The Only Reliable Film Magazine in the World, says Quentin Tarantino

My friend Daniela Catelli (the author of Italian books on THE EXORCIST and William Friedkin, and an Italian translator for parts of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK) sends the following message from Rome:

"Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, now you’re famous in Italy! This is from the only independent newspaper in Italy, IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO, and it’s a small daily column written by Luca Guadagnino, a film director who’s in the Jury at the Venice Film Festival with Quentin Tarantino. You will find the scan attached, this is the translation:

“Here’s some advice from jury president Quentin Tarantino: The only reliable film magazine in the world is VIDEO WATCHDOG, a [bi]monthly publication that reviews only the films on DVD without submitting to the market rules. Instead, VW follows the taste and the analytical depth of his founder, the greatest film historian Tim Lucas, author of – Tarantino claims – the best book on films ever written: MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. Tarantino-Lucas-Bava: cinema is truly without borders.”

I'm most grateful to Quentin, whom I've never met and with whom I've never spoken, for these astounding, purely unsolicited and heartfelt words of praise. There are three huge compliments in that little paragraph. Color me blushing.

So come on, you Tarantino fans... embrace paper! SUBSCRIBE!

Get Rondo-ized!

"Don't hurt that Rondo, Rondo!" VW publisher Donna Lucas takes a protective stance outside the auditorium where the 6th Annual Rondo Awards were held at WonderFest in 2008.

In an effort to spread awareness of VIDEO WATCHDOG's various nominations for the the 8th Annual Rondo Awards, Donna and I (with the approval of our writers) have decided to make available -- for a limited time -- the complete texts of the four nominees for this year's Best Magazine Article award.

Stephen R. Bissette's "Let the Twilight In", an in-depth study of TWILIGHT and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, can be read here.

Eric Somer's "Down the Block from Bergman: THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and Beyond," an examination of the influence of Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING on Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, the recent remake, and other horror films, can be read here.

Kim Newman's "DVD Spotlight: MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION, a detailed history of the 1966-70 British TV terror anthology, can be read here.

And Shaun Brady's "Weird Scenes Inside the Fun House: The Making of MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD," a production history of the 1972 Pittsburgh-made surrealist horror film, can be read here.

And here is a link to a special Rondo link page now added to our website, which also features direct links to a five-part HD video of my Q&A with INFERNO star Irene Miracle and composer Keith Emerson, which has been nominated for Best Fan Event.

Also, please don't forget to consider any of our many hard-working contributors for your vote in the Best Writer and Best DVD Reviewer categories, and remember that both our cover artist Charlie Largent and our art director Donna Lucas (whose layouts make VW's feature articles soar) are eligible in the Best Artist category.

Waffling About Watchdog, Weight and Woodstock

Sam Umland has written a wonderful response to my previous posting's 20th year announcement at his 60x50 blog. Always thoughtful reading here and I commend it to your attention above and beyond his VW musings, which include an overview of his and wife Becky's long and valued affiliation with the magazine.

We have been receiving numerous calls, even from our printer, inquiring about the status of VW 150. Donna promises to have it to the printer by Monday, so it should be a busy weekend here at Chez Watchdog. Today, with temps pushing to 100° here in Cincinnati, the air conditioner went back into my office window to facilitate speedier and more pleasurable editing of the contents of VW 151.

Also, though I did not mention it on Tuesday (when it would have shared the spotlight with VW's 19th anniversary), Diane Pfister and I finished our screenplay THE WEIGHT OF SALT AND SOUL that same day after four months of steady, intensive and almost exclusive labor. The following day we made some additional changes to the 181-page manuscript and sent it around to our agent and some friendly readers for feedback. Our plan is now to take a week off and decide what we want to do next.

Yesterday I watched four movies in a day (Robbe-Grillet's EDEN AND AFTER, the four-hour director's cut of WOODSTOCK in Blu-ray, JUNO and THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR), which is something I haven't done since... well, since I was who I used to be. I have owned a Grove Press hardcover of Marguerite Duras' novel THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR for close to thirty years and have wanted to see the movie for as long. It was a great disappointment, as I find Tony Richardson's films almost invariably are. I thought the controversial JUNO was refreshing, savvy fun with a commendably subtle edgy subplot (had I been directing, Jason Bateman would have pulled out a copy of THE HEADLESS EYES rather than THE WIZARD OF GORE, though), and EDEN AND AFTER gave such a brilliant slant to the rest of the day that I think watching an art film at 10 or 11 every morning might be just the way to start my day.

WOODSTOCK remains one of my favorite movies, and its non-musical elements are becoming more poignant and fascinating with age. The bottom end of the disc's 5.1 TrueHD mix attests to how dully or just plain badly most of the bassists at Woodstock actually played, but let's hear it for the select few who make the movie's subwoofering bearable and melodic: Bruce Barthol of Country Joe and the Fish, John Entwistle of The Who, Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone, and god of all bass gods, Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane. Speaking of the Airplane, the disc's second disc of supplements includes something else I have waited more than thirty years to see: one of the earliest live performances of the then-not-yet-released "Volunteers," which appeared on the original soundtrack album set but has never been included in any cut of the movie. Legend has it that most of the band got dosed from a water jug before taking the stage at dawn, and by this point in the set, Jorma Kaukonen's guitar playing had become pre-grunge sludge and Marty Balin, clearly tripping his balls off, sings the words with a passion he could still summon when the song was fresh.

Now In Our 20th Year

According to Donna, who remembers such things, it was nineteen (19) years ago yesterday -- on June 15, 1990 -- that the first copies of the first issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG were delivered to our home.

We were unhappy with some unfortunate things about VW #1, which was ineptly printed and cut by a Kentucky company evidently unaccustomed to printing anything but business cards. The paper stock was like shirt cardboard and no two copies of the issue were uniform in height; I can remember Donna taking a paper cutter to the tops and bottoms of some copies in a mostly vain attempt to make all the pages in some individual copies the same size. It was a source of personal unhappiness to me that we were so short on photo material that I had to resort to drawings to fill certain gaps. I had won awards for art when I was in school, but it was a muscle I hadn't flexed in awhile and, at least to me, it showed. I do like the drawings I did for Craig Ledbetter's Venezuelan video piece, and The Letterbox (showing the unmistakable hand of Christopher Lee rising from a letter-strewn coffin); in fact, I was so pleased with the Letterbox art that it continued until our 9th issue, at which time I stumbled on our more playful way of introducing each issue's letters department -- which other magazines have sometimes tried to emulate.

But despite its production shortcomings, the issue had an impact (people still talk and write to me about "How To Read a Franco Film") and it launched an award-winning magazine that is now in its twentieth year of business and which, in some ways, has helped to change the face of the industry it writes about.

Coralina Rocks with Video Watchdog

This link will take you to a YouTube audience video of Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni performing "Suspiria" onstage in Toronto with ex-Goblin keyboardist Maurizio Guarini's band Orco Muto, in 2007. To my astonishment, Coralina's intense performance -- which is accompanied throughout by a rear screen slideshow of images from Dario Argento films -- climaxes with two strangely included Herschell Gordon Lewis projections, the second of which happens to be the controversially gruesome cover of VIDEO WATCHDOG #60!

This first collaboration came as a huge surprise to Donna and me, and I suspect it will surprise Coralina too! In a still more impressive coincidence, this performance took place on August 24 -- the very day that we first received MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK from our printer in Hong Kong!

Cover Story & Twitch

Now on Cincinnati newsstands and racks about town, the new issue of CITY BEAT (our local entertainment paper) profiles Donna and me and our 32 year struggle to produce MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK in a cover story called "Book of a Lifetime." Excellent work by Jason Gargano, which non-Cincinnatians can read online here.

And over at Twitch, Dave Canfield presents his own ATCOTD interview with yours truly.

VW Meets QT

Correspondent Paul Hurt reports that VIDEO WATCHDOG has made its long overdue debut in a major motion picture!

The cover of VW 126 (pictured left) can be seen on a newsstand visited by Rosario Dawson at the 103:49 mark in the new, expanded DVD of Quentin Tarantino's GRINDHOUSE offering "DEATH PROOF." It's arranged in the uppermost tier of a gas station newsrack, wedged between copies of JET and EBONY, which, come to think of it, is usually where I see it. I made one of my increasingly rare or decreasingly often treks out to a theater to see GRINDHOUSE and didn't notice this, so it may be one of the newly added scenes.

Unless he does so under an assumed name, we have no record of Quentin ever ordering anything from us, but we did notice one of our order blanks on an enticingly cluttered table in his living room, in a full page photo published in ROLLING STONE at the time of KILL BILL 1's release. So we suspect he's a fan, and of course it's mutual.

FILM FREAK CENTRAL editor Bill Chambers was kind enough to send in the screen grab above. As Bill says, "You gotta love that Lebanon, Tennessee gas stations stock VW."

Indeed.

VIDEO WATCHDOG #130: First Peek

Here is your first look at the cover of our next issue, VIDEO WATCHDOG #130, which will be shipping on April 27. A tip of the hat to cover artist Charlie Largent for his evocative trip back to FORBIDDEN PLANET, which handsomely acknowledges Sam & Rebecca Umland's detailed review of Warner Home Video's new HD DVD of this classic title.

Though the Umlands' review isn't one of the issue's feature articles, it's only a two-page spread shy of the length of our two features -- Ted Newsom's Freddie Francis tribute and David Kalat's behind-the-scenes story about producing a restored version of GANJA & HESS for All Day Entertainment. The comparative brevity of these articles (six pages each) allowed us to accomodate more reviews this time around, which is helpful since we wanted to make up somewhat for lost time by covering a larger number of new releases. Anyway, we've had a number of 1950s icons on our covers over the years -- the Gillman, Harryhausen's Cyclops, James Arness as the Thing, even the She-Creature -- and I feel a sense of fulfillment to have the ultimate '50s sci fi icon, Robby the Robot, gracing our cover for the first time.

VW #130 is an important issue for us because it marks the resumption of our monthly schedule for the first time since #119, which we published a full two years ago. We're up to the task of meeting tighter deadlines, and we're hoping that you'll all fall happily back into the habit of seeking out VW at your favorite newsstand on a more regular basis.

Visit the "Coming Soon" page on the VW website for a near-complete rundown of the issue's contents and a free four-page preview.