Assemblog: September 28, 2012

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, 1970

New on Popshifter this week: I strongly recommend Richard Crouse’s new book Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils; a concerned citizen lays down some rules on proper Facebook etiquette; Julie can’t find a song to dislike on Gemma Ray’s Island Fire; Emily deems The Very Best Of Vince Guaraldi and The Very Best Of The Bill Evans Trio as “essential” and praises Timi Yuro’s The Complete Liberty Singles as a “wonderful collection”; Paul explains why only hipsters hate hipsters; and Jemiah has good news for people who don’t know the difference between “grisly” and “grizzly” in her review of The Wrong Word Dictionary.

Remember when we saw that fantastic 3D trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and we couldn’t wait until December? And then the movie was pushed back to 2013 and there were rumors of financing problems? There has been an updated release date of May 10, 2013 for The Great Gatsby so I guess we should assume that all those problems got sorted out. Whew! I am still looking forward to this movie.

Also on the upcoming movies front, is a remake of Alice Sweet Alice (I talked about the original briefly here) by Dante Tomaselli, who is also about to release Torture Chamber. First off, let’s get the remake-weary gnashing of teeth and wailing out of the way. I love Alice Sweet Alice, but it sure as hell ain’t perfect, so I’m curious to see how this remake will turn out (hopefully there will less yelling from the actors). Second, I don’t know anything about Torture Chamber, so I had to look up more. It’s about possessed kids! Having watched the trailer, I am not too impressed, but I am convinced that Tomaselli can bring a lot to his Alice remake. Stay tuned . . .

Dread Central has a wonderful article about the history of Universal monsters to coincide with the October 2 release of the Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection on Blu-Ray. I hate to be “that guy” but it’s almost impossible to read the article due to the high black and white contrast. I would like to respectfully suggest to Dread Central and Fangoria that they need to seriously consider a site redesign so that people will actually want to read their articles.

The remake of Maniac starring Elijah Wood just screened at Paris’s L’Etrange Festival and Twitch posted a terrific and thought-provoking review from Brian Clark that you should read, even if you don’t like horror movies.

Clark brings up a lot of things that I think about myself when I’m watching a particularly gruesome horror film (I Saw The Devil is the one that comes to mind immediately). I hate to say I have doubts about my love of the genre because that makes it sound like a cult and I’m certainly not going to pretend to like certain movies just because they’re horror movies. But I can see why, to an outsider (for lack of a better word), certain movies, no matter how well made, can seem unnecessary, if not downright offensive.

For more on L’Etrange Film Festival, here’s a good interview with its creator, Frédéric Temps, also from Twitch.

LabSplice at Paracinema has been doing a tremendous job covering the Giallo Fever! Film Festival at the Anthology Film Archives in New York.

There is an intro to the coverage of not only the festival but the giallo genre itself. He also delves into the origins of giallo in novel form, and discusses the film Who Saw Her Die? Each day of the festival is covered in an in-depth blog post as well. Day One includes input from Tony Musante from The Bird With The Crystal Plumage; Day Two talks about The House With The Laughing Windows (as well as my tweet explaining how I couldn’t get through the whole thing when I tried to watch it); Day Three discusses Deep Red and What Happened To Solange?; while Day Four ponders the “Maybe Giallos.” If you know nothing about giallo, it’s worth your time.

The Festival continues through September 30, so keep checking Paracinema for more updates.

—Less Lee Moore, Managing Editor