio commentaries - Clint Eastwood's directorial debut PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1970) and THE WONDERS OF ALADDIN (1961), a gorgeous widescreen restoration of the Arabian Nights comic fantasy co-directed by Henry Levin (THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM) and Mario Bava. The latter - a work of sometimes jaw-dropping beauty - is a must for all Bava collectors, and the Eastwood film now looks like a genuine turning point in the mutation of the horror genre as it shifted from atmospheric fantasy to the terrors lurking in full, contemporary daylight. I don't often get much feedback on the work I turn into them, but my producer at Kino Lorber told me that he feels my PLAY MISTY track ranks high among my work. It will street on November 10, with ALADDIN on November 17, so get those pre-orders in now.
Two nights ago, Donna and I got caught up in THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT over on Netflix; we had to stop after two episodes because we had an early morning and it was actually painful to stop. We finished it up last night and, somehow, the spell cast by those introductory episodes was sustained right through to the end; the entire seven-hour drama is up there with the very best and most cinematic of contemporary television. It's based on a novel by Walter Tevis, who also wrote THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, and as with that novel, it sets some important scenes in Cincinnati, which is always amusing to us when that happens. The Netflix limited series, directed by the gifted Scott Frank, manages to make a Cincinnati hotel circa 1963 look like the ritzy side of Manhattan - which it should, to its young heroine's eyes. It's essentially the story of how a young orphaned girl accidentally discovers herself in the game of Chess and goes on to be internationally recognized as an "astounding" prodigy. It doesn't matter how well you understand or appreciate Chess, because it's really a universal story of how anyone of talent becomes, through adversities, who they are. Also, anyone familiar with THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, novel or film (or even miniseries, which I've yet to see), should be able to see ways in which THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT tells a variation on the same story, a story of ambition, addiction, and achievement. Anya Taylor-Joy and Isla Johnston (as the adult and child stages of the heroine, Beth Harmon) radiate a certain angular alien quality, and relation to the camera, that recalls some of the otherness that David Bowie brought to the role of Thomas Jerome Newton. My only gripe about the film is that it had to move on to the story it needed to tell, demanding the change in actors; Taylor-Joy definitely proves herself one of those actors the camera simply loves to watch - she can embody cinema simply by walking down a corridor or turning her direct gaze on an opponent - but Johnston's performance is one of the most gripping I've seen a child give.
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