News and What Have You

First things first: all-night werewolf movie marathon tomorrow night at the Two Boots Pioneer!, starting at 9:00. Be there, and keep off the moors.

James Lipton is a figure who never ceases to fascinate me. I find his interviews with actors endlessly interesting to watch, and I greatly admire how he gets actors to seriously examine their craft. On the other hand, I find his persona to be one of the skeeviest and most repellent I've ever seen, either broadcast on television or in person. When I'm watching Inside the Actor's Studio, it's as if I'm seeing Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. or whoever it might be getting molested by the lovechild of Peter Lorre and Baron Harkonnen from Dune, but his doing so somehow makes them incredibly candid about their work ethic, the Hollywood system, and where they draw their inspiration from. Now, to add to the mystery, Lipton has revealed that he once worked as a pimp in Paris in his younger days. The guy just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

Life Imitates Art.... Robert S. McElvaine of the Op-Ed News examines how Bush's presidency eerily mirrors Gabriel Over the White House, an obscure, pro-fascism Walter Huston film from 1933, which was funded by William Randolph Hearst.

Additionally, here's an (old) article from the sometimes pretensious, but most often wonderful Bright Lights Film Journal, about The Bride of Frankenstein. Specifically, it's about how The Bride of Frankenstein is, no joke, one of the greatest pieces of subversive queer cinema ever filmed. I read this article for the first time some years ago, and it gave me a startling amount of insight into the subtextual nature of many genre films.

Halloween is fast approaching. Anyone got any particular favorites they like to pull out and watch this time of the year?