Good Day
A holiday week means a weak newsletter I'm afraid. In the span of seven days it's often hard to get geared up with a ton of interesting stuff but rest assured that next week's endeavor will knock your ass clean off. Russ is in Toronto covering the festival for the third year and it's always lovely. Devin has some terrific interviews on the way as well as his review of Pan's Labyrinth. I'm sure I'll cobble something more interesting than my typical combination of letters columns, Goin' Polish things, and installments of The Dark HIM (which is brilliantly rendered and needs your support) but for the life of me I don't know what they'll be. All I can say is to keep spreading the word about the site. We are always looking to inflict the eyes of new readers.
Crikey!
It's a shame about ol' Croc Hunter. A stingray? Easily one of the most beautiful and mysterious creatures ever to gracefully glide the planet now has a big black eye thanks to one misplaced stinger. Of the ways to go, I think Steve got off well. No evisceration or public head chompings. It sucks, though. It sucks almost as much of the people who can only make a big deal about the "child incident". It sucks almost as much as the fact the next few weeks will be rife with Croc Hunter jokes and email forwards. I wish all celebrity deaths could be by stingrays. Including Buddy Holly.
Beaks!
I'm sure Devin will go into this further in his contributions to the newsletter, but I am so blown away to see Jeremy "Beaks" Smith's name on a CHUD.com article. Granted, it's probably a one-time thing but it still rocks. Any L.A. trip doesn't feel whole unless I see the man and have a drink or two and his Brian DePalma interview is exactly as good as I'd hoped. Granted, I loathed his upcoming The Black Dahlia but mostly because it sucked. Still, it's great to see Beaks doing a wonderful job of speaking to a bearded legend of film.
http://www.chud.com/interviews/7568
-Nick Nunziata
Friends, Romans and Countrymen,
This week I got into a little bit of a dust-up with a movie blogger. John Campea, who runs The Movie Blog, is a nice guy - I met him on the set visit for The Transformers two weekends back. He's a quiet, sort of straight-seeming dude, and there's nothing wrong with that. I liked him well enough. So I was a little dismayed to see him calling me out on his blog as an example of why studios don't take movie websites seriously.
Now, when I'm wrong I don't mind being called on it. And God knows I've been (and will again be) wrong. The thing here is two-fold, though: 1) I wasn't wrong and 2) The studios take movie websites seriously.
We'll get back to what this argument was about in a second, but let's address point number two first. Another blogger weighed in on this issue, MediaMelt from FilmRot, and I would like to quote him here:
“Studios only care about one thing: good word for their film on their terms. The moment you no longer benefit them, they'll drop you, no matter what your level of professionalism. If you do benefit them (ie you have an audience and will play nice with them), you can be all Harry Knowles and they don't care - they'll load you up with all the plane flights, set visits and early screenings you can handle - no matter how unprofessional you are. Just ask Earl Dittman.
http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1678
PS, I've met Earl Dittman! I tried to take his picture, but it came out blurry, like every picture ever taken of Sasquatch.
Anyway, MediaMelt's right - the studios don't care how well you write, they care who reads you. Do you think People gets great access because its' a fucking literary journal of high repute? No, it gets great access because everybody's mom reads it. This is important to keep in mind, because the only people really worried about the legitimacy of internet outlets are… people who write for the internet. It's the readership that makes someone legit, and CHUD is legit.
But what bugged me about John's editorial was that he quoted all these mean things I said about the critics who booed Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain at the Venice Film Festival. I called them morons and said that they must have not been smart enough for the film, etc. He quoted all of those things, but he left out the sentence where I said I give leeway for personal taste. Maybe The Fountain won't be for everyone, but to boo it? It's a gross overreaction at best, and other critics who have seen the film agree with me on this point - you may not like The Fountain, but it cannot be denied that it is a well-made and serious film.
It's troubling when you get quoted out of context like Campea did to me there. I've always tried to be very careful with my transcripts of interviews, and to only include stuff that I have on tape, which means that some great off the cuff stuff people have said to me never made it to the site. And yet John left out the sentence from my article that would have completely ruined his whole thesis.
You can read John's article, and the talk back with my replies, by clicking here.
CHUD.COM
THE SPECIAL EDITION
Spin that golden platter!
There have been a veritable assload of titles that have arrived and promptly broken down your door with the full intent of reenacting the 'squeal like a pig' sequence from Deliverance. And it's not just with you, but your sacred DVD player.
First up, there's The Seven Samurai, which Criterion just reissued in a sexy 3-disc edition. I know I erroneously noted that the disc itself carried Dolby Digital 4.0 audio, and I have to retract that, since now it's been confirmed it's still actually Dolby 2.0. My mistakes will be taken out mercilessly on my Research Intern. He's quivering right now as I type this, even though he happens to be me. Back to the masterpiece, it's chock-filled with a splendorous amount of extras that buoy the film experience. That's precisely what good extras SHOULD do, and more often than not don't. Criterion has worked their illustrious telecine skills, crafting a transfer that sparkles high and mightily above any other previous edition in the entire world. Maybe the entire universe.
There's also been the terrifically entertaining Billy Wilder flick Double Indemnity. Universal just released it as part of their ongoing Legacy Series. This, like the above, is also a no-brainer instant purchase. It's been looked at as the granddaddy of all film noir flicks, and it almost is and then some. Crackling with some of Wilder's most atmospheric sarcasm, and his heady command behind the camera, Double Indemnity works as both a fun time and a chance for all of the fledgling film buffs out there to learn something, to be enthralled. As a completely necessary double Wilder feature, you could do worse than pairing it with the recently released Spirit of St. Louis (in the exemplary James Stewart Signature Collection), but you could also do even better pairing it with a rental of The Big Carnival, aka Ace in the Hole. Unfortunately, the latter is on VHS only, and in short supply.
I'd also be remiss to not single-out Let's Scare Jessica to Death, which for all of its charm, is precisely a coolly calculated fright fest that works both your skin and the sexual deviant beneath it. Seeped heavily in a shrouding haze of horror, each participant in the unwilling struggle between the natural and supernatural (minus Rick James) helps to create an effective portrait of what fairly good 70's chillers can accomplish, besides your parents' immortal night creating your older Brother.
And we're not even quite finished yet. Universal, in conjunction with Best Buy, will release their Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection soon enough on 9/19 ( click here). Titles include the wonder of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the spectacle of Tarantula, and others like The Mole People, The Monolith Monsters, and Monster on Campus. Best of all, it's only a small $19.99 (or a years' wages for theatre/video store employees). Having been unable to see most of the collection, I'm stoked to get my hands on this set, even if it means falling into their exclusive trap.
Anything that slips through the cracks in the future I'll try and cover here, and vice-versa with The Special Edition. Speaking of things that go long in the night, are you reading? Hopefully the Bargain Bin section is saving you some much-needed coin for hookers, booze, and that extra copy of Big Man on Campus (even though it's not out here in the states. Yet. Petition, anyone?). That's it out of me for this week.
-Newell Todd
CREATURE CORNER
The horror!
11 COLONELS ATTACK!
Belly itchers, unite!
Andrew Sweeney (our director) just returned from a quick jaunt to Los Angeles to get away and do some work with the cast. He returned with some raw stuff, but fun stuff. I'll put a clip online later in the week but everything but the procuring of money is coming along very well. I hear it helps to have a budget, but we haven't licked that yet. That said, momentum will not cease until this thing is made. Here's hoping we don't have to pull off a heist to do it. Stay tuned here for links to clips and stuff. I think the best way to make this thing happen is to share the material.
Please visit the 11 Colonels MySpace page well as my brand new one at these locations:
http://www.myspace.com/11colonels
http://www.myspace.com/nicknunziata
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